The Arsonist Read Online Free PDF Page A

shirt, fraying at the collar. He had a little rounded potbelly, almost exactly bisected by his belt, and long, skinny legs. His face, too, was long and thin. His nose was beaky under his wildly curling eyebrows, half white now. There was a slightly simian aspect to the way he looked, mostly on account of the unusual distance between his nose and his upper lip, but he was attractive anyway, partly because of the gentle attentiveness he brought to bear on any conversation, any new person.
    She looked like him, she supposed. Certainly more than she looked like her mother. She was almost as tall as he was, and as slender, and she had his long face; but, as he used to say to her from time to time, she’d invented her own coloring, different from anyone else’s in the family. She had red hair, and her eyes were light—an oddly pale blue that could look washed out and empty when she was tired, as she was today. Liz was dark, like their mother.
    Frankie had often thought that if she’d looked more like Liz, she would have had an easier time of it in Africa. As it was, her appearance had made people turn to stare at her in the street. Her skin itself, which was paper white, sprinkled everywhere with pale brown freckles, was part of that. The little children she worked with sometimes laughed at her“dots” and sometimes were terrified by them, as if they were the result of some spell, some curse called down upon her.
    Today she was exposing a lot of those freckles in her shorts and tank top, in her bare feet, which made a light, whispering sound on the kitchen floor as she walked back and forth. She was aware suddenly of how happy she was to be dressed this way—happy to be barefoot, happy not to have to worry about giving offense with her body, as she would have in Africa with this much skin visible. It seemed to her an easy and very American happiness. The happiness of no rules.
    She carried her coffee out to the porch, her father following her. They sat in the old Adirondack chairs facing the distant blue hills. The nearer hills were green. She was aware, suddenly, of birdsong everywhere and, somewhere off in the distance, a steady hum, a motor—someone haying or brush hogging. This was almost a constant here, she realized abruptly. The sound of someone else working—the background noise of summer life.
    Her father was speaking now of some work he was doing. He had a project, apparently, just as her mother had said. Yes, he was reading for a prize, something to do with historical writing for a wider, lay audience. His face changed as he spoke of this, and she saw how proud he was of it, and remembered now that he’d spoken of it briefly last night, though she’d been too tired to ask about it, to really take it in. This would explain the books stacked everywhere, she thought, even out here on the porch. Though there had always been books stacked everywhere, wherever they went, whatever new house they moved into. Books that drove her mother mad: Why did he need so many? Where would they all go ?
    They chatted now about several he thought were strong contenders. He dug one out from the pile next to his chair, the chair he always sat in out here. He read a few paragraphs from it, looking up to see her reaction.
    Frankie agreed, it was fascinating, and then a little silence fell between them. She was looking at him, thinking how unchanged he seemed. Always the same, with these shifting, fleeting enthusiasms to which he brought so much energy. She had a quick, surprised moment of sympathy for her mother’s perspective, for her fatigue with Alfie’s endless projects.
    “Oh!” he said suddenly, as if just remembering something. “Did you hear the fire horn in the night?”
    She had to think for a moment, but then she recalled the odd noise as she was drifting off after her walk. “Yes. Oh! That was it. Yes.” And she imitated the sound, the long, distant honk she had at first thought was an animal. It was a good imitation,