WHEN HE WAS PARTWAY UP THE HILL, THE MOON ROSE over the mountains on his left, tracing the ridge line in hard silver light. Moonlight made the wound hurt more. He eased down on one knee and slowly rolled over a shelf of loose rock until his weight was supported by his hip and good shoulder. Tucking his knees up, he rocked slightly on the ground, trying to shake the pain off. It had seemed bearable at first and he had climbed to the place he was by marching to songs and cadences in his mind.
It was like eating morning glory seeds. Not so bad at first, you think you can take more and more of them but after a while they’re the worst thing in the world. At first you think, well, I’ve had these before but presently they get to you.
Part of himself had seemed to come off in his hand; it had taken him some time to realize that the bloody mass he held was a canvas bag, some kind of expanding cartridge that had struck him under the arm and sent him sprawling.
A man with a beard had fired it.
It hurt him very much to stand up. He closed his eyes to the moonlight and began to erect a blue triangle against the base of his skull. The background was deep black and there was some effort involved in delineating the borders of blue. At the heart of the triangle, he introduced a bright red circle and within the circle he concentrated his pain. The circle glowed and lit the triangle from within, making it lighter against the blackness.
Give me a triangle and a song, he thought, and I’ll climb this son of a bitch. For the song you wanted something simple and pleasant because you would be hearing it for hours over and over
and it could drive you out of your mind when the pain got to it.
He started up to “Red River Valley.” His breathing felt so mechanical and unrewarding that he feared his lungs were not filling, that there was a puncture somewhere — but he convinced himself that his trunk was sound, the vital organs untouched and functioning.
He was glad to be alone. The triangle held and his legs with it.
The most difficult part of the climb was the rain. It was light rain, that grew warmer and warmer, jungle rain that closed off the breeze — it took an act of concentration for him to realize that it was the clearest of moonlit nights, that the ground on which he walked was dry as dry bones, as chalk, as dry as his mouth was dry.
At the entrance to the shelter, he took a few deep breaths and brought the bag out and slung it by its straps across the rifle sling on his good shoulder.
The trees at the top of the hill were full of lights and music; they wrecked his concentration and infuriated him. The mission building was flashing on and off. He made steadily for the carved doorway; when he had climbed the steps and passed through it he was disappointed that the pain did not subside. He would have to take it in with him.
Dieter had turned off the interior lights. The only illumination in the room came from the flashes outside and the tubes of the console in front of him. When he saw Hicks, he stood up in alarm.
“How about some light,” Hicks said.
Dieter lit a desk lamp and closed the switches on his forest. Hicks sat down in the stiff Spanish chair and tossed the little bloody bag which had wounded him on the floor. He had carried it all the way up the hill, clenched in his right hand. He flung the dope at the foot of Dieter’s altar.
Dieter stared at the things and then at Hicks.
“What’s the matter with you, Dieter?”
“You’ve been shot. You’re bleeding.”
“Did you think everybody was kidding?” Hicks asked, trying to pull his matted shirt away from the wound. “You been away, man. You been living in the country too long.”
“What happened?” Dieter asked breathlessly. “Who’s out there now?”
“I got their fucking car with an M-70,” Hicks said laughing. “Did you see it?”
“No,” Dieter said. “I heard it.” He sat down slowly on a chair beside Hicks’. “Ray — did you put a rocket in a police car? Did you kill an agent down there?”
“They’re killing each other,” Hicks said. “They’re nuts, the greedy bastards. I got a car, that’s all I know. Give me some water.”
Dieter brought him a drink of creek water in a ceramic bowl.
“Where’s your girl?”
“They split.” He stood up, tried to move the arm above his wound and sat down again.
“If they got through they’ll meet me. I’ve got to get to route eight before the heat comes in.”
“Ray, that’s her husband down there. If they’re alive they won’t be looking for you.”
Dieter searched among the shadows for his glass of wine.
“We’ll go,” he said. “We’ll get out of here for a while.”
He found his glass atop the refrigerator and drained it. “Maybe for good. Maybe it’s time.”
