The New Valley by Josh Weil

Author:Josh Weil
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Press
Published: 2009-06-23T04:00:00+00:00

The Booe child found him. The Toronado, stopped in the middle of the bridge. The Swain gurgling below. It was night.

The kid seemed to come out of nowhere. One moment, Stillman was sitting behind the wheel, staring at the rain shredding the headlights. The next, the child was there in the brights. It was wearing a green plastic trash bag that reached all the way to its feet and yellow dishwashing gloves that came up to its elbows. In one glove it held a flashlight. In the other, a long black pipe. Its head, jutting from a hole in the top of the bag, was covered by a red plastic fireman’s hat. The number on the front gleamed in the headlights.

The child stood there as if it was as surprised to see Stillman as Stillman was to see it. Then it walked around to the passenger door, opened it up, and got in. It slung a backpack onto the middle of the seat, put the long black pole between them. They sat in silence.

“You want to see what I got?” the child said.

“Where did you come from?” Stillman asked.

The child pointed at the river. “You want to see what I got in my bag?”

“How long have I been sitting here?” Stillman said.

The child shrugged.

Stillman peered at it. It was mostly blur. “What are you doing out? This late, in the rain.”

The child unzipped its backpack and held it up to Stillman. The backpack smelled like river mud and giblets dug out of the cavities of chickens. Something in there let out a feeble, horrible croak. Peering close, lowering the loupe, Stillman could just make out the glint of frog eyes before he jerked back at the smell.

“Most of them are dead,” the child said. It jiggled the long black pipe. “I got them with this. It’s my dad’s. He taught me how to use it.” It slid something out of the pipe: a long silver dart. “I bet there’s a hundred in there. If you take me home, I’ll give you some.”

They sat in silence.

“I don’t know how,” Stillman said. He could feel the child looking at him.

“You don’t know how to drive?”

“Oh, come on,” Stillman said. “This is my car. I bought it in 1976.”

They sat in silence again. In the child’s backpack, one of the speared frogs let out a noise like air being squeezed from a bag.

After a long while, Stillman asked, “Is it upriver or downriver?” After a while longer, he said, “Well?” And then he said, “Where. My … your home. I can’t remember where it is.”

The child pointed up the road. Stillman eased the car that way. For a minute, he rolled it forward. Then he stopped. He leaned close to the windshield, rolled the car forward again till he lost sight of the edges of the road and had to stop once more. The child was staring at him.

“You can get out and walk if you want,” Stillman said.

“Are you blind?” the child asked.

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