by Clint Martin
I saw my friend last night. And boy has it been a while. The moment I spotted my man my mind went to calculating calendars and figured we’d circled the sun almost five times since I’d last stood in the shade of my friend’s shadow. That’s just too long. Especially for a person I will go to the grave calling friend, homey, brother.
When I saw my friend last night, I admit I was quite unprepared. There I was, in some large and elegant room with a big and dapper party crowd. As I gabbed to a small group of faceless and attentive strangers in shiny clothes who were holding martini-shaped glasses and spinning yarns about who knows what, a dreamy vibe told me to turn around, so mid-sentence, I did and Bugoogit! my friend. Numbness flashed me, held me motionless while first my mind and then my body, my whole body, being and all confirmed yes, yes, this is the man, this is your friend, this is Ronald Lemar Gathright.
Lemar. Gath for short. Sometimes Ron G. Sometimes Marrr (put the pirate into it). Ever so often Ronnie Junior to honor his father. And occasionally Ronniger Galbraith—an alias I gave him in 11 th grade (long story). Such a list. Regardless, I was so thrilled to see my man last night I didn’t know which name to slap him with first. But isn’t that the way? Isn’t a single name somehow insufficient for those we wholeheartedly adore?
Yet, before I could voice a name, my suspended speechlessness of this unexpected Gath-sight continued because even though I’d accepted his presence, I couldn’t believe how fantastic he looked. Somehow Gath had flipped the script back a quarter century. This was mid-90s Lemar standing before me. This was the guy I first glimpsed at a summer basketball practice in Eastern’s gym. Back when I was new to school and knew no one. This was the 6’2” version of Lemar more football muscular than basketball svelte, the fifteen-year-old already testosteroned enough to sport the thin black stache that would be tattooed to his upper lip for the rest of his days. As I stared at the angelic and athletic Gath before me, my mind replayed that first time I saw him curl off a pick, catch a pass, square his broad shoulders, and spring like a puma off the floor. His long arms lifted and shot the ball, his large right hand following through with all five fingers curling into a unified paw. Swish, the ball said. I’m going to be that guy’s friend, I silently replied.
That’s the friend who appeared last night. And not only was I cold-showered by Lemar’s blast-from-the-past appearance and lack of gray hairs, but the spinning slideshow of memories his face instantly awakened insisted on holding my tongue hostage even longer. There, playing out before me, was the night Gath drove me home after a tough loss in his Pops’s full-sized Caddy. Turning into my subdivision, Ron Jr. stated—joked I assumed—he was going to crash the car so we wouldn’t have to go to what would surely be a grind-our-ass-to-the-bone practice the next day. A split second later, rounding a snow-slick curve, we slid straight sideways right off the road. The white Caddy slipped and slid toward a row of evenly spaced suburban trees planted about a full-size sedan’s length apart. We weren’t traveling fast, so we didn’t seem headed toward death. In fact, the whole scene, then and now, seemed to play out in super slow-mo as the car skated, kept skating, slid across snow-covered silence toward two teenaged trees. As I braced for the inevitable impact, one bare Bradford pear strolled in front of the wide white hood, a mere passing pedestrian drifting parallel to the car’s silver bumper while the second pear repeated the feat from behind. In the most improbable parallel park job ever, we’d slipped between both trees, and before the Caddy came to a complete halt, I fled the passenger’s seat to belt out a full-moon howl and gawk at the tire tracks of evidence in the freshly tracked snow. I repeatedly broke the silent night with loud laugher and raucous holy shits. My final, and loudest, bellow came when I opened the driver’s side door to see Gath still sitting, still staring straight ahead, both black hands white-knuckling the hula-hoop of a steering wheel, his mind not yet come to a complete stop.
And neither did my mind stop at those trees when I saw my friend last night. It seemed as those several slippery minutes passed between recognizing Mar and listing names and brushing away reels of rousing memories, all while calculating more staggering math. Not only had it been twenty years since we roomed in college with Dre and Joe and Big Lee, not only a decade since his wedding, not only six years since I’d razzed him about the added pounds of padding pillowing his face and frame by christening him Gerth-right, but it’d been two, two long ass
years since we’d spoken. Two years since we’d even talked. That is excluding the group text we still share with Dre and Joe and Big Lee. That means it’s been over seven hundred days since I called my friend one weekday morning while waiting for an oil change. Ron G answered the phone as if half-expecting my call. He answered after just one ring with a bellowy Mr. Martinnnnnn!!!! so glorious all we could do for the first two minutes of that hour-long conversation was laugh. Before any hellos, we just cackled and giggled and tried to breathe so we could start swapping stories about kids and wives and lives, so G-right could confide in me that he’d recently fallen in love, fallen hard for the woods of all things. He told me he owned a hatchet and a tent and Ron Sr. now called him the Black Lumberjack. Gath told me he knew of a place with no cell service, just tall trees and wide quiet. He said he’d love to share it with me, so we set a date. We marked our calendars for a weekend in the woods.
