The New Valley

by Josh Weil

  When we go back to that house, I said, We gonna pick up your stuff?

  No, she said.

  I drived on.

  Geoffrey, she said. You can’t come by that house no more. You got to stop looking for me.

  I—

  Hush, she said. Just hush and let me talk, okay? After I’m done you can ask me whatever you got to ask me and I’ll tell you. Brian didn’t want me to, but I told him I owe it to you. He said that you’d go to the—that you’d cause us trouble. I told him you wouldn’t. I told him you were too sweet. Remember in the hospital when you said you wouldn’t tell nobody what I’m going to tell you if you knew it would hurt me? Well, this would hurt me a lot. I know I don’t have a right to ask you, but if you told it would ruin my life, Geoffrey. And my life is pretty good for the first time since almost ever. Can you understand what that means? What it means to have that?

  I nodded.

  And if I tell you what you want so that there’s no more questions you won’t come try and see me again?

  How bad did he hurt you?

  My ex? she said.

  Waker, I said.

  He broke my cheek. And my nose.

  I looked at her. I said, You can’t tell.

  It’s pretty much healed, she said. He wasn’t supposed to hurt you so bad, Geoffrey. I want you to know that. That wasn’t the plan.

  I know, I told her. It was my fault.

  No. No it wasn’t your fault.

  You don’t know, but it was my fault he come.

  No, she said. No it was Brian who called him. And it was me who let Brian know when to call. It was him and me who set it up, Geoffrey. You didn’t do nothing wrong. Take that left, she said. It’ll bring us around back to 33.

  After a while I said, Was Brian in the room the whole time?

  In the bedroom?

  Was he the other one in the room what told you to run?

  He was across the yard, she said.

  In the neighbor’s house?

  He was our neighbor. It used to be one big family plot. They split it up when their dad died. He could see everything that was going on, Geoffrey. That was supposed to make it safe, so he could see as soon as Waker came in. You were supposed to just get hit once or twice and then Waker would hit me once or twice and that’s when Brian would come in and put a stop to it before it got too bad.

  It took him a long time, I said.

  I know, she said.

  What held him up?

  He said lots of things. They were a pack of lies. What held him up was that he knew about me and you and he was jealous. By the time he come, I had more of your blood on me than my own. He says that worked out fine, that it just looked extra good for the neighbors when I went out on the street and started yelling. It’s true it helped us in court, but I want you to know I was mad at him about that for a long time. I still am. If I were you, I’d hate him.

  Up ahead there was 33 going through the valley.

  I told her, Roy says you’s the worst kind of woman.

  Do you believe that? she said.

  I don’t know.

  You should.

  I don’t know what he means.

  He’s right, she said. You shouldn’t just hate Brian. It was both of us who did the plan. That’s what it was, Geoffrey. It was a trick. When it comes down to it, it was just an awful, awful trick. And it worked.

  Because it got Waker in jail?

  Because it got us this. She moved her hand at the car window and the road and the land what was all around us. When it comes down to it, she said, it’s really that simple.

  Us? I said.

  Brian and me, she said.

  I don’t understand, I told her.

  Who was going to believe that I was having an affair with a—you don’t have to understand everything, Geoffrey. I told the judge, we told the judge, that me and you had become friends, that I was like a mother to you, that I took care of you and they put Waker in jail and gave us all we were asking and it worked.

  The road hit 33. We stopped. To the right was back to Ripplemead. The left was back toward her log house. She looked at me like she was waiting. I looked straight at the bigger road what crossed in front.

  I said, When you told me I was a man you’d want to sleep with was that true?

  A car come along 33 and passed by and gone on. She was still looking at me. A truck come by. When it was gone, she said, Take a right.

  That’s back to Ripplemead, I said.

  Just take a right. I want to show you something.

  We drived in quiet and the sun heated up the car fast. I rolled my window down and she kept hers up and the wind come in and made a shaking sound between us.

