I'd Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them by Jesse Goolsby Page B

houses on your left.”
    Alston and Janelle light two more Camels and somehow end up sitting next to each other. The sun warms Dax’s face, and after he gets a flirty wave from an overweight girl from the opponent’s school, he forces a nod. An ice cream truck pulls into the nearby parking lot, thin music box tunes tinkling out, and for a moment Dax thinks back to when his parents were still together.
    Later, with only one match continuing in the far court, Janelle fingers her right earlobe.
    â€œA refrigerator fell on my dad in Iraq,” she says. “In Desert Storm, unloading crap. Damn thing crushed his neck and most of his chest. After we got the army money, my mom split.” She takes a drag and exhales white smoke. “She’s in Wyoming, I think, but I’m not sure. Every now and then she sends me thirty dollars cash.”
    â€œWhat’s the return address on the envelope?” Alston says. “If you want to know where she’s at, check out the return address.”
    â€œYou think I don’t know that?”
    â€œYes. I think you don’t know that.”
    â€œDamn, A,” Dax says.
    â€œAnd a fridge? No bullet to the heart or anything?”
    â€œNope.”
    â€œWhat kind?” Alston says.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œA Maytag?”
    â€œAlston, come on.”
    â€œI don’t know,” she says. “I know it was big. Someone said it was brown. That’s what I know.”
    â€œA falling refrigerator,” Dax says.
    Alston runs his fingers through his hair and looks at Janelle.
    â€œFuck Saddam.”
    Â 
    Drew Barrymore sits behind Dax, Alston, and Janelle in a New York City theater just before
Die Hard: With a Vengeance
starts. Early summer and hot, and Dax and Alston have traveled the short distance to the city from Rutherford for basketball camp and sneaked out on the third night to the show. Dax didn’t anticipate that Janelle would show up, but nothing surprises him about Alston and Janelle, now that she’s a permanent fixture.
    Dax is too nervous to talk to Drew, but Alston turns around and says, “
Poison Ivy
was your best work,” and for those words he receives a condescending pat on the head before the lights dim and they all watch and cheer Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson as they kill, maim, and solve logic puzzles to save New York City from pissed-off foreigners.
    On the sidewalk after the show a disheveled and serious old woman begs Dax never to cut his hair because she’s certain the Japanese will soon invade the country searching for American locks. Dax takes a step back and the woman holds up a paintbrush as evidence.
    â€œPromise me,” she says.
    â€œYes,” Dax says.
    â€œThey have unfinished business here.”
    â€œOkay,” Dax says.
    â€œOklahoma City was two months ago. It was just the start.”
    â€œYep.”
    â€œI was alive for Pearl Harbor.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œPromise me.”
    â€œFine.”
    â€œYour hair.”
    â€œYes.”
    A block later, Dax, Alston, and Janelle stroll along the night boulevard, and a boy around twelve years old walking in the other direction pulls up his shirt to reveal a white-handled revolver stashed in his pants. He contorts his fingers into a practiced gang sign. Once Dax notices his weapon, he allows his shirt to fall back down, nods his head, and continues down the street. Dax’s body shakes and Alston says, “Calm down. It wasn’t loaded.”
    â€œYou can’t tell that shit from the handle,” Dax says, trying to settle himself.
    â€œI can tell.”
    Dax is in awe of Alston because of his ignorant surety—an unabashed confidence that Dax desires for himself—and because Alston teaches Dax things he’s not supposed to realize until much later in life, stuff like honesty is rarely the best policy, a car runs even if you don’t have a driver’s license, and people do