I'd Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them (23 page)

“They had these draft lottery drawings, you know. On television. They'd reach down and pick a birthday on a slip of paper and post it to a big board, and damn, you didn't want to hear your birthday being read. It's the one time in my life that I feared my birthday. It's a shit thing to do to someone. It's then you realize that the day you were born has nothing to do with you. You'd give it up in a second.”

He takes a drag, and Dax, still feeling his forearm, stares at the orange glow of the cigarette draw.

“Anyway, here we are. Your arms.”

Dax has had enough time to think about his answer, but he was focused on the lottery, the exact opposite meaning of that word as he understands it—winning the big one—and still no answer about his arms.

“Is it too difficult?” Nicholle's father asks. “I understand, son.”

“My arms,” Dax says, hearing himself. “I've done this.”

The doctor invites Dax to grab one of Nicholle's legs before he instructs Nicholle to start pushing, and before he can say no, Dax finds himself holding Nicholle's right leg, staring above her head, repeating
Don't look down, don't look down,
but he does. Emma arrives a little early; six pounds, three ounces.

Dax knows no man could endure Nicholle's schedule of no sleep, all-go patience, and worry. Emma has Dax's blue eyes, and even though many children are born with blue eyes, hers are his deep shade. He sees them under the oxygen mask she has to wear for several hours to keep her lungs full. A few days later he drives Nicholle and Emma home, his foot hovering over the brake, eyes scanning for sixteen- and ninety-year-olds.

Eight weeks later Emma has some neck control and Dax starts out on the road again. He returns from an Indianapolis-Louisville-Lexington trip exhausted. His back kills him, and he's noticed a new red mole on the side of his rib cage. Emma rests on his chest and Nicholle sips half a glass of cheap Shiraz.

Dax had stopped by another VA hospital on this latest trip, and he tells Nicholle that if they play the percentages, he will probably die before her, most likely from some kind of cancer caused by the crap he breathed in while deployed—the jacked-up cells have probably already started multiplying somewhere far inside his slippery body.

“Great, Dax,” she says. “Welcome home. Shut up and hold your girl. She missed you.”

Sometimes he worries that Nicholle might die first. When she's late getting home from a mom's night out and he gets her voicemail—her gentle voice, as if everything is okay—his mind allows about a thirty-minute cushion and then begins the murmurs of what-ifs. The whole scene flashes by: the dreaded call—auto accident, funeral, insurance money, his baby girl growing, him dating or not, the guilt of either, moving, different career, Emma's wedding—but then, as always, the garage door rumbles open and Nicholle saunters in, because in the end, nothing is wrong.

Dax travels more now: outside the local rounds, he's gone a week every month. When away, he calls home at 6:30 Knoxville time every night. Emma has normally finished her bath, and Nicholle puts the phone up to her ear so she hears her daddy's voice. Emma is eight months old and already she plays with her first steps.

Whenever he's in Memphis he plays cards a couple blocks off the strip in a brick basement where there's a password. This is his trivial thrill. He recognizes most of the participants. They aren't thugs, at least in his opinion—when they lose money, it hurts. They have polo shirts and middle-class mortgages.

One day after he negotiates the sale of ten new blood-sugar monitors at St. Jude Hospital, he showers and heads to the card game. The password is
sycamore,
but Dax says
live oak,
last week's password. They let him in anyway.

Five hands in and Dax spies his flush and a story starts up around the table about a guy who had his dick put in a vise. The poor genital-squeezed guy owed money to the wrong people. There is laughter. Dax stares at his spades, organized and lethal. He reaches for chips.

“Named Sim,” says Brent, the organizer of the game.

“Sim?” someone says. “Deserved it.”

Jordan, a banker with nervous hands, asks if people can die from that—a dick in a vise.

A new guy, Ian, quiets everyone with his monotone.

“Yes,” he says. “If you leave 'em there, eventually they die of hunger.”

“You could rip your dick off,” Jordan says.

“I guess you always have a choice.”

