Desert Boys Read online

  “They’re going to take this all out one day,” Karinger said, drunk. He waved the bottle, motioning toward the undeveloped land surrounding them. “Who’s gonna take care of it all?”

  “You sound like Kush,” Watts said.

  Karinger laughed. “I’m serious, though. Who will take care of … my car?” He pressed his palm against the royal blue hood between his legs, holding on to the bottle with his other hand. Kush reminded him to pass it over.

  “Your sister,” said Kush. “It’ll be hers soon.”

  “But who will take care of my sister? Not you.” Karinger grudgingly handed the bottle to Kush. “You are out of here, Berkeley.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Kush. “Ol’ Watts here will keep an eye on her.” He took a drink. “Won’t you, Watts?”

  “Give me that,” said Watts. He mouthed something to Kush, pleading. Then he said, “Karinger, your sister is my sister.”

  “Ha,” said Kush.

  “And you, Watts—who will take care of you?” Karinger patted Watts’s floppy curls. “And who will take care of you?” He looked to Kush. “And my mom,” he said. “And Jackie?”

  “Everyone here is going to be golden,” Kush said. “The question is, who will take care of you?” He meant it in a funny way, jabbing his finger into Karinger’s impressive arm to loosen up the conversation. But Karinger seemed to be mulling the question over with sincerity. They were quiet, all three of them, for a long while.

  Karinger pushed himself to his feet. His graduation cap fell to the dirt. Out of Watts’s hand he took the bottle. He wound up and threw it with a howl as far as he could into the dark. The sound of the bottle shattering hung between them.

  A good amount of time passed. Watts cleared his throat. “That bottle,” he said. “It was empty, right?”

  The three of them sent their laughter into the world, into and beyond the reach of the Mustang’s lights.

  * * *

  Dear Kush,

  Don’t apologize for being dramatic. I don’t know how it is for you academic types, but for us regular people, some situations get a pass.

  You asked if he would have wanted you here. Let me tell you a story. Not the last time he was home, but the time before that, we got into an argument. It was something stupid—I can’t even remember. Maybe it was what to have for dinner? What day to invite my parents over? Anyway, he’d come back this time a little different. He never told me what had changed, but I could tell by the way he talked to me—like he didn’t really care either way about anything—that something was off. I brought it up to him that night. I took off his shoes and set them next to his duffel bag, which he’d been looking through, at the side of the bed. Then we were in bed in bed—forgive the details, but for some reason I don’t care if you know—and again, he didn’t respond like he usually did. So I asked him again, what’s wrong? Well, you know him. He wouldn’t say a thing sober, so I got up and poured him a glass of whiskey, and then another, and another. It was winter, and the whiskey warmed him up. He kept saying so. Finally I asked him one more time, what was wrong? Had anything happened out there that changed him? No, he said, not one thing in particular. That only happened in movies, he said. He put his head down on the pillow and started talking and talking, everything from his dad to the idea of having a baby to what he would do if he wasn’t in the marines. You name it, he talked about it. And just when I thought he was about to fall asleep, he said something so sad and sweet I picked up a pen and jotted it down. He said (I’m reading it right off the scrap of paper): “Might not be rooting for me anymore, but I’m still rooting for him.”

  For some stupid reason I thought he was talking about his dad. He got upset and said I was wrong. Then he wouldn’t say anything else, but I always figured it was you he was talking about. Who else could it be?

  My point is you’re not the only dramatic one. But, yes, to answer your question truthfully. He would have wanted you here—yes, yes, yes.

  Best,

  Jackie (Connolly) Karinger

  ☺

  * * *

  From the patio, Linda Karinger called into the house for help. She’d need the outdoor furniture set up before noon, and would someone please get on that while she started the coals going in the grill? She wore a camouflaged apron with white block letters across the front: FREEDOM ISN’T FREE.

  Watts, followed by Kush, came outside. Karinger and Jackie would be arriving any minute, followed shortly thereafter by the Connollys. Tomorrow, Karinger would head south to Camp Pendleton to transform into the man he would be for the rest of his life. This was his going-away party.

