Dog Tags

by Stephen Becker

  “You sure have. I suggest,” Benny said formally, rising, “that you consider Comrade Beer’s five-point program. Otherwise you may have to melt down that tea set for bullets.” He paused for a general view of his colleagues: the men barbered, concealing bad hearts, livers, arches; the ladies lacquered, bewildered—he was mystically aware of straps and harnesses, unguents and mascaras, tiny pads within tight shoes; and Finlay wearing a truss. He stared, fascinated, a trifle wild-eyed, at the complex reticulation of minuscule capillaries on the wings of Taubeneck’s nose.

  “Benny’s right,” Runge said.

  Startled, Benny sought irony, but Runge meant it. His muddy hazel eyes, pouched above a fat nose, held steady on Taubeneck; with full lips, a wide mouth and an irrepressible black stubble, stolid Runge sat like a champion bull about to bellow. Benny admitted hope, and modest affection: Runge the voice of America, the good honest dealer whose men turned out at four of a winter’s morn when the burner broke down.

  “My boy says the same thing,” Runge added. “People are talking against doctors—and not just poor people.”

  “Against doctors!” Lindahl glowered. “We gave them health insurance.”

  “Hell you did,” Runge said. “They took it. You fought it every inch of the way for fifty years. And as soon as they got it we doubled our prices. Soon as we knew the money was there. Doubled in five years. These orderlies and all, their pay went up about ten percent. If that. Can’t blame it on them.”

  “He’s right,” Cassini said. “My last baby cost so much I almost sent it back.” They laughed, relieved, the strain diminished, a neutral unfunny joke.

  “You should have brought figures,” Runge said to Taubeneck. “You ought to bring figures and sit down with that Burris fellow. Or I will if you like.”

  “Who elected Burris?” Bolden complained.

  Benny said, “His colleagues elected him. Who elected us?”

  “God,” Taubeneck said, and grinned. “I was brought up to think so.”

  “I don’t like any of this,” Bolden said.

  “That’s not the point,” Benny said.

  Marian Lacey said, “I just heard you were going to run for mayor.”

  Jean Diehl’s chart. He rooted among files, extracted one and made himself comfortable, sucking pleasantly at his cigar. Sad biographies, facts and figures, pompous comments. Psychiatric reports. He read carefully, replaced the file and said, “Damn.”

  Coughlin nagged at him: the uncontrolled particle, smashing arbitrarily through random chambers. Tanking up; Benny hoped that he was drunk, unconscious. The deranged were unknowns, eerie. From a booth in the corridor he called Frank Cole.

  “Here and there and around and about.” Cole was exasperated. “But in the neighborhood. Not doing any of the smart things you might expect. Quite a boy.”

  “Quite a boy,” Benny said. “If the baby dies it’s manslaughter.”

  “At least,” Cole said.

  “Rosalie’s gone home. Can somebody check her house now and then?”

  “Yeah, sure, no problem. We’ll find him, don’t you worry. Any trouble at the hospital?”

  “The strike, you mean.”

  “Yeah.”

  “No. No trouble and I don’t think there will be, and I think Don Runge agrees with me. Can I ask you to go very easy? Forget it, unless we call?”

  “That’s not what Taubeneck said. We’ve got a man there now. Peattie.”

  “Taubeneck. Well, my advice is to call him off. Nothing’s going to happen before morning, and don’t forget Artie’s a pacifist. Strictly non-violent. He’s also smart.”

  “Yeah. I’ll think about it.”

  “Please. I mean it.”

  “Well, I’ll try, doc, but it’s my job to keep an eye on troublemakers. We haven’t had much of that here, and maybe the best thing is just to come down hard the first time.”

  “No guns,” Benny said.

  “Oh now, doc. Can’t send a man to do a job without tools.”

  “What job?”

  After a silence Cole said, “We’ll keep the peace.”

  Benny surrendered. “Good luck. I’m off tomorrow but if you need me call me. Blessed are the peacemakers.”

  Cole chuckled. “That’s what they used to call the old forty-four.”

  “If you find Coughlin let me know.”

  “You’ll hear,” Cole said.

  “McCook,” he said, “can I see you?”

  “Doctor Beer. By all means.” McCook gestured grandly toward an armchair. “How’s the youth of America?” Crinkly graying hair, modeled features, about the eyes an impressive air of sanity.

  “They’re all fine,” Benny said. “It’s one of your patients.”

  McCook had caught his tone, and fell solemn: “Oh?”

  “The Diehl woman,” Benny said.

  “Ah yes. Damn shame. Husband and four kids and she just can’t make it.” McCook was dashing. He sported half-spectacles and wide ties with sunbursts and Fibonacci spirals.

  “How come?”

  “Tight as a drum,” McCook said. “Conflicted to the core. Upbringing, sex, God, politics even. She needs a long stay in good hands.”

  “Well,” Benny said, and chose clemency, “I’ve found something new.”

