I'd Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them (16 page)

Not shy in front of crowds, Armando has thought about the offer, but when he considers which stories to dress up, he invariably returns to the checkpoint girl. But instead of a girl—it can't be a girl—it has morphed into a man, a bearded man, two bearded men in a tiny hatchback, two bearded men in a tiny hatchback yelling “Allahu akbar,” and in the story he doesn't shoot, it is a story about witness, he was there but as witness to honor, courage, sacrifice. Even as he forms the new scenes, the new characters, he knows he'll never tell either story. Even in debrief that day in Afghanistan, he, Big Dax, Wintric, and the LT had different answers to the same questions: “How many times did you yell to her to stop?” “Who shot first, second, third?” “How far was she?” “Why didn't you aim for her legs?” “When did she drop the ball?” “Was it possible she was pleading for help?” “Is it true you argued among yourselves about who had hit her?”

The first droplets hit the front yard, and Armando wonders how long he'll consider himself a soldier, how long he'll want to. He's told Anna that he won't shave for a month after he gets out, but what that means he isn't yet sure. The rain is pounding now, and a crack of thunder sounds a few miles south. He sees the familiar bevy of antennas on top of Cheyenne Mountain—the nuclear war–proof mountain.
Thank you, Cheyenne Mountain.
His father's new wife used to work in the mountain, the stepmother he has come home to, unbearably kind and supportive. Disgustingly humble and already a confidant of Anna's. This woman with years in the mountain, but she can't talk about the mountain. Easy questions: “How many people do we have in there?” “Are we still tracking Russian nukes?” Armando has served at Fort Carson for years, not two miles from Cheyenne Mountain, and he knows nothing about it, save the nuclear war–proof claim, the antennas, the fact that he now knows someone who has worked there, and some unsubstantiated claims by his father. Years ago his father told him two things about the mountain: (1) that Russia's nuclear aim was so poor that living next door to it was the perfect place to be, and God help anyone around the Durango area if things started rocking, and (2) that the microwave was invented inside the mountain. Whenever Armando's father would heat up popcorn, he'd tap the microwave door and say, “Thank you, Cheyenne Mountain.” That's what Armando hears now on his front porch, “Thank you, Cheyenne Mountain,” and the rain pounding, the antennas, the same antennas he watched blinking at night as a child, and he flashes back to when he was sixteen years old, popcorn popping on their Friday family movie night, each of them arguing for a different film and Armando's mother finally deciding what to watch and all of them settling in. His mother on the couch, his mother on the couch post-transplant, saltines and 7Up, a trombone, the rain even harder now, punishing, his father on the baseball field taking him in his arms, the open-casket viewing the night before the burial, his fascination with his mother's shaved face, her funeral, singing “Because I Have Been Given Much,” a three-mile-long car procession, the bishop's promise that they would all be together again in heaven and his father laughing, months of his father's madness, hiding the lighters in his sock drawer, his sister's move to their aunt's in Cortez, Marie to Arizona, a friend signing up for the army, Armando going along, the papers in front of him in the recruiting office, the path forward, out, his signature, signatures, his name, signing, black ink, his name.

Six minutes into the downpour Armando sees minirivers along the street's gutters and pools forming in his uneven front yard. The Front Range is already clearing and he guesses the rain will stop soon, and it's a good thing, because the yard can't take much more water. Already he knows they'll have to move from this place, maybe only from this poorly constructed house, maybe to a whole new city, but he's certain this isn't the place he wants to come home to, this isn't the place he wants his kids to come home to, and although he has no way of knowing now, he's right.

In a couple years he'll move his family about forty miles north to Castle Rock, where they'll enjoy a better view of the Rockies and a properly graded front yard, a home where his kids will grow and fight, where he'll watch the Broncos lose a Super Bowl, where, decades from now and wheelchair-bound, Armando will turn to hiding bottles of whiskey in boxes of Christmas decorations, a home where he'll write a letter inviting his estranged daughter Mia home and one July day, overcome with emotion, he'll welcome Mia and her daughter back into his life. But right now Armando sits and watches the shallow front-yard pond creep outward, and although the sky has now cleared above him, the rain continues to fall.

