Dog Soldiers

by Robert Stone

  After the game, Hicks would brew a pot of verbena tea and turn in early.

  He was trying to read Nietzsche again. To his annoyance, he found that he could not get with it at all.

  “Whither does it move? Whither do we move?”

  “Does not empty space whirl continually about us? Has it not grown colder?”

  His copy was from the Seaman’s Service library and the last reader had marked many passages with underlinings and exclamation marks. Hicks smiled when he came to them.

  Some punk, he thought. Like I was.

  He had read Nietzsche over twelve years before at the Marine Barracks in Yokasuka—Converse’s book—and it had overwhelmed him. He had marked passages in pencil and underlined words that he did not understand so that he could look them up. Before his meeting with Converse in Yokasuka, the only books he had ever finished were The Martian Chronicles and I, the Jury.

  Hicks knew very few people for whom he had ever felt anything like love, and Converse—whom he had not seen for twenty hours in the past ten years—was one of them. Seeing Converse again had made him feel good and young again in a simple-minded way; as though all the plans and adolescent fantasies they had shared in the service might take on some kind of renewed near-reality.

  Effectively, their friendship had ended when Converse was discharged and Hicks became, as he thought, a lifer. Once while he was still married to his Yokasuka girl, Etsuko, Converse had come to Camp Pendleton without his wife, and the three of them had eaten sushi together. Very rarely they had met to go drinking in the city. But he was aware that Converse for the most part avoided him, and he was rather hurt by the fact.

  He was hurt as well by what Mary Microgram had said that Converse had said. And he had been hurt further by Converse’s sneering at his copy of Nietzsche and calling his reading of it piquant—presumably in the sense of appealingly provocative, pleasantly disturbing, rather than spicy, having a pungent odor.

  At the same time that Hicks had come to know Converse, he had encountered Japan, and Japan—as he perceived it—had been immensely important to him. He had brought a Japanese woman home with him, and he had come, during his years as a professional marine, to think of himself as a kind of samurai. Although he had never approached satori, he was a student of Zen and he had once had a master, a German who could read the texts and was said to be a roshi. Even dealing, he endeavored to maintain a spiritual life.

  In the course of his third hitch, after years of base and embassy duty, of shining shoes and saluting automobiles, he had gone ashore at Danang to face an armed enemy for the first time. His disciplines had served him well.

  He had been older than all of them—older than the teen-aged riflemen, older than the Princeton former football player who commanded his company. They expected that he be better and more professional at war than themselves, and he had been. He had never let himself question the necessity to be.

  But it was not a war for a man who maintained a spiritual life, and who had taken an Asian wife. Many marines there were stronger against it than he; he declined to speak against war, any war. Yet people in the line who had come to hate the nature of the thing did not hesitate to talk to him about it. When one of the regimental communications companies in the grip of dope spirituality formed itself as a commune and declared for Joan Baez, the kids in it expected a certain sympathy from him.

  One day, when the company was out of the line, he had, in a mood of vague disgruntlement, allowed a number of his people to walk into town and see Bob Hope, who was playing there. It was not, in the circumstances, a serious dereliction but it called for reprisal; reprisal came in the form of an undesirable patrol, which resulted in what Hicks had come to call the Battle of Bob Hope. Almost every man in his platoon who had seen Bob Hope died in it. He himself was shot and flown to Okinawa. At the end of the year his hitch expired and he walked.

  It was a source of pride to Hicks that he was at home in the world of objects. He believed that his close and respectful study of Japanese culture had enabled him to manipulate matter in a simple disciplined manner, to move things correctly. He believed it was all in your head.

  When, eighteen hours ahead of schedule, the Kora Sea tied up at Oakland, he did his exercises and meditated briefly on the righteous arrow and the inevitability of its union with the target.

  Early in the afternoon, the yardbirds trucked Dempsey Dumpsters—huge mobile garbage cans—to the Kora’s after gangway. Hicks waited until the last Dumpster was almost full and then personally conveyed two cardboard barrels of bakery refuse to its maw. The package was inside in its cornmeal sack together with some yeast cartons, the binoculars and the souvenir flag. Attached to the sack was a length of pennant rigging, which he left adrift within reach of the opening chute. This much done, he returned aboard and took lunch. As he did so, the yardbirds responsible trucked the Dumpsters off to stand with their like in front of the A-dock welding shop. While the-shore-bound sections chanced into their shore clothes. Hicks busied himself with a scrupulous cleaning of the bakery.

  Shortly after four o’clock, he went on the pier again and bought a bottle of Coke at a geedunk trailer at some distance from the welding shop. At four-fifteen the welders secured and washed their hands. At four-thirty the head cleaning crew signed in and their first stop was the men’s room of the welding shop. They were silent somber blacks; one of them carried the tin refuse can from the toilet to a Dumpster and shoveled the contents into it—paper towels, empty half-pint bottles, cigarette wrappers. At this point, Hicks applied his only tool, which was a key to the welding shop toilet. He had an extensive collection of keys to various buildings and offices at the Army terminal, acquired over a number of years. When the head cleaning crew went round to the other side of the building, Hicks let himself into the toilet and waited until there was no one close at hand. As soon as things appeared suitable, he picked up the tin refuse can and carried it to the mouth of the Dumpster in which his bag was hidden. He held it up against the Dumpster’s chute and with his right hand seized the flag line to pull the package up and shove it into the tin receptacle. He then carried it back to the welding shop toilet, where it would spend the night. There were very few functionaries, however mean, who would stoop to inquire into the maintenance of toilets. Only agents would do so—and although there were plenty of agents about, right thoughts and right actions enabled one to move discreetly. Blacks troubled him most because the sight of a white worker emptying shit cans engaged their attention.

