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

“Fuck you.”

“I got candy bar in my pocket. Maybe bomb?”

“I got dick in my pants. Smack your face?”

“Easy,” says Torres. “Dude is with us.”

The interpreter smiles.

“Build one or not, I don’t care. After this war I get my visa. I will move to Nevada.”

“You’re not moving to Nevada,” Wintric says. “I’ve been to Nevada.”

“Las Vegas.”

“You’ll lose all your money,” Wintric says. “One, two days of slots. Good luck with that.”

“No. You misunderstand. I will work at the casino.”

“What?”

“Work there. Roulette. I’ve seen it. Wave your hand, put white ball in the spinner. Easy.”

“There’s more to it,” Wintric says.

“No. That’s it. Wave hand. Spin ball. Money.”

“Never happen.”

Wintric lifts a boy’s sleeve up to the nub of the boy’s shoulder joint and fumbles with, then drops, the cheap syringe. He selects another syringe and drops it.

“Hey. Relax. Focus on the kids,” Big Dax says. “Hold their hands, sing, do whatever you need to do. Keep your mind working on the good shit.”

“I don’t need friends.”

“Careful, Ellis,” Torres says. “It’s a long walk back.”

Wintric pushes a new syringe against the boy’s shoulder, presses the plunger, and the clear liquid slides in.

“It’s not that long,” he says.

“These kids,” says Big Dax. “This one right here.” A young girl missing her left nostril rests her neck in his hand. “She risks getting her arm cut off to come see us. It’s why we only see the worst.”

This seems like an exaggeration to Wintric, though he isn’t sure of anything in this place. Another boy steps up for his shot.

“We’re as safe as we’ll ever be,” says Torres. “You can almost relax for a few hours. No one ever shoots when the army inoculates and clothes and hands out money.”

Wintric sees Torres glance over at the meandering goats.

“Still,” Torres says, “stay close to the kids, especially the boys. They hate losing boys.”

“That makes no sense,” Wintric says. “We’re safe, but stay close to the boys?” He glances at the naked mountain peaks above them.

“You from San Francisco, right?” Big Dax asks Wintric, hoping to help.

“Four hours north.”

“Oregon?”

“No. California. The good part.”

“Redwoods?” Torres chimes in.

“Two thousand people. A lake. Think Montana, but Bay Area assholes in the summer.”

Wintric takes a drink of bottled water and motions to the next in line.

“They take our water,” he says.

“A’s or Giants?” Big Dax asks.

“Giants.”

“You like Barry Bonds? ’Cause he’s a prick. Probably got nuts the size of gnats.”

“Hit three-forty-something, forty-five homers. He’ll beat it this year. You’d take him in a heartbeat.”

“Shit. Yankees don’t need him. Don’t make a hat big enough for his planet-sized ’roid head.”

“Oh, damn,” Wintric says. “Yankees fan.”

“Maybe that’s what we’re giving these kids — some nice, fatten-you-up steroids,” Torres says and rips another rubbing-alcohol pad from its wrapper. “Creating a superrace of Afghanis that can hit a baseball a mile.”

“Torres, you dumbass, have some compassion,” Big Dax says while tending to a girl with a goiter. She stares at him as he tries to wave her on.

“You’re done,” he says.

She doesn’t move.

“Done. Go. Now.”

She blinks twice.

“Go.”

“She wants candy,” the interpreter says.

“No candy,” Big Dax says. He joins his right thumb and index finger, brings them to his open mouth, and shakes his head.

“No. Candy. No. Candy.”

The girl stands still. The goiter bulges from the side of her neck, the flesh brushing her deltoid.

“No. Candy.” He nods at the interpreter. “Translate, please.”

“She understands you.”

Big Dax grabs the girl beneath her arms, lifts her, turns her away from him, and sets her on the ground. He places his huge hands on her lower back and pushes her just enough so she takes her first step away.

“Come on now,” Torres says, “where’s the compassion for the greedy one?”

“They have nothing to do with us being here.”

“You don’t know that. These kids could have plenty to do with this,” Torres says.

“Don’t piss me off, Torres.”

“Doesn’t take much strength to dig a foot down, put something in the hole, cover it up. Bet some of these arms have done some digging.”

Wintric sees Big Dax’s left boot tap the ground.

“Fight your urge to be a little bitch,” Big Dax says.

“We got staying-alive problems,” says Torres. “So you’re right, I’m a bitch. Guess I’m a scared bitch that wants to live.” Someone off by the goats laughs. “I don’t want the fucking dirt road exploding on our way back.”

“Don’t listen to him, Ellis. The road’s fine. And Torres, don’t talk shit about these kids. You know the life expectancy of these dudes?” Big Dax asks, straightening his six-foot, eight-inch body. He pauses, and Torres scratches his neck. “Low thirties.”

“I must’ve checked the Doctors Without Borders block instead of the U.S. Army,” Torres says. “My mistake.”

“If it was your kids in line here, you’d think different. If it was your kids that wouldn’t see thirty-one…”

“These aren’t my kids.”

Stretching his arms above his head, Armando Torres examines the diminishing line of children. Not a single child appears nourished, and as he touches their arms and hair and holds their hands and the anger inside him, he thinks of his two daughters. His mind goes to Camila, his oldest and the prettier one, who refuses to eat anything unless she has a dollop of crunchy peanut butter on her plate. Four years old and tearless at his base sendoff. He was proud of her strength, but now he fears the indifferent expression she wore as he walked away.

Torres used to sing the ABCs to his girls every night while he tucked them in, and the tune comes to him now, in this gorge. It calms him. After a while he leaves out the letters and hums.

Wintric says, “You know any Metallica?”

Torres ignores him and continues to hum. He considers the minuscule amount his daughters are growing each day, how Camila will be old enough to play catch when he returns, how they might want to tuck themselves in.

“Incubus? Deftones?”

After delivering the shots, the men wait around with some of the now antibodied kids and a collection of Afghan amputees. The wind has picked up, and the injured glance up every now and again, waiting for their limbs to fall from the cloudy sky. The C-130 is late.

“Jim Abbott had one arm,” Big Dax says as the men sit and pick at the ground.

“Who?” Wintric asks.

“He had an arm,” Torres says. “Was missing a hand.”

“Threw a no-hitter,” Big Dax says. “For the Yankees.”

“Did he use?”

“Why would you use if you have one arm?”

“One hand,” says Torres.

“Jesus, Torres, who cares if it’s an arm or a hand?”

“It’s a big difference.”

“He didn’t use,” says Big Dax. “Not like your boy Bonds.”

“They’ll never prove it,” says Wintric.

“Look at a photo of him with the Pirates side by side with one of him on the Giants,” says Big Dax. “I’m a Jersey-educated man and I can tell the difference. It’s not broccoli.”

“Your Yankees signed Giambi,” says Torres.

“Yep. And he’s sure as shit dirty. You see, that’s how it’s done. Just admit the worst and move on. What’s jacked up is that everyone on the West Coast wants to believe. No one trusts their eyes.”