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

“Do something,” Anna says.

Armando is about to ask her what she thinks about a third child when she leans over, grabs his arm, and whispers, “You have to touch your children, dammit. Do you hear me?”

The words hang on him, and the shock and anger brew inside his limbs.

“What the hell did you say to me?”

This fury arrives from someplace new, and he lines up obscenities on his tongue, but before launching them he shuffles through the past two weeks of memory and comes up with a stinging recap: the girls were too shy to hug him when he came off the plane with the cameras flashing and the news teams and the Bruce Springsteen music. He rushes past bedtime routines, feedings, a doctor’s visit, walks to the park, and he realizes that he has touched them, but only in passing; he hasn’t held them, not as he used to, not as he wanted to while he was away. His chest pounds and Anna’s hand clutches his biceps to lead him out to the yard.

Without a word he rises. His daughters now play with the water hose, Camila half plugging the stream into a spewing water fan, and for the first time their giggles terrify him. He walks onto the wet grass, but a few steps away he shakes his head, not sure what comes next. A crushing weight stops and holds him. Does he grasp them and throw them in the air? Grab their thin arms and pull them close? Take the hose and spray them? Does he ask for permission? He wants to live for them, but it all feels wrong, and before he knows it he sits, crushing the dusk grass, and everyone pauses, even young Mia, with a puddle covering her toes. He opens his arms, but his children stand motionless.

“Please,” he says.

“Girls,” Anna says.

“No! I’ll do it,” he says. “Camila, Mia. Come to your daddy. Now.”

They stand still.

“Why won’t you come? Please, girls.”

His arms are open. He could receive them so easily.

“Mommy,” Mia says.

“No! Here, Mia. Here. With me.”

“Mommy.”

“Goddammit! No! Here, Mia. Camila, here.”

“Armando.”

“No!”

Armando slams the ground, his palms on the ground, pressing, and he closes his eyes and steadies himself. He senses Anna moving in the background. He breathes and opens his eyes, but he’s still in his back yard.

“Girls,” he says, his voice cracking. “Girls.”

Camila takes a step forward and stops. Armando guesses that Anna is waving the girls forward, begging them with her arms to go to their father, but they stand locked in place, staring above him. He feels water on his legs, and Anna says, “Sing the ABCs.” He hears her and sees his arms and hands reach out to the great expanse in front of him. He thinks of the tune and just before he begins the melody, Camila starts with the A, and Mia joins in by the E. His daughters gaze at Anna, singing slowly and softly in the air, their faces solemn. The refrain should sound elementary, but the dual-voiced letters are veneration. Armando thinks back to when he sang this same song to his daughters at bedtime, and all at once he realizes that he has taught them a beautiful prayer, one they remember. He opens his mouth and hits the right pitch on Q. Together they sing the building blocks to everything they will ever say to each other.

When they finish he expects a surge of something, a new resolve, or an answer awaiting him after Z. He wants his body to come alive, but it’s near dark and the girls haven’t moved and he feels the cool water beginning to cover him, then Anna’s hands on his shoulders, squeezing him to life.

FEBRUARY 2005, a moment alone in Afghanistan, and Wintric smells burning trash and shit from the other side of the post, and he hears the helicopters whipping in the dark distance, his uniform warming his body, and he walks between the rows of massive shipping containers and feels the first push in the back, and the Afghan night envelopes everything, a tackle from behind, dirt pressing his face as he struggles with strangers, but a game he knows, like all the wrestling, the UFC imitation, the bets, the boredom before battle, hearing himself, “You got me. Fine. Fuck off,” then silence, instantaneously odd, no “Fuck you” or “Pussy” reply, and all at once a switch flips a separate world on and his face presses hard to the soil, knee on his neck, he’s gasping now, suffocating, a heavy weight lands on his back, fumbles with his belt, then pants down, his underwear, the dizzying disbelief, his arms and legs attempt to flail, but they fail him once, and again, a will to thrash, a throaty gurgle, anus pressure and pain, pressure and pain, and ripping flesh and a grunt, and barely breathing and confusion and helpless swirling beyond, and the dirt pressing his nose and mouth, gasping, fighting, but nothing, willing his body but nothing, and pressure and pain, then silence, his slack body shedding parts of himself into the shallow night, hovering somewhere there, close.

The following days press pain and debate, thoughts of home that can’t materialize, death and weakness. The dense hours crawl. Patrols like a zombie, meals he can’t taste, then refuses to eat, Halo 2 for hours. A sergeant asks him if he’s okay, and he hears himself say that he is, and somehow the sergeant believes him. He shits and weeps. Desperate, he sharpens his knife, considers the right spot to stab (left foot, below the smallest two toes, marked with a penned X ), how hard to stab, swigs smuggled booze until he vomits, and straps the doomed foot down. The knife is light in his hand and he cries and wipes at his eyes, then closes them. He swings down hard. The pain rockets through him and his eyes blast open and he sees the blade lodged an inch to the right of his aim point and not deep enough to do the trick — the trick being escape. The blood starts up fast, darker than he imagined, and already he’s dizzy and his arms spasm out at his sides. The tent walls around him push close, but he manages to will himself back to the knife. He pulls it from his foot and stabs himself two more times before he passes out.

At the Reno airport Wintric’s mother cries and takes him in her arms. She knows her son has injured his foot badly, but that’s all. They load the Ford Taurus and Wintric says, “I’m tired, Mom. Just let me look.” On the drive to Chester, Wintric’s mother sips at a Pepsi. Gwen Stefani, Mariah Carey, Kelly Clarkson take turns on the radio. Wintric has the passenger seat reclined and his booted foot up on the dash.

This is coming home silent: early afternoon northwest bound on Highway 395 out of Reno past Sun Valley, Bordertown, the WELCOME TO CALIFORNIA sign with a trio of golden poppies, Hallelujah Junction, high desert, sagebrushed pioneer settlements, WELCOME TO DOYLE — WORLD FAMOUS LIZARD RACES, Herlong, army munitions depot, dried-up Honey Lake, Highway 36, the supermax prison with gleaming fences, Susanville, the Sierra theater, the climb up into pine and red soil, Fredonyer Pass, green meadow, Westwood, the old dump, over Bailey Creek running at a trickle, cresting Johnson’s grade, Mount Lassen holding snow against the blue sky, Lake Almanor’s dark blue water, the causeway into town, the green city limits sign, POP 2200, Chester, home.

Kristen wanted to see Wintric in his uniform, but he wears sweatpants. It’s been three years, and now here he is, on her couch, in her tiny living room just big enough for couch, coffee table, fern, short bookshelf, and television. Deftones play from the tiny speakers. She nudges him with her elbow. She has curled her hair and squeezed into her best Lucky jeans. Under normal circumstances she would palm the back of his head, feeling the sharp brush of his close haircut, but she’s not thinking about hair. She hasn’t even mentioned the package Wintric sent her from basic training that she’s kept in the closet.