The Arsonist (41 page)

“No. Let’s not argue.” He sounded tired, suddenly. They sat together silently in the twin chairs facing the cold stove for what must have been several minutes. Then he stood up and started unbuttoning his shirt. “Let’s just fuck.”

And that was what they did, a kind of aggressive, careless slamming into each other that at first excited Frankie and then, as it went on—as he came, arched back above her, his eyes closed—made her feel utterly alone.

Afterward they lay for a while side by side, not speaking. Then, abruptly, Bud pushed up off the mattress, and in the half-light coming in from the big room, he picked his clothes up from the floor and pulled them on. First his pants, then his shirt.

“You’re not staying.”

“No. I have some stuff I have to do.”

She watched him, standing on one foot and then the other to pull on socks, shoes. “I’m sorry you’re so angry,” she said.

“I am. I’m more angry than you can imagine. I’m angry at everything. But I do have stuff to do.” He started to button his shirt, and this made Frankie sad, watching his beautiful bare flesh disappear.

“Please don’t be angry.”

He laughed, a single abrupt sound.

“What?”

“Just … nothing, Frankie. Nothing.”

And he left.

Frankie couldn’t believe it for some seconds. She’d thought he was going to the bathroom or getting some water from the kitchen, that he’d come back and that they’d finish talking. They hadn’t finished. She hadn’t finished.

But then she heard the outside door shut, and even as she was standing up on the mattress, stepping across the floor and scrabbling to find her shirt to pull it on, she heard the engine start, the car’s loud gargling
sound. Just as she reached the door and stepped out into the chilly night air, she saw the car turning out of the driveway, she stood and listened to the sound of it dropping from hill to hill to hill.

The phone was her enemy the next day. Bud wasn’t answering or responding to the messages she left, and Sylvia called her almost once an hour, from about eight o’clock on, calls born of her anxiety about every possible aspect of the logistics of her impending move. What to take, what not to take, where Frankie could get the keys, whom she should call if she needed help in Bowman.

Frankie had arrangements to make herself. In between Sylvia’s calls and her own to Bud, she talked to Diann, the coordinator in New York. She told her she’d like to come into the offices and talk sometime in the next week or ten days. Diann sounded at first pleased, and then a bit anxious.

She was looking for work here? In the New York office?

Yes, Frankie said.

Well! Interesting. Well, sure. She might as well come in and
talk
.

Frankie remembered then how territorial it was in New York, more so even than in the Nairobi office. How much it was seen as a zero-sum situation—what you have, what you get, is what I don’t. She remembered, too, how glad she’d been in the past each time she left New York. How ready she always was after those visits to go back to Africa.

But they agreed Frankie would call a couple of days beforehand, and they hung up. She sat for a while looking out at the trees, at the browning field rising up behind the house. She had to try, she told herself. She was actually good at that administrative stuff. It would be strange and different to be so removed from the work itself, but the aims were the same, and she knew how to implement them. It would be fine, once she was
in it
. She had to try.

By early afternoon, Frankie was packed with what she thought she’d need for what might be a few weeks away, a few weeks that would include the
trip to New York, where she would be dressing differently from the way she’d been dressing up here or would be dressing in Bowman. Later she could get the rest of her stuff. She’d thoroughly cleaned Liz and Clark’s house, too, in case they decided to come up before she could get to it again.

Once all that was done, she gave herself permission to drive to Bud’s house. She couldn’t leave things as they’d left them last night. She had thought throughout the day of what she might suggest to him, arrangements friends of hers had made, friends who lived in Africa and had lovers, even spouses, living continents away. Who met three or four times a year in one person’s place or the other’s, or in some exotic place in between.

Though she’d also thought of Bud’s likely answer—Bud, who had talked so often of loving their most ordinary times together, of the pleasures of a daily life with her in it.

She stood knocking on his door for a minute or so, in spite of the fact that his car wasn’t there. She could see into the neat kitchen, its counters wiped clean. Bud’s home. She was tempted to turn the knob, to step inside, to wait there for him, but she didn’t.

