An Arsonist's Guide To Writers' Homes In New England Part 9

"I read it in the newspaper, too," I said, which was the truth, or part of it. And then: "Dad, I saw Mom leave the house earlier."

"Yes, she was here," my father said, starting to count the letters again. "And then she left."

"She didn't look happy," I said.

"There was a bit of a mix-up," my father said. "I have one of these parties every Tuesday. Your mother tolerates the parties as long as she knows when they are so she won't be around. That's why they're every Tuesday."

"Today is Monday," I said.

"That was the mix-up," he admitted. "I thought it was Tuesday. So I called everyone and said, 'Where are you? Get over here."'

"Tell me about the parties, Dad," I said, although I could picture them pretty well already. They would be populated by men like the old, rednosed guy who'd earlier bounced his head off the kitchen table, men whose natural and sole habitat was the college town: failed or failing graduate students, drunk professors or book editors like my father, all of them wearing corduroy jackets in various stages of disrepair. These guys had once had their fields fields Victorian literature, tropical botany, the cultural import of the manual typewriter but one day they discovered that they didn't like their fields anymore, not as much as they liked to drink, anyway. And the only thing they liked as much as drinking was Victorian literature, tropical botany, the cultural import of the manual typewriter but one day they discovered that they didn't like their fields anymore, not as much as they liked to drink, anyway. And the only thing they liked as much as drinking was oddity oddity, which made sense, since they were both odd and drunks themselves. My father and his free booze and his son the arsonist and murderer and all those letters fit both those bills. I could picture all of them, every Tuesday, showing up at my parents' house and drinking their booze and listening to my father read those letters until they'd exhausted most of the liquor and my father had exhausted most of their curiosity and they drifted away, until there was only one red-nosed guy left, always the drunkest one, the one with n.o.body to see and nowhere to go and nothing to do except sit at the kitchen table and drink the last Knickerbocker and listen to my father drone on and on and on about the letters, the letters, the letters, the way he'd talked to so many drunks before. I knew this without my father telling me, even though he did, in so many words.

"So Mom doesn't like these parties," I said. I could see why, but something didn't quite make sense to me. After all, my mother didn't seem to have a problem with drunks in general, being one herself, plus being married to one, plus being mother to a son who was well on his way to becoming a drunk, too. So why would a few dozen more drunks in corduroy blazers bother her so much? "How come she doesn't like these parties?" I asked my father.

"I have no idea," he said, and that's another thing I'll put in my arsonist's guide: be wary of a man who says, "I have no idea," when asked why his wife doesn't like something he's done, which of course is just another way of saying be wary of men in general. "Maybe she doesn't like what my guests do to the house," he said.

"Speaking of the house ," I said, "Dad, how long ago did Mom move out?"

"Move out?" my father repeated. "I wouldn't exactly say she has. Her clothes are here, after all, or at least most of them. She comes back here to drink most every night."

"Dad," I said, "I saw her apartment tonight. I saw her in her apartment in Belchertown, in the Masonic temple. I know all about that."

"Oh," he said. His face fell a little and began to look more like the face of the stroked-out father I believed and wanted him to be and he perhaps wanted to be, too. "I'm sorry you have to know all about that."

"Are you still even married?"

"It's complicated," he said.

"What is?" I said.

"Marriage," he said.

"Do you still love her?"

"I love her very much," my father said automatically. Did this mean he did, or he didn't? If he had asked me the same question about Anne Marie, I would have given him the same answer, and I would have given it automatically. "I wish your mother weren't in that apartment," he said. "I wish she were here, with us."

"So why isn't she?"

"It's complicated," my father said again. I could see that "complicated" was the word he used to describe that which he didn't understand, the way I used "accident." My father dropped his eyes and then returned them to the letters. He picked one up and I could see his hand shake. He seemed more and more feeble and distracted with each pa.s.sing second, and I thought I'd better finish asking questions before he fully reverted to the stroked-out father I'd been thinking he was.

"Dad, how many people have seen these letters?"