“I’m gonna walk that wetback trail out of here. She’ll get him to pick me up.” Hicks stood with difficulty and walked to the altar where the pack was and sat down beside it.
Dieter looked at the pack, holding his empty glass.
“The first thing we’ll do is toss that bad medicine.”
Hicks wiped the sweat from his eyes.
“Here’s what you do, Dieter. You take my works and cook up and hit me here — “he tapped his limp left arm with his right hand. “Because I got pain there. Then help me strap the fucker on.”
When he had the shot he nodded off into rain. Dieter had poured something ice cold over the wound and was taping bedsheeting over it with Band-aids.
“You’re bleeding a lot, you know that?”
“You should have seen me last time.”
He put a hand on Dieter’s shoulder to move him out of the way and vomited explosively across the stone floor. “It looks awful,” Dieter said, when he had finished the bandage. “It’s huge.”
“Beautiful,” Hicks said. “Now strap it on.”
Dieter wiped his hands on the extra sheeting.
“We’re going down to the village. We’ll pick up my boy and ride out with Galindez. Can you walk?”
“I can walk fine,” Hicks said. “Give me a hand with the pack.”
“Galindez won’t carry dope. It’s against his religion.” Dieter picked up the pack and shook it. “This goes, you hear me? You came here to get rid of it and that’s what we’ll do.”
Hicks reached out and seized the pack by a strap. Dieter pried it from his fingers.
“That’s called grasping, remember? Grasping is ignorance.” He backed away, holding the backpack beyond Hicks’ reach. “There is no payoff in grasping.”
“Dieter damnit, don’t fuck around.”
“We’re at a primitive stage in our development,” Dieter said. “But we shall learn from our mistakes.”
Hicks stared at him, fighting off another nod in the rain.
“No nonsense, no vulgarization. No occultism, no lambs, no dope. Strength!” Dieter cried. “Discipline! Love! Words much debased — nevertheless I dare to speak them.”
Hicks turned around in his chair to see whom it was that Dieter was speaking them to.
“You’re drunk, Dieter. Hand it over.”
“I know how you are,” Dieter said. “I understand you better than anyone eke in the world. I love you more than anyone else in the world. I know your courage and your obstinacy.” He was red-faced and swaying. He kept shaking the bag. Hicks reached out and made a swipe at it but his fingers never came close. “This is not strength, Hicks. It goes.”
He marched down the altar. On the last step, he tripped and the pack fell from his hands and into the streaks of Hicks’ vomit.
Hicks tried to stand without success.
Dieter scurried after the pack and picked it up.
“Look at it, Hicks. It’s full of puke and blood! On the inside it’s all illusion and false necessity. It’s suffering human ignorance. It’s hell!”
“Sounds good,” Hicks said.
“The truth is,” Dieter said, “that I talk too much.” His slack mouth broke into a smile. “This was perhaps the problem all along.”
“Einsicht! he shouted. “Agenbite of inwit! I’m a runner-over at the mouth. If I had kept my mouth shut — who knows?” He extended the bag toward Hicks. “With this goes my wine and my loquacity.” His eyes filled with tears. “Oh Hicks — listen to me! We begin again. We begin. Again. First I throw it.”
“Sounds good but it’s my dope. You bring it back here.”
Dieter watched him as slowly and painfully he unslung the M-16 from around his good shoulder. He stood the weapon on its stock and caught it by the trigger housing as it tipped.
“You’re wired into grasping,” Dieter told him. “You’ve got to fight.”
“Dope got you up this mountain, Dieter, and you figure dope’s gonna get you down. Dope is what you’re all about, man. You think I don’t know the difference between what’s real and what’s not? You think you’re gonna bluff me out of my good shit and con yourself another mountain with it?”
“It appears to be evil,” Dieter assured some interested presence, “but it is in fact mere ignorance. The first is actually nonexistent and the second is mistaken for it.”
He started for the door. He was afraid and Hicks found his fear enraging. “Where do you think you’re going, Dieter? I’ll kill you, man I”
Dieter turned, his mouth quivering with fear and disgust.
“I’ll kill you, man!” he shouted mockingly back at Hicks. That’s the slogan of this stupid age! The land of dope and murder! You accuse me of coveting this filth?”