  Then Hicks changed clothes, packed his bag, and went to the terminal sick bay to make an early morning appointment for his mandatory chest x ray. He planned to return in the morning with his appointment slip, driving through the gate nearest the sick bay, pick up his package from the trash can before the morning cleaners emptied it, and then drive out through the gate he had entered with the package concealed under a fender.

  His normal procedure was to send his dope ashore in the plane parts and recover it from the railroad siding from which the parts were shipped to the repair facilities, but he had heard that the sidings were carefully watched now and the parts sniffed over by dogs. His present plan seemed to him audacious but sound.

  The gate search he passed through on his way to the parking lot was thorough and businesslike, worse than he had ever seen it. When it was over, he started his car with difficulty and drove downtown to the Seaman’s YMCA.

  At the Y, he engaged a room and lay down on the bed for a while. When it grew dark he was able to discern the peephole in the door through which it was said the military police spied on the military personnel to see if they were buggering each other.

  He was restless in the face of dead time. Hours of vacant unease had to be passed before he could return to cop his weight; self-discipline permitted, or required, light uncomplicated diversion.

  When he went downstairs he saw that the lights above Oakland had come on, and the sky behind them was like deep blue marble. Even skid row smelled of euc
alyptus. He was unmoved.

  On a corner two blocks from the Y was a bar called the Golden Gateway. A sign over its side door read: LIQUOR BEER FOOD—Home of the Seafarers Club. Another sign made of cardboard, resting against the Venetian blinds in the window, announced Seven Topless Dancers.

  At one time the Golden Gateway had sold good cheap Italian food and there were pool tables in the back. The pool tables were gone now and the kitchen with them; in their place was a large cage with pink bars, inside of which girls of various colors and conditions frapped themselves to music from the jukebox. Since the cage was installed, all manner of people fell by. Escaped lunatics up from Agnew came to engage the suburbanites who came to engage rough trade. There were agents representing every agency, and a contingent of neighborhood blacks who did their business there and never seemed to enjoy themselves. Finnish Alex, a bartender under the old regime, managed the place now, assisted by three shark-eyed barmaids.

  Hicks went in, thinking he might bullshit with Alex for a while, but it was not much of a place to bullshit anymore. He was shortly drinking hard, following bourbon two-fers with nip bottles of Lucky Lager. The go-go girls were an affront to sex, and Hicks was mildly scandalized by the fact that one of them appeared to be Japanese. The false canine on the upper right side of his mouth began to ache.

  Drunk now, he went to the gents’, took the tooth out and ran cold water over it, and rubbed it with a clean handkerchief. It seemed like a good idea. He replaced his tooth, pissed, and went out, walking toward the bar in solemn processional step. A party of blacks watched him from their table like medical students regarding a charity patient with a curious low disease.

  At the bar, he got to speak with Alex for the first time.

  “I feel like a walking pair of teeth,” he told him.

  “That means you’re drunk,” Alex said. For Alex, almost everything meant that. “What kind of trip you have?”

  “Good,” Hicks said. “A good trip.”

  “They still got that good pussy over there?”

  Hicks leaned his elbows on the bar and belched.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “When you gonna go back?”

  “Soon as I can get out. I want to put some money by and take a vacation. Go down to Mexico for a while.”

  “Mexico, that’s a good place. They got that good pussy down there.”

  Hicks looked up at the girls in the cage.

  “What a lot of shit this place is now,” he told Alex. “Why do I have to look at those poor junkies? Christ, I just as soon look at you up there.”

  “I ain’t got a costume,” Alex said.

  Hicks reached out and pushed him back against the booze locker.

  “You got bigger tits, though.”

  Alex served him another nip.

  “When you say you was goin’ to Mexico?”

  “I didn’t say I was.”

  “Yes, you did. You just said you was.”

  “That’s a dream,” Hicks told him. “A dream.”

  “Ever see Coley?”

  Coley was a dealer who had also worked for Sea Lift Command and had quit when paranoia overcame him. Hicks swallowed his beer and tapped on the upper tooth with his forefinger.

  “Coley?”

  “You know Coley,” Alex said. “You used to drink with him here.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Hicks said, watching Alex. “Sure. Him.”

  “I hear he went to Mexico.”

  “Yeah?”

  “They say he went down there with a whole lot of money to buy something for somebody and he blew it all.”

  “Blew it all on the jai ’lai, huh?”

  “Blew it all on the good pussy. People are real pissed at him.”

  Hicks was about to say that he would be real pissed too if it was his money, but he let it pass. He had never heard Alex talk around dope before.

