The Meaningless Scrapheap
I feel good, he thought, squeezing the steering wheel to help press the emotion into his memory.
You feel good. You’re here. Right here, right now. Feeling good. Looking forward to something. Kicking an opportunity around. You can do this. You can have a life and mourn your son.
It’s allowed.
He arrived home having made no decisions, but still smiling and full of a desire to buckle down to business. Instead of heading to his office to unload his backpack, he set up shop on the dining room table. His day job would stay in the office. Here on the table he’d work the second shift.
Laptop. Notebook. His stack of research books. He had to do a little bit of hunting around the house to find their old Scrabble game, but he ran it to earth in the basement and dumped the bag of letter tiles on the table. He had anagrams to solve.
For all his love of language, Liko had never been good at word puzzles. He was always missing the obvious. As much as he tried to look for the simplest solution first, he usually found Occam’s Razor after it had slashed him in the face.
He had to admit later Dane had served him a clue on a plate, but it took an absurd amount of time before Liko’s brain registered the “than” in Jonathan.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” he muttered, drawing the T-H-A-N toward him, then adding one of the Es from Henshe to make Ethan.
A head-smacking flash of clarity, and the rest of the tiles moved into place, forming Ethan John Hasen.
Liko grabbed at his stack of books, and stared at the cover of Harefoot by Ethan J. Hasen.
“Yes,” he growled under his breath. Then, fuck it, he lived alone. He cried it at the top of his lungs. “Yes.”
He switched the tiles back to Jonathan Henshe and took a picture. Slid them around to read Ethan John Hasen, took another. Then took a picture of the book cover.
He texted it all to Dane. After five minutes, Dane replied with an emoji of a plate. Nothing more.
Another long minute creaked by, then Liko caved and typed: Don’t be a cagey bitch.
LOL, Dane replied. See you on May Day. Bring a pole.
You wish.
He got nothing more. He turned to the back of the book and the inside flaps, looking for a biography.
Ethan J. Hasen is a contemporary artist and illustrator who combines folklore and cultural motifs with modern influences.
He first gained attention for his collaboration with Cate Coates on her children’s series Madrigal Farm, for which they won a Caldecott medal.
Hasen went on to illustrate the 25th anniversary edition of Richard Adams’ Watership Down, and in collaboration with Philip Pullman, created the art book Daemon, artistic depictions of the animal soulmates in Pullman’s His Dark Materials series.
Daemon won both a Hugo award and a Chesley award.
Hasen branched into the online digital art world with his designs for Leporine: The Down collectible card game. He’s also a contributing artist to many popular video games and casual game apps.
“Many popular video games,” Liko said. “Like Three Hares?”
Weird how Hasen’s artistic credentials were so detailed yet the gaming section of his resume was a throwaway. Almost coy. Yeah, I did some work on that.
No picture was included with the biography. No mention of a spouse or partner. Which, if you asked Liko Greenman, was damn rude.
He Googled liner notes for Gideon Perfect Two-Faced album. The credit was all the way at the end, after production and before the acknowledgments:
Cover artwork and design: J. Nathan Heshone
“Son of a bitch,” Liko said, moving tiles around again. Same letters, a third anagram.
Jonathan Henshe.
Ethan John Hasen.
J. Nathan Heshone.
Right there in the open, for anyone who would deign to look.
Well, and anyone who had a lucky invitation to Schoenfeld’s.
His hand tapped his phone, itching to text Kyle. To crow and brag and let him know his old man was really doing it.
Kyle knows, he told himself. You either believe he sees you right now and he knows, or you don’t. Pick a side and live it. Good lord, text him if you want. Who gives a shit? Write him letters, leave a voicemail. Talk out loud to him. Do what you have to do. Just don’t give up on this.
He drew his notebook toward him, read the current list and added his latest discoveries.
Go to Birch Island, NY and look for yourself along the roadside.
Myself?Greenman?Green Man motif on the stone wall.
Farm is called Schoenfeld’s
John Schoenfeld is author of Journey of the Green Man.
Man living there now named Dane, but last name isn’t Schoenfeld.
