An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England_ A Novel - Brock Clarke [32]
My mother told me this story when I was fourteen, after my father came back, and after my father came back my mother's stories both hardened and became easier, less tense but more gruesome, as was the case with the story about the kids with the six-pack and the condoms. Oh, it was a mess. They walked into the house and started going at it, and soon enough, bits of bone, flesh, tendon, began flecking the walls, crawling under dressers, hopping into the mail slot and sticking there: a cruel change-of-address notification. Imitation gold rings, baseball caps, hair bands, condoms, and full beers were found conspicuously in view, leftovers, the breathing out after a long swallow. A reminder of the evil of illicit sex and its punishment. It was a scene, all right, a regular bloodbath those kids got themselves into, and it seemed obvious to me that if I were ever to have sex, it would never, ever be in the Emily Dickinson House.
So no sex, and no sex club. Of course, I can't say how far Mr. Coleman got with Mrs. Coleman that night. After the fire was through with them, they were just so much bone and connective tissue. That much I know.
And it was not true that I was, as my first-grade teacher testified, a "little firebug." Not true! As proof, she told, in court, about the time on the playground when I was six, when she found me burning an anthill with a magnifying glass, or trying to (there were clouds that day, too many of them). Let me tell you, I was not the only kid in Miss Frye's class that tried to torch an anthill and learn a little something about solar power in the bargain. And let me tell you, what happened in first grade had no bearing whatsoever on what happened in and to the Emily Dickinson House. I had forgotten all about the anthill, in fact, and wasn't thinking of fire at all that night when I broke into the Emily Dickinson House. I was thinking of my mother's stories ― like the one in which Emily Dickinson's corpse was hidden in one of the house's many secret compartments and came to life (or at least became ambulatory) only when there was a full moon. There was a full moon that night, and out of nervousness I was smoking a cigarette ― which was a new habit, a short-lived one, too ― when I heard a noise. Who knows what it was? It could have been the house creaking or a tree moving in the wind. It could have been the Colemans, enjoying their last private moment on earth together. Or it could have been Emily Dickinson, as glassy eyed as your best movie zombie, breaking out of her secret compartment and heading full steam in my warm-blooded direction. Whatever, I dropped my cigarette at the noise and hightailed it out of the house and so didn't notice that my dropped cigarette had lit a heavy living room drape on fire, which set the living room rug on fire, and so on. So. Accidental fire starter? Yes. Firebug? No.
But you know what is true? My mother's stories were good, or must have been. The judge pointed this out at my trial, the sentencing part, when my defense attorney was again explaining why I was in the Emily Dickinson House in the first place, and I was explaining again about my mother's stories. The judge interrupted and said, "Those must have been some good stories."
"I guess they were," I said.
"But then again," the judge said ― and he was really editorializing here, but I guess his robes and his elevated seat and his handsome wooden gavel gave him the right ― "if a good story leads you to do bad things, can it be a good story after all?"
"Come again?" I said. "I'm not following."
"I'm afraid I'm not, either, Your Honor," my lawyer said.
"I agree," said the prosecutor, who was exactly the same as my lawyer except that he wore a cheaper suit and was touchier because of it.
"Bear with me," the judge said. "It's an interesting question, is it not? Can a story