Dog Soldiers

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CONVERSE HAD LITTLE SATISFACTION FROM THE LAWYER. A plantation of fine gray hair hung to shoulder length from the lawyer’s bald crown, giving him the look of a mad pinko professor in a vintage Hearst cartoon. When Con verse described his adventures in the motel kitchenette, the lawyer shrugged and smiled in an irritating manner. Con verse had the impression that the lawyer did not like him and did not sympathize with his distress.

“This is common,” the lawyer said. “This is the way they operate.”

The lawyer said that if Converse wanted to approach the authorities with a statement he might indeed do so but that an attorney with better contracts in the district attorney’s office might render more valuable assistance. He said that, obviously, Converse should be extremely careful — should not agree to private meetings with anyone unknown to him and should take whatever steps he was capable of to safeguard his residence and person. If arrested, the lawyer reminded him, he was entitled to a phone call.

Apparently, the lawyer remarked, Converse believed in rugged individualism, and this was just as well because it would require some very rugged individualism indeed to keep him afloat.

The lawyer used the term “afloat.”

Converse had salved his ear in Vaseline and bandaged it with cotton and gauze. He walked along Van Ness Street, avoiding eye contact. He had spent part of the night on the floor of the motel and the rest in Berkeley, asleep under the devil drawing in Janey’s room. In the morning he had gone to the Pacific office and borrowed some of the Thorazine that Douglas Dalton kept handy for delirium tremens. He assumed it helped some.

Thus tranquil, Converse followed the street like a sleep walker to Aquatic Park and sat on a bench among exercising bouncers and topless dancers with sun reflectors at their chins. Some of the girls aroused him and arousal made him think first of Charmian, then of Marge. The urgency of desire surprised him. After a while, he began to feel a peculiar kind of contempt for his own lust and for the women who inspired it — but anger eluded him. He had no anger to bring to bear. In time, he supposed he would lose even fear. He found fearlessness an extremely difficult state to conceive, like the hereafter.

When he had rested for an hour or so, he decided to go and have a talk with June.

The San Frenciscan was a structure of pastel metal blocks built in the form of a wedge so that both grids of its mini mal windows faced the harbor. The view from one angle was of Alcatraz, from the other of Coit Tower and the Bay Bridge. The attendants in the lobby were costumed as Santa Ana’s hussars and many were actually Mexican.

June’s room was at the end of an airless immaculate corridor; a closed circuit television camera surveyed the hall from a point just above her door.

For quite a while, she declined to open but after he had slid his red and yellow Vietnamese press card under the door she let him in.

“Why didn’t you call up?” she asked him. She was fair-haired and freckled with a hardening baby face, wearing tight faded Levi’s and a halter with anchors on it. Her voice reminded him of the voices of telephone operators who answered from Bismarck or Edmonton when he misdialed an area code.

“What else you got with your name on it?”

He showed her his passport. There was a color television set in the room tuned to the day’s Giant game; the sound was off.

“How’d I ever get mixed up in this happy horseshit?” She took a cigarette from a pack on the television set and lit it. She seemed slightly drunk or fatigued.

“I understand you had my daughter for a while.”

“Isn’t she all right?”

“I hope so,” Converse said. “I haven’t seen her.”

“Well, we took good care of her. You ask Bender.”

Converse went to the blue tinted window and looked out at Treasure Island and the bridge.

“Do you know where Marge is?”

She widened her Scandian cornflower eyes in annoyance.

“Don’t give me a hard time.”

“Understand my position,” Converse said. June shook her head, and turned her back on him. He saw that there was another room with a second television set in it. A pale blue uniform suit with a flight pin at the breast pocket was spread on its hanger across a bed.

“What were you doing over there?” she asked him.

“Writing.”

“So you’re back and your old lady is doing something else. It’s not unknown.”

“It’s awkward for me.”

She gave him a brief, shrill laugh. “Well don’t be peasant about it, man. Learn to live with it because some things are more important than boy-girl.”

“Boy-girl,” Converse said, “isn’t the trouble.”

She looked at the bandage over his ear.

