The Boy Detective

by Roger Rosenblatt

  How do you walk in the world? That’s no trick. The how is easy. Or if it is not always easy, it is at least clear. How to walk in the world? Walk as the private eye walks. Do right, play fair, ignore the trash, and keep your nose clean. But why does one walk in the world? That’s another matter. Which brings me to you, as ever, and you to me. Will you be my partner? Shall we do our walking side by side? What do you say? See? I wasn’t tracking you, after all—through the fog and the screams and the gunshots. I might have thought I was tracking you. But all I ever wanted was to face you, in the blessed, blazing light.

  And now it is past midnight. And the park is visible only in contours, ghost-trees that menace us no longer. I am alone no longer, and neither are you. So why do we walk in the world? The pitch of the rooftops, and the pulse of the clouds, and the black water tanks, and the trees reaching up and the people reaching up. And you, pal. Guilty, blameless you.

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to Ginny Rosenblatt, Dan Halpern, Jane Freeman, Libby Edelson, Gloria Loomis, Leon Wieseltier, Julia Masnik, Lou Ann Walker, David Lynn, and Kay Allaire.

  About the Author

  ROGER ROSENBLATT’s essays for Time and The NewsHour on PBS have won two George Polk Awards, the Peabody, and an Emmy. He is the author of six off-Broadway plays and sixteen books, including the national bestsellers Kayak Morning, Making Toast, Unless It Moves the Human Heart, Rules for Aging, the novel Lapham Rising, and Children of War, which won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He has held the Briggs-Copeland appointment in the teaching of writing at Harvard, and is currently Distinguished Professor of English and Writing at Stony Brook University.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  Also by Roger Rosenblatt

  Kayak Morning

  Unless It Moves the Human Heart

  Making Toast

  Beet

  Lapham Rising

  Children of War

  Rules for Aging

  Witness

  Anything Can Happen

  Black Fiction

  Coming Apart

  The Man in the Water

  Consuming Desires

  Life Itself

  Where We Stand

  Credits

  Cover design by Steve Attardo

  Cover photograph © by SuperStock

  Copyright

  Portions of this book have appeared, in different forms, in the New Republic, the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, and Time magazine.

  THE BOY DETECTIVE. Copyright © 2013 by Roger Rosenblatt. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  FIRST EDITION

  ISBN 978-0-06-224133-7

  EPUB Edition © NOVEMBER 2013 ISBN 9780062241344

  13 14 15 16 17 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  About the Publisher

  Australia

  HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

  Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street

  Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

  http://www.harpercollins.com.au

  Canada

  HarperCollins Canada

  2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor

  Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada

  http://www.harpercollins.ca

  New Zealand

  HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited

  P.O. Box 1

  Auckland, New Zealand

  http://www.harpercollins.co.nz

  United Kingdom

  HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

  77-85 Fulham Palace Road

  London, W6 8JB, UK

  http://www.harpercollins.co.uk

  United States

  HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

  10 East 53rd Street

  New York, NY 10022

  http://www.harpercollins.com