"Too many to count," he said, and this seemed to please him. He rallied a little bit and started walking around the kitchen, waggling beer cans to see if they had any beer left in them, drinking out of the ones that did.

"Does anyone know where you keep the letters?"

"Of course," he said. He sat down at the table and started flipping through the letters again. "Lots of people do."

"Does anyone suspicious know where you keep the letters?" I asked. This was a weak question, and my father gave me a look as if to say, They all were They all were, and so I thought about how to be more specific. What would a suspicious person look like, exactly? What would a suspicious person look like, exactly? I asked myself, and immediately Thomas Coleman came to mind, especially since he'd seemed to know my father, knew where his bedroom was, and had been in this same home only the day before. Plus, I'd already fingered him as guilty to Detective Wilson, so I had some stake in his guilt. Plus, I didn't think I had anyone else to name except my mother, and I didn't want to name her, not unless I had to. I asked myself, and immediately Thomas Coleman came to mind, especially since he'd seemed to know my father, knew where his bedroom was, and had been in this same home only the day before. Plus, I'd already fingered him as guilty to Detective Wilson, so I had some stake in his guilt. Plus, I didn't think I had anyone else to name except my mother, and I didn't want to name her, not unless I had to.

"Do you know someone named Thomas Coleman?" I asked him.

"I know lots of people," my father said.

"He has blond hair," I said. "He's thin, has blue eyes." I thought about it some more, wished there were more ways to physically describe the people who are ruining our lives. "Really thin," I said again. "Does that sound like someone who has seen the letters?"

"Lots of thin people have seen the letters," my father said, talking more to the letters than to me.

"Dad, pay attention!" I barked, the way a parent does to a child, and the way every child eventually does to his parent, too, taking revenge for being barked at so many years earlier, revenge being yet another one of the many kinds of sadness. My father's head jerked up and he held it there, at attention. "Thomas Coleman's parents died in the Emily d.i.c.kinson House fire," I told him.

"They did," he said.

"Yes," I said. "I killed them." It felt good to admit this finally, although every good feeling exists only long enough for you to ruin it, and I ruined this one by adding, "By accident."

"By accident," my father said.

"Do you know Thomas Coleman?" I asked. "Has he seen the letters? I'm pretty sure someone who has seen the letters tried to set fire to both the Bellamy House and the Twain House. They probably have the five other letters, too. Dad, please, think hard. Do you know a Thomas Coleman? This is important. important."

My father thought hard; I could tell by the way the worry lines on his forehead deepened and multiplied. He even brought his index finger to his lips and left it there. Finally he said, "I have no idea. I'm sorry, Sam, but I don't."

"OK," I said, and I believed him, and that will also go in my arsonist's guide: don't trust a man who says, "I have no idea," but also don't underestimate his capacity not to have one. "Dad," I said, "you don't think it could be Mom who tried to burn those houses, do you?"

"No," he said. "Why would you ask something like that?"

"Because I'm pretty sure it's a woman," I said. "If it's not this guy Thomas Coleman, then I'm pretty sure it's a woman."

"Why do you say that?"

"It's complicated," I said, throwing his favorite word back at him. "But trust me, I'm pretty sure it's a woman."

"Why would it be your mother?" my father said. He was really lucid now, his eyes suddenly clear of the booze and the letters and who knows what else that had been fogging them.

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe she's not happy I came back. Maybe it's because of me."

"Don't you ever say that!" my father yelled. I mean, he really yelled this, and then banged on the table, giving his fist the opportunity to yell, too. I don't think he ever banged or yelled once when I was a child; usually he moped and then fled. I'm not sure which was worse, or better. Were these my only choices? Shouldn't you get more than two choices? "Your mother would never do something like that to you," he told me. "Don't be ridiculous."

"OK," I said.

"She loves loves you, you idiot," he said. "You have no idea how much." you, you idiot," he said. "You have no idea how much."

"OK, OK," I said. "But I'm still pretty sure it's a woman, though."

"Then it's another woman," my father said. "Go find another woman." Of course he said this, and of course I listened, finding another woman finding another woman being both the hope that keeps most men going and the hope that eventually does them in. being both the hope that keeps most men going and the hope that eventually does them in.

