An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England_ A Novel - Brock Clarke [62]
I found it, right there in the local news section. In the early evening, someone had set fire to the Mark Twain House, in Hartford, Connecticut, forty-five minutes or so down the highway. The article said that the fire was "suspicious," although I knew this to be the case without their having to tell me so.
Part Three
12
If I were to write the bond analysts' memoir, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England, my first piece of advice would be this:
Practice. For God's sake, practice.
Whoever had tried to burn down the Edward Bellamy House hadn't practiced, that was obvious, and that was also true of whoever tried to burn down the Mark Twain House. But before I went to the Twain House that morning, and before I go there in memory here, I first had to sneak into my father's room, open his shoe box of letters, and find out who wanted the Mark Twain House torched in the first place. Unlike my mother, my father was home: I could hear him in his room, snoring adenoidally and loudly enough to shake the house's shake shingles. I opened the door to his room ― it caught and then creaked a little, as doors in old houses do, but not loudly enough to be heard over the snoring-and then crept in the direction of the end table. There was a streetlight right outside my father's window, illuminating the room until it was slightly on the bright side of pitch black, and I could just make out my father's blanketed shape on the bed. During waking hours, he looked small, diminished, but on that bed, in that filtered light and under the blankets, my father looked oddly huge and mysterious, much more of a man than he actually was. I remember thinking how sad that was, that my father ― and maybe all of us ― was more impressive asleep than awake.
In any case, I located the end table in the mostly dark, opened the drawer as quietly as I could, and removed the shoe box from the drawer and then myself from the room. I walked to the kitchen; there was a half pot of coffee from the day before, and so I heated and drank it while I flipped through the letters. They weren't in any particular order ― Wharton was before Alcott, who was after Melville ― but finally I found the Twain House letter. I carried the letter with me upstairs and put it in the pocket of the coat I'd wear that day, then showered, shaved, dressed, and generally made myself presentable to the world I wanted to investigate. Then I walked downstairs. About halfway down the stairs, I stopped: there was my father, walking back from the kitchen. He was wearing boxer shorts, and only boxer shorts, and looked oddly virile for the stroked-out sixty-year-old I knew he was: his arms and chest had some definition, and the skin under his arms wasn't loose and didn't sag earthward the way old-man underarm skin can; his stride was more hop than shuffle, and I almost yelled out something like, Hey, looking good, until I saw what he was carrying. In one hand, of course, was a big can of Knickerbocker. But in the other was the box of letters. My father was looking curiously at the box as he walked, as if the box were a stranger and my father was waiting for it to introduce itself. My father was still looking at the box as he disappeared into his room and shut the door behind him. What was my father thinking in there? Did he wonder who had taken the box out of his room and into the kitchen? Did he suspect it was me who had taken the box? After all, who else was there to suspect? Or did he assume maybe that he had done it himself while he was