by Robert Stone
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 grabassing, 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 hurting 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 kep
t 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, hidden, 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 cloth 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 Converse 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 everyone 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.
THE ROAD SOUTH AND WEST RAN BETWEEN YELLOW hills, dappled with stands of live oak like fairy forts.
An hour after sunrise, they came to a diner with drawn black shades across its windows and three dusty pumps out front. Converse pulled in and sounded the horn. After a minute or so, an old man wearing a holstered pistol on his belt came out and filled their tank, and watched Converse spark the wires.
“It’s all different over here,” Converse said, when they were riding again. “You’d never guess that place was back there.”
Marge wiped her nose on a corner of the quilt she had gathered around her.
“Are you badly?” Converse asked her.
“I don’t know.”
“Well,” he said, “it can’t be all that bad then.”
He was so tired that he could barely keep his hands on the wheel. He talked to keep himself awake.
“We might try going south,” he said, “we’re so close to the border.”
But the border was not the way. They would get lost in the desert going overland, and if they drove south of the frontier zone the Mexicans would demand all manner of automobile registration and put stickers everywhere.
“Maybe east,” he said But east was desolation a day and a half of dry barrens to be chased across.
“Do we know anyone in San Diego?” he asked Marge.
“I don’t.”
“I like the idea of San Diego. If we get that far.”
“He wants us to pick him up.”