Grim. It’s not the kind of name you hear every day. Unless, of course, your name is Grim.
Grimner Hallbjörn Magnusson, to be exact, which was a rather hefty name to bestow on a tiny newborn, but Grim’s father, the distinguished Professor of Scandinavian Studies, had been persuasive. Grimner was another name for Odin, the chief god of Norse mythology, Hallbjörn was the name of Grim’s great-great-grandfather, and you couldn’t ask for a more respectable Icelandic last name than Magnusson.
But since Grim had weighed only five pounds at birth, his mother was a little concerned that the next day’s newspaper might bear the headline:
Infant Crushed By Weight Of Own Name
So she had called him Grim from the moment he was born, as if by dropping the weight of those last three letters she’d be increasing his chances of survival. She never called him by his full name, even when she was angry. It had never been, “Grimner Hallbjörn Magnusson, you come down here this instant!” Instead, she had turned the “r” into a growl. “Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrim!”
But despite his scrawny beginnings, he’d grown into his name quite nicely. Now 17 years old, he was six feet tall and 165 pounds, with his father’s dark hair and olive complexion. Grim had always been a little envious of his younger brothers, Thor and Njal, who had their mother’s blond hair, blue eyes, and fair skin. When he looked in the mirror, the only thing he had to remind him of his mother was half his eye color. It was as if they’d mixed his father’s brown eyes with his mother’s blue eyes to come up with his green.
At the moment, Grim’s eyes were closed. He was standing in the middle of east lawn, head back, shirt off, arms outstretched, waiting. Three, two, one…and there it was. The gurgling and sputtering of water flooding PVC pipes, followed by the angry hiss of sprinkler heads. Grim needed to cool off and the fine spray of the No. 18 Fixed-Pattern Nozzles on the east lawn should do that quite nicely. Should, but after a few seconds he realized that the only thing being cooled off nicely was his left shin.
He opened his eyes and looked down at the sprinkler in front of him. Instead of a strong, round spray pattern, it was spitting limply on his left leg. He looked around, spotted two other sprinklers with similar problems, and started making the rounds. He loved doing sprinkler work when the weather was hot. After you reach a certain age, running through the sprinklers is considered to be “immature.” But if you pick up a screwdriver and walk through the sprinklers you can call it “maintenance.”
Within a few minutes, he’d taken care of the three misbehaving sprinklers and was standing back on the sidewalk, his soaked cargo shorts dripping water onto the hot cement. The water evaporated almost as fast as it hit the ground. It was only the end of May and the temperature had been hovering in the mid-90s all week. It was going to be a long, hot Idaho summer. Grim was almost glad he wasn’t going to be in St. Albans to experience it.
Grim heard the familiar squeak, followed by the familiar slam, of the screen door and the clicking of heels across the front porch. He knew what was coming.
“Mr. Magnusson,” said Florence Peterson, who looked down from the porch as a queen looks down on her subjects. “It’s not enough for you to abandon me for the summer to go traipsing around the English countryside. You now seem intent on giving my nosy neighbors the impression that I hire male strippers to do my yard work. Would you kindly put your shirt on before one of the town spies sees you and starts another round of vicious rumor-mongering.”
Grim glanced down the hill to Agnes Johansson’s house. The 98-year-old Mrs. Johansson was the only neighbor, nosy or otherwise, in a one-mile radius. And while he didn’t doubt Mrs. Johansson’s ability to put together a crack surveillance team and information network, he did doubt her eyesight. She’d been legally blind for the past 12 years and had to position the Lay-Z-Boy two feet from the TV just to make out Pat Sajak’s face.
“My shirt’s in my car, Mrs. Peterson,” he said, motioning to the old Toyota Tercel station wagon parked at the bottom of the driveway. “But I’d be happy to go get it.”
“Oh, don’t bother,” she sniffed. “If you got a scratch reaching into that rust bucket, you’d probably get tetanus and sue me for millions. I certainly hope that when you return in the Fall it will be in a vehicle from which you haven’t had to evict chickens.”
“Oh, I didn’t evict them,” Grim said with a grin. “I told them they could stay if they helped with the car payment.”
“Has the toxic brigade arrived?” Mrs. Peterson asked, changing the subject.
“No,” Grim replied, “They won’t be here until four o’clock. And don’t worry, I’ve talked with Mr. Nelson and he’s assured me that he won’t be doing any spraying while I’m gone.”
“Well, I’m not going to take any chances.” And with that she turned and went back into the house, the screen door slamming behind her.
Grim took one more walk around the grounds to make sure that everything was in order. He’d spent the entire Spring getting things to a point where they should be able to coast through the Summer, but he still worried about what condition the grounds would be in when he got back in September. It’s not that he didn’t have faith in Mr. Nelson and his ChemoGrass franchise….OK, it was that he didn’t have faith in Mr. Nelson and his ChemoGrass franchise, but he didn’t have much choice. ChemoGrass was the only other horticultural game in town.
ChemoGrass was a father and son concern, with Mr. Nelson handling all of the hazmat work (fertilizer, insecticide, etc) and his son, Michael, doing the mowing. Michael was 14 and was a comic book nut, which had a definite negative effect on the quality of his work on the riding mower. He’d been a little more careful since the incident with Mrs. Knudsen’s cat, but you’d still see him weaving back and forth across lawns, steering with his left hand while clutching the latest graphic novel in his right.
Mr. Nelson was a firm believer in ChemoGrass’ unofficial motto: “There’s no problem that a heavy application of petrochemicals can’t solve.” But Grim had been even more firm when he’d talked with Mr. Nelson about taking over the groundskeeping duties at The Fortress for the summer: No spraying, period. It had been a bitter organic pill for Mr. Nelson to swallow, but in the end he’d agreed.
Grim walked through the orchard, checking the apricot trees for any sign of last Fall’s powdery mildew. He tied up a few errant canes on the climbing roses, pulled a couple of weeds from the west flower beds, and was turning the compost pile one last time when he heard the diesel engine of the ChemoGrass truck making it’s way up the driveway. He got to the top of the driveway just as the truck came to a stop, the ChemoGrass mystery liquid sloshing back and forth in its large translucent tank. Mr. Nelson hopped down from the cab. Michael sat in the passenger seat, glued to his copy of Ultimate X-Men.
