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

by Jesse Goolsby

  “Armando, your dad,” someone says.

  As he hits second base, Armando’s father scratches his chest. The PE teacher meets him at the pitcher’s mound and the teacher nods his head and points at the dugout and stares.

  Armando stands and hikes the dugout steps into the sunshine. The sky seems close.

  His father crosses the base path and takes his son in his arms.

  On the way home, Armando’s mind pounds out images of his mother on the couch—7Up sips, Uno indifference, trombone disappointment—and he can’t get his mind to work back far enough to when she was whole.

  When his father misses the turn for home, Armando doesn’t ask where they’re headed. His father drives past the Broadmoor and its blooming flowers, past stucco mansions with rock walls, and turns right, heading up into the mountains. They gain altitude and Armando peers out over the valley, all the way across the city to the eastern plains curving toward Kansas and Missouri. Once the pavement turns to dirt his father says, “When Tesla was up here,” but he stops the sentence. His father rolls his window down, inhales, mumbles, “She wanted to see London and Naples, the Thames,” then flips a U-turn. On the way back down, the city rises up to them.

  When they walk through the front door, his sister rests on the couch where their mother spent the last months of her life.

  Armando retreats to his bedroom and sits on the edge of his bed and stares at a white wall holding up his room. His father comes in and sits down. Armando wants to tell his father that he thinks he’s okay, that he worries about his sister, that he wants Marie near, but he keeps quiet and sits next to his father, who begins to rub his son’s back, first slowly, then faster. Armando listens to his father breathe and feels his father’s hand circling fast, warming his back as they stare at the wall because neither of them knows what to say with the words they have left.

  4

  Neutral Drops

  ALSTON MIXES VODKA and cherry Kool-Aid in his water bottle before his high school doubles tennis match.

  “Gatorade,” he says to his doubles partner, Dax, then gulps down the red concoction and smirks. No one cares enough to notice Alston’s drinking because Dax and Alston are terrible, even stone-cold sober. They play for the short-skirted girls who never pay them attention and the spring weekday afternoons out of school. Dax, who sticks with actual Gatorade, has a single goal on the court—he takes aim at the other team’s net player and tries to smack the ball as hard as he can into his opponent’s head or nuts. If he gets four or more direct hits before he and Alston are blanked 6–0, 6–0, he considers the damage a victory.

  Alston is fast, sinewy, and handsome with his square jaw and narrow blue eyes. He likes to rile Dax up and tell the other team what’s coming—“Dax, the dude at the net says your sister likes it blindfolded with a midget watching,” and “Hey, Freckles, your nuts are about to get fucked up!”

  The other team typically responds with mock anger or withdrawn cowardice, never neutrality, but Dax doesn’t mind whatever animosity comes his way. Already six foot six, two hundred pounds in eleventh grade, armed with a cannon forehand, he has a stature that alone deters the most ardent opponents.

  Dax’s friendship with Alston is cemented by past loyalty and subtle envy. Alston showcases none of the shyness that Dax battles, so Dax attaches himself to Alston’s moments of outward exhibition and feels the alluring intensity, but not the consequences, of a life without restraint; even now, though Dax has no sister, he plays along with the blindfold taunt and lets the net player decide which body part to defend. The choice may seem easy, but Dax’s coach often sees talented players hunched over, peering through the heads of their meshed nylon racquets, praying that Dax will aim high.

  Alston handles his liquor well, but one day he throws up in the middle of his serve.

  “Damn,” he says, wiping his mouth. Then: “Love thirty. Second serve.”

  “Wait,” the nervous but skilled opponent at the net says. “We’re not playing with that shit on the court. Somebody’s got to clean it up.”

  Alston studies the foul puddle of alcohol and Kool-Aid.

  “Dax, you want to keep playing?”

  “Whatever,” Dax says.

  “We’re done,” Alston says.

  “Then you guys forfeit.”

  “Bitches,” Alston says, already swigging from his water bottle.

