Dog Soldiers

_

SOMEONE HAD DRAWN A DEVIL ON THE WALL ABOVE Janey’s crib. It had horns and bat wings and a huge erect phallus; there was enough characterization in the details of the face to make it distinctly frightening.

Converse sat in Janey’s bedroom with his back to the thing. He had found the refrigerator working, but the meat in it had blackened and the milk soured. There had also been a bottle of cassis inside and Converse drank some with the idea that it might keep him awake while he decided what to do. He was nearly too tired to sit upright.

When she had not turned up at the airport and no one had answered the phone, he had taken a taxi from Oakland which had cost him over twenty-five dollars.

Through the back-door windows he could watch evening drawing over the hills. From time to time he would turn on the drawing, acting out the thought that it might disappear, a hallucination of his fatigue. But it did not disappear and before long he could not stop looking at it. Sometimes he thought he recognized people he had seen somewhere, and he searched the features for some sort of clue.

Things were funnier over here.

After sitting for an hour, Converse decided to have a word with Mr. Roche, his landlord. Mr. Roche was a tiny man who lived in a bungalow behind the apartment building. As Converse walked across Mr. Roche’s lawn, the unfamiliar wind, cold and sour, chilled him and added to his fear.

It took Converse several minutes to draw Mr. Roche from cover. Although Mr. Roche owned the building in which Converse lived, it pleased him to pretend to be the manager. In that capacity he could refer to himself reverentially as “The Boss.” Mr. Roche stood slightly over five feet and had fine womanly Irish features. His face, like his apartment house, was his late mother’s. Converse ad dressed him across two lengths of chain lock.

“Hi,” Converse said, as though attempting to elicit a welcome of some sort. Mr. Roche seemed to dislike Converse and his family, so intensely that Converse often wondered why he had rented to them in the first place.

Mr. Roche smiled a great deal; his life was not easy.

“I’m just back from overseas,” Converse explained. “My wife’s out now and I wondered if she left any messages for me.”

“No,” Mr. Roche said. His smile broadened and his eyes twinkled with whimsy.

Mr. Roche was a member of the parish Holy Name Society and of the American Party. He had once owned a dog named MacDuff. One evening while Mr. Roche was walking MacDuff on Ponderosa Street, a column of Gypsy Jokers had rounded the corner and the point rider’s ma chine had struck MacDuff and crushed his spine. The rider was overthrown. When Mr. Roche, in his bereavement, had remonstrated with the group, the thrown Gypsy Joker had seized him and battered his small head against the curb until he was unconscious. It had been expensive, even with Blue Cross and Medi-Cal. The incident had made Mr. Roche, who was not adventurous, even more wary. When a representative of the American Party called on Mr. Roche to solicit contributions and discuss American ism, Mr. Roche denied his membership and even pretended to be someone else altogether.

“Well,” Converse asked, “do you know when she went out?”

“Days ago,” Mr. Roche said. “Days ago.” He shook his head in what appeared to be good-natured disapproval. “I understand there was some kind of trouble,” he added softly.

“What kind of trouble? Where did you hear about trouble?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Mr. Roche said. “I think it was one of the fellas that drives the trucks.”

“Trucks?” Converse asked. He yawned convulsively.

“She didn’t pay any rent for next month. The boss’ll want you out.”

“Look, I’ll write you a check tomorrow. Don’t worry about rent.”

“He’ll want you out. There’s been people coming in.”

Mr. Roche closed the door.

From the apartment, Converse telephoned the Odeon. A girl there told him that Marge had not turned up for a week or so. He drank another glass of cassis, looked at the devil picture for a while, and picked up the telephone to call Elmer.

But in the course of dialing he became uneasy about the security of his telephone. He replaced the receiver and decided to use the pay phone in the liquor store on the corner.

He went quickly along the block. It was nearly dark; the empty sidewalks and the ranks of huge headlighted American cars at the intersection frightened him. Passing under the dead eyes of the liquor store clerks, he dialed Elmer’s special number at a phone beside the beer cooler. Elmer believed, with some reason, that Pacific Publications’ phones were tapped and he had personally installed a separate phone in one of the Nightbeat closets for the purpose of receiving private calls.

“Jesus Christ,” Elmer said. “Where are you calling from?”

“A pay phone in Berkeley. Look — something weird is happening.”

Elmer cut him off. “I know about it. Come and see me.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now. Do you know who’s following you?”

