An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

by Brock Clarke

  “What’s going on here?” I asked.

  Peter shrugged, which I took to mean, I don’t know.

  “Let’s go see,” I said. Peter shrugged again, which I took to mean, No.

  “Why not?” I asked, and you already know what his answer was, or at least how he gave it, and so I won’t bother to interpret it for you.

  But no matter what, I was going in that house: already that week I had been locked out of my house and my mother’s apartment, and I was not going to be kept out of this place, too. I got out of the van, walked up to and inside the house, and guess what? Peter followed me. This is yet another piece of necessary advice that’ll go in my arsonist’s guide: if you lead, they will follow, especially if it’s painfully cold outside and your followers don’t want to be left in the unheated van. If you lead, under exactly these kinds of circumstances, then they will follow.

  17

  Let me say now that between the then when this was happening and the now from which I’m writing, I’ve become something of a reader. Back then I hadn’t heard of the author who was inside the Robert Frost Place, about to read from his most recent book, but I’ve heard of him now and have read all his novels, too. Each of his novels is populated by taciturn northern New Hampshire countrymen with violent tendencies, doing violent things to their countrywomen and children, then brooding over the violence within them and how the harsh northern New Hampshire landscape is part and parcel of that violence. Recently the author moved to Wyoming to get away from the city folk who are moving to New Hampshire, and he’s now setting his books in Wyoming, where the men are also taciturn and violent, et cetera. And the books have won a few awards, and they’ve been made into major motion pictures—I should say that, too.

  It was a good thing Peter and I arrived when we did, because we got two of the last available seats. I did a quick scan of the crowd for arsonists or potential arsonists, but I recognized no one, no one at all. There were a few women scattered around, but mostly the audience was composed of men. Some of the men were dressed like Peter and wore red plaid hunting jackets or bulky tan Carhartt jackets or lined flannel shirts, and all of those men were wearing jeans and work boots. Some of the men wore ski jackets and hiking boots and the sort of many-pocketed army green pants that made you want to get out of your seat and rappel. Some of the men wore wide-wale corduroy pants and duck boots and cable-knit sweaters and scarves. It was a regular United Nations of white American manhood. But all the men, no matter what they were wearing, were slouching in their chairs, with their legs so wide open that it seemed as though there must be something severely wrong with their testicles.

  In front of all of us was a podium with a microphone sticking out of it. On the front of the podium—and all over the walls, too—were posters announcing the reading, and also announcing the reader’s position as the current Robert Frost Place’s Writer-in-Residence. There was a picture of the Writer-in-Residence on the poster, and from the picture I recognized him in person, sitting off to the right of the podium. He, too, was wearing a red plaid hunting jacket and had a big red beard and a pile of graying red curly hair. Sitting next to him was a thin, bald man wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a yellow corduroy shirt so new that it looked as though it had just come out of the box. The thin, bald man got out of his chair, walked to the podium, and introduced himself as the Director of the Robert Frost Place. He talked about the history of the Robert Frost Place Writers-in-Residence, and how each Writer-in-Residence was chosen for the way he and his work embodied the true spirit of Robert Frost and of New England itself. The Director then talked for a while about what, exactly, the true spirit of New England was. I can’t say I listened to all, or any, of what he said, the way you don’t really listen to those car commercials when they tell you how their vehicle embodies the true spirit of America.

  Anyway, this went on for a while, and at some point he must actually have introduced the Writer-in-Residence, because the Director suddenly sat down, there was some applause, and the Writer-in-Residence took his place at the podium. He took a bottle of Jim Beam the size and shape of a hip flask out of his jacket pocket and took a pull from it, and without saying a word of thanks to us for coming, he began to read. The story was about a woodpile and the snow falling on the woodpile and the old man who owned the woodpile and who wasn’t actually that old but who had been so beaten down by life that he looked old. The old man was sitting at his kitchen window drinking bourbon straight from the bottle and watching the snow wet the wood that he and his family needed for their heat and that needed to be chopped, pronto. His son was supposed to chop the wood, the son had promised, but he was off somewhere getting into trouble with a girl the old man didn’t much care for because she was a slut (she was a slut, it seemed, not because she’d actually had sex with someone or someones, but because who else but a slut would date the old man’s son?). The old man hated the girl and he hated the son and he hated the snow and he hated the unchopped wood, which clearly was some sort of symbol of how the man’s life hadn’t worked out the way he’d planned, and the old man hated the bourbon, too, which he kept drinking anyway. I couldn’t understand why the old man didn’t just get off his ass and chop the wood himself, and I also couldn’t understand why the author didn’t use metaphors or similes in his story, but he didn’t; the story was more or less an unadorned grocery list of the things the old man hated. And speaking of grocery lists, the old man’s wife entered the kitchen with her grocery list and told the old man that she was going to the store, and as an aside she looked at the dead woodstove and said, “Pa.” The old man didn’t answer her, maybe because he didn’t like to be called “Pa,” or maybe because he liked to be called “Pa” so much that he wanted his wife to call him that again, or maybe because men like him are only called “Pa” in books and he didn’t realize he was in one. In any case, his wife said it again—“Pa”—and then: “It’s cold in here. Why don’t you go out and chop some wood?”