“Hello, Mr. Nelson. How are you today?” Grim asked, shaking Mr. Nelson’s hand.
“Well, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous about meeting Mrs. Peterson,” Mr. Nelson said quietly, glancing anxiously at the house.
“Why’s that?” Grim asked, though he already knew the answer.
“Well, I’ve never met her before, but my wife did once and she said it was one of the most unpleasant experiences of her life. I asked her if she had any advice, and all she said was, ‘Be confident, she can smell fear.’”
Just then, they both heard the screen door open and looked up to see Mrs. Peterson emerge from the house wearing a World War II-era gas mask.
Grim couldn’t help but smile, but he could hear Mr. Nelson chanting under his breath, “Be confident, she can smell fear. Be confident, she can smell fear.”
Grim leaned over and whispered, “I think you’re safe. With that gas mask on, she can’t smell a thing.”
Posted: Wednesday, March 3, 2004 at 10:39 PM
The Queen of St. Albans
St. Albans, Idaho, population 7,276, was nestled on the Henry’s Fork of the Snake River, about 40 miles west of the Grand Tetons. The town had been established in 1870 by Mormon pioneers, most of whom had immigrated from Norway, Sweden, and Iceland. While the high altitude, harsh winters, and short growing season had proven to be too daunting for previous settlers, the Scandinavians were right at home.
Given it’s Mormon origins, it might seem odd that that St. Albans’ name had come from a Catholic saint, but the name was a borrowed one. The area around St. Albans had reminded one of the early settlers of St. Albans, Wisconsin, which, as home to a large granite quarry, had been named after St. Alban of Mainz, the patron saint of hernias.
While St. Albans, Idaho, didn’t have a granite quarry, its roots were firmly planted in the earth. Its rich, volcanic soil was ideal for growing root vegetables and the area quickly became one of the largest potato producing regions in the U.S. Up until a few years ago, most people in the town were either potato farmers, ranchers, or, like Grim’s father, taught at the college in nearby Rockford. But even though none of these occupations paid particularly well, St. Albans had one of the highest average incomes in the state. When one of your neighbors is a billionaire it tends to skew the numbers a bit.
Pete Peterson was born in St. Albans in 1923 and, after a brief stint in the Navy during World War II, he headed off to Chicago to attend Northwestern’s business school on the G.I. Bill. After graduating, he married Florence Smyth-Hamilton (of the Chicago Smyth-Hamiltons) and returned to St. Albans with an eye on modernizing the potato processing business.
He noticed one day that a lot of potato scraps were wasted during processing, so he devised a way to mince the scraps, add a little seasoning, and form them into bite-sized nuggets. He called them Spud Nips™ and they were an instant success. In the post-war era, frozen foods were a symbol of modern suburban chic, and Pete Peterson’s Spud Nips™ became a fixture, along with TV dinners and chicken pot pies, on the TV trays of Americans everywhere.
Unfortunately, a year after the successful nationwide launch of Spud Nips™, the Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite into orbit. The American public went into a panic, figuring that if the Russians could send a metal sphere the size of a basketball into orbit over U.S. soil, it was only a matter of time before nuclear warheads came raining down on their pot pies of prosperity.
The name of the Russian satellite, Sputnik, bore an unfortunate resemblance to the name of the Pete’s starchy confection and his competitors, Alma and Heber Driggs, of La Grande, Oregon, took advantage of the anti-Soviet backlash to launch a competing product. The name Tater Tykes™ didn’t conjure up the same vision of a nuclear apocalypse in the American mind, and by the end of 1959 the Driggs brothers had gained 90% of the bite-sized potato market.
Pete Peterson lost almost everything in the Spud Nips™ fiasco and decided that catering to restaurants would be less risky than dealing directly with fickle, reactionary consumers. So, he developed a method of parboiling and freezing thin strings of potato which could then be shipped to restaurants where the potato strings would be cooked in oil, salted, and served with a tomato-based condiment. Within a year he had a contract to be the exclusive provider of french fries for a small chain of hamburger restaurants that was experimenting with the concept of “franchising” and the rest is history.
As Pete’s fortunes rose, so did Florence’s expectations. In the early 1970s, Florence insisted that Pete’s new billionaire status warranted a move from the unassuming, ranch-style home they had on the outskirts of town to something a little more…prominent.
The new house, designed and built under Florence’s supervision, ended up looking vaguely like Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water, but without the water. And rather than being nestled in a valley and integrated with its surroundings, it was perched on the top of the highest hill in the valley. The large plate-glass windows of the house faced northeast, ostensibly to provide the best view the Grand Tetons, but since St. Albans lay to the west, it gave the impression that the house was trying to ignore the town.
The town tended to ignore Florence right back. Pete was considered a local and made frequent trips into town in his 1969 Ford pickup for groceries and hardware supplies. But Florence had worked hard to foster an outsider status and hadn’t set foot in St. Albans since 1978. Even after Pete died in 1985, she rarely left The Fortress (as it came to be called). What little interaction she did have with members of the community was usually quite unpleasant. Her tongue lashings were legendary and there were persistent rumors that she’d reduced each of the last four mayors to tears.
The only thing Florence seemed to enjoy was gardening. The Fortress was surrounded by five landscaped acres and while a commercial firm from Idaho Falls had always taken care of the lawn, she’d done everything else herself. There was a small orchard with apple, apricot, cherry, peach, pear, and plum trees, a rose garden, grape vines, raspberry and blackberry bushes, a kitchen herb garden, and a large vegetable garden, as well. All of it scrupulously maintained.
In the late-1990s, however, Florence’s arthritis became progressively worse and she wasn’t able to get around the gardens like she once had. The lawns remained in good shape, but since she was too proud to have anyone else come in to do the gardening, the rest of the grounds fell into disrepair.
This situation wasn’t unusual. While the average Idaho farmer could expect to live into his mid-70s, it was not unusual for Idaho farmers’ wives to live into their 90s. As these women got older, health problems often limited their mobility and if getting around the house became difficult, getting outside the house to do yard work was often impossible.
