The New Valley

by Josh Weil

  I don’t understand, I said.

  Sometimes I don’t either, she said. That’s how it goes.

  What changed? I asked her.

  I don’t know, she said. I guess—I guess I started to realize I had feelings, that I had feelings I didn’t think I was capable of having anymore. That sounds like it’s from a soap. It probably is from a soap. Jesus Geoffrey I just—sometimes you don’t know why you feel a certain way, you just do, and that’s usually when you know it’s—well, when you know it’s not just puppy love.

  I don’t know why I got feelings for you, I said.

  I don’t know either, she said. After what you’ve seen and what you know I swear I don’t know either.

  That night she got out and into her car before I could get around the lot on my bike and by the time I hit the road she was gone.

  She wasn’t really gone.

  You know that good as me. Or else you wouldn’t be who you is where you is and I wouldn’t be who I am where I just got out of. If she’d just gone then I guess our stories here would be pretty different. But she didn’t. What you don’t know is what I don’t know how to say anyhow but this. She’s gone now.

  That is what I meant to tell you when I started to put all this down here tonight. Like I said, last night I rode out to Crigger’s Den to see her. The redbuds what was in the creek was all done this late in summer and it was hard at first riding with just one eye. Plus it hurt on my face when my bike hit bumps. But it was sweet to see Crigger’s with them lights on and the lot full. I rode on back and parked my bike by the Dumpster and knocked on the screen door. Them kitchen people looked out at me.

  It’s Linda’s boy, one of them said.

  They made jokes at me till I’d waited long enough and asked them straight out.

  She quit, one said.

  She don’t work here no more? I said.

  That’s the usual result.

  I gone around and in through the front door and right up to the bar. There was a woman who’d never even stopped at the Sunoco wearing Linda’s apron. She told me the same. You someone to her? she said.

  Once, after all this but before you all started your courthouse fight, she come to my room at New Castle Memorial to talk. She brung me flowers in their own plastic wrap, said, They’re not redbuds but. My jaw was wired up but I writ on a pad she brung me and it was near as good, just slow. We talked it out that way long and hard. She wanted to make sure I understood. There was some things she told me would hurt her real bad if the whole wide town got wind of them and how she couldn’t live if I told her deepest things out loud.

  You know I wouldn’t, I writ her on the pad. It was a big pad of paper what she brung, long and yellow. The pen was chewed up by her. I liked the way it felt in my hand.

  I writ for her to sit. There was a chair what everyone else sat on when they came. She put her bag on it and sat on the bed instead. Right by my hip. I could feel under me how the mattress bent under her. The other side of the curtain was a old man what peed his sheets. He was calling for someone to change them.

  I guess she could see me up close better now cause she was looking hard at my face when she said, What did he do to you?

  I started to writ her, but she put her hand on mine right over the pen.

  Shh, she said.

  Her hand on top of mine was same as how if her lips was on my lips.

  Do you know how sweet you are? she said. I mean to me? How sweet my feelings are for you? Anyone else would hate me. She reached at me and touched the bandage what gone over my eye and then down the wires on my face. Her fingers wasn’t a inch away. I could almost feel them. When she took them back she said, Maybe you do.

  I tried to write her No, but she made her Shh again and pressed her hand more down on mine.

  It doesn’t matter, she said. You’ll always be my sweet Geoffrey. If he thought doing this would change that. I wish you could be in court just so he’d have to see you.

  I started to write again but she said, No it’s better if you put it down here, write it out the way, you know, the way we discussed. She took her hand off mine. Before you do, she said, is there anything else you need me to explain?

  I was gonna write No but instead I writ Do. It just come out. After that there wasn’t nothing to do but write the rest. Do you still go behind the tank?

  She looked at me and said Whew and looked away again.

  The nurse come and seen what the old man done and the whole time she was in the room Linda was quiet. When the nurse was gone to get new sheets Linda reached down and took my pad. She tore the piece off and crunched it into a ball of paper in her hands.

