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

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to know. You tell me too much.”

  “’Cause you don’t know anything.”

  “Where you gonna go?”

  “She wants Key West. Figures rich people need help around their mansions. Plus if we got to live, why not live there?” He takes a swig of the Velvet.

  “I don’t think Key West is real. But even if it is, it can’t be all that great or everyone would live there,” Dax says.

  “I always wondered why people don’t move to the vacation spots. If you have so much fun there, just move, get a job, boom, done.”

  “Sounds too simple. Like when you’re ten and say you’re going to run away when your parents piss you off and you don’t make it out of the driveway.”

  “I’m not ten, and besides, how hard is it? Get on the bus, get off at Key West.”

  “You think Greyhound goes to Key West?”

  “Close enough.”

  Weeks pass and Alston and Janelle haven’t gone anywhere. Autumn sweeps in and basketball season arrives. Dax finds himself starting at power forward. He’s big but not very strong, and outside of the summer camp with Alston he has largely ignored the sport, but the team needs height, so Dax clogs the lane and keeps his arms up.

  Alston comes to the home games with Janelle and sits in the front row trying to pick fights with opposing players, which, while funny, still surprises Dax. He has seen Alston in three fights, all of which he lost badly.

  After one home game—a rough night when Dax’s best efforts and Alston’s “weak dick” chants fail to keep Dax’s man from pouring in thirty-three points in a blowout win—Dax, Alston, and Janelle neutral-drop in the post office parking lot. Alston drives first, drinking root root from a Natural Springs water bottle he then passes to Janelle. Dax lounges in the back seat, feeling the jerk and lurch of the car from neutral to drive, neutral to drive, and the dirty smell of brakes and tires. Tired, he thinks of the player that lit him up in his home gymnasium, how the guy was smaller than him, not that much faster, but had seemed so much better at everything. He wonders why it’s so damn hard to get his body to do exactly what he wants, as fast as he wants it.

  When it’s Dax’s turn to drive, Janelle and Alston climb into the back seat and disappear into the darkness.

  “Put on some Biggie and drive around,” Alston says, so Dax does. He drives down Montross to Pierrepont to Riverside with the music loud. A cop car appears up ahead and Dax rolls his window up. He turns on Passaic and something pushes at the back of his seat. Alston told Dax that the first time he and Janelle screwed he used Saran Wrap and a rubber band, so this is what Dax can’t shake out of his infected mind: Alston, back at home, unfurling a rectangle of clear plastic and snapping it off with the carton’s sharp teeth.

  After a song titled “Who Shot Ya?” beats out of the factory speakers, Alston hops into the front seat. For a while no one says anything, and for the first time Dax notices that he has to hold the steering wheel an inch to the right to keep the Camry straight, but he’s unsure what this means.

  “I fucking hate people that play instruments,” Alston says. “Seriously, who has time to learn to play an instrument? There’s nothing better to do? Let’s learn notes over and over. Dumbasses.”

  From the back-seat darkness, Janelle says, “I played the piano for a little bit.”

  “You’re a foster kid,” Alston says.

  “So? You’re a shit. I can play a Beethoven song, a song from The Nutcracker, and an overture.”

  “What’s an overture?” Dax says.

  “Did I say I was a fucking music teacher?” Janelle says.

  A right turn.

  “Where did you get a piano?”

  “Electronic keyboards at Walmart. They got them set out and plugged in and no one’s ever there, so you go in and practice and keep the volume low. Sometimes I went to Target, but mostly Walmart.”

  “Radio Shack?” Dax says.

  “Did I say Radio Shack?”

  “Foster-kid trick,” Alston says.

  “When we’re married we’re having ten foster kids,” Janelle says.

  “You’re too tall for me,” Alston says.

  “You’re too small for me. And by that I mean your cock.”

  With that, Alston jumps into the back seat.

  Dax slides a Boyz II Men CD in and thumbs the track to “I’ll Make Love to You,” knowing it’ll piss off Alston, but there’s no reaction. After the first chorus Dax only wants to escape from his car, so he drives to his high school, parks the car facing the grass field, leaves the stereo on, and gets out.