His name is Danelaw Strong and I’ve met him before. New Year’s Eve 2015 at the Jensens’ house.
He was part of a threesome. His wife had died and his partner left him.
He sometimes dresses as a woman named Diane? Says he’s not transitioning. This part is weird, I don’t know what to make of it.
Dane/Diane has one blue eye and one brown eye. Both eyes were blue when I first met him, but when we met again this time, they were brown.
Does he do this all the time? Sometimes? Is covering one or the other just a game he plays?
His shoulders relaxed and his fingers loosened. As he wrote, his lips faintly moved around questions. Sometimes he spoke aloud, and glanced toward an invisible, adolescent presence beside him.
Dane was the model for the cover of Gideon Perfect’s Two-Faced album. The artwork hangs over the fireplace. Album’s artist credit is J. Nathan Heshone, anagram of Jonathan Henshe, anagram of Ethan John Hasen, author and artist behind Harefoot.
Three names. Three hares.
So these are all the same person? The artist Ethan Hasen created the Three Hares game and also the cover for Two-Faced?
Was Dane the inspiration just for the cover, or was his face, with its two different eyes, the inspiration for the entire album?
Is Two-Faced a clue to the game?
Liko thought about the epithet two-faced.
It meant a host of unflattering things—cunning, conniving, double-crossing, opportunistic and dishonest. You couldn’t pull anything complimentary from two-faced.
Yet the vibe Liko was getting from Dane, while unusual, wasn’t shifty.
Liko definitely felt all kinds of baffled right now, but he didn’t feel fucked with.
“Not yet,” he muttered behind a half-smile. He scratched his head with the end of the pen, then began writing again.
I’m remembering more of the details from the party. Dane’s wife died on or around her birthday, I think. He told me his partners’ names. Nomi—I thought this was beautiful. And Ethan, who had left him.
“Ye then deign to know me” means ETHAN DANE TO NOMI.
It’s right there if you know who you’re talking about.
You need the context. Anyone can solve the mystery, but Dane said it won’t be interesting or satisfying unless you have the context. The Green Man Chamber is a love letter to his life. Important only to three people, two of whom are now gone.
His train of thought stalled, Liko doodled the name Danelaw Strong again.
“I knew I knew that guy,” he said.
The freakin’ twink-otter-construction worker-poet from the Jensens’ New Year’s Eve party.
Liko forgot. Of course he forgot. He lost his mind when Kyle died, and his consciousness quickly divided all aspects of life into two categories: The Precious Little I Give a Fuck About, and The Meaningless Scrapheap of Everything Else.
The hair on his forearms was rising and falling. This was fucking nuts. Shit like this didn’t happen to him. Weird coincidences that made him feel all goofy and magical and willing to suspend disbelief.
Savor it, he reminded himself. It’s a paint-by-number kit. You got all the time you want to slowly kill.
Liko tapped his pen on the pages, then he wrote: Why was Dane even at that party? How does he know Huff and Maisie?
Well. Ask and ye ought to receive. He texted Dane: How do you know the Jensens?
He waited. Dane seemed to have a personal rule of waiting five minutes before replying. The bubbles popped up, indicating he was typing. Then they stopped. Then started. Then stopped.
“You are edging me,” Liko said.
Finally the reply came in: How do you know them?
What did I tell you about being a cagey bitch, Liko typed.
LOL.
Did you ask them about me?
No. We agreed not to exchange names. You said, “Don’t cheat and ask Huff and Maisie. You’ll ruin it.”
I did?
You did. So I didn’t. Because, ways to kill time.
Liko arranged Scrabble tiles on the table to read Huff and Maisie Jensen, took a picture and texted it, asking Yes or no—is anagramming this a waste of time?
Dane deigned to answer in ten seconds: Yes.
Liko rearranged the tiles to read Gideon Perfect.
Is THIS a waste of time? he asked.
Yes. Let me clarify: Gideon, Huff and Maisie are part of the story, but their names aren’t clues in the mystery.
Good, Liko typed. I suck at anagrams.
So do I. And I’m giving away too many clues before you’ve earned them. Hitting the sack. Night.