  When the record on the box finished, the girls from the cage climbed down and wrapped some sequined cloth around themselves. One of the girls was a mocha-colored East Indian with the features of a brahmin; she went to sit with a slightly frayed executive type at a back table.

  “The guy’s a bug,” Alex said, looking at them. “He ties her up and beats on her. She loves it. They’re both bugs.”

  Hicks stood up.

  “I don’t want to know all this shit, man,” he said. “I don’t want to know it.”

  He walked back toward the telephone booth through knots of drinking blacks.

  Christ, there’s a lot of them, he thought.

  As he walked he tried to maneuver himself in such a way that he would not have to make anyone back up for him, or himself have to back up for anyone. He weaved skillfully among the black customers projecting a genial demeanor, but they seemed only to see the murder in his heart. They were funny folks.

  Inside the booth, he secured the door with his foot and thumbed through the phone book. He could not remember deciding to call her. It was just happening.

  Etsuko’s second husband was named Eligio Robles, D.D.S. On deciding to leave Hicks she had enrolled in a dental technology course, financing herself by years of petty hoarding. Her English was good enough by then. Dr. Robles was a Filipino, her very first employer.

  Humming to himself, he dialed Dr. Robles’ number. And she answered.

  “Konibanwa Etsuko? Shitsurayu Mrs. Robles-san.”

  “It’s you,” she said.

  It seemed to him that he could picture her face exactly as she calmly attempted to determine what the call might mean.

  “How’s everything?”

  “Fine. How’s everything with you?”

  “I just got back from Nam.”

  “How was that?” Not that she gave a shit, he thought.

  “Fucked up.”

  She made no sound, but the line itself seemed to convey her impatience with his profanity.

  “How’s the good doc?”

  “None of your business.”

  “I got some trouble with my teeth. You think he could fix me up?”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “He’s a dentist, ain’t he?”

  He took the tooth out again and held it in his handkerchief.

  “Ith orful.”

  “Why are you stupid?” she said. Cold, ivory anger. “You’re drunk.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s not a funny joke. Don’t bother busy people who aren’t bothering you.”

  He decided to ask a stupid question.

  “Don’t you miss me, Etsuko? I miss you sometimes.”

  He could picture her again quite clearly; her mouth would be rippled with a small tremor of embarrassment and faint disgust.

  “Give me a chance,” she said. “Stop calling.”

  “Christ sakes, I haven’t called you for a year. More than that.”

  “When I get calls from you,” she said, “I think you’re becoming a drunken bum. Too bad for a man of your intelligence.”

  “Why, you little shit,” Hicks said.

  She hung up.

  “Interrigence the fuck indeed,” Hicks said aloud. Her English had improved incredibly. “You little shit.”

  As he fumbled for another dime, a black girl in an imitation leather overcoat walked by the booth. Hicks smiled at her absently, forgetting that his smile was missing its upper right corner. The girl stared at him and raised her eyes so that the whites were exposed and the irises fluttered under batting lids. Fuck off. As she went by, he blundered into eye contact with the other members of her party—three young men in black leatherette coats and pastel slouch hats. They were not amused.

  “Asshole,” he said to himself.

  He kept looking back at them as he dialed. When June answered, he turned his back.

  “Hello, June.”

  “Is that Ray?” She sounded ripped.

  “Right,” Hicks said. “I’m down here in Oakland. I’m fucked up and there ain’t a white face in the joint. I want to make my will.”

 
“Your will?”

  “Forget it,” he said. Laughs were hard to come by.

  “Owen is here,” June said.

  “Owen is here! Terrific. Lemme talk to Owen. I’ll call you tomorrow, O.K.?”

  “Uh-uh,” June said. “I don’t want you to call me.”

  It was Dumb Question Night.

  “Why not?”

  “Owen is gonna kill you if he sees you. You know he’s like armed, man. He’s insane with rage.”

  Hicks shook his head. Someone tapped on the booth door with a coin.

  “If he’s insane with rage I won’t trouble him. Can he hear you?”

  “He’s out in the garage working over the machine. Like I don’t even want him to catch me on the phone.”

  “He wouldn’t turn me, would he, June? He wouldn’t narc me over?”

  “I don’t think so. Just don’t be around.”

  “You asshole,” Hicks said. “You told him. What did you tell him for?”

  “Oh, man,” June said. “Who knows why they do the shit they do?”

  “The desires of the heart,” Hicks said, “are as crooked as a corkscrew.”

  “That’s about how it is,” June said.

  He held the receiver, hooked up with the general static. The bloods at the table were broadcasting cocaine vibrations. From his pocket he took the slip of United Seaman’s Service stationery which had Marge’s phone number written on it. When he had done that, he threw a snappy little hand signal to absolutely no one at a point beside the door. One of the bloods turned to check it out.

  “Odeon,” the voice said. Hicks smiled. A collegiate whine.

  “Marge?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Ray.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Hi.”

  It was nice to be important.

  “I’ll fall by early tomorrow. Everything O.K.?”

  “Yes. Yes, all right.”

  “See you then.”

  “See you then.”