What I don’t tell the boys

I don’t tell them how giddy I get walking into the desert miles from home. We’re all singing with our beer cans and tents. Walter trips over some desert weeds and lands on his face, and the rest of us double over with our phones out. He’s crying out, Don’t be doing that, boys.

We reach the lake and set up our tents. There’s a rattling speaker with the Yardbirds on repeat, and mosquitos consume us. Josh and Billy cast their rods and I wrap myself up in mine. Walter untangles me. He doesn’t own a rod, but he’s brought an eighteen-pack of beer, the posh kind. You want one? he says.

He’s said it to each of us now. Josh and Billy take one, and then I take one, then he fucks it up by saying, Thanks for saying thanks to me.

Josh’s square head, he draws his guns quick and says, Who told you to speak, huh? And then Billy doesn’t even look, he just chuckles and spits in the lake. Walter, he’s a big lad but he lowers his head. Got some more beers though, for you boys, he says. My tongue gets all wrapped up. My hands too, the way I can’t pat him on the back.

I once watched a movie that was set out here where everybody had strong jawlines and wore cowboy hats and scuffed up the dust with their spurs. Those movies were black-and-white pictures but everyone saw the colours. They fished at this blue lake and made a camp of red trees. When the sun came up, they rode to Montana. They did it with this wide shot, the distant mountain range and three lone riders who are alive and heroic enough that you want to be them and Walter was never there.