Read Online An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England by Brock Clarke - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Brock Clarke
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even though I lived only two miles from the center of town. I’d learned that I could drive the spur around town on the way to work, and Katherine’s school, which was called Amherst Elementary, was actually a new, sprawling red brick building outside of Amherst, and all the necessary superstores we shopped at weren’t in Amherst, either; they were on Route 116, which is to say they weren’t really anywhere. This is how it is these days: you can live in a place without having to actually have a life there.
And there was that voice, back as loud as ever, asking, What else? What else? The van was awfully quiet and lonely without the kids making noise and Anne Marie telling them not to, and so to fill the loneliness I listened to the voice carefully, maybe too carefully, and didn’t pay enough attention to my driving, and that’s how I ended up ramming into a K-Car in front of me. Luckily, it was a gentle ramming: the old lady driving the car wasn’t hurt and neither was her car, really, and after some initial confusion she seemed to remember that the bumper had been loose and hanging off the frame before I’d rammed it. I had , however, knocked over a few bags of vegetables and fruit in the backseat, and so I crawled into her car and tried to put the produce back in the bags. The bags were broken, though, and the produce ended up rolling all over the backseat and floor. Still, the old lady was very sweet about it, and even though I was pretty sure I remembered her from my younger days, she didn’t recognize me as the boy I’d been, the boy who burned down, et cetera, which I thought was promising indeed. We exchanged information — which by law we were required to do — and then parted ways. All in all, it was a very pleasant, civilized accident I got into on the way to my parents’ house. As the old lady pulled away, I had a vision of the fruit and vegetables happily rolling around her backseat, and I remembered that my father was a big fan of fresh produce and had once even started up a garden, which didn’t work out the way he’d planned.
And so, a few facts about my father and then his failed garden. My father was an editor for the medium-size university press in town. He mostly edited books on American history, but his subspecialty was the relationship between popular music and American culture. In addition to his books, my father also covered the area’s annual squeeze-box festival for the local newspaper.
“Sam,” he once asked me, “do you know why the accordion is so important? Do you?”
I was seven at this point. I didn’t know anything about anything and told my father as much.
“Because it is part of the history of music and immigration,” he said. “The Acadians played it, and when they moved from Canada to Louisiana, they brought their squeeze-boxes with them. The accordion is their instrument. It is their gift to the world.”
“It hurts my ears,” I told him.
This simple, seemingly innocent comment pretty much ruined my poor dad. He couldn’t stand knowing that his son did not admire his occupation. I was seven, let me remind you, and knew nothing about the relationship between a man’s lifework and his sense of self-worth, and my father should have ignored me. But he didn’t: instead, my father left the editing and musicology business and searched around for something else to do, something I might respect him for. Somehow he decided that I would respect him if he became a farmer. Amherst is not exactly the country, but my father turned our half-acre backyard plot into a minibreadbasket anyway. For six months — May to October — my father grew beets, zucchini, tomatoes, pumpkins, garlic. Our backyard was teeming. But we never ate any of it, because my father wouldn’t let us. He said we couldn’t “reap the harvest” until the time was right.
“When will the time be right?” I wanted to know.
When I asked this, my father looked at me in complete surprise, as if he
And there was that voice, back as loud as ever, asking, What else? What else? The van was awfully quiet and lonely without the kids making noise and Anne Marie telling them not to, and so to fill the loneliness I listened to the voice carefully, maybe too carefully, and didn’t pay enough attention to my driving, and that’s how I ended up ramming into a K-Car in front of me. Luckily, it was a gentle ramming: the old lady driving the car wasn’t hurt and neither was her car, really, and after some initial confusion she seemed to remember that the bumper had been loose and hanging off the frame before I’d rammed it. I had , however, knocked over a few bags of vegetables and fruit in the backseat, and so I crawled into her car and tried to put the produce back in the bags. The bags were broken, though, and the produce ended up rolling all over the backseat and floor. Still, the old lady was very sweet about it, and even though I was pretty sure I remembered her from my younger days, she didn’t recognize me as the boy I’d been, the boy who burned down, et cetera, which I thought was promising indeed. We exchanged information — which by law we were required to do — and then parted ways. All in all, it was a very pleasant, civilized accident I got into on the way to my parents’ house. As the old lady pulled away, I had a vision of the fruit and vegetables happily rolling around her backseat, and I remembered that my father was a big fan of fresh produce and had once even started up a garden, which didn’t work out the way he’d planned.
And so, a few facts about my father and then his failed garden. My father was an editor for the medium-size university press in town. He mostly edited books on American history, but his subspecialty was the relationship between popular music and American culture. In addition to his books, my father also covered the area’s annual squeeze-box festival for the local newspaper.
“Sam,” he once asked me, “do you know why the accordion is so important? Do you?”
I was seven at this point. I didn’t know anything about anything and told my father as much.
“Because it is part of the history of music and immigration,” he said. “The Acadians played it, and when they moved from Canada to Louisiana, they brought their squeeze-boxes with them. The accordion is their instrument. It is their gift to the world.”
“It hurts my ears,” I told him.
This simple, seemingly innocent comment pretty much ruined my poor dad. He couldn’t stand knowing that his son did not admire his occupation. I was seven, let me remind you, and knew nothing about the relationship between a man’s lifework and his sense of self-worth, and my father should have ignored me. But he didn’t: instead, my father left the editing and musicology business and searched around for something else to do, something I might respect him for. Somehow he decided that I would respect him if he became a farmer. Amherst is not exactly the country, but my father turned our half-acre backyard plot into a minibreadbasket anyway. For six months — May to October — my father grew beets, zucchini, tomatoes, pumpkins, garlic. Our backyard was teeming. But we never ate any of it, because my father wouldn’t let us. He said we couldn’t “reap the harvest” until the time was right.
“When will the time be right?” I wanted to know.
When I asked this, my father looked at me in complete surprise, as if he
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