Chapter One - Riley and Ol' Roy

First, very rough draft. Chapter One - Riley and Ol' Grandpa Roy Sixty years before I was born, my great-grandfather was arrested and sent to prison for arson. He was a mouthy third-generation French-Canadian hood trying to prove himself to the Italians who had trickled into town with their shiny black cars, pointy shoes, and piles of greasy bills. As it seems, they were an uneasy but fortuitous pairing, Grandpa Roy and the Mafia. He, a spitfire firebug, and they an employer frequently in need of a scratchy match. Pyrites was a small boomtown on the Canadian border, seven hours north of the New York City, named after the rich deposits of pyrite under the sandy, mosquitoey ground. Fool’s gold. The mine had shut down in 1908 but then paper was all the rage. The hungry mouths of Hearst’s printing presses were hungry for more and more and more. $15,000 in payroll checks written every week. A community that swelled from a church and a few farms to 180 buildings. Saloon on every corner. Coins in every purse. The town was experiencing an influx of poor, huddled masses from the city searching for prosperity outside of the tenements. Borderlands at the time of Prohibition. The Big Apple had lost its taste for bathtub gin and Canadian whiskey was all the rage. The North Country had its own Wild West played out against a backdrop of corn fields and farm houses. The Akwesasne Reservation straddled the border like a whore, legs spread wide for anyone for the right price - Canadian, American, Heroin. Grandpa Roy knew he’d never be a real Mafioso and it riled him. Even when he connected the Wop fuckers with his connections in Ontario. Even when he risked life and limb smuggling the clanging clacking bottles of Canadian Club across the dark, writhy river. His resentment ran deep. They called him and his brothers “The Canucks” but he could do nothing but grit his teeth. He had, afterall, a family to feed and couldn't exactly change his bloodline. So a low- level mob hench he became. “I’m as American as you, you dumb fucks,” he’d say once those Mulberry Street mother fuckers were out of earshot. The thing was that Grandpa Roy was a coward. As most arsonists are. He almost told them to go fuck themselves when they ordered him to torch Frank Jurowksi’s poolhall but they sweetened him up with whiskey so smooth it seduced his tongue and his will. Frank was a good man and his whole life was in that leased building, ten years of equity and all his savings in a coffee can.. But the insurance money was significantly more profitable than rent so the choice had been made, the orders straight out of Brooklyn. To hear it told, the fire was so bright and hot that it melted the tar on nearby roofs. Nearly burnt down the whole damn town. Grandpa Roy was so startled by how fast the conflagration spread that he was seen stumbling down the street stunned, gas tank still in hand. He was arrested within a few hours. Found quivering in an abandoned barn, the stench of hooch and fuel strong and fresh. Years later, they’d try to blame the picture house fire of 1919 on him as well. A young woman had been pulled out blackened by flame, gasping for air and clutching a round, pregnant belly. They’d lost both her and the baby. Ol’ Roy never was charged and he never said either way if he did. He’d just shuffle his feet and mumble about being out in Brick Chapel buying some turkeys. My great-grandfather and his brothers spent equal time in both the Army and Dannemora. Petty crimes like theft and robbery but arson was the prevail of my particular blood line. Fire in our veins. A love of flame that lead to little three-year old Eva catching her dress aflame while playing with matches while her Daddy did his time in prison, cursing those Italian fucks for stringing him up. One minute a bundle of little girl giggles then a twirling, burning, screaming whirl of blonde curls, torched cotton, and agony. It was too late. Like some sort of karmic retribution for his sins. How many houses had ol’ Roy burnt down over the years either for money or for spite? During a time when the town was a tinder box of booze, straw, and newsfeed who was to say. But when they told Grandpa Roy about little Eva, he found himself dropping to his knees and begging the good lord Jesus to forgive him. He never meant to hurt nobody… he was a good man... He'd taken the eucharist all of his life. Eight years later he left prison quiet and bent. Long thin nose, long thin face. Same fierce, flaming blue eyes like a pilot light in the dark. Azure eyes that burn even in a black and white photo. The same eyes as me. “I see it in you, girl,” my father whispers as he gently pries the matchbook out of my chubby little girl hands. “You can’t do this shit. You’ll pee the bed. You’ll burn up like little Eva.” “And like Grandpa?” “Yes, and like Grandpa.” My father casts a glance over his shoulder out the large bay window. Out in the meadow you can still see how the hay never grew up quite right around the old driveway, as if their footsteps scorched the earth and nothing more could grow. The hulking, broken shape of the old foundation still visible, the house remains. The ghost of it anyway. The house where Grandpa Roy and Grandma Rose had died in their sleep when their old chimney caught fire during the blizzard of ‘77. Smothered, lulled, cremated. But I’m seven now and scary stories don’t bother me like they used to. Daddy steps into the kitchen to break a piece of slimy, waxy stem from the aloe plant on the counter. My fingertips are red and hard to the touch. But there is no pain.