  McCook chuckled. “It’s late. She’s due to leave tomorrow. I have the papers here.”

  “It’s not too late.”

  Warily McCook raised a brow. “You’ve got a theory. You’re going to give me hell about something.”

  “I’d like to,” Benny said, “but I could be wrong.”

  More cheerily, McCook sat back, tapped at the edge of his desk with a golden pencil and assumed an aspect of intelligence. Benny was incredulous. Perhaps the man practiced before a mirror.

  Benny strode hunched and fretful toward the heavy glass doors; somewhere out there Coughlin marauded. Or lay in ambush. He paused at the doors and rocked on his feet, planted them wide and gauged the afternoon like a sailor; the rain had slacked, the wind had backed, to the west the skies were lighter. Behind him footsteps whispered and he knew as he turned that it would be Mary; day’s end, going home. Sadly he scanned her black face, the soft dark eyes, the wide nose, the full lips, all in a perfect round, crowned by a flocculent Afro. They flew to Cuba, and in a white frame clinic on a green mountain they healed little children, and at sunset they drank coconut milk and made love while the distant fringe of sea turned purple. “Want a ride, little girl?”

  “Have to ask my daddy.”

  “Leave him alone. His feet hurt.” Benny held the door against a warm breeze, and refrained from taking her hand.

  “What’s this about Diehl, Jean?”

  “Diehl, Jean.” Why should his heart be heavy? Carefully he collected thought. “Poor lady. She’s been on cortisone for a year and McCook never knew, and it may be only cortisone depression.”

  “Dear God,” Mary said.

  “Anyway, we caught it.”

  “Thank heaven. Hard to get into that place and harder to get out. What now?”

  “We’ll take her off it and see.”

  “How’d you catch it?”

  “I stopped in to say hello, and we chatted.”

  “Yes. Old Doc Hello.”

  “Don’t make fun of me. Damn.” Pull yourself together, m’lad. “I’m a little depressed myself.”

  “Baby Roland?”

  “Among other small matters.”

  She touched his hand. “Dear Benny.”

  “Did everything right,” he said, and a tremor shook him. “Should have known better. It all turns to shit. You get old and it all goes away.”

  She was silent; they paced along, and gravel crackled. “You need a vacation.”

  “I need … God knows what I need. Mary, Mary!” he burst out. “I’m forty-six. Today. And I don’t love anybody.”

  “Happy birthday,” she said. “I’m thirty-two and nobody loves me.”

  “We sound like a bad movie.”<
br />
  “Yes. We run off together and get killed in a car accident.”

  “I have just the car for it,” he said. “It’s in worse shape than I am. Where would we run off to?”

  “Algeria.”

  “Grentzer thinks we should all go to Vietnam. Expiate. Salvation through works.”

  “China,” she said. “I’d like to see China.”

  “Peking. Those tile roofs, and temples. I’d like it,” he said, cheery for an instant.

  “A fantasy.”

  “Well,” he said weakly, “you’re fantastic.”

  “Why, Doctor,” she said. “How gallant.”

  Ou-yang smiled broadly. “She is a lovely girl. I never thought to see you again.”

  “Are you in real trouble?” she asked.

  After a moment Benny said, “No. I just don’t like myself much. I keep wondering why I bothered. Why I bother. Life is a dull, chronic pain in the ass. And when I think what else I might do, it’s always something childish and shameful.”

  “Like running off with me.”

  “You wrong me savagely, ma’am. We’ve been circling each other for years.”

  “For the wrong reasons.”

  “Yup.”

  “At least you know.”

  “At least we know.”

  He drove her home and kissed her gently. “Why do I kiss so much?” he asked suddenly. “Why do I bother you with that?”

  “Why not?” she said. “And why talk about it? Come in handy when you run for mayor.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “I guess I’m not very good about women. Never grew up. Do the same again, too,” he muttered.

  “They all think you’re beautiful,” Mary said.

  “I turn into a great hairy spider at midnight. The things I like to do,” he said, “used to be sins. Now they’re social errors or political tyranny. All the fun is gone. I used to think of myself, years and years back, as a good lover distributing joy. It turns out I’m an exploiter. Admire the female form; turns out I’m an exploiter and a voyeur. Like to live naked; turns out I’m an exploiter and a voyeur and an exhibitionist. I don’t know where I was headed but I got sidetracked. And years ago. Why can’t I grow up and forget it? You think I would have been happy as a stud? A dumb paid stud?”

  “You men are all alike,” she said. “All you need is a good fuck.”

  He laughed through shock and anger. “Don’t be bitchy. I don’t talk that way and I don’t think that way.” Half a dozen superspades ringed him, smoke eddied, a piano tinkled. “What you doin with that sister?” one of them asked softly. “What you doin here anyway?” and they ringed him closer. Just found joy, the piano said. “Art Tatum,” he said. “I once shook hands with Art Tatum. He was blind and he had stubby little fingers.”

  “Niggerlover,” she said.

  “Oh shut up,” he said. “I was a prince.”