“You’re the greatest show on earth,” Hicks said. “But you’re not conning me out of that pack.”
Dieter’s legs trembled.
Hicks lowered his good shoulder to cradle the stock under his arm and started down the steps. “Bring it here, Dieter.”
“It goes,” Dieter said. “You’re stoned, you’re delirious.”
He backed further away, toward the door. “Dope is not what I’m all about,” he said. “What I’m all about is much stronger than this.” He drew himself up and closed his eyes for a moment, trying for instant serenity. “This is one I have to win.”
He turned and walked carefully out the front door and down the steps.
Hicks sauntered after him.
The space outside the mission building was bathed in light from the spotlights on the tower. Dieter was striding purposefully across the plaza toward the cliff. Darkness commenced about thirty feet ahead of him, and the paths down began in that darkness. Hicks smiled at Dieter’s cleverness.
“Hey, Dieter. You’re not gonna make it, man.” He released the safety and brought the clip up into Fire position.
Well, they just kept coming, he thought, one of them after another. Pieces and bayonets, lies and cunning and deviousness but none of them were worth a shit. None of them could take him off.
“You’re not gonna make it, Dieter.”
Dieter stopped and turned toward him.
Hicks sighed and sat down on the top step.
“Please,” Dieter said. His own spotlights dazzled his eyes. He raised a hand to shield them. Hicks laughed. “No, Dieter. No, Dieter. You just bring that on back
here, man.” Dieter performed a fat man’s shuffle and began running for darkness. Hicks spread his legs out behind him on the top step and crouched over his weapon. He brought the barrel up.
All right—
Dieter made for the darkness, for a moment he was out of sight. A moment later his running figure was visible against trees, totally available against the moonlit sky.
You dumb—
A little man running against the trees, Hicks thought, I’ve hit that one before. And Dieter wasn’t so little, he was paunchy and slow.
Son of a bitch.
Look at his dumb ass up against that pretty sky.
All right you dumb son of a bitch.
An automatic round — it sprayed him with shells and splintered the fence he was trying to climb. Hicks walked down the steps through the smoke and over the still clattering cartridges. He went across the plaza toward the cliff. In Nam, he would have fired another two clips into the darkness as he came.
Dieter was lying on his belly under the remnants of his fence. His wrist jerked. Hicks walked up and kicked him. The pack was not beneath his body.
After a while, Hicks found it, quite near the cliff edge.
So he threw it, Hicks thought. He was running for the edge and he threw it. “For Christ’s sake,” Hicks said.
Dieter had not been taking him off. Of course not. Not Dieter.
It was a gesture. A gesture — he was going to throw it over because there was no fire for him to throw it in.
Throw it over was what he had said. A gesture.
“What the hell, Dieter,” Hicks said. “I thought you were taking me off.”
It was one he had to win. He was trying to get it on again. He was being stronger.
Damn it, if you’re going to make a gesture you have to have some grace, some style, some force. You have to have some Zen. If you act like a drunken thief, and people haven’t seen you in a while, they’re likely to think that’s what you are.
He had certainly fucked his gesture.
“Semper fi,” Hicks said. The pain came up again, he sat on a standing part of the fence in the rain.
Lousy stupid thing. like the Battle of Bob Hope. like everything else.
During the long and painful time it took to get the pack on his back, he put it out of his mind.
Walk.
The first part of the walk was through happy forest; Dieter’s knickknacks flickered in the moonlight and the earth was soft and mossy under his feet. He fell several times, experiencing with gratitude the tenderness of the ground and its reluctance to injure. Disneyland. Each time he had to stand up again, he felt the throb and although it was diffused, its fangs drawn by the drug, he was sorry that it had happened.
Another sort of light was creeping up on him; it seemed at first to come from the trees. Morning. In spite of what it meant, he was innocently glad to see it
His satisfaction in the coming light made him feel like an ordinary man with a child at his core, out walking one morning for pleasure. He was tempted by anger and self-pity.
The light was not good news and the sentiments were the stuff that killed, the warrior’s enemy.
