He’d had generally amiable feelings toward Carlos, he supposed. But nothing special. The only one who’d truly stood out to him was the one currently standing in front of him.
“You’re a kindhearted person,” Eli observed, and Harrison nearly erupted in laughter. He was thinking of his brother Lewyn, and his sister Sally—how they would have writhed and scoffed at such a notion. Kindhearted! As if the two of them controlled exclusive access to kindness! Sally had written her college application essay on the wildlife sanctuary that just happened to border our Martha’s Vineyard property, effortlessly adding eighty pristine acres to coastal view. Lewyn had been unable to come up with a community service project （a graduation requirement at Walden） so our mother had phoned up a woman her sister Debbie knew on the board of Dress for Success. He’d spent his required hours in the shoe closet, doing his homework. And he, Harrison, was supposedly the uncharitable, self-serving one? He was as “kindhearted” as they were, even if that was, basically, not so much.
“S’nice of you to say,” is what he actually said. Where was his wit? He felt pathetically tongue-tied, as if a pretty girl had just declared an unexpected romantic interest in him. He looked down to find his silly basket on the hard ground, one edge unmistakably smeared in brand-new chicken shit.
“I’m impressed by how you’ve handled this. Your friendship with Carlos. I’m sure it hasn’t been easy for you.”
“Oh, we’re not friends, really,” Harrison heard himself say. And lo: he and Carlos were defined as not-friends, if indeed they ever had been friends.
“I know it’s challenging,” said Eli Absalom Stone. “In a community like this. If only the principles weren’t paramount, but they are. They always are.”
“Yes,” agreed Harrison.
“I’ve been asked to a conference this summer, in Virginia. Sort of a think tank some people I know are involved in. It’s in July, near Monticello.” Harrison’s thoughts were racing, both to keep up and to interpret—conference, Virginia, Monticello?—and Eli was still talking. “They’re kind of intentionally under the radar. But really wonderful people. So supportive of my education, and what I want to do.”
Then Harrison was confused. Eli’s education—famously—had been self-administered in a shack on a mountain in West Virginia. Then he realized what Eli must mean.
“Is that how you heard about Roarke?”
Eli nodded.
“Anyway, I thought you might like to come along. I expect you’ll want to be with your family over the summer, but…”
Be with? His family? He nearly shuddered. But then he was already shuddering in the cold, on the iced-over ground. “No,” Harrison managed. “Not at all.”
“I’ll be giving a talk,” Eli said. “You could give one of your own, if that interested you. It’s not a formal thing. Everyone who attends can speak on any topic they like. I’ve generally talked about education, my experience as a self-schooled student. Perhaps you’d like to talk about your exposure to progressive education, and what that was like as a young conservative intellectual. I think this group would find your account fascinating.”
But Harrison was still a sentence behind. Not just on “intellectual” （the word he had long embraced within himself, though it had never once been used aloud, in his presence, to describe him） but on “conservative,” which had not yet entered his lexicon of self-determination. It fell, at first, like a spatter of acid, and he recoiled from it, but that—he realized right away—was Walden, not him. Walden, where the very notion of conservatism （and intellectualism!） was poisonous, initiating a knee-jerk repulsion devoid of engagement. Though not him. Never him! Never, from the moment he’d begun to think critically, independently, and as a sentient being accountable to himself, not some inherited or institutionalized notion of worth. It was an almost comically head-smacking moment, the moment Harrison Oppenheimer understood that he himself was a young conservative intellectual. Naturally Eli Absalom Stone had seen that first. It was final proof, if proof were somehow necessary, that Eli was smarter.