  The old man didn’t look at his wife when she said this; instead he looked at the ax resting in the corner, and he looked at it in such a resigned, meaningful way that it was clear that he wouldn’t chop wood with it but would instead use the ax to commit some horrible violent act against his wife or his son or both and that the violence was inevitable. The story ended with him staring at the ax, and then the Writer-in-Residence left the podium and reclaimed his seat next to the Director.

  There were several minutes of big, thunderous applause. It was like the time I spoke to Katherine’s first-grade class for career day. I’d brought in the ziplock plastic bag I’d invented for show-and-tell, and I showed the kids how it zipped and locked, zipped and locked, and then told them how I’d made the bag that way and why. Afterward the kids gave me a sustained, raucous ovation, not because they were so impressed by the bag, but because they were competing with one another to see who could clap the loudest and the longest. The ovation in the Robert Frost Place was like that. Even I slapped my hands together, in the spirit of the thing and to be agreeable. The only person in the audience not clapping was Peter. At first I thought it was just that he clapped the way he talked. But then I noticed he was staring at the Writer-in-Residence, really staring at him, squint eyed and furious, as if the Writer-in-Residence were an especially hateful eye exam. Instead of clapping, Peter was grinding his right fist into his left palm in such a way that it made me feel very sorry for the palm.

  “What’s wrong?” I whispered.

  “I hate him,” he growled.

  “Why?” I asked, but he didn’t answer me, not even a shrug. That’s how angry he was.

  And after thinking about it a few moments—the applause continued, which was good because I think better with the help of white noise, the way some people sleep better with the help of a fan—I was pretty sure I knew why he hated the Writer-in-Residence. I had a clear picture of Peter sitting at home—the stove blazing away, his plunger and dog close by—and reading book after book after book. Maybe he’d re
ad the Writer-in-Residence’s books, too, and they—with the help of Ethan Frome—were telling him not what sort of person he could be but what sort of person he was and always would be: grim, beaten down, violent, inarticulate. Maybe this was what the Director meant by the true spirit of New England, spirit being not that thing that helps you rise above, but that which weighs you down. Maybe this was why Peter wanted me to burn down the Robert Frost Place: because they kept bringing in Writers-in-Residence like this Writer-in-Residence, kept bringing in men who told Peter who he was and who he wasn’t, and not who he might yet be, and Peter was sick of it. This I knew for certain, as though I had Peter’s letter in front of me and had read it many times and knew his reasons by heart, which of course I hadn’t and didn’t.

  Because if I had, if I knew then what I know now (I recovered Peter’s letter, a story I’ll get to soon), I’d have known that Peter wanted me to burn down the Robert Frost Place because of the Director, who, of course, was sitting right next to the Writer-in-Residence. Six years earlier (Peter had written me the letter after I’d been released from prison), the Director had hired Peter to fix a leak in the roof. A week after Peter had fixed it and been paid for the fixing, the roof had started to leak again, and Peter refused to fix it again unless he was paid again. The Director not only didn’t pay him again but also made it known that Peter was unreliable and shouldn’t be hired, and now Peter couldn’t get work. Even six years later, he apparently couldn’t get work. And so he wanted me to burn down the Frost Place because he wanted revenge on the Director. The letter didn’t say why Peter couldn’t just burn the house down himself, but the bumbled condition of his bathroom gave me a pretty good idea. In any case, his wanting me to burn down the Frost Place had nothing to do with the Writer-in-Residence, just as the Writer-in-Residence had nothing to do with Frost himself, even though he was there under Frost’s name. I wonder if this is why writers die: so they don’t have to sit around and have people misconstrue what sort of writer they are. I wonder if this is why people do it, too. Die, that is.

  As for why Peter read so much and had so many books scattered around his house, his letter didn’t say. Maybe because he couldn’t get any work, he had so much time to kill, and reading helped him do that. Maybe he was bored. Maybe he liked to read. Maybe because the books were from the library and free, the way so few things are. Or maybe his reasons were private, if private means not that someone else wouldn’t understand our reasons, but that we don’t entirely understand them ourselves.

  In any case, I thought I knew who Peter hated and why he hated him, and I felt for Peter and wanted to do something to help him, something besides what he wanted me to do. Meanwhile, the applause kept going on and on and the Writer-in-Residence sat there looking more and more severe and drinking more and more bourbon, and the Director was looking more and more pleased, and Peter’s face was getting redder and redder, and you could tell his resentment was getting hotter and hotter, and let’s just say I felt I had to do something. If that’s not good enough, let’s just say that if the spirit of New England was in the Writer-in-Residence, then the spirit of my mother—book reader and storyteller—was in me.

  “I have a question,” I said, standing up as I said it. I don’t know if anyone heard me over the applause, but sooner or later a group of people sitting will take notice of one man standing. When this group noticed me a few minutes later, they stopped clapping. “I have a question,” I repeated.