Hungry bluejays chattered. He touched his side and felt blood flowing. When the pie was opened, his child’s voice prattled, the birds began to sing. He wondered if in their hunger and ferocity the screeching jays might not be tempted by the blood and the mauled flesh. There were things that lived in wounds.
At the edge of the trees was a cattle gate strung with wire. He unhooked the wire loop and stepped carefully over a rusted grid and into a high meadow where the tall dew-covered grass soaked his trouser legs. The sun was rising over purple hills behind him; the track ahead led down ward into a canyon that was crowned with tortured rock spires like the towers of the pagodas along the Cambodian Mekong.
He walked down on his heels, arching his back to support the weight of the pack, gripping the stock of his slung M-70 to keep it from knocking against his thigh.
The Fool.
Down had a rhythm of its own, bad for discipline because the lowered foot on striking sloping ground caused the body to lurch and lose cadence, broke up concentration. The temptation was to coast, let the feet find their own quick way down — an ankle buster. To hold back and descend deliberately was work. He detached, thought of the water that would be at the bottom, watched for rattlesnakes, and imagined the wild pigs whose tusks had tested the trail for buried oak balls. By the time the rising sun touched the tops of the pagoda spires over the canyon, he was into shade. The canyon bottom was cool, but windless and rank smelling. It filled him with suspicion and he walked tensely, ready to crouch and unsling his weapon.
The canyon opening was a hole in the wall, so narrow that he had to turn sideways to advance through it. When he was out, he saw the flat before him. The near edge of it was still in shade; across its yellow stony surface, balls of tumbleweed ran before a wind he could not feel in his protected place. At the end of it were round brown mountains; they were an insupportable distance away, but he would not have to walk that far to reach the road. Miles out, the dun color of the ground gave way to something unearthly, a glowing twinkling substance without color that grew brighter as the sun strengthened and sent off waves of heat that made the mountains shimmer. A line of rusted tracks, supported by mummified crossties, shot dead straight across the barren.
Between the desert and himself were shaded grass and a small stream that ran down from red boulders to nourish three cottonwoods and a lone stunted oak. He followed the stream and rested among the trees, ran the cold water over his face and filled his canteen. In trying to drink from it, he did a foolish thing. As he lowered his face to the water, the backpack slid forward over his neck and the strap tightened on his torn underarm; the pain made him straighten up and increased the pressure. He let himself slip into the water and got the pack so that he had it hanging from one strap balanced on his right shoulder. The water hurt at first, but in a few moments it felt very good indeed. When he climbed out, he noticed for the first time how swollen his left arm was and that he could not move it, not at all. Spot of bother.
He threw away the captured pistols and most of his M-16 clips. In spite of its weight, he could not bring himself to leave the rifle. Conditioning, something — he could not imagine such a walk without it. He kept two clips, one in the weapon, an extra in the pack.
The edge of shade had narrowed when he started out. The farther he went from the canyon wall, the more the wind rose and it was against him. That shaded part was a stroll. The moment he stepped out under the sun, the wound began to bother him.
A triangle and a song. First to keep the brilliant sunlight from the base of his skull, then to assemble the figure — black background, blue triangle, red circle. The pain in the circle looked like it might catch fire in the heat. It wasn’t easy to get it all in there, it took a while. The song wasn’t easy either because there were so many things to think about
Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate bodhi swaha. That was cool all right, that was lovely but you might disappear into it, pass out and bake.
Form is not different from nothingness. Nothingness is not different from form. They are the same.
Try a little nothingness.
Nothingness was cool too but you couldn’t count cadence to it. It helped with the triangle but it certainly didn’t make you feel like walking. Well, he thought, the old songs are the good songs, they used to say.
He sang as he walked beside the tracks. He had tried walking over the ties and of course that was murder. Walking beside them was the only way.
“I don’t know,” he sang.
“But I been told
Eskimo pussy
Is Mighty Cold
Your left”
P.I. without sandfleas and hotter. P.I. reminded him of salt. He took the shaker bag from his pocket and had a lick. Your left The pain was contained, he was covering ground.