“No?”

“First there was the disappointment. Then yesterday somebody burned me over a stove.”

She put her cigarette out and shook her head quickly with her eyes closed.

“It’s not my problem, John. Don’t give me a hard time.”

“If this is your idea of a hard time, you haven’t met the people I have.”

“That’s a threat,” she said.

“No, it’s not.”

The walls were beige with silver bamboo leaves painted on them.

“Is this where you had Janey?” he asked her.

“I don’t live here. Who burned you?”

“Two guys.”

“Freaks?”

“More or less.”

“I get it,” she said. “I see.”

He sat down carefully on the edge of a sofa that matched the walls.

“If you get it — where’s Marge?”

Her eyelids fluttered. Her eyes looked slightly out of focus as though the effort of being casual was putting her to sleep.

“Marge is away, man. On vacation, Pee Vee. Guaymas. Rosarita, cha cha cha.” She snapped her fingers twice.

“They’re hiding for Christ’s sake. I don’t know where they are.”

“All right,” Converse said.

She settled onto the far end of the sofa and looked at her watch.

“How did Janey end up with you?”

“I was doing a favor for a buddy.”

“For Ray Hicks?”

“Yeah for Ray.” She watched him drowsily and lit another cigarette. “They didn’t screw you. I mean as far as I know they didn’t. They got taken off.”

Converse could not restrain a sigh.

“They still got the dope though. It’s your dope, right?”

He shrugged without answering.

“Well, they still got it. Or as far as I know they still got it.”

He was nodding thoughtfully as though the intelligence were of some value to him.

“Scared?”

“Yes, indeed,” he said.

“You seem just like an ordinary guy. Why’d you try it?”

“We’re all just ordinary guys.”

June laughed.

“That’s what you think. Do you know Those Who Are?”

“Those Who Are? Those who are what?”

“Forget it,” June said. “It’s a gag.”

“It sounds really funny,” he said. She looked at him with sympathy.

“Me, I’m getting loose of these people. I’m straight, I got a chance of my old job back. They won’t see me around this town again.”

“What’s your old job? Are you a stew?”

“Used to be,” June said. “Will be again for a while. See, when I knew Ray I was into running shit from Bangkok. No scag — just Laotian Red and such. Then I started dealing myself and I met this guy Owen and then we were both dealing.”

“I guess I ought to thank you,” Converse said. “For having Janey.”

“Sure,” June said and looked at her watch.

“How was Marge?”

“Well, she wasn’t hurt. She was pretty fucked up. You want to get back with her?”

“I don’t know.”

“I really hope everybody makes out,” June said. “I been up against so many people’s paranoia that I’m really turned around. When I get east, man, I’m gonna get some protection and nothing and nobody’s gonna get to me.” She watched the television set for a while; the camera was panning over the stands as the fans in Candlestick Park took their seventh-inning stretch. “That’s what this country needs is protection.”

“Tell me,” Converse said, “who do you think it was that burned me?”

“Who do I think it was? Well, I guess it was the people who took off your wife. They were right there when Ray got in so they must have been expecting everybody. You can figure your troubles started over in Nam.”

“Yes,” Converse said. They sat watching the Atlanta pitcher warm up. “Do you know a cop named Antheil?”

“He’s not a cop,” June said. “He’s a regulatory agent. I know him.”

“He’s been harassing my father-in-law. He seems to think Marge is mixed up in a dope ring.”

“Well, you’ve all got my sympathy.” She smiled and shuddered. “Is that what he said? A dope ring?”

“So I understand.”

“That sounds like him.”

“If you were dealing dope,” Converse said, “How come you know what he sounds like?”

“Oh man,” June said sadly, “I don’t want your paranoia. I know the dude, that’s all. The guy I was with,” she said, “he had dealings with Antheil. Antheil has lots of dealings.”

“Why is he a regulatory agent instead of a cop?”

“Because he works for a regulatory agency. And that’s what he calls himself.”

“I see,” Converse said. “He knows everybody, right? He’s got a lot of sources.

He pays them. I don’t know if he stands still for their dealing but I guess he’d have to.

