The Arsonist

by Sue Miller

  “Though he’s going to get off, in the end,” Pete said.

  “You think so?”

  “I do. They don’t have much of anything without the confession, and that’s dirty. Take that away and add in all the people lining up with alibis for him.” Pete shook his head. “There’s nothing there. Like you said in your piece, it’s a hard crime to prove, and they haven’t.” He had some beer. There was a fire going in his fireplace, and Pete had been up often, poking at it, turning the half-burned logs to keep it going. It seemed an activity he enjoyed. “I suspect we’re never going to know for sure, one way or the other,” he said.

  “That’ll be really hard for people to take, after all this. They want to know. They need to.”

  “Too bad. They won’t, if he’s acquitted on some technicality.”

  Bud had been watching the fire. Now he looked back over at Pete. “But maybe if that happens, they’ll reopen the investigation.”

  “There’s nothing to reopen. They bet the farm on Tink. They’ve got nothing left.”

  “Unless there’s another fire.”

  Pete made a dismissive noise. “There won’t be any more fires. Whether Tink’s acquitted or not, there won’t be any more fires.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “What would be the point? If Tink did them, it worked, it worked out for him. There are all these folks willing to stand up for him. There’s even some raising money. Sure, it might be mostly because they’re so mad at the way the police handled it, but there it is. Why would he put all that goodwill, all that love, in jeopardy by starting up again?

  “And if someone else did it … well, now is the perfect time to stop and get away with it.”

  It would turn out that Pete was right. That the confession would be ruled tainted and inadmissible after the state police admitted they’d alternately befriended and threatened Tink, after they acknowledged that they told him things would go easy for him if he signed. After they conceded that they had rejected the suggestion by his friend Gavin Knox in their presence that he get a lawyer. After it was discovered that Tink was unable to read aloud or understand a number of the words that had been used in his statement.

  But long before all that—and it wasn’t until spring that the judge made that ruling, and summer when the quick trial was held and Tink was acquitted—Bud had come around to Pete’s way of seeing things: that it was unknowable, though that wasn’t exactly what Pete had said. But that was the point, Bud thought. The point of Tink, and of Frankie, too, he’d come to feel. Of the way they arrived together in his life, brought to him by the fires. The lesson was there were things you had to let go of, losses and mysteries you had to learn to live with.

  And sometimes, even years later, when he’d see Tink around town—a less and less pretty boy, and then a thickened, balding, middle-aged man—Bud would be aware of feeling a strange sense of connection with him. Of a kind of gratitude welling in him at the sight of Tink—gratitude for his unwitting lesson, for the letting go he had helped to teach to Bud.

  It was cold in the mornings now, and Bud decided to change what had been his routines since he came to Pomeroy. Now before he had his breakfast, he built a fire in the living room stove at his house, and he stayed at home for the first half of the day, working at the desk facing one of the big picture windows on the first floor. The window looked down the hill to the northern edge of the village, and from his vantage, he could watch the slow, distant stages of the morning’s start down there.

  First the dogs came out, freed from their life in their families, rushing to the green to greet one another, to smell one another, and joust and run from one end of the wide lawn to another in barking packs. Occasionally a responsible owner trailed one of them long enough to pick up its shit, then went home, or took the dog for a walk. But mostly the dogs ran and frolicked wildly and freely until they were called back in. And they were all called back in at this time of year—no one let them wander now that hunting season had started.

  A little while later the yellow school buses, like old, lumbering animals, made their appearance, stopping every fifty yards or so, heading south with the younger kids to the village grammar school, heading north with the teenagers to the high school in Winslow. A while after that, the townsfolk who worked somewhere else—in Winslow or Whitehall or Black Mountain or even Greenwood—left in their cars and trucks for their jobs.

  Then things were quiet. Quiet in a way they never were in the summer, when the summer people moved in and out of town, shopping and visiting with one another. When the kids appeared and disappeared all day in waves, going to the pool, or swooping through on their bikes, or taking up some project on the green itself.

  It was quiet, though Bud knew that there were those like him, at work in the old white houses around the green or up in the hills, and he found himself thinking about them, about all of them, doing their jobs. There was a publisher with a tiny press in his barn. There was a weaver, a potter. There was the veterinarian, whose office and kennels were behind his house. Bud had the odd sense as he moved around his own house—making another cup of coffee, standing in the kitchen looking over at the hills, returning to the notes and papers on his desk—of being among them, somehow. Of being of them. Of them, in a way he hadn’t felt before.

  And this feeling held when he stopped in at Snell’s for the papers on the way to the office. When he talked to Adrian or Lucy or Harlan or someone also stopping by.

  Nothing important, usually. “How’s it going?” “Got anything left to write about these days?” It was the same, the way it had always been, but it had changed. Something had changed it for him, and he didn’t know what it was. Perhaps the strange relief he felt once the summer people left this year. Or maybe it was the end of the fires. Or the loss of Frankie, who had kept him so much in her orbit.

  He didn’t know.