“Nobody,” Converse said, realizing at the same moment that he must be wrong.

“That’s impossible. Find out who it is and lose them on your way here. Do it right.” Converse’s weary brain resisted instruction. He leaned his forehead on the cold metal surface of the freezer.

“I guess I’m in trouble.”

“So it would seem,” Elmer said.

As he walked out of the store a peculiar image thrust itself on his recall. The image was of steam rising from the shower room of the Yokasuka brig. For a moment, he experienced the image with intense clarity — the steam, the sound of the water needling the gray cement, the prisoners’ voices. Converse had once stood by outside the showers while the CMPs, the prisoners, beat up a white rat. They had done it on Converse’s watch because they knew he would not interfere. The recollection induced in Converse a sense of utter despair which he found soothing.

For a short time he stood in front of the store, studying the street with as much indifference as he could affect. The corner was empty and, as far as he could tell, so were the parked cars along the curb. He went back into the liquor store and called Yellow Cab.

It was fifteen minutes before the cab arrived. Converse purchased a pint of Gold Leaf Cognac to cultivate the management. When the cab pulled up, he slipped into the back seat and told the long-haired driver to take him to Macy’s. As soon as they were out in traffic, Converse noticed that the headlights of a car parked across the street from the store went on. It was an ordinary-looking tan-colored car and Converse, who knew little about cars, could not tell what make it was without closer examination. It stayed several lengths behind them, all the way across the bridge and into downtown San Francisco. Converse drank his cognac without economy. He could hardly bring it into Macy’s.

At the Grant Avenue doors, he eased the bottle onto the taxi floor, thrust a ten into the driver’s hand, and hurried into Macy’s without looking behind him. He hurried across the crowded street level with such haste and obvious alarm that shoppers turned to look after him. Macy’s was number ten. It smelled of perfume and breath and there were horrible little bells.

Ascending on the escalator, Converse watched the door he had come in. To his horror, a dark-bearded man came quickly in from Grant and looked, rather angrily, among the crowd. Converse had almost cleared the second floor landing before the man looked upward toward him. He looked away from the man before their eyes met. The second floor was as crowded as the one below. Converse dashed round the posts to rise another story. The third floor was as high as he dared go; above it would be un populated wastes of furniture and carpeting in which he might be brought to bay. Stepping from the escalator he loped across the record department to find the other set of escalators. In the record department they were playing the “Age of Aquarius.”

On the other escalator, he decided to ride all the way down. He was back on the street-level floor in seconds, making for the O’Farrell Street exit in prodigies of self-control. There would be another one outside, he realized, circling in the tan car.

The car was not in sight as Converse dodged through the Powell Street traffic. Rounding the corner of O’Farrell, he permitted himself a near run and he kept going until he reached a side door of the Mason Hotel. He crossed the lobby and walked upstairs to the mezzanine where he found a bar with a view of the doors. The bar was furnished in bamboo and its walls and hangings were designed to suggest the Orient. Converse ordered a Scotch and water, leaning forward in order to keep the length of the lobby in his scan. Sporting in the regency plush below were men with name cards, on their lapels and a large number of blond children with crew cuts and bow ties. There were no bearded men.

He drank deeply of his weak drink; fatigue was under cutting the alcohol in his blood and he felt no closer to intoxication than tachycardia.

His choice of Macy’s as a place in which to flee had not been an instant improvisation; he had been pursued through Macy’s before and had escaped there. It had been Christmas time — the store had been more crowded and seasonably decorated. His pursuer at the time was a middle-aged man with a harelip whom Converse had rashly interrupted in the act of stroking ladies’ privates on the Geary Street bus. The man had slunk off to the rear without a word, but he had followed Converse from the bus at Union Square. Cursing his own fatuous interference, Con verse had dodged through the noontime crowds, but the hare-lipped man had been dogged and agile. At each intersection, Converse had cringed in anticipation of the bullet, the blade, the hatchet. At last he had darted into Macy’s and escaped along a route very like the one just employed.

How peculiar and stupid everything was, he thought. In the short length of time during which he could force himself to reflect on the matter, he felt certain that it was preferable to be chased through Macy’s as a scourge to the poor and a poisoner of children than as a hapless, cowardly concerned citizen. It was more chic, probably even in God’s eyes. He ordered another drink.

