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

8. Metatarsal

FEBRUARY 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.”

Her eyes level up to his, and he recognizes the expression — the pity he wants and despises.

“Sometimes I think about chopping the whole thing off. Maybe then I’ll deserve the fucking sympathy.”

He’s surprised her, and she inches back.

“Don’t do this, K,” he says. “Don’t look at me like I’ve changed.”

“You have half a foot. I’m not supposed to feel anything? It’s enough that you’re back.”

“You think I’m back?”

“I’m glad you’re back.”

Wintric grabs his gear and hurriedly puts on the nylon and the sock and fastens the boot up. He stands up, and the spiked blood rushes down his leg. The groan brings Kristen’s hand to her mouth. She locks the door dramatically.

“Sit down,” she says.

She feeds him two of his pain pills, and his face flushes out. It’s against the label warning, but he asks for a beer and she gets him one. He calms, says he’s inquiring about work down in Sacramento in fence manufacturing, but she knows he lies.

“If you don’t like it there,” she says, stops. “Just because you were raised here doesn’t mean anything. I’m making nine an hour at Holiday.”

“We got a Subway, I see.”

“There are worse places.”

“I’ve been to Alabama. Georgia. Went up to Atlanta.”

“Yeah?”

“Coca-Cola plant. The headquarters is there.”

“Oh.”

“The Coke secret ingredient list is locked in a vault.”

“For Coke?”

“Yeah.”

“But don’t they have to put the ingredients on the can? It’s a rule, right?”

“I think.”

“Then how is it a secret if you can see it on the side?”

“All I know is that there’s secret shit in there and like only two people in the world know what it is.”

“Cocaine.”

“That’s how it started.”

“Seriously?”

“That’s what they said.”

“Well, it’s called Coke.”

Wintric drinks from his beer can. Kristen thumbs the front pockets of her jeans, her chest hollow. There is no transition for what she wants to say. She was as surprised as anyone when Wintric’s parents told her he was coming home, done with the army, injured, but not horribly.

“I missed you,” she says. “I left you alone because you wanted me to.”

“I know,” he says, looking away. Barry Bonds on the wall, bat in hand.

“I would’ve been…”

“Relax. I didn’t send anyone else my hair.”

“I have it,” she says, and rises.

“No. Don’t. I believe you.”

“You going to grow it out?” she asks, now reaching out and touching the back of his scalp. “Prickly.” She brings her hand down to his shoulder and squeezes the muscle.

He smells her hand, vanilla lotion, and the scent intoxicates him—comfort, home, sex, strong, young. Kristen’s green eyes, home. He reaches up to her face and touches her jaw.

“It’d just get in the way, I think. We’ll see.”

She leans into his hand, then reaches for it, kisses it. She notices that he does smell different, but how?

He exhales and moves close and kisses her on the mouth. The warmth and fear rush at him on the couch, everything happening so fast, and he remembers standing and lifting Kristen, moving her to the wall. He pictures this muscular movement, but it seems a desire too far removed, a past fantasy, no longer a fantasy. His pulse jabs strong in his hands, but before he attempts to command his body into action a pain shoots up his leg and he winces.

Kristen remains close, hoping he can smell her.

“Stay,” she says.

She stands and reaches to the bottom of her green shirt and yanks it up over her head, her curled hair lifting in the neck hole, then bouncing down. She unbuttons her pants and wiggles free. She reaches back, unfastens her bra, and slips it off. Wintric sits up on her couch, then opens his mouth.

“Stay,” she says, and smiles.

She reaches to his waist and the lip of his underwear on his skin, then pulls his underwear and sweatpants down past his knees. His legs shake and he lifts his arms in front of him, but she grabs his wrists and he lets her guide them to her hips as she straddles him.

“You nervous?” she says. “It’s okay. I know you.”

He opens his mouth to say “Wait,” but nothing comes out.

“I know you.”

She feels herself weightless and she senses the tears are near, so she closes her eyes as she leans over Wintric and lets her breasts brush his face. She waits for him to say her name and he does, in a whisper, a question. She kisses his mouth and feels him kissing back, and soon she moves down and tongues his nipples, her hand running along his inner thigh — something she knows he used to love — and she hears him breathe shallowly, then her name, a question, but she doesn’t answer. She kisses his stomach, his body trembling, her lips on his belly button, a mole just below, her name, and she moves her hand to his penis, half erect, and moves her head down, and she opens her mouth and feels his hands on her head, squeezing at the sides of her head, pulling her up, her name, his closed eyes.

