I'd Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them Read online

  Marcus can’t hear the tiny pings that come fast and fill up his visor. This is the first time he has pushed the bike past sixty, and he can barely see. He dreads removing one of his hands, because the bike shakes. Marcus knows that if Wintric is at the Top of the World, Wintric could spot him, but is he watching? Does Wintric have his pistol with him? Marcus has heard the betting stories, and he’s scared but wired. His vision slowly disappears behind the crushed flies and gnats and mosquitoes.

  The bow his mother gave him for his eighteenth birthday wraps around his chest and squeezes him. He has put an arrow down the back of his shirt, tip up, rubbing against his helmet. He has no plan, and he struggles to organize his thoughts, but somewhere among the whirling emotions and projections he feels Kristen’s hands on him once again. He knows he’s being used in a way he doesn’t fully understand, but she almost invited him in. The road is empty and black, and Marcus wrenches the accelerator and squints.

  Wintric hears the bike. The throttle sound varies depending on the ridge, the turn, and the grade. Even though he sips at the Scotch slowly, he has refilled his glass twice before the bike’s gravely throat is on him, the bike’s light swinging around the final turn.

  Wintric was shocked when Kristen told him about the relationship with Marcus—the shy soda fountain kid in all black, a half-capable wrestler. He didn’t believe her at first, could not understand how she could go for Marcus, even if their families were close. As time went on Wintric came to believe that her choice was more a comment on him, that he and Marcus were somehow equals, he and the kid who dished out ice cream and dreamed of the mill. This thought has cornered Wintric, and since his return he’s watched Marcus around town; watched as he rides his rundown motorcycle back and forth to work, as he shops at the market where Kristen works. Wintric has spied him jogging in the street and wondered if Marcus purposely runs by the Ellises’ place. Wintric’s parents’ house is out of the way, but once or twice a week Marcus jogs by with his jerking, elongated steps, his elbows pinned. The stride is outrageous and pitiful, and Wintric envies every whole-body step. He realizes they might not even be equals.

  The motorcycle pulls in twenty yards from Wintric’s chair, and the bike’s headlight shines at his feet. Marcus removes his helmet and unfurls the weapon over his head. Wintric remains seated, bypasses his glass, and lifts the bottle to his lips. Marcus fumbles badly in his attempt to place an arrow on the string, and Wintric knows that he has never used the bow before.

  “Hey, can you take the other half of this foot off for me?”

  Marcus draws the bow.

  “You’re drunk.”

  “You’re not?”

  “I’ll kill you here.”

  “Lower. There, I know it’s dark. I don’t know you.”

  “Don’t believe me, you son of a bitch?”

  “I believe you, Marcus. But right now, tonight, it doesn’t matter. Go, buddy. Take the town. I’m leaving here.”

  “You’re not leaving.”

  “I don’t even know you, Marcus.”

  “You know me. Stop saying that.”

  “Seriously, pull up a seat. Tell me.”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  “I don’t know you.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Have her, man. She won’t help. She’s nice, though, right? Goddamn. If she was from somewhere else, she’d be a catch.”

  “You know me.”

  “I see you running your marathon, stud. What you training for? You training for the mill? You running the Fourth of July Fun Run? Marcus, you badass. You should join the army, man. They’ll love you. You can serve ice cream all day long.”

  “I’ll shoot you. You hit her, I hit you.”

  Wintric squints. “Hey, you wearing red instead of black? Mixing it up, hero?”

  The sharp whipping sound of the arrow cuts the air above Wintric’s head.

  “There you go! Come on, Marcus.” Wintric drops his leg off the log, yells out in pain, and tumbles off his chair to the ground. He rolls, clutching his foot, stops on his back, and pulls his left knee to his chest.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  Marcus has frozen in place, holding the bow away from his body. Wintric braces himself on his elbows, breathing hard, the pain mixing fast with the Scotch.

  “You brought one arrow?” Wintric says. He waits, and when Marcus says nothing, Wintric laughs. “Fucking Robin Hood.”

