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

“Everything and nothing. Listen, guys are already complaining, but we’re in a war. Put it this way, no one’s bitching back home if it’s a bomb or our burning shit that takes someone out. Don’t take that the wrong way. But just wait, when we’re all sixty the government will admit that we poisoned ourselves, give the living ones a couple grand, maybe some VA bennies. That’s it. Thanks for volunteering.”

“So you’re saying we’re burning more than our shit?” Wintric says.

“Will do more damage than these Taliban jerk-offs.”

“No offense, LT,” Wintric says. “I hear you, but it could be a flu.”

“Damn, Ellis. You’re making sense to me. You’re an optimist. They need you at West Point. Stay with it, man. Stay with it.”

The next two days, nothing. Dust and distant helicopters and heat. Scan horizon, clean weapons, sweat, scan horizon, drink water, scan horizon, sweat, repeat; a two-hour argument on Stallone versus Schwarzenegger, an hour on Liddell versus Ortiz, an hour dispute on the hottest porn star followed by a half-hour debate on who among them would let a woman stick her fingers up his ass. Two yes, one no, one “has experience.”

“This one’s for everyone,” the LT says. “Five division-one football teams don’t have university in the name of the schools they represent. Go.”

Silence.

“Three you should get, being in the military.”

“Shit, LT, don’t help. Service academies.”

“There’s three. Other two?” The LT coughs into his fist.

Big Dax scratches his neck. “Football’s for pussies. Except Peyton Manning and Jonathan Vilma. Jets are two and oh, baby.”

Torres stands and raises his rifle. “I think better when I’m aiming.”

“You’d make a hell of a tight end, Big Dax. Tell me when you all want a hint.”

“I like that Tennessee orange,” says Big Dax. “We need Peyton on the Jets, LT.”

“Jets need Elway,” Torres says. “The greatest ever. First answer, LT, Georgia Tech.”

“One more to go. Not bad.”

“In Georgia you get free school if you’ve served, right?” Wintric says.

“I don’t know,” the LT says. “A few states…”

“Yeah, Texas, Illinois, Georgia. G.I. Bill or not. Doesn’t matter. It’s in the constitution or something. That’s what I’ve heard.”

“You going to school?”

“Sure. I’ll move to Texas,” Wintric says.

“What you majoring in?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not really,” the LT says.

“The Citadel?” Torres says.

“No.”

“Virginia Tech?” says Big Dax.

“No. It’s actually a mouthful: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Think gold helmets.”

“Seven months left here,” says Wintric. “A few more months at Carson, then my commitment’s up. Drive to Texas with my papers.”

“Austin?”

“Is there water near there?”

“Yep,” the LT says. “Lake Travis. It’s right there. They’ll make you a longhorn. The other obnoxious orange, Big Dax.”

“They call it burnt,” Big Dax says. “And I don’t like to talk about Texas. Too many crazies.”

“Sounds good, LT,” Wintric says. “Lake Travis, huh?”

“Supposed to be nice.”

Several moments of silence as the wind picks up. Wintric has rarely considered Texas, and as he does now he pictures long-horned bulls, the Dallas Cowboys’ blue star, Emmitt Smith, oil dikes bobbing. Lake Travis, he thinks, right there, and he tries to imagine the lake, but all that appears is a replica of Lake Almanor without the pine trees.

Big Dax runs through his mental catalogue of gold helmets. Notre Dame, Florida State, Colorado, UCLA, Purdue? Wyoming?

Torres lowers his rifle.

“I’m ready for a hint,” he says.

“Big Dax?”

“Fine,” Big Dax says.

“Doug Flutie,” the LT says.

“Doug Flutie?” Torres says.

“Boston College,” Big Dax says.

The next day, during a cloudless afternoon, and Big Dax notices a child in the far distance, but he doesn’t yet realize it’s a girl. He’s been on watch for two hours and nothing, and now this kid, a wide-open dirt plain, wind, and a heart he now hears inside him. Two hours since his last cigarette and he feels it in his blood. A mongoose darts across the road, surprising him, and he thinks about the little nondescript mammal tearing up cobra after cobra. Do they ever lose? Then his back tattoo. He had asked for a boa constrictor, but for thirty-three dollars outside Fort Benning you get what you get, so he sports a green creature along his vertebrae that appears more eel than snake. He’s nicknamed it Snake.

Again the child, now walking toward them.

“We got any candy left?” Big Dax says to no one in particular, and no one answers.

Big Dax thinks he sees the kid wave, but no, just a child in a white shawl and pink pants, ten, maybe twelve years old. She walks alone, holding something round.

“Guys, where’s our candy?” he asks.

Big Dax lifts his rifle and peers through the scope at this walking girl — no shoes, a soccer ball in hand. But all alone? A gust lifts her white shawl, and something silver, metallic, flashes. Another gust and he gets a peek at a silver vest. His insides pulse, then expand, and he calls out to Torres, “Scope her. Scope the girl.”

“Call it in, Ellis,” Torres yells.

The girl tosses the spotted ball to herself. Big Dax flips the safety off and his heartbeat throbs and he hears the LT on loudspeaker: “Estaad sho yaa saret fayr meykunam.” Stop, or I’ll shoot. She strides toward them, all alone with the flat earth.

“Two hundred out,” Torres says.

“What did you see? Talk to me,” the LT shouts.

“Vest. Vest.”

“Vest?”

“Metal. It’s not right. No one is here. It’s metal.”

“What the fuck?”

“Vest?”

“Look!”

“No one is here.”

“Shit!”

“Where is everyone?”

“A girl?”

“There’s a vest. Something’s there, LT.”

The girl stops. Big Dax sees the silver glint under her shawl and her moving lips through his crosshairs. The girl has an odd lump of skin hanging from her jaw.

“Something there, LT,” Big Dax says.

“Got it.”

“Not right. Not good.”

“Easy,” says the LT. “Wait.”

“I see metal,” Torres says. “Silver something. It’s not right. The girl isn’t right.”

“Yes.”

“She’s talking to herself.”

“Make the call.”

“Wait,” the LT says.

She walks toward them, alone. A soccer ball in her hands.

“Make the call, LT.”

“Warning shots one-fifty. Shoot at one hundred,” the LT says.

The girl shakes her head at something off to her right, then walks again. She keeps her gaze off to her right but walks straight. Torres raises his rifle and the girl stops again and touches her chest— A skin-and-bones chest? A wired chest? Silver-strung explosives?

“Estaad sho yaa saret fayr meykunam.”

Wintric mimes opening his blouse over and over.

“Look here!” he yells.

Torres’s voice: “Dax, your shot. One-fifty. Your shot. Your shot.”

“Warning shot,” LT says.

Big Dax peers through his scope, from the girl to the clear sky. Aiming high, he pulls the trigger and feels the rifle’s kick as a bullet hurtles away. Back to the girl, who stares off at the openness, seemingly unaffected, her moving lips, the skin sac hanging off her face. He smells gunpowder.

Please, Big Dax says to himself, then repeats out loud, “Please.”

Wintric has his rifle up; he peers through the scope, sees his bullet’s trajectory from his barrel to the girl’s chest. A girl? His mind works question and answer. A girl. A girl? A girl. He pictures his bullet tearing through her heart.