“Kristen?”

“What?”

His eyes are closed.

“Please,” he says, and he opens his eyes. He can sense her surprise when he reaches down and grabs his sweatpants. He pulls them up to his waist and begins to stand, but stops. He looks at her silent face and reaches to her and puts his hands just below her ribs and brings her close, chest to chest, her wide-eyed face now in his hands, and he kisses her mouth hard, pushing his lips against hers, turning his cheek to her lips, feeling the pressure of her face on his, his hands now on her back, pulling her hard against him.

She places her hands on the sides of his head, fingertips pressing the base of his skull, where the neck meets. She kisses his cheek, his temple, his ear, his forehead, her hands pulling him close, his head on her chest, her arms strong and flexed, pulling him into her.

Twenty minutes later Wintric grabs a packet of cigarettes from his bag and says, “I know,” before lighting one. He rests his head on the back of the couch. Kristen takes eight steps to the refrigerator, her pants still on the floor. Wintric watches her long legs and ass move and wonders where they’ll live. He has already heard talk of twenty new homes out by the airport, and he sees himself on his hands and knees, his back bending at awkward angles as he nails roofing under the sun.

“Can I get you anything?” she asks.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

He still has her taste in his mouth, and he knows she’ll always ask him if he is sure. She’ll offer to carry things, lift things. His foot is back up on the coffee table, and he weighs the consequences of yelling to her, I’m fucking sure. I said no, but he eats the words. He sees his new boot on the coffee table, the scythe foot inside, and he debates cutting off the rest, making everything clean.

Marcus’s coworkers wait for the day when he’ll blow something up. Several of them have known him since grade school, and as long as they can remember he has worn black. This, they say, is a sign; of what, no one is certain, but they figure it can’t be healthy, and he rides his bright yellow motorcycle around town, most of the time helmetless. Kristen was the one thing he had going for him, and that ended a year ago, but they can tell he still holds out hope. They know where he goes after work most nights, and they debate when to have him yanked from the heavy machinery. He’s become clumsy around the saw, and it’s only a matter of time before the DAYS WITHOUT AN ACCIDENT sign resets to zero, but today people up and down the line notice his newfound eagerness. He works fast, and he has all his safety gear on, a first in weeks.

Marcus lets the day’s excitement brew in him. During their breakup Kristen told him that it had nothing to do with Wintric, but Marcus knows different. He’s followed the two of them to the Top of the World, observed the parked car. He’s watched her take Wintric into her place night after night, and watched the lights go out, but some nights they leave the lights on, and he watches their shadows move on the thin blinds. Last night he sneaked up to the bedroom window. They were arguing again, and while he hoped the fight was about him, he didn’t hear his name. After Wintric left, Marcus sat underneath a tree in the dark, smoking for two hours, replaying Wintric’s exit, convincing himself that the departure was final. Marcus has heard the rumors about Wintric — that there is more than the foot wrong with him — but there is little evidence now that he has lost the boot, save for Wintric putting on some weight and the fights with Kristen, which could be about anything. Marcus decides that in the end, cause doesn’t matter. Already he feels more powerful and capable than Wintric, and it’s this that strengthens his hopes.

After work Marcus stops by his apartment and changes into the red shirt Kristen gave him. He checks for Wintric’s Bronco before approaching Kristen’s door. She answers in a torn shirt, her eyes glossy.

“Where is he?” Marcus asks, already shaking.

She shoulders the door frame.

“Jesus, Marcus. What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be hiding under a tree?”

“Tell me where he is and I’ll take care of it.”

Kristen feels a pain inside her and senses Marcus awaiting her command. She pinches the bridge of her nose. It’s already dark, and she considers for a moment whether Wintric would be jealous if she invited Marcus in, if the simple action of Marcus crossing her home’s threshold would shake Wintric back into reality, or at least shake him enough for him to be willing to talk to her. She wants to hurt Wintric for last night, for months’ worth of nights that have left her worn — for leaving for the army and sending only his hair — and she sizes up Marcus, desperate and lost in his red shirt. His mouth is open and he smells like cigarettes and sawdust.

“Go away.”

“He did that to you?” Marcus says, reaching out to touch the torn fabric of Kristen’s shirt. She lets him caress the material and brush her skin.

“Does it matter who did it?” she asks.

But Marcus has stopped listening. He focuses on his index finger, how his finger reaches between the ripped fabric of her shirt, the way his skin feels on the smooth skin above her collarbone. He takes a step closer, resting his foot on the threshold.