  At the big curve just before it goes down the hill to Harts Run she said, Let’s go up there, okay? It was a brick building with big windows broke of their glass. I took the drive. It was gravel and loud till we parked. Come on, she said.

  She got out and I followed her. There was a chain locked over the front doors but she walked past it and gone around down the hill to the side. There was a small door there come off its hinges and she asked me to help her move it and then we was inside. The stairs was wooden and some was busted but we gone up anyhow. We come out in a hall what looked like a school. It was in too bad shape for nobody to use. Her walking and me walking it was both real quiet and real loud like you only get in big places what’s been empty a long time. She gone in a door and I gone in after her. It had the chairs what’s attached to the desks and a blackboard and everything, but it was all covered in dust what hadn’t been touched in a long time. She drug her arm cross the big desk at the front. Sit down next to me, would you? she said. We sat there.

  When I was a girl, she said, I went to school here. It wasn’t a good school, I don’t think. Anyway, I wasn’t a good student. I don’t think my teachers cared one way or another about me and I didn’t have many friends. Everyone I know now always says those are the hardest years, how tough it is to fit in, how mean kids can be. This was my homeroom in seventh grade. I’ve never been as happy again as I was right here. Do you see what I’m trying to say?

  I thought you said life was pretty good now?

  It is. I’m not really talking about me. I’m talking about you. I’m talking about how mean adults can be. What I’m saying is that’s how it is, Geoffrey. Outside of here, out there, that’s how it is. I am sorry for what I did, Geoffrey. I am sorry. But I also know I’ve had bad things done to me. And I’ve done other bad things. And there isn’t no one I know who hasn’t. Except maybe some kids somewhere. Except maybe you.

  I done bad things, I said. I done things what hurt people. I writ a letter to your husband. I was the one what told him to come to your house that night.

  Why do you keep on with that? She said. It wasn’t your letter.

  You didn’t know about it, I said.

  Of course I did, she said. You left it at Brian’s work.

  I left it for Waker, I said.

  Waker never saw it, she said.

  I wanted to do it right, I said. I wanted to have it out like growed men.

  Grown men don’t do it like that, Geoffrey.

  I done it like—

  They do it a lot worse.

  No, I told her. No, I done it. I done it.

  I stood off the desk and walked into the middle of the room but when I got there I didn’t know where I was walking or what direction was out. I was still talking, but I can’t now hear in the memory of my ears what I was saying. I can’t hear it. Then I stopped and gone quiet. I sat down on the ground where I was.

  She come over to me then and got down next to me. She tried to look at me but I wouldn’t let her. She reached around and put her hand on my chest. Maybe she could feel my heartbeat. I tried to feel hers through her hand. I couldn’t feel nothing under her fingers but the warmness and the weight.

  All the whys there is. Or even one. Why in the end she telled me how it was. Why for all I tried it was Brian who had in
him the thing she wanted for her heart. Why the Eyes of the Lord didn’t see that in her the first night we met. Or if they did, why didn’t He let me know? Why did He let her break them rules and kiss me like I was a full adult? Why did He give her such elbows what come to such perfect points and let me love to hold them in my hands?

  I do not understand a single one. The only thing I know is this. You most like do. You most like understand them all. I believe anybody but me would.

  The whole drive back to Roy and Jackie’s I wished it was you, Waker, who was out and going home. Wished I was where you is instead. You is the one who belongs here among them of your kind. Them all I passed on my way through Ripplemead, out at the end of their own drives getting their own mail from their own boxes, them talking streetside easy back and forth and no looks on their faces like what they would give me, them ones who drived by in their trucks sitting quiet beside their wives. Ma B says Hate is just Hell and Gate put together to get you through to the fires more quick. Well in the end she is only one of them too.

  It was still before noon when I got home. The house was empty. In My Hall I got together all what I could think of and put it in my bag. It wasn’t much. I gone into the kitchen and took as many cans of all kinds as the rest of my bag would hold. On the table by the baby’s chair I left Jackie her keys. In Roy’s Office I seen the gun. I looked till I found the bullets. I took them too.