  Again Linda poked her head into the house through the sliding glass door, careful not to let a cat escape: “Roxanne! Get off the dang phone and come help!”

  Roxanne put her palm over the mouthpiece and said, “I’m on vacation.”

  “Not today, you’re not. Go help the boys set up the chairs.”

  As Roxanne came outside, Watts and Kush were fitting their hands underneath the surface of the patio table. They carried it to the center of the backyard’s lawn. The day happened to be the hottest of the year—people were calling it 108—and although the furniture was cheap and lightweight, dark circles of sweat pressed through the boys’ shirts in the chest and back like giant thumbprints.

  The doorbell rang and Roxanne, easing a folded chair onto the grass, went to answer the door. Linda squeezed a bottle of lighter fluid over the coals, and a ball of fire burped out.

  Karinger had arrived. There were moments of symbolic importance in life, it seemed to Kush, just as there were moments of symbolic importance in literature. He remembered that day in the desert with Watts, finding their old paintball field dismantled. That was an example of a moment that felt symbolically important to him. But real moments existed, too—moments that didn’t represent something, but actually were that something. None of these thoughts appeared in Kush’s mind that day in sentences—they never did. They were only part of a feeling he had—that lame, irrefutable noun—while he watched his friend Karinger on the patio hug the women in his life, one by one: the feeling that this was not symbolically but actually the end of their corresponding lives.

  Karinger, adjusting the straps of a backpack, made his way out to the lawn while the girls spoke around the whitening coals. “Thanks for putting this all together,” he told Kush and Watts.

  “What’s with the luggage?” Watts asked.

  “I know,” Karinger said. “I feel like a freshman again, lugging this thing around. I had some clothes and stuff lying around the farm I wanted to bring over here before I left.”

  Roxanne came over, dangling a plastic bag of disposable silverware in front of her. “Mom wants you guys to set the table.” She ripped open the plastic bag and split the forks, knives, and spoons among the three of them. “Kush, you seem like a spoons kind of guy. My brother’s definitely the knives. That leaves Watts with the forks, but I’m not sure what that means.” Laughing, she left them to do their job.

  By the time the guests arrived, the heat had everyone complaining. Roxanne kept holding her hair up off her neck and saying, “Jesus.” She removed her Dodgers cap and placed it underneath the spigot. Once the hat was filled, she twisted it back onto her head, letting the water crash over her face and shoulders. She returned to her seat, encouraging everyone else to follow suit. Kush watched as Watts made a concentrated effort not to stare at her wet shirt.

  As flies swarmed the leftover coleslaw and chicken bones on plastic plates, Linda told her son to open his gifts. They were gags, most of them—porno magazines and tiny glass bottles of Jack Daniel’s and Smirnoff vodka, none of which Karinger could take with him to boot camp—but some gifts were given in earnest: a pocket Bible from his parents-in-law; a single-sheet list of relevant addresses from his wife; and a few Polaroid pictures of young mom and kids, in the trailer they lived in before the house, from his mother. Everyone laughed when they were supposed to laugh, and looked to Lind
a—face red with sunburn and emotion—during the sweeter moments. Gone were the complaints over the heat.

  Kush watched the party from a distance, from a canopied patio swing at the far end of the yard. Initially he’d taken the seat to get some shade. As the party wound down, however, and as the in-laws began to say their good-byes, Kush remained there, rocking gently, alone. Over and over again, he thought about what he wanted to say to Karinger.

  Eventually, it was just the three boys in the driveway. The sky turned dark, and crickets sang in the hedges. In the white light of the fixture at the rim of the garage, the three boys drank from the tiny gift bottles of liquor, smuggled in Karinger’s backpack, which he set down at the driver’s side of Watts’s truck. “Take these, too,” Karinger told them, meaning the porn.

  Watts took another bottle from the bag and unloaded the magazines, stacking them in the cab of his truck. “So,” he said, slamming shut the truck’s door. “This is it?”

  “Those should last you a while,” Karinger said.

  Watts said he didn’t mean the porn; he meant “this”—he moved his hand in a circle between the three of them to elaborate.