That was the end of that. After he told me to go find another woman, my father seemed to stroke out again. He put the letters back in the shoe box, tucked the shoe box under his arm, got up from his chair, and shuffled toward his bedroom. Before he left the kitchen, though, he reached with his free hand and picked up a book on the counter. "By the way," he said. He held up Morgan Taylor's memoir, then tossed it at me. I didn't react quickly enough, and it hit me right in the gut, which, coincidentally, is exactly where the book jacket promised the book would hit me. "I read this. Am I supposed to be in here?"

"Well, not you exactly," I said. "But the things you did, the places you went after you left Mom and me. Those are your your stories." stories."

"If you say so," my father said. He shrugged and then shuffled off to bed.

LIKE THE MANY SAD-SACK young male narrators of the books my mother made me read when I was a sad-sack young male, I went to bed that night without my supper, and for that matter without my lunch, too. My stomach was rumbling angrily, keeping pace with the rumbling in my head. There were so many things to think about that I couldn't properly think about any of them. When this happens, the only thing you can do is to locate one thought, the simplest one, the one nearest to you, and do your very best to eliminate it and then go on to thinking about the next thought you want to eliminate.

The thought closest to me that night was this: Morgan Taylor had stolen my father's stories for his memoir. My father had read the memoir and said he wasn't in it, even though those postcards he'd sent me said otherwise. When I was a child, I kept the postcards my father had sent in my closet, on the top shelf, in a manila envelope. I got out of bed, dragged a desk chair over to the closet, climbed up on the chair, reached up to the top shelf, and found the envelope. The postcards were inside: I read them like that, standing on the chair. They were exactly as I remembered, in my father's handwriting, the handwriting I recognized from the "Drink Me" notes he left in the morning beside my hangover potion. I'd remembered the handwriting so clearly, in part, because it was the only time I'd ever really seen either of my parents write anything anything except for the illegible marginal comments they made on student papers and ma.n.u.scripts, and even that writing wasn't writing at all but rather symbols telling the writer to indent or not to. The way I figured it, my parents scribbled so much at work that they couldn't bring themselves to write anything at home not even a grocery list or a birthday card. Except for my father's postcards. My father might not have remembered the postcards clearly, but here they were, written proof that something important had happened as I remembered it happening. Each postcard was signed, "Love, Your Dad." except for the illegible marginal comments they made on student papers and ma.n.u.scripts, and even that writing wasn't writing at all but rather symbols telling the writer to indent or not to. The way I figured it, my parents scribbled so much at work that they couldn't bring themselves to write anything at home not even a grocery list or a birthday card. Except for my father's postcards. My father might not have remembered the postcards clearly, but here they were, written proof that something important had happened as I remembered it happening. Each postcard was signed, "Love, Your Dad."

"I love you, too," I said to the postcards, putting them back in the envelope and then putting the envelope back on its high shelf. The father downstairs was strange to me and unlikable, but the one I knew from the postcards was still here, with me, in my heart and on my high closet shelf. With one thing less to think about, I got back into bed and tried to go to sleep. I did, too, for three hours, until the phone woke me up. It rang and rang and rang my parents didn't have an answering machine, which seemed about right, because I don't think the phone had rung once since I'd moved home until it finally pulled me out of bed and downstairs, where the phone was. I picked it up and gave the usual greeting, and in response I heard a man whose voice I didn't recognize say, "The Robert Frost Place, Sam. At midnight," and then hang up. I put the phone back into its cradle, then walked into my father's room. I was prepared to wake him, but he was already awake. The lamp on the end table was on. There was a box of wine on the end table next to the lamp, red wine dripping from its spigot onto the floor. My father was sitting in his chair, a gla.s.s of wine in one hand, the open box of letters in his lap. He was staying up late, drinking box wine, worrying about the missing letters, the way another father might stay up late, drinking coffee, worrying about his missing son or wife.

"Dad," I said, "did you hear the phone ring?"

