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

by Jesse Goolsby

  “You’re a gold miner now,” Dax says. “You got one of those lights on your helmet?”

  “Those are for coal miners, you dumbass. And I sure as shit ain’t no gold miner. Bail bonds, man. Easy money. Dumbest fucks in forever.”

  “You haven’t been in the army.”

  “Who do you think my customers are, Mormons?”

  “Buddy of mine is one,” Dax says. “Loved it when he said fuck. He got out too.”

  “Where?”

  “Colorado.”

  “Same as here. All about gold. When it dries up, no more Colorado. We got gambling and water. That’ll keep some folks around.”

  “Where we going?” asks Dax. “I saw the casino lights coming in.”

  “Good tables or girls?”

  “Both.”

  “Where do you think you are?”

  “Pick a place where we can win you a stuffed buck.”

  Four hundred up after a three-hour session at the poker table, Dax waits in the casino bar’s corner booth for Alston to return with drinks. Alston promised him something “old school,” and Dax senses a root root in his future.

  The Eagles play from a hidden speaker and Dax stares at a woman sitting in profile at the center of the bar. Her blond hair is cut shoulder length and her legs could reach the floor if she extended them, but she has her heels on the low rung of the stool. She’s kept her jacket on, giving the impression that she could leave at any moment, but she’s only two sips into her latest drink.

  Near drunk, Dax wants another gulp in him before he walks over to her. He pictures his smooth approach, her eyes rising to meet his, her instant attraction. He’s never gained a woman’s interest with just a look, but his roll on the poker table, the drinks, the “just home from war” angle, and “Take It Easy” have him feeling good. He fantasizes that she has a place nearby, that he won’t have to take her back to Alston’s.

  When Alston returns with the drinks, he says, “Guess what this is,” but Dax grabs the tumbler and hammers his drink.

  “Shit,” Alston says. “You’re not that big.”

  “Work to do,” Dax says, and points at the woman.

  “One-armer,” Alston says.

  “What?”

  “See how she sits. That’s on purpose. Listen, I got no issues with it, but I know you.”

  “What?”

  “That girl has one arm. Go check her out. Can’t tell from here.”

  Dax stays seated and examines his empty glass.

  “Hey, no problem, big boy,” Alston says. “Go do your thing. I’ve had one-armers, one-leggers.”

  “Shut the hell up,” Dax says. “You’re so full of shit.”

  “You kidding me? What do you want to know?”

  “Nothing. Please.”

  “One-armers are great, because you don’t have to adjust anything, but the one-leggers fuck you all up. She was cut to the hip. The whole angle in there—I don’t know, man. And you don’t want to stand ’em up. Jesus.”

  “Only you,” Dax says.

  “Hell no, some people like that crap. I don’t like it and I don’t dislike it. Doesn’t matter to me. Decent face, green light.”

  “Got a feeling you’d take them without a head.”

  “I got my limits, man. No tits, no way. I’ve been down that road. Sad as fuck. You get the shirt off and one is missing and she’s all fucked up emotional about it so you can’t say anything, but I say something. Can’t get past it. Happened twice. Cancer or some shit. These gals come in from the hills where they practiced the nukes back when. Beautiful chicks, but I can’t touch ’em after I’ve seen that.”

  “You’re cheering me up,” Dax says.

  “I should be. That one’s got one arm. What you need two for? You got one dick, unless the war’s changed you.”

  “Yep.”

  “And I’ve never seen her before, which is a good sign. Legs on her too. You might like it.”

  “Sure.”

  “What? The thrill gone? The root root will kick here in two seconds. Fix everything.”

  “It’s horrible,” Dax says.

  “Childhood.”

  “Yours.”

  “I guess. I wouldn’t go back. You better not be going. Nothing good in Rutherford. It’s all gone.”

  “I don’t know,” Dax says.

  “You know. There’s nothing there. I can tell you’re going. You’re already there. It’s a mistake. You don’t need the city, Dax. There’s nothing worth knowing. Not good for you. Don’t go. You’ll screw yourself.”

  “I’m not sixteen, A. I know what I’m doing.”