Grim’s introduction to horticulture came when his neighbor, Mrs. Skarsgaard broke her hip and Grim’s mother asked him if he’d be willing to go over once a week and mow her lawn. Shortly thereafter, he started mowing Mrs. Stratton’s lawn, followed by Mrs. Johnson’s, followed by Mrs. Nay’s, followed by the nearly-blind Mrs. Johansson’s, followed by others’. Mowing led to sprinkler work, which led to flower beds, which led to vegetable gardens and soon he was the groundskeeper for twelve of the best-looking yards in St. Albans.
When Grim turned 14, he started feeling the great adolescent need for spending money. Money was kind of tight at home, so if he wanted some disposable income he was going to have to find some way to earn it himself. The employment options for a 14-year-old don’t go much beyond yard work, which was fine with Grim, but he couldn’t very well start charging the widows for his services. There was only one person in St. Albans who could really afford to pay for yard work, and that person was Florence Peterson.
So, one May afternoon, Grim made the pilgrimage to The Fortress on his mountain bike. He was too young and clueless to realize how nervous he should be about meeting the Queen of St. Albans, but this lack of fear was one of the first things she noticed about him. Grim made her a proposal: He would work for three weeks for free. If she didn’t like his work, she was under no obligation to keep him on. But if his work was satisfactory, she would hire him as her full-time gardener.
If she had known that what she was really doing was subsidizing 12 other widows’ yard work, she might not have agreed, but she did. The truth is she didn’t think a 14-year-old boy had the maturity and discipline to do the work and she had secretly been looking forward to firing him at the end of the first week. But he was much tougher and more mature than he looked at the time. For three weeks, he woke at sunrise, rode his bike out to The Fortress, worked like a dog until sundown, rode back home again, and collapsed into bed, his arms, legs, and back aching like they had never ached before.
He spent the first week doing demolition: pruning shrubs and trees, thinning the flower beds, aerating the lawn, amending the soil, turning the garden, and weeding everything. The second week he repaired the irrigation systems, fixed the broken panels on the greenhouse, and (with some help from his father) reworked the electrical wiring for the outdoor lighting. The third week he had his Mom drive him to Idaho Falls where he picked up seeds, vegetable seedlings, annuals, ground covers, a new plum tree, and a few dwarf evergreens to replace the ungainly, aging junipers that flanked the driveway.
While Grim was working, Florence made frequent trips out onto the porch to criticize Grim’s pruning technique, click her tongue at perceived horticultural missteps, and second-guess his plant choices, but in the end even Florence had to acknowledge the results. The grounds were beautiful again, and though Florence would never admit it, they looked better than ever before. He got the job.
He’d never worked harder than he did that summer and the results were striking. But it wasn’t just the yard that was transformed. That summer Grim went from being a scrawny 14-year-old boy to being a lean, muscular young man. He grew three inches, put on about 15 pounds of muscle, and developed a dark tan. When he showed up at school that Fall, every girl at school couldn’t help but notice the change, but Grim was oblivious to their stares. In his own mind, he was still the same gawky nerd he’d always been.
He’d spent the last three years refining what he’d started that first summer at The Fortress and it had turned into a year-round job: landscaping in the summer; snow removal in the winter. The previous summer, when he turned 16, Grim purchased an old Toyota Tercel station wagon from a guy in Jackson Hole who had decided to abandon the granola lifestyle in favor of a career in accounting. The station wagon had 160,000 miles on the odometer and 20 years of road salt had taken its toll on the paint job. The brown paint on the roof and hood of the car was peeling off in large sheets and parts of the floor had rusted through so that driving through puddles usually meant getting your socks wet. Florence had been so appalled by the appearance of the vehicle that she had forbidden it in her driveway. Grim had to park at the bottom of the hill and ride the mower up.
The car was not what you would call a “babe magnet,” but it ran well and the price was right. In fact, the trailer he pulled behind the Tercel was worth double what the car was worth, and the mower he carried in the trailer was worth double the value of car and trailer combined.
But now he was leaving them all (the car, the trailer, the mower, The Fortress, St. Albans) behind…at least for the summer. His brother, Thor, was taking over lawn mowing duties for the widows in town and Mr. Nelson, who was currently being lectured by Florence Peterson (still wearing the gas mask) on The Florence Peterson Rules of Horticulture, was going to be in charge of The Fortress while he was gone.
Grim waited for a pause in the lecture and excused himself. He said goodbye to Mrs. Peterson, whose muttered response was unintelligible through of the gas mask, shook Mr. Nelson’s hand one last time, and rode the mower down the driveway to his car. He loaded the mower into the trailer, slammed the tailgate shut, and looked back up the hill one last time. He was going to miss this place, there was no doubt about it. But this opportunity to go to England was the chance of a lifetime and there was no way he could pass it up.
So, even though he’d never in his live travelled more than 300 miles from St. Albans, tomorrow morning he was getting on a plane (for the first time) and flying 4,731 miles to England. If he’d known just how much this summer was going to change his life forever, he would have been a little more nervous. But sometimes it pays to be young and clueless.
Posted: Thursday, March 11, 2004 at 11:40 PM
As Grim pulled up in front of his house he saw Brad Andrus standing beside the sycamore tree that dominated the front lawn of the Magnusson’s house. At Brad’s side stood another boy, about Brad’s age. This could mean only one thing. Something was stuck in the tree.
This was a little game that they played. Brad would lob some object into the high branches of the sycamore and it was Grim’s job to retrieve it. Grim was like a trained, tree-climbing monkey that Brad liked to show off whenever he had visitors.
“Hello, Brad,” Grim said as he got out of the car. “Who’s your friend?”
“Tod. He’s my cousin.” Brad replied.
“Nice to meet you, Tod,” Grim said, shaking Tod’s small hand. “So, what is it this time?”
“A Nerf football,” Brad replied.
“Is it the green one?”
“Yep.”
“Where is it?”
“On the left side, about halfway up.”
Grim looked at Tod. “So, how many times did Brad have to throw it up there before it stuck?”
Tod blinked and looked nervously at Brad. “Ummm…about 20.”
“OK,” Grim said to Brad. “Time me.”
Brad lifted the stopwatch he was holding in his right hand and hit the button. Brad’s father was the Jr. High School gym teacher and Brad had recently become enamored with his Dad’s stopwatch. He carried it everywhere, timing everyone doing anything. His Dad had become so tired of searching for his stopwatch every time that he left for work that he’d purchased himself a new one and relinquished the old one to Brad.