"Yes," he said, then drained his gla.s.s. He placed the gla.s.s under the spigot, filled his gla.s.s only halfway, and then gave the box a disappointed glance that let me know it was empty.

"That was someone telling me that he was going to burn down the Robert Frost Place. In so many words."

"Peter Le Clair," he said automatically. "Ten State Route Eighteen, Franconia, New Hamps.h.i.+re." He looked at me sheepishly and nodded. "I should have remembered that one."

Part Four

16

New Hamps.h.i.+re was pretty. For one thing, it started snowing immediately after I crossed the state border, which gave me the feeling that it never stopped snowing in New Hamps.h.i.+re and that if I turned around and looked back at Ma.s.sachusetts, I'd see a solid line of weather on one side blizzard, on the other side nothing but palm trees and warm breezes. But I didn't look back to check. I kept my eyes straight ahead, on the road, because it really was snowing hard and you could hardly see a thing with all the trucks barreling northward, the snow whoos.h.i.+ng and blowing in their wake and into my winds.h.i.+eld. It was like driving behind a fierce and terrible tsunami with Quebec plates. Then one of the trucks got caught in a rut of snow, veered to the left, through traffic and off the highway, and jackknifed into a ditch, after which all the cars panicked and started skidding here and there, and it was like b.u.mper cars that had lost their poles while going seventy, in the snow, with some horrible visibility. It was a real mess, and I knew if I stayed on the highway much longer, I'd soon be in a ditch myself or worse, so I took the next exit.

It was magical off the highway, still snowing hard but no semis and no high speeds and so more heavenly and not nearly as blinding and hazardous; all in all, it was a much better-looking New Hamps.h.i.+re. I went through about twelve towns, lovely towns full of white clapboard houses and snow-covered town greens and sensible white boxy Congregational churches and covered wooden bridges, and even a gristmill or two paddling their way through icy streams, not getting much done for all their paddling, but still plucky and hopeful. I wished that I wasn't just driving through and also that I'd learned to paint so I could be an artist and live in New Hanps.h.i.+re and paint pictures of the towns. They were that handsome. I drove by an inn in Red Bell, and there were a half-dozen cars parked out front, all of them with out-of-state plates, people obviously on vacation. I'd never been on vacation myself, not really, and now I knew why people did it. People went on vacation not to get a break from their home but to imagine getting a new home, a better home, in which they'd live a better life. I knew this because as I drove, the hole that was me and my life was getting smaller and smaller and was being filled up with New Hamps.h.i.+re, or maybe it was only the idea of New Hamps.h.i.+re, but who cares, as long as it was filling up the hole. So maybe that's what a vacation was for: to fill up the hole that was you not on vacation.

Because that's what Red Bell was doing: it was filling me up and making me reflective, too. Now that I had seen the real deal, New England town-wise, I could see Camelot as Anne Marie had at first: cheap, sterile, and so lonely and, as far as homes go, no shelter at all from the cruel, cruel world. But if we could have moved here, near a gristmill, things would have been different. Was it too late? Maybe it wasn't too late. Maybe Anne Marie and I could work things out in New Hamps.h.i.+re; maybe the boxy churches would help her forget my lying and would also help me to finally tell the truth; maybe my b.u.mbling wouldn't be so severe here, in Red Bell, or in one of its neighbors. After all, the place was so very old and had been through a lot, so you probably couldn't do much to it that hadn't been done to it already. The ancient, meandering stone walls, for instance: they were everywhere, and if the Indians and the British and generations of livestock hadn't wrecked them, I didn't see how I could do the walls much damage, either. They looked tough and permanent, those walls, but with the snow on them they looked soft, too, which was how I was starting to think of myself or rather, was how I was starting to think of my future, New Hamps.h.i.+re self. Yes, New Hamps.h.i.+re was already doing strange things to me. After only an hour in the state, I had fully imagined life here with Anne Marie and the kids; it was easy to do so, easy to forget that Anne Marie was with Thomas Coleman now and wanted nothing more to do with me. I wondered if this was how my father had felt during his three-year exile if he'd felt hopeful and dreamy about the prospect of a new life with his wife and boy in Duluth, Yuma, et cetera. It hadn't worked out that way for him, exactly, but it would work out better for me and mine of that I was convinced. Because everyone knows that the one constant in the human story is progress, and my father's Duluth was not my New Hamps.h.i.+re, his familial disaster not mine, and so I pledged to look into local real estate prices and employment opportunities immediately after I found out who had called me, asking me to meet him at the Robert Frost Place at midnight.

