Jesse Goolsby - I'd Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them

“Shit!” his father says, lifting his right arm up with a fist.

His mother moans.

“My God,” she says. “Slow down. Slow down. Now. Please.”

Armando’s father lifts his foot from the accelerator, but the pedal sticks. He presses the brake and the van shakes.

“Stuck. Pedal’s stuck. Shit,” he says. “Help me.”

Armando glances outside and watches the red rock and pine trees flash by. Amid his still-forming fear he wonders if they’re doing a hundred.

Later Armando will understand that his father’s mistake was not shifting the car to neutral and not making any attempt to turn off the engine, but no one in the minivan knows that now, so while his father hammers down his left foot on the parking brake and his right on the main brake pedal, his mother unbuckles her seat belt and leans over the center console and yanks on the accelerator. The burning brake stench overpowers them. From the back seat Armando watches his mother’s lower back jerk and jerk. He has never seen her body move so wildly, and the sight scares him more than anything that has happened up to this point, until his body launches sideways, then presses taut, and he hears his father yell out “Na!” as the van begins its roll.

His vision straightens and Armando makes out his sister’s wet face and the ground at the window behind her. Something presses on his neck and he reaches there and grabs at flesh, bone underneath, and he moves it away from him. A dangling, shoeless foot on a leg — his mother’s leg extending out at an impossible angle toward her body. He hears voices nearby and reaches out in the space in front of him, toward his sister, and sees his hands there before darkness overtakes him.

One afternoon, eight weeks into Armando’s mother’s coma, Armando’s father picks him up from school in their loaner van and drives them past the luxurious Broadmoor resort and out on Gold Camp Road toward Pike’s Peak. Aspens flank the packed dirt path. They talk about the Broncos beating the Redskins, about John Elway, how he may have a couple more seasons left in him.

His father says, “The guy once knelt on home plate at the Stanford baseball stadium and hurled a baseball over the center fence from his knees.”

Armando pictures young Elway kneeling on home plate before the throw. Elway’s in uniform, warming up, windmilling his massive right arm loose as a crowd gathers near the backstop. A baseball appears in his hand, and in one superhuman motion he flings the ball high and deep. The ball still climbs into the sky as it passes dead center, headed for the clouds. Young Elway grins as Armando shakes the vision away.

After a crest in the road his father turns south, guiding the van into a valley. A mile down the bumpier road he pulls the van off by a stream and parks.

They follow the stream for a while and piss at the base of a rusted-out sign before peeling off and hiking up a hill, then resting on a granite outcropping.

“Never eat an armadillo,” Armando’s father says. “Leprosy.”

“I’ll never eat an armadillo.”

“You never know when you’ll be tempted to try. Wyoming. New Mexico. Weird freaks out there.”

“What’s the weirdest thing you’ve eaten?”

His father smacks his lips. “Weird, of course, is relative. But to answer your question, human.”

“Human?”

“You believe me?”

“I guess.”

“Be careful.”

“Okay.”

“I ate a rabbit eyeball for twenty-five bucks.”

“Dad.”

“Hard Jell-O marble.”

Armando looks out on the modest vista — gray rock and trees scattered together. He picks up a flat rock and tosses it down the hill. Tiny dust eddies circle into the afternoon. He sees dirt on his jeans and swipes. He imagines Marie calling his house and leaving a message he’ll find later that night. He recalls the yellow shirt she wore at school, the freckles on her neck. Near the end of the day she mentioned to him that she wanted to see Se7en —he’s heard something about a severed head in a box.

“Your mom will wake up,” his father says.

“Yep.”

“I mean it, son. She’ll be back with us soon.”

“You gave her a blessing?”

“Doesn’t have to do with that.”

“Okay.”

“There’s free will, but there’s God’s plan. There’s volcanoes and shit too. God’s always watching, which is a pain in the ass. And, of course, Freud is always watching, which is less a pain in the ass, but still. So there you go.”

The wind blows through the trees and they hear the branches move.

On the way down they stay silent, but as they near the van, his father tells him to wait by the stream, ambles to the vehicle, and returns with a glass jug and matches.

“It’s getting darker,” his father says. “Okay.” He uncorks the jug and holds it out to his son. “Smell,” he says, smiling, but Armando can smell the gasoline from where he stands.

“Little smoke ’cause there’s no green on it,” his father says, stepping close. “Always pick dead ones.”

Only then does Armando notice the tree next to him. It’s largely limbless save a few dead branches near the top.

“I’ll do this one,” his father says. “Now listen. You just burn one. I got too cocky. Out of control.”

He steps to the snag and pours gasoline over the bottom two feet of the tree.

“Wow,” he says. “Yeah. That’s the smell.” He pinches a match and holds it in his left hand between his thumb and index finger.

Armando stares in wonderment. “They’ll see the smoke,” he says.

“Getting dark, son.” His father shakes his head. “And there’s no they. ”

“Okay.”

“Most of the law is good, but some of it’s shit.” He shakes out his arms. “You already know that. You may think different, and I don’t care. Just never say I didn’t know what I was doing. You understand? Don’t ever say that.” He points the match at his son’s chest. “That’s the worst thing you can say about someone, that they don’t know what they’re doing. Doesn’t matter how old. We should hang kids that kill people. They know enough.” He pauses and examines the unlit match. “If you have a drink, that’s fine. Your mother will wake up and disagree.”

“I try things.”

“Good.”

“Some things.”

“Always believe in God. You’ll be tempted. People believe in gravity. No one knows what the hell it is. There’s no difference.”

“What?”

“Be suspicious of Jesus. No one understands what’s going on there.”

His father strikes the match on the side of the box and cups the miniflame. Armando’s head buzzes, and he steps forward.

“Can I?” he asks, but his father ignores him, and Armando sees his father’s mouth move, but no sound emerges. His father flicks the match at the base of the tree and the flame catches and climbs. The tree lights up quick — a twenty-foot torch.

Armando can’t find words to say, but in his mind many cartwheel by: beautiful, free, power, hot, trouble, crime, glorious, God, coma, dead, Marie, prison, run.

Then his father’s voice.

“She said I was a slob or something. Things go back and forth, then you dig up the good stuff, and I end up calling her an über-bitch. So she says she’s going to stay at her sister’s in Cortez. Fine. ‘Good,’ I say. And she gathers her stuff, her priceless diploma. Gets in the car. All ready to go. But she sits out there forever. She’s not crying. Not doing anything. Just sitting. Not even touching the wheel. Finally she comes in. ‘It’s Sunday,’ she says. ‘Can’t spend money on gas on Sunday.’ That’s it. She stays.”

“Mom?”

“Can’t spend money on Sunday? Can’t live like that, man. Don’t talk about it.” He takes a step toward the fire.