  The office was empty when he got there at about eleven each day—no Barb. She’d left for a vacation as soon as leaf season was over, and after that she usually came in only rarely through the fall and winter. He worked at his desk and the big table until early afternoon, planning things, calling people, or returning their calls. Then he was out, at the Golden Agers’ weekly lunch, or the high school soccer game or wrestling practice. He attended everything—the rehearsal for the high school production of Kiss Me, Kate, the fund-raising committee meeting for the volunteer fire department, still strapped for cash, the Haunted House at the town hall. He tried to stay as busy as he could, and it worked, it helped. There was consolation in the very ordinariness of these events, in the conversations he got into, in the sense of belonging he increasingly felt.

  And threaded through all this there was the tracing of the slow process of the law in its relation to Tink Snell, for a while requiring Bud’s presence in Greenwood once or twice a week, then at more staggered intervals. First his bail appeal. Then the decision about that—no was the answer from the judge, just as Pete had thought it would be. Then his arraignment, with more discussion of the bail. Then a hearing in which his lawyer asked that the confession against him be thrown out.

  Over these weeks, Bud came to like the Greenwood Courthouse, with its dark wood wainscoting and its uncomfortable wooden benches. The room was always crowded with people he knew, mostly from Pomeroy, though all the newspapermen for miles around also came—Peter Knowlton from Whitehall, Larry Winters from Winslow. Even, twice, Matt Reinhart from the Boston Globe.

  In all of it, Tink seemed, more than anything, lost. A lost, beautiful boy who might or might not have done any of it. Sometimes, looking at Tink, Bud thought that Tink himself—so blank, so helpless-looking—might not know for sure anymore whether or not he’d set the fires. Could that be?

  The drives back and forth to Greenwood were themselves a form of consolation. By now the leaves had finally finished falling, and the woods had opened up to reveal themselves—the bare trunks, the lean, empty branches, everything colorless except for the dark gree
n of the pines here and there and the slowly fading brightness of the leaves that lay heaped over everything. Sometimes, coming around a corner on the familiar roads, Bud would pull over to the shoulder and stop to look at what had always been there but was unseen, unseeable, till now. An old farmhouse revealed on the hill opposite, its smoke curling yellow-gray out of its stone kitchen chimney. A faded red barn visible through the bending white stalks of a naked birch grove. The river, curving where he’d forgotten it was, glinting cold and black behind the bare limbs. These sights did something to him, and he wished he’d made more of all of this with Frankie, that he’d tried to make her see and feel the natural world around them as he was seeing it now. He wished that he’d wooed her with it.

  Too late—he’d been seeing only her then.

  But slowly through these weeks, as he felt himself giving over again to what seemed fine to him here, he also felt himself letting go of the idea of Frankie just a little, and that made him believe that eventually he’d be able to think of her more easily. Perhaps even as his last, passionate resistance to everything that compelled him here.

  And why not resist? Why not resist anything final or definitive in life, anything that said After this, the doors will not stay open for you here, or here, or here.

  And why not make Frankie, whose yearnings for all the unknowable things that lay behind those doors had seemed worthwhile and serious and noble to him, whose way of yearning seemed so real and affecting, even as it seemed to make their way forward together more unlikely, more vexed—why not let her be the emblem of everything other that he was giving up, if this helped him? It wouldn’t be hurting her or misusing her. After all, wasn’t the sex with her, the lying down with her, the talking with her, like a dream of something that couldn’t last anyway? Even if she’d stayed, he thought, even if she’d found a way to lead a life big enough for her here, they couldn’t have held on forever to the intensity of the passion that drove them over the summer.

  Which didn’t alter his answer when she knocked on his door one night in mid-November. And wouldn’t have altered it, even if he’d known it all, everything that would come. Even if he’d foreseen the restlessness that would sweep her from time to time, that would make her miserable in her life in Pomeroy, that would call her away over and over. Away to New York, for months of work on projects that made her feel alive again, she said to Bud on her return. Away once to Africa for almost a year, a year that made her know one more time that she couldn’t stay there but that reminded her of how much she wanted to.

  He would have answered the same way even if he’d known the sense that all this would breed in him over the years, a sense of such tentativeness in his approach to her that the moments between them that seemed natural and glad and easy became rarer, more and more painfully dear.

  None of this will matter when he hears the soft tapping on the glass in the kitchen on the first snowy night of the fall and puts his book down. When he crosses the living room and comes into the darkened kitchen, when he sees her there through the glass pane, the yellow light over the door falling on her, on the snow moving steadily all around her and catching in the thick, coiled net of her hair resting on her shoulders. When her face changes at the sight of him. When he opens the door and she steps urgently into his arms, and it feels the same. She feels the same—tall, strong, matched to him in every way, limb against limb—and smells the same, and tastes the same.

  When, after their long embrace, he says into her ear, into her hair, as he rocks her from side to side, “God, it’s you, Frankie. It’s exactly you.” When she leans her head back to look at him, her whole face a question for him to answer.

  When he steps back and up, over the threshold to make room for her to enter.

  “Yes,” he says. “Yes, come in.”

