Chapter Adam
Adam
“Bad news and good news,” Dane said, when Liko came downstairs Monday morning. “Bad news is the cottage I was going to let you use for the summer just got rented out from under you. I’m afraid money trumps hospitality.”
“You’re dead to me,” Liko said.
“Good news is…” Dane motioned for Liko to follow and they went into the front hallway, where Dane opened a set of curtained French doors. “Your scholarship has an inner sanctum clause. Welcome to the holy of holies. AKA, your new office.”
“This is terrible,” Liko said, walking into the handsome space.
“A real dive, right?” Dane watched him take in the big desk and chair, the large picture window behind, the floor-to-ceiling shelves, the beat-up leather chair and ottoman.
Liko sighed darkly. “No, I’m afraid this is out of the question. Won’t suit my needs at all.”
“Thought you’d like it.” Dane ran a finger along one of the shelves and wrinkled his nose. The dust in this house was going to kill him. “Believe it or not, the books left here are a fraction of John Schoenfeld’s library. He took all the good stuff to France. This is just the riffraff.”
“Excellent. I’m easily distracted and I’ll get no writing done if interesting books are about.”
Liko perused the walls, hung with their share of Ethan’s artwork. He paused, staring at a locked gun case with three rifles. “Great,” he said over his shoulder. “Now that I’ve seen these, one will have to be fired in the third act.”
“Also left behind by John. Can you shoot?”
“No. You?”
“I’m no marksman but I know what to do with a rifle and not shoot myself by accident.”
“You ever have to?”
“No, but for a short time after I came to live in Schoenfeld’s, I had a lot of anxiety about my father coming to find me. Knowing John had guns and knowing he wouldn’t tolerate my father on his land… It helped me sleep at night.”
“Not your average, absent-minded professor.”
“Not at all.” Dane sat in the leather chair and put his feet up.
“The things I learned in this room. If all the therapy I’d done up to that point had roughed me out as a person, John came in and polished up so many details.
Just by telling me stories and giving me books and talking about…
God, so much shit.” Dane pointed back toward the front hall.
“He gave me the map of the Danelaw. He was obsessed with my name.”
“As am I.”
“I come from a family of lawyers and nearly every Strong boy has law in his name. Morelaw. Renlaw. My father is Ivelaw. Don’t get your Scrabble tiles because he has no place in the game. Or in my life. Suffice it to say, you can pull the word revolting out of Ivelaw Strong.”
“You told me he’s a monster,” Liko said, sitting at the desk. “I didn’t forget.”
“John, though, he zeroed in on the literal meaning of my name. The historical Danelaw, which were the lands in Britain under Norse control. Forgive me preaching to the choir.”
Liko waved a dismissive hand. “You’re already on my list for dumping me in this horrific home office, so go ahead, make things worse.”
“John said, At its essence, the mission of the Danelaw was peace. Which kind of stopped me cold. Then he added, Only you can write the laws that keep your peace.”
Dane laced hands behind his head. “I’m sure it wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard in therapy already.
Yeah, yeah, I’m in control of my emotions.
I can’t control what happens, I can only control how I react to what happens.
I can set boundaries, blah blah blah. It’s all good stuff and I know I heard it.
But something about standing in front of a map that had my name emblazoned across a swathe of land, and hearing John say, The mission of the Danelaw was peace.
Only you can write the laws that keep your peace.
” Dane touched fingers to his forehead and blew them out.
“You finally heard it.”
“And finally believed it. John did that shit all the time. He was something else. Impractical and abstracted and ever so slightly out-to-lunch when it came to everyday life. But he gave me so many spiritual gifts that were rooted in history and literature, folklore and mythology. He had a way of simultaneously letting you know you were unique, but your story had all been written before. He loved to help people find their purpose. Find their destiny.”
Dane got up and stretched. “Anywho. I’m off to toil in the land and you have your own toiling. But for real, man, work wherever you want. That’s partly the point of being here, right?”
“Right.”
“Other than Saskia’s bedroom, no place in the house is off-limits.”
“What about your bedroom?”
Dane stared.
Diane stared, too, then quietly tiptoed out of the room, shaking her head.
Liko laughed softly, touching his mouth. “Did I say that out loud?”
