I'd Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them (19 page)

The sun is hot on her body as she loads the items into her car's empty back seat. She starts the car and turns onto the highway that will take her back to Chester. She rolls down Susanville's main thoroughfare, aware that Marcus and Stacey are a few minutes in front of her, driving the same route home, and she can't help but glance ahead to see if they've caught a red light, but there's nothing.

During the drive home—up over Fredonyer Pass and down into the valleys outside Westwood—Kristen sips on a Coke, apprehensive that she's catching up to them, so she keeps it at 50 mph and studies the road for a blue Chevy truck. Her nausea simmers and her right leg aches, and she turns off the one local radio station that plays top 40.

Up ahead she spots a dirt turnout she's passed a hundred times on her way back and forth to Susanville and Reno, a turnout big enough for one of the few diesels that take this route. She grabs her right quad and steers her car to the turnoff. She gets out, stretches her leg, lifting her right ankle back toward her butt.

On the far edge of the turnout stands an old brick fireplace and chimney, the remnants of what Kristen guesses used to be a pioneer home. The ruin has always been a welcome sight for her, marking twenty minutes' driving time left to Chester, but she's never stopped here before, and she studies the old fireplace, clean from a recent rain, wondering why it was left intact. She looks south, across the valley, past grazing cattle, to the distant ridge line there, then to a hill in the otherwise flat meadow. She camped at the base of this hill once when she was twelve. Her father took her and one of her friends there and told them ghost stories and brought out kids' bows and let them shoot arrows at the blackbirds that sat on the rotting fence posts. Kristen considers the outing: the absurdity of shooting arrows at birds that would leap away, then return to the same fence posts; losing all the arrows; the meandering cows; her earnest father and his ghost stories that scared no one. Her father, his gentle demeanor, his Sunday trips to the local Methodist church alone; her father, surprising Wintric and her with Giants tickets and a hotel in Oakland. When Kristen told her parents about her pregnancy a few nights ago, he begged her to keep the child, even though she hadn't voiced any other plan.

Kristen stares at the hill and thinks of Marcus and Stacey hitting the Plumas County line, Wintric running the wood splitter in the back-yard heat, and this minuscule baby inside her—the only proof of its existence being two home pregnancy test results and nausea. She stares at the hill and hears the cows' calls in the distance. Just before her cell phone rings, her father's words return to her: “Keep the baby. Keep the baby.”

Wintric's name appears on her phone, and she answers with “Hey, babe.” When he says, “You get Dead Rising?” she hears his drunk-drugged voice. Her feet and hands sting, and again she sees him at the controls of the wood splitter, the iron wedge driving through the large round, his sweat, his dirty shirt, pine chunks falling to the yard.

“Win. Tric.”

She says the two syllables hushed, detached, and a new vision arrives: Wintric on the couch, Halo 2 on the screen, a narcotic, lazy smile as he sips a fourth Coors Light under a spinning ceiling fan. “Oh my God.”

“Baby, you on your way here? You on your way?”

Kristen bends over at the waist.

“Wintric,” she says. “What have you done? God. Shit. What—”

“I'm sitting here. Where you?”

“Outside Westwood.”

“What?”

“What have you done?”

“Where you at, baby?”

She hears another “Baby?” and the hand holding the phone drops from her ear to her side. She sees herself in the doorway of their home, crossing the room to intoxicated Wintric, her arm reaching out to him, handing him the new video game, returning to the kitchen; she's opening the refrigerator, placing the milk gallons on the center shelf. She's leaning over the counter, watching Wintric's joy as he picks up the game controller and hits Start.

At the turnout a waft of manure hits Kristen and she walks over to the fireplace and reaches out and touches the bricks, pressing her left palm against the chimney. She glances at the square diamond in her ring and moves her ring finger. The bottom of her ring taps the bricks.

