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

Wintric doesn’t go inside. He waits on the steps. When he gets the pills, he selects four from the bottle, then tosses them into his mouth. He tries to swallow them dry, but the pills stick in his throat. He gulps twice, but they’re still stuck, so he rushes down the three stairs and cups snow from the yard into his mouth and waits for it to melt enough to swallow.

“What the hell?” says the dealer. “Get the fuck on.”

Wintric walks away, but not home. He turns down Second Avenue, past an empty lot where as a kid he used to break empty Budweiser bottles. Every step he takes seems to propel him a block. Rushing and ready for the Oxy to be absorbed, he walks past the old homes and families he’s always known: the McIntires, the Garretts, the Roulands, the Killingsworths. His breath plumes out wide into the cold. He doesn’t know where he’s walking, but he wants to be outside. Already he believes he could walk forever, go anywhere.

Down First Avenue now; a minivan and a blue Chevy truck pass him and he walks the road past the Salversons’ and the Hardigs’. The cold and anticipation push Wyoming away and he searches for the self-pity that will make all this worth it, and he thinks about his life, how he’s lost it, how the days don’t get better fast enough, how he’s seen the world but none of the parts he wanted.

Wintric steps and slips, but he steadies himself. He stops in front of the Waldrons’ place, a house he roofed in the fall. An inflatable Santa sits on the porch by the front door. Family friends for years; he’d only cleared three hundred on the five-day job. The snowpack lays thick on the roof, and Wintric finds himself here, in Chester, before the drugs have hit.

He’ll always be here. He won’t get younger. He’s walked this street forever. The drugs haven’t hit, but he can wait. It’s him, alone on First Avenue. The Waldrons’ place right here. He’s alone but alive, and the drugs haven’t hit yet. He’s here, alone, and suddenly there’s enough time to fear.

When he enters the Holiday market, he pauses inside the automatic doors. The store is busier than normal in the winter months, and he frantically searches the checkout stations for Kristen, but she’s not there. He digs his nails into his palms and keeps his head down and paces fast down the cereal aisle to the back of the market. Wintric turns the corner near the frozen apple juice and sees her and stops. Her back is toward him, hands at her hips. Her hair is longer than he remembers.

Kristen is talking to Mrs. McIntire. She shifts her weight and brushes Mrs. McIntire’s arm.

Wintric steps forward, then pulls back near the freezers and grabs the back of his neck. He presses his forehead on the cold glass. Kristen loves him and he doesn’t know why. He’s starting to feel light and he’s scared to go home and scared to step out into the aisle, but he knows what alone means. He’s heard their stories.

He pulls his head off the freezer door. He steps out into the aisle.

It’s Mrs. McIntire who waves to him first, and Wintric waves back, but he can’t force a smile. His heart pumps the poison and Kristen turns toward him. She raises her hand to wave, and when she sees him her hand stops its move upward. Her mouth opens. Her hands fall to her sides.

Out back by the delivery dock, in an employee bathroom, Wintric jams two fingers down his throat for the second time. He cut the roof of his mouth with his fingernails on the first attempt and he tastes his own blood and gags, then throws up into the toilet. His head floats over the putrid water and he cries and waits for what’s next. His stomach clenches and he dry-heaves. He stands and washes his hands and face with hand soap. He exhales, then sprays a lavender-scented air freshener.

On the back of the bathroom door hangs a green-and-white Chester Volcanoes basketball calendar. Kristen must have put it here. He stares at it for a while as he gets his legs under him.

Wintric listens for his wife on the other side of the door, but he doesn’t hear her. A weak exhaust fan works above him and he searches for the switch to turn it off, but he finds only one switch, so he flips it off and it kills the light and the fan. It’s quiet now and he listens. What’s he opening this door to?

Wintric listens inside the dark bathroom. He feels the drugs. He smells the pungent lavender. He places his hands on the door. In the darkness he could be anywhere.

He waits for Kristen’s voice asking if he’s okay.

He waits and he cries and his chest is soft and the drugs warm the space behind his temples and all along his back.

He can wait. If he wants, he can wait right here. He can choose to stay in this place.

He thinks about flipping on the light switch, about saying his wife’s name. He thinks about turning the doorknob.

“Kristen?” he says.

He listens. He hears his own staggered breathing and squeezes his mouth. He waits. He feels for the doorknob. It’s small in his hand.

“Kristen?” he says, and opens the door.

Out on the delivery dock, a man Wintric recognizes unloads crates of milk. An announcement garbles over the store’s loudspeaker.

In the far corner, behind stacks of paper towels, Kristen sits on a stool with her face in her hands. She’s pulled her hair back into a ponytail. Wintric walks to her and stands close. He can smell her vanilla perfume. It’s cold and he doesn’t know if he should touch her or speak, so he wipes at his wet face and stands there and watches her. Her wedding ring covers her left eye. A bracelet he’s never seen is on her left wrist.

Behind him, the sound of milk crates being stacked. An announcement from the speaker somewhere above them. The voice calls his wife’s name.

Wintric reaches out and touches Kristen’s shoulder. His numb fingertips press against her cotton shirt.

He knows what’s happening. He’ll leave his hand here. He’s aware. He’s facing the moment. He’ll stay right here.

“Please,” she says. She stands up, shaking his hand off her.

She exhales hard and runs her hands down her chest and belly, over to the outside of both hips. She pulls at the bottom of her shirt. She stands close, her shoulder inches from Wintric’s chest.

“Kristen,” he says. He stands, motionless, her smell in his nose. The shape of her neck. The curves of her ear. She could turn to him. So close, she could turn his way. He watches her face. He waits for the turn.

Over the store’s loudspeaker, someone’s calling her name.

She keeps her eyes forward as she walks away and rounds the corner back into the store.

Wintric grabs the back of his neck, then folds his arms.

Someone is calling her name.

He listens to the sound.

My deepest appreciation for

— my incredible agent and friend Chelsea Lindman.

— my brilliant editor and friend Ben Hyman.

— the wonderful Houghton Mifflin Harcourt team, especially Leila Meglio, Hannah Harlow, Brian Moore, Laura Brady, and Liz Duvall.

— my parents

— the Goolsby, Archibald, Hunt, Rouland, Moss, and Walton families.

— my dear friend, colleague, and sounding board Brandon Lingle.

— the many people who opened the doors to my professional dreams, especially Donald Anderson, Kathleen Harrington, Thomas McGuire, Blaine Holt, Erin Conaton, Peter Bloom, Lance Bunch, Jessica Wright, Karen Pound, Troy Perry, and Debra Shattuck.

— my great friends and brilliant readers of this book: J. A. Moad II, Brian Turner, Siobhan Fallon, Kristen Loyd, Kerry Linfoot, Gretchen Koenig, Kyle Torke, Charlie Beckerman, CJ Hauser, and Mike Warren.

— my Florida State University family, especially Robert Olen Butler, Bob Shacochis, Mark Winegardner, Diane Roberts, Elizabeth Stuckey-French, Michael Garriga, Brandi George, and Jennine Capó Crucet.