  Dax and Alston walk over to the top of a grassy hill overlooking the courts and check out the girls’ matches, their attention focused on the hiking hemlines and swaying asses of girls awaiting serves. Their earnest coach leans forward in a lawn chair next to the fence, shouting encouragement. Dax stretches his body out on the grass and stares up at the crisscrossing contrails. Alston sits and wraps his arms around his knees.

  “Hey,” Alston says. “Tall one.”

  A new girl at their school speaks with the coach, her hands rubbing her hips, then turns and walks toward them. She crests the hill and stands close to the boys.

  “They’re talking about you two,” she says. The hill is empty save the two boys and her. Dax shakes his head and rises onto his elbows.

  “Bad flu,” Alston says.

  “I can smell you,” she says.

  The girl lowers herself to the ground. Dax watches her long limbs fold. She clasps her hands and slides them between her thighs. Dax notices a dolphin tattoo above her right ankle, a scar running along the outside of her thigh, disappearing under her shorts.

  “You on the team now?” Dax says.

  “No racket,” she says.

  “Oh.” Then silence, except for the grunts, shoe squeaks, and score recitations of six high school tennis matches.

  The match they all ignore features the two best girls from each school. The girl from Rutherford High is the better player, quicker to the ball and with smoother ground strokes, and she produces a high-pitched squeal every time she strikes the ball.

  “There need to be more tennis sluts,” Alston says. “All this grunting for nothing.”

  “Alston,” Dax says, and nods at the girl.

  “Relax, Dax. Your name’s Jean, right?” Alston says.

  “Janelle.”

  “How come you don’t play?”

  “I’m new.”

  “So? Aren’t you living with the Conleys?”

  “Yeah.”

  From down below the coach yells something about backspin and gives a thumbs-up. The boys Dax and Alston forfeited to stand across the way, talking to their coach and pointing to where the three of them lounge. Dax stares at his feet.

  “Don’t the Conleys have a bunch of foster kids?” Alston says.

  “Jesus, A,” Dax says.

  “Yeah,” Janelle says.

  “You been in other foster homes?” Alston says.

  “It’s not my first.”

  “Where you from?”

  “Delaware.”

  “The whole state?”

  “Dover.”

  “Why are you in Rutherford if you’re from Delaware?”

  “You talk too much,” she says.

  “Bitch, please,” Alston says, “people should talk more.” He reaches into his shorts, pulls out a pack of Camels, selects one in the middle, and lights it.

  “Here,” he says, holding out the pack to Janelle. “I can tell you smoke.”

  She accepts one and Alston reaches across Dax and lights it for her, cupping the flame with his opposite hand although there’s no hint of wind. Dax glances at her face, her thin nose and dark eyes, then her long legs. His body tightens, but when she glances back at him he knows right away she’s not interested. She looks at him as many have, as a slight physical freak—a grown-man body at seventeen—that’s worth a second glance, and that’s all. Dax shakes his size 15 basketball shoes and wonders when he’ll stop growing.

  “I’m trying to get this one to start,” Alston says, exhaling a cloud of smoke.

  “Not a chance,” Dax says. “I like my lungs without the crap they put on t
he roads.”

  “It’s different tar,” Janelle says. “This is good tar. Helps you breathe.” She smiles for the first time and shows her perfectly white, crooked teeth.

  The three of them stay quiet for a while under a partly cloudy April afternoon. The low grunts of the Rutherford girls’ number one rise to high-pitched shrieks as she volleys, retreats, then hammers a cross-court winner to take the first set.

  “Druggie parents?” Alston says.

  “No,” Janelle says.

  “So?”

  “So what?” she says.

  “So what’s the story? You’re what, seventeen? Eighteen? You’re in Rutherford, New Jersey, sitting with two fucks at a stupid-ass tennis match, and you don’t play tennis. You probably already know you’re going to take off if you’ve spent over a week at the Conleys’. But we’re not there yet. What’s up with your parents?”