Kristen drafts ultimatums in her head—
no more alcohol, no video games, rehab, time to cut out the drugs
—but she can't conjure a threat. She wouldn't leave, it hasn't gotten that bad, and really, has it been bad at all? It's the first relapse in over four months. And what's a relapse? Drunk at 2
P.M.
on a Saturday? He's not soaking in the tub fully dressed. He's not running away or locking himself in the bedroom or pulling a gun or driving drunk. What is she worried about? Maybe his foot is killing him from the wood splitting. Maybe he split all the wood and threw back a couple waiting for her. She is later than she said she'd be.

After Kristen and Wintric's engagement, her father took her aside and told her that she should never ask Wintric about the war, that there were no answers that would make sense, and besides, there was only one way to gauge if someone was ready for marriage: if he would still love his spouse after one of them had starting shitting their pants in old age. “I'm just waiting on your mother to start,” he said, with a raise of his eyebrows. The comment had made her laugh at the time, and though she couldn't visualize an aged, pants-shitting Wintric or explain why she felt like he was the only one for her, she yearned to be with him and to care for him—she had as far back as she could remember. It was not a curse or a blessing or a surprise.

Kristen clutches her phone and the questions and guilt and rage invade. What if she hung up too soon? Wintric installed the ceiling fans and painted their bedroom a light blue for her. He danced at their back-yard wedding reception without a whisper of pain.

What makes it worse is that he won't be upset with her. He's never upset with her. He never asks her to do anything for him.
Calm down,
she says to herself. The cattle graze in the meadow. The yellow grass. The ridge line in the distance. Almost home. This is the world she knows, but most of it she's only driven through, and at the moment she's not sure what she knows or wants or expects. The threat of beginnings gnaws at her. Is this the first in a series of drunken phone calls she'll get from Wintric? What is her fault? What does he need to recover from? Will she always overreact? Has she now? What does she want?

She climbs back into the car and her chest tightens and the nausea expands someplace inside. She peers out the windshield and notices a new chip in the glass that will run on her come winter. Her eyes close, and she promises herself that when she opens them everything will still be there. In past moments of stress she's always heard her mother's motto that the only folks who experience real anxiety are the ones who don't know when they'll eat next. The perspective has always helped, but nausea isn't just a state of mind. Her stomach clenches and opens, and she leans out of the car and throws up.

Kristen washes her mouth out with lukewarm Coke and spits. A minivan pulls into the turnout. In her rearview mirror she watches a boy jump out, look around, and scramble behind the fireplace. Soon a stream of pee appears from behind the bricks. She wants to look away, but the scene is fantastically bizarre, this fireplace springing a leak, cows in the background, her little hill and those damn blackbirds. She hears her laugh before she feels it, and she lets herself go and her laughter fills the car and she wipes at her eyes and tastes the Coke film. Soon the pee stream stops and the boy runs back to the van and hops in, and the van pulls back onto the road.

Kristen's nerves ease momentarily, but she sits in the silent car and the worry creeps back in. She knows what she wants—she wants nothing else to change today. She wants no news or answers, big or small. Wintric hasn't called back or texted, and she guesses that he's already forgotten about her hang-up, is now fully reinvested in Halo 2, another half a beer down. She remembers that she gassed up in Susanville before heading to Walmart and she wonders how far she can drive on a tank. Where could she go where there's no news?

When she hits Chester, Kristen keeps her foot on the gas, down Main Street, past her home two streets over, past the airport and the Forest Service station. By the time she reaches Mineral she's guilt-ridden but exhilarated. She knows where she wants to go, just not exactly how to get there, so when she pulls into Red Bluff she asks a 7-Eleven checkout woman the way to the redwoods after paying for two Mountain Dews and a cylinder of Pringles. In the parking lot she debates calling Wintric, but she doesn't want to hear his voice, so she thumbs out a text:
I'm fine. Need alone time. Drove west to clear head. Home tomorrow or next.
She considers typing
Don't worry
or
I love you,
and while she means both, she stops herself and presses Send, then turns her phone off and slides it into the glove box.

