Dog Tags

by Stephen Becker

  “Thank him for the cigarettes and the food,” I said. “It was a bad time for us, and the dried peas saved lives.”

  Ou-yang did so, and Chang nodded some more. He spoke, and handed me a small cloth-covered box, about four inches by two by one.

  “He would like you to have this,” Ou-yang said, “to thank you and to hope that this will not come again.”

  The box was fastened by two little ivory teeth that passed through loops in the cloth. I disengaged them and raised the lid. Inside was a tiny covered dish, of porcelain, and in the dish a gummy red wax; beside the dish was a square-sectioned shaft of ivory, with characters in relief on one end. Awkwardly I dipped the end in the wax and held it up. Chang smiled. Ou-yang braced a small pad of paper and I stamped it. The characters were delicately carved; they might have been dragons and birds.

  “It is called a chop,” Ou-yang said, “and that is his name. Chang, here, and ting, and hua. He wants you to have that.”

  “Well,” I said, “I’m grateful. It’s very beautiful. I’ll take good care of it, and I’ll keep it all my life and give it to my son when I die.”

  Ou-yang translated, and Chang was pleased. I covered the dish and laid the chop in place and closed the box. What the hell, I thought. I remember grinning, and I remember thinking that: what the hell. I reached inside my collar and tugged the necklace of dog tags over my head, and offered them. It was clearly a classic and refined gesture: the exhalation of approval was celestial music. Chang beamed and accepted the tags. The officers were murmuring, “How, how,” which meant good, good, and a patter of applause rose. Then Chang began to laugh. He laughed loud, in great booming gusts, and his eyes sparkled at me, and I figured I knew why he was laughing. These damn fools, he was saying, these imbeciles, every damn one of them, yours and mine, these shits—and then I was laughing too. The others fell silent and then giggled politely. Perhaps. Perhaps not. Perhaps Chang merely thought I was funny-looking, with the big nose and the round eyes. Anyway, we laughed for some time. Then we shook hands again and I said, “Ding how,” and he said, “Okay,” and we laughed a bit more. I waved a silly salute at the company and said, “Goodbye.” They nodded and cackled. I shook hands with Ou-yang. “Goodbye,” I said. The impulse to say “thank you” was very strong, which made me feel foolish and angry and moderately demented, but I smiled and smiled. “Goodbye,” he said. “Good luck.” I nodded and backed off, bowing and ducking and waving, and shot a last wink at Chang, who also winked, and then I was outside and shortly on a truck for Panmunjom and later Inchon and you know the rest.

  16

  “No hard feelings,” Cornelius said angrily. The bridge sailed by above them. Benny contemplated San Francisco with no great emotion.

  “Colonels and up,” Benny said.

  “The more I know the less I know,” Cornelius said. “There was one man who thought the Chinese were protecting him from the North Koreans.”

  “No escapes,” Benny said.

  “Not one. Not one in the whole war. And as far as we know only nineteen prisoners died after that first July. Only nineteen in two years.”

  “What happened to Yuscavage?”

  The question was for Alex, who shook his head cheerfully. “Classified.”

  Secrets: good guys, bad guys. “Who killed Ewald?”

  “Classified.”

  “Yes. Poor kid. Thousands like him.”

  “You said it was your fault.”

  “I gave him ideas,” Benny said. “I saved his soul. I set him a good example. Never set a good example. It may kill somebody.”

  Soon Gabol said, “San Francisco. How does it feel?”

  “Never been there,” Benny said.

  “See the world.”

  “Benny,” Cornelius said, “I still think it was a just war.”

  “There are no just wars,” Benny said. “There are only dead people.”

  “Your country matters,” Cornelius said.

  Country matters. Do you think I meant country matters? “On your own turf, then,” Benny said. “Otherwise you have to believe that everybody in the world is your enemy. Gabol can tell you what that’s called.”

  “Do me a favor,” Alex said. “Stay out of the army.”

  Benny laughed ungrudgingly. “I promise. What about you?”

  “Oh, there’ll be a place for me somewhere,” Alex said.

