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

  “Her name is Kristen,” says Wintric. “The girl at home. It’s my fault. I haven’t e-mailed. I told her not to. I don’t know why.”

  “One day the people we’re trying to kill will be in charge again,” says Torres. “One day soon we’ll negotiate with these fucks, even though they’ve killed us and tortured us and today we’re trying to kill them. No one will remember 2004 or us breathing in the fucking burn-pit smoke or the bomb that almost took off my arm. None of this will have happened. So yes, I think about who’s waiting for me, because if I think about all this, I’m done. I got kids, man, so be careful.”

  “I’m not commenting on Anna, your kids, or whatever,” says Big Dax, “just reality. Dude, you may be a lucky one. People change. That’s all I’m saying. They’re living every day that we live.”

  “That’s enough,” says Torres. “Don’t say this shit again.”

  “You guys believe what you want to.”

  So Torres believes. He lives his return home in advance. He feels the departure out of Afghanistan, out of Kyrgyzstan, out of Germany, the packed jet, restless legs, nervous energy, the Atlantic, the boredom, the squiggly coastline of Maryland and Delaware, landing at Baltimore, buying a magnet of Colorado in a gift shop, flying across farmland, the Rockies bringing him to tears, into Colorado Springs. He sees his family running to him in the airport, his daughters jumping into his arms, them arguing about who gets to ride on his shoulders, walking into the home Anna bought while he was away, and after his girls are tucked in, Anna’s skin and weight pressed against him, her hands and mouth on him, on top of him, under him, the pressure build and release, home.

  Wintric sees Kristen naked on the shore of Lake Almanor late at night, standing on a stump in the low beams of his Bronco, waving her arms, singing, urging him out of the water, to come to her and this place, his home, again.

  2

  Top of the World

  THE TOP OF the World is a clearing cut into a hill outside Chester, California, and from that height Wintric watches a column of white smoke pushing out hard from the mill. Inside, men strip and cut trees into boards. Some of the workers tell their children they’re making clouds—Wintric’s father had told him this years ago—but from the Top of the World Wintric can see the plume dissolve into the air well below the slow-shifting cumulus.

  The bet is up to thirty dollars, and the .38 special feels just right in Wintric’s callused hands as he squeezes the gun’s handle. He’s gathered his long brown hair behind him in a band, and his left big toe claws at a fresh hole in his shoe from a nail he caught working construction out by the sewers. He kicks some of the construction paycheck to his mom and dad to keep the electricity on, but the betting windfalls he keeps for himself.

  Young men he passes every day in high school shout obscenities as Wintric takes aim at a target the instigators squint to see. Today there’s a run on motherfucker and bitch. The rules: they can shout and move about, anything except touch him. Tall trucks with gnarly tires line up at their backs. Ponderosa pines surround them, many with white chalk lines around their trunks where they’ll be cut.

  Kristen sits in Wintric’s Bronco, swings her long legs out the side, and sings to Metallica. Her green eyes look out through mirrored sunglasses on a scene she’s witnessed plenty of times, and she wonders if this is one of those outings when he’ll purposely miss so the second round of bets nets over fifty bucks. She stays in the truck in case they have to leave in a hurry, but she feels relaxed as she hears her voice mesh with James Hetfield’s. She watches Wintric take the verbal abuse in his green Levi’s T-shirt, his young face, the squint he never seems to lose. To her, he seems most alive on these betting runs and other afternoons when he drives her deep into the woods on back roads and chances getting the Bronco stuck. She knows Wintric’s routine and senses that he’s about to perform the wipe-the-forehead move. It’s hotter than usual for late May, and she guesses that if everything goes well she may score an ice cream soda out of this if he leaves in a good mood.