  “You’re pretty stupid, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, but you’re still sitting here with me and Dax.”

  “Dax isn’t a name.”

  “He’s sitting right here,” Alston says.

  “Are you stupid like this one?” she asks Dax.

  “He’s not the most talkative,” Alston says.

  “I’m talkative,” Dax says. “What do you want to know?”

  “Tell me about anything.”

  “Okay. If you keep throwing up at our tennis matches, coach’ll kick us off the team and we’ll have to sit through history class more often.”

  “Did you throw up?” Janelle says.

  “Do I seem like someone who throws up in the afternoon?”

  “You look like someone who flinches.”

  “What?”

  Dax yanks up a balled fist and Alston jerks away.

  “I’ll kill you, Dax.”

  “You’re a shit talker, but I didn’t say that was bad,” Janelle says.

  “Shit. I’ve never flinched. I’ve hurt people.”

  “Where?” she says, smiling.

  “Where?”

  “Yes, where did you hurt people? Tell me where you were when you hurt all these poor souls.”

  Alston takes a drag.

  “Everywhere. That’s what you need to know. In the Bronx. In Canada. In your back yard.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Dax says.

  “I’m not done. Here, in Rutherford. In fucking Finland and Egypt and Iraq.”

  “Wow,” Janelle says. “World traveler.”

  “Where you going to go?” Alston says.

  “When?”

  “When Conley accidentally walks in on you taking a shower.”

  “You don’t know shit.”

  “Yep. But where?”

  “To your house.”

  “Take Union to Springfield, couple houses on your left.”

  Alston and Janelle light two more Camels and somehow end up sitting next to each other. The sun warms Dax’s face, and after he gets a flirty wave from an overweight girl from the opponent’s school, he forces a nod. An ice cream truck pulls into the nearby parking lot, thin music box tunes tinkling out, and for a moment Dax thinks back to when his parents were still together.

  Later, with only one match continuing in the far court, Janelle fingers her right earlobe.

  “A refrigerator fell on my dad in Iraq,” she says. “In Desert Storm, unloading crap. Damn thing crushed his neck and most of his chest. After we got the army money, my mom split.” She takes a drag and exhales white smoke. “She’s in Wyoming, I think, but I’m not sure. Every now and then she sends me thirty dollars cash.”

  “What’s the return address on the envelope?” Alston says. “If you want to know where she’s at, check out the return address.”

  “You think I don’t know that?”

  “Yes. I think you don’t know that.”

  “Damn, A,” Dax says.

  “And a fridge? No bullet to the heart or anything?”

  “Nope.”

  “What kind?” Alston says.

  “What?”

  “A Maytag?”

  “Alston, come on.”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I know it was big. Someone said it was brown. That’s what I know.”

  “A falling refrigerator,” Dax says.

  Alston runs his fingers through his hair and looks at Janelle.

  “Fuck Saddam.”

  Drew Barrymore sits behind Dax, Alston, and Janelle in a New York City theater just before Die Hard: With a Vengeance starts. Early summer and hot, and Dax and Alston have traveled the short distance to the city from Rutherford for basketball camp and sneaked out on the third night to the show. Dax didn’t anticipate that Janelle would show up, but nothing surprises him about Alston and Janelle, now that she’s a permanent fixture.

  Dax is too nervous to talk to Drew, but Alston turns around and says, “Poison Ivy was your best work,” and for those words he receives a condescending pat on the head before the lights dim and they all watch and cheer Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson as they kill, maim, and solve logic puzzles to save New York City from pissed-off foreigners.

  On the sidewalk after the show a disheveled and serious old woman begs Dax never to cut his hair because she’s certain the Japanese will soon invade the country searching for American locks. Dax takes a step back and the woman holds up a paintbrush as evidence.

  “Promise me,” she says.

  “Yes,” Dax says.

  “They have unfinished business here.”

  “Okay,” Dax says.

