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

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 shirt and no coat, holding a gun. Except it wasn’t a gun — my eyes and assumptions 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, it might have been howling. 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, it was 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 shirts, and hooded sweatshirts 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, a book every eighth grader in Massachusetts 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 pubescent 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 butter 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 assumed 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.”