An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England Read Online Free PDF Page A

people we love? Is it because we have only so much listening in us, and so many very important things to tell ourselves?
    “Sam, what are you thinking?” Anne Marie asked again, because I hadn’t answered her, because I was still thinking about Camelot and the house.
    “Hello, life,” I said back.
    “Are you crying?” she asked me.
    “Yes,” I said. I was crying, because I was so happy, because this was my new home, and because it was clean and perfect and I couldn’t imagine anyone knowing me here, anyone wanting to know me. My neighbors, were they ever to introduce themselves, and upon hearing that I was an arsonist and a murderer, would start talking about the virtues of Bermuda grass as opposed to Kentucky blue. I could not be normal in Amherst, but I could be normal in Camelot. I felt so happy, so grateful. I wanted to thank somebody. If there were any neighbors visible, I would have thanked them. But there weren’t any neighbors visible; they were all inside, minding their own business, and that was one of the things for which I was grateful.
    “Thank you so much,” I said to Anne Marie.
    “I guess you’re welcome,” she said, without having to ask what I was thanking her for, because that’s what our love was. We called the real estate agent and bought the house and said good-bye to the apartment over the Student Prince (it wouldn’t be a permanent good-bye, although I didn’t realize that at the time) and moved to Camelot, and for five years we lived there and I commuted my half-hour commute and the kids grew up a little and Anne Marie got a part-time supervisory job at the super housing-supply store, and for five years there was no story to tell and we were happy enough, as happy as anyone can expect to be. True, it took Anne Marie some time to find happiness: she cried the first year when she discovered that the fireplace was ornamental and always would be; she cried the second year when she found she could put her index finger through the surprisingly thin plaster walls without really trying so very hard and she did this repeatedly in her dismay, and the house probably still has the many finger holes to prove it; she cried the third year when our neighbors still didn’t know her name and she didn’t know theirs, either. This time she really cried and couldn’t stop, and I had to send the kids to stay with Anne Marie’s parents while she worked it out. But even Anne Marie seemed happy enough after a while, and if prison was my first not entirely unpleasant exile from the world, then this was my second, and not once was I recognized as the man who burned down the Emily Dickinson House, et cetera, and not once did I hear that voice, the voice inside me that asked, What else? What else? Not once, that is, until the man whose parents I accidentally killed in the Emily Dickinson House fire appeared at my front door one day, and then the voice returned and then I moved back in with my parents and reread those letters, and then the bond analysts showed up and started giving me a God-and-country hard time, and then people (not me! not me!) started setting fire to writers’ homes all over New England, and that’s when all the trouble started.

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    First, there was the man, the son whose mother (she was one of the Emily Dickinson House tour guides) and father happened, unknown to me, to be sharing a private, after-hours moment on Emily Dickinson’s bed when I accidentally burned the house down and killed them those many years before. He showed up in early November, on a Saturday, which was about right, since nothing ever happened in Camelot during the week. During the week, everyone worked and went to bed early and got up early and you couldn’t clip your toenails on your front porch for fear of bothering someone with the noise.
    Weekends were different, our chance to prove that we could pour gas out of a spout and into a hole and pull a cord and make noise and then cut some grass. I’d just finished