The Arsonist (24 page)

“Yikes,” she said.

“Exactly—yikes. His wife was asleep next to him, so she woke up in absolute terror. And then she was furious at him, she said. And the toe”—he shook his head—“gonzo.”

“I bet that really hurt,” she said. And then, “But it’s kind of funny, too.”

“So he says. That it hurt like hell. But he’s mostly embarrassed.” He had some beer. It was Sam Adams, one of his favorites. “I also bring you reports on the two latest fires. They’re finally willing to say that at least one of them is, in fact, arson, so that’s new. News,” he corrected himself. “This was the Froelichs’. The one where the dog died.”

“Oh, God, yes. I heard about that. That was awful.”

“It was, poor guy. I hate thinking about
that
,” Bud said. “He was known to me, actually.”

“You knew the
dog
?”

“Yeah. In the sense that he liked to chase the car when I dropped the paper off. He’d come out, greet me, we’d have a perfectly reasonable conversation.
Then, as soon as I pulled away from the mailbox, I was his archenemy. His nemesis.” He shook his head. “He was a golden, going white from the bottom up. A nice old guy.” He had been momentarily almost tearful when he heard about it.

“That’s really changed things, hasn’t it?” Her face was sober. “I mean, the fires were bad enough before, the houses being lost, but to kill an animal …”

“Yeah, suddenly it’s not just real estate.” They raised their glasses simultaneously and drank.

She set her glass down and turned it slowly. When she looked up, she was smiling again. “Though Marjorie Griffith’s studio was not just real estate, either. A genuine community loss, that one,” she said.

“In what sense?”

“Oh, it was famous with the teenagers in town. I assume it still is.”

“Famous for …?”

“Being left open, basically. And having a bed in it. And being far away from anyone else’s house. You sneaked up past her house, and once you were on the path through the woods, you were home free. I’ll say no more.”

“You need not.” He was thinking of Frankie, moving into a dark cabin, moving to a bed inside it. Lying down. “Did you avail yourself of the facilities?”

“Along with about a thousand others.”

“It must have gotten crowded from time to time.”

She laughed. “It didn’t. Who knows why not? Maybe the guys had a way of
reserving
it.”

They were silent a few seconds.

“The thing is,” he said, “I’m here to ask you on a date.”

Her face stilled for just a few seconds, and then she smiled and said, “I’m honored. Amazed and honored. I can’t remember the last time anyone asked me out on a date. What did you have in mind?”

“The fire-station dance. Friday.” It had been announced only over the weekend, with posters at Snell’s and at the post office. All the ministers in town had been charged with announcing it from their pulpits on Sunday, and Bud had written it up for the paper. They’d run out of money,
the fire department, on account of the extraordinary number of fires they’d been called to, and a committee had been formed to plan several events to raise funds. There was this dance, and the following week, there was to be a bake sale on the green.

“Oh, I saw that. I was thinking about going. It’s a barn dance, right?”

“It’s
in
a barn, but the Churches’ barn is not your grandfather’s barn. It’s more like … a pavilion, let’s say. So it’s a regular dance. That’s my sense.”

“A
pavilion
?” She made her voice snooty. “Why, it’s been years since I went to a dance in a pavilion.”

A dry wind pushed into the room, and the screen door jumped and then slapped back into its frame. They both looked at it and then at each other. They both looked away.

After a moment he said, “So? Will you?”

She smiled, revealing the gap he so admired. She bowed her head quickly. “I will. I’m pleased as punch.”

The next night when Bud opened the door to leave the office, he almost cried out at the sight of the figure crouched there on the front stoop.

And then saw it was Ed Carter, straightening up, seemingly as startled by Bud as Bud was by him. “Oh! Bud,” he said, further surprising Bud, who would have doubted Ed knew his name. “I didn’t realize you were in.”

“The paper lives up on the second floor, Ed. I was hiding out up there. But can I help you?”

“I was just dropping off a letter for you. Trying to slide it under the door, in point of fact.”

“There’s a slot for mail,” Bud said, and pointed to it.

“Ah, I didn’t see it through the screen.”