  A bank of fog thickened astern and flowed silently toward the hills. It blotted out the bridge. The hills of San Francisco stood bright, busy, unpocked. Benny weighed one seventy-five and was still hungry. Not a mark on him, not a scratch, no stories for Joseph. I was kicked once by a Chinese guard. I ate walnut soup and belched. “And you do me a favor,” he said. “Don’t give me a medal.”

  “It’s not up to me,” Alex said. “If they give you one, you’ll just have to put up with it.”

  Melancholy stilled them; they leaned upon the rail—officers and gentlemen, ignorant, useless, mortal—and were borne home. An hour later Carol’s miraculous face rose to meet Benny’s, and he knew he had learned something about love.

  The Oldest Boy in the World

  17

  It is no small thing for a man of forty-six to be roused at dawn by colic; so it befell Benjamin Beer, M.D., on his very birthday. He emerged from yearning infinities and pawed the telephone, remembering almost immediately who he was—existence precedes essence, but only by a second or so. His “Doctor Beer speaking” was grave, sympathetic, unresenting; he heard the complaint, prescribed, comforted the young mother, and rang off. Gray light, mizzle: six o’clock. He rose ponderously, a bear at winter’s end, and sprang the shades; the lake lay gray, pocked by raindrops, treetops poking up, gnarled diluvian hands; on a black branch a kingfisher ruled.

  Benny stretched. He inhaled strenuously. He touched his toes, again, again. He twisted his torso left and right. He scraped his coated tongue on furred teeth, and resolved again to resist cigars. Barefoot he padded to the bathroom, answered other calls, showered. He shaved, whipping a bowl of soap with a badger-hair brush. He scoured his perfect teeth. He combed his undiminished hair, modestly shaggy now in the new fashion, edged artistically in silver. The finished product, naked, groomed, pleased him. Presentable and racy still, though graying much within.

  He costumed himself in shorts, a T-shirt, dark brown woolen socks, tan corduroy trousers, a shirt of wide brown and white stripes, and a classic, ageless brown jacket of herringbone tweed. He thrust his feet into ankle-high brown suede shoes. He filled the customary pockets with the customary minor baggage, including a monogrammed handkerchief, gift of Joseph Beer on a previous birthday. He passed quietly through the hallway, with the customary bittersweet glance at Carol’s door, the customary twinge of mad, melancholy lust for that dearest of dolors, and stole successfully downstairs.

  Outside and squinting, spattered by rain, he paused for an invocation: “Wheat and soybeans,” he told the sun god, “closed higher.” He dashed for his car. He had told Jacob it was a Fiat luxe, and Jacob had believed. He peered out over the new lake at the roc’s nest, barely visible in the rain, a tangled mass of twigs and withes woven patiently by a thousand years of auks, dodos, moas, phoenixes and pesky crows. For fifteen years Benny had wondered what secrets its prickly bowl cradled, what riddles universal and eternal lay raveled and revealed within: riddles of spring, of migration, of survival, of love. Tomorrow he would see; he would row to that nest in his own boat, and the man-made lake would be, at last, high enough. He assumed, always, that he would be present tomorrow.

  He had thickened with the years and now trudged through his days heavy and sad, though still a handsome dog and shamefully susceptible to the tawdriest impulses. Within him there dwelt a raddled, stunted monster, rearing hoarsely to ogle and scratch. This fiendish skink inhabited a small but growing void at the center of Benny, and was perhaps a native of Korea. Once a year or so Benny let him out for exercise.

  Fifteen years Benny had driven this road! He drove
toward town, crossed the wooded ridge, admired the undulating fall of a dozen dingles behind the scrim of rain; he let the road carry him downhill, and left the dam behind, and the drowned houses. Fifteen years. His vision had blurred a bit, a recent annoyance, but otherwise he lived in a serviceable body, its tone maintained by recurrent orgies of rage, despair and romantic fizz: he had committed himself to the preservation of a species he despised.

  “Man is the only animal that commits moral nuisance,” the old doctor had pointed out. Bartholomew drove slowly, with kindness and deliberation, as if the comfortable automobile were a friend, a partner; Benny sat loose and unworried beside him and admired the fine fluffy white hair, the sharp blue eyes, the tangled white brows. Bartholomew wore a white linen suit and a blue denim shirt, and his hands were light on the wheel, the pink nails shiny. Benny, restored to fighting weight, felt gross.

