The Arsonist by Sue Miller

either—no cross, and the church windows were clear, crazed glass, letting in the gently gray light of the overcast day outside. The minister was a woman, though Bud wasn’t certain of that until she opened her mouth, and her voice—lovely and light—said, “Let us pray.”
    Afterward, he went to the coffee hour in the church basement. You entered through a door around the side of the church, descending threeor four steps. Perhaps fifteen people were there in all, standing around on the shiny linoleum floor under the unkind fluorescent lights. Bud moved around, speaking to several of them.
    The woman pouring coffee or tea introduced herself as Emily Gilroy. Coffee , Bud said, and picked up a doughnut. “Homemade,” Emily said. And then, “So nice to see a new young face.”
    Bud said, “Young?” and turned to look behind him.
    Emily laughed. Later he’d come to know her well. She was the clerk in the town hall, someone who heard a lot of gossip about everyone in town and was willing to share almost all of it. A resource, as Bud thought of her—seemingly incapable of keeping a secret. He liked the odd woman who couldn’t keep a secret.
    Sunday afternoon, he went to a Little League game in the field behind the white frame grammar school and stood leaning on a chain-link fence, shivering, with a half-dozen others as the Pomeroy team lost, 14–1, mostly on walks. By the end of the game, they had run through seven pitchers, the coach was so desperate to find anyone who might, perhaps, be able just to get the ball over the plate. Some of the boys were actually called in from the bases and the outfield to give it a try. Minutes before the mercy rule was invoked and the game declared over, a light wet snow began, disappearing as it fell onto the brownish grass. The woman next to him put her head in her hands and said to no one in particular, “Just take me out and shoot me now, why don’t you?”
    By the end of the weekend, he’d made up his mind. He’d read through the town’s history, he’d talked to people he ran into. It all seemed yeasty to him, interesting, and he had an almost immediate sense that he could get it. He felt he could make a life here, professionally, personally.
    On Monday, before he left to go back to Washington, he went to see the owner of the paper. They sat in his office, housed on the second floor of a brick building on the town green. The first floor was a real-estate office, its space mostly unoccupied in the winter, the paper’s owner said. He was tall, skinny, hawk-nosed, in his early seventies. He wore a bow tie and a pilled, stained cardigan. Bud asked about the health of the paper.
    It was doing okay, Pete said. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that he’d run it for almost fifty years with his wife. After she died,a year and a half earlier, it was too much work. But also, he said, and shrugged, “Not so much fun.”
    Bud remembered then the picture of them together in the article in the Post , standing outside this building in warm weather. Laughing, he thought. When he looked it up later, he saw he was right. She was stout and shapeless, a monolith, wearing a kind of dress he didn’t think they even made anymore, sprigged with flowers. Pete was saying something to her, an eager, wicked grin on his face as he leaned in toward her, and she was laughing in response—her shoulders were lifted up toward her ears, her head was thrown back, her eyes were shut. Maybe that’s what had made him notice the article, Bud thought. Fun indeed, embodied.
    He wasn’t sure if his offer would be accepted. Pete had been asking forty grand, and Bud only had twenty, his entire savings.
    But two days later, back in Washington, he had a message on his telephone answering machine. “It’s Pete. Two words. You’re on.” He called back, and they made the arrangements. Pete would stay on for six months to help him get going. Bud would get there as soon as he could.
    He gave his notice at