But then I kept driving north, up into the White Mountains and toward Franconia, and it got so awfully poor and depressing that even the snow couldn't disguise it. First the clapboard houses lost their clapboards and took on some aluminum siding, still white but somehow dirty against the legitimately and naturally white snow. I felt bad for the houses, having to be compared to the white snow and failing so completely. It would probably have been better for the houses and the people in them to move south, where there was no snow to have to live up to.

Anyway, accelerating through time (because this trip took hours and hours you could see why people in a hurry and with no eye for local detail are so completely devoted to the interstate), I drove farther north, and the trailers started popping up here and there, until there were only trailers and I started to miss the aluminum siding. Oh, those trailers were sad and made Mr. Frazier's neighborhood in Chicopee seem like Shangri-la. They looked cold, too, sitting there on the open ground with no trees to protect them from the wind and the drifting snow. Some of the trailers had plywood entrances tacked onto their fronts or sides, and I could see the plywood jittering in the wind. Every trailer had a stovepipe coming out of its roof, sticking out of the tar paper like a lonely digit. The smoke came furiously out of these pipes, the wood burning double time so as not to spend any extra minutes in the trailers. There were wrecked cars in every yard, taking the place of the trees, and they, too, were covered with snow, the way the stone walls had been farther south. But whereas the snow had softened the boulders, the wrecks looked cruel as the rusted and warped fenders punched through the snow, making harsh holes in the drifts. I was in Franconia now, with the White Mountains everywhere, and it should have been beautiful, but it wasn't. The mountains themselves seemed impossibly far away, as if they didn't want to get too close to the trailers. It was awful, all right, so depressing, so poor, and by now the hole inside me the hole where Anne Marie and the kids were, the hole that pretty Red Bell had started to fill was as large as ever, and I'd forgotten about Red Bell entirely, couldn't remember what made it so beautiful, couldn't even conjure up a gristmill. This is what poverty does, I guess: it ruins your memory of more beautiful things, which is just another reason why we should try as hard as we can to get rid of it.

Peter Le Clair's address: 10 State Route 18. I found his place because of the hand-painted number 10 on the mailbox, which was bent face downward, almost off its pole, as if ashamed of its address. His trailer was the same as the others except for one thing: Peter himself was standing at the trailer's one front window, watching as I pulled into his driveway. His face disappeared from the window, and seconds later the tan plywood door to the black plywood addition swung open and there stood Peter, five-day beard and flannel s.h.i.+rt and no coat, holding a gun. Except it wasn't a gun my eyes and a.s.sumptions were playing tricks on me it was a plunger (Peter had real plumbing problems, in addition to his other problems). Still, Peter looked mighty threatening. He was big, much taller than six feet, with a chest that was full barreled to my half. There was a doghouse in front of the trailer, right next to my minivan, and a dog howled from inside it but didn't come out. I wished I were in the doghouse with the dog, who knew Peter better than I did and could probably give me a few pointers about how to please its master. Or maybe the dog was trying to do just that, through its howling, which was loud and echoing from inside the doghouse. Go away Go away, it might have been howling. Go away, go away Go away, go away.

But I couldn't go away. For one thing, it was only six o'clock, and I had to stick around until at least midnight to find out who had made that phone call and why. And for another, I had nowhere else to go, nothing left to do. Perhaps Peter's trailer in Franconia was as close to home as I was going to get. Perhaps, for a man like me, there was no longer any such thing as a true home and so I couldn't be picky, couldn't just sit in the van and refuse to come out because the homes were depressing and their inhabitants were large and menacing. Yes, I needed to get out of the van. Now that I knew that, the dog's howling took on a different meaning, and instead of Go away, go away Go away, go away, it was Get out of the van, get out of the van Get out of the van, get out of the van. I got out of the van.

