AllFreeNovel
Share Us
For much of tonight’s lesson, Evan has felt antsy, his thoughts desultory. “Time before what?”
“Before you get killed,” Jack says, in a tone implying that this is the most naïve question he’s ever heard uttered. “That’s why the First Commandment comes first.”
“‘Assume nothing.’”
“Yes. If you have to be hit over the head to learn something about yourself, you’ll be someone who thinks that people only learn if you hit them over the head.”
“And that’s bad?” Evan asks.
“Son, that’s what assholes are.” Jack takes a swig. Closes his eyes as he swallows. The booze does something to him, warms him, opens him up, too.
Evan feels warm as well. The study is the only place in the rural Virginia farmhouse that could qualify as cozy.
Resting on Jack’s wide knee is a vintage cloth-bound book, maroon-brown and tattered, spine letters long faded. “You’ll have to work at all this in small ways and build up. That’s why the Second Commandment comes next.”
“‘How you do anything is how you do everything.’ That’s what I need to know to be an assassin?”
“Being an assassin is easy. I’m raising you to bedangerous.”
“Don’t you have to be dangerous to be an assassin?”
“There are a lotta ways to be dangerous. You canthinkdangerously. You can be a dangerous conversationalist or—”
“Conversationalist?” Evan says. “I want to fuck people up and stuff. Shouldn’t an Orphan befeared?”
“Feared?” Jack shakes his head, just slightly, but Evan feels the show of disdain in his spinal cord. Though he’d die rather than admit it out loud, he never wants to disappoint Jack. He hasn’t felt that way about another person, and the sensation is as terrifying as it is disorienting. “Fearedis never the aim. If you’re an Orphan, a true Orphan?” Jack leans forward, fixing Evan with a stare. Licks of fire reflect in his dark pupils. “The world will never know your name.”
Evan feels it then in his chest, the loneliness that has been his lifelong companion, a black hole of dread. His lower back still hurts from practicing the traditional forty judo throws; hiskata gurumaneeds work, his frame not yet sturdy enough to support the shoulder wheel.
Jack parts the book of military strategy and resumes reading. “‘The human heart, and the psychology of the individual fighting man, have always been the ruling factors in warfare, transcending the importance of numbers and equipment.’” He lifts his square baseball catcher’s head, the fire tanning the skin of his face. “Who am I quoting?”
“John Boyd.”
Jack grimaces. “No. Major General F. W. von Mellenthin.”
Evan says, “Wasn’t he a Nazi?”
“AbrilliantNazi. You think you get anywhere without learning from your enemies?”
Jack drains the glass, rises to set it down on the mantel next to the framed picture of his deceased wife, Clara. She’s on a black-sand beach a few steps into the surf, sundress clinging at her knees. She’s laughing big and staring at the camera with an affection Evan can’t imagine, can’t imagine Jack being the kind of free he must have felt that day having a woman look at him like that. Though Evan never met Clara, she seems to be the animating spirit of the farmhouse, of Jack himself.
“What was she like?” Evan asks, and Jack follows his gaze to the photograph.
For a moment Jack’s face loosens. Then snaps back into form. “Study your Musashi now,” he says. “Unless your delicate morality is offended by Japanese warriors, too.”
Evan doesn’t let the disappointment of Jack’s redirection show. “I still don’t get why I need to read about all these ancient people.”
Jack settles back into his seat. Gives Evan’s question its due. “You’ll be alone. Most of your life.” He lifts the venerable book. “These thinkers are your only companions for now. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t surround yourself with like-minded people. You’ll get limited or radicalized.”
“By what?”
Jack looks irritated-amused, one of his go-to settings. “Who the hell knows? The news, the community, the military-industrial complex. The only hope is to stay open to all perspectives as they come in.”
Evan shifts on the couch, grimaces.