  “No, you think you do, but you’ve been away. It’s not your fault. You go back, it’s over. Start new.”

  “You’re not listening.”

  “Far away from Rutherford.”

  “Travel agent now? Where’s the place for me, O great one? Tell me.”

  “It’s not home.”

  “I’m not you. Don’t want to be you.”

  “Don’t stall. Go talk to her.”

  “No, you’re a travel agent and a gold miner,” Dax says. “You hunt deer. You take shit from the ground.”

  “The drink feels good, huh?”

  “I want to be as smart as you,” Dax says.

  “You don’t want to be me.”

  “Smart as you,” Dax says.

  “You started too late.”

  “I should go down south, maybe?” Dax says. “The sun will be good for me.”

  “You’re chicken shit. She’s at this bar for a reason.”

  “She’s looking for deer hunters.”

  “You won’t go, but I will.”

  Alston stands and takes a step away.

  “Oh, I know,” says Dax. “Key fucking West.”

  Alston stops and turns back. He steps to the booth, grabs Dax’s empty glass, lifts it a few inches off the table, and slams it down.

  “Fuck, I’m glad you’re here,” he says, and turns and walks to the bar.

  From Alston’s front steps Dax stares south beyond the ridge line at the white glow in the otherwise black sky. Digging the gold, killing the mountains. Five minutes since his last cigarette; he leans his head back on the front door. He’s always liked the black, early-morning calmness and thinks he might look for something where he can work at night and sleep during the day-lit morning.

  The faintest sound of crushing rock arrives from the distant white glow, then Alston’s footsteps inside the home. Dax guesses he’ll have another couple minutes on his own before Alston joins him outside. He didn’t expect these fifteen minutes alone, especially after they left the casino empty-handed and Alston pleaded with him on the drive home to move out west. He told Alston he’d think about it, but Dax already knows there’s nothing here to connect to, nothing that excites him. There’s too much space to feel close to anything. Up to this trip, Fort Carson was as far west as he’d ever been, and that was far enough. Colorado, Nevada—these were places to escape to after you’d lived a life. You could sleepwalk here and get by. There weren’t enough people, wasn’t enough buzz to get you to wake up.

  Alston is wrong about Rutherford. Dax knows he’s not returning to just his hometown. It’s Rutherford and Newark, the traffic, exhaust smell; the local Pancake House, nearby skyscrapers, Madison Square Garden; taxis and cops with attitude, Connecticut pricks; airplanes everywhere, back-yard pools, everything familiar and foreign and kinetic. There, you’re always awake.

  But Alston’s words have tweaked him enough that he questions accepting his well-intentioned stepmother’s offer to crash at their place while he figures things out. His childhood bedroom might kill him at twenty-seven. She’s told him the jobs are waiting for him, which he believes is shit, but even so, where to start? He knows tons of ex-army security guards, but he’s done with uniforms and guns, save for the pistol he’ll keep for home protection, but that one will be locked up.

  Torres called him a couple days ago to let him know about a po
ssible speaking gig for veterans and that Ellis had hurt his foot and was coming back to Carson early. Torres had few details on Ellis. As for the job, Dax would have to travel, which seemed to suit Torres fine, but Dax isn’t sure he could pull it off. He can’t think of a single wartime story he’d want to tell, no matter how motivational, funny, or gut-wrenching. Besides, he struggles with the details: his memory of war is the girl in the road. Already all else blurs beside her. He knows about the patrols, laughter, showering, sweat, and boredom that filled his two tours in Afghanistan, but none of it feels real—there’s no focus or faces or sounds. His war is his rifle in his hands, gunpowder in his nose, a girl in the road. How could he tell that story? Why would he want to?

  The doorknob turns and Dax leans forward.

  “Big guy like you,” Alston says, stepping past Dax, “you’d make sixty a year collecting bonds out here. Sixty, easy. I’ll wake the boss up right now. We start tomorrow. Send the rest of your shit whenever. We only have to get like a quarter of the money back to break even. You think business will ever slow down? You think this place is gonna turn into Disneyland? We’ll get you a .357 or something. You’ll never use it, man. Don’t worry. Just shave your head and get yourself a killer tattoo. Show ’em your forearms. They’ll give us more money than they owe.”

