I'd Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them

by Jesse Goolsby

Of the five stopped cars, only Wintric, Daniel, and a woman in a Chico State T-shirt stand near the animal.

  The deer swings her head into the air and back down, making frantic attempts to gain momentum, but it’s hopeless, and the three of them hear the slap of her head against the pavement, the scraping front hooves.

  “Crap,” the woman says.

  Wintric realizes what has to happen—knew soon after he got out of the truck and saw that the deer wasn’t going anywhere. He’d hoped that the doe had been hit well enough to be on her last breath by the time he walked up, but the car had caught her back end, which meant working lungs and heart.

  Wintric runs his hand over the pocketed knife that he’s had for years. His cardiovascular system pounds inside him. He reaches out and touches Daniel’s arm.

  “Son,” he says.

  “I know,” Daniel says. “Shit. I got nothing in my truck.”

  “Nothing,” the woman says, and shakes her head.

  “It’s okay,” Wintric says. “I got something. It’s not great.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls the knife out. He opens the three-inch blade and shows it to the woman, who purses her lips.

  “It’s okay,” Wintric says.

  Another car pulls to the back of the southbound lane lineup, and a man gets out, takes in the scene, then gets back in his car.

  The deer exhales in short, violent bursts, her black eyes huge in her head.

  “Poor damn thing,” the woman says, still shaking her head.

  “Dad,” Daniel says.

  “What do you want me to do?” the woman says.

  “One second,” Wintric says.

  “What can I do?” says the woman.

  “Dad,” Daniel says. “I can do it.”

  Wintric looks at the deer, at the deer’s neck, the fur there, and he can’t remember the last time he sharpened his knife.

  He had felt good today, not perfect, but good. As long as he keeps the car rides under two hours, he can manage. He could stop everything now and wait for someone with a gun, but who knows how long that will take, and already there are enough people stopped to make a scene. They may be in their cars, but they’ll watch.

  “She’ll kick like hell,” Wintric says. “You two hold her.”

  “Step on her?” Daniel says.

  “We’ll have to lean,” the woman says. “She’s strong.”

  “That’s right,” Wintric says. “Lean on her. Get ready.”

  He kneels down a few feet away from the doe, the knife light in his hands. Underneath him he sees the tons of tiny rocks that make the road. They dig into his knees. Black flies dart past his ears. While Daniel and the woman get into position he presses the knife against his left thumb, but it just dents the skin.

  “Stay on the body,” Wintric says. “I’ll go fast.” He clenches his teeth. “I’ll go fast. Okay. Now.”

  Daniel and the woman kneel on the deer’s flailing body and Wintric presses his knee down on the deer’s head and he feels the muscled power underneath him, the neck strong, trying to twist up, to breathe, lifting his knee, and him pressing back down with all his weight and his hand under the deer’s jaw grabbing at the folds there, feeling the deer throb, and his knife already at the throat, sawing, sawing into the neck fur, the knife edge disappearing into the fold and the shit smell and he saws the blade deep, but there’s no blood, and he presses harder into the animal, sawing the blade, and the deer heaves, and he searches for an opening where he saws, but there’s nothing, and he yells “Shit” and with his right arm already tiring and his back flaring he drives the blade hard into the neck and the fur now opens, but only a little, and he yanks at the sliced fold but he can’t grab enough to pull it back, and the sweat in his eyes and the black flies, and he saws hard and fast at the space there, and his arm is giving out and the deer yanks and bounces his knee into the air, and he yells “Shit” and slams his knee back down on the deer’s head, and he holds the knife up into the afternoon and shakes his arm out, and “Fuck,” and he stabs at the deer’s neck twice, and the first spots of blood appear on the road, and he saws, his arm and lungs and back giving out, and the shit smell everywhere, and his vision turns and he saws and feels the blade through the skin now and blood, warm blood on his hands, but not enough, not spurting, and the shit smell on him, and the blade against cartilage, and his arm numb and weak, and the sparks in his vision, and the breath he can’t draw, and he looks over at Daniel, who slides to him fast and takes the knife from Wintric’s hand, and Wintric lunges over the deer’s body, straddling the thrash, pressing the front legs down, breathing in the shit, shoulder to shoulder with the woman, flies at his face, hearing Daniel’s loud grunts, eyes focused on the road, the millions of rocks, the thrashing and wheezing underneath him, and Daniel grunting and a thin crack and Daniel yanking the deer’s head back, and Daniel’s voice, “Through,” and the rocks of the road, a stream of bright blood, a desperate whistle-wheezing and thrash, the woman’s voice, “Can we get up? Can we get up?” and Daniel, “Yes,” and Wintric rises, and the deer’s front legs scratch at the road and Wintric’s hands are wet and dirty, he’s wiping them on his jeans, and the deer’s legs scratch at the road, then slow and stop, and Wintric looks at Daniel, at Daniel’s blood-soaked hands, Wintric’s knife in his hand.