If he had been just a bit less timid in Vietnam, he thought, he might be honorably dead—like those heroes who went everywhere on motorbikes and died of their own young energy and joie de vivre. Now it would be necessary to face death here— where things were funnier — and death would be as peculiar and stupid as everything else.

He paid for the drinks and went down to the Mason lobby. Returning to the side door, he stood just inside it for a while and then stepped out to the sidewalk. No beard, no tan car.

When he had crossed Mission, he turned in his tracks and looked around him, but he could see no trace of pursuit. He went all the way to Howard and followed it to Seventh and by the time he turned back toward Mission again, he was as concerned with the likelihood of being mugged as with whoever was following him. He was reasonably satisfied that he had, for the moment, broken free.

Elmer’s office was above two stories of shirt factory on the corner of Seventh and Mission. Converse had a key to the elevator.

There was a bell beside the door that led to the offices from the darkened foul hallway. When he rang it, Frances called to him from inside.

“Yeah?”

“Converse.”

“He heard the sliding of a police lock and Frances stood before him in the office’s fluorescent light, squinting with concern.

“Johnny! Jesus Christ, chum.” She had grown a bit soft under the eyes but her poitrine endured, firm as ever.

Pacific Publications was as he had left it. Over Mike Woo’s desk was a photograph of Mao Tse Tung, a written inscription across the buttoned pocket of the Chairman’s tunic:

Converse had written it on the picture the day before he left for Vietnam.

R. Douglas Dalton, the colorless odorless alcoholic, sat late at his desk, typing the week’s last story. He was pale and natty as ever. When he saw Converse he stood up slowly.

“Great Scott,” he said, “young John fresh from the steaming war-torn.” His lips parted over a Draculan smile. “Hip hip,” he cried softly, “hurrah. Hip hip…”

“Douglas,” Frances said, “…please.” She watched Converse with hyperthyroid curiosity. “Your father-in-law would like very much to see you.”

“Same here,” Converse said.

Elmer Bender worked in a large gray room. Its only furnishings, besides the desk, were a leatherette armchair, an old-fashioned coatrack and an electric percolator. Across the surface of the desk were spread pictures of dead people which would be used to illustrate the stories in Nightbeat. Dead people could be portrayed as anything — killer hermits, spanking judges, teen-aged nymphomaniacs — they had no recourse to law. Only in Utah could lawsuits be filed on behalf of the deceased, so it was vital that the dead people come from everywhere else.

Elmer sat primly behind the rows of photographs, his hands folded beside a dummy of the current front page. The headline was a ten-inch blue banner — MAD DENTIST YANKS GIRL’S TONGUE.

“Sit down, dear boy,” Elmer said. “Are you confused?”

Converse collapsed into the armchair.

“Yes, I am,” he said. “There’s weird shit all over our walls.”

“I don’t know about your walls. Marge is hiding somewhere. Janey is in Canada.”

“In Canada? What the fuck is she doing in Canada?”

“She’s with Phyllis and Jay. We got her out of California and off with them.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because her parents are criminals. What the hell are you dealing in heroin for? Have you lost your mind?”

Converse closed his eyes. He saw the steaming shower room again.

“I’ll take it,” he said, “that we’ve been caught.”

Elmer nodded briskly. “Who was following me?”

“I’m not sure. Did you lose them?”

“Yes. In Macy’s.”

“What I don’t understand is why they don’t just arrest you.”

“Then they’re after me. Right now.”

“After you? Dear boy — they got you. Do you know where Marge is?”

Converse shook his head. “Maybe with the guy who brought it over.”

“Maybe dead,” Elmer stood up. “This time I’m resigned. She’s my baby but I can’t help her anymore. She’s a big girl — I’m an old man.” He stared at Converse, the ceiling lights glinting in his wire-framed glasses. “Who do you think you are? Some big hustler? Was it her idea?”

“Both of ours.”

“I can understand Margie, she’s disturbed. In you I’m disappointed.”

“It was a crazy idea,” Converse said. “You hear stories over there. They say everybody does it. Being there fucks up your perspective.”

“So we’re led to believe,” Elmer said. “Who are you in with?”

“These people. They’re supposed to be friends of Irvine Vibert.”

Elmer had a way of appearing to smile when people said things he found disagreeable.

“Irvine Vibert! The wheeler-dealer? Is it true?”

“I think so.”

“Did you think you were a second Irvine Vibert, you schmuck? Do I have to explain to you the situation you’re both in?”