  “I got a tat on my back.”

  “You gonna walk backwards without a shirt all day?”

  “I could get one of those Mike Tyson jobs on my face.”

  “You do whatever the hell you want.”

  “Yeah.”

  “We’re goddamn brothers. You know that?”

  “Yeah,” Dax says.

  “Hey, talk when you’re ready, okay? When you’re ready, let it fly.”

  7

  Touch

  ARMANDO HAS BEEN back home from Afghanistan for two weeks, and as he peers out of the restaurant’s corner window he can’t get over how much the mountains west of Colorado Springs differ from the cracking peaks circling Kabul. Armando’s father adds sweetener to his iced tea, glances around the half-filled room, and taps the table.

  “You’re right, no one really cares about you. No one is thinking about you. And thank God. It’d drive us all crazy. You want to come home to an America that realizes its sins? Screw that. We want to gloat, son, and you are the proof we don’t need. I don’t blame you and your dudes for pissing on dead Taliban. Go for it. Piss on the live ones. Screw the Geneva Convention. Rip dicks off, hack up kids, waterboard, light that Koran on fire, baby.”

  “Easy. I was just saying—”

  “Or treat for polio or pass out limbs like you all did. Do it. We’ll forget. Don’t do it. We’ll forget. So yes, I guess I thank you for raising your right hand. For walking into the recruiter, clueless. And don’t put this on your mother’s death.”

  “What?”

  “Seriously, who actually wants to go into the military? Enough, I guess. Everyone wants someone to tell them what to do. That’s what it was with you. Just needed someone to tell you what to do. Look, it worked. And you got it good. Someone will hire you here as soon after you sign your separation papers. They’ll be called patriotic for doing it. No one is calling you baby killers these days, that’s thanks enough.”

  “You like hearing yourself talk. That’s okay.”

  “You said no one cares about the wars. I’m agreeing with you. You say we’re at war? Where, son? Look around. Who’s talking about it? Chicago isn’t talking. San Fran? Memphis? We’re not a nation at war. We never were. Are you serious? No one cares unless it’s someone they know.”

  “So no one knows anyone?”

  “We don’t care because all of you have volunteered to die. If not in war, then when you get home all brain-fucked from an IED some illiterate planted for twenty bucks and his neck. And believe me, I think that’s shit. I’m not mad at you. The VA needs to get their shit together, sure. But there are choices. You chose to be a paid rifle. You are all-volunteer.”

  “We volunteer to serve. We don’t choose our wars. Hell, I got in before 9/11. You know that. You act like that doesn’t matter. We’re allowed to be pissed about where we go.”

  “You’re wrong. You volunteer to serve at the whim of presidents and senators with no skin in the game. Holy shit, we just reelected Bush. You volunteered to let human beings like him make the call on how you’ll die, so don’t pretend you’re a hero or something. Don’t go strutting around.”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “Don’t buy the commercials where people stand up and clap as soldiers walk through the airport. No one knows why they’re clapping. Forget the bullshit parades.”

  “Parades? Dad.”

  “You really think they’re for you? They’re for us, son. You kill people you don’t know, and they hate you the same way you hate them. That’s it. I know economics. It’s not just oil. I also know that no one is invading Florida.”

  “Would that make it easier?”

  “Defending actual land, actual Americans instead of algorithms that run the stock market? Yes. That would make me feel better. Would it make you feel better?”

  “No. I don’t know. I used to.”

  “Yes you do. You want to say yes. But if you say yes, your recent trip becomes hard to swallow. And you’ve been told isolationism is shit, although there’s no such thing as isolationism. Listen to me, there are things worth fighting for, we just can’t find them. Stare into your kids’ eyes and tell them about Karzai’s butchers. His druggie, raping buddies.”

  “You know there’s no honest people in the world. It’s always the lesser of two evils. We’re corrupt, but not as corrupt. I know economics too. You fight for a way of life.”