  Lately Torres has talked about his international speaking gigs, memories of Big Dax, the Denver Broncos, the weather, the Rockies, and his wife, but Wintric hasn’t heard him talk about his daughter, Mia, in over a year. Wintric closes his bedroom door and lies on his bed, phone on speaker. Torres seems sober.

  “I don’t know about regrets,” Torres says. “It’s the great thing about life. You don’t know the alternative. Make your decisions and press on. Mia made her choices. She wants to raise that poor child on her own, let her. She wants to live in Cortez and do it alone, let her. When you walk away from family, you walk away. Life is hard, but some people like it that way.”

  “Yeah,” Wintric says. “Doesn’t make it easy.”

  “Nothing’s easy, I guess.”

  “I don’t know,” Wintric says.

  “I thought she’d come back. It’s been four years. I haven’t seen my granddaughter. Most days I don’t care, but sometimes I do.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “Does it?”

  “It’s family,” Wintric says. “Everything and nothing makes sense. It’s your kid, doesn’t matter if they’re six or twenty-six.”

  “They’re not always your kid.”

  “No?”

  “Mia doesn’t get that you have to choose to be in a family. After a while it’s not guaranteed. If she were to show up right now, I don’t know if I’d let her in. I’d like to think that I wouldn’t. There have to be consequences. Listen, I don’t pretend there’s justice in the world. Only fools think that. She’ll probably win the damn lottery or something.”

  “I don’t know,” Wintric says.

  “There’s no justice, but there are rules. You don’t have to like them, but they’re there. You want to get pregnant, move out, turn your back on your family, fine, but you’re not going to be sailing the Mediterranean on your yacht. And I get it. It’s not all about money. But she chooses the hardest way possible.”

  “I get it.”

  “All of that, and if she showed up, I’d probably let her in. Why wouldn’t I?”

  “I guess you would,” Wintric says.

  “It wouldn’t be about forgiveness, just about the kid. It’s my only grandkid.”

  “Old man.”

  “Old enough.”

  “Drop her a note and see what happens.”

  “A note?”

  “Write it out, old school,” Wintric says. “You might be surprised.”

  “You’d forgive everyone. That’s your rehab talking.”

  “You never know. Things grow out of control, but sometimes there’s a good reason. I mean that things may be okay after a while. Maybe she comes back different and things are
good.”

  “Do you feel different?”

  “I feel how I feel. I try to remember how I used to feel, but I never know if it’s better or worse. I don’t believe people when they say, ‘This is the worst I’ve ever felt.’ I don’t think anyone remembers how good or bad things were.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I think about being on the drugs,” Wintric says. “I remember being calm. I remember feeling good, but I don’t know. I don’t trust myself.” He pauses. “What if it felt good but it could’ve been better? The only way to know would be to try it again.”

  “Dangerous.”

  “That’s the problem with drugs,” Wintric says. “They work.”

