I'd Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them (27 page)

“Say yes,” Wintric says, nodding up and down. “Yes?”

Daniel nods.

“Good.”

The seven veterans stand and spit and scratch in their military uniforms at the Collins Pine lumberyard parking lot, waiting for the Fourth of July parade to begin. They touch and straighten their pressed uniforms, and after a truck backfires one veteran successfully fights off a flashback to the past by imagining a nude Angelina Jolie. Here in this northern California small-town haven, there are no mortars, no IEDs, no bullshit commander, no Arabic. Those days are long gone for them, passed to others crouched on the other side of the world, waiting for someone to say stop, to come home, and to walk in their own parades.

One young soldier is missing both arms, her sleeves hanging flat and pinned to her sides. She nods at her new boyfriend and he swigs a Coors Light and tosses the silver can to the ground. Wintric and an airman in the group will soon showcase their limps as they stroll along the straight avenue.

Each of the seven is a recent veteran, not long back from Afghanistan or Iraq, save one Vietnam-era graybeard who hasn't missed a Chester independence parade in twenty years. Their group is sandwiched in front by a flatbed truck carrying the high school's small jazz band and behind by a dozen 4-H kids holding photos of fattened-up cows, goats, pigs. The sky is clear, except for a single line of clouds that could pass for a contrail. Douglas firs and cedars surround the paved lot, and a paramedic kneels off to the side in the summer grass. He rubs his face, then squints.

A pair of old, smiling women wearing T-shirts with a cursive
Lake Almanor
on the front walk up to the group and pause.

“When do you go back?”

“We're all veterans.”

“So you have to go back?”

“No. We're not in the military anymore.”

“Oh.”

“We used to be.”

“You get to wear uniforms?”

“Sometimes.”

“Okay. Thank you, all of you,” one of them says, then points at the armless solider. “Especially you.” The soldier nods, glances down at the parking lot asphalt, and shakes her head.

The women start to walk away and she cough-speaks: “Bitches.” It gets a laugh. “Esssspecially you,” she mocks.

The parade is starting late owing to several locals finishing up the nearby 5K Fun Run at a breathless walk. Fire trucks, clowns, Shriners' hats, classic cars, and decent floats for Boy Scouts, the Elks Club, the Plumas County beauty queen, the county commissioner, the community chorus, and the Little League All-Stars mix together and form a bunched half-mile line leading from the parking lot. Wintric guesses that all the floats will get applause but that the crowds lining the street will rise from their cheap foldout chairs for his group and the American flag that accompanies them. Some will put their hands on their hearts, some will chant “USA,” and more than a couple will point at them, directing their children's attention to the uniformed few and whisper well-meaning half-truths into their kids' ears.

In the parking lot, the high school jazz band in front of the seven starts to warm up, then launches into a bare-bones version of Glen Miller's “A String of Pearls.” One of the soldiers shakes her head at the out-of-tune mash coming from the trumpet-trombone-tuba-saxophone-clarinet combo.

“Shit,” she says.

“Convoy or parade,” says one. “Not an easy choice.”

“Screw you.”

“Chester, baby.”

“This is a movie. A wonderful movie,” the graybeard says. “And this is our anthem.”

“Play Metallica, damn!”

Then some movement. The seven straighten up and six instinctively run their hands down their chests and stomachs, smoothing their uniforms and feeling themselves underneath, but it proves a false alarm and everyone stops and exhales.

“Hurry up and wait.”

“It's okay to be happy, everyone,” the graybeard says. “You'll get that after a few years.”

“That's some Yoda shit,” Wintric says.

“It's a choice, my young friends. It's not an easy choice, but it's a choice.”

Soon, after another false start, it's go time, and they walk the double yellow lines on the street and wave and soak in the day like their uniformed siblings across the country, past the salutes, the swelling communal pride, the repeating three jazz songs that get worse, then somehow better, as they all stop and go, stop and go.