That evening Camila and Mia play in the home's fenced back yard. The moon already hugs the southeast sky, and things get heated between the girls after Camila trips Mia and tugs on her leg, pulling her around the still drying yard. Mia screams, but Camila keeps yanking.

“Easy,” Armando says. He stares at his kids. They ignore him. He realizes that they're starting to look more and more like Anna.

“Do something,” Anna says.

Armando is about to ask her what she thinks about a third child when she leans over, grabs his arm, and whispers, “You have to touch your children, dammit. Do you hear me?”

The words hang on him, and the shock and anger brew inside his limbs.

“What the hell did you say to me?”

This fury arrives from someplace new, and he lines up obscenities on his tongue, but before launching them he shuffles through the past two weeks of memory and comes up with a stinging recap: the girls were too shy to hug him when he came off the plane with the cameras flashing and the news teams and the Bruce Springsteen music. He rushes past bedtime routines, feedings, a doctor's visit, walks to the park, and he realizes that he has touched them, but only in passing; he hasn't held them, not as he used to, not as he wanted to while he was away. His chest pounds and Anna's hand clutches his biceps to lead him out to the yard.

Without a word he rises. His daughters now play with the water hose, Camila half plugging the stream into a spewing water fan, and for the first time their giggles terrify him. He walks onto the wet grass, but a few steps away he shakes his head, not sure what comes next. A crushing weight stops and holds him. Does he grasp them and throw them in the air? Grab their thin arms and pull them close? Take the hose and spray them? Does he ask for permission? He wants to live for them, but it all feels wrong, and before he knows it he sits, crushing the dusk grass, and everyone pauses, even young Mia, with a puddle covering her toes. He opens his arms, but his children stand motionless.

“Please,” he says.

“Girls,” Anna says.

“No! I'll do it,” he says. “Camila, Mia. Come to your daddy. Now.”

They stand still.

“Why won't you come? Please, girls.”

His arms are open. He could receive them so easily.

“Mommy,” Mia says.

“No! Here, Mia. Here. With me.”

“Mommy.”

“Goddammit! No! Here, Mia. Camila, here.”

“Armando.”

“No!”

Armando slams the ground, his palms on the ground, pressing, and he closes his eyes and steadies himself. He senses Anna moving in the background. He breathes and opens his eyes, but he's still in his back yard.

“Girls,” he says, his voice cracking. “Girls.”

Camila takes a step forward and stops. Armando guesses that Anna is waving the girls forward, begging them with her arms to go to their father, but they stand locked in place, staring above him. He feels water on his legs, and Anna says, “Sing the ABCs.” He hears her and sees his arms and hands reach out to the great expanse in front of him. He thinks of the tune and just before he begins the melody, Camila starts with the
A,
and Mia joins in by the
E.
His daughters gaze at Anna, singing slowly and softly in the air, their faces solemn. The refrain should sound elementary, but the dual-voiced letters are veneration. Armando thinks back to when he sang this same song to his daughters at bedtime, and all at once he realizes that he has taught them a beautiful prayer, one they remember. He opens his mouth and hits the right pitch on
Q.
Together they sing the building blocks to everything they will ever say to each other.

When they finish he expects a surge of something, a new resolve, or an answer awaiting him after
Z.
He wants his body to come alive, but it's near dark and the girls haven't moved and he feels the cool water beginning to cover him, then Anna's hands on his shoulders, squeezing him to life.

8

F
EBRUARY
2005, a moment alone in Afghanistan, and Wintric smells burning trash and shit from the other side of the post, and he hears the helicopters whipping in the dark distance, his uniform warming his body, and he walks between the rows of massive shipping containers and feels the first push in the back, and the Afghan night envelopes everything, a tackle from behind, dirt pressing his face as he struggles with strangers, but a game he knows, like all the wrestling, the UFC imitation, the bets, the boredom before battle, hearing himself, “You got me. Fine. Fuck off,” then silence, instantaneously odd, no “Fuck you” or “Pussy” reply, and all at once a switch flips a separate world on and his face presses hard to the soil, knee on his neck, he's gasping now, suffocating, a heavy weight lands on his back, fumbles with his belt, then pants down, his underwear, the dizzying disbelief, his arms and legs attempt to flail, but they fail him once, and again, a will to thrash, a throaty gurgle, anus pressure and pain, pressure and pain, and ripping flesh and a grunt, and barely breathing and confusion and helpless swirling beyond, and the dirt pressing his nose and mouth, gasping, fighting, but nothing, willing his body but nothing, and pressure and pain, then silence, his slack body shedding parts of himself into the shallow night, hovering somewhere there, close.

