The Arsonist's Handbook

by L. A. Detwiler

  He’s back, my brain chanted over and over, like a gleeful Christmas song that a five-year-old puts on repeat.

  I’d hung onto every word about the details of the fire, the third in a span of a few weeks. There had been some fires this summer in Elmwood and surrounding communities, but then they stopped for a while. The officers assumed the arsonist had moved on.

  And now, it’s started again. This time, I’m poised with the knowledge that has changed it all—my father’s an arsonist. It changes the perspective of it all.

  Last night, I listened with rapt attention as the woman with brassy hair talked about how police are on the lookout for the arsonist. A hand covering my mouth, the stubble on my chin scratching it, I wondered if it could be. A lofty thought crossed my mind. Maybe he’d returned to claim his son for the family business. Maybe he’d been waiting until I was old enough and ready.

  I’d chided myself. This wasn’t some goddamn movie. This was real life. My father left so many years ago. He isn’t coming back. But later, when I perused the pages of his journal like a religious textbook, my hands shook a little. It probably wasn’t him. It couldn’t be, could it?

  As much as I tried to access the scarce rationality within, my overactive imagination took over. I pictured the always faceless man setting fires, performing his work with pride, a town over. I visualized him looking into the distance, wondering if I’d seen his work. Wondering if I’d found my way to my calling yet.

  It was unlikely, true. I’d invented plenty of stories about my father in the past. I’d set up tons of reunification scenes that never came true. This felt different, though. It was unlikely he was back—but there was that chance, that small chance. Like the child who knows Santa can’t plausibly be real but hangs onto the magic a little while longer, I clung to the possibility as I thought about the journal. A line from one of the sections resonated with me.

  Even when you watch from a distance, you can feel the truth in the power of the flame.

  Is that what he’s been doing? Watching and waiting from a distance?

  I’d like to say I don’t care. I’d like to say I’m a sixteen-year-old, almost a grown man. I don’t need my father. But a growing voice inside of me, the same one who cried at Christmas as a young boy or who jumped at the sound of a knock at the door because of a sad hope for his return—that voice is still there. The inner child in me is still hoping the man I once called father didn’t leave forever, didn’t abandon me. And the lost boy in me is hoping that knowing my father will help me find my way. I’ve spent years on the outskirts of not only society but of myself. Could he be the final puzzle piece in figuring out who the hell I’m meant to be?

  I tell myself it doesn’t matter, but I know it does. We all want to belong to something, to be someone who matters in some infinitesimal way.

  The bell rings, and as I head into the sea of misery that is the hallway, I consider for a second that this is my chance. Because one thing I know from my father’s journal, his handbook of advice—once he starts burning, he can’t stop.

  My father is an arsonist.

  He is back.

  I must be vigilant and ready.

  Chapter Two

  Jameson

  I stalk through the unlocked front door and note that the house reeks of cigarettes and dismay. It’s become the marked stench of my life. I exhale as I consider the distinct possibility that I’m being melodramatic like Mom often accuses me. I have that penchant.

  The candles are lit in the kitchen. I can’t help but think how odd it is if Mom does know about my father that she has such a love for candles. At one point a few years ago, she started a small candle business that she was convinced would help us make it big. She was always pouring new scents and having me try new combinations in a feverish desperation to better our lives. The entrepreneurial spirit, perhaps bred of desperation as a single mother, has always been on the verge of emerging in her. However, the candle business failed, and our house was dripping with reminders of yet another in a long list of failed attempts at success. Sometimes I see the sadness in her eyes, the regret when she lights the leftover candles.

  Glancing at the flames, though, I think she must not know what he was. There’s never been a hint of her knowledge. She’s never uttered a warning about him or imparted a stark issuance of who I should avoid becoming. She’s never flipped the channel at the mention of arson or fire like you’d think she would. She wears no blatant scars from him. Thus, my father’s love for burning must be something even she did not know.

  How odd to be married to a man you only know a piece of. Then again, my mother tends to turn inward, to isolate, to pull back. It’s where I get my aloofness from. She’s never been the extroverted party animal. Sure, she’s charming. She’s good with the bank customers, and she makes enough tips from waitressing. But it’s a fake connection she extends to the world, a tissue-paper-thin mask she wears as a forced badge of honor. Deep down, she remains on the outskirts of society, always on the verge of being detached.

  I wonder what she was like with my father, what he was like with her. Maybe their marriage wasn’t all that great. How could it be if he left without a trace? It used to make me feel horrible, but now, I feel enlightened. This journal has changed so much. It’s sort of exciting to think I know a secret she doesn’t. I walk with a bit more of a bounce in my step.

  I toss my backpack on the extra kitchen chair. Mom sits in her usual one, staring out the window as she puffs on a cigarette. She’s wearing her waitressing uniform, the dingy apron framing her frail frame. Guilt assuages me as I consider again how much she works to keep the two of us going. I need to get on the job situation. I’ve already applied a few places, but everyone looks at me with my black hair and my nervous demeanor, and they assume I’m not a good worker. They’re probably right. But I need to try harder.