He took a card from the comer of his desk blotter and handed it to Converse. “Benjamin Whiteson, Attorney at Law.” it said on the card, with an address on Ellis Street.

“See him. He’s a friend.”

Converse put the card in his pocket and leaned his head on the back of the chair.

“I’m cracking up,” he told Elmer. “I’m hallucinating. I just got off a plane.”

Elmer pursed his lips and glanced upward.

“It’s incredible,” Converse insisted. “I can’t believe I did it.”

Elmer waved his hand as though he were dispersing an unpleasant odor.

“A sense of unreality is not a legal defense.”

“I suppose not,” Converse said.

“There was a man around here called Antheil, a Fed who talks like a lawyer. He asked me if I knew my daughter was mixed up in a narcotics ring. I said I couldn’t believe such a thing — naturally as soon as he said it I knew it must be true. You know about my difficulties with the Feds?”

“Pretty much,” Converse said. Elmer had had political difficulties.

“Well, this Antheil knew all about that. He accused me of hiding her, he threatened me in various ways. Finally I think I convinced him I didn’t know anything about it.”

“Don’t they watch this place?”

“They watch my house, not here. And they haven’t been around the house much this week. Of course it’s possible that since they lost you tonight they’ll have a look over here.”

Converse stood up, trying to shake off his fatigue.

“Are you sure they know about me? Maybe they infiltrated the people who were going to pick up. They might just be fishing following me.”

Elmer made a sour face and shook his head.

“I don’t understand what they’re doing. Do you know a little bimbo called June? A nutty-looking little blonde?”

“I don’t know any Junes,” Converse said.

“Janey turned up with this June. Marge left her there. The only word I’ve had from Marge came through June and June’s mind is so fried it’s not easy to make out details. Apparently Marge still has your heroin and she’s traveling with the guy who brought it. There was some kind of rough stuff with somebody.”

“How’s Janey?”

“She’s unhappy and frightened — how else would she be? She’s still salvageable, but she won’t be much longer.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Converse said. “I just don’t.”

“Judgment was never your strong point. You and Marge are quite a team. You better talk to Ben Whiteson before grand inspiration strikes you.” Converse stood unsteadily in the middle of the room and began to laugh.

“I’ve been waiting my whole life to fuck up like this.”

“Well,” Elmer said, “you made the big time. Congratulations.”

“It’s all true,” Converse said. “Character is fate.” Elmer shrugged. He disliked words like “fate.” Converse was pacing again. “If I could just get back over to Nam, I’d probably be all right. You can hole up forever over there.”

“Hole up forever,” Elmer said. “Sounds very nice.”

“Better there than McNeil Island.”

Elmer brought two cups from the bottom drawer of his desk and poured coffee from his percolator.

“It’s up to you. But something very peculiar is going on. Whoever went after Marge in June’s version doesn’t sound like Feds. If there really is a tie-in with Irvine Vibert’s friends this could all be very complicated. And Antheil.” He sipped his coffee bemusedly. “Antheil has… a certain Bohemian flair, if you know what I mean. It’s a quality I find very disturbing in policemen.” For a moment he looked as though the coffee were making him sick. “I have a lot of experience with undercover types.”

“You were a spy,” Converse said. “That’s different.”

As he said it, Fran opened the door and came in with a basket of apples. She glared at him and he was not offered an apple. Elmer declined.

“Your father-in-law was not a spy,” Fran told Converse sternly. “And anyway they were on our side.” She gave Elmer a sympathetic look and went out.

Elmer sighed.

“Who says I was a spy?”

“Marge. She says your whole family were spies.”

“Marge is an idiot.”

“They sat in silence for a while. Converse stared at the worn rug.

“I ought to know what I do next,” he said. “But I don’t.”

Elmer took his empty coffee cup to the windowsill. His window commanded a view of the fire doors in the adjoining building.

“Stay away from your house. Sleep in the office tonight. Whiteson gets back about three o’clock, go to him immediately.” He looked at Converse for a moment and took out his checkbook. “You want your salary?”

Converse nodded.

Elmer wrote him a check for two hundred dollars.

In the outer office Frances was reading Douglas Dalton’s latest Nightbeat story; the story was entitled “Mad Hermit Rapes Coed Campers.” As Frances read, her lips moved.

“C’mon,” she said, thrusting the piece back at Dalton, “put some pizzazz in it.”

Dalton returned to his typewriter; Elmer watched his slow steps with resignation.