  A new smile rounds at the corners of Wintric’s mouth. He knows this game’s conclusion, but he lets the boys in their flannel shirts go at him a little longer. He has to play the whole thing up, even lose sometimes, or people will stop wagering. He drops the gun to his side and shakes his head. He wipes his sweatless brow. His toe digs at his shoe. After a theatrical exhalation he lifts the handgun and pictures the new boots he will buy: black steel-toe boots on sale down in Chico. The advertisement he saw on television says you can drop a thousand pounds on them without so much as a dent. He keeps both eyes open and visualizes the bullet’s trajectory all the way to the target, a skill he’s been able to conjure for as long as he can remember. One of the boys calls Wintric’s mother a cunt, which he would normally fight over, but the money’s too easy to take the insult as an insult. Just a game, he thinks. Still, the word hits Wintric enough for him to say, “Through the capital P.”

  The boy replies, “Make it fifty, motherfucker, and when I win, I’ll give half to your mom for services rendered.”

  Wintric has cocked the gun, so the trigger pull is light. A Pepsi can falls in the distance and he’s wearing new boots.

  Marcus ruins another black-and-white sundae. A little chocolate sauce on the bottom of the glass, a fat scoop of vanilla, marshmallow cream, a scoop of vanilla, chocolate sauce, whipped cream, nuts, and a cherry. The dessert construction isn’t hard, but Marcus flusters easily, and the gray-haired woman in front of him shakes her head, trying to talk above the crowd and the spinning milkshake machines.

  “No. Marshmallow in the middle, son. Not the bottom. The middle.”

  Already Marcus’s fourth mistake and he hasn’t hit the lunch rush, but this summer has brought temperatures in the high nineties, and the line for the Lassen Drug Old-Fashioned Soda Fountain snakes out the door. These rushes exist only in the summer, when the lake brings the crowds up from the valley to their second homes and the main-street town awakens.

  Marcus stands short and muscular behind the counter in a white shirt with a banana-split patch sewn onto the front. His work shirt is the only one he owns that isn’t black, and it showcases the drying splatter of an exploded strawberry shake. His hair is parted down the middle, and he doesn’t yet realize that a sliver of banana is lodged in his eyebrow. Two female coworkers shoot around him, filling orders for milkshakes, ice cream sodas, and cones. He dumps the ruined sundae into the sink and grabs another glass from beneath a NO OUTSIDE FOOD sign.

  He turns back around to face the crowd and sees Kristen. She stands inside the glass front doors, touching one of the painted ceramic bowls for sale. Wintric is there.

  Marcus is seventeen years old, and at the moment completely aware of his attire. Kristen has seen him working many times before, and even though their families have been close for years, her presence still unnerves him, and now, as she plants a cheek kiss on her boyfriend, the volume in the store lowers and he can hear his insides working. His vision blurs for a moment, and when he comes to he sees that the marshmallow ladle is at the bottom of the new sundae glass. He wants to throw the whole thing, wants to take off his shirt and burn it. The gray-haired woman turns to her companion and says, “Moron.” More people squeeze into the store. Some of them wear shirts printed with his town’s name on it. Marcus has the ladle in his hand and marshmallow at the bottom of the glass.

  He reaches back for another glass, stealing a glimpse at Kristen in the large mirror, her gaze intently fixed on something, as are the other reflected faces, and several customers now point. Over his left shoulder a woman has her hands locked around her throat and her female friend bangs at her lower back with a closed fist. Like the others, Marcus freezes. The choking woman shades to maroon in seconds. Her forehead veins bulge, and one of his coworkers joins the woman’s friend beating at her back. Marcus knows what to do, as do many of the people in the shop, but something stays them. The back beating isn’t working, and he holds a sundae glass in his hand. A few p
eople huddle closer, and Kristen takes a step in as well. Marcus stares at her and her frightened face, but suddenly she bounds forward, pushes the swinging women away, and reaches around the choking woman. Kristen vises down and Marcus notices the long muscles in her tanned forearms before they disappear into the woman’s midsection. A violent moan, and a thick pretzel segment explodes out.

  The tense atmosphere flushes out after a minute and the crowd invites Kristen to the front of the line. Playing into Marcus’s simultaneous fear and desire, she and Wintric take seats at his section of the counter.

  “Hey,” Wintric says, and Marcus nods.