The following days press pain and debate, thoughts of home that can't materialize, death and weakness. The dense hours crawl. Patrols like a zombie, meals he can't taste, then refuses to eat, Halo 2 for hours. A sergeant asks him if he's okay, and he hears himself say that he is, and somehow the sergeant believes him. He shits and weeps. Desperate, he sharpens his knife, considers the right spot to stab (left foot, below the smallest two toes, marked with a penned
X
), how hard to stab, swigs smuggled booze until he vomits, and straps the doomed foot down. The knife is light in his hand and he cries and wipes at his eyes, then closes them. He swings down hard. The pain rockets through him and his eyes blast open and he sees the blade lodged an inch to the right of his aim point and not deep enough to do the trick—the trick being escape. The blood starts up fast, darker than he imagined, and already he's dizzy and his arms spasm out at his sides. The tent walls around him push close, but he manages to will himself back to the knife. He pulls it from his foot and stabs himself two more times before he passes out.

At the Reno airport Wintric's mother cries and takes him in her arms. She knows her son has injured his foot badly, but that's all. They load the Ford Taurus and Wintric says, “I'm tired, Mom. Just let me look.” On the drive to Chester, Wintric's mother sips at a Pepsi. Gwen Stefani, Mariah Carey, Kelly Clarkson take turns on the radio. Wintric has the passenger seat reclined and his booted foot up on the dash.

This is coming home silent: early afternoon northwest bound on Highway 395 out of Reno past Sun Valley, Bordertown, the
WELCOME TO CALIFORNIA
sign with a trio of golden poppies, Hallelujah Junction, high desert, sagebrushed pioneer settlements,
WELCOME TO DOYLE—WORLD FAMOUS LIZARD RACES
, Herlong, army munitions depot, dried-up Honey Lake, Highway 36, the supermax prison with gleaming fences, Susanville, the Sierra theater, the climb up into pine and red soil, Fredonyer Pass, green meadow, Westwood, the old dump, over Bailey Creek running at a trickle, cresting Johnson's grade, Mount Lassen holding snow against the blue sky, Lake Almanor's dark blue water, the causeway into town, the green city limits sign,
POP
2200, Chester, home.

Kristen wanted to see Wintric in his uniform, but he wears sweatpants. It's been three years, and now here he is, on her couch, in her tiny living room just big enough for couch, coffee table, fern, short bookshelf, and television. Deftones play from the tiny speakers. She nudges him with her elbow. She has curled her hair and squeezed into her best Lucky jeans. Under normal circumstances she would palm the back of his head, feeling the sharp brush of his close haircut, but she's not thinking about hair. She hasn't even mentioned the package Wintric sent her from basic training that she's kept in the closet.

“Do I smell like Afghanistan?” he asks, eyeing Barry Bonds and Chris Webber posters over the bookshelf of DVDs, photos. A glance at the pictures and he finds himself in one, but it's a group photo on Mount Lassen.

Wintric's protective boot is parked on the coffee table. His unmedicated foot pains him if it dips below his heart too long. Kristen wants to see his foot, but he tells her no, at least not yet. Thirty minutes later he pulls at the Velcro on the top of the boot. He slides the boot off, then the black sock, and finally the nylon. His biggest toe is the single remaining digit, and half his foot is missing on an arc, a crescent from the base of the ankle to the single intact toe. Kristen asks to touch his foot and Wintric tells her yes, but she doesn't move. She wants to know how it happened.

“If I say someone shot it off, I'm a hero, but if I stepped on my own knife, I'm a fool. Either way, I've got a third of a foot. A scythe foot.”

“A scythe foot?”

“Doc told me it's used to cut wheat down. Got a big curved blade on it. Grim Reaper carries one.” He lifts his foot and swings it left. “Knocks them down for harvest.”