  “We can see it all from here,” Bartholomew said, and drove onto the shoulder and let the engine die.

  They contemplated many miles of green valley, and dots that were dairy cows, and a thin winding line of blue river. The lighter blue sky was cloudless and endless. Two hawks hovered a mile apart. The two men sat for some time without speaking. Birds sang, twittered, chawked. Grasses rippled. “Indian country,” Bartholomew said. “The names. The river’s called Mill River, but it used to be the Misqueag. That hogback, above those red barns there, that’s Quaggin Ridge. See a nose now and then, among the farmers, like that fellow on the nickel.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Benny said. “I don’t believe it.”

  “You may be bored here.”

  “Not for a while,” Benny said, “and maybe never.”

  “Got a few weekend commuters. They liven things up. Your neighbors, some of them, if you take that house. Got a painter too. Fuzzy squares, orange, yellow. Not my style, but then I go back some.”

  This valley too went back some, this pastoral Eden, macadam roads and eaved roofs. The shadows of mastodons, and files of phantom redskins. “That’s a sawmill.”

  “Yes. Westerdonck’s. A lot of Westerdoncks around here. Thrown out of Holland for horse-thievery about Rembrandt’s time. Been a Westerdonck killed in every war we ever had. Got a little museum down there, and talk your head off if you let them.”

  “Healthy-looking place,” Benny said. “Long life.”

  “Long life. Tough winters, but they’re good for you. Don’t feel much over twenty-one myself.”

  “Lazy summers.”

  “No such thing. Baby doctors are always busy, and then I’m the only doctor in the village proper. Young ones like to be up to Suffield with the electronics and the new machines.”

  “Not for me,” Benny said. “Just a quiet time with some nice people. I just want to be left alone. Not vote, even.”

  “Nice people. That’s a tall order. Been a doctor for almost sixty years and if I had it to do again I’d be a veterinarian. Better class of patients.”

  “Strong talk.”

  “I get fed up with them,” Bartholomew said. “They breed like animals and drink themselves to death and then tell me human life is sacred. I take a little bourbon myself from time to time.”

  “For the circulation,” Benny murmured.

  “Exactly. And I have nothing against sex. Beats hell out of television. Old enough now to appreciate it. But—oh hell, I don’t know, no style any more.”

  “My father talks like that.”

  “A doctor?”

  Benny shook his head. “A tailor. A little Jewish tailor from the big city.” He stared off at the dairy cows. “I meant to ask about that. Certain troubles I will not take lightly.”

  “I wouldn’t worry,” Bartholomew said. “Times change. Anyway the Jew they had in mind is about four foot six with horns and a tail. Hell, boy, I suppose you’re some sort of hero. Any trouble, spit in their eye.”

  “By God,” Benny said. “A hero.”

  “Anyway they’ve got the Negroes to worry about now.”

  “Are there many?”

  “About fifty families, over in Suffield. Some of them work at the hospital. No better than anybody else, no worse. Christ, boy, we’ve got some Mayflower families here I wouldn’t pee on. Don’t worry about that kind of thing. Look out there to your right.”

  They had rounded a long curve and Benny could see back to the upper part of the valley.

  “Back of that notch,” the old man said, “that’s where the house is. If you come here, grab it. Highest house in a beautiful bowl, birch and pine, maples.”

  “It looked pretty.”

  “Pretty, hell, it’s beautiful. That bowl is God’s own south forty: deer and woodchucks and foxes, possums and porcupines. Every five years or so a bear passes through. Fool engineers want to put a dam in the notch so some monopoly can make a fortune selling power to the big city. Been talking about it ever since the WPA, but it won’t happen. A little farther back there’s a lake about half a mile across, bass there, perch, lots of little ones.”

  “It’s all too good,” Benny said. “There must be something wrong with it.”

  “Well, there is. One movie. A rundown high school twelve miles off. No music or theaters or anything like that. For that you take a couple of days in Sodom and Gomorrah. You said your kids were about five?”

  “Five and four, boy and girl. Never even saw the girl until she was two. Never even knew she was coming until she was there.”

  “They’re years from high school, and the grammar school’s good. Small. Basic. Time they get to high school there may be a better one.”