As Brad ticked the button, Grim took two quick steps, put his foot on the large knot about three feet off the ground, and launched himself into tree. He grabbed the lowest branch, which was about nine feet off the ground, and used the upward momentum to swing up and grab the second branch. Then he put both feet on the first branch and leapt up to grab the third.
The Magnusson’s sycamore was the ideal climbing tree, with a thick central trunk and large branches radiating out from the center. The branches were almost perfectly spaced — not too dense, not too sparse — so once you cleared the second branch you could climb the interior branches as if you were climbing a ladder. There was a gap about halfway up the east side that required a jump across to the south, but from there it was a straight shot to the top.
As Grim neared the halfway point he looked around and spotted the Nerf football resting on one of the smaller branches about 12 feet out from the trunk. This was going to be easy. He grabbed a large branch about five feet above the smaller branch and swung his legs up. Then, hanging upside-down like a three-toed sloth, he made his way, moving hand over hand, leg over leg, to the football.
The farther he climbed out on the large branch the more it bent under his weight, so by the time he was directly above the football he only had to reach down about a foot and a half to grab it. Brad and his cousin were almost directly below, so Grim took aim like a bombardier and let the football go. It was a perfect shot, bouncing off Brad’s head and landing at Tod’s feet.
“Hey!” Brad yelled, rubbing the top of his head.
“Oops, sorry about that,” he called down. “What was my time?”
Brad glanced at the stopwatch. “17 seconds,” he shouted.
“I must be getting old.” Grim muttered as he made his way back down the tree. He dropped the final nine feet to the ground. “Now, Brad, try not to get anything stuck up there while I’m gone. I don’t want to come home and find 80 things stuck in the tree.”
“I won’t,” Brad promised and ran off with his cousin, Nerf football in one hand, stopwatch in the other.
Grim went into the house, stripped, showered, ran his fingers through his hair (the extent of his grooming routine), and threw on a fresh pair of cargo shorts and a T-shirt. That was Grim’s summer uniform. Other than when he went to church, he would wear nothing but shorts and T-shirts until school started in the Fall.
After he was dressed, he ran out to the car, unhitched the trailer, and drove the few blocks into town. As he pulled into the parking lot of Ruffles Drive-In he saw Scott’s and Brent’s cars already parked outside. He walked in and headed toward the booth where they always sat.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “I had to get something out of the tree.”
“What was it this time?” Brent asked.
“A Nerf football,” Grim replied.
“Where was it?” Brent asked.
“About halfway up,” said Grim.
“What was your time?” Scott asked.
“17 seconds,” Grim said with a smile.
“You’re getting old,” Brent said. “You used to be able to do halfway in twelve.”
“Give me break, it was a long day,” Grim said as he headed to the counter, ordered a Fresh Lime (Ruffles made the best Fresh Limes in the state of Idaho), and took it back with him to the booth.
“So, what time do you leave in the morning?” Brent asked as Grim plopped into the booth.
“Five. I fly to Salt Lake where I have a two hour layover, then to New York where I have a three hour layover, and then to London.”
“This is your first time flying, isn’t it?” Scott asked.
“Yep,” Grim replied.
“You’re going to love it.”
“I hope so, because I’m going to be doing it for 18 hours.”
“Hey, I forgot the name of that castle where you’re working.” Brent said.
“Wickham Castle,” Grim replied.
“Never heard of it.”
“It’s not a very big one.”
“Are you going to have to handle the grounds all by yourself?” Brent asked.
“No, I’m like an intern. I’ll probably just end up doing all the grunt work.”
“So, will a grunt like you get to meet the Royal Family?” Scott asked.
“No. I understand they don’t really use the castle anymore. It’s out in the middle of nowhere and it’s pretty old, so it’s not big on luxuries. I guess the Royal Family is big on luxuries. There are tour groups that come through occasionally, but other that that there’ll be nobody but us lowly serfs.”
“What about Victoria?” Scott asked, pronouncing the name with his best proper British accent.
“Nope. No one from the Royal Family is going to be there.” Grim replied.
“Too bad,” Scott said.
“Why?” asked Grim.
“Because I think she’s hot,” Scott said.
“‘Hot?’ Did you really just use the term ‘hot?’” Grim asked, laughing.
“Yeah.” Scott said, staring off into space for a moment. “She’s beautiful. Sure, she’s mess, but she’s beautiful. And with those lips, I’ll bet she’s a great kisser.”
“Well, I’ll let you know,” Grim said with a smile.
“Yeah, right!” Brent said sarcastically. “You said she wasn’t even going to be there. Besides, you wouldn’t even know what a great kisser was!”
“Hey, I’ve had some experience,” Grim insisted.
“One kiss! One kiss does not count as ‘some experience,’” Brent countered.
“‘I forgot something,’” Scott said mockingly.
“Cut it out,” Grim objected. “That’s one more than both of you losers combined!”
“I’m saving myself,” Brent said demurely.
“For what, your fortieth birthday?” Scott asked. “I’m not saving myself, I’m just a nerd.”
“Well, maybe we’ll all get lucky this summer,” Grim offered, but he knew there was little chance of that. His subtle charms were lost on the young women of St. Albans, so he held out little hope that they would be appreciated on any other continent. But hope springs eternal, even if kissing doesn’t…or something like that.
Posted: Wednesday, March 17, 2004 at 1:07 PM
The Jet Set
If Grim was ever given the opportunity to join The Jet Set, he would politely refuse the invitation.
Perhaps he had gone into the flight with unrealistic expectations. He’d always viewed air travel as something vaguely glamorous. But Grim had not, in fact, “loved” flying any more than he would have enjoyed riding in the back of a hog trailer for 20 hours.
He had never really liked airports. On the occasions that he’d been to Idaho Falls to drop off or pick someone up, it had felt as if everything about the airport was temporary and unconnected. Like nobody really belonged there, not even the employees. He found the same thing to be true of airplanes. As passengers, they were just a bunch of solitary transients packed into a cramped, dark, noisy, ill-smelling, metal tube.