  I hate for you to remember me that way, she said.

  I tried to shake my head.

  I don’t know how to tell you. How to help you understand. I don’t.

  The nurse come back with the sheets. Linda looked at the curtain like she could see the noises they was making. Then she leaned down so close her breathing was more loud than the other sounds. I could feel it on my ear. Feel her sigh. Feel her breath gone when she sat back up.

  Tell you what, she said. I’ll write it out. It’s easier for me that way. I’ll write it while you write out for the lawyer the way it happened, how we discussed. Deal?

  She tore out a page and another page. Then she give me back the pad. She got up and drug over a little table on wheels. She sat in the chair and writ and I lay with the pad on my chest and writ all what she’d told me how it would help her out. When I was done she was still working at hers. The nurse come round the curtain and asked on me and I told her fine. My ribs was hurting from sitting up to write but I wanted her gone so Linda would start writing again and finish up and come sit back on the bed. But Linda didn’t start writing again. She just come and sit.

  Push over, she said.

  Then she lied next to me on the bed. The flowers was between us. I reached over and moved them to my other side. She moved in where they’d been. We swapped papers and read like that. What I’d put down. What she’d put down. Behind the curtain the old man lied there with nothing to do or talk to or nothing. All the carts in the hall what always gone by gone by.

  When she was done she put the pad on her lap and leaned over and kissed me next to my one eye what I got left. I’d already read what she’d writ. I was reading it again.

  I can’t write it any clearer, she said. I’d have to burn it. She smiled like it was a joke but her voice showed how it wasn’t. About all I understood of what she writ was how she didn’t want me to tell it to no one. And I didn’t.

  She took what I’d done and got up and gone to put the pad in her bag but I reached for it till she give it back.

  Come back? I writ.

  She looked at me funny. She said, Maybe once this is all over I can explain it to you better, okay?

  I tried to make the words with my mouth. Tried to say them at her. But the sound what come out of my wired jaw wasn’t nothing like Come back and I could see on her what the sound I done was bad to listen to.

  Of course I’ll come back, she said.

  Then she picked up her bag and gone around the curtain. There was her footsteps and the carts going by in the hall. Then just the carts.

  I wonder, Can you get phone calls where you at? I’d guess so. I’d guess you can get letters too. I can get letters here, just in the box with everyone else’s mail. I think I can get phone calls, too, but when I checked in the phone pages it was just Roy and Jackie by the number. I guess if someone tried, I’d find out.

  Last night at Crigger’s Den I writ out a note what told the phone number and Don’t say who you is, just ask for me, and left it with the woman. I gone by Linda’s house, which I guess is your house too, or was your house, or anyhow there’s a For Sale sign out front and the place has been cleaned out. I gone by your home seller’s office too, but they said, You mean Brian? And I said, No sir. I mean Waker Podawalski. And they said No, you looking for his brother. Which pissed me off, and I told them
what I may not be smart but Look at my face. You think I’d forget who did that? They said they was sorry but what no Podawalskis period worked there no more. Which I guess makes sense since you’s in jail. Today I stood out on the curb every chance I got between cars pulling in. I didn’t even wave the smallest kind what people don’t even know they see. I just stood there looking hard at windshields what passed. Sooner or later she got to drive by. When she does, I’ll let you know.

  Thursday of July

  Two big things has happened. The first is they going to have what’s named Open House for the home what was yours and Linda’s. There’s two homes being done. Your neighbor seems made up his mind to sell, too. Maybe he just don’t like living next to the scene of the crime, as they say. There was a phone number on the Open House sign front of your and Linda’s home. I writ it down. Last night Roy and Jackie gone out and left me to sit the baby till they come home. While they was out I called the sign number. It was a man. I asked if he knowed where I might find Linda Podawalski. He asked who it was wanted to know. When I told him he said, Oh well she don’t live here. I asked him where she did live and he said, Hell if I know, and hung up. I want you to know I ain’t give up hope. Soon as that house opens up, I’m gonna go and wait there till she shows. And if she don’t, I’m gonna start asking. I’m gonna start asking anybody what might know anything about where’s she gone.

