The Labors of Hercules Beal

by Gary D. Schmidt

Elly read Wuthering Heights, which she said was the most ethereal book ever written. I’m not really sure what ethereal even means, but how can a book that you have to keep a family chart for to figure out who’s who be ethereal? When I asked her that, she said I was just being a jerkface.

Here’s what happens in a family business when someone looks at you the way that Achilles was looking at me. It isn’t just him looking. It’s my father, and my grandfather, and my great-great-grandfather Elias and great-great-grandmother Elene and my great-great-granduncle Elijah, who are all looking out of Achilles’s eyes. And they’re all trying to learn to let go just a little bit. It isn’t easy, but they’re trying.

Maybe, the stuff we hold up, we don’t have to hold up by ourselves all the time. Maybe sometimes we can let someone else hold it up too. Maybe that’s how we can get by. Maybe that’s how we can do a whole lot better than just get by.

My presentation was fine, even though the mynah birds called “Beal! Beal! Beal!” all the way through it. I went through the twelve Labors, I summarized each one, I established each Labor’s relevance to something in my life, I listed Charles Anthon as my principal reference, and I concluded with a summary of my three main points, which were these: First, by the end of his Labors, Hercules understood that sometimes, he was a jerkface—and he had to live with that and try to do better. Second, by the end of his Labors, Hercules understood that he had been to hell and come back. That meant a lot—that he had come back. Now he had a lot more living to do—and he was grateful beyond anything for that. Third, by the end of his Labors, Hercules was no longer a secret to himself. That’s what all the Labors were really for.