  The grass is still wet from the previous night’s rain, so Dax walks the length of the field and leans on a damp picnic table. He looks up at the city lights’ dirty hue, then over at his Camry, a tiny light from the stock stereo illuminating the interior.

  Dax smells the night grass, considers how there’s a good chance that no one, anywhere, is thinking of him. He thinks of his mother, her hands on his face the day she left, her eyes on his eyes, her voice whispering. “I love you, but you chose him.” Dax imagines his mother in Dallas, where she now lives, strolling down the street in an oversized cowboy hat with her Texas husband. They hold hands and laugh and push their set of twin girls in a wide stroller. The last he heard from her was three years ago, when she sent him a Troy Aikman jersey for his birthday. A New York Jets fan, he burned it in his back yard with Alston.

  Dax fights the tension in his chest and glances over to his car—still the stereo’s glow, but he’s not sure how long the battery will last. His dad has shown him how to jump the car, but he’s not sure he remembers, something about grounding. Janelle will probably know.

  A helicopter overhead, with a searchlight scanning. A pain in Dax’s back right molar, then gone. Dax thinks about his dad, the new girlfriend who resembles his aunt Karen, how his dad has been harping on Dax to consider the army, how it’ll pay for school, how he’ll have no one to fight, just train and train, maybe stub a toe or two, then go to college. Even Alston thinks it’s a good idea: “Sweet outfits? Rugged, hot army bitches? Bazookas? Fuck, yeah. Do it.” Dax pictures himself in camouflage, running in formation, hiding in the woods, and wonders what kind of disadvantage he may be at in blending in with the surroundings. He’s a big man, easier to see. That can’t be good. But who’s shooting?

  He hasn’t been swayed toward this army idea, but when he imagines college or a job, nothing comes to him and he hears his father’s low voice in his head: “A paycheck, free post living, free food, free school.” Dax thinks, How can everything in the military be free? When was the last time we really got into a fight? Vietnam? Iraq? Does Iraq count? A few days of bombs. Night-vision tracers on CNN. A falling refrigerator.

  Dax has fired a gun once outside Watertown with his WWII army vet grandpa, who has also been pushing the military route. Empty beer bottles near a creek in autumn. He remembers the silver revolver, the bunny-eared rear sights, the fierce percussion, and the still-standing bottles. His grandpa’s voice—“Fun, isn’t it?”—and Dax thinking it was something, but fun?

  Dax snaps out of his dream when a lifted truck pulls into the spot next to his car and someone jumps out. The person races in front of the truck’s headlights, then jerks the Camry’s back door open and reaches inside. Dax stands and starts walking back, and by the time he’s close enough to see clearly, a man towers over Alston, punching and punching, and Janelle, pantless, is at the man’s back, tearing at his neck and face. Dax’s body comes alive, and he races across the field and lunges at the man, but Dax is thrown off and he feels a punishing pounding on his face and chest. He tries to rise but can’t. The man lifts a grunting Alston from the pavement and rams Alston’s head into the Camry’s door. Janelle lies in the first cut of grass holding her stomach, her naked lower half kicking at the sky. The man walks over to Janelle, pulls her up by her hair, walks her to the truck, throws her in, and leaves.

  Dax’s chest b
urns; rocks dig at his back. Alston moans.

  “Al-ston,” Dax says, trying to find his lungs. “Alston.”

  “Shut the motherfuck up.”

  Dax touches his body, but everything is too new to know anything. He goes to his knees, then stands and staggers over to Alston, who drags himself up into the passenger seat.

  “Drive to my house,” Alston says.

  “What the fuck, Alston?”

  “Conley, that sorry-ass, messed-up dick. I’m killing that motherfucker.” Alston says this calmly, and Dax worries that he might be telling the truth. Dax flicks on the interior lights and sees Alston’s inflating face.

  “Call the cops, A,” Dax says.

  “Drive to my house. I’m not asking.”

  “I’m calling the cops.”

  Dax reaches for the keys in the ignition.