  Marcus lowers himself to the ground.

  “Her shirt is torn,” he says.

  On the causeway below, two patrol cars scream out. The red and blue lights play in the dim landscape.

  “We’ve got five minutes,” Wintric says. “What you want to do?”

  “Kristen called the cops,” Marcus says. The words arrive as a question and a statement and he tries to paste them together. He feels himself fingering the tear in her shirt.

  “She called me,” Wintric says.

  Marcus pauses for a few seconds, jumps to his feet, and rushes to the bike, but before he gets there he stops and lifts his bow. In one fluid motion he spins and hurls it toward town, launching it high in the air with a grunt.

  The cops disappear, negotiating the twenty-three switchbacks, two road changes, and a navigable stream. Wintric pulls himself back into his seat. The town lights flicker.

  “I’m pressing charges, asshole,” Wintric says. “You better run, boy. Run. I know you, Marcus. I know you, man. County jail, bitch.”

  Marcus jumps on his bike, starts it up, and speeds off.

  Wintric listens to the sound of the departing motorcycle and the incoming sirens as they mesh together for a while before the rising sirens take over. He will recognize the cops who arrive. Everyone in town knows all the cops—there are only eight—and these guys will be pissed that they had to come out to the Top of the World, but everything should be fine as long as he doesn’t give them any hell. Wintric brushes at his arms, knocking off pine needles he picked up from the fall. He reaches for his glass but finds the bottle first and uncorks, then drinks. The cops are close and he anticipates a spotlight in his eyes, but he has a few seconds, and he looks out over the town’s lights below, a pocket of amber glow in the California blackness.

  Kristen has her brown pants on and reaches for her white work shirt in her closet. Last night Wintric called her after the cops pulled up to the Top of the World. She forgets much of what he said, but in the end the cops said they would talk to her later and Wintric said he would stop by sometime. Apparently the warning call was enough for him, but he was drunk, and she’s unsure if he’ll remember or if anything will change. She’ll answer a couple more questions after work, but she guesses everything will blow over in a week and find a comfortable place in the local gossip. No one has heard from Marcus, but Kristen expects to see him in the store.

  She buttons up her shirt and eyes the box at the top of her closet, the one with Wintric’s hair. She’s running late, but she grabs her footstool and brings the box down. Narrow and long, like a box for a sword. It has a layer of gray dust over its white cover. Kristen sits on the side of her bed with the box in her lap. She thinks about blowing the dust off the top. She thinks about writing a word with her finger, but no words come to her.

  9

  Redwoods

  SEVEN WEEKS PREGNANT and nauseated enough to search for the women’s bathroom, Kristen sweats in the “Express—twenty items or less” line at the Susanville Walmart and tries to calm her stomach and mind; she regrets the Jack in the Box tacos she had for lunch, and her mind replays her answer to Wintric’s question about an abortion: “I don’t know.”

  Married for two weeks, she wears a solitaire diamond ring and a silver wedding band, and while she hasn’t asked him, she guesses Wintric purchased the set from the same store where she now stands and vises down on the shopping cart’s handle. She’s still acclimating to the minor weight of the set and the protruding diamond, and the inside of her left-hand middle and pinkie fingers are sore f
rom the new rub.

  She swallows and fingers the sweat away from her face. She reaches into her purse and grabs the small plastic baggie of saltines she totes around, selects a cracker, and places it on her tongue.

  Unloading her cart onto the conveyer belt, she surveys her soon-to-be purchases: a whistle, a gray T-shirt, a new sports bra, dry-erase markers, a dry-erase board with basketball court markings, an iron-on Coach logo, the Dead Rising video game, the latest People magazine, three gallons of milk, tortillas, instant coffee, deodorant, toothpaste, and athletic socks.

  She guesses the Walmart checkout man is new, exhausted, or stupid, because he struggles to locate the barcode on everything he attempts to scan, and while she counts out her sixteen items before the plastic bar that separates her things from the cowboy-hatted man’s stuff in front of her, she realizes that the conveyer belt isn’t moving, that everything is taking too long for her trembling stomach and esophagus. After another cracker and two more minutes of nervous gulping, the cowboy has his total, and he reaches into his front jeans pocket and brandishes a leather-bound checkbook, then asks for a pen. These acts will delay her bathroom entrance by a minute, probably more.