Boy, it was cold. The sort of heart-clutching cold where after being out in it for a second, you can't bear another one. Even Peter and his plunger were less frightening than the cold. Plus, it was still snowing hard and I didn't have a hat, and if I stayed out there much longer, I'd be buried like the wrecked vehicles in the yard. There were three of them, to the left of the doghouse; I could see their antennas sticking out of the snow.

"Mr. Le Clair, I'm Sam Pulsifer," I said, walking up to him. And then not reminding him of who I was or of the letter he'd sent me who knows how many years ago or even waiting for a response I said, "Let's go inside, what do you say? My teeth are chattering right out of my gums, they're so cold." And with that, I kept walking, right past him and into the trailer, not because I was brave but because the fear had frozen inside me. It was that cold.

It was warmer in the trailer. There were boots everywhere, and coats, lined flannel s.h.i.+rts, and hooded sweats.h.i.+rts hung on hooks and off the backs of chairs and even off the back of the TV, keeping it warm. It was an enormous, old TV. No remote control ever had or ever would control it. There were heavy tattered rugs everywhere, too there was even one nailed to the living room wall, like an animal's hide-rugs with not much color in them (mostly brown and dark red), and you knew someone's grandmother had labored over them for a year and a day. Then there were the books: the living room its furniture, its floor was covered with a layer of books, like dust. The books were all from some library I could see the telltale laminated tag on the spines. I looked down, lifted my left foot, and saw I'd been standing on a copy of Ethan Frome Ethan Frome, a book every eighth grader in Ma.s.sachusetts since Edith Wharton had written it had been required to read and then wonder why. I kicked the novel away from me, something I'd been wanting to do for twenty-six years, and in doing so I imagined I was striking a blow on behalf of its many unwilling, barely p.u.b.escent readers. There were so many library books that I wondered if Peter had put the local public library out of business and whether his living room hadn't become the real library instead. I say the living room, but in addition to being the library and the living room, it was also the TV room and the dining room. There was a separate kitchen, which was only a little bigger than the TV, and between the two rooms was the most important appliance in the house: the woodstove. The stove was really going, high and hot, and it was so dry in there that your sinuses couldn't help but go screwy. My face, which was still raging from the cold outside, was no less red now that I was inside, and the effect of the extreme heat wasn't much different from that of the extreme cold.

The door slammed and rattled nervously in its frame. I turned around. Peter was right behind me, standing at the mouth of the room. He was still holding the plunger he really seemed attached to it and still hadn't said anything. My face felt even redder, just looking at how his wasn't. Boy, he was white, like the snow, but much paler and not so pure. Peter had tapped into some primordial whiteness, like a prehistoric fish in a cave, except wearing flannel and well over six feet tall. I was scared of him, always had been. There were guys like him in my high school, country guys with big scarred hands, brooding hulks who didn't say much and didn't need to. They seemed older, more serious than me, more manlike, and they also seemed to have properties and qualities and things that I did not, even when they didn't have much, which Peter obviously didn't. I could see rolled-up newspapers and towels shoved into the holes at the bottom of the trailer, where the elements had rusted through the metal.

"That's much better," I said, rubbing my hands together to indicate the improvement of my blood circulation. "Whew." Peter still didn't say anything, and now that I was warmer, I was feeling even more afraid, and so to calm my nerves and b.u.t.ter up my host, I said, "That's a good fire. I mean it. Really wonderful heat."

Still no response. I suddenly remembered this one time in high school, when I'd finished an apple and thrown it in the trash can from a great distance, or tried to. Instead I'd hit this dairy farmer's son named Kevin. I was thirteen and Kevin was thirteen, but it seemed as if we were from different planets, his the bigger one populated by a warrior race, and he charged in my direction when he realized who had thrown the apple. Once he got to me, he stared the way Peter was staring now, and I babbled how sorry I was and that it was an accident and what a poor shot I was in general (you could ask the gym coach), and so on and on out of nervousness and terror until Kevin punched me in the right cheek and knocked me down. I a.s.sumed he punched me because I'd hit him with the apple, but I found out later, from reliable sources, that he punched me because I just wouldn't stop talking. I couldn't stop talking with Peter, either, which just shows that history repeats itself whether you know it or not.

