The Arsonist by Sue Miller

Author:Sue Miller [Miller, Sue]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-385-35170-6
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2014-06-23T16:00:00+00:00

The next night when Bud opened the door to leave the office, he almost cried out at the sight of the figure crouched there on the front stoop.

And then saw it was Ed Carter, straightening up, seemingly as startled by Bud as Bud was by him. “Oh! Bud,” he said, further surprising Bud, who would have doubted Ed knew his name. “I didn’t realize you were in.”

“The paper lives up on the second floor, Ed. I was hiding out up there. But can I help you?”

“I was just dropping off a letter for you. Trying to slide it under the door, in point of fact.”

“There’s a slot for mail,” Bud said, and pointed to it.

“Ah, I didn’t see it through the screen.”

“Well, now I can take it in my bare hands anyway, if you like.” He opened the screen door, which meant Ed had to step back slightly. “What’s it about?”

“It’s more or less a response to your last column.”

“Ah,” Bud said. “Interesting. Come on in, why don’t you? I’ll read it now.”

“Oh, no need for that.”

“A clue, then,” Bud said, “as to its nature.”

“It’s from a group of us.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. We’re concerned, I guess you’d say, about certain … elements in your reporting.”

“Now you do have to come in.” Bud hoped he was managing to keep his tone friendly.

“The letter speaks for itself,” Ed said, and smiled his chilly smile.

“Let’s talk about it,” Bud said. He held his open hand out as he stepped back, and slowly, clearly reluctantly, Ed put the letter into it.

And came in, though Bud hadn’t been sure he would.

He flicked the light switch by the door and gestured Ed over toward the chairs Barb kept for clients. Standing next to them, he opened the letter.

Fancy stationery, Ed’s address at the top. Two pages, single spaced, maybe five paragraphs. It was signed on the second page by fifteen or twenty people. They seemed, at a quick glance, to be all summer people. As Bud began to read, he saw why that was the case. They were “concerned,” they said, about the possibility that his reporting would heighten tensions between year-round and summer people.

This had to be a response to the idea of the state trooper he’d quoted—his notion that class resentment might be a motivation for the fires.

The writers wondered if Bud was fully aware of the years of effort that had gone into creating a community here, one that rose above the class boundaries he’d pointed to. Those efforts were described in several paragraphs he skimmed quickly.

In the final paragraph, they called upon him to publish a paper that supported, rather than undermined, the good relations among all—underlined three times in ink—the groups in town. There was no need for a small, weekly country newspaper to be disturbing to its readers.

Then the signatures, some large, some small, in the aggregate rather like the Declaration of Independence, he thought.

Bud looked up. Like him, Ed was still standing. He’d moved to the side of Barb’s desk, as if to put it between him and Bud.

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