A World Elsewhere by Wayne Johnston Page B

the fire and people were afraid it would collapse. But it didn’t smell as smoky as the attic and it wasn’t as dark. Library Ann told Deacon that Landish had spent a lot of his life there before he went to Princeton, and he was the most unlikely looking bookworm she had ever seen. His voice echoed even when he whispered. But he had been her best customer. Now he and Deacon were almost her only customers and she was very afraid her beloved Athenaeum’s days were numbered because it wasn’t safe. She said they would have nowhere to store the books, so when the time came they could have their pick.
    They went in the afternoons and sat side by side at a long, bare table. Using books that were smudged with soot and had little holes burned into them, Landish taught Deacon how to read. They skipped printing and went straight to writing words. They did arithmetic. In the winter months it was warmer than the attic. Sometimes he sat beside Landish and slept, curled or slumped in his chair, while Landish read—though he was restless even as he read, surrounded by shelves of unburned books written by writers who, often against odds greater than the ones he faced, had succeeded. “The Athenaeum’s books burned by accident,” Landish told Library Ann. “I burn my book on purpose.”
    But one afternoon the doors were locked, a notice, pinned to the wall, stating that the condemned building was about to be torn down. They banged and heard a key turning in the lock. Library Ann peered around the door at them. Her eyes were red and she dabbed them with a handkerchief as she pulled Landish and Deacon hastily inside. She told Landish they could take as many books as they could cram into the wooden wheelbarrow she had put beside the steps.
    Landish pushed the barrow up the hill. I look like a book peddler, he said. They stood the books on the floor along the wall. They had to lie on their bellies to see the names. In a library, he told Deacon, the shelves of books are called the “stacks.” And we have a Smokestack. You’ll have the Attic School from now on.

    A priest who gave Communion to shut-ins came by with the nuns who were nurses too on Sunday afternoons to visit Hogan. Sometimes, Landish and Deacon were passing through Hogan’s kitchen when they arrived. The priest wore his vestments, the hems of which the two nuns carried as they trailed behind him. The holy vessel that contained the Host was covered in white cloth whose purpose Deacon fancied was to keep something warm until Hogan ate it. Deacon said he could tell that the priest was pretty high up in the Clout.
    “That boy was baptized in the Catholic Church,” the older of the two nuns said one time. “There is the matter of his religious instruction and his preparation for the sacraments.”
    “The Drukens are Anglicans, Father,” Landish said, “as I believe you know.”
    “Mr. Druken may raise the boy as he sees fit,” Landish was very surprised to hear the priest say.
    “Yes, Father,” the older nun said.
    Landish and Deacon had left, Landish gently guiding Deacon by the back of his head with his hand.
    Captain Druken had made it known throughout St. John’s that he had stipulated in his will that his estate, when he died, would be divided equally between the Churches of the city, doled out to them in annual stipends. Landish assumed that the priest was concerned that the stipends of the Catholic Church might be withheld if he took an interest in Deacon’s upbringing.
    But the nuns began to come upstairs to check on the boy, who, they said, was dressed no better than the boys who all but lived outdoors. When Landish told them that Deacon’s face was bruised from the latest surprise hug he had staged on his leg, the older nun said it would be a shame if the boy’s face had got that way from the very hand that held his own.
    The nuns asked Landish a lot of questions when Deacon was in the other room, and Deacon a lot of questions when Landish was in the