  Miraculously, the second saltine has helped, offering a sliver of reprieve—enough, she thinks, to get her through the check writing. She glances left, to the inviting stand of magazines and candy, and catches a photo of a sultry-grinned Fergie, light blue Cosmopolitan at the top, deep red “THE SEX HE WANTS” below. Next to Cosmopolitan, Time magazine, “LIFE IN HELL: A BAGHDAD DIARY.” Next to Time, GQ and a flirty-grinned Justin Timberlake, “THE PRIVATE LIFE OF JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE.”

  Kristen pops another cracker. Her esophagus and stomach downshift from tremble to sway.

  The checkout man offers an enthusiastic “Hi there,” smiles, and fumbles with the sports bra, turning the garment in his hands although the barcoded tag dangles near the clasp. Brand new, she thinks. Why in the world would they give him the express line?

  When he fists the first gallon of milk, Kristen says, “It’s on the front.”

  “Thanks,” he says, smirking with a hint of newfound annoyance. “What team?” he says, holding up the Coach logo.

  “Basketball,” she says, swallowing a cracker. “Girl’s JV. Over in Chester.”

  “The Chester Volcanoes,” he says. “Cool mascot.”

  It’s then that she spots Marcus twenty feet from her, pushing a cart full of groceries toward the exit with his girlfriend, Stacey. Kristen lowers her head, then peeks back up. There’s no desire or longing, just a nervous wish to avoid eye contact. She’s heard that Marcus got on with Caltrans and is making good union money working on the paving crew, and there’s a town rumor that Stacey did time for simple assault on a girl over in Greenville who called her a drunk Indian, which, as far as Kristen knows, is a fairly accurate description.

  Occasionally Kristen sees Marcus’s blue Chevy truck rolling down Main Street in Chester, heading south to the aging, valley-bound highways, but he no longer shops at the Holiday market, where she still works, preferring, she’d guessed correctly, to make the forty-five-minute drive to this Walmart. Kristen watches them walk away, Stacey’s hand on Marcus’s back, her long black hair hanging down to the top of her jeans.

  Kristen pays with cash and moves toward the exit, but pauses by stacks of on-sale bottled water, Lucky Charms, binders, and dog food. She doesn’t want to run into Marcus or Stacey returning their cart or discover that they’ve parked next to her, so she glances over at the bathroom entrance and grabs another saltine from her purse and peeks at a clock on the wall. She watches the second hand and decides to wait three minutes. She hears the old-man greeter welcoming people to the store, and she digs out her phone and sees the background photo of Wintric and her at a San Francisco Giants game.

  Her father had given them the tickets for her birthday, five rows up from the Giants’ dugout. The Pirates intentionally walked Barry Bonds three times, but the afternoon was sunny and the stadium was even better than she had imagined, with the bay right there, the eastbound ocean breeze in her hair, and she and Wintric each downing two overpriced hot dogs before the fifth inning. In the phone’s background picture Wintric has his arm around her and she’s tucked into him, smiling under her black-and-orange-brimmed Giants hat. It was that night in an Oakland Holiday Inn Express, sunburned and exhausted and happy, that she became pregnant.

  Kristen stands near the Walmart exit, one minute into her allotted three. She texts Wintric that she’s about to head home, that maybe they should order pizza for dinner. She knows he won’t see the text right away, as he’ll be finishing up splitting the pile of wood he hauled home yesterday. It was another example of his four-month roll of energy and optimism, which Kristen wants to believe can last forever, even if she talks herself into taking everything a day at a time.