“I made it with Ray, O.K.? Owen was very possessive, he found out about it. After they split Owen got loaded and called Antheil. He had a theory about where they were going.” She watched a throw to first, an easy out. “I think he’s wrong. I hope he’s wrong.”

“Where did he think they were going?”

June shook her head.

“You wouldn’t find it by yourself. It’s way out in the toolies. Anyway, it’s not where they went.”

“All right,” Converse said.

They watched the game.

“Sorry to hear you got Antheil after you. He’s very weird. He’s not your ordinary nark.”

“Why not.”

“He’s a lawyer. He used to work for the civil service commission and for the internal revenue. Then some shit went down and he transferred. He knows a lot of heavy political people, Owen says.”

A lock of Converse’s hair had stuck to his bandage. He tried cautiously to disengage it.

“Do you have anything to drink?”

“I don’t drink. I can give you a hit off a joint.”

Converse declined.

“Did Owen ever mention Irvine Vibert?”

“Could be. I heard the name somewhere.”

Her pale foxy face displayed a shadow of weary amusement. “You look like you just figured out how and why.”

“I just figured out how.” June had taken a joint from her pack of cigarettes. She lit it with seeming absentmindedness. When she passed it to him, he took it and smoked.

“You never should have tried it, friend. Why did you?”

“In the absence of anything else,” Converse said.

The grass took him to Charmian. He had tried it in order to do something dangerous with her. The sex had been poorly because of his fear. When he spoke he could not make her listen; each time he had endeavored to engage her tripping Dixie fancy she had regarded him with such knowing calculation that he sometimes suspected she had the measure of his very soul. He had tried to extend, to surprise. As an act of communication.

“You mean you were broke?”

June had settled on the sofa with her legs tucked beneath her. Her head rested on the sofa back so that her torso was thrust forward and her breasts swelled under the halter. The rosy skin between the base of her breasts and her shorn armpit was firm and trim, without a wrinkle.

“No, I wasn’t broke.”

His belly warmed, his prick rose — it was beyond perversity. He sat desiring the girl — a speed-hardened straw-colored junkie stewardess, a spoiled Augustana Lutheran, compounded of airport Muzak and beauty parlor school. Her eyes were fouled with smog and propane spray.

What a feckless and disorderly person he was. How much at the mercy of events.

“It was just a kick,” he explained. He was communicating again.

And what events. What mercy.

He reached over and took another toke of the joint she was smoking.

“I can dig it. And oh boy, is that a bad way to be.”

She took the joint back gently.

“The way dealing is — scag for sure — you have to be ready to fuck people. You have to sort of like it. Some body goes down on you, does you — you walk on their face.” She set her feet back on the floor and leaned against the arm as though something had made her suddenly sad. “Owen used to say that if you haven’t fought for your life for something you want, you don’t know what life’s all about.”

“That must have been what I was after,” Converse said.

“Well, I hope you’re getting off.”

When she passed him the joint, he eased beside her and she did not move away. She was warm, firm, comfortable. He felt in need of comfort She observed his move without expression.

“You horny?”

“Just going with the flow,” he said.

“Shit, man. Don’t hurt your ear.”

She uttered a little grunt and giggled wearily.

“You see,” he communicated, “it’s like the oriental proverb. There’s a man hanging on the edge of a cliff. Above him there’s a tiger. Underneath there’s a raging river.”

June seemed to be looking at the ceiling.

“And on the side of the cliff,” she said, “there’s some honey. And the man licks it.”

“Owen do that one too?”

“Lemme tell you something,” she said. “I’ve listened to every manner of shit.”

He put his hands under her breasts and breathed into the dry coarse hair behind her ear. When he kissed her neck, she shifted to give him a wasted smile.

“You’re a funny little fucker.”

Converse was over five feet, ten and a half inches tall. He was at least three inches taller than June. No one had ever called him a funny little fucker before. The phrase rattled the shards of his vanity but it also found him out on a level he could not at first identify. He paused with his mouth against the terry cloth over her nipple, the strings of her halter between his fingers. He had been a funny little fucker in the Red Field.