Can pussy be cold? Yes. No. Philosophical discussion at the Little Tun, Yokasuka, F.P.O. San Francisco.
Converse, can pussy be cold? How would he know?
Eskimo pussy might be funky from wintering fur pants but it wouldn’t be cold in any weather. An eskimo granny — put her out on the ice to starve, by and by her pussy will be cold.
That’s not what the song’s about. The song’s about walking— picking them up and putting them down, that’s what the song’s about.
Etsuko was a clean girl. And smart. Full of surprises, always something happening with her. Very straight head, many laughs.
Look at me Etsukee, I’m out here with my weapon in this terrible place, how you like them apples?
I don’t worry ‘cause it makes no difference now.
No Hank Williams songs, please, it bothers the triangle.
It seemed to him that he could still hear the birds in Dieter’s forest. He resisted the impulse to run and gauge the distance he had covered. It wasn’t possible. It was too far, there were no birds where he was, there was no place for them to lit, nothing for them out there. We hope.
More blood, and we don’t really know how bad it is. Nothing to do but walk however. There was one really subversive thought, one sorry piece of negative thinking: You’ll never do it twice. Walking away from the Battle of Bob Hope was one thing and this was something else. This was twice.
Negativity.
He took a deep breath and gathered up the pain. It was hard to gather. Stack it like hay? Draw it up with a siphon? Put it in something.
Where’s that triangle?
But maybe it’s a mistake to separate it like that. Maybe it’s ignorant to keep it off by itself where it just gets angrier and angrier, festers in there waiting to creep out and cripple you. If you set it in there locked up like that you might be keeping it going.
Experiment. Get with it, and for all you know it’ll disappear. It’s part of you — you’ve always got something sore on you, burned lips, hangnails, blisters, toothaches. It’s just you, there’s always some pain around.
Merge, it’s you, you’re it. The triangle dissolved and he embraced the pain.
No, he decided immediately. Indeed not!
The experiment had gone so badly he had to stop walking. It was unmanageable.
He stood staring down at the tracks. The hot metal glowed right through its coat of dust and oxidation, blinding him.
Get back in there, you fucker, you ain’t no friend of mine. Those All Is One numbers were very difficult to employ in practice. I’ll try it again, he thought, when I’m a hundred and ten years old and the birds bring me flowers.
It broke down between what hurt and what didn’t and the difference seemed very important. That was as it should be. If you couldn’t tell the difference between what hurt and what didn’t, you had no business being alive. You can’t have any good times if you can’t tell. If you don’t know the difference between busting your toe and a glass of beer, where are you? That was Converse’s trouble.
List of things that don’t hurt: Birds. Mountains. Water.
It really is all one though, he thought. Contrary to sense as it might seem.
He took a drink of water to balance the pain and it became apparent to him that what hurt and what didn’t could come together in a hurry and that throwing up was a fine example. He leaned forward clutching the rifle butt and retched over the tracks.
Fine mixture of sensations but you lose all your water that way.
Expedite. The triangle will assemble to the rear and to the left of the right ear under the direction of the duty NCO…
Dress it up. Bracing the back in the specified position, bring up the weight with a smart twist. He opened his mouth in surprise at the sudden wrenching. Pain within pain. Do not twist too hard. Do not twist suddenly. Proceed resolutely in a military manner.
It turned out there were birds, but he could never have heard them. Hawks, three of them, way up there, gliding on the wind. There was a jet trail over them.
“Some of you birds think I’m down here to play fiddle fuck around,” Hicks told them. “Let me be the first to inform you that I’m not. Any bird who makes that mistake will encounter the meanest crudest son of a bitch they could conceive of. If I catch a bird grab-assing, that bird can give his soul to Jesus because his ass belongs to me.
Belay that. Give Jesus the ass, I’ll take the soul.
I’ll trade these one-after-another railroad tracks for the soul and fly out of here.
What I need railroad tracks for I got no railroad.
Whatcha doin down there on those tracks, little speck?
Playing I’m a train, sir.
Water. Hold it down because it’s so nice. It’s the real thing.