  “Oklahoma City was two months ago. It was just the start.”

  “Yep.”

  “I was alive for Pearl Harbor.”

  “Okay.”

  “Promise me.”

  “Fine.”

  “Your hair.”

  “Yes.”

  A block later, Dax, Alston, and Janelle stroll along the night boulevard, and a boy around twelve years old walking in the other direction pulls up his shirt to reveal a white-handled revolver stashed in his pants. He contorts his fingers into a practiced gang sign. Once Dax notices his weapon, he allows his shirt to fall back down, nods his head, and continues down the street. Dax’s body shakes and Alston says, “Calm down. It wasn’t loaded.”

  “You can’t tell that shit from the handle,” Dax says, trying to settle himself.

  “I can tell.”

  Dax is in awe of Alston because of his ignorant surety—an unabashed confidence that Dax desires for himself—and because Alston teaches Dax things he’s not supposed to realize until much later in life, stuff like honesty is rarely the best policy, a car runs even if you don’t have a driver’s license, and people do whatever you want them to do if they’re scared enough.

  Alston’s father left when he was eight, and his undisciplined mother saw Alston as a miniature version of his wayward father—same verbal energy, blue eyes, and attraction to alcohol—so Alston largely takes care of himself. Most nights dinner is frozen chicken nuggets and a Coke from the corner store. His father still shows up once a year and takes Alston up to Bear Creek Camp near Wilkes Barre to shoot a .357, camp out, and sip a mix of whiskey, vodka, and root beer, a drink Alston’s father calls root root.

  Dax’s father, a tired, below-average dentist, gave fatherhood a shot when Dax had to make a decision during the divorce but has since focused on golf, his new girlfriend, and his timeshare in Hilton Head. If he had to do it all over again, Dax wouldn’t pick differently—he has all he needs, and his father kicks him extra money whenever he asks. Plus the freedom gives him more time with Alston, the one person he considers a close friend.

  One of the things Alston teaches Dax is neutral drops, the art of shifting an automatic vehicle into neutral, revving the engine, and simultaneously “dropping” the shifter to drive. One Friday night Dax and Alston neutral-drop Dax’s 1984 Toyota Camry in the Lincoln Elementary School parking lot, listening to the front-wheel-drive vehicle skid on the old pavement. Alston nurses a fifth of Black Velvet, and
even though he has never had a driver’s license, he demonstrates particular talent at the neutral-drop maneuver, seemingly oblivious to the grinding sound the shift produces after each drop.

  “You need a six-cylinder,” Alston says. “But hell, you have a car.” He pauses and takes a sip. “Drink this,” he says, offering the bottle. “I know you won’t. And that’s okay. If you did it, I’d hate you. You’ve fucked yourself into expectations, my friend. Always the good guy, huh?”

  “Never,” Dax says.

  “Guy with your size should be fucking shit up. You know that?”

  “I am.”

  “No. You’re not. Listen, it’s easy. You need to be louder. Even when you’re wrong, be loud. It works.”

  “Where do you get this stuff?”

  “I have eyes and ears.”

  “Fine.”

  “I mean it. A guy your size, they’ll tuck their dicks and run. Girls coming out of their minds.”

  “You should teach, A.”

  “Volume up. Free lesson, my friend. And you should play football. Everyone likes football. You watch it enough.”

  Dax loves college football and follows the games closely, especially the New Mexico Lobos, from where his father went to school, but actually playing football would mean violent contact, speed, and inevitable pain.

  Alston revs the engine and drops the shifter and the tires squeal.

  “Not bad,” he says. “Hey, what about Janelle?”

  “What about?”

  “You know she’s messed up, right? That family she lives with—they got all those dumb-shit foster kids.”

  “Okay.”

  “Weird shit. Foster dad jacked up.”

  “The dad messes with them? Did she say that? I don’t want to know.”

  “We’re going to take off. This is the last time you’re going to see me.”

  “Don’t tell me.”