“He stinks,” Elmer whispered. “He can size pictures — that’s about it.”

Frances was looking at the check which Converse still held in his hand.

“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” she said pointedly. “How about Johnny-boy does some nice stories for us now he’s back? Some spicy specials.”

“He has too much on his mind,” Elmer said.

“Does he? He couldn’t even do a few headlines?”

Elmer smiled.

“It’s a thought. Is it out of the question? In the worst of times we have to eat.”

“In the worst of times especially,” Frances said.

“You’ve been missed,” Elmer told Converse. “We’ve lacked imagination since you left us for the active life. We rely on gross obscenity now. We’re so dirty we’ve been closed out in five states.”

Converse put the check in his pocket.

“C’mon, Johnny,” Frances said. “Gimme a headline.”

Elmer clapped his hands softly. “A freak animal story — for five hundred words.”

Converse shook his head.

“For Christ’s sake!” He walked to the window and back. “Birds…”

“Watch this!” Elmer told Frances. He leaned a hand on Converse’s shoulder like a track coach. “Birds what?”

Douglas Dalton came grimly forward with his revised version of “Mad Hermit Rapes Coed Campers.” Frances read it with impatience. Elmer kept his hand on Converse’s shoulder.

“C’mon, Douglas,” Frances sighed. “Pizzazz.”

“Yes,” Douglas Dalton said. He took the story back to his typewriter.

“Birds what?” Elmer asked softly.

“Birds nothing!”

Elmer removed his hand. “Birds Starve to Death!”

Converse sat down on a desktop.

“Starving birds,” he said. “All right!” He turned to Elmer in weary anger. “Skydiver Devoured By Starving Birds!”

Frances stared at him in astonishment.

“I’m going nuts,” Converse said.

Elmer was already sketching it on a layout sheet.

“Excellent. I love it. Only you can write it. Now gimme another beauty. Gimme a rapist.”

“Let’s pack it in, Elmer.”

“A rapist,” Elmer said. “Please.”

“Rapist,” Converse said dully. “Rapist Starves to Death.”

“Pussy-Eating Rapist Starves To Death!” Frances frowned. “That’s not what I call pizzazz.”

“Scuba-Diving Rapist?” Elmer shook his head. “We already got a skydiver.” He paused thoughtfully. “Skydiving Rapist?”

“Housewife Impaled By Skydiving Rapist,” Converse said.

Frances shrugged. “Jesus! That almost makes it.”

“Enough,” Elmer declared. “He’s gone cold. He has too much on his mind.”

When Douglas Dalton came forward with the last rewrite of “Mad Hermit Rapes Coed Campers,” Frances hardly troubled to read it.

“This is just filth,” she told him.

When Elmer and Frances went home to Atherton, Con verse and Douglas Dalton sat at Douglas’ desk and drank bourbon from the bottle Douglas kept in the bottom compartment. It was his night to carry the completed layouts to the Greyhound Bus station, whence they would be conveyed to a non-union printer in San Rafael. He had finished with the mad hermit’s excesses and was bracing himself for the walk along Mission and the longer one to his hotel on Sutter Street.

Douglas kept plastic cups to drink from. Converse had assembled a bunk from four chairs and across them had draped an ancient sleeping bag which Elmer Bender kept in a closet with his illegal telephone.

“All I need to know,” Douglas kept telling Converse, “is that you’re in trouble. That’s enough for me.”

Converse thanked him repeatedly.

“It’s a long time since I’ve been able to help a pal. God’s Blood, you look out of it. Am I keeping you awake?”

“I’ll drink another one,” Converse said. Douglas nodded happily. “Helping a pal was always very important to us. When I say us, I mean my crowd. That old gang of mine.” He

poured and consumed his third full cup of bourbon.

Drinking seemed to make him grow paler.

“Who are they?”

“They’re gone. Dead. Scattered. Reformed. All but yours truly — the last of a dirty old breed. I can’t count Elmer. Elmer’s a prince but he can’t drink.”

Converse allowed Douglas to pour him a measure.

“‘When like her O Saki,’” Douglas said, “‘you shall pass among the guests star-scattered on the grass, and in your joyous errand reach the spot where I made one — turn down an empty glass!’ Do you know who wrote that?”

“Yes,” Converse said.

“It wasn’t Lawrence Ferlinghetti.” He drained the cup and unsteadily poured another. Converse lay back on his row of chairs.

“Tell me what it was like,” Douglas said suddenly. “What was it like?”