  “Fine. Listen, you won’t see me after tonight.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t call anyone.”

  “What?”

  “Stop and listen to me.”

  Dax has his hand on the key but doesn’t turn it. He stares at Alston, who seems transformed, happy.

  “Give me a sec.” Quiet everywhere, then the soft sounds of traffic a couple blocks over. Alston touches his own arms and neck, then smirks.

  “You’re not gonna see me after now. I knew it was coming.”

  “What?”

  “Shut up and listen. That dude should’ve killed me.”

  “Alston, don’t be crazy.”

  Alston shakes his head. He pulses his hands into fists, in and out, in and out, each time slower than the next.

  “Damn, he’s a tough fuck,” Alston says. “Didn’t see that coming.” He laughs. “Okay, all right. Okay. Thinking. I’m thinking. Just sit here for a bit.”

  “Alston.”

  Alston slaps his face and blinks three times. His eyes narrow and Dax wonders if he’ll cry.

  “Okay, brother. Here it is. If you go into the army, shoot first. Prison is better than dead.”

  “What? Calm down. Calm down.”

  “You aren’t listening, Dax. Listen for a sec.”

  “Fine.”

  “Be a medic or something, but if you get a gun, shoot that motherfucker. If ever in doubt, shoot first. Prison is a ton better than dead or paralyzed or no arms or eyes or whatever.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “And one more thing.”

  “We’re not fighting anyone.”

  “And one more thing. Listen. You’re not going to see me again.”

  “Sure.”

  “And one more thing.”

  “What?”

  “I forgot.”

  “Fuck you, A.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I know you will,” Alston says. He opens the door, stumbles into the night, and disappears around the corner of the gym.

  When he arrives home, Dax steps into his living room. His father and his father’s girlfriend, Angela, sit on a blue leather couch.

  “I’m okay,” Dax says before they can ask.

  “You don’t look so bad,” says Angela, a fortyish brunette whom Dax believes is too good for his father. She likes her martinis, but she’s well-spoken and even dragged Dax’s father to a couple of Dax’s basketball games. “Did you take an elbow during the game?”

  Dax sees himself for the first time in the living room mirror and realizes that Angela is right: he appears fine, with only a scratch on his left temple and a black mark on his red T-shirt.

  “Dax, sit down,” his father says. “I was just finishing this story. You won’t believe it.”

  “I’m tired, Pop,” Dax says. “Alston’s out of his mind. Got the shit kicked out of me. I’m headed to bed.”

  “Here’s the story, honey. Someone called him the n-word on the golf course,” Angela says.

  “Angela, please.”

  “But you’re white,” Dax says. He touches his stomach, surprised there’s no pain.

  “No shit. That’s the point. How does that make sense? There weren’t any black guys around. And even then.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Angela says.

  “Who was it?” Dax says.

  “Another golfer,” she says. “What do you say to that?”

  “I should’ve laughed, I guess. I don’t know. Bizarre.”

  “So what’s the point?” Dax says.

  “There’s no point, honey,” Angela says. “People don’t know how to speak.”

  “I’m white,” Dax’s father says.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she says.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Okay.”

  Angela reaches out and holds Dax’s father’s hand.

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “Why are you sorry?”

  “It’s just I’d be sorry for anyone being called that.”

  “It shouldn’t mean anything.”

  “Well.”

  “To me, I mean,” Dax’s father says. “I don’t know.”

  “It doesn’t mean anything. It can matter to you but not mean anything.”

  “I was playing golf. Wild.”

  Dax waves good night, walks down the hallway to the bathroom, pisses, brushes his teeth, inspects himself in the mirror, washes his face, walks to his room, undresses, and climbs into bed. He glances at the Cindy Crawford poster on his wall before turning off his bedside light. He touches his forehead and runs his fingers through his hair, finding, then flicking away a piece of gravel. His chest lifts and depresses. In a weird way, he wishes he was more badly hurt; maybe then he’d have the courage to call the cops. He runs his fingers along his rib cage twice, then down his sides to his hips. Alston’s stupid, but Dax doesn’t believe he’s kill-someone stupid, so he has no one to save, as long as Alston saves Janelle.