“I bet he’s at the Top of the World,” she says. She doesn’t know what will happen, but as the words leave her mouth she’s as excited and fearful as she’s ever been. The past two months have racked her — Wintric’s insomnia and apathy mixed with moments of energy and resolve. Yesterday she arrived home from work to find Wintric in an overflowing bath, fully clothed, a blue Sierra Nevada Brewery hoodie pulled over his head, submerged jeans and Nike basketball shoes.

She lifts Marcus’s hand off her, and his face whitens as he steps backward.

“Is he alone?” he says.

Kristen turns and slams the door behind her. She’s unsure whether Marcus can figure out all the roads to get there, but that’s not her problem. She stands in her living room, just inside the door, on a welcome mat still damp from Wintric’s dripping clothes, where he stood and yelled before leaving last night. Her hand on the arm of her couch, where Wintric plays Halo 2 and pops OxyContin while she works, where he tells her he loves her, begs her to stay with him, tells her that he is her folded American flag, only alive. She walks to the kitchen, to the stove, and turns on a burner without any intention of cooking. She watches the burner brighten orange, feels the subtle heat in the air. Next to the stove, on the side of the refrigerator, hangs a calendar, stuck in June even though a mid-October day is ending. Tired, confused, and guilty, she finds her phone and calls Wintric. She tells him that Marcus is angry, unreasonable. She hears his drunken voice.

“Thank you,” he says. “I’m here. Still here.”

She hangs up, turns off the burner, and calls the cops.

The lit plume of smoke pours upward from the mill, dissipating into the stars. Wintric has been coming to the Top of the World for years, but lately he’s come alone. It’s where he goes to return Torres’s phone calls and avoids answering his questions. Wintric prefers to listen while Torres practices his speeches on him, but they never include the checkpoint girl, a fact not lost on Wintric. For him, the girl has submerged just below the pain of his rape and his injured foot, but she’s there, potent each time she surfaces.

Tonight Wintric forgoes a fire, slumps in a cheap nylon folding chair, and steadies his bad foot on a block of wood.

The night is cool, and he sips at a fifteen-year Scotch his neighbor gave him when he came home in the boot. The streetlights on Main Street spread out in front of him like a runway. Eight minutes since Kristen’s call, and a lone motorcycle speeds across the dark expanse well below him. Although he knows there’s a causeway underneath the tires, it seems as though the bike zips along the top of the water. The velocity is amazing, the oval headlight beaming the black away at full throttle. The bugs are thick, and Wintric guesses that Marcus’s helmet is covered with flattened bug bodies.

Marcus can’t hear the tiny pings that come fast and fill up his visor. This is the first time he has pushed the bike past sixty, and he can barely see. He dreads removing one of his hands, because the bike shakes. Marcus knows that if Wintric is at the Top of the World, Wintric could spot him, but is he watching? Does Wintric have his pistol with him? Marcus has heard the betting stories, and he’s scared but wired. His vision slowly disappears behind the crushed flies and gnats and mosquitoes.

The bow his mother gave him for his eighteenth birthday wraps around his chest and squeezes him. He has put an arrow down the back of his shirt, tip up, rubbing against his helmet. He has no plan, and he struggles to organize his thoughts, but somewhere among the whirling emotions and projections he feels Kristen’s hands on him once again. He knows he’s being used in a way he doesn’t fully understand, but she almost invited him in. The road is empty and black, and Marcus wrenches the accelerator and squints.

Wintric hears the bike. The throttle sound varies depending on the ridge, the turn, and the grade. Even though he sips at the Scotch slowly, he has refilled his glass twice before the bike’s gravely throat is on him, the bike’s light swinging around the final turn.

Wintric was shocked when Kristen told him about the relationship with Marcus — the shy soda fountain kid in all black, a half-capable wrestler. He didn’t believe her at first, could not understand how she could go for Marcus, even if their families were close. As time went on Wintric came to believe that her choice was more a comment on him, that he and Marcus were somehow equals, he and the kid who dished out ice cream and dreamed of the mill. This thought has cornered Wintric, and since his return he’s watched Marcus around town; watched as he rides his rundown motorcycle back and forth to work, as he shops at the market where Kristen works. Wintric has spied him jogging in the street and wondered if Marcus purposely runs by the Ellises’ place. Wintric’s parents’ house is out of the way, but once or twice a week Marcus jogs by with his jerking, elongated steps, his elbows pinned. The stride is outrageous and pitiful, and Wintric envies every whole-body step. He realizes they might not even be equals.