Instead she drove to his office. His car wasn’t there, either, but another one was parked in one of the spaces. Barb’s probably.

And yes, when she knocked, Barb came to the door, wearing a denim jumpsuit with a rhinestone patch above each breast.

Frankie asked where Bud might be.

“Who knows? You can’t keep up with that boy. There’s some stuff happening with this business with Tink Snell, so he might be over there. But this is the day he takes the paper to Whitehall also, so …” She shrugged. Her makeup was very thorough and careful.

Frankie nodded
oh yes
, as though she knew these things and had just forgotten them, momentarily.

“But I thought you’d flown the coop, as Bud says. No?”

“No, I fly the coop tomorrow.”

“Out of the Manchester airport?”

“No, I’m driving. I just mean, I leave.”

Barb nodded. She stepped forward a little in the doorway and said,
“He seemed a bit … down about it, if you want to know. Still good humored—he always is, but …” Then, apparently seeing something in Frankie’s face, she said, “Oh well. Mind your own business, Barb.”

“No, it’s okay,” Frankie said. “If you could just tell him I stopped by.”

“I will.” She stood in the open doorway as Frankie walked back to her car. “Say,” she called. “Good for your mother! Cashing in on some of that fabulous land up there.”

“Yes, it’s good she can.”

Barb waved vigorously as Frankie pulled away.

Frankie couldn’t stand the thought of going back to Liz’s, so she drove to the library instead and sat at a table in one of the armchairs there, trying to read
The Mill on the Floss
, which she’d taken off the shelf after a short, aimless perusal of the selection. After a while, though, she felt conspicuous just sitting there, pretending occasionally to turn a page. So she left.

She left, she drove past the news office again, and past Bud’s house, looking for his car. Then she drove home, where she lay down on top of the quilt covering the mattress on the floor. And perhaps because she’d had so much trouble sleeping the night before, she felt herself drifting away.

When she woke, it was dark. Dark and chilly. She’d wrapped the quilt around herself sometime during her long nap. She got up and put a log into the stove. She opened a can of soup and set it to heat on the kitchen stove.

After she’d eaten, she drove back to town. She could see the lights were on upstairs in the newspaper offices, and there were three cars parked outside, one of them Bud’s. She pulled in and parked off to the side of the others.

As soon as she opened the door, she could hear the voices upstairs in conversation. Bud said something, his voice just a whispering rasp from here, and there was a burst of laughter. Then it was quiet. A boy’s voice said, “
I
wouldn’t, for one.”

And someone, a woman, answered him.

Frankie mounted the stairs and stood in the doorway at the top. The woman noticed her and said,
“Bud.”

He looked up. “Oh, Frankie,” he said. His voice was neutral, cool. There was a pause, and he said, “Did you come to help?”

“I … can. Sure.”

He turned to the room. The others had stopped for a moment, all but one, the teenager, and he addressed them. “A new recruit, guys.” And then to Frankie: “Do you know these folks?”

She shook her head, and he introduced them. Arvilla March, whom Frankie knew by sight; Conor O’Hara, the kid, who looked up quickly and then away; and Gus Moody. Frankie knew his name—he’d worked on her parents’ pond a few years back, making it larger.

“See what we’re doing here?” Bud asked. And he showed her. The two different batches of advertising circulars. One went into the other, and they both got folded into the center of the paper. “Then you pass it to Conor, who rolls it up and bags it, and counts it out into the haul bags.” He was standing next to her, she could feel the warmth from his body, but he didn’t look directly at her.

Frankie said yes, sure, she could manage that, and took her place at the table standing next to Gus.

The conversation was intermittent, but Tink Snell was a big part of it. They were talking about the confession. They disagreed as to whether it had been coerced and what that meant about its reliability. Gus and Arvilla were on opposite sides of the question, she certain he hadn’t set the fires, that he’d been nearly
seduced
, as she put it, into saying he had. “I mean, think of that boy, without a friend in the world, nearly, and those bullies—there’s no other word for them—making him think they were his undying friends, if only he’d do what they wanted.”