  I left the door from the kitchen to Roy’s Office hanging open. Then I left the door open from Roy’s Office to My Hall. I gone into Roy’s Bahamas and jammed that door open, too. The sun was coming in almost straight down. It hit the fishes so they shined all kinds of colors. The frogs gone quiet at my sound. I walked over the sand to the door what gone from the Bahamas to the backyard. I opened it and stuck it open and left.

  Tonight the yard critters will come. I can see in my brain how it will be. The first ones will sneak up slow to sniff it out. Then the rest will come. From the yard the Bahamas will be dark and all full of them hot weather plants and them frogs what glow blue hopping around. The moon, if there is one, is sure to shine on the water, and on the fishes sleeping in it, and on the eyes of all them critters coming on. It’s gonna be a mess. If I’d time I would have done it all down the block. Done it all through the whole town. I’d have liked to see the hour them coons got into all them homes. All them living rooms and bedrooms and kitchens and lives of all them Ripplemead people what watched me eat my supper in the Pine Top and waved at me from behind the window of their cars and knowed me how they knowed me all them years.

  Them years is done. When the coons come for the Bahamas, when they gone into My Hall, when they find their way into the house, I won’t be there. Sometime back around noon I got on my bike and rode out. I gone out through Ripplemead, past the Sunoco where I was supposed to be at work, past Crigger’s Den to 42 what I took all the way out to the national forest till I seen them big tents like Roy said all done of branches and tarps out by a dirt road what I gone up till I hit the Swain. I don’t know how long it took. But the sun looked like it didn’t have more than two three hours left by the time I hit the bridge. I thought about bringing my bike the rest of the way, but I didn’t see how or what good it would even be to one like me where I was going. I left it roadside what some regular man or boy might find. I untied Roy’s gun and took my bag and gone down through the brush to the creek bank and started up along the rocks. Sometimes the creek run straight so’s I could see way up ahead how the woods was thick and the rocks come down straight off the ridges in walls what squeezed.

  This is the story of all them Sarvers how I think it gone. I don’t think Ma B was fully right nor Dad Kreager, neither. I think the truth of it lays somewhere in between. I think Ma B was right about them all was diminished. They wasn’t regular men or boys or women or girls. I think they was like me. But I think she was wrong about why they gone. I expect they didn’t choose what they wanted to go no more than what they got kicked out. I expect they just seen how towns wasn’t made for ones like them. They spent their lives trying to fit into places made for them who was natural, always trying to get back to the last or onto the next, and always winding up between. I expect they just got tired of trying. And so they all of them up and left and come to the Swain. And I’ll tell you what. Most like they did okay. Most like they made them mills and had them hogs and did the farming of the trees. Most like they come to fit a place in this valley for them who’s like us. I don’t know why they all disappeared. I believe maybe they didn’t. I believe maybe they just gone deeper in the hills. Maybe they got cabins up on the ridges. Maybe they still come down here, bring their hogs to water, gather what’s left of them plants they once growed. Maybe they come down at night and walk through here and go to the old dance hall and have themselves a time.

  I think it must be the dance hall what I’m in now. It’s big enough and there is a stage I think what has falled in and a piano sitting in the middle of the room where it would be in everyone’s way. Unless they danced around it in a big circle, which I guess they might. There’s a bench what runs around the edge of the whole room. The floor is pretty good still, though there is one corner of the place what has a tree growed up through it and out the roof. The roof is pretty good too except one, two spots. I can see the sky through them and it is getting late. I got here two hours ago and I been writing since. Soon I’m gonna have to leave my spot on the bench and get up and go see if there is a better one of the other houses for me to sleep. When I come up the creek I seen the orchards first. The trees was big as I ever seen and twisted up and most of them dead. But on some of them high branches I seen cherries. I think the fields of rice must be gone, but just before I seen the first houses I come upon the gardens. They was overgrowed with all kinds of plants gone giant wild. I come on a old hog-slaughtering post what’s mostly rotted. In between all the houses is trails worn down. I expect it’s by the use of the deer what must come down here some big amount. Their droppings is everywhere.