"Le Clair," I said. "Is that French? I mean French Canadian? From Quebec?"

Nothing. If it were possible to slip out of silence into deeper silence, then Peter did so. His eyes, which were pale blue and already set back, receded even further into his face. His forehead and chin jutted out at me like weapons.

"Because I went there on my honeymoon," I said, "with my wife, Anne Marie. We're having some troubles, but I hope we can work them out, but it's too complicated to go into right now. I lied to her, but she thinks I lied to her about something I didn't, but I can't tell her that, because the actual lie is worse than the lie she thinks I told. Although she might be thinking I'm lying about something else entirely now. See, complicated. To Quebec, though, that's where we went on our honeymoon, even though I didn't speak French. Still don't. I've kind of always regretted not learning another language, although I have all these other regrets, too, to keep it company. I bet you do, though. Speak French, that is. Although maybe not. Did you ever learn it in school? I hear it helps to live in the actual country. Did you ever live in the actual country? Although maybe your parents taught it to you."

Still nothing. I could hear the dog howling outside, and again I wished I were with the dog in the doghouse and not in the trailer with Peter, because at least the dog wasn't mute and had something to say.

"What's your dog's name?" I asked him. "How old is he? Or she? I've never had a dog. Or a cat. No pets at all. Is your dog neutered? Spayed?" And so on, until I began to get sick of myself and my babbling. Then I changed my mind and got sick of him, Peter, and it, his silence, and then I got sick of stoic men in general. Did they not have anything to say, these stoic men? Did they have plenty to say but not the right things, or not even the ability to say those wrong things the right way? Well, so what. Had that ever stopped me? Did people not know that talking was good for you, like medicine or juice? Had someone told Peter that you had to be silent and gloomy to be a man? Was that what reading about mopey, inarticulate Ethan Frome Ethan Frome had taught him? (I'd already kicked the book out of my kicking range, but I kicked it again, in my mind, for good measure.) I was so sick of these silent men, it seemed as if I'd been around them my entire life: not enjoying the silence, and not wanting it, either. Their silence was like an ugly hat someone had told them they had to wear, and so they did, but bitterly. I almost missed Thomas Coleman, who could at least had taught him? (I'd already kicked the book out of my kicking range, but I kicked it again, in my mind, for good measure.) I was so sick of these silent men, it seemed as if I'd been around them my entire life: not enjoying the silence, and not wanting it, either. Their silence was like an ugly hat someone had told them they had to wear, and so they did, but bitterly. I almost missed Thomas Coleman, who could at least talk talk and wasn't shy about doing so, even if the stuff he said was hurtful and sinister and some of it out-and-out deceitful. And of course he was saying this stuff to my wife, and now that I thought about it maybe he was with her right now. Suddenly I was sick of Thomas, too, and maybe it wasn't just that I was sick of silent men but of all men, which was troubling, since I counted myself one of them. and wasn't shy about doing so, even if the stuff he said was hurtful and sinister and some of it out-and-out deceitful. And of course he was saying this stuff to my wife, and now that I thought about it maybe he was with her right now. Suddenly I was sick of Thomas, too, and maybe it wasn't just that I was sick of silent men but of all men, which was troubling, since I counted myself one of them.

"Listen," I said. "Like I told you earlier, I'm Sam Pulsifer. I need to know now. Are you Peter Le Clair? Are you the Peter Le Clair who wrote me years ago, asking me to burn down the Robert Frost Place?"