  The other big thing what happened is Roy got them frogs.

  Friday of July

  I am sure there’s something of a sin in what I done tonight. If there is I am sure Ma B will point it out and I will try to stop it then. For now, I am not gonna stop it. I am gonna keep on. I am sorry if this is hard to read. I just come in. My hand is still shaky from the excitedness. I don’t think there’s no one else in the world but Ma B what I’d tell about it, or maybe Linda, or I guess since here I am, it would include you.

  I been out to the neighbors’ yards getting their trash. I got a can and brung it over to our back yard and dumped it out right along the edge of our house. Then I brung the can back and got another from the next house and done the same. I got so I could do a dozen cans in a half hour. You shoulda seen them critters come. There musta been least two dozen. I gone out with my flashlight and just stood there for a while looking at all them eyes. They was all kinds from possum to squirrel to coons, but mostly coons, and them all coming down on all them leftovers from all them families on Abe’s Knob like something from the Bible. It made me so happy to watch them go at it I had half a mind to open the house door and just let them at all what they could ever want.

  I’m glad I didn’t though. It would have been a mess and woke Roy up for certain. Even now, while I’m writing, I can hear them going through what’s left out there. Sometimes one will kick a can or turn over something glass and I’m sure Roy is gonna start shooting. But so far it’s quiet. Except for the critter noises. And Roy’s damn frogs. They make this peep peep peep peep noise all night like some jungle what’s gonna creep under the door into My Hall. If I go over and put my mouth to the crack of the door and hiss like a snake they stop for a while. Then you can hear the scratching on the greenhouse glass. Scratch scratch scratch scratch. One of them yard critters trying to get in.

  Saturday of July

  It is late again. I am tired tired tired in my whole body, but my brain is up. My brain is thinking how sometimes things is done what makes other things done what I never seen coming. Sometimes I can’t figure the why of something no matter how strict I am on my brain, no matter how I can feel everyone else around knows it. I’ve growed to know I just got to wait. I got to wait for what’s to come and maybe it will show me the why of what come before.

  Today when I come home from the Sunoco there wasn’t even time to get off my bike before Roy was on me. He come down the drive with a gun in his hand. He told me things what if they was writ here would make the Eyes of the Lord mad on you and me both just for reading them. He said them the whole way round the house. In the back was the trash what I’d put out. It was in Jackie’s flowers and in Roy’s fishing boat and everywhere. Some was in the crap bush at the edge of the yard. Some was way in the woods looking shiny beneath the trees where them yard critters musta drug it. But some of them critters was still in the yard. You could tell by where the trash moved. Every time it did Roy shot it.

  Go get that, he said.

  He was using a gun what was too big. Sometimes I had to carry them critters in parts. He was still in his post office clothes and I guess he must have been out there shooting them since he got home from work cause there was already plenty dead ones spread in with the trash. He made me clean them all up. He said put them in big black trash bags. He shot new ones around me while I did it. When I’d brung all the dead ones and put them in the bags he gone back inside to get away from the stink. Cleaning up the rest of the trash was slow work. I tried to do it quiet so as to let what critters was still hanging on in the woods know it wasn’t me who was shooting their coon babies and possum wives. If I seen one, I threw it a piece of something good so it could tell the others what side I was on.

  When Roy come out again it was almost dark. Here, he said. He give me Jackie’s yellow rubber gloves what she uses in the sink. I tried to get them on.

  You learned your lesson? he said.

  These is too small.

  What the hell’d you do it for anyway?

  For them critters.

  He pointed at me with the gun. Boy, he said, Jackie’s gonna be mad you stretch out those gloves.