At Redding she turns west, singing first to Coldplay, then to the Killers through Weaverville, then parallels the Trinity River under the setting sun. In McKinleyville she smells the salt air and buys a turkey sandwich at the Safeway. She eats the sandwich while a man in a Portland Trail Blazers hat tells her he's pretty sure there's a redwood up near Klamath that cars can drive through. A woman with a shaved head seconds that, so Kristen heads north, pulling into Klamath's Hinkle Motel a little after ten, where the smiling man at the desk tells her she's in the right spot, that the Klamath Tour Thru Tree is only a mile away, that he'd be happy to show her the way in the morning.

With room key in hand, Kristen decides to ditch two of the gallons of milk, but she squeezes one into the tiny refrigerator in her room. Exhausted, she lies on the bed and stretches her body. She observes the room's reflection in the turned-off television screen and begs herself not to think about Wintric, but she wonders if he's already called her parents. If he shares her text with them, all will be okay. If he plays it up, there could be issues, but it's only been a few hours. It's warm, and she closes her eyes and kicks off her shoes and lets the silence of the room come to her.

A knock at her door jolts her awake and she looks around, dazed. A lit lamp. A television. Brown curtains. White walls. This is her room. She's in Klamath.

Kristen searches for a clock and finds one on the nightstand: 11:15
P.M.
She's not sure what that means. When did she get in? Another knock. A double tap. Kristen stands and steps to the door, not thinking to glance for a peephole. She pauses for a moment. Klamath.

Through the door, a voice.

“It's Dennis, from the front desk.”

Kristen inspects the room, unaware of what she seeks. She remembers there's no suitcase to find. The bed appears huge. Her purse on the bathroom counter. The clothes she wears. She turns the door's handle and cracks the door enough to expose her head.

“It's Dennis. You know. From the desk. Just wanted to make sure everything was okay in here.” He smiles. His hands are behind him and he rocks back and forth.

“Yeah. Everything's fine. Thanks.”

“Good,” he says. “Good.”

He rocks in place, and Kristen comes to.
Eleven-fifteen,
she thinks. The motel's lights cast a blue shade onto the parking lot.

“Yep,” she says.

“So the drive-through tree is down the road here. Hell, you could walk to it. You know, there's three redwoods you can drive through in California. Two of them are down south a bit.”

“Oh.”

“I haven't been there to those two, but . . .” He pauses and Kristen waits for him to continue, but there's only silence. He rocks in place.

Kristen thinks Dennis may be wearing a different shirt, and she gets a whiff of his cologne. She notices that he's combed his now wet hair. He's tall and overweight, and his large hands appear at his sides, then slide into his front pockets. She cases the parking lot for someone, but there are only two cars parked in front of dark rooms on the far side of the place.

“Yeah,” she says. “Well. I'm fine with this one. Thanks.” She moves her left hand to the door's edge and grips, pointing her ring set at him, but his eyes don't leave hers. At the far side of the parking lot someone appears and walks a few steps in their direction, then pauses and lights a cigarette. Dennis glances at the smoker, then turns back to Kristen.

“I'm glad the room works,” he says. “There's not much going on, but we got a bar across the street.” He points.

“I'm not really—”

“I know Rick, the bartender. It's the one game in town.” He gulps. “No pressure, of course.”

The parking-lot smoker has moved a few steps closer to them and stopped. Kristen eyes Dennis's boots, a couple feet from the doorjamb. She breathes his cologne.

“I'm married,” she says. “I mean, he's here . . .”

“Wow,” he says, and laughs. “Married. You the only one?”

“I'm sorry?”

Dennis lifts his hands and presses his palms to his chest. Kristen decides to shut the door, to slam it, but her hands don't move. She flexes her arms and the muscles tighten.

“I mean I'm just being nice, telling you about the bar,” Dennis says. “That's what we got here. You from some big city looking for the drive-through tree. That's what I'm saying. I'm not asking if you're married. Just being nice. You seemed a little out of sorts, that's all. Just being nice.”

“I know,” she says. “I'm sorry. Long day.” She hears her words and this repeated apology.

“So?”

“Sorry?”

She tells herself to close the door. Why is she asking questions?

“So you agree about nice people? That there are nice people?”