The sweat begins in earnest when the seven hit the parade's half-mile point. There has not been a lot of chatting between them since the parade started. It's hot out, and most of them prefer not to rehash what they have in common. They learned long ago that you never want to appear as if you're having a good time in uniform. It sends the wrong message.

The Chester High School band in front of them has moved from a too-slow “String of Pearls” to a squeaky “Take Five,” and already Wintric is near his breaking point.

The crowd, three to five deep on each side of the road, points, whispers—most smiling. Happy, sunburning fat people are everywhere, locals mixing with the tourists. The parade's pace picks up, and Wintric's good foot begins to cramp. He glances over at the armless soldier walking next to him and wonders why she didn't wear prosthetics for the parade.

A sweat stream flows down Wintric's leg and runs into the holster strapped to his shin. Something about the .380 hugging his right leg comforts him, even though it's the one of his eight guns he hasn't fired in the last six months.

The crowds have grown considerably since he was a kid watching a similar procession, and he uses the thick multitude as an excuse to give up searching for Kristen and Daniel. He wonders if they're packing up their things at that very moment. He imagines Daniel tattling—“Daddy stuck me with his knife”—and Kristen leaving for Chico or her parents' place or heading off to get the sheriff, who would be hard to find on account of the parade. Maybe Daniel won't say anything; maybe it was just an accident with a kid playing with his dad's knife.

Up ahead a fire truck blasts its horn for the twenty-second time. Wintric wipes his brow and concentrates on his protective boot and minimizing his limp as much as possible as he walks his town: past the Beacon gas station, past the road leading to the elementary school, past the dirty tire shop, past the dentist's office, past a shallow stream where he used to catch crawdads with his friends, past the Holiday supermarket. He searches for a cloud, but they've disappeared, and his good foot revs up the ache again.

The heat and the collective stares close in, and for the first time he notices how tightly his uniform hugs him. It's all too much to bear, and he decides to ditch this whole thing midwalk and flee through the supermarket's parking lot back home, but the band conductor says “Star-Spangled Banner” and the parade slows to a halt.

“Here we go. For God and country,” the graybeard says.

“Hope they do the Hendrix version,” someone whispers.

The seven come to attention and the crowd rises and quiets.

“One. Two. Three,” says the conductor, counting the band in, and the players all take a breath together, ready to exhale into their instruments, and in that moment before sound someone shouts “Peace!”

The first few bars of the song roll over Wintric and he closes his eyes. He avoids the things that normally come to his mind during the anthem: army events, the flag, Washington, D.C., the Olympics, San Francisco Giants games. He feels the gun on his leg, thinks about its shape, how his hand fits around it just right, the clean silver finish, the gorgeous oily smell when he holds it close to his nose.

The crowd starts singing with a purpose when they hit “rockets' red glare,” but Wintric is still lost in contemplation when his left foot zips him with pain. He shuts his eyes tighter and his insides turn. He wishes he had popped four pain pills instead of two and hears “flag was still there,” but it's distant background noise now as he focuses on the pain, how his bright nerves throb with his pulse, how the electric pinging travels from his foot all the way up to his scalp—
this cut foot, this big toe digging, the living room cranberry stain, falling from McIntire's roof, the cramped plane ride to Reno, my discharge, Afghanistan, the knife lodged in my foot after the first strike, shitting blood, face-down in the dirt, the first push to my back, the smell of burning trash, a moment alone.

Wintric sits in his car on a Saturday morning across Davy Crockett Drive from Nelson's yellow house with a .357 revolver in his lap. It's his third trip to Wyoming, and the light fog is beginning to burn away under the rising sun. Nelson's black Lab yaps at a crow that has perched on a new doghouse. His Tacoma has been replaced by a new Jeep Wrangler with
AFG
and
Wyoming Cowboys
window stickers. The squat homes on the street are lined up close, and Wintric searches the road to see if the dog's barking has anyone's attention, but there's nothing.

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.