  “Maaarrrcus,” Kristen says. She buries herself in the menu, and despite her confident tone, Marcus can tell she’s still coming down off the adrenaline. Kristen only ever orders one of two things—a cherry or lime ice cream soda—and he’s never seen her peruse a menu before.

  “That’s why they have the policy about outside food,” Marcus says, pointing to the sign above the glasses. “We only sell ice cream. Can’t choke, you know, on ice cream.” Kristen peeks up at him with a polite smirk before returning to the listings. Marcus would tear his tongue out if he could. Wintric orders a chocolate malt and she gets a banana split. The malt is easy, but at the store they have a policy on the order of the strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate ice cream in the split—each has a specific position and topping—and although Marcus can recite the last twelve U.S. presidents in order, he can’t remember the flavors’ banana-split positions at this nervous moment, so before he scoops the ice cream he tilts his shirt up and examines the patch.

  Marcus places their orders in front of them, but before he turns away Kristen reaches over and touches him on the arm and draws him closer. Confused, Marcus glances at Wintric, but he’s already into the malt. Marcus hesitates, but leans in after she says, “Come here, Marcus,” his name from her lips like magic. Her vanilla perfume intoxicates him as he advances ear first, but she repositions his head straight on. She stares just above his eyes and swipes at his lower forehead twice.

  “There,” she says, leaning back. “A little banana.”

  Wintric and Kristen swim naked in Lake Almanor while the Bronco’s stereo plays Incubus out the open windows. The water appears mercury silver and dense just after midnight. They tread out past where they can touch, and slithery plants rub at their feet and calves. The low water level reveals random stumps poking up from the beach. The moon blooms full. To the west, a cloud of lit smoke from the mill.

  They laugh about a teacher who always has coffee breath, about the future occupation survey they were forced to take in class, and Wintric tells Kristen he signed papers to enlist in the army. He leaves two weeks after graduation. He’ll pocket a bonus for signing up. She’s guessed at a departure of some kind for a while—he said he’d never work the lumber—but Wintric’s casual announcement while she treads water surprises her. She lets herself sink to the lakebed, only a few feet below. Her feet settle in cool mud and she stays there for a moment, inside herself, wondering what she’ll do next.

  She crests the surface splashing but silent, and retreats to the shore. The moment deserves a scene. She wants to cry, wants the tears. She needs him to witness them running down her cheeks, but they aren’t coming. For a reason she can’t capture, the news itself troubles her only lightly. She knows the town sends lots of people into the military, and her father has told her that the service has saved many of the local kids, but Wintric? Her mind spins, but comfortably, and she searches for a response that makes sense. He should have told her weeks, months ago—only a month’s warning after two years together?

  Some of her classmates already celebrate their near-future plans to leave Chester for faraway towns and universities, a course she hasn’t pursued, and she knows couples who have promised to stay together when one half leaves, but long distance rarely ends well—it just ends. In the forty seconds she’s had to process the news, she’s decided that if Wintric asks, she’ll stay together, will, if he asks, maybe even go with him, but everything is too new, there’s no expectation, only a calmness, this unanticipated reaction to his announcement.

  She walks to the shore and the lake recedes down her body and the mud at her feet hardens to pebbles. Her skin throbs with a recovering sunburn and the soft air evaporates the moisture away. She poses in front of Wintric’s lifted Ford, low beams at her back, disappointed that she can’t recall all the words to the song playing. After a minute the rocks dig at her bare feet so she steps onto a nearby stump.

  She calls out over the stereo, “How much is the bonus?”

  Wintric has stayed in the water, letting her go about her business. He’s witnessed her productions before, and is a little surprised there aren’t any tears. He swims in to where he can touch and revels in the sight of Kristen’s moonlit body, her constant, unabashed confidence.

  “Thirty thousand.”

  “You’re going to the war.”

  “Is there anything else?”