The flight from New York to London had been particularly unpleasant. Grim’s seat was unbelievably narrow and when the gentleman in front of him reclined fully he felt like a kid in “time out” who was required to sit for 12 hours with his nose against the wall. Grim had never been able to sleep in automoblies and it turned out he wasn’t able to sleep on planes either. He was seated in the middle of the center section, which meant that whenever he needed to get up he had to climb over the two sleeping travelers on either side, trying not to wake them in the process. Since he didn’t want to climb over his seatmates too often, he spent much of the flight pacing the aisles.
The flight attendants were brusque and uninterested, the food tasted like the plastic it came in, and the air wasn’t recirculated as much as exhumed. By the time he staggered off the plane at Heathrow, his ears were numb, his eyes were bloodshot, he had a raging headache, and he hadn’t slept in far too long.
As he made his way down to the baggage claim area, he saw his Uncle Richard hanging back near the edge of the crowd greeting the new arrivals. He came forward and gave Grim a big hug.
Uncle Richard was the epitome of the phrase “a bear of a man.” He had always reminded Grim of Baloo the Bear from Disney’s The Jungle Book, but with a British accent. He was Grim’s great uncle on his mother’s side. Grim’s Great Aunt Barbara had met Uncle Richard when she was stationed in England during the 1960s as a nurse with the United States Air Force. It was, by all accounts, love at first sight, and shortly after they married, Uncle Richard became the estate manager of Wickham.
Since they hadn’t been able to have children of their own, they had “adopted” Grim’s mother, their only niece, long-distance and they had always treated Grim and his brothers as if they were their own grandchildren. For years, Uncle Richard and Aunt Barbara had come to The States at Christmas time, when the estate in England was essentially dormant, and spent the holidays with Grim’s family. The holiday season was never complete until Aunt Barbara made her famous trifle.
Grim had always looked up to his Uncle Richard. He was a strong, smart, kind man with one of the deepest and most soothing voices you’ve ever heard. He made you feel instantly at ease. He and Grim had always had a special relationship. It’s hard to put your finger on what it was exactly, but they had always gotten along famously.
The previous winter, Uncle Richard had asked Grim if he could see the work he’d been doing at The Fortress. So, one overcast, snowy December day, Grim drove Uncle Richard out for a tour. As they strolled through the grounds, Grim described the state things had been in when he had taken over three years before. He described the process he’d gone through to resurrect the gardens and pointed out the changes he’d made to the gardens’ design. For about an hour they traded thoughts on landscape architecture, talked about native plants, and discussed the challenges of gardening at high altitude and with little water.
Grim had been a little nervous. Showing off your landscape during the winter is a little like showing off your girlfriend after removing her hair, skin, muscles, and internal organs. OK, that’s a bad (and morbid) simile, but you get the idea. With all of the leaves gone, the lawn brown, and snow covering most of it, the only thing most people can see is the skeleton. It’s hard for people to imagine what it looks like in its natural state. But Uncle Richard could see it. The structure and the flow of the gardens were still there and his imagination could fill in the rest.
“I think you’ve done a brilliant job here, Grim,” his uncle told him when the tour was complete. “Whenever we’ve talked about your work in the past you’ve always dismissed it as mere ‘lawn mowing,’ but you’ve done yourself a disservice. This is marvelous work, really.”
Grim blushed and didn’t know quite what to say. He thought his uncle was just being polite. But just before he returned to England, his uncle pulled Grim aside.
“Grim,” he said. “I was wondering if you would be willing to come to England this summer and help me on the estate.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Not at all. I could use someone with your skills…and muscle, quite honestly. I’ve had a few lads retire this year and the rest of our staff are getting along in years. We could use some new blood, a strong back, and some fresh ideas.”
Grim was at a loss. “I’d have to ask my Dad,” he said hesitantly.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve already taken the liberty of speaking with your father and he thinks it is a brilliant idea.”
Until that moment, it had never really occurred to Grim that he and his Uncle Richard were in the same line of work. It was like being a coal miner and having an uncle in the diamond business. They both work with hunks of carbon, but they’re worlds apart. Grim almost didn’t feel worthy of the offer.
“I’m not sure I could afford the airfare,” Grim said, as if he was trying to talk himself or his uncle out of it.
“That would be taken care of,” his uncle said with a wave of the hand. “Honestly, Grim. I’m not just asking you out of kindness. I could really use your help. What do you say?”
“Yes?” Grim said, as if it was a question. Then, “Yes!” he reiterated, a little more enthusiastically this time.
So, there he was, in England, jet-lagged, bleary-eyed, and barely able to breath in his uncle’s bear hug.
“How was your flight?” Uncle Richard asked.
“Fine,” Grim lied.
“Your eyes say otherwise,” his uncle said, smiling.
Grim smiled back. “I’m exhausted.”
“Well, let’s get you home and you can sleep it off.”
After retrieving Grim’s duffle bag, they made their way to the car park. Grim’s uncle stopped at a large green Land Rover with a white top and canvas covering what would have been the bed if it were an American pickup. His uncle put Grim’s duffle bag in the back and Grim made his way to the right-side passenger door.
His uncle smiled. “Grim, you’re on the other side.”
Grim was so jet-lagged that it took him a second to realize what he was talking about. He looked in the window and saw the steering wheel on the right-hand side of the truck. Grim laughed, made his way to the left side, and got in. It felt so strange to be sitting in the left-hand seat without having a steering wheel in front of him.
“I’m probably going to do that a lot before it finally sinks in.”
“Wait until you start driving. Every time I visit The States it takes a few days for my brain to transpose everything right to left.”
His uncle started the truck and they made their way out of the car park.
“Grim, there’s been a slight change in plans since I talked to you last,” his uncle said in a rather serious tone. “There’s going to be someone staying at the estate this summer, after all.”
“Who?”
“Princess Victoria.”
“But I thought the Royal Family never visited the place anymore.”
“Well, normally, they don’t. The princess was supposed to spend the summer on the French Riviera, but there were some security concerns. I don’t know the specifics, but they wanted her someplace where they could keep an eye on her. And, since the castle was originally a fortress, it’s easy to keep an eye on.”
“And I’m hoping you can do me a favor,” he continued.
“Sure, anything…” Grim said.
