Brock Clarke - An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

Just then we passed our first two human beings: two boys sitting on the front steps of one of those multifamily homes. They were shirtless and wore shorts that were not properly shorts, because they came down well past the knee. The boys were emaciated and their chests were as concave as mine had once been, and both of them had their nipples pierced with silver hoops. I wondered if air had escaped from the boys’ chests with the piercing.

“Good afternoon,” Mr. Frazier said as he passed them.

“Fucked up ,” one of the boys said. When he said the word “fucked,” he didn’t exactly enunciate the c and the k but slurred the word straight into the final d. The other boy didn’t say anything but just laughed and shook his head.

I wanted to say something to the boys, something like, Hey, what’s that? What did you say? or maybe, Why don’t you show some respect, punk? But I was following Mr. Frazier’s lead and he kept walking and so did I. He had to know, of course, that the boys were talking to him, but he probably didn’t know to what exactly they were referring, and neither did I. Something was fucked up, that much was clear, and it wasn’t Mr. Frazier, no matter what the boys said. If anything was fucked up, it was the boys. Maybe they weren’t really boys at all: maybe they were grown men dressing like boys and acting like boys and not working adult jobs and not supporting their families, if they had families, and swearing like black people were supposed to swear, even though the boys looked white. The word wigger came to mind — it was a word I’d once heard on television — but I quickly got rid of it and didn’t mention the word to Mr. Frazier. No, Mr. Frazier did not want any new words in his mouth or head; I knew this without having to ask. There were enough words in the world already, and too many of them were curse words, and too many young people cursed in such a way that you could not discern the object of the swearing and in such a way that made you think that this was simply the way they talked — to one another, to strangers — and it made it difficult to tell whether the swearing was friendly or threatening, whether the swearing was black swearing or white swearing, whether there was a difference, whether it mattered to the person who was being cursed, if he was actually being cursed. I imagined poor Mr. Frazier all alone in his house at night, his lights off and him standing at the front windows, not being able to sleep, just looking at the neighborhood, which is even darker than his house and so, so strange to him. Somewhere out there, Shamequa is eating pussy and then testifying to that fact on the sidewalk with her pink chalk, and the trash is rolling through the streets like tumbleweed, and the words “fucked up, fucked up, fucked up” are blowing in the wind, and you can’t get away from them or know if they refer to you or to someone else. It was fucked up, all right. For Mr. Frazier, not knowing whether he was being cursed at or not must have seemed liked the most fucked up thing of all.

By the time we got to the store — it was a Super Stop and Shop all right, but I was on Mr. Frazier’s side now, and so it was a store — I was in something like agreement with the boys: it was fucked up, “it” being the store itself, which was more parking lot than building. And it was fucked up that those boys could speak to Mr. Frazier, that sweet guy, the way they had and suffer no consequences. Mr. Frazier had to be angry, at least angry enough to burn down a house or to want someone else to burn it down. But why the Edward Bellamy House? That’s what I didn’t understand.

“Hey, what do you say, Mr. Frazier?” I said to him. “I have a couple questions for you.”

Mr. Frazier didn’t respond. He bought his paper from the machine outside the store (who knows why? Maybe as long as he didn’t enter the building, he could in good conscience continue calling it a store), then turned and began walking back home. He was really setting a good pace, and I broke a sweat trying to catch up with him. Soon after I did, we passed by those boys again, still sitting on the steps, as if waiting for us. You don’t often get a second chance in this world to say what you wanted to say, or ask what you wanted to ask. So I stopped in front of them and grabbed a fistful of Mr. Frazier’s jacket to get him to stop, too. Mr. Frazier didn’t turn to face the boys but, like a spooked horse, looked at them sideways. I turned to face them, though, and I could feel my face get fiery red and I hoped that it shone on the boys like a beacon of sorts.

“Earlier,” I said to the boys, “you said something to Mr. Frazier here.”

“True,” one of the boys said. They both looked exactly the same, with their faint mustaches, their flat alabaster stomachs, their nipple rings glinting and glistening in the sun.

“Well,” I said, “I’d like you to apologize to him. I think he deserves an apology.”

One of the boys shook his head, and said, “Fucked up.” He said this without malice or slyness or any emotion at all. It was delivered as a statement of fact.

“Hey!” I said, because I couldn’t take it anymore. Mr. Frazier had so much life left in him, but even if he hadn’t, even when old people were taking up space and air, they’d lived through a lot and you had to give them some credit and respect. I moved toward the boys in what I hoped was a menacing fashion. When I did so, they stood up — also menacingly — and I noticed that their white socks were pulled up very high, probably to their knees (I couldn’t tell exactly, because of the length of their shorts). Why pull your socks so high? There was only one reason I could think of: these were the kind of guys who might have knives in their socks, except the socks were so high they could probably have hidden a short sword in there. Me, I had no weapons anywhere. Plus, my socks were the ankle-high kind and couldn’t possibly harbor anything dangerous. I backed away from the boys, palms facing out, and as I backpedaled I whispered to Mr. Frazier, “Let’s get out of here.”

But Mr. Frazier ignored me. He turned his head slowly and slightly to look at the boys. Even that head-turning gesture was impressive. I wondered if it occurred to the boys how inferior they were to him. It was like watching a world-weary colossus swiveling to ask the puny villagers why they were pelting him with rocks. “To what are you referring?” Mr. Frazier said to the boy who’d spoken earlier.

“It’s hot and you wearing some sleigh-riding clothes, dude,” the boy said, and then fanned himself with his left hand to remind us all of the heat.

“Fucked up,” the other boy said.

“I see,” Mr. Frazier said, and resumed his walking, beating the now rolled-up newspaper against his leg, keeping time with his outrage, which must have been huge. I fixed the boys with one last meaningful stare and then, before I could see how they’d respond, turned and ran until I caught up with Mr. Frazier.

His clothes: they were what was fucked up, and all of a sudden Mr. Frazier was hot, very hot, his face nearly as red as mine ever got. He stopped beating his leg with the paper and began using it as a fan. The fanning would do no good; I knew this from experience because we both had powerful heating mechanisms inside us, big furnaces of shame and rage somewhere down there around our hearts and livers and other inner organs, and you can’t cool the inside from outside. Mr. Frazier learned this truth quickly. There was an overflowing trash can on the corner and Mr. Frazier tossed the newspaper on top of the heap and crossed against the light, daring traffic to hit him, us. But there was no traffic and we reached the other side unscathed.