Peter didn't put down his plunger at this news, and he didn't smile or say anything. But he did shrug. It was, as I learned over the next several hours, Peter's favorite gesture, one probably used to communicate knowingness, confusion, sleepiness, hunger, loyalty, drunkenness, impatience, empathy, s.e.xual longing. It was an economical gesture, and I admired it so much that I thought about doing it myself right back at him. But then I remembered that time in prison when I said, "I'm a grown-a.s.s man," after playing basketball, and Terrell beat me; there were no prison guards to protect me this time. So I didn't shrug. But I wanted to, and I bet, if given a chance, the mimicry would have done our relations.h.i.+p a lot of good. Because it seems to me that the world would be a nicer, more empathetic place in which to live if we were only allowed to mimic each other without the one being mimicked taking offense and threatening violence.

"You shrugged," I said. "Does that mean yes?"

"Yes," he said, his voice rough but a little higher than I expected, like a rugged Tweety Bird. "I am Peter Le Clair."

Well, now we were having a regular conversation we both sat down, as if settling into something and I certainly didn't want to lose its thread. So I kept the questions simple so that we could both follow them.

"Do you know why I'm here?"

"Yes," Peter replied, and then, before I could respond, he said, "I want you to burn down that house. But I can't pay you anything." When he said this, his eyes dropped to his boots and then rose up to my eyes, as if his shame were having an internal struggle with his pride. I felt for Peter and wanted to tell him that the struggle wasn't just part of his personal condition; it was the human condition, and it was my condition, too. Maybe that's why my face was so red. I wanted to tell him all this, but I also didn't want to get off the topic, which is my weakness, the way not speaking was his.

"Can't pay me anything," I said, just to buy myself some time to think and catch up. "Did you get a phone call saying something about burning down the Robert Frost Place?" I was also thinking about the phone call I'd gotten back in Amherst. It wasn't Peter's voice, I knew that now, but maybe Peter had received a phone call, too.

Except he hadn't. "No phone call," he said. "No phone." Then he shrugged again. It was a definitive shrug, one that told me there wasn't anything else to say about the phone call. So I didn't say anything and instead silently took stock of what I now knew or thought I knew. Peter hadn't gotten a phone call; I had, but the caller hadn't asked anyone for money to burn down the Robert Frost Place, a.s.suming that's what he planned on doing. The person who'd tried to burn down the Mark Twain House had asked for money but had done so in a letter, not over the phone, and most likely wasn't a man and so most likely had nothing to do with whomever I was supposed to meet at midnight at the Robert Frost Place. And none of these people seemed to have anything anything, necessarily, to do with whoever had tried to burn down the Edward Bellamy House. I felt panicked, taking account of all the things I didn't know, the same kind of panic a schoolchild feels when picking up a pencil to take a test for which he is unprepared. And as every schoolchild knows, panic is to the bladder what love or hate or exercise is to the heart.

"I'll be right back," I told Peter, and then wandered to the left, down the trailer's only visible hall. The bathroom was the first door to the left and was interesting. There were appliances and fixtures everywhere pipes and tubes of joint compound and fractured tile and shower rods and curtains and a medicine cabinet with no door. And as on Noah's boat, there were two of each of the most necessary items: two sinks (one fixed into the wall and one on the floor) and two ashtrays and two towels and two towel racks and two toilets, a blue one and a yellow one. Now Now Peter's plunger made a little more sense. But in my hurry I couldn't stop to tell which toilet I was supposed to use, so I used the blue one in honor of the boy I'd once been and still was, essentially. When I was done, I left the bathroom in a hurry and without checking to see whether it was the right, working toilet. Because if it was, great, and if it wasn't, well, I didn't really want to know. Peter's plunger made a little more sense. But in my hurry I couldn't stop to tell which toilet I was supposed to use, so I used the blue one in honor of the boy I'd once been and still was, essentially. When I was done, I left the bathroom in a hurry and without checking to see whether it was the right, working toilet. Because if it was, great, and if it wasn't, well, I didn't really want to know.

"Can't pay you," Peter repeated as soon as I returned to the living room. I empathized: his lack of money weighed heavily on him and he needed relief from it, his poverty being to his vessel what my pee had just been to mine.

"Don't worry about the money," I said. "What do you say we drive over to the Robert Frost Place and see what we're dealing with."

"The truck's busted," he said.

"Which one?"

"All of them," he said. "We'll take your van. Let's go."