After a long silence, the shuffling of paper, the
thunk
of the rolled-up tubes into the bags the only noises in the room, Gus said, “Fine with me, Arvilla, if you’ll come guard my house after they release him.”

Arvilla made a disgusted noise. “Don’t you think he’s innocent, Bud?”

“I’m agnostic here,” Bud said. Frankie was noticing his hands, how quickly, how efficiently, they moved. She thought of how they had touched her, in sex, in affection, and for a moment she felt almost tearful. But she swallowed and forced herself to listen to the conversation, to keep working.

“If he didn’t, then who did?” Gus asked.

“Maybe it was a bunch of different guys. Just all of them seeing if they could get away with it,” Conor said.

“But the fires stopped when they arrested him, didn’t they?” Gus said.

“That doesn’t mean a thing,” Arvilla said. “I’m with Adrian on this one.”

“With Adrian?” Conor asked.

Bud said, “It’s Adrian’s idea that the real firebug knows a fall guy when he sees one, so he figures this is a very good time to stop.”

They worked quietly for a few minutes. Then Conor said, “I tried that thing with the Vaseline and the cotton ball and it was way cool. It just keeps burning like it’s never going out.” He turned to Frankie. “He did your parents’ house, didn’t he?”

“Someone burned the barn, yes.” Her voice sounded scratchy, and she cleared her throat.

They worked for a while longer. Arvilla asked Frankie about her father, and she tried to sound cheerful. “Oh, he’s much better. He’ll be home in a few days.”

“Well, that’s just fine.” She hadn’t looked up from her task. “Too bad all this stuff about Tink took away from the rescue team.”

“They had a good long piece,” Bud said. She looked at him, hoping he might look back, but he was working steadily, his hands keeping up the rhythmic folding together of the papers.

“Oh, I know. But it wasn’t anything like it would have been, and you like them to get some credit.”

And suddenly, they were done—there were no more papers on the table.

While Arvilla and Gus washed their hands at the laundry sink, Conor and Bud carried the bags downstairs and out to the cars. Frankie followed them, hoping this would be her chance to talk to Bud. But he and Conor went back up to get the other bags, leaving her waiting uselessly outside by her car in the chilly dark.

Finally the cars were loaded and everyone was outside saying good night to one another. Conor got in Gus’s car, and Arvilla drove off alone.

Bud had gotten into his car at the same time the others did, but he
seemed to be waiting for her—he was sitting with the door still open. She stepped over close to him.

He looked up at her. “So, you’re leaving tomorrow, Barb said.”

“I hoped we could talk.”

“Ah, Frankie. There’s nothing more to say.” He was watching her steadily. “Unless you’ve changed your mind.”

She shook her head, and in response he lifted his hands.

“Bud,”
she said.

“We’re friends, Frankie.” His voice was gentle now. “Let’s be friends. You’re right, you told me from the start you were going to go. I shouldn’t have gotten angry. That was wrong of me. I was … I suppose I was pretending I hadn’t heard you. Pretending to myself, anyway.” He shrugged, for a moment a half smile on his face.

And then it was gone. “So you
go
, Frankie. It’s what you have to do. I’ll stay, and you’ll be gone. You’ll visit someone up here from time to time, and we’ll be glad to see each other.” He looked up at her. In the dark his eyes were black, unreadable. “I’ll always be glad to see you,” he said in his hoarse voice.

“Bud …,” she said.

“No, Frankie. I get it.” His head made a series of small nodding motions. “It’s how it has to be. I get it.”

Frankie didn’t know what to say. This was what she had wanted in some way to persuade him of, wasn’t it?

“Oh!” he said, as if reminded of something, and her heart seemed to move in her chest. He reached over to the passenger seat and turned to her with a paper. “Your weekly news,” he said, and shut the door, bent forward to start the engine.

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