  “No questions, no questions,” the Director said, standing up. When he did that, Peter growled audibly, which I appreciated, and kept growling until the Director sat down. The Writer-in-Residence didn’t seem to care one way or the other. He looked weary and dulled out, as though he knew exactly who I was, as though he’d played his Mercutio to my Tybalt too many times before. Even his drinking from the Jim Beam seemed to come at planned, regular intervals, as though part of the stage directions.

  “Why does your character have to be such a”—and here I paused for just the right words, and not able to find them, I chose from the many inadequate words at my disposal—“mopey jerk?”

  The Writer-in-Residence took another pull off his bottle of Jim Beam and said that he didn’t feel it was his business to say why his characters were the way they were.

  “Whose business is it?”

  “It’s nobody’s business, and I mean nobody’s,” the author said.

  This must have been a line from one of his books, because everyone around him cheered and hooted. This is the most terrifying thing about speaking in front of a crowd: not that you’ve lost them, but that you never had them in the first place and never will. My face felt so hot, so red, and I bet that if I’d touched my cheek to the floor, the whole house would have gone up in smoke, and Peter would have gotten what he wanted that way. But I didn’t do that: I stood there and waited for the crowd’s noise to finally subside, and then said, “But it is your business. You made him that way.”

  “I didn’t make him that way,” the Writer-in-Residence said. “That’s the way he is.”

  “The way he is,” I repeated. I borrowed this tactic from my mother. When I was a child and I would say something stupid, she would repeat it back to me so I could hear for myself how stupid it was.

  “The way he is,” the Writer-in-Residence repeated back to me. Maybe that was his tactic, too.

  “But suppose that’s not the way he is,” I said, and before the Writer-in-Residence or his crowd could say anything else, I continued: “Suppose he’s not an old man. Suppose he’s a young man.” The Writer-in-Residence nodded, as though that seemed a viable alternative, which only encouraged me. “Suppose he wasn’t angry at all. Suppose he had a job. Suppose he was a farmer …”And here I paused. I remembered the bond analysts’ memoir-brainstorming sessions; I remembered that they always urged one another, when trying to hurdle an especially big writer’s block, to “write what you know.” And in a sense, the bond analysts did write what they knew—they knew my father’s postcards, knew where he had been and what he had done—and so it seemed like useful advice. But I didn’t know anything about being a farmer, so I tried something else. “Or suppose he was a lumberjack.” But again, same problem: I knew nothing about being a lumberjack, not even what sort of saw to use in killing which sort of tree. The only job I knew anything about was being a packaging scientist. But I remembered my father’s initial reaction to my job—“No greatness in tennis ball cans”—and I suspected the Writer-in-Residence’s reaction would be the same or worse. And so out of panic and with nothing else to say, I said, “Or suppose this young man was a bumbler and he accidentally …,”and then I basically told the story I’ve been telling you. It was a much shorter version, but it included most of the major events and characters: my mother’s stories and the burning houses and the dead Colemans and their vengeful son and my beautiful wife and children and my drunk parents and their mysterious living situation and the letters and the bond analysts. It’s true the story didn’t have a proper ending—I only told the story up to the Mark Twain House fire and then said, “To be continued”—but I tried to keep things close to the facts. In fact, the only thing I made up about the young man was that he played a mean twelve-string guitar, because I’d always wanted to play guitar and because twelve strings seemed better than six, since there were more of them.

  “What do you think?” I asked after I was done. In truth I was very pleased with myself and with my story and all that had happened in it. Because you can’t help being impressed with your own story. Because if you’re not impressed with your own story, then who will be? “What would you say about that guy?” I asked.

  “I’d say he doesn’t sound like a real person,” the Writer-in-Residence said.

  “He doesn’t?” I asked. Oh, that hurt! Just the day before, Lees Ardor had told me she wanted to be a real person, and now I knew exactly what she meant. I would have given anything, right then, not to have told my story. I would have given anything to go back in
time, before I’d told my story, and get Lees Ardor and bring her here so we could have sat there together and listened to the Writer-in-Residence tell us what a real person was.

  “He doesn’t sound like a real person at all,” the Writer-in-Residence said. “He sounds like a cheap trick. No cheap tricks.”

  “No cheap tricks,” I repeated. I fell back into my chair, hard, and I bet the folding chair would have folded with the impact except it had heard what had happened and felt pity.

  “No tricks at all,” the Writer-in-Residence said, and then he took another swig of his bourbon.

  At that moment the Director stood up, walked toward the podium, and started waving his hands and arms over his head, as though he were shipwrecked and trying to get the attention of a plane flying overhead. “I believe that’s all the time we have,” he said, and then he announced that the Writer-in-Residence would be happy to sign books. This announcement caused a mad rush toward the front of the room. I sat in my seat, with my head hanging between my knees, in the crash position. Except I had already crashed and the position was taken too late. Peter was sitting next to me—I could hear the angry in-and-out of his breathing—but other than him, I felt completely alone. Even my mother’s spirit had left me, as though it had, like the Connecticut Yankee, time-warped out of my body and this place and back into its own.