“I had to sack the stable lad. Because of the heightened security, they did a background check on everyone and it seems that Terrence had a bit of a green thumb. He was growing cannabis in his flat. A lot of cannabis. So, I’m going to need someone to fill in for him. You’ve worked with horses, haven’t you?”
“Sure,” Grim replied. “My friend, Brent, owns a few horses and I’ve helped him out quite a bit.”
“I just need someone to take care of the daily chores. It shouldn’t require much work since Victoria’s horse will be the only tenant in the stables, but this would be in addition to your regular responsibilities. Could you do that for me?”
“Sure, no problem,” Grim replied.
“Thank you,” his uncle said, sounding relieved.
Grim thought for a little while and then asked, “So, did they do a background check on me?”
“Yes, they did.”
“And?”
“You are, apparently, a model of virtue and propriety,” his uncle said with a grin.
“It pays to be boring,” Grim laughed.
Grim looked out the window at the passing landscape. He was surprised at how green it was. They were out of the city now and it had started to rain. He leaned his head against the glass and watched the wind push the raindrops across the windows. And, for the first time since he was a baby, he fell asleep in a moving car.
Posted: Sunday, March 28, 2004 at 7:51 PM
Desperado
A bird woke him. Not because it was loud, but because Grim couldn’t, for the life of him, figure out what type of bird it was. When you’re a gardener you get to know your birds. Some are your friends, eating the insects that are trying to eat your work. Others would just as soon strip your strawberries bare and leave you for dead. Grim wasn’t sure whether the bird outside his window was friend or foe, but it was going to drive him crazy until he knew what it was.
“I need to buy a book about the birds of Britain,” he thought to himself, and then he said it out loud because a sentence with that many Bs really needs to be said out loud.
He looked at the clock: 7:32am. Grim had slept most of the way from the airport. When they arrived at the estate, he woke up just long enough to stagger out of the Land Rover, give his Aunt Barbara a hug, and drag his bags upstairs to his room. He’d laid down on the bed to rest for just a few minutes, but he’d never gotten back up.
He got up now, put on in a fresh pair of cargo shorts and a T-shirt, splashed some water on his face, and headed downstairs. About halfway down the stairs he stopped dead in his tracks. The air was thick with the smell of breakfast. That wasn’t something Grim was used to. When no one in your house cooks, breakfast doesn’t have a distinct smell. You don’t wake up to the heady aroma of Lucky Charms wafting through the house. The subtle fragrance of Honey Nut Cheerios doesn’t fill your nostrils. He and his brothers couldn’t even be bothered to make toast in the morning, so breakfast just wasn’t an olfactory experience.
But the smell reminded Grim of his Mom. His Mom had cooked breakfasts. Big breakfasts on Saturday morning. Eggs, bacon, blueberry muffins, pancakes…the works. A wave of nostalgia washed over him. He was thousands of miles away, and yet the smell of breakfast made him feel more at home than he felt when he was actually there.
He made his way to the kitchen and found his Aunt Barbara poking at some vaguely disturbing cylindrical meat products frying in a pan.
“So, you’re finally awake, are you?” she said with a smile.
Grim loved to hear his Aunt Barbara speak. Over the last 40 years, she’d gained about half of a British accent. Her speech was a strange combination of crisp, American consonants and rounded, British vowels. Rs were a toss-up. Half the time they were a soft British R; the other half they were growled in the best of western American traditions. This linguistic schizophrenia had fascinated Grim when he was younger. When he was 8 years old he used to walk around the house affecting a British accent, pretending that he’d been living in London for so long that he’d gone native.
“Good morning,” Grim said. “I’m sorry I crashed last night.”
“Well, having been on that flight a few times, I know exactly how you feel. It always takes me two days to recover when I fly back from The States.”
“Breakfast smells great,” Grim said. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Yes,” she replied. “Sit down and eat. Your uncle had to meet some men who are doing some work at the West Gate, so it will just be you and me this morning. He should be back by eleven o’clock.”
Grim sat down and dished up some scrambled eggs and a few strips of bacon. Aunt Barbara brought the pan over from the stove and plopped a couple of huge sausages on his plate.
He looked at them for a second and the only thing he could say was, “Wow.”
“What’s wrong?” she asked in a mock-serious tone. “Haven’t you ever seen a proper sausage before? You won’t find any of those tiny sausage links you have in America over here. We take our sausages very seriously in the U.K.”
Since a sausage that size no longer qualified as a finger food, Grim picked up his knife and fork and got to work, but after just a few bites he could almost feel the cholesterol being slathered onto his artery walls. He paused for a moment to let the saturated fats pass.
“So, Aunt Barbara, I understand Princess Victoria is going to be here for the summer.”
“Yes, she is.”
“Is…is that a good thing?” he asked with a little trepidation.
“Oh, it’s certainly not a bad thing,” she assured him. “But I don’t think she’s very pleased to be here.”
“Uncle Richard mentioned that she was supposed to spend the summer in France.”
“And Monaco, too, but they had to change those plans at the last minutes. She arrived three days ago and the staff say she’s been in a foul mood.”
“I may need some royalty lessons, then,” Grim said. “I have no idea how I’m supposed to act around a princess. I mean, what am I supposed to do if I see her? Do I need to bow or anything…or do I just ignore her and pretend she’s not there?”
“Actually, she’ll be the one to ignore you, but don’t take it personally. She has grown up being surrounded by staff at all times so to her we’re just part of the landscape. When you see her, you don’t bow, per se. You do what’s called a ‘neck bow.’ Nothing big, mind you. Just a slight tip of the head.”
“Like this?” Grim asked, nodding his head forward.
She chuckled. “That looks more like you’ve fallen asleep. Try making it a little smaller. Yes, that’s it!”
“And what do I call her? ‘Your Majesty?’”
“No, ‘Her Majesty’ is her grandmother, the Queen. When you first address her, you should call her ‘Your Royal Highness.’ Then, depending on how formal the occasion is, you can usually call her ‘Ma’am’ for the rest of the conversation.”
“Well, unless she’s going to be hanging out by the compost pile this summer, I don’t see us having a lot of ‘conversations,’ formal or otherwise.”
“Well, if you do, don’t worry about it too much,” she said in a reassuring tone. “You’ll do just fine.”
