Valley Of The Shadow

VALLEY-r%1t5HADOW r HRJSTOPHLR DAVIS VALLEY OF THE SHADOW With simple clarity and enormous emotional power, Christopher Davis's new novel tells a story of great love and great tragedy. It is a story about AIDS and two young men who have it, a story about their love and about what it is like for the young to die. But it is also a story of flawless summer days and starlit nights, of mountain lakes and blue-white Maine winters, a story of parents and children and families and holidays, and of the tangled web of love and loss and loyalty that is our life. Beautifully written, with a poet's eye for the singular detail, Valley of the Shadow is sad and funny and consoling, a wise book of serene courage and extraordinary, crystal beauty. 0 f- z "<> uJ zuJ CHRISTOPHER DAVIS's first novel was Joseph and the Old Man (SMP '86, Stonewall Inn Editions '87). He lives and writes in New York City. Jacket illustration by Lisa Desimini St. Martin's Press 175 Fifth Avenue New York, N.Y. 10010 " alley of the Shadow by Christopher Davis St. Martin's Press New York VALLEY OF THE SHADOW. Copyright © 1988 by Christopher Davis. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010. Design by Jean Wisenbaugh Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Davis, Christopher. Valley of the shadow. I. Title. PS3554.A9329V35 1988 ISBN 0-312-01843-6 10 9 8 813'.54 First Edition 7 6 5 4 88-1936 3 2 Acknowledgments This book started as a short story and would have remained one without the advice of my editor, Michael Denneny, and it would not have been written at all without the understanding and support of my lover, Mark Blasius. My thanks and gratitude to them both. Additionally, I must thank the many people who read this as a manuscript or who encouraged me while it was being written, among them Olivia Joyner, Lenny Tropp, Carolyn Francis, Virginia Washington, Asja Cronin, Franklin Mitchell, and Natalie Hurst, and Barbara Zappavigna for giving me the time to complete it. Finally, I must, as always, thank my dear friend Michael 0., who, over the years, has had the patience to read almost everything I have written and comment wisely on it. Chapter] I can remember wben I was young, not very young, not an infant as some people claim to remember, but still young, when my body was weak and small. I remember my father teaching me how to swim. I was afraid of the water when I was young and small and I remember my father taking me out into it and holding me under my stomach and then letting me go. I 1 Christopher Davis cannot remember any more than that: I cannot remember if I gasped and choked and sank and had to be lifted out of the water with strong arms or if I somehow made it to the shore, but I know that now I love the water; I love to feel my body moving through it and I love to feel the surf of a roaring ocean breaking over my head and I like the feeling of swimming out until I am enervated and then drifting back, exhausted but strong enough, strong enough. In the summers when I was young I swam in a pond that was long and wide and deep, and between the pond and the old stone house was an aged apple orchard, the trees lined on the rises of the rolling lawn. There was a garden beyond the trees, not a small domestic garden with a few straggly offerings of flowers, but a garden, bordered on one side by a row