Jesse Ball - How to Set a Fire and Why

I told her I knew that part wasn’t true. To be honest, I can’t even remember the difference between chlamydia and gonorrhea. Is one of them worse?

He (Jan) said we’d need to stop by his house first, so we drove there. I was going to wait in the car, but he said I might as well come inside. It was a pretty crappy house, far back on a run-down property. I think they used to call this type a bungalow, but if it used to be a bungalow, I don’t think anyone would call it that now.

I asked him,

Do you own this?

It was my grandfather’s. Now, it’s no one’s.

The door was unlocked. We went in. There were empty beer cans here and there—it looked like a college house.

My room’s back here.

I shrugged, like, why are you telling me where your room is.

Come on back, he said, and kept walking, so I followed.

His room was at the back of the house on the second floor. I guess it had been some kind of den. There was a bar at one end. Maybe his grandfather had liked entertaining guests. The room was actually pretty neatly kept. It didn’t look like Jan owned very much.

He was changing his shirt, and I saw that he had scars. I mean, Jan has a lot of scars.

That is a lot of scars, I said. He told me about them—where they came from. It wasn’t any one thing—and it wasn’t abuse, if that’s what you were thinking. They were just scars, just lots of scars.

What are we going to do? I asked after a while.

We’re going to shoot a dog.

I won’t do that, I said.

I’m joking. We are going to steal some potassium nitrate from a farm supplier.

Can’t you just buy it?

You can, but then your name might be on a list. Can’t be too careful.

We got back in his car. I realized I left my hoodie in his room, so I ran inside to get it. I saw a photograph of a girl on a ledge next to the bed.

When I got back to the car I asked him about her.

Forget about her, is what he said.

What if I don’t?

She’s my sister. She killed herself when I was eight.

Why?

It was an accident. She was holding her breath at the bottom of a pool.

I didn’t say, I’m sorry, or anything like that—because I know it just pisses people off. I kept my mouth shut, he kept his mouth shut, and we drove for about another forty minutes. Once we stopped at a gas station for about two minutes. He went in, got a bottle of water, came out, and gave it to me.

In thirty seconds, we’re going to pass by Revo’s Supplies. I’m going to pull into the lot just past. That’s an aquarium supply shop. You will get out. I will get out. You will go across the lot and into Revo’s Supplies. There should be only one guy on duty. I want you to chat him up. I want you to ask him dumb questions about hammers and ratcheting tools versus nonratcheting tools and which you should get. Tell him some story about how your dad was a carpenter but died and you are going to get rid of his tools because you don’t know what to do with them or how valuable they are. Make up some stories and run them. About a mile south on this road there’s a taco shack. Meet me there in an hour.

We passed by a box building—red metal with a flat overhanging roof.

it said R E V O S P L Y.

Then we pulled into the next lot.

Get out.

I started getting out.

Hold on. Leave the sweatshirt.

No.

Then at least take it off. You need his attention, got it?

Yeah, I got it.

Revo’s Supplies was a big store. The aisles were big, the counters were big, the ceiling was high. There was actually a tractor inside it, which was okay to look at. I went to the back, where there was a big counter. At the middle of the counter was a little hammer and a bell. RING ME, it said.

I rang it.

After about ten seconds, I rang it again. Then again and again.

A guy came out of the back wearing coveralls.

Hey, hey, stop that.

If you don’t want people to ring the bell, don’t have such a nice bell.

What do you need?

I need some screws for my air conditioner. The screws fell out. Now it doesn’t fit in the window properly.

Do you know which screws those are? The screws are over here.

We went down one aisle a ways.

I don’t know which ones they are.

Not sure what to tell you. Best bet would be—measure it and see? Or get the tech specs for the AC unit. I bet they’re on the manufacturer’s site.

Oh, yeah. Well, I need some other stuff too.

What can I do for you?

I was thinking about building a drafting desk, so I need to figure out what pieces of wood would be good, what kind, whether to use screws or nails, you know.

That’s not really what we do here—I mean, I, hold on.

Another customer came in.

They knew each other and began to exchange pleasantries. I could tell the attendant wanted me to get the fuck out of his hair, so I pretended to look real hard at some kind of doorknob kit.

One second, miss.

He went over to the other guy.

I hung out for a few minutes to make sure enough time would pass to put Jan in the clear, then I took off.

The walk along the road to the taco shack was—scenic. There were a lot of fields, another gas station, some kind of small factory with Chinese characters on it, and a bunch of Chinese guys sitting outside smoking. I bummed a cigarette and smoked it with them. Would you believe not a single one spoke English? I mean—they knew how to say hello, but when I asked what county or town we were in, they couldn’t say. I heard about this once, that sometimes people will move a whole town to the U.S. There is a town in a different country, and the whole town moves here, and takes up residence. Then, they don’t really need to speak English. I think that’s great. Fuck English. If I grew up next to a Laotian village, maybe I’d speak two languages already, instead of one and a half.

The taco shack, as far as I could tell, was out of business. Jan was waiting in the parking lot, though, and he flashed his brights at me from about a quarter mile away.

When I got in he said, I wasn’t going to mention it, but you know you look like a fucking raccoon. Who did that to you?

In the car, I showed him a sticker Lana and I had made on her computer. We were going to have a bunch printed up so we could put them around.

You made that? he said.

Yeah, well, Lana did a lot of it. We both did it.

Right.

He didn’t say anything for a while.

Do you know whose coffin that is?

Lana and I kind of had an argument about the meaning of the sticker. She said that it was just a basic anarchist sticker, whatever that means. I said it is more complicated because of whose coffin it is. Now, I’m the one who picked out the photograph, so I didn’t expect her to know whose coffin it was, but then it turned out she did know. Apparently she liked outlaws when she was a kid.

The guy in the coffin is Jesse James. They are showing off his body after he has been killed because his celebrity was such that you became more important just by being in a photograph with his corpse. So, for someone who is walking down the street and sees the sticker: they are selling coffins, you know—you think you are buying something that is useful to you, but it is just a weight on you. It is as useless to you as a coffin. And why is a coffin useless to you? Because when you climb in it you’re already dead.