  “You’re wrong. We’re not as corrupt because our lie is better than their lie. And here, people know it’s a lie.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Son, I like my Comcast, my fifty-five-inch plasma, and the Broncos. I want to get pissed when my cable goes out in the fourth quarter of the NBA Finals. I want it to ruin my day. I want to hate Ohio State, I want to eat blueberries year-round, pretend that Christ actually danced on water, and bang my new wife when I have a good day.”

  “Don’t.”

  “I want to go ape-shit at my grandkids’ soccer game when the ref makes a bad call. I tell this to your children when you’re away: ‘You get what you get and you don’t get upset.’ There you go. You want a thank-you?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. Thanks. I love you. You know that. But your uniform means nothing. No matter what you’ve been told, it’s only a job.”

  “You’re wrong. Not about everything. But you’re wrong about that. And people know why they’re clapping as soldiers walk through the airport. They’re just glad it’s not them and they know that if things got bad enough it would be them. They’re clapping because they know sometimes it’s hopeless and we serve anyway.”

  “But you’re getting out. Why?”

  “It’s not because I don’t believe in what our military does.”

  “So let’s say you were thinking of staying in. If they cut your pay and benefits in half, right now, what would you do?”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “You don’t serve. You’re a paid rifle. Soon to be ex–paid rifle. I love you, son, but it’s true.”

  “People are capable of appreciation.”

  “It’s fear, and fear works.”

  The carpeted chapel seats three hundred, and three quarters of the chairs are occupied this Sunday morning. Armando’s younger daughter, Mia, moans in frustration halfway through the hour-long service. Armando leans over Anna, squeezes Mia’s leg, and whispers, “Don’t make me.” She eyes him like a stranger. She shoulders into Anna’s red dress, his favorite, and quiets down.

  A year away and his dark suit drapes loose on his dry, thin frame. Anna tries to calm both of their daughters as a woman with heavy eye shadow cries at the podium. She struggles through a story about how tithing h
as lifted her soul. She gathers herself: “It’s easy to die for the Lord, but hard to live for him.”

  The statement settles nicely over the congregation and all the members contemplate their lives and the things they do or do not give to him. Armando glances at Anna, and he can tell that she contemplates it all, because she has her unfocused stare on the seat in front of her. She probably considers what service to this country means, with him being away so often, or maybe just the ways she lives for the Lord. Perhaps she relives Mia’s birth during his previous deployment: driving to the military hospital, only to be sent home because her body had not dilated enough; then, when it was time, waiting an hour for the anesthesiologist, giving birth, and, soon after, trying to get Armando on the phone half a world away, only to be told that he was unavailable; resting and worrying, imagining the worst, and finally writing an e-mail that she hoped he would be alive to read with nothing in the body, just the subject line: “Girl—Mia?”

  Armando rubs her back and she leans into his touch, rewarding him. He’s unsure if God wanted him to join the military. Armando figures God is mostly hands-off, but even so, when he prays, he does so expectantly.

  The speaker now rehashes the founding-of-the-church story, centering her comments on the resiliency of Joseph Smith and his early supporters, chronicling select hardships: Smith’s being tarred and feathered, the lynch mob killing him and his brother, church members dodging persecution in Illinois, Missouri, making their way to Utah in a great and difficult migration, and setting up shop near a lake of salt. Armando has heard these stories many times. There is pride there, and although the worst he has experienced is soldiers questioning his underwear, he appreciates the religious lineage of tough souls.

  Mia moans again, and three people in the row in front of the Torres family turn and smirk-smile. Anna places her hand on Armando’s bouncing leg to soothe him, but his mind floats in a trance, now stuck on the particulars of tarring and feathering. Pine tar? Tar we use for the roads? Hot tar? Pour it on? Why the feathers? Mia fusses louder and Anna whispers, “I’m taking her out” to Armando, but his leg keeps bouncing, his eyes up—How do you get the tar off? Why tar and feather when someone can put a shirt on over it? Unless you do the face. Hot tar on the cheeks. A beard of feathers. Where do you get feathers? Chicken feathers? Who brings the feathers? Of all the choices for pain and humiliation, tar and feathers? His head clears and he peeks over at his family, but there is only Camila, sitting silently, stuffing the eraser end of a pencil up her nose.