“Well, now I can take it in my bare hands anyway, if you like.” He opened the screen door, which meant Ed had to step back slightly. “What’s it about?”

“It’s more or less a response to your last column.”

“Ah,” Bud said. “Interesting. Come on in, why don’t you? I’ll read it now.”

“Oh, no need for that.”

“A clue, then,” Bud said, “as to its nature.”

“It’s from a group of us.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. We’re concerned, I guess you’d say, about certain … 
element
s in your reporting.”

“Now you do have to come in.” Bud hoped he was managing to keep his tone friendly.

“The letter speaks for itself,” Ed said, and smiled his chilly smile.

“Let’s talk about it,” Bud said. He held his open hand out as he stepped back, and slowly, clearly reluctantly, Ed put the letter into it.

And came in, though Bud hadn’t been sure he would.

He flicked the light switch by the door and gestured Ed over toward the chairs Barb kept for clients. Standing next to them, he opened the letter.

Fancy stationery, Ed’s address at the top. Two pages, single spaced, maybe five paragraphs. It was signed on the second page by fifteen or twenty people. They seemed, at a quick glance, to be all summer people. As Bud began to read, he saw why that was the case. They were “concerned,” they said, about the possibility that his reporting would heighten tensions between year-round and summer people.

This had to be a response to the idea of the state trooper he’d quoted—his notion that class resentment might be a motivation for the fires.

The writers wondered if Bud was fully aware of the years of effort that had gone into creating a community here, one that rose above the class boundaries he’d pointed to. Those efforts were described in several paragraphs he skimmed quickly.

In the final paragraph, they called upon him to publish a paper that supported, rather than undermined, the good relations among
all
—underlined three times in ink—the groups in town. There was no need for a small, weekly country newspaper to be disturbing to its readers.

Then the signatures, some large, some small, in the aggregate rather like the Declaration of Independence, he thought.

Bud looked up. Like him, Ed was still standing. He’d moved to the side of Barb’s desk, as if to put it between him and Bud.

“I’ll certainly take this into consideration, Ed.” He tried a smile. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for bringing it by.”

“I think you’d do well to consider it. At least that.”

“I have to say, though, that in return I’d ask your friends to reconsider their notion of what news is. Which, by the way, it is my
job
to report.”

Ed lifted his narrow shoulders. “The news is what you make it.”

Bud shook his head. He was trying to keep his face benign, pleasant. “I disagree. I think there’s a kind of integrity to it,” he said. “Necessarily, I’d say.”

“Oh, come on, Bud,” Ed said, unable any longer to keep the contempt out of his voice. “This is not the Pentagon Papers. And you are not the
New York Times
.”

“Don’t I know it,” Bud said.

They stood, looking at each other. “So the issue is joined, apparently,” Ed said.

“Well, if you put it that way, I’m afraid so,” Bud said. “But look, thank you for letting me know your response. Thank your group, please, for its opinions, for being so open and frank. I’ll reread it carefully. What more can I say?” He raised his hands, smiling.

When the screen door had shut behind Ed, Bud sat down in Barb’s desk chair and read the letter again, and then the names. The signers included Annie Flowers, the Cotts, the Caulfields. Frieda McMahon, whom he’d always liked. Walter Eberhardt.

They weren’t the town, he reminded himself. They were maybe twenty summer residents. They didn’t even vote here, most of them.

But many of them were people he’d thought of as friends, and Bud felt wounded. Ganged up on and, almost childishly, hurt.

He needed a grown-up to talk to.

Pete came into the hall with a book in his hand, his finger inserted in its middle. He was wearing his half-glasses for reading, which made him look like a scold. He was dressed exactly as he always dressed at work—the khaki pants, the cardigan. Only the bow tie was missing.

He lowered his chin and looked sternly at Bud as he held the screen door open for him.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Bud said.

“Are you?” His eyebrows went up. “Interrupting?”

“I’d like to. If you’ll let me.”

“When you put it that way, I more or less have to, wouldn’t you say?”

“Politeness would dictate.”