Dax thinks of what he'll say to Nicholle.
How many Sims can there be? What do I ask? Water moccasin Sim, snapping turtle Sim. Torture.
Dax remembers Sim laughing in the muddy water as Dax dried off on the bank, unable to get his knees to stop shaking.
Where else do you want it to go? This is where it lives.

Dax waits until the next day, 7
P.M.
, to call home. He has spoken to Emma, and Nicholle explains how she is considering going back to work, just part-time, over the summer, then how she's struggling to lose the last ten pounds of pregnancy weight.

“I need something to do,” she says, “outside the house.”

“When's Sim going to come visit his niece?” Dax asks. It's the easiest lead-in.

“I don't know,” she says. “He's not coming with money, if that's what you're asking. He called last night. Said he was in international waters. Probably the Mississippi.”

Sim rolls his truck four times outside Mobile on a Monday at 3
A.M
He's drunk and his face and chest bruise up good. Nicholle's parents call—her mother asks for their prayers. Nicholle prays and Sim stays in critical condition for eighteen hours, but he pulls through. Nicholle's mother praises God and his mercy and his comfort. Glory and grace is all she talks about for a month. Sim drank a bottle of Jack and got behind the wheel; he forgot to put his seat belt on; he was ejected from his rolling vehicle and landed on his back in a patch of grass, looking up at the stars. Dax wants to ask Nicholle's mother whether sobriety or buckling in is the devil's work.
Do we praise Jesus if Sim impales himself on a mile marker?
He doesn't say any of this. When he finally talks to Sim, he says, “I'm glad you're with us.”

Two months later Sim shows up at the house twenty pounds lighter, hands shaking. He smells like cabbage and urine. He says he's been in the same clothes for a week, sleeping during the day, driving at night. He's out of money and in trouble. He says this is the kind of trouble you don't wake up from.

“Got to stay out of 'bama,” he says.

Before Dax can wrap his head around the situation, Nicholle has invited Sim in and shown him to the guest room. He showers upstairs while Nicholle and Dax cuss and stomp. Before the shower water turns off they've reached a compromise. Sim has two weeks; he doesn't leave the house, his truck stays in the garage, he gets no calls, and he's gone, cops called with any weird stuff. After that he's on his own. Dax knows Nicholle won't kick her brother out at the deadline, but he'll let himself be surprised.

For two weeks Dax finds himself in pleasant shock as Sim sleeps for two days, then cleans up and helps around the house. Gently enthusiastic and outwardly caring, he plays dolls with Emma, plays horse with Emma, helps feed her, bathe her. Just finding her walking legs, Emma trails Sim around the house, almost pronouncing his easy name, and he, nervous of possible falls, protects her from the brick fireplace, a backward tumble from the stairs, three inches of bathwater. His unexpected involvement frees Nicholle to extend her work hours, Dax to make a few more phone calls without a screaming child in the background. On the last night of Sim's allotted live-in time, Dax and Nicholle crawl into bed with each other. No one has talked about Sim leaving the next day. They both know it's his agreed-to time to depart, but he's volunteered to wake up early with Emma, to take her to the park if they need some quiet time at the house. Dax leans over and kisses Nicholle, and for the first time in two months they make love.

A week later Dax makes the morning hospital rounds in Little Rock. He isn't scheduled to leave until the following day, but he considers changing his flight to get back to the girls and Sim that night. He hustles back to the hotel and picks up the ringing hotel room phone just before he leaves for the airport. Nicholle's nervous voice. She asks why Dax isn't answering his cell phone, but before he can answer, she says that there are two men, a tall one at the front door, the other standing at the side of the house. She's ignored them, but the man at the front door has stopped knocking and is peering into the long, narrow window to the left of the door. Emma sleeps.

“Am I crazy?” she asks.

“Wait a minute,” he says. “Are they in uniform?”

“No,” she says. “Why? Did you schedule something?” But she doesn't let him answer. “Because it's been far too long. They've been here five minutes.”

She tells him that she can see the one at the front door glancing around, not into the house, but around at the other houses in the neighborhood. He hears Sim in the background.