  “I was on good stuff after the accident. You’re damn right they work. I’d be lying there in the hospital thinking that I’d walk again, I felt that good. I remember weeks after, still thinking I’d walk. Get me drunk enough and I’d probably tell you I still imagine it. It’s not good to think that way.”

  “You never know.”

  “Stop. It’s been long enough to know. But put it this way—if a miracle happens and I stand again, I’ll throw a party. I’ll fly out all the friends I can find. We’ll all hold hands and go on a walk together.”

  “Am I on the list?”

  “Hell, you are the list.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Wintric says.

  “I’m not drunk.”

  “How’s your liver?”

  “How’s yours?”

  “That fair, I guess,” Wintric says.

  “It’s not about fairness.”

  “Okay.”

  “I don’t know what it’s about.”

  “We’re older now. It can be about anything.”

  “I remember being a kid on the playground at school and watching the cars driving by and wondering where all of them were going. It fascinated me that all these people could just go wherever the hell they wanted. And come to find out it’s true. You grow up and you can go wherever the hell you want. Just hop in the car and go. You get older and all of a sudden you have all these choices.”

  “Independence,” Wintric says.

  “In a way.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But you still have places to be.”

  “Hopefully, places you want to be,” Wintric says.

  “Your choice, my friend. Grab the family, hop in the car, and go. That easy. One-way trip. But I’ve been preaching at you for years. You know this. You aren’t going anywhere, because you like it there.”

  “You’re guessing.”

  “What’s the name of the lake?”

  “Almanor.”

  “You love it.”

  “You’re guessing.”

  “I’ve known you a long time.”

  “That’s true,” Wintric says.

  “You like getting up in the morning?”

  “What?”

  “Do you like waking up and thinking you have a day in front of you?”

  “Sure.”

  “My father used to rant all the time about random crap and most of it was worthless, but as I got older one thing he used to ask me was, ‘Why are you waking up today?’ I guess what he meant was that I’d better have something worth waking up for, and if I ever got to a place where I didn’t, I’d better make a change quick. But you ask that question too often and it gets tough. Doesn’t matter what you’ve been through. Don’t ask me to answer my own question.”

  “You don’t have to think like that when you’re a kid.”

  “You don’t ever have to think about it, but it helps sometimes.”

  “We all got reasons to get up,” Wintric says.

  “Do you know yours?”

  “Maybe he didn’t mean the big stuff. Maybe it’s a small thing.”

  “Could be.”

  “Something simple,” Wintric says.

  “It has to be simple or no one would understand. Has to be enough to get you out of bed.”

  “Yeah,” Wintric says. “Something simple.”

  The game is on ESPN2. An afternoon bowl game five days before Christmas. Channel flipping, home alone and bored, Wintric sees the game appear, and an unrecognized moment of peace passes before he focuses on the screen. Wyoming versus Oregon State. Flung into paralysis, he stares at Wyoming’s brown-and-yellow uniforms, the helmets: the saddled cowboy and bronco. Wyoming. Jettisoned to Nelson’s white door, Nelson’s dog, now huge and savage, the white door in the heat, the AFG sticker on Nelson’s Jeep, the dog pressing him, the McDonald’s parking lot, a white door, a garbage truck, desert and gunpowder, a postcard in his hand. He won’t write his name on it. He won’t send it. Wyoming is a white door. Trapped, Wintric holds the remote in his living room. He can’t move his fingers. He holds the remote. Wyoming is an exit off I-80. He stares at the television through credit card and beer commercials, through a missed field goal and an ACL tear. Wyoming is a gun in his waistband. He won’t use it. Wyoming is a white door. No one is there.

  Wintric stands. He’s off the couch. His coat is on. He’s on a nearby street, squinting. The sun reflects off the ice-packed road.

  The dealer’s house is in a row of shotgun homes. Someone has left a square of red Christmas lights on around the front window. The fence has been fixed and the home has been painted yellow since Wintric was last here, ten months ago. There used to be kids’ toys everywhere, but now there’s only this sturdy fence and two feet of snow.

  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 hi
s 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.