This is the writer's voice new fiction from the New Yorker. I'm Deborah Treisman,

fiction at the New Yorker.

On this episode of the writer's voice, we'll hear David Wright Valadee read his story,

The Sand Banks 1861, from the August 31st 2020 issue of the magazine. Wright Valadee is the author of a non-fiction book,

Fire on the Beach, recovering the lost story of Richard Etheridge and the P Island lifesavers,

and a young adult novel, A Way Running.

This story was adapted from his novel in progress, Nayana Brother, which will be published in 2022.

Now here's David Wright Faladee.

The Sand Banks, 1861.

We were just boys, 10, 11 and 12 year olds, 5 colored and one white. But for our small clothes, each of us was most all naked. We stood on the rickety reach of the pier, its

planks' care laid but well used, us colored boys black glistening in the noontime bright, the

white one, not yet leathered like the sunbeat beasts that free range

the island.

Our bridges and coveralls and burlap shirts lay pell-mel near the spot on the shore where

Ebo-Jo meekins knelt, inspecting the line of the skiff he was refitting.

The old Negro was either 50 or a thousand.

The one age as imponderable to us is the other, and he paid us no more mind than we did

him. On the water, cleat-hitch to the pier,

rock the dugout full of oysters that we were supposed to be faring over to Ashby's

harbor. Up and down it rolled with each leap or dive as we plunge into the water one at a time or in twos and sometimes all six at once.

I was young, square-shouldered but elseways long of limb, with knots for knees and elbows, and I climb from the Corotan sound up onto the dugout. Straddling it, a foot on each gunnel, I began walking its edge. The woods rough grain dug into the pads of my feet with each

shuffle step forward. The other boys waited nearby, wandering at my balancing act. You look like one of Uncle John's barncats, Patrick, the white

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