The Nature of Arson and Other Stories
Five for a Friday
The Nature of Arson
October 17th, 1975-
Dear Alice,
It’s happening again, stronger this time since I stopped taking the lithium. I know the doctor says I need it, but I just can’t stand the foggy feeling. Besides, this time the voice has been more pleasant. You remember when I told you about the one I kept hearing so bad right before I went to the hospital? The deep man’s voice I called Screamer? Yeah, well, he’s gone. Now it’s a woman’s voice, calm and sweet. And amazing– she knows thing about people. I mean, she really does.
I really like what she tells me.
Coupla Guys
“You get him fixed up?”
“I put so much tape on him he looks like a whatsis. A caterpillar.”
“Where’d you put him? Not in the building, right?”
“You think I’m fucking stupid? No. He’s lying in a car in parking lot. It’s parked far enough away that he should be fine.”
“Should be? Or will be?”
“He might get a little hot. That’s okay. Boss will like that part.”
“You got that gas can? Good. Pour it around the base of the stove, there. I’ll get the rags.”
“Sure is a waste. All this great booze.”
“Yeah, well. Rules.”
Letter From the Trenches
My numb feet swelled in my boots as I squatted with the others in the frozen mud.
McCombs had scrounged some charcoal somewhere and made a fire in a 305mm Skoda shell the Germans left behind when they retreated.
We crowded around its scant heat, holding over the flames our tins of bully-beef skewered on bayonets.
Everybody had snipers deployed all along the lines, so our chief amusement was putting a helmet atop a stick and waving it above the trench wall.
We’d take bets on how long before it was shot through.
This seldom took longer than a half-minute.
Motherless Children Have a Hard Road
Always the fear of waiting. Will they come? Will they forget me?
They never forget, of course. Yet this feeling of dread gets stronger with every passing year, seems to grow inside her as though her brain is swelling inside her skull, pressing into it, striving to escape.
She becomes obsessed with ritual, counts her footfalls, takes notice of birds. She avoids using the verb to be in any form, as though naming a thing will give it shape, make it real.
Soon she avoids talking altogether.
But still the formless fear grows to fill her.
She becomes furtive, watchful.
The Gates Are Narrow and the Road is Long
It started with the Bible. She hid it in her room like porn, read it secretly at night. She stopped hanging out with the girls she’d known since pre-school, instead preferring the company of people she would name but never introduce.
Only full names, which was odd. Joshua. Stephen. Bethany. No Jeff or Steph or Liz.
We confronted her when the attendance office called to report she’d not been to school all semester. She sat there, placid as a marble bust, staring through us as though we were apparitions.
We woke next morning to find she was gone.