Without the weapon, without the pack, things would be so much easier. He recalled that the pack was what he wanted so he would have to carry it. Serious people existed in order to want things, and to carry them.
As for the weapon, he thought, I didn’t abandon the creature at the Battle of Bob Hope, I won’t give them the satisfaction now.
The Battle of Bob Hope was in the rain. Like Austerlitz.
Slipping and sliding around the Rockpile, the warm rain that never dried out. AKA-47s, the Big Sound of Charles. The fuck it isn’t, that’s them! There they are and there they are and now I fall on my ass. Yes they are, they’re all over the place. Don’t follow them, they’re being wasted down there.
NVAs I think it is, pith helmets.
He fired the rockets where they figured he’d come out — ka-thop ka-thop. Whee it’s football, fake with rockets and then, clever, I’m off like a fucker through the bad smelling green and oh boy they’re gonna get me but they don’t and then, oh my goodness, they do.
Blind through the asparagus to the land where the friendlies are. Hello, friendlies, you no shoot. Me U S Maline. LBJ number one!
Worse time I ever had, worse than now.
He turned round and looked behind him; there was a heartening distance between himself and the canyon. But the land around him was not heartening at all. It was dirty white, lifeless.
He crouched down, put his finger on the earth and tasted it. Salt. How about that!
As he prepared to rise, he noticed that his left arm was hanging limp and his left hand was touching the salty ground, bent at the wrist and without sensation.
Well, something hurts, he thought.
As he looked out over the salt, it began to glow. For a moment he was filled with terror.
Oh mama. What kind of place is this?
He took a deep breath.
Never mind your mama, never mind the questions. This is home, we walk here. It’s built for speed not for comfort.
If you don’t like it here, then walk away. Nobody gonna do it for you.
He stopped by the tracks and tried to throw up again but there was nothing to throw. When he finished retching he had trouble drawing breath.
What is this, rain, for Christ’s sake? The trouble with the rain, hot as it was, was that it made you cold eventually. It made everything slippery and rotted your feet.
I got no dry socks, he thought. Stowed my handgun, my M&M’s and forgot my dry socks. Or somebody swiped them. One of you bastards misappropriated my socks, I’ll burn your ass.
Absolutely no rain. He took the thermos and poured a bit of water over his face.
It’s so dry, he thought, it feels like rain.
When he found the triangle again, the stuff in it was congealed and festering. He might construct a new triangle. Or else secure the old one and wash it out. Turn to on that triangle. Hot weather you have to hose it down. Negative, doc says to leave it alone if it’s not actually hurt ing him.
It’s not actually hurting, it’s more of an attitude.
He had to laugh at that.
He had scraped the knuckles of his right hand and for a while the pain concentrated there. He let go the lower part of the rifle and shook it.
A while before, his knuckles had been rapped with the edge of a deck of cards. The Adjutant had taken his cards and slapped his knuckles with them. The Salvation Army didn’t go for cards and he was teaching the other kids in the Booth Shelter to play Go Fish. That was the Booth Women’s Shelter in Chicago, North Side, Wisconsin Avenue.
Satan’s Game
His mother was washing pots in the kitchen. She said they put saltpeter in the food.
The salt burned his eyes and the sky was even brighter.
Nowhere to look.
There was a child around somewhere, the same child he’d almost met that morning in the forest, the one who’d had his knuckles rapped. He knew immediately that the child would be the most dangerous thing he had to face, the hardest thing to get by.
A turned-around kid who made up stories — wise guy, card player. They all made up stories in the Booth Shelter, they all told lies about themselves. The boys and the girls both.
The kid walked beside him, making him feel bad, making him feel like a kid himself.
“Whaddaya doin’?”
“Walking across this here.”
“My father’s got a rifle like that.”
“You got no father and if you had he wouldn’t have no rifle like that.”
“He bought me a twenty-two and showed me how to shoot it. The first time I did, the concussion almost knocked me over.”
“There’s no concussion to a twenty-two. You like guns?”
“I love ‘em. I love the way they look. I’m from out west. From Texas. I’m part Comanche.”