  When she took his last name it seemed like something she had known would always happen, something inescapable but comfortable. Already her new name sounds familiar: Kristen Ellis. She thinks of Wintric splitting the wood into fireplace-sized pieces, and she believes the war won’t live in him forever—at least not as it has—that there are too many things that happen in a life for the past always to live downstage. She believes that people are always someone different the next day. Already she sees Wintric anew as they laugh together watching Arrested Development, or as he hums while they walk along the boggy shore of Willow Lake, or as he takes in the Chester Fourth of July parade, which she hopes one day he’ll walk in with the rest of the veterans.

  Recently Wintric has replaced all the ceiling fans in their place, dropped down to two OxyContins a day, with plans to kick them altogether, and surprised Kristen with lunch—freshly made turkey sandwiches—a few times at work. She trusts these things are not signs, they aren’t teasers; this is who he is. Still, she understands days rarely pass by easily, regardless of his motivation. She navigates this world and lives through the days just as he does. In the past week she’s put in five thirteen-hour days at the Holiday supermarket, changed the oil in their car, and finished the sixth Harry Potter book, all under the stress of work as a new assistant manager at Holiday and the pressing debate of whether to keep this child.

  Kristen swallows, her dry throat constricts, and she feels slightly dizzy. She walks over to the drinking fountain and sips, then tracks the clock’s second hand. At three minutes she makes her move outside, playfully scolding herself for her cowardice. She surveys the parking lot for Marcus’s truck, then watches the Chevy depart from the back of the lot by the Jack in the Box.

  The sun is hot on her body as she loads the items into her car’s empty back seat. She starts the car and turns onto the highway that will take her back to Chester. She rolls down Susanville’s main thoroughfare, aware that Marcus and Stacey are a few minutes in front of her, driving the same route home, and she can’t help but glance ahead to see if they’ve caught a red light, but there’s nothing.

  During the drive home—up over Fredonyer Pass and down into the valleys outside Westwood—Kristen sips on a Coke, apprehensive that she’s catching up to them, so she keeps it at 50 mph and studies the road for a blue Chevy truck. Her nausea simmers and her right leg aches, and she turns off the one local radio station that plays top 40.

  Up ahead she spots a dirt turnout she’s passed a hundred times on her way back and forth to Susanville and Reno, a turnout big enough for one of the few diesels that take this route. She grabs her right quad and steers her car to the turnoff. She gets out, stretches her leg, lifting her right ankle back toward her butt.

  On the far edge of the turnout stands an old brick fireplace and chimney, the remnants of what Kristen guesses used to be a pioneer home. The ruin has always been a welcome sight for her, marking twenty minutes’ driving time left to Chester, but she’s never stopped here before, and she studies the old fireplace, clean from a recent rain, wondering why it was left intact. She looks south, across the valley, past grazing cattle, to the distan
t ridge line there, then to a hill in the otherwise flat meadow. She camped at the base of this hill once when she was twelve. Her father took her and one of her friends there and told them ghost stories and brought out kids’ bows and let them shoot arrows at the blackbirds that sat on the rotting fence posts. Kristen considers the outing: the absurdity of shooting arrows at birds that would leap away, then return to the same fence posts; losing all the arrows; the meandering cows; her earnest father and his ghost stories that scared no one. Her father, his gentle demeanor, his Sunday trips to the local Methodist church alone; her father, surprising Wintric and her with Giants tickets and a hotel in Oakland. When Kristen told her parents about her pregnancy a few nights ago, he begged her to keep the child, even though she hadn’t voiced any other plan.

  Kristen stares at the hill and thinks of Marcus and Stacey hitting the Plumas County line, Wintric running the wood splitter in the back-yard heat, and this minuscule baby inside her—the only proof of its existence being two home pregnancy test results and nausea. She stares at the hill and hears the cows’ calls in the distance. Just before her cell phone rings, her father’s words return to her: “Keep the baby. Keep the baby.”

  Wintric’s name appears on her phone, and she answers with “Hey, babe.” When he says, “You get Dead Rising?” she hears his drunk-drugged voice. Her feet and hands sting, and again she sees him at the controls of the wood splitter, the iron wedge driving through the large round, his sweat, his dirty shirt, pine chunks falling to the yard.