  “One thing at a time.”

  “Good sense,” the old doctor said. “There’s our little town again. You want to visit the hospital now?”

  “If you have time.”

  “Time? A man of eighty has all the time in the world.”

  They drove cautiously through Misqueag and Benny noted again the drugstore, the general store, the hardware; people waved, and Bartholomew waved back, and Benny found himself waving and wondered if this were a mirage, this exotic world of slow-moving giants, of calendar babies and catalog overalls. Saturday night drunks? Would a figure pop out of the barbershop, masked and feathered, rattling gourd and pointing bone, shouting “For Christ!”? Were there Kallikaks? Antique and mysterious corruptions of the blood, foot-long earlobes? Old Doc Beer on the courthouse steps, sipping Agri-cola. No French movies, but a town whore.

  The Misqueag Diner was open for business, Sylvester Burris a hustler, a black capitalist, no illusions, life is travail, and Benny scrunched across the wet gravel through a cool white morning, mist and cloud and the light rising, Benny drifting between dew and rain. The diner was classically meretricious and one of the few commercial structures Benny could abide: not an old railroad car, but chrome and fluorescence and red plastic, and honest-to-God imitation linoleum on the floor. He clumped up the cement steps and inside. Sylvester Burris, black and round, the Pinsky of a new era, suspended his sunrise ritual—slicing, dishing, setting out—to smile and say good morning. “Coffee is ready.”

  Benny swung aboard an unstable stool and set his palms flat on the cool formica. Finally he lied: “Good morning.” Burris was sixty-some and they had been friends for twelve years. Burris was a widower with two grown children, Artie and Mary, and they too were Benny’s friends—he thought, he hoped; Mary and Artie, it was not easy these days.

  Burris set coffee, sugar and real cream before him and said, “How about ham and eggs? I was about to, myself.”

  “Good.”

  Burris bustled. Sounds arose, sizzles, odors. Beyond the panes light thinned, trees loomed. “How’s your boy?”

  “Just fine,” Benny said. “College boys. Blue jeans and no underwear. How’s Artie this grand morning?”

  “My son the labor leader,” Burris said. “Well, they won’t strike today. I tell him not to strike at all, but they will—tomorrow, more than likely. He’s got the orderlies and the janitors and some of the practical nurse
s, and the painters and plumbers will go out in sympathy.”

  “Hallelujah,” Benny said. “Solidarity forever.”

  “You may not laugh when they have you toting bedpans.”

  “True. Not many patients, anyway.”

  “You wouldn’t refuse?”

  “No,” Benny said. “Artie does his thing, I do mine.”

  Burris nodded. “God bless fresh eggs! Don’t think Artie isn’t grateful.”

  “Just keep quiet and give me some decent service,” Benny said.

  Burris laughed softly. “He thanks you all the same. Just doesn’t know how.”

  “Oh, what did I do,” Benny said in minor but real annoyance. “Stop being grateful for nothing. What good was it? All those damn Westerdoncks and other such Calvinists. They won’t even C.O. white Quakers, much less big black Artie with that fat ass in those tight black pants and those nostrils like wastebaskets.” Burris jiggled with laughter and Benny grinned. “I don’t know why you laugh. He almost went to jail.”

  “That’s why,” Burris said. “That almost.”

  “It was none of my doing,” Benny said. “It was those smart lawyers from the big city. Hebrews and Ethiopes. So now I have to run my own bedpans.”

  “Mary’ll work twice as hard.”

  “Now there’s a girl,” Benny said lightly.

  Burris set platters on the counter and doffed his apron; he stepped around to sit beside Benny. “Oh that smells good. Oh my God that smells good! Some days I can hardly eat breakfast. But when I am hungry in the morning, food smells better than any other time.”

  “Morning is the pure time,” Benny said, “before you ruin your senses. Morning’s like being a virgin.”

  “Son,” Burris said solemnly, “I lost my cherry in nineteen hundred and twenty-four and you cannot expect me to recall the previous state.” In some gloom he added, “I suppose I’ll find it again soon.”

  “A transplant,” Benny said.

  “Wouldn’t that be something. Well. We sure got to the subject early in the day, for a couple of old bucks.”