“You’re from Bloomington, Indiana, and then Milwaukee and then Omaha and then Chicago. You never saw an Indian but on a nickel. You can’t shit me. How come you tell lies like that?”
“Nobody calls me a liar.”
“Yes, they do. All the time they do. You wait till you grow up, you’ll have all the guns you want, all the dope and all the women.”
“I could go for that, I guess. I’m gonna join the Marines.”
“You better believe it. That’s the Training School tradition, you join the fucking Marines whether you want to or not. The social worker’ll shame you into it. When you get down to Paris Island you’ll recognize the other kids from the Training School because they steal.”
“I’m a good stealer.”
“No, no,” Hicks said, “you cut that out, that’s for punks. You’ll wash the punk off you when you’re out in the fleet. Just keep your mouth shut and watch how people do. Watch how the Japs do, they’re the coolest people in the world.”
Just as he had feared, he began to feel cold. His side began to hurt as though for the first time.
“I know you,” Hicks said. “I wish I didn’t but I do. You better do something about the way you cringe and whine. I don’t want to see you do it. That’s why I don’t want you around here now.”
He stared down at the tracks as he walked, the crossties one after another kept him going.
“For one thing it makes you weaker. For another nobody gives a shit. Who are you whining to? People? They don’t care.
“Look where we are kid, we’re walking on salt, nobody gets us out of here but me. The people are over on the other side of those goofy and we don’t need a single one of the son of a bitches.”
He stopped and watched the mountains vibrate.
“You know what’s out there? Every goddamn race of shit jerking each other off. Mom and Dad and Buddy and Sis, two hundred million rat-hearted cocksuckers in enormous cars. Rabbits and fish. They’re mean and stupid and greedy, they’ll fuck you for laughs, they want you dead. If you’re no better than them you might as well take gas. If you can’t get your own off them then don’t stand there and let them spit on you, don’t give them the satisfaction.”
Careless of the pain, he unslung the rifle and propped the stock against his hip. “Knuckle me, you fucking pig, I’ll kill you. Go up on a bridge and let them have it, watch the motherfuckers die.”
“I’ll kill you,” Hicks screamed.
“Ray,” the old lady said, “don’t get so mad. You’ll just throw up on the tracks again.”
“It wasn’t me that did, Ma Ma. It was another kid I seen him.”
Oh man, don’t cringe. It’s a terrible thing to cringe.
At the Training School, he was still pissing his pants at thirteen. He’d carry the underwear around with him, hid den, afraid to put it in the laundry bag because it was labeled. Hid it under the bed and then did the same with the next pair. Oh my God, two pairs of them all pissed on, they’ll beat shit out of me.
Terrible thing.
Like the nigger who shined shoes in the basement of the enormous roadhouse they had near the Jacksonville stock-car track. Old man who went back to oughty ought. Whenever a drunk staggered down the stairs, he’d grin. Grin for all he was worth. The meaner the old boy who came in down to piss, the wider that grin got, big horse teeth straining under the lip meat.
Smiling through. Shit, maybe he was amused.
What’s funny, boy?
No — there’s no forgiveness for that, nobody can forgive anybody for making them that scared. No man forgives another man for scaring him like that.
There was a bullet-head priest in the German Catholic church on the Northside and one day he and his mother went there to beg. The squarehead slammed a fifty-cent piece down on a table so they went to North Avenue and had sundaes and saw The Crusades. Taking Jerusalem. Thanks for the flick, you Kraut bastard, I wish I had your fat ass out here now.
God, Hicks thought, it just makes it hurt.
Dieter. Got him back on the mountain. Friendly fire. You couldn’t hear him, you could only watch the way he was acting. He was asking for it. Cringing.
All those people. Marge.
Remember what this is for. Remember what it is you want or it won’t make any difference. Sometimes it’s work remembering. Indifference to the ends of action — that’s Zen. That’s for old men.
It’s worse. It’s getting away.
Triangle.
It’s distorted in the heat, it can’t hold its shape.
Get up there you devil.
Gate gate paragate parasam gate bodhi swaha.
Again.
Gate gate paragate parasam gate bodhi swaha.
No not that one. You’ll go out on that one.