Dane laughed, too, wishing he didn’t blush so easily. “You did. And for the moment, my room is off-limits.”
“Dude, I was joking.”
“No, you weren’t.”
They stared some more, Liko slowly nodding. “No, not entirely.”
Dane was getting a hard-on. “All right then,” he said. “I’ll just…be on my way.”
“Excellent.” Liko put hands behind his head and feet on the desk. “I’m easily distracted and I’ll get no writing done with you around.”
Blushing and bothered, Dane went out the front door. Diane tapped his left shoulder and whispered, What are we going to do with him?
1993
“So what are we going to do with you, Danelaw Strong?”
Dane looks at John and has no answer.
“Let me think…”
Dane comes to Schoenfeld’s right after John’s study has suffered the inequity of being gutted and redone.
He was forced to clear the shelves and make a ruthless inventory of books, papers and academic clutter.
He’s still milking the offense, but the new shelves and the new, bigger windows with their beautiful view of the farm are a joy to behold.
On rainy days or weekends, Dane joins John in reshelving the volumes.
It’s quality time, just like Ethan had growing up, and Nomi when she came to Schoenfeld’s.
Each learned something profound in John Schoenfeld’s study, something that helped them forge purpose and latch onto their identity.
Ethan Hasen learned about the Three Hares motif from his father.
Nomi Misteria turned her M upside-down and studied the taxonomy of Tribe Wisterieae, learning its legends and lore.
Dane will learn a lot of things within the walls of the inner sanctum, but John starts by gifting the beautiful map of the Danelaw, which will hang in the boy’s room ten years before being moved to the front hall.
Next is the story of how the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau was once run down by a Great Dane.
“Reveries of a Solitary Walker,” John says, taking a book from one of the unpacked boxes. “Forgive me, I only have the French version.”
“Unacceptable,” Dane says.
John sits in the leather chair and Dane sits on the ottoman.
Sometimes Ethan and Nomi are present, but they keep mostly silent, respecting Dane’s time at the professor’s knee.
This is especially touching from Ethan, because Dane now knows he’s a brilliant auto-didact, speed reads in between artistic endeavors, possesses a mind that never shuts off, and knowledge is his religion.
The fact that he knows when to shut up and listen makes him lovable.
While being read to was as intricate a part of Ethan’s childhood as being vaccinated, and Nomi orchestrated her own story times by frequent trips to the library, Dane has never known such cultivated, personal attention.
Never known anything like this room full of books and dust and maps and papers, rain streaming down the windows and the gun case on the wall standing guard.
“The date is October the twenty-fourth,” John says.
“Seventeen seventy-six. Jean-Jacques Rousseau is walking in his village of Ménilmontant, outside Paris. Coming in the opposite direction is a great carriage, and loping alongside the carriage is a Great Dane. Seeing the massive dog rushing toward him, Rousseau comes up with what he later calls a ‘lightning plan of action.’”
“Get out of the way?” Dane says.
“You’d think a sixty-four-year-old man would go for the simplest solution first. No, his plan was to, and I quote, ‘leap into the air at precisely the right moment to allow the dog to pass under me.’” John looks at Dane over the rims of his glasses.
“Terrible plan. Rousseau had barely flexed his knees when the Great Dane ran him down. He was knocked to the ground, hitting his head on the cobblestones. Let that be a lesson to all old men.”
“Get out of the way when a Great Dane is coming,” Nomi says.
“I disagree,” Ethan says, looking at Dane intently.
“But why did our esteemed philosopher even contemplate jumping over the dog?” John says. “Did he want to get knocked over?”
“Probably,” Nomi says. “I’ve seen boys do a lot of stupid shit just for the experience.”
John points a finger at her. “Punto. Rousseau was often presented as seeking out trouble.”
“What experience did he gain from being clobbered by a dog?” Dane asks.
“Well, after the fall, he couldn’t remember what happened, where he was, or even his own name.
Which he thought was fantastic.” John opened the book.
“I felt throughout my whole being such a wonderful calm, that whenever I recall this feeling I can find nothing to compare with it in all the pleasures that stir our lives.”
He closes the book and looks at Dane, who looks back.
“Sorry, I don’t get it,” he finally says. “Sounds like he had a concussion and just got a little woozy.”