So, when I saw my forty-three-year-old friend looking all teenagery last night,
it took time to arrive at the number twenty as in twenty months since we’d tried yet again to reschedule our camping trip. Two days before our originally appointed rendezvous, the Black Lumberjack texted back business. Four months later, we were on a third maybe fourth attempt at trying to cram camping into a swollen calendar. Between my son’s soccer games and his daughter’s gymnastic meets and spring break, between checking off errands and fulfilling promises, we couldn’t find a weekend in the near future. No worries we texted. We’ll figure it
out.
But we haven’t figured it out, and so it was quite unexpected to finally be reunited with my friend last night. But once I’d move past the shock, once the memories and math were finished, I finally, finally found the space for a reaction. I yelled. Boomed really. I let out a great shrieky kind of shout. One not composed of word, for words—like names—are often inadequate. No, I hollered a sound. A senseless sound. Some singular syllable from the soul that can’t be corralled into letters. It was a sound that meant nothing yet conveyed a bunch of shit all at once
like I can’t believe it’s you, no way six years, you look fantastic, I can’t believe…, look so great, how?, remember the tree, my man, remember the…, we were supposed to go camping, I can’t believe it’s you, almost two years, I’m sorry, so good to see, so sorry, remember…we were supposed to go camping, too long, I think about your kids, camping, I really wanted to go. I still want to go.
I’m not sure if anyone else in the room paid attention to my outburst. I was too absorbed in the sight of my friend. Too engrossed by the shock of seeing him standing before me. But the moment the hollow echo of my scream faded, the second the vibrations of delight finished quaking my insides, I noticed my friend wasn’t grinning. His cheeks were pinched at the bottoms by his two shallow dimples, but he wasn’t smiling. And Gath always smiled. Or beamed. Or smirked. But he wasn’t frowning either. He was staring. Just staring back at me, his deep brown eyes lacking their usual sparkle. Instantly I knew why. I may have to do some math to figure out other things, but I knew without counting it’s been eighteen months, eighteen I-still-don’t-believe-it months since Ronald Lemar Gathright’s funeral.
I stared at my friend. I knew why he wasn’t smiling, and there was nothing to say about it. We’d never made it camping. And now because of his big, stupid heart that quit beating at 2:30 a.m. while Pasquel slept by his side and his two young kids dreamt in their rooms down the hall, there was no calling or texting or rescheduling. We couldn’t even lie through toothy smiles that we’d see each other soon.
So, when I saw my dead friend last night, after doing all the things I’ve already shared, I did the one thing I’ve been dying to do for the last eighteen months: I grabbed him. I grabbed Gath and squeezed him with everything I had. Damn I hugged him hard. I hugged and held, squeezed and held, and never uttered one meaningless name. I embraced my friend and his broken heart, the one that stopped beating as if you can just all-out quit when your kids are young and before you go camping with someone who’s loved you from the moment you met. I gripped Gath with all the love and thanks and sorrow my body holds. Last night, as if he, as if we, as if the two of us were both young and athletic and on the same plane of existence, I squeezed the friend I just dubbed Ghost-right. I buried my face into his chest until slowly, slowly, he
thinned…
faded…
dissolved.
Last night I hugged my friend hard. Hugged and held him until the very last possible second. Squeezed him until the moment I awoke horizontal in my own bed. My wife sleeping soundly by my side. My two kids dreaming down the hall. I awoke this morning hugging nothing but myself.
Clint Martin lives occasionally in Iowa but mostly in Kentucky. When not writing or teaching, Clint enjoys meditating, identifying the birds in the backyard, and learning about cool things like plants and space. His work has appeared in various places such as Kenyon Review, Sagebrush Review, The Write Launch, and Motherwell Magazine.