Absolutely nothing out here, he thought, but me and the mountains and the salt. Nothing to manipulate, nothing to work with but the tracks. What a waste of awareness and coordination.
He worked on the triangle, honing its edges, cleansing it of salt, blotting out the image of the tracks. It was hard, but for a while the pain was contained. When it stopped him again, he took a drink of water and looked at his arm.
His arm was enormous, so swollen within his sleeve that he could not take hold of the doth between his fingers.
It occurred to him that he might try making the triangle larger.
It worked. With what seemed to him extraordinary ease, the triangle’s dimensions expanded, the red circle within it swelled and vibrated to the beating of his heart. He could make it as large as he chose, there was no limit.
The containment of pain, he realized suddenly, was the most marvelous and subtle of the martial arts, a spiritual discipline of the highest refinement. As his own pain eased, he came to understand that now he might carry within his mind and soul immense amounts of it. A master of the discipline, such as he was now becoming, might carry infinite amounts of pain. Far more than his own.
A lesser man, he thought, might consider making money out of this. He grew excited and his excitement almost caused him to fall and upset the infinite triangle.
He could do it for other people, for those not acquainted with the martial arts. If there was a way for all the people on the far side of the goofy mountains to let him have their pain, he could take it up and bear it across the salt.
Happy as he was, he began to cry because Dieter had not lived to hear of it.
All that cringing, all those crying women, whining kids — I don’t want to see that, I don’t like it. Give it here.
I don’t want to see all you people so scared, it drives me nuts, it makes me mad. I’ll take it.
That kid — some joker shot him off his water buffalo — I’ll take care of that for you, junior.
Napalm burns, no problem — just put it on here.
Straighten up, pops. That’s O.K., brother. Well I can’t explain it to you but it’s easy for me.
“All you people,” Hicks shouted, “Let it go! Let it go, you hear! I’m out here now. I got it.”
They must know I’m out here now, he thought, they must be feeling it.
“Everybody! Everywhere! Close your eyes and let it go. You can’t take it — you don’t have to take it anymore. I’ll do it all.
“You see me walking? You see me stepping out here? No — it doesn’t bother me a bit.”
No I don’t require any assistance, beautiful, I do it all myself. That’s what I’m here for.
Got it. Got it all now.
So there was always a reason, he thought. There had always been a reason. You never know until the moment comes and there it is. He walked along and the triangle dissolved. There was no need for it.
In the course of things Marge would be there; he was pleased that he had not forgotten her. He wanted Con verse too, Converse had always sold him short, always put him down a little. But he would understand it.
He loved them both — they would understand it and as lonely a business as it had to be, you wanted people sometimes, people who would understand it.
I don’t know how it works, he told them, I do it because I can do it — it’s as simple as that.
What are you carrying? someone asked.
“Pain, man. Everybody’s. Yours too, if you only knew it.” What’s the weapon for? What’s in the bag? The bag. “It’s mine,” Hicks said. “I carry that too.” It’s not necessary now. It’s not necessary but it’s mine. All right then. Maybe it’s not so simple. He reached behind his right shoulder and felt for the strap.
Can’t get it off. Doesn’t matter. Let’s just say I carry what I carry and leave it at that.
It’s not so simple because there are as many illusions as there are grains of sand in the goofy mountains and every one of them is lovable. The mind is a monkey.
The bastards, he thought, now they’ll take it back.
Let them take it back then. Let them have all the illusion back. Strip it down, we’ll have it whole. The answer is the thing itself.
So much for the pain carrier.
So much for the lover, the samurai, the Zen walker. The Nietzschean. Take it all back. Look, he told them, I can love those birds up there as much as anything in life. I don’t need your charity.
After a while, he could no longer see the birds and he began to be frightened again. I am not my five senses, he thought. I am not this thought. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow…
Belay that. In the end, there was only the tracks. That’s enough, he said, to himself, I can dig tracks.
Out of spite, out of pride, he counted the crossties aloud. He counted hundreds and hundreds of them. When he had to stop, he leaned his head on his rifle and held to the blazing rail with his strong right hand.