“Vietnam?”

Douglas nodded solemnly.

Converse sat up.

“You should really ask a grunt. For me it was expeditions. A lot of time I was in hotels. Sometimes I went out to the line. Not a lot. I was too scared. Once I was so scared I cried.”

“Is that unusual?”

“I have the impression,” Converse said, “that it’s fairly unusual. I think it’s usual to cry when you’re hurt. But to cry before is uncool.”

“But you went,” Douglas said. “That’s the important thing.”

Converse did not see how it was the important thing, but nodded anyway. Douglas poured himself another drink. It was not pleasant to watch him drink.

“I too went,” Douglas declared. “I was like you. But I was younger — you’re twenty-five?”

“Thirty-five.”

“Yes,” Douglas said. “Well, I was twenty. My father tried to stop me, but I wouldn’t hear of it. Do you know the Biltmore Hotel in New York?”

“I think so.”

“You must know it. It’s a block from the Roosevelt. Didn’t you ever meet your date under the clock at the Biltmore?”

“No,” Converse said.

“Well, my father met me in the Men’s Bar of the Biltmore. It was the first time he and I drank together. As I recall, it was also the last time. He said to me — You’re going to die in a ditch for Communism, and it’ll serve you right. Do you know what I told him? I said — Father, if that should be my small place in the world’s history, I am the proudest man in this place.”

Converse watched Douglas’ features compose themselves into a dyspeptic expression which he deduced was silent laughter.

“And the place, mind you — the place was the Men’s Bar at the Biltmore Hotel!” He slapped Converse on the knee.

“The same night — the very same night—I went on board the Carinthia for Havre. Three days later I was in Spain.” He seemed to hesitate for a moment and then poured himself another shot. “So I was just like you. I went.”

“Douglas,” Converse said, “the two things aren’t the same. Fucking around Saigon is not like volunteering for Spain. I mean, essentially we were on different sides.”

“Who?” Douglas asked. “Different sides? You and me?”

He laughed and waved a hand. “I suppose you’re a Fascist.”

“Objectively, I suppose so.”

Douglas was delighted.

“Objectively! Objectively this and objectively that. Elmer used to talk like that. Did you know he was our political officer? He used to tell us that there was no difference between Mrs. Roosevelt and Hitler. Objectively! And that wasn’t the line then — that was Elmer talking.”

Converse pulled the sleeping bag over himself and leaned on an elbow.

“I had a friend at Amherst named Andy Stritch. I’ve always thought about Andy. He was killed at the Jarama. And there was a boy from the University of Indiana, his name was Peter Schultz. And there was a boy named Gelb who was only eighteen. He was straight from high school, can you imagine? They were all killed at the Jarama.”

To Converse’s astonishment he began to sing.

“There’s a valley in Spain called Jarama.” It went to the tune of “Red River Valley.” He stopped after the first line.

“Oh, don’t sing it,” he said to someone or other.

“The Moors! They were Moors. I thought — being very young — this is like the Chanson de Roland. Moors. They would come up to the wire and pretend to surrender. Some of them spoke English. And we poor little clots, we always wanted to believe them. Some of the fellas would let them come over and get a dagger in the gut for it.”

“The gooks are like that,” Converse said. “Objectively.”

“You shouldn’t call them gooks,” Douglas said. “We didn’t.”

“They call us Thong Miao. It means gooks in Vietnamese.”

“I had another Amherst friend — his name was Pollard. They shot him for cowardice. They wanted to shoot me. For cowardice. Not that I’d been all that cowardly, mind you. Elmer saved my life. But it hurt my feelings, do you see? It hurt my feelings very very badly. I wasn’t in com bat in the Second War.”

Converse’s elbow collapsed.

“If I’d been there, they’d have shot me. Somebody may shoot me yet.”

“You can’t be shot for cowardice in San Francisco, John.”

“Yes, you can.” On the edge of sleep, something occurred to Converse that made him sit up again.

“It was Charmian,” he told Douglas. “All this shit It was because of Charmian.”

“Lovely,” Douglas said. “A lovely old Southern name.”

“She’s this girl. I’m in trouble because of her.”

“So,” Douglas said, “you’re in love.”

“No. Not at all. I was over there and there was this girl and I wanted to please her.” Douglas put the bottle away and stood up. He walked surprisingly well. “That’s all over for me,” he said merrily. “Since the Jarama.”