Boys in the Valley
Philip Fracassi
For Dominic
Introduction
Let me begin by saying this: I’ve never actually met Philip Fracassi, but I’ve known him forever.
It’s hard to explain, how a couple of phone conversations or a story exchange can engender such a sense of another person: their talent, their work ethic, their ambition. Thousands of miles may separate us, but somehow, despite all the reasons it’s absurd to claim so, I think of Philip as kin. Read his blog and you’ll see: his struggles are every writer’s struggle, his dreams every writer’s dream, and his victories, yes, are every writer’s victory.
Because, let’s face it, we’re all of us richer for his work.
Take Boys in the Valley. The set-up is pure horror: an unknown evil infests a group of young boys in an isolated orphanage in rural Pennsylvania. In lesser hands, this could easily be an off-putting tale of exploitative violence. But Philip’s is a sure and steady hand, and his execution of that premise is extraordinary. Think Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door. Here is a book that confronts our worst cruelties, without flinching, and demands answers to the great questions that plague our spirits. What is evil? Is it benign neglect, malicious intent? Some deeper, more incomprehensible darkness? Do we, as humans, possess a light strong enough to overcome such darkness? Where is God in all this? For us, against us?
It’s a book that puts me in mind of two other great works: William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s Black Narcissus. In Golding’s novel, a group of boys stranded on a deserted island fashion their own doomed civilization and sink quickly into depravity. In Powell and Pressburger’s film, a group of nuns are stationed high in the Himalayas and find themselves haunted by their own earthbound desires. Both works suggest that our environment has a hand in driving us crazy, but also that our own doom is somehow inherent to “some final, rebellious act of the haunted flesh,” to borrow a phrase from Boys in the Valley.
And yet: Philip’s book offers as much hope as despair. In my favorite passage in the novel, Father Andrew tells our hero, Peter, a young candidate for the priesthood, that “the discovery of Christ is not found in a darkened room . . . It’s found in the light. God is not found through escape from a distant place, but through the arrival of where you already are.” （Sometimes, as a writer, you read a passage in a book so achingly beautiful and perfect you wish you’d written it. Other times, you surrender to the realization that you’re not even capable of writing something that good. So it goes here.）
I could go on about Boys in the Valley—its language, its humanity, its compassion—but that would only delay your experience of reading it, which will be, by turns, gut-wrenching, terrifying, heartbreaking, and sublime.
In many ways, it feels like Philip Fracassi has always been here, working quietly among us, book after book, story after story. I hope he always is—in part because, one day, I hope to meet the guy out in sunny Los Angeles and buy him a beer, to tell him what his work has meant to me these last few years. But mostly because, these days, our world needs all the hope it can get, and as long as there are writers like Philip Fracassi toiling in the light, the darkness cannot overcome us.
Andy Davidson
Cochran, Georgia
February 10, 2021
“When I am asked how many demons there are, I answer with the words that the demon himself spoke through a demonic: ‘We are so many that, if we were visible, we would darken the sun.’”
—Father Gabriele Amorth, Chief Exorcist of the Vatican
“I’m just a man, not a hero Just a boy, who had to sing this song.”
—My Chemical Romance
Harris Valley, Pennsylvania. 1898.
Midnight.
THE MUTED THUNDER OF WAGON WHEELS WAKES ME from shallow sleep.
Outside my darkened window, the clop and hard breath of horses. A rattling wagon pulls close to the house, then slows, then stops. Men’s raised voices group together then fall apart. Disappointment veiled by revelry and drink. I hear Mother in the kitchen, dividing my attention. I throw off the blanket and run barefoot to the window. Cold air pushes through thin glass and I shiver. Father’s inky silhouette stands in the narrow lane, one arm raised. He cries out and now-distant voices reply. His arm drops to his side. He turns toward the house and appears to stumble then catch himself. The long black line of the rifle cradled in his arms points skyward. Pots clatter from the kitchen and I run to the door that separates my room from the living area—this includes the sitting room, dining room, and kitchen. Our whole world is but three rooms and a pair of outhouses, a world held together by warped wooden planks and warmed by a rusted black stove that eats coal faster than we can fill it.
I am lucky to have my own room, even if it’s small. Though I’m little, I’m not able to take three large steps in any direction. Father says I’m a runt but Mother says a nine-year-old boy has room to grow. I hope to get big, but not so big I can’t fit in my room. I like it too much.
I see more clearly now because Mother has lit the kitchen lanterns. There’s enough space between my bedroom door and the frame to stick a finger, so light comes through easy, coats the dark walls and disrupts the shadows in the corners and beneath my bed. I step softly to the door—it wouldn’t do for them to know I’m up—and put an eye to the gap. If I swivel my head, I can see the entire kitchen and the dining room table, but not much else. I’m cold in nothing but long johns but want to hear about the trip. Mother has the stove going and I smell the warming onion soup she’d taken from the icebox. She puts on a kettle for coffee. Father slams the door and the house rattles. Mother wipes her hands on her apron in a way she does when she’s upset, like she’s wringing it dry.
Father enters my field of vision, all beard and worn leather. A beat-to-hell Stetson wedged over black hair. He pulls out a chair, sits heavily. The rifle butt clunks against the floor and he looks at the old Winchester as if willing it to speak.
“Nothing?” Mother says. “Nothing at all?”
Father waits for the gun to answer but it stays silent.
“I’ll have what’s in that pot, Sissy. And some coffee.”
“It’s heatin’，” she says, stirring. She keeps her eye on the stove, off my father. “You’ve been drinking.”
I inspect him more closely for signs of drunkenness—wondering what my mother sees that makes it apparent—but nothing stands out. He looks tired and wronged, but that’s his natural state.
“Sheriff is shooting poachers. Land’s dry.” Father shakes his head. He takes off the Stetson, sets it on the table. He still holds the rifle.
I want to open the door and go to him. Sit with him and talk like men about the Sheriff and the land.
The kettle starts to whistle.
“What are we gonna do, Jack? The garden can provide some, but we need meat. Winter’s coming.”
Father runs a hand through his long hair. “Please . . .” he says, and I tremble at his voice as well as the cold. “Shut up, Sissy. Just shut up and bring me some coffee.”
I will my mother to stop. To leave him be. She knows what he’s like. I close my eyes for a moment and silently pray. Then I watch.