  “I’ll be back for a little after boot camp,” Karinger said. “We’ll get together again before I ship out.”

  Kush said, “I’ll probably be up north for orientation, I think.”

  Karinger nodded. “Well, I guess this is it.”

  “For a while, anyway,” said Watts. He finished what was left in his mini-bottle and tossed it into the bed of the truck, bringing on the heavy sound of thick glass hitting metal.

  “Who knows?” Kush said. “Forever, maybe.”

  Karinger and Watts laughed. Watts said, “Kush, why do you always have to be such a dramatic motherfucker?”

  Near the backpack, Kush took a knee and grabbed the last mini-bottle, which he opened and finished in one swallow. When he stood, he said, “Karinger, you always said I needed to be more decisive, right?”

  “‘Indecision is death,’” Karinger said, quoting somebody.

  “This isn’t me being dramatic.”

  “Tell me, man. Whatever it is you want to tell me, tell me.”

  “This war is criminal,” Kush said, feeling as though the cold rush of truth came through him.

  Karinger turned his face and laughed it off. “Is it, now.”

  “I mean,” said Kush, “you’re not dumb enough or sadistic enough to go kill people for money, are you?”

  From Watts: “Kush, you drunk asshole. The war is way more complicated than—”

  “If you say one more word,” Kush said, turning to Watts, “I’ll tell him something else I should’ve told him a long time ago.”

  “You’ve got a lot of growing up to do,” said Karinger. “A younger me would’ve knocked you out already.”

  “You’re still a younger you!” Kush said, shouting now. “That’s the point! If you die in that war, it’s a younger you that’ll die, and for what? Absolutely nothing!”

  The power Kush felt just a minute ago had already begun to fade. Now he felt something less heroic, but he’d gone too far to pull back. Seeing no other option to try to regain that power, he wound up and threw the empty miniature bottle at Karinger as hard as he could. To his surprise, the bottle hit its target, glancing off Karinger’s enormous shoulder and breaking apart against the driveway.

  Karinger looked at the bits of glass, which refracted the motion sensor’s light here and there against the side of Watts’s truck and across his own shadow. He stepped forward and planted his forehead against Kush’s. This was the closest they’d been since their game of chicken in the desert four years earlier. Kush braced for a punch until he heard Karinger laugh.

  “Let’s not pretend this is political,” Karinger said. “I know why you really want me to stay.”

  He raised his finger to his mouth. “Go ahead, Kush. Kiss me.” Karinger closed his eyes. He cartoon-puckered his lips.

  And for the first time in a long time, Kush acted without thinking. He kissed Karinger with his eyes closed. With his mouth he held on to Karinger’s fat lower lip as long as he could, and felt the cracks at the center from the dry, searing summer winds. When Karinger seemed to let him have the kiss, every fantasy Kush had tried so diligently to ignore over the years occurred to him at once. The result was a magnificent barrage of embarrassments, sentimental on the one hand, pornographic on the other. Kush never figured out which was more pathetic: the times he’d daydreamed of skipping town with Karinger to San Francisco or New York or Paris, or the nights he’d spent alone in his bedroom after a day of paintball, licking from between his fingers his own semen, and imagining the taste—like a desert plant, leafy and hot—was his friend’s. Either way, it was in his mouth now, the withered taste of shame itself. It had been rooted in his memory, but now shot from his brain to the wet nib of his tongue, which pressed between the small valleys in Karinger’s bottom row of teeth. And before Karinger stepped back and threw his fist so perfectly into Kush’s chest that the impact felt to Kush less like a punch than a tree breaking a horrendous fall, Karinger kissed him back. Hadn’t he? He seemed to have kissed Kush back, a brief but beautiful hold on Kush’s mouth, so forceful and lovely that Kush, after the punch, felt not only the immense pain in his chest but also, in his top lip, a kind of swelling.

  Now Kush sat upright in the driveway, one hand pressed against the thudding plate in his chest, the other behind him, for balance, against an oil stain.

  Above, Karinger picked up his backpack and, fitting his arms into the straps, said, “Everyone, including you, will be happier once you’re in Berkeley. It’s where you belong.”