With some effort, Grim finished the rest of his breakfast. He hoped that the quantity of food that morning was in celebration of his arrival. If every meal was going to be like that, he was going to have to spend half summer’s salary on cholesterol medication.
“If you don’t mind, I think I’ll head down and take a look around the stables,” he said as he took his dishes to the sink. “Do you have any sugar cubes I could borrow?”
“Of course, dear. They’re right there in the sugar bowl. Take as many as you like.”
“Thanks,” Grim said, shoving a small handful in his pocket. “I’ll be back by eleven.”
Grim headed out the kitchen door and stepped down onto the gravel driveway. Shielding his eyes from the morning sun, he looked across the expanse of lawn at Wickham Castle which lay about 100 yards to the east. He’d glimpsed it the night before, but he had been so exhausted that it had barely registered. Apparently, his lack of sleep hadn’t the issue. This morning, even with the early sun bathing it in a warm glow, it still barely registered.
It was easily the least impressive castle Grim had ever seen. (Not that he’d ever seen one in real life before.) The non-ornamental portion of the castle was only two stories high and had all the visual interest of a gray brick. But perched atop the drab, rectangular base were a series of ridiculously elaborate spires that were completely out of proportion with the rest of the structure. They made the castle look like a short, stocky king trying to compensate for his lack of stature by wearing a tall, spiky crown. Or a very plain woman trying to look more exotic by fashioning herself some sort of French High Gothic beehive hairdo out of ice cream cones and razor wire.
The gardens weren’t helping, either. The only greenery surrounding the castle consisted of a few sparse ornamental shrubs and hedges that had been sculpted into sharp, geometric shapes. Everything about the place seemed angular, severe, and generally out of whack.
The morning air was cool and damp. It hadn’t rained, but a heavy dew covered the lawn and dampened Grim’s boots as he made his way across the freshly mown expanse of grass that separated the house from the stables. They were housed in a large barn-like structure with a tall stone foundation that supported the timber-frame walls and a tall, arching roof. There were small windows lining the north and south walls and attached to the back of the barn was a small paddock and, beyond that, a large pasture with a small stream running through the middle of it.
Grim grabbed the large, rusty handle on the front door, swung it open, and peered into the dim interior. It smelled of fresh horse and stale dust. He looked on either side of the door and found an ancient light switch which he flicked on. Three weak flood lights came on overhead, casting a dim glow on the fresh bales of straw that had been stacked just inside the door.
“Psssh, Psssh, Psssh…” Grim said softly and an equine head popped out of the next-to-the-last stall on the right.
“Hello there,” Grim said, as he made his way to the other end of the stables. “How are you this morning? You must be the new resident they told me about.”
He pulled two sugar cubes out of his pocket and held them out. “Psssh, Psssh, Psssh,” he said again as the horse nuzzled his palm and snarfed up the cubes.
“You’re a handsome devil, aren’t you?” Grim said, rubbing the horses muzzle. The thoroughbred was a dark chestnut color, with a dark brown mane and tail, and had the conformation and bearing that come from impeccable genetics and a life of being very well cared for.
“How would you like to take care of the grass in the pasture for me?” Grim asked. “I’d rather not have to mow it this summer.”
He slipped the halter off the hook that hung outside the stall, slipped it over the horse’s head, and lead him out the back door and across the paddock to the pasture’s gate. As Grim unhooked the lead strap the horse nuzzled his hand again, looking for more of the sweet stuff.
“What? It’s gonna cost me? OK, OK, two more in return for services rendered.”
He gave the beast two more sugar cubes and a pat on the rump to send him out into the pasture.
“Go! Mow!” he commanded.
Grim walked back to the stables and took a quick look around. The layout and daily routine of horse stables is pretty much the same the world over, so it didn’t take him long to find everything he needed. He grabbed a manure fork from the tool rack on the wall and started mucking out the stall, separating the clean, dry straw from the dirty straw and manure, which he shoveled into a wheelbarrow and set aside as the start of a compost pile.
He went back to the bails of straw that had been stacked just inside the front door and re-stacked them, one by one, against the side wall. Then he broke open one of the bales, took a section back to the stall, and spread it across the floor, replacing the straw he’d removed. He refilled the water pail and topped off the feed bucket. Then, with the stall taken care of, Grim turned his attention to the rest of the stables.
It was obvious that they hadn’t been inhabited for quite some time. A layer of dust from the clay floor covered everything and, more than anything, the place needed a good airing out. He threw open the front door and then, one by one, opened all of the side windows letting sunlight and the morning breeze into a space that probably hadn’t seen either in quite a while.
He grabbed a broom and swept out the empty stalls and wiped down the rails with some old rags he found in a back cabinet. While he worked, he started humming country-western tunes. In general, Grim wasn’t a big fan of the genre, but it seemed appropriate somehow working around horses. Unfortunately, his repertoire of country-western songs was pretty limited and leaned toward the classics (Sons of the Pioneers, Roy Rogers, etc) he’d picked up from the elderly women whose lawns he had mowed in St. Albans, but he knew enough to make it through the morning.
By mid-morning, he was a mess. He had straw in his hair, his clothes were covered in dust, his face was smudged, and his boots still had remnants of manure on them, but he was in a great mood. He’d made his way, musically, through the 60s and 70s and somewhere along the way he’d made the transition from quiet humming to full-on singing. In fact, at that very moment, as he was making one last pass with the broom, he was belting out a fantastic cover of The Eagle’s “Desperado” and had just reached the final verse. He’d started softly so the big crescendo on the final line would have the appropriate weight.
“Desperado, why don’t you come to your senses?
Come down from your fences, open the gate.
It may be raining, but there’s a rainbow above you,
You better let somebody love you…”
Then he stopped sweeping, took a deep breath, threw his head back, and belted out the background vocals in full falsetto:
“Let somebody loooove yoooooooooooooooooooooo…”
The last note slid down the scale as if it had been pushed off a cliff. Grim froze (his lips still forming the “oooo”) as he stared across the aisle at the girl who was leaning against the rails of the stall opposite him. It took approximately 2.7 seconds for his brain to go from:
“How embarrassing! Someone caught me singing.”
…to:
“Ouch! A girl caught me singing.”