  I already done it, I told him.

  He looked happy. Before he gone back inside he said, Don’t forget there’s the neighbors’ yards too.

  Jackie was done feeding the baby and they was on their own supper by the time I come in. Roy got up. Look at that boy’s hands, he said.

  I pulled at the gloves.

  Jackie shaked her head. She said, Roy—

  Like a duck, Roy said. Boy you look like a duck.

  You owe me a pair, Jackie said to him.

  He leaned down to the baby. He looks like a duck, Roy told it.

  Roy took his gun in one hand and a flashlight in the other and said for me to follow. We gone back outside. He put the light on the yard.

  Boy, he said, You’re a pretty good worker.

  I told him, Mister Gilkey says I’m the best service attendant what he ever hired.

  I bet, Roy said. Then he said, Best you keep those gloves on.

  Jackie ain’t—

  Fuck Jackie. Roy done his neck so’s to see back in the window what showed her at the table. She was scraping what was on his plate over to hers. He put the flashlight on her, shaked it around, done a circle with it. You could see she knowed he was out there, but she didn’t even give him a look. You know what that is? he said.

  Nuhuh.

  Marriage. You want to take a ride to the dump?

  While I brung the bags and put them in the truck, he hanged the gun on the hooks in the back window and started her up and sat there for me to get in. We drived. He put the radio on talk. There wasn’t nobody on the road. They was all inside their homes. It was dark and windows gone by and dark again. I watched them lit up squares. Sometimes when the radio talked Roy talked back.

  At the dump, Roy pulled up so his headlights showed all them squares of metal wire and the chain and the lock. Behind the gate was the dump hill.

  How we gonna get in? I said.

  Roy shut off the radio. You got a cigarette, he said?

  Nuhuh.

  He told me look in the glove box. While I done it he reached back and took the gun off the hooks. He stuck his hand in the glove box next to mine and took out a box of bullets. He slid the window down. When I found the pack he took a smoke. He give me one too. Lit them both with the plug in the dash. Then he leaned out and pointed the gun at the gate and shot it.

  What you aiming for? I said.

  The lock, he said.

  I think you missed it.

 
I think you’re a fucking genius.

  He popped the old one out and put a new one in and shot again. He did the same twice more. But the next one brung so many sounds on my head so loud I don’t know what come first. There was just the bangs and then the sound in my ears afterwards and we was both got all small down in our seats beneath our arms covering our heads. There was little bits of glass in Roy’s hair. He was shaking. I thought he was scared and then I looked up and seen the windshield bust with a hole in it and I thought he was mad and maybe I oughta get out now but when I looked back at him he was laughing.

  Holy shit, he said.

  Yuhuh, I said.

  He said, Holy shit we better get those bags.

  But outside the truck he just run down to the road. He stood there looking back and forth like he was gonna cross it. The truck was off but the lights was on and it was making its beep. He still had the gun.

  Throw them over the fence, he told me.

  I was on the last one when he come up behind me. He stood there looking at the truck. How do you like that, he said.

  I don’t know, I said. I told him, I throwed them bags.

  He turned around and looked at them. They was all five over there the other side of the fence. Well that’s a good job, he said.

  I started back to the truck.

  Hey, he said. You just gonna leave them there?

  Yuhuh, I said.

  No, he said. No, I don’t think we can do that.

  I done it, I said.

  Come on, where’s your civic pride?

  I don’t got one.

  He was already climbing the fence. He gone up it with the gun. At the top, he said, Turn off the truck lights. Then he gone over the other side.

  I gone around to the cab and reached in and shut off the lights. The moon come through the windshield and showed how broke it was.

  What you gonna tell Jackie? I said.

  I couldn’t see him anymore now what the lights was off. He didn’t say nothing back. But soon as I shut the door, there come a shot. It hit the windshield. There come another and the windshield was hit again and then another just bust the glass right out.

  Quit it, I told him. Quit it.