  Kush, still struggling to take in air, said, more deliberately and honestly than he’d said anything in his life, “Go die for nothing, asshole. I hope you do.”

  Then Karinger spat on the ground, walked the path to the front door, and disappeared.

  “I should have told him about Roxanne,” Watts said on the drive home. His hands on the wheel were shaking. “We could’ve avoided all that back there. I should’ve been the guy getting punched.” Now he was crying, swiping his nose and eyes with the back of his hand. At a red light, he twisted his fists over his eyes, and for the first and only time, Kush felt he wasn’t the weakest of the three.

  * * *

  The day before the baptism, Lloyd and I were at a sidewalk café eating crepes with strawberries and Nutella. We’d seen each other every day for six weeks. No one would argue six weeks is a long period of time for a relationship. But look: We were sitting on one side of a small circular table on a sidewalk in Oakland, California, under a cloudless, bright sky. A mother pushing two babies in a double-seat stroller passed us and—when Lloyd licked his thumb and wiped chocolate from my face—smiled a benevolent smile. Six weeks was not separate from ten years, I felt, or any bit of my life. Six weeks, in some ways, was everything.

  “So,” Lloyd said, “I was thinking. Maybe I can come along with you tomorrow. See your hometown, meet the gang. Maybe even meet that mysterious Armenian mother of yours.”

  Just then, the blaring sound of sirens wailed by, and I imagined Watts driving his ambulance around the Antelope Valley. He was a man now—a man who saved lives, I was proud to say. For whatever reason, though, I couldn’t think of Karinger as the husband and father he turned out to be. I didn’t think of him as a man. I felt awful admitting that. I tried to picture him fighting that war out there in a climate not unlike what we’d been used to, and all I could see was the boy in that gas mask, shooting his gun at other boys, frightened boys crouching behind a sofa. Hostile, hostile fire, small-arms fire, Kandahar Province—I had these bits of information, but none that helped me imagine the scene of his death. So I thought instead of that silly note I wrote and carried with me for so long, slipping it into his backpack as I took that last miniature bottle of liquor in the driveway. I thought of how he must have discovered it at some point, using the same language with his wife later on,
and I tried to imagine what he felt while reading my words. How close had he come to calling me? What was it he’d said, about my having to grow up? To have a person so young tell you to grow up …

  “Well,” Lloyd said. “I don’t need to come along. But how excited are you to go back home? What do you think it’ll be like, seeing everyone again?”

  I could imagine. I would head to the church near the old library a bit early. I’d slip into the back pew and wait for the important players to assemble at the altar—mother, godfather, baby, priest. I’d recognize the bald priest, who would joke with the baby: Come on in, the water’s fine. The churchgoers, perpetually reminded of the unspoken sadness of the day, would appreciate the humor. Our laughter would complement the crying of the baby, who’d be lifted and dipped, lifted and dipped, lifted and dipped until every last prayer was heard.

  But I was sitting at an outdoor café in a city on the rise with a man I was beginning to love. I wasn’t about to go back.

  THE TALLEST TREES IN THE ANTELOPE VALLEY

  I. BRIEF OVERVIEW OF AN EVOLVING CULTURE

  The town became a city, and so on, but in the transition, there were elements of both, and I happened to be raised there during that period. In fact, depending on who’s telling the story, that transition still defines the place.

  I’ll give you an example of each. On the city end of things, you started seeing department stores, courthouses, various public schools—in short, buildings with elevators and escalators. Our town was literally moving up. Bridges linked stretches of new highway over the anachronistic caterwauls of the railroad. And people were moving in, people from Los Angeles and its boroughs, people who’d been drawn to the cheap, carry-only-what-you-need, fresh-start sort of living the desert represented. People who’d been renting a one-bedroom apartment for the entirety of their financial lives woke up one morning and read the signs that the same amount of dollars and cents got you a modest, one-story home up north. Sure, the desert wasn’t L.A. But for the people who headed into my town—and they came then by the thousands—maybe not being L.A. was the most appealing thing about it.