“And I am nothing if not polite.” He led Bud into the small, low-ceilinged living room. Nothing had changed at Pete’s house since Bud had first known him, except for a slight
embrowning
. A light grime, around the wall switches, for example. The worn look of the lace or tatted headrests and armrests on the chairs—the general sense of a bachelor carelessness about the exact definition of clean. Though everything was always tidy, picked up, arranged, down to the folded newspaper, set atop several other folded newspapers on the coffee table.

“I see you’re keeping up,” Bud said, gesturing at the pile.

“Lots to keep up with,” Pete answered. “You want coffee? A beer?”

“I want to talk.”

“I’m having a beer, then,” Pete said.

“Fine. I’ll have one, too.”

“One, two, buckle my shoe,” Pete said, leaving the room. He came back in a minute with two beers in bottles, no glasses. He handed one to Bud and sat on the couch with his own. Bud had sat down in one of the two old-fashioned armchairs, both with those worn-looking lace circles.

“I had a letter tonight,” Bud said, after he’d had a swallow.

“Oh?”

“From a group of summer folk. Delivered by hand by Ed Carter, no less, so I heard his take on it as well. They’re worried about my reporting.”

“Your reporting of …”

“The fires, of course. Worried about, let’s see … ‘Exacerbating tensions,’ I think the phrase was.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Yeah.” They both had some beer and were silent for a long moment. Bud had learned Pete’s pace when they were working together—the long pauses, the slow responses.

“These would be tensions between year-round folks and them?” Pete said, finally. “The summer folks?”

“Yeah.”

“You plead innocent?”

“I said I was simply reporting the facts, ma’am. The usual shuck and jive.”

Pete smiled. He had another swig of beer.

Bud did, too. He rested his bottle on the doily on the arm of his chair. “What I wondered was whether there was ever any such issue for you. And, if so, how you handled it.”

“Oh, lots of issues. Not that one, but others.”

“Such as.”

Pete thought. “Creeping socialism,” he announced. “This accusation coming from year-round folks who tend to Republicanism. Probably a letter a week saying that.” He sat for a minute more. “Too much national news, though I always tried to bring it around to home, don’t you know. How this or that policy would live out here. But still, found objectionable from time to time.”

“But not this town-gown stuff. Or summer-winter, I guess you’d say in this case.”

“Not that, no.” He shook his head. “But that’s newer anyway.”

“Newer how?”

“Well, that expectation that we’ll all
get along
—that didn’t used to matter so much.”

“Because?”

“Because there was no such expectation. There was no social mixing.” They sat quietly for a minute or so. “Look,” he said. “My mother worked as a maid at the Mountain House, so I speak with some authority on this.”

“When was this?”

“Before she married my father. Maybe, let’s say maybe 1920 or so. Chambermaid. Changing sheets. Cleaning up after folks. Messes. Bathrooms. That kind of stuff. And then when all that changed—this was after they were married and had us—she still cooked and cleaned for summer people. And sometimes there’d be some party, end of season, where the help got invited—you know, the field guys, the gardeners, the like. And my parents would go, and we children, too. This would be in
the thirties, I guess. Into the forties. But this would be a special event, you understand. Noblesse oblige. The exception to the rule. There was never the expectation that my parents would be invited, say, to a dinner party or anything like that. We knew our place. Our places.” He tapped the opening of his bottle. “I suppose it was the sixties that changed things, to some extent.”

“How so?”

Pete thought for a moment. “It gave people the idea that class differences weren’t right, somehow. As a matter of social equity. Of morality, let’s say. Partly it was that so many new folks undertook to do the kinda work my parents did—farming, work with their hands. Carpentry. And these new folks were college educated, they were solidly middle class in their backgrounds, so they saw themselves differently.” He laughed quickly. “They did
not
know their place. And then there were some fairly utopian notions, I guess, that could get played out here more easily than they would have had a chance to in a city, let’s say.”

Bud had rarely heard Pete so expansive. “And how did you fit into all that?”

He shifted on the couch. “Well, the paper had changed everything for me by then. Starting it up. Before then, I didn’t know if I could stay on here. But the paper, it made a kind of place for me that was everywhere and nowhere socially, all at once. And that was what I wanted when I came back.”