An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England_ A Novel - Brock Clarke [95]
"Why does your character have to be such a" ― and here I paused for just the right words, and not able to find them, I chose from the many inadequate words at my disposal ― "mopey jerk?"
The Writer-in-Residence took another pull off his bottle of Jim Beam and said that he didn't feel it was his business to say why his characters were the way they were.
"Whose business is it?"
"It's nobody's business, and I mean nobody's," the author said.
This must have been a line from one of his books, because everyone around him cheered and hooted. This is the most terrifying thing about speaking in front of a crowd: not that you've lost them, but that you never had them in the first place and never will. My face felt so hot, so red, and I bet that if I'd touched my cheek to the floor, the whole house would have gone up in smoke, and Peter would have gotten what he wanted that way. But I didn't do that: I stood there and waited for the crowd's noise to finally subside, and then said, "But it is your business. You made him that way."
"I didn't make him that way," the Writer-in-Residence said. "That's the way he is."
"The way he is," I repeated. I borrowed this tactic from my mother. When I was a child and I would say something stupid, she would repeat it back to me so I could hear for myself how stupid it was.
"The way he is," the Writer-in-Residence repeated back to me. Maybe that was his tactic, too.
"But suppose that's not the way he is," I said, and before the Writer-in-Residence or his crowd could say anything else, I continued: "Suppose he's not an old man. Suppose he's a young man." The Writer-in-Residence nodded, as though that seemed a viable alternative, which only encouraged me. "Suppose he wasn't angry at all. Suppose he had a job. Suppose he was a farmer . . . " And here I paused. I remembered the bond analysts' memoir-brainstorming sessions; I remembered that they always urged one another, when trying to hurdle an especially big writer's block, to "write what you know." And in a sense, the bond analysts did write what they knew ― they knew my father's postcards, knew where he had been and what he had done ― and so it seemed like useful advice. But I didn't know anything about being a farmer, so I tried something else. "Or suppose he was a lumberjack." But again, same problem: I knew nothing about being a lumberjack, not even what sort of saw to use in killing which sort of tree. The only job I knew anything about was being a packaging scientist. But I remembered my father's initial reaction to my job ― "No greatness in tennis ball cans" ― and I suspected the Writer-in-Residence's reaction would be the same or worse. And so out of panic and with nothing else to say, I said, "Or suppose this young man was a bumbler and he accidentally ... , " and then I basically told the story I've been telling you. It was a much shorter version, but it included most of the major events and characters: my mother's stories and the burning houses and the dead Colemans and their vengeful son and my beautiful wife and children and my drunk parents and their mysterious living situation and the letters and the bond analysts. It's true the story didn't have a proper ending ― I only told the story up to the Mark Twain House fire and then said, "To be continued" ― but I tried to keep things close to the facts. In fact, the only thing I made up about the young man was that he played a mean twelve-string guitar, because I'd always wanted to play guitar and because twelve strings seemed better than six, since there were more of them.
"What do you think?" I asked after I was done. In truth I was very pleased with myself and with my story and all that had happened in it. Because you can't help