  Mom exhales a puff of smoke as I open the fridge, eyeing the barren shelves. I pluck the half-empty carton of orange juice from the top shelf, swigging it as Mom chirps up.

  “Jameson, when are you getting a new job? We can’t have you laying around forever. Joe says…”

  The name chokes me. I spew out the juice and turn on my heel to face her.

  “I don’t fucking care what Joe says,” I bellow, shaking my head in disgust. It pisses me off that Mom keeps working for that asshole after what he did to her. I really should’ve killed him. I’m pissed at myself for not standing up for her. He may have gotten away with what he did with my mom, but I won’t grovel at his feet for work on top of it. I need to make money, but I won’t sacrifice my manhood, my pride, to kiss his ass.

  Mom casts her eyes downward. Shit. I feel like a total dick now. I set the empty carton back in the fridge and slink over to the table. I sigh, perusing the bags under Mom’s eyes that no amount of plastered on eyeshadow and eyeliner can make up for. The woman’s exhausted. All my life, she’s worked herself to the bone to keep us surviving. She’s not perfect, but she’s done a whole hell of a lot more than most. I need to give her more credit and cut her more breaks.

  “I’ll work on it tonight. I have some prospects,” I reply as I retreat from my anger, trying to smooth it over. I steady myself on the chair and offer her a stoic nod as guilt pummels against me. It’s my job to take care of Mom. It’s my job. I’ve been failing at that, too, though.

  As Mom says her goodbyes to leave for work and I settle into the dingy couch in the living room, I feel something foreign bubble up in me. I don’t know if it’s the journal sitting under my mattress in my room back the hall or if it’s the idea that the string of arsons could be him. Maybe it’s just that I’m desperate to escape the humdrum, mediocre existence that has me dying an agonizing death where I simply dissipate as no one notices.

  Whatever it is, I can’t shake this feeling that there’s something more important out there for me. Something more thrilling. So instead of surfing through the few channels we have on the television or tackling the pointless homework a
ssignments sitting in my backpack, I decide.

  I have to see if I have what it takes. My fingers itch with anticipation.

  Chapter Three

  Pete

  Sloshing the unexceptional coffee in his navy “Best Dad” mug she’d bought him when Tanner was born, Pete Andrews inhaled the thick tension that clung to the kitchen table. She rocked Tanner with her hand aimlessly as she scrolled on her phone with the other, never looking at him across the table. How had it come to this? Where had they gone wrong?

  Pete thought about the times a few years earlier when they would sit next to each other at the breakfast table, smile, and share stories. She would make him eggs while he poured the two bold roast coffees, and they would start their day the same way they always ended it—together. Smiling. Blissfully fucking happy like some cheesy 1950s commercial for American living.

  When did it all go wrong?

  Tanner whimpered from his bassinet in the living room, which was attached to the kitchen area. Pete looked up from his plate of toast he’d whipped together. The tie strangled him as he swallowed hard. He would like to say it was the baby who had changed things, who had brought an end to their blissful wedded state. At least then, he’d have an explanation that made sense. Babies did change things in a marriage. There would be no shame if their son had ripped them apart and extinguished the once hot and heavy passion that existed between them.

  But no, things were on the downhill slide before Tanner’s arrival into the world. He’d felt it in his bones a year and a half ago. Suddenly, their breakfasts became silent phone scrolling sessions. Overnight, her sexual prowess became a “Not tonight” chant, leaving him cold and lonely on his side of the bed. Their only encounters were her nagging him about shit that didn’t matter—the trash, his outfit, his late work hours. The more she nitpicked him, the more he withdrew until miles separated them. They had become the proverbial married strangers so many had warned them about.

  He looked over as the sunlight beamed in her curled blonde hair. She sparkled. He never stopped seeing that. But sometimes beauty failed to quench the thirst for connection, for touch, for broiling love.

  He exhaled, staring past her and out the window. Guilt assuaged him. He knew no matter what went down between them, responsibility belonged to him. She might have started the ball rolling toward their demise, but he finished it. And she didn’t even know. Shit, she didn’t even know. She didn’t know what mistakes he’d made not once, but five—or was it six? —separate times. Shit.

  He was a bastard, like his mother always told him. Of course, she believed full-heartedly all men were bastards. Maybe she’d been onto something. Still, even if Anna wasn’t consciously aware of what he’d done, Pete knew his actions had changed something irrevocably. The friction had enhanced between them. Maybe he’d created it, the guilt of what he’d done building into something inexplicable but palpable, hazy in the air of the house they shared.

  “Don’t forget you have to pick him up at daycare at six,” she murmured across the table without taking her eyes off her phone, chiding him like he was an imbecilic teenager incapable of caring for their son.

  “I know,” he snapped. She was going on a business trip, would be gone for the weekend. She’d already been over the details of Tanner’s day, of his schedules, of his requirements. That had been their only real exchange. He remembered a time when her business trips were preceded by hot sex and tearful goodbyes. Now, all she cared about was that he was feeding Tanner the bottle at the right time and making sure he got to sleep on the exact schedule she’d set for him.

  She paused from her phone, looking up at him. “I want to make sure you’re going to be paying close attention and not distracted by work.”

  Pete slammed his fist on the table. “I fucking think I know how to take care of my own son,” he seethed.

