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

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 has 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.