  Dax shifts to his left side and wonders how Alston will break Janelle out. He imagines a near future with Alston and Janelle at the local bus ticket counter, wild and nervous, and then the dim, southbound Greyhound filled with grim-faced nocturnals with little to lose. He knows Key West is near Miami, but he’s not clear on exactly where Miami is, only that there’s water everywhere. He pictures a map of Florida, then alligators, then an island with high-walled mansions. He imagines Alston strolling around in a pink shirt serving drinks at a party and sneaking one for himself every time he refreshes his tray.

  What Dax can’t imagine as he drifts off to sleep is what will actually happen—that he’ll receive a postcard from Alston nine years from now, and on the front a photo of a mountain lake with an island golfing green right in the middle of the water. On the bottom: Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. And the handwritten words on the back: Yeah, Idaho. Shoot first. A. Closing his eyes on his dark room, Dax can’t fathom that he’ll receive the postcard in Afghanistan on his second tour there, or that later, on a dirt plain, he’ll peer through his rifle’s scope as a girl sprints toward him. So tonight he visualizes Alston in Florida; Janelle on a beach in a two-piece bathing suit; hurt Janelle in the night grass holding her stomach, her long naked legs, somehow inviting and cursed; Notorious B.I.G.; Janelle in a well-lit, cavernous store, an ELECTRONICS sign overhead.

  She stands at the keyboards, alone. She’s picked a new model with a large CASIO on the side, and she turns the volume up and presses middle C over and over. Using just her right hand, she keeps to the white keys first, “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” then “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” easy and boring but still magic, the connected sounds from her fingers; then she moves to the black keys, the tone shifting, somehow ominous and tender at once. She doesn’t recall a song for the black keys, so she presses each one in order, working her way left to right, then back down again. She starts into the one Nutcracker song she knows, “The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy,” playing slowly, biding her time. Every now and then she peeks over her shoulder for a ticked-off employee or a one-in-a-million keyboard seeker, but as always no one notices her, so she decides to stay
and play until someone does.

  5

  Unbomb

  TWO MONTHS AFTER the car bomb in Kabul, Big Dax sees nothing but dirt and a road extending from him bisecting more dirt. Two miles away, an Afghan town of a thousand he can’t make out through the windswept dust.

  The checkpoint he mans is set up for car inspections, but there have been only six in the past two days. Two weeks on this duty and Big Dax, Torres, and Wintric are bored—they oversee this lightly traveled road, more donkeys than cars, and the loaded donkeys and their handlers often circumvent the checkpoint, far enough off the roadway to ease the nerves but close enough for the men to scope with their M4s.

  Torres and Big Dax are a month away from heading home. The invisible clock ticks in their minds, but they refuse to talk about time. Torres has asked his family to stop sending care packages, since they won’t arrive until after his return, and something about that absence of the tangible—no cookies, no kids’ handwritten letters on the way to him—fills him with equal parts longing and dread. His wife, Anna, listening to the advice of the spouses back at Fort Carson, has been sending e-mails with reminders of their courtship and has attached photos of the Royal Gorge Bridge, Michelle’s ice cream shop downtown, Bishop’s Castle with its dragon head, Breckenridge, the master bedroom in the new house, a self-portrait in leopard-print lingerie.

  Big Dax hasn’t told anyone, but he has submitted his separation paperwork. In moments of admitted weakness he already allows himself to daydream about leaving Afghanistan and Fort Carson behind and returning to Rutherford, getting his own place, the Meadowlands, the Jets, the Lincoln Tunnel, cargo shorts and T-shirts every day, how everything can once again become routine.

  Big Dax spits and performs a short in-place jog to keep his legs alive. Behind a wall of sandbags Torres listens to early Pearl Jam and writes in his journal while Wintric spits tobacco into an empty Dr Pepper bottle and plays hearts with a lieutenant they all like. Wintric has won four games in a row since the lieutenant told him the 49ers suck.

  “Call this payback for Montana and Young,” Wintric says as he shuffles the cards.