  Acknowledgments

  THERE WERE A NUMBER of work worlds I needed to inform myself about in order to write this book, and I’d like to thank the people who made this task the pleasure it turned out to be. Judy Muller kindly e-mailed me a prepublication copy of her fascinating and funny book about small-town newspapers, Emus Loose in Egnar, and it was more useful than I can say. Sam Allis helped me with newsroom terminology and reporting practices. Kevin O’Hara and Adrian Lakin answered my myriad questions about volunteeer fire departments and how they work, and I’m grateful to them both. Nora Love and Jennifer Martin were more than generous in talking to me about their rich and rewarding lives as aid workers in Africa. The confusion and struggles of my fictional character are not theirs.

  My agent Jill Kneerim and Doug Bauer carefully read and commented on an earlier version of the book. Jordan Pavlin, in her editorial wisdom, turned me back into it to do the major revision that made it, finally, much more the novel I had set out to try to write.

  Thank you, all.

  An A. A. Knopf Reading Group Guide

  The Arsonist by Sue Miller

  The questions, discussion topics, and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your reading group’s discussion of The Arsonist, best-selling author Sue Miller’s gripping new novel about a small New England town that is rocked by a series of fires with mysterious origins.

  About This Book

  From the best-selling author of The Senator’s Wife and The Good Mother comes The Arsonist, a provocative examination of how life in a quiet New England town begins to unravel after the community becomes the center of an arson investigation. Filled with nuanced character portraits alongside broad philosophical questions, The Arsonist is a finely drawn work of suspense and intrigue.

  Fifteen years ago, Frankie Rowley left America to do aid work in East Africa. After years of intense labor and fleeting love affairs, she is uncertain of whether the life she has built in Africa is ultimately a sustainable one. Unable to determine where her “home” really is, she books a one-way ticket to New Hampshire to stay with her parents and sort out her life in the house where her family hasalways summered. On her first night back, a nearby home burns to the ground under suspicious circumstances. Then, another summer house goes up in flames, followed by another, and another; the incidents too frequent and too similar to be accidental. The sleepy town becomes an environment fraught with anxiety and accusations as neighbors turn against neighbors, and long-buried issues of class differences in the town emerge. As all this unfolds, Frankie finds herself becoming romantically involved with Bud Bigelow, a local journalist covering the fires. As the investigation heats up, so does their affair, ultimately leading Frankie to question whether her life in Pomeroy, New Hampshire, could ever be a permanent one. With deftly executed plot turns and richly developed characters, The Arsonist explores questions that the main characters struggle with, while offering a gripping narrative that will have readers on edge until the last page.

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1. On this page, Frankie says that she is “undeniably an American after all.” How has Frankie’s time in East Africa affected the way she views her home country? What aspects of American life are most difficult for Frankie to readjust to?

  2. Frankie describes the house in Pomeroy as “no more her home than the Connecticut house had been.” (this page) Why is the concept of “home” fluid for Frankie? What place would you argue is most like home for her?

  3. Describe how Frankie and Sylvia’s relationship evolves over the course of the novel. Would you say that Frankie is similar to her mother in any ways? If so, is she cognizant of these traits? By the end of the novel, is their relationship strengthened?

  4. The town of Pomeroy is divided between two populations: the summer people and the year-round residents. Describe the interactions between these groups. As the novel progresses, how does the schism between the classes become more pronounced?

  5. When Frankie describes her aid work in Africa, she asserts that it seemed like her parents had trouble listening, yet later on, when pressed by Bud to discuss it, she has trouble articulating her role in great detail. Why do you think Frankie is hesita
nt to discuss her work at length? What assumptions does she face from others about her work?

  6. How would you characterize Frankie’s romantic relationships? Does her relationship with Bud fit into the mold of her past encounters? What attracts her to him?

  7. As Alfie’s illness progresses, Sylvia finds “the managing of appearances” increasingly difficult.” (this page) Discuss the role of gossip in Pomeroy. In what ways is gossip a form of social currency?

  8. Why do you think the author chose to provide the backstory of Sylvia and Adrian’s high school romance? How does their shared connection manifest throughout the novel? Is Sylvia embarrassed by it?

  9. On this page, Alfie describes how his brain is changing in a rather bold and straightforward way. As the novel progresses, how does his character change as a result of his illness?

  10. Describe how the social landscape of Pomeroy is affected by the fires. How do the fires bring the community together? Ignite debate? How are relationships between neighbors changed?

  11. On this page, Frankie discusses her spiritual inclinations, admitting that the “ideas in Christianity” always appealed to her. What does she mean by that? How has her need for “goodness” affected her throughout her life?

  12. Discuss the history of Pomeroy as described by both Pete and Sylvia. How has the town changed over time? In what ways does the economy depend on tourism? Have issues of class difference always been apparent?

  13. How does Bud integrate himself into the town of Pomeroy? Do you think he is respected? At what points is he made to feel like an outsider?

  14. Characterize Sylvia and Alfie’s relationship. Would you describe their marriage as a happy one? As Sylvia moves from the role of wife to caretaker, what emotions take hold? How does Frankie view her parents’ relationship?