  One day when it goes cold and frosts and them first snow come I’ll get one with Roy’s rifle. I’ll make a suit out of it like that boy Sam done way back on his mountain. I know the ways of it. I know all the traps what he done and all the ways he kept living on and I will even make a pair of gloves. Rabbit fur gloves. A hat. Might be I get me a woods critter what to scratch behind the ears and talk to and spill my heart, as they say. I believe I’ll grow a beard. I believe that woods critter will warn me if ever anyone tries to come my way.

  If one of them old time Sarvers does come down from some home what he made way up there on the ridge I guess I’ll know it woods critter or not. I guess he’d know me too. I seen they done that church roof in pieces of wood and some up there the years ain’t got to and what ain’t lost their color and looked pretty new to me. I aim to sleep there. Let them come some night and find me in the church they made. Might be it’s just one old boy coming through the trees holding a light. Might be a whole family of Sarvers. I wonder if they kept them mules. If I heard all them mule feet coming down through the leaves what’s falled and all dry and noisy till they come out onto them deer trails of dirt and then towards me in my church I wonder how would that sound?

  Through the roof, the sky is showing me to wrap it up. I don’t guess there’s any reason for me to write you no more. You and me have come together and gone our ways already without you having yet knowed. I will keep what I have writ safe in my bag till maybe someone come along who’s going out to town. Maybe one of them like me what come here before will pass through with a load of wood they’s taking down the river to sell. If I see anyone I’ll give them this, and ask they get it to you somehow. I don’t know if you and me will understand the other. I guess that is not my worry now. My brain was never fit for it anyhow. You is of a different kind. Of the normal world of towns. I have gone back where I should have never gone away from in the first. So long from Sarverville. I would think of something more better to end on, but I have a lot to do in t
he last light what remains.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I owe deep thanks to the men and women of Sinking Creek, Virginia, who held out their hands to me and didn’t shake too hard. Alan Lugar, who opened his truck door for me and taught me most of what I know about beef. Russell Lugar, who taught Alan, and who told me stories by the glow of his space heater. Lonnie Oliver, for letting me walk his land.

  How blessed I’ve been to work with the team at Grove, especially Elisabeth Schmitz, whose thoughtful editing and care for this book helped lift these novellas another notch. PJ Mark, who brought me to her, is all a writer could ever wish for in an agent—and then some. And I’m grateful to Pia Ehrhardt for introducing me to him. She is part of a community of fellow writers and artists—Liz Gilbert, Porochista Khakpour, Margo Rabb, Suzanne Rivecca, Laura van den Berg, and Paul Yoon—whose support and friendship sustain me. Many of them I met at Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, or Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, or in the MFA creative writing program at Columbia University, all of which helped in getting me to here.

  I’ve been lucky to study under professors as talented and generous in the classroom as with the pen: John Casey, Robert Cohen, Jonathan Dee, David Gates, Maureen Howard, Binnie Kirshenbaum, Ben Marcus, Patty O’Toole, and Helen Schulman. I’m particularly indebted to Vincent Cardinal, who taught me my first rules; Christine Schutt, who helped me learn how to break them; and, most of all, my mentor and friend Mark Slouka.

  With their wise and generous criticism, my dear friends Katherine Fausset, Michael George, Elizabeth Kadetsky, Robin Kirman, Johanna Lane, and Nazgol Shifteh each helped shape parts of this book; Mike Harvkey and Ben Weil did so with all of it. Ellen McKeown’s mark is also on these pages, as much as it is on me; I am grateful for both.

  Finally, none of this would be, or matter, without my family: my mother (my first editor) and my father—no boy who wanted to learn to write could have asked for a better place to do it than within their arms; my step-mother, a kindred spirit; my brother, whose mind and heart guided me from the beginning; and my grandparents, Shirley and Joseph Boscov, who gave me the freedom to pursue that most impractical and essential thing we call our dreams.