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

Wintric sips at his coffee and considers the fifth of whiskey in his glove box, but decides against a pour. His roofing kneepads rest on the passenger-side floor by Audioslave, the Tragically Hip, and Deftones CDs and a Burger King bag. The dog has exhausted herself, and the only noise is the idling car’s engine and the AC on low. Wintric reaches down on his right side where his ass and hip meet and pushes and rubs at the soreness. In his head he repeats the slogan he’s been repeating across the Great Basin— It’s easy if you want it.

This time he thought he’d drive to the house and walk up to the door without hesitation, but he’s been stuck in the car for fifteen minutes. A garbage truck drives by with no one on the back, and Wintric sips at his coffee and spills a couple drops on his Sacramento Kings T-shirt.

Nelson’s front door appears freshly painted and clean against the fading yellow siding. For a moment Wintric thinks he sees the door move, but nothing happens. Easy if you want it.

Wintric’s phone vibrates and he peeks at the number — Kristen.

Two years ago Kristen placed her People magazine down on her bedroom nightstand and asked him if he was having an affair. Does he love her? Does he like anything in his life? Is he going to leave her? Her hair was down, and he saw the despair in her face. Her yearning broke him, and he described the assault out loud for the first time. He expected tears, but the story arrived emotionless, straight: the dark night, the helplessness, not knowing who it was, the whispered “Nelson,” the silence out of fear and pride, living with it all. At the end he heard himself repeating the lie he keeps safe: “And then I step on the fucking knife.” It’s her face that he sees now: mouth slightly open, eyes narrowed, one large crease that he had never seen before stretching across her forehead. It’s her words that he hears: “Just tell me what you want. What do you want to happen?”

Wintric answers the phone.

“Baby? Where you at?” Kristen asks.

“Here,” he says.

“I’ll go.”

“No. Talk to me. Just for a second.”

“Dammit, Wintric. Get out of the car and do it. Right now. Keep me on. Walk up to the front door. If you wait, it’s over.”

“Yes.”

“Do something. Please.”

“Yes.”

“Got your gun?”

“No.”

“Good. Get out right now. Open the door. I love you.”

“Okay.”

“Go now.”

“Talk later.”

Wintric glances in the rearview mirror, runs his hands down his cheeks, exhales three times, slips the gun into his waistband, opens the driver’s door, stands up, and closes the door. A motorcycle rounds the corner, and he lets it pass. He leads with his bad foot and crosses the road. When he hits the first step of the home he pauses, and the dog trots over to him. No bark. Four more stairs and Wintric stands in front of the door, and through the chaos he notices that the door isn’t freshly painted; it’s unlike any door he’s seen, plasticky and shiny. He searches for a doorbell, but there isn’t one. He cocks his arm back to knock but pauses for a few seconds, waiting, listening. The smell of dog shit wafts over him. He moves his body and his knuckles strike the soft surface and he hears the weak sound of his fist knocking on the flimsy door. Wintric steps back from the door and moves his hands behind his back and sticks his chest out. The dog yaps, but Wintric refuses to turn. Ten seconds. Twenty. He steps forward and accidentally kicks the threshold with his right foot before knocking again. He steps back, and the dog is at his side. He swats at the Lab, but the dog jumps back, then forward again. Ten seconds. Twenty. No answer. Nelson’s absence isn’t something he had considered, and he stands there on the landing in momentary paralysis.

Wintric turns around and surveys the neighbors’ homes, but nothing moves. He runs his fingers through his hair. A Harley rumbles in the distance and the black Lab walks to his side, nuzzles.

“Get,” he says, his voice cracking. “Get, fucker.”

Wintric places his open hand on the door. He pushes and the door flexes. A whimper from the dog, and he feels the gun in his waistband.

“Get.”

The sound of his voice turns something in him, and he rolls his hands over and sees the sweat. He steps forward once more and knocks on the door, the sound this time three strong strikes, the noise coming to him as rapture. From somewhere behind his jaw Wintric finds emotion near, and he tries to calm by breathing through his nose, but his chin begins to move from side to side, and he realizes he has seconds. He pushes the dog aside, walks to his car, and gets in. He starts the car and punches it down the street, through another neighborhood, past two churches, out to the highway, where he rides the bumper of a gray Buick. His sobs come with guttural moans, and he uses his forearm to wipe at his face. He drives over the Green River and pulls into the back of a McDonald’s parking lot and turns off the car. He lifts his shirt over his head, bunches it up, and presses it hard to his face, over his nose and mouth. He screams into the cotton and lowers the shirt and sees his eyes in the rearview mirror and it’s him, alive, in Green River, Wyoming. Behind him the drive-through line in the mirror inches forward. He watches the vehicles stop and go, stop and go. Wintric grabs the gun from his pants, empties the bullets, and slides the gun into the center console, bullets into the glove box. He looks at his gas gauge, although he knows the tank is nearly full. He rolls down the driver’s-side window and listens to the people ordering and the metallic voice reading their orders back.

Although he’s attempted the emotional exorcism before, Wintric tries again; he decides he isn’t looking for Derek Nelson. He reinvents the past twenty minutes. He closes his eyes, calls up the vision, comfort, the story he’ll tell Kristen. I met Nelson. He was there at the door. I saw him and I asked him and he looked at me like I was crazy and he invited me in, but no, just passing through, Go Army, Go Army, best of luck, brother. It’s not sticking. Go Army. Brother. The vision isn’t sticking. Nelson at the door. He’s not there. Wintric can’t see it. He sees the door, only the door. The white door. Fist knocking. The door. No doorbell.

“Come home,” Kristen says. “We’re here.”

“Don’t put him on. I can’t handle it right now,” Wintric says.

“Come home.” Aside, in a whisper, “To Daddy, honey.”

“Don’t put him on.”

“Where are you?”

“Through Elko.”

“We miss you. Things are going to be better now. You know that. You faced him.”

“Yeah.”

“You never have to tell me what he said. It’s for you.”

Midday and fighting sleep thirty miles outside of Winnemucca, Wintric single-lane drives behind a diesel doing forty-five on an eight-mile stretch of construction in the middle of nowhere I-80. The diesel has a pair of old mud flaps with a busty, long-haired, reclining woman relaxing in chrome. Every now and then the sun strikes it right and she throws a bright flash. Desert hot, and the AC pushes out cool air and the car’s temperature gauge flirts with the yellow zone. A Circus Circus Casino billboard arrives and races by to his right, followed by a billboard for reverse vasectomies. Wintric takes in the miles and miles of beige rock intersected by a slit of blacktop.

Already halfway through Nevada, he fights himself about his decision to leave Green River, not to wait it out. This mental manipulation along this same strip of land is nothing new. He’s called Torres on the way home after each of his failed attempts and lied about where he was and his reason for phoning, and each time Torres has listened to the made-up stories and offered advice that Wintric can’t use. Even so, Torres’s soothing voice has helped get him home. Wintric looks at his cell phone, at the default blue background, but there’s no service.