  She exhaled. “Language.” With one word, she enveloped him in an inferno of raging anger that couldn’t be calmed. His temper flared.

  “He’s barely eight months. I don’t think he’s going to start talking yet. Or did you pencil that in his schedule, too? Jesus, let us all fucking breathe.”

  Anna rose from her seat and walked over to Tanner, who was now whimpering on his back. She protectively lifted him from his prone position, patting his back and rocking him as she looked back at Pete as if he were the big bad wolf coming to devour her son. After a long, icy moment, she spoke.

  “What’s happened to us?” she asked. Her whispered question stabbed Pete’s chest. He heard the grief in her words, endured the heartbroken isolation he was no stranger to.

  “I don’t know,” he replied honestly, softened by the melancholy stirred between them. He stared at his almost-empty coffee cup. “I don’t fucking know.”

  He thought about traversing the short distance to her across the kitchen. He thought about wrapping her in his arms and swearing to be a better man, a more worthy partner. Instead, his cold stoicism froze him in his tracks. It was too late for simple fixes. He’d learned to be rigid, to never bend. Even when he wanted nothing more than to reach out to her, to soften himself, to abandon his unwavering pride.

  He cleared his throat to signal himself to abandon such crazy notions. He finished the coffee in his cup, tightened his tie, and grabbed his keys from the table. He didn’t kiss her goodbye, as had become their custom. He simply left. He was good at that part, at least.

  Chapter Four

  Pete

  If you’d have asked Pete Andrews when he was a teenager what he would be when he grew up, he’d have flicked back his hair and given a smooth answer like, “Rockstar.” He always had wild, vivid visions for a luxurious life that would be a far cry from the trailer he grew up in with his dilapidated excuse for a mother.

  hen he got a little older, he would tell people he was going to be an entrepreneur. He pictured himself running a Fortune 500 company, leading a team as he raked in millions. He saw himself in flashy suits, the world knowing his name. In short, he was going to be somebody who made his way in the world, who found his success, who didn’t let anyone get in his way. He wanted to pave his trail in golden bricks and possibilities.

  Pushing over the files on his desk as the smell of Maria’s coffee wafted over the partition of his sad excuse for a cubicle—he didn’t even have his own fucking office, to add insult to injury—Pete thought about the clueless boy he’d once been.

  Back when he thought life would lap into him, would sweep him away on a gentle wave of happiness and success.

  Back when he thought hard work would equate to bliss.

  Back when he thought he needed to get out of Chicago, find a decent job, and marry a good woman with whom he could find peace.

  Back when he thought he was in control.

  All he wanted, even then, was peace.

  From the screaming rage his mother emitted to the boyfriends she would bring home hopped up on cocaine.

  From the glares of his teachers who told him he was trouble.

  From the weary boy who existed deep within who was riddled with anxieties of not being enough.

  He opened up the computer program, the neon colors filling him with a sense of monotonous dread. He poised his fingers over the dusty keyboard and prepared to type the numbers into the spreadsheet. He was lucky, in many ways, he supposed. He had managed to get into college on a scholarship—for football, not for his grades. He’d picked the smart choice, accounting, a career he could hang his hat on if his grandpa knew anything. He’d found the blonde beauty of his dreams. He’d settled into the suburbs. Gone was the destructive life of his childhood in the trailer court. He found a woman who thought he was enough. He proved his mother wrong. He’d found success and happiness. He’d bought the house, the car, and everything in between.

  Hadn’t he?

  Punching in the numbers, though, a familiar feeling started to creep in. He fought against it, leaning his head into his hands and gripping his hair.

  “Tough morning?”
Maria asked, having wheeled around the partition. He jumped, her rich voice always interrupting his thoughts when they got too dark, as if her intuition guided her around the flimsy partition at just the right moment. She ran a hand through her silky-smooth hair, and he ogled her tan legs that peeked out from her mini skirt. She was a few years younger than him and had the eyes of a flirtatious twentysomething to prove it. He cleared his throat, looking away.

  “You could say that,” he murmured.

  “Did you catch the news this morning?” she asked, eager to hang onto the conversation a bit longer. Somehow, though, Maria always seemed to shift an easy morning chat to heavy topics. The term Debbie Downer always came to Pete’s mind, which was a shame. She was gorgeous enough to make a man forget his problems—if her lips didn’t whisper reminders of all the world’s failings.

  “No, I missed it,” he admitted, thinking about the tense morning with Anna. The news about how the world was on fire would’ve been better than the cold tension of a marriage gone dark.

  “The arsonist is back at it,” she said. “Gives me chills. I’ve always been terrified of fire. He’s in Elmwood again, though. The fire was at my cousin’s boyfriend’s best friend’s family. Poor things. They got out, but their cat didn’t. Can you imagine?”

  Pete’s head throbbed with her mile-a-minute story, but his interest was piqued. The Elmwood arsonist had been big talk over the summer. Five mysterious fires had cropped up, and the police—incompetent idiots—still didn’t have leads. They stopped a while back, and everyone moved onto the next news story, assuming the arsonist had left. It was eerie to think he wasn’t done yet.