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

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.