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

The boy replies, “Make it fifty, motherfucker, and when I win, I’ll give half to your mom for services rendered.”

Wintric has cocked the gun, so the trigger pull is light. A Pepsi can falls in the distance and he’s wearing new boots.

Marcus ruins another black-and-white sundae. A little chocolate sauce on the bottom of the glass, a fat scoop of vanilla, marshmallow cream, a scoop of vanilla, chocolate sauce, whipped cream, nuts, and a cherry. The dessert construction isn’t hard, but Marcus flusters easily, and the gray-haired woman in front of him shakes her head, trying to talk above the crowd and the spinning milkshake machines.

“No. Marshmallow in the middle, son. Not the bottom. The middle.”

Already Marcus’s fourth mistake and he hasn’t hit the lunch rush, but this summer has brought temperatures in the high nineties, and the line for the Lassen Drug Old-Fashioned Soda Fountain snakes out the door. These rushes exist only in the summer, when the lake brings the crowds up from the valley to their second homes and the main-street town awakens.

Marcus stands short and muscular behind the counter in a white shirt with a banana-split patch sewn onto the front. His work shirt is the only one he owns that isn’t black, and it showcases the drying splatter of an exploded strawberry shake. His hair is parted down the middle, and he doesn’t yet realize that a sliver of banana is lodged in his eyebrow. Two female coworkers shoot around him, filling orders for milkshakes, ice cream sodas, and cones. He dumps the ruined sundae into the sink and grabs another glass from beneath a NO OUTSIDE FOOD sign.

He turns back around to face the crowd and sees Kristen. She stands inside the glass front doors, touching one of the painted ceramic bowls for sale. Wintric is there.

Marcus is seventeen years old, and at the moment completely aware of his attire. Kristen has seen him working many times before, and even though their families have been close for years, her presence still unnerves him, and now, as she plants a cheek kiss on her boyfriend, the volume in the store lowers and he can hear his insides working. His vision blurs for a moment, and when he comes to he sees that the marshmallow ladle is at the bottom of the new sundae glass. He wants to throw the whole thing, wants to take off his shirt and burn it. The gray-haired woman turns to her companion and says, “Moron.” More people squeeze into the store. Some of them wear shirts printed with his town’s name on it. Marcus has the ladle in his hand and marshmallow at the bottom of the glass.

He reaches back for another glass, stealing a glimpse at Kristen in the large mirror, her gaze intently fixed on something, as are the other reflected faces, and several customers now point. Over his left shoulder a woman has her hands locked around her throat and her female friend bangs at her lower back with a closed fist. Like the others, Marcus freezes. The choking woman shades to maroon in seconds. Her forehead veins bulge, and one of his coworkers joins the woman’s friend beating at her back. Marcus knows what to do, as do many of the people in the shop, but something stays them. The back beating isn’t working, and he holds a sundae glass in his hand. A few people huddle closer, and Kristen takes a step in as well. Marcus stares at her and her frightened face, but suddenly she bounds forward, pushes the swinging women away, and reaches around the choking woman. Kristen vises down and Marcus notices the long muscles in her tanned forearms before they disappear into the woman’s midsection. A violent moan, and a thick pretzel segment explodes out.

The tense atmosphere flushes out after a minute and the crowd invites Kristen to the front of the line. Playing into Marcus’s simultaneous fear and desire, she and Wintric take seats at his section of the counter.

“Hey,” Wintric says, and Marcus nods.

“Maaarrrcus,” Kristen says. She buries herself in the menu, and despite her confident tone, Marcus can tell she’s still coming down off the adrenaline. Kristen only ever orders one of two things — a cherry or lime ice cream soda — and he’s never seen her peruse a menu before.

“That’s why they have the policy about outside food,” Marcus says, pointing to the sign above the glasses. “We only sell ice cream. Can’t choke, you know, on ice cream.” Kristen peeks up at him with a polite smirk before returning to the listings. Marcus would tear his tongue out if he could. Wintric orders a chocolate malt and she gets a banana split. The malt is easy, but at the store they have a policy on the order of the strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate ice cream in the split — each has a specific position and topping — and although Marcus can recite the last twelve U.S. presidents in order, he can’t remember the flavors’ banana-split positions at this nervous moment, so before he scoops the ice cream he tilts his shirt up and examines the patch.

Marcus places their orders in front of them, but before he turns away Kristen reaches over and touches him on the arm and draws him closer. Confused, Marcus glances at Wintric, but he’s already into the malt. Marcus hesitates, but leans in after she says, “Come here, Marcus,” his name from her lips like magic. Her vanilla perfume intoxicates him as he advances ear first, but she repositions his head straight on. She stares just above his eyes and swipes at his lower forehead twice.

“There,” she says, leaning back. “A little banana.”

Wintric and Kristen swim naked in Lake Almanor while the Bronco’s stereo plays Incubus out the open windows. The water appears mercury silver and dense just after midnight. They tread out past where they can touch, and slithery plants rub at their feet and calves. The low water level reveals random stumps poking up from the beach. The moon blooms full. To the west, a cloud of lit smoke from the mill.

They laugh about a teacher who always has coffee breath, about the future occupation survey they were forced to take in class, and Wintric tells Kristen he signed papers to enlist in the army. He leaves two weeks after graduation. He’ll pocket a bonus for signing up. She’s guessed at a departure of some kind for a while — he said he’d never work the lumber — but Wintric’s casual announcement while she treads water surprises her. She lets herself sink to the lakebed, only a few feet below. Her feet settle in cool mud and she stays there for a moment, inside herself, wondering what she’ll do next.

She crests the surface splashing but silent, and retreats to the shore. The moment deserves a scene. She wants to cry, wants the tears. She needs him to witness them running down her cheeks, but they aren’t coming. For a reason she can’t capture, the news itself troubles her only lightly. She knows the town sends lots of people into the military, and her father has told her that the service has saved many of the local kids, but Wintric? Her mind spins, but comfortably, and she searches for a response that makes sense. He should have told her weeks, months ago — only a month’s warning after two years together?

Some of her classmates already celebrate their near-future plans to leave Chester for faraway towns and universities, a course she hasn’t pursued, and she knows couples who have promised to stay together when one half leaves, but long distance rarely ends well — it just ends. In the forty seconds she’s had to process the news, she’s decided that if Wintric asks, she’ll stay together, will, if he asks, maybe even go with him, but everything is too new, there’s no expectation, only a calmness, this unanticipated reaction to his announcement.

She walks to the shore and the lake recedes down her body and the mud at her feet hardens to pebbles. Her skin throbs with a recovering sunburn and the soft air evaporates the moisture away. She poses in front of Wintric’s lifted Ford, low beams at her back, disappointed that she can’t recall all the words to the song playing. After a minute the rocks dig at her bare feet so she steps onto a nearby stump.