  Something swims between his legs and he grabs his genitals. He isn’t sure of all the details of his enlistment, about what he’ll be asked to sacrifice, but he knows the posts are nowhere near this place, that the travel will take him away from these pine-filled valleys that cut him off from what he calls “civilization.” There are other lakes in the world like the one he stands in. He would struggle to name any, but he’s sure there are cities with lakes right in the middle of them, and when you’re done swimming you walk a block to your apartment or to other city things that await your call, and the sun shines warmer. He wants more than a taste, he wants to stay, and not in Chico or Redding or Red Bluff. Farther. He longs for strangers surrounding him, people who don’t know about his family’s crumbling house or his father’s bad back or his repeating sixth grade. He needs the separation, even if it means aiming a weapon for real.

  Wintric watches Kristen balance on the stump. He’s sure she will never leave this place. Once when he asked her about her fantasy vacation, she said she’d always wanted to drive through the massive redwood over near the coast. She wasn’t sure of the tree’s exact location, only that she’d seen photos of cars halfway through the trunk. It was so close by, her dream getaway, he had to laugh. She argued that people come from all over the world to drive through that tree. “If you’re from Japan or France, driving through the tree is a big deal. Why can’t it be a big deal for me?” He knew she was right, and he thought about how the only thing interesting about travel was that it’s away from where you are.

  Kristen turns around, faces the low beams, and Wintric studies her silhouette, her lean shoulders, the lines of her slightly spread thighs up to their intersection. Her hips have filled out, and Wintric pictures his hands there.

  Wintric hobbles out of the lake and strides to her. Her skin smells like fish, and he smells his own arm and it’s the same. His face comes to her stomach and he kisses her belly button. She sways her hips and he places his hands on them and listens to her singing.

  They decided early never to say “I love you” to each other. Even so, Kristen is all he has known of romance and trust. He kisses her right hip, then runs his tongue along where it meets her thigh.

  “Wintric,” she says.

  Though he can’t fathom what death or war means, he’d want her to get the folded flag if everything came to that, and he wonders if that’s what love is, and he thinks that it is. He reaches up from her hips and runs his palms down her sides, up to her breasts, down her ribs, her stomach.

  “Not here,” she says.

  “Please,” he says.

  Wintric squats down and kisses the inside of her left knee, and she runs her hands through his wet hair.

  “You’ll have to cut your hair,” she says. “You’ll look bad with short hair.”

  He kisses the inside of her right knee, her inner thigh.

  “I could look great. You never know.”

  “A bowling ball,” she says. “A tennis ball. Round.”

&
nbsp; His hands on her hips.

  “The lights are on,” she says. “At least get the lights.”

  “Low beams.”

  Her hands through his hair, her fingers on his scalp underneath. Can he feel better than this?

  “They charge for haircuts in the army?” she says. “Stupid if they do.”

  “Are you kidding?” he says. “It’s thirty grand a cut.”

  Marcus prays his erection will go down before the bell rings. He has about ten minutes left in class, but Kristen sits two rows ahead to the right, wearing a white cotton shirt, and every time she leans over to talk to her friend he catches a flash of the top of her breasts. He untucks his black shirt. A female voice trickles down through the air, something about lawyers.

  The results of the career questionnaire rest on Marcus’s desk. He darts his eyes back to the top of it: (1) Doctor, (2) Teacher, (3) Accountant, (4) Lawyer, (5) Services. A week ago he filled in the far-right bubble on each line and let a computer tell him what career options there are for high schoolers who answer “Very Interested” to every question.

  Even after glancing at the results multiple times, seeing his name above “Doctor” sends a warm surge through him, but when he closes his eyes he can’t picture himself in the white coat, can’t feel anything but the word and the sound of it from Kristen’s mouth, the same mouth that he dreams of at night. He imagines her naked in his bedroom doorway, walking toward him, taking back the covers, saying his name, and going down on him.

  The lecture ends and the counselor weaves up and down the rows, helping anyone with his or her hand raised. Marcus’s hands are in his lap, but Miss Sheroll stops beside him. She appears tired.

  “They don’t have an ice cream question so you blow it off? Keep the paper, Marcus. Keep it and think of what you won’t be. When you wake up, we can talk.”