“Put Sim on.” Dax waits for Sim's voice, and the pause stretches. Dax forces himself to breathe.

“Not lying. There's some shit,” Sim says. “Damn. Damn. Nothing is gonna happen, man. Trust me.”

“You son of a bitch. Handle this, Sim.” No reply.

“Hello?” It's Nicholle. “The one on the side moved into the back yard,” she says. Dax pictures the spacious yard and medium dogwoods. It's 3:15 his time, 4:15 there. “Sim pulled the damn truck out into the driveway a few days ago. Listen to me. Something's not right here.”

Dax stands in the hotel room, packed suitcase at his feet.

“Go get Emma,” he says.

Nicholle breathes heavily into the phone and says, “My God.”

Dax traces her path in his head, down the long second-floor hallway, through the white door into the baby's yellow bedroom with block pink letters above the crib:
EMMA
.

“We're back in our room. Emma's—they're in,” she says, interrupting herself. “The other one's in the screened porch and the man at the front door, he's knocking again.”

“Lock the bedroom door and call 911,” Dax says. “Do it now.”

“But Sim—” she says.

“Lock it now. Call 911.”

“Don't hang up, damn you.”

“I don't hear Emma.”

“She's here.”

“Where's Sim?”

“He's down there. They're screaming.”

It was twenty bucks a month for the alarm whose wires probably dangle unconnected. Dax pictures its white box under the stairs. Then the blue safe under their bed.

“Get the gun,” he says.

“I'm putting the phone on the bed.” Over the line Dax hears Emma's labored breathing. It sounds like she's trying to put the receiver in her mouth.

“I have it,” Nicholle says. “Okay.” A pause. “They're fighting. God, they're fighting.”

“Like we practiced. Put the magazine in. It should have rounds in it.”

“Crashing downstairs.”

“Pull the hammer back,” Dax says.

“What? What's the hammer?”

“I mean the slide. Shit, the slide. We've practiced this. The top part, throw the slide back.”

“It's sticking. On the stairs now.” She whispers. “Up. The. Stairs.”

“Yell out to them, ‘I have a gun.'” She does.

“And again,” he says.

She says it again, and “I will shoot you.” He hears her say the words, and she says “motherfuckers.” Emma cries.

“It's sticking,” she says to Dax.

“Do you remember?”

“Yes,” she says. “I know what to do, but it's sticking.” Her pitch rises. No one is on their way to them.

“Got it,” Nicholle says. “They're talking on the stairs.” Her voice lowers even more. “They said Sim. My God, they know us.”

“Say it again.”

“What?”

“The gun,” he says.

“I've got a gun,” she yells.

“If they open the door, you shoot until the gun stops firing and then load the next magazine.”

She hears the finality in his voice, because she says, “No. No.” Dax hears her right before he hangs up and dials 911. He slings information as fast as he can to the operator and pictures the safety tab on the gun Nicholle holds, turned down, the red fire dot hidden. His sight goes wavy, the ceiling lowers on him, and he thinks of the locked trigger. He hangs up, calls his home phone, and the metallic tone pulses off and on until the answer machine engages. It's her morning voice: “You've reached Nicholle and Dax Bailey,” and his voice in the background, “and Emma,” she squeaks. “We're not in right now, but please leave a message and we'll get back with you. Thank you.” He listens to the entire thing, thinks about leaving a message, his voice loud on the machine, but hangs up. She won't be able to hear him, no matter what he says into the phone. He calls her cell phone, and when he gets her cell-phone message—just her voice—he hangs up immediately. He stares at a dark stain on the hotel carpet.
Someone's on the way. Someone's on the way.
He calls the home line again. This time he lets the whole message play and stands with the phone in his hand, a beam of light from the hotel window now shining through. Dax closes his eyes. The muffled near-silence records him listening, and he thinks there's a chance, if he's loud enough, Nicholle might be able to pick up one word, through the drywall and beams and carpet, past Sim's body, past the men knocking on the locked bedroom door. He breathes in through his mouth and nose and screams “Safety,” over and over and over, until there are no more words, just his machine now recording his empty lungs.

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