He froze as he had then. He pressed against her as he had against the ground, stunned by the vividness of recall.

“We must read different manuals,” she said.

He sat up and stared at her. She laughed softly.

“Lose the flow?”

“I don’t know…” he began to say. He had wanted to take some comfort; he was tired of explanations.

“That was about as fucked up a come-on as I ever sat still for,” she told him.

“No offense.”

She shook her head amiably, tied her halter back on and looked at her watch.

“You don’t know your mind, that’s all. You don’t know what you want.”

“No,” Converse said.

As he left he thanked her for having Janey and for talking with him. She did not care to be thanked.

“If you ever see Ray — tell him it was Owen that called Antheil. Tell him it wasn’t me.”

Converse assured her that he would pass the message.

“Take care,” she told him as he stepped out into the corridor. “Take a whole lot.”

When his hand touched the elevator signal it touched off the tiniest spark of static electricity. He drew it back and clenched it.

When the elevator came, he got on.

The Red Field was in Cambodia, near a place called Krek. It had been about two o’clock in the afternoon in early May, the hottest time of year. Since dawn, Converse, a veteran wire-service man, and a young photographer had been on patrol with a Cambodian infantry company. The Khmers held hands as they advanced and sometimes picked flowers. They stopped often and when they did Converse would hunt out some shade and sit reading a paperback copy of Nicholas and Alexandra which he had bought in Long Binh PX.

The Cambodians were impossible troops, they clustered and chattered and tried each other’s helmets on. Walking in front of Converse was a little man called the Caporal who carried a Browning automatic rifle decorated with hibiscus. The white hot sun and the empty hours dulled all caution. It seemed that the very innocence of their passage could charm all menace.

When the silent jets streaked over the valley, they turned sweat-streaked faces toward the unbearable sky. They were surprised — but not alarmed. The aircraft were friendly. There was nothing else for them to be.

At the same moment in which they heard the engine roar the things began going off. MACV called them Selective Ordnance; it made them sound like assorted salad or Selected Shorts. They were Elephant Feet, the most dreaded, the most awful things in the world.

The Cambodians were still gawking skyward when bits of steel began to cut them up. Converse saw the wire-service man dive for the grass and did the same.

After the first detonations there was the sparest moment of silent astonishment. The screams were ground down by the second strike. Men rolled in the road calling on Buddha or wandered about weeping, holding themselves together as though embarrassed at their own destructibility — until the things or the concussions knocked them down.

A man was nailed Christlike to a tree beside the road, a shrine.

Converse lay clinging to earth and life, his mouth full of sweet grass. Around him the screams, the bombs, the whistling splinters swelled their sickening volume until they blot ted out sanity and light. It was then that he cried, although he had not realized it at the time.

In the course of being fragmentation-bombed by the South Vietnamese Air Force, Converse experienced several insights; he did not welcome them although they came as no surprise.

One insight was that the ordinary physical world through which one shuffled heedless and half-assed toward nonentity was capable of composing itself, at any time and without notice, into a massive instrument of agonizing death. Existence was a trap; the testy patience of things as they are might be exhausted at any moment.

Another was that in the single moment when the breathing world had hurled itself screeching and murderous at his throat, he had recognized the absolute correctness of its move. In those seconds, it seemed absurd that he had ever been allowed to go his foolish way, pursuing notions and small joys. He was ashamed of the casual arrogance with which he had presumed to scurry about creation. From the bottom of his heart, he concurred in the moral necessity of his annihilation.

He had lain there — a funny little fucker — a little stingless quiver on the earth. That was all there was of him, all there ever had been.

He walked from the Red Field into the lobby and there was no place to sit. People passed him and he avoided their eyes. His desire to live was unendurable. It was impossible, not to be borne. He was the celebrated living dog, preferred over dead lions.

Around him was the moronic lobby and outside the box-sided street where people hunted each other. Take it or leave it.

I’ll take it, he thought. To take it was to begin again from nowhere, the funny little fucker would have to soldier on.

Living dogs lived. It was all they knew.