The motorcycle pulls in twenty yards from Wintric’s chair, and the bike’s headlight shines at his feet. Marcus removes his helmet and unfurls the weapon over his head. Wintric remains seated, bypasses his glass, and lifts the bottle to his lips. Marcus fumbles badly in his attempt to place an arrow on the string, and Wintric knows that he has never used the bow before.

“Hey, can you take the other half of this foot off for me?”

Marcus draws the bow.

“You’re drunk.”

“You’re not?”

“I’ll kill you here.”

“Lower. There, I know it’s dark. I don’t know you.”

“Don’t believe me, you son of a bitch?”

“I believe you, Marcus. But right now, tonight, it doesn’t matter. Go, buddy. Take the town. I’m leaving here.”

“You’re not leaving.”

“I don’t even know you, Marcus.”

“You know me. Stop saying that.”

“Seriously, pull up a seat. Tell me.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“I don’t know you.”

“Shut up.”

“Have her, man. She won’t help. She’s nice, though, right? Goddamn. If she was from somewhere else, she’d be a catch.”

“You know me.”

“I see you running your marathon, stud. What you training for? You training for the mill? You running the Fourth of July Fun Run? Marcus, you badass. You should join the army, man. They’ll love you. You can serve ice cream all day long.”

“I’ll shoot you. You hit her, I hit you.”

Wintric squints. “Hey, you wearing red instead of black? Mixing it up, hero?”

The sharp whipping sound of the arrow cuts the air above Wintric’s head.

“There you go! Come on, Marcus.” Wintric drops his leg off the log, yells out in pain, and tumbles off his chair to the ground. He rolls, clutching his foot, stops on his back, and pulls his left knee to his chest.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Marcus has frozen in place, holding the bow away from his body. Wintric braces himself on his elbows, breathing hard, the pain mixing fast with the Scotch.

“You brought one arrow?” Wintric says. He waits, and when Marcus says nothing, Wintric laughs. “Fucking Robin Hood.”

Marcus lowers himself to the ground.

“Her shirt is torn,” he says.

On the causeway below, two patrol cars scream out. The red and blue lights play in the dim landscape.

“We’ve got five minutes,” Wintric says. “What you want to do?”

“Kristen called the cops,” Marcus says. The words arrive as a question and a statement and he tries to paste them together. He feels himself fingering the tear in her shirt.

“She called me,” Wintric says.

Marcus pauses for a few seconds, jumps to his feet, and rushes to the bike, but before he gets there he stops and lifts his bow. In one fluid motion he spins and hurls it toward town, launching it high in the air with a grunt.

The cops disappear, negotiating the twenty-three switchbacks, two road changes, and a navigable stream. Wintric pulls himself back into his seat. The town lights flicker.

“I’m pressing charges, asshole,” Wintric says. “You better run, boy. Run. I know you, Marcus. I know you, man. County jail, bitch.”

Marcus jumps on his bike, starts it up, and speeds off.

Wintric listens to the sound of the departing motorcycle and the incoming sirens as they mesh together for a while before the rising sirens take over. He will recognize the cops who arrive. Everyone in town knows all the cops — there are only eight — and these guys will be pissed that they had to come out to the Top of the World, but everything should be fine as long as he doesn’t give them any hell. Wintric brushes at his arms, knocking off pine needles he picked up from the fall. He reaches for his glass but finds the bottle first and uncorks, then drinks. The cops are close and he anticipates a spotlight in his eyes, but he has a few seconds, and he looks out over the town’s lights below, a pocket of amber glow in the California blackness.

Kristen has her brown pants on and reaches for her white work shirt in her closet. Last night Wintric called her after the cops pulled up to the Top of the World. She forgets much of what he said, but in the end the cops said they would talk to her later and Wintric said he would stop by sometime. Apparently the warning call was enough for him, but he was drunk, and she’s unsure if he’ll remember or if anything will change. She’ll answer a couple more questions after work, but she guesses everything will blow over in a week and find a comfortable place in the local gossip. No one has heard from Marcus, but Kristen expects to see him in the store.

She buttons up her shirt and eyes the box at the top of her closet, the one with Wintric’s hair. She’s running late, but she grabs her footstool and brings the box down. Narrow and long, like a box for a sword. It has a layer of gray dust over its white cover. Kristen sits on the side of her bed with the box in her lap. She thinks about blowing the dust off the top. She thinks about writing a word with her finger, but no words come to her.