…to:
“Oh, no! A pretty girl caught me singing.”
…to:
“Oh, crap! I think it’s the princess that caught me singing.”
It took him a while to recognize her because the image of Princess Victoria that Grim carried in his head was from a photograph he’d seen almost a year earlier. In it, her hair had been dark and had been in a short, blunt cut. Her skin had been quite pale, she had been glaring at the photographer with eyes that were almost black, and her lips looked as if they’d just let go of an expletive. In short, she’d looked like a surly goth flapper.
This was in stark contrast to the girl who stood before him now with light brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, a ruddy complexion, eyes that were a dark, dark blue, and lips that were turned up in a wry grin. She was obviously pleased that she’d caught him in the middle of his impromptu karaoke routine.
He would have been fine if she hadn’t been so attractive. He would have merely apologized for the distraction and gotten back to work. But any time Grim was around a cute girl, he was transformed from a confident, intelligent, capable young man into a blithering idiot. He became so concerned about not making a fool out of himself that he almost invariably did. Even now, his mind was racing without producing a single coherent thought.
“Oh…uh…I’m sorry, ma’am…” he stammered.
Wait, we wasn’t supposed to call her that. At least, not yet.
“I mean, Your Majesty…”
No, wait, that wasn’t it either.
“I mean, Your Highness…”
Back up.
“Royal Highness. I…I didn’t see you come in.”
Shoot! He forgot the neck bow. Was it too late to do the neck bow? Had he missed the neck bow window?
“I was just…um…I was…just…”
He stopped, looked down at the ground, let out a sigh, and a smile spread across his face. There are times in your life when you find yourself so far off track, when you’ve blown it so badly, that there is absolutely no hope of recovery. This was one of those times. He looked like crap, he smelled like crap (literally), and he must have sounded like a complete idiot . But rather than being mortified, he was strangely relieved. He didn’t have to worry about making a fool of himself anymore because he’d already done it.
“I’m so sorry, ma’am. If you don’t mind, I’ll go back to sweeping. Just ignore me.”
“Is that possible?” she asked, raising one eyebrow ever so slightly.
“Sure,” Grim replied with a grin. “Girls have been ignoring me for years.”
Self-deprecation was almost an automatic reflex for Grim, so it came out of his mouth before he could really think. It suddenly occurred to him that he was being much too “familiar,” but she smiled; almost laughed.
“You’re American.” It was a statement of fact, not a question.
“Yes, ma’am,” Grim replied, leaning against his broom. “I’m Grim.”
She looked puzzled. “Grim?”
“Yes, ma’am. That’s my name. Grim Magnusson. It’s Icelandic.”
“Where are you from?” she asked, looking even more confused.
“Idaho, ma’am.”
“An Icelandic American from Idaho?”
“Well, when you put it that way, it sounds kind of exotic, doesn’t it?” he smiled. “I’m Mr. Chapman’s great nephew. I’m just here for the summer helping him out.”
“I’m Victoria,” she said. “I’m just here for the summer being bored to tears.”
“Nice to meet you, ma’am.” Grim said, taking advantage of the opportunity to finally throw in a neck bow. “Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to make your stay less boring.”
“The singing was a good start,” she said. “Can I expect that every morning?”
“Only on Tuesdays.”
“Then I’ll remember to avoid you on Tuesdays.”
“You may want to give Break Dancing Fridays a wide berth, too.”
She looked at Grim for a second and kind of scrunched up her nose. Then, as if suddenly remembering why she was there, she looked around and asked, “Where’s Dauntless?”
“Dauntless?”
“My horse,” she explained.
“Oh, he’s mowing the pasture for me. Would you like me to get him for you?”
“Yes,” she said, and then added, “please,” as if it wasn’t a word she said very often.
Grim grabbed the lead strap off the hook, went out the back door, and crossed the paddock to the gate leading to the pasture, the princess following close behind.
“Psssh, Psssh, Psssh,” he said, loud enough for Dauntless to hear. Dauntless, who had been grazing on the far side of the pasture, pricked up his ears and trotted over.
“What was that?” she asked.
“What?”
“That sound…”
“Pishing,” Grim answered.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Pishing,” he emphasized. “That’s the sound I was making.” He made the sound again. “Birdwatchers use it to lure birds out of hiding, but it works on other animals, too. Some people think it was the sound St. Francis of Assisi used to attract animals.”
She looked at him sideways. “Are you having me on?”
“No, I promise,” Grim replied. “Try it.”
“No,” she stated flatly.
“Oh, come on…” he encouraged.
“No!”
“Come on…”
“Pish off!”
He laughed. “Hey! Can royalty say things like that?”
“I can do whatever I please,” she replied with mock indignation.
Dauntless came right up to Grim and stood there expectantly. Grim pulled two more sugar cubes out of his pocket and gave them to Dauntless.
“Good boy,” he said, as if he was talking to a dog.
“Are you sure it was the ‘pishing’ that brought the animals to him, or did St. Francis resort to sugar cubes, too?”
“I think he used Milk Duds,” Grim replied, but then he realized she probably didn’t know the reference. “Milk Duds are an American candy…they’re chocolate and caramel and…um,” he trailed off. If you have to explain a joke…
Grim attached the lead strap to the halter and handed it to the princess.
“Do you need any help with the saddle?” he asked.
“No,” she said, and then added the, “Thank you. I can manage.”
“Then I’ll get back to my sweeping, if you don’t mind. You won’t even notice me.”
Grim followed Dauntless and the princess back into the stables and grabbed his broom. While he finished up he kept stealing glances at the princess as she went about saddling her horse. She moved easily and quickly with no wasted motion. He was a little embarrassed about his offer of assistance since she obviously knew what she was doing.
When she was done, she mounted Dauntless and rode down the aisle to the front door where she stopped and turned around in her saddle.
“So, will I see you later?” she asked.
“I’ll be here all summer.”
“Good,” she said with a smile, and rode out into the late morning sun.
“‘Good,’” he repeated to himself, leaning against the broom. Then he took a deep breath, let it out, and picked up where he’d left off, sweeping and singing…but softly, this time.
“You better let somebody love you, before it’s too late…”
Posted: Monday, July 26, 2004 at 12:09 AM