  “Now what does that mean?”

  “I was a prince,” he said stubbornly, “and a famous violinist. From high notes to middle, from middle to low, you be my fiddle and I’ll be your beau.”

  “You’re fun.” She giggled. “You’re a beautiful man.”

  “I’m glib,” he said. “It’s not the same. Hell, you’ve got troubles too and all I do is talk about myself, and I suppose I like you as well as anybody I ever knew.”

  “Ah,” she said. “That’s dangerous. Good day, your highness.” She slipped out. “See you tomorrow?”

  “I’m off. Day after.”

  “I’m off day after,” she said.

  “Three days,” he said. “Can we make it?”

  “If they go on strike I’ll see you tomorrow. You’re not too old, you know. You’re too young.”

  He was miles down the road and framing future replies when he saw Walt Coughlin. The red car whipped toward him, and past, and for a split second they clashed, the white-gold hair and the ice-blue eyes looming at him; his heart thudded, and he pressed down on the accelerator, but Coughlin vanished behind him, unswerving.

  20

  He crossed his doorsill at a quarter of five, and announced himself to his answering service. For years he had done so with barely suppressed hope tingling in his fingertips: “A Miss Swinburne will call back,” they would say, or “Doctor Lin called.” More likely Parsons. Often it was “Mrs. Untermeyer,” sometimes “Mr. Jacob Beer.” Tonight a miracle: no messages whatever. He left Iacino’s number, and called Frank Cole. “In the red car, on the Misqueag Road. Headed for Suffield. Driving fast and looked a little wild.”

  “I don’t know what the hell he’s doing,” Cole said. “We keep missing him by fifteen minutes. Drunkard’s luck.”

  “Let me know.”

  “Doc.”

  “Yes?”

  A silence. Benny grimaced. Imbeciles. “Would he have any reason to bother you?”

  “None at all,” Benny said.

  “Okay.”

  “Can you keep a man at his house?”

  “Haven’t got that many men. If we had any kind of decent police force. I told her to call me if she heard anything—a car, footsteps, anything. She’s home, you know.”

  “I heard. Good luck.”

  He changed to woolen trousers, flannel shirt, work shoes; he zipped himself into a windbreaker—ah, foul-weather gear!—and let himself out the back door. The sky was still pearly but clearer, and glints of white light rippled off the lake. He went to the rowboat; it was floating free, and the stake was low. Grunting happily, he levered the stake from the damp earth and with a small rock pounded it home a few feet farther up the receding bank. Bizarre landscape, treetops alien, rising like skeletons from the water, rootless and trunkless. The crow’s-nest huge in the late light. Tomorrow. If they had miscalculated? If the waters rose and rose, and Benny too went under? He looked back at his house, masonry and brickwork and timbers, wide windows, and watched the water rise, flooding the basement, blowing the furnace, dissolving away his carpets, furniture, diplomas, bed. But they had not miscalculated. They were professional men, with slide rules, unsmiling men. Benny would have his private lake. Lucky Benny. And his private house and his private car and his private joys and private woes. Like to have a few public joys. He sold out next day and went to join a commune in California, where his skills made him welcome. There were thirty-odd communards; Benny was the oldest, but they tolerated him and would like him in time. The young women were splendid, tanned and buxom, and they ground flour and baked bread, and no one slept alone.

  He left the lake and trudged among his limp shrubs. Crocus soon, and daffodils, resurrection and head colds. He sloshed through puddles and rivulets, circled the house, slogged up past the south chimney, headed for the front door and saw the woman, the suitcase, the rusted, dented foreign car. His breath was stopped, but briefly; he walked on, faces and names thronging, and when she heard him and turned, he saw with sudden, immense, unmanning love that it was his daughter.

  Early in the day, he cautioned himself, preparing two whiskeys, but a special day and tomorrow off, and how often do I drink with a maiden of nineteen? Maiden! More jokes. Shoeless he shuffled to her; she blurred, hazed to Carol, Carol at nineteen. God, these carbon copies! He missed Joe: a pang.

  Sarah raised her glass: “Love and luck.”

  “Love and luck.” They sipped. “Tell me all.”

  “I will not.”

  “Good girl. I couldn’t bear it. Are you pregnant?”

  “Oh God,” she said. “My father is a male chauvinist pig. Why not ask me if I have a job, or what am I doing about capitalism? No. I’m not pregnant. My mother is a genetics counselor.”

  “Keeps my work down.”

  “Ah. Say on.”

  “Nope. Never discuss your wife with your girl friend.”

  “Oh dear. You’re quarreling.”

  He shook his head and smiled for her; why break good habits? “No. Life is sweet.”

  “It’s a bloody bore,” she said.

  “Oh come on! You’re
nineteen. You’re supposed to be out there screwing and yelling bullshit and having a high old time.”

  “You don’t think that’s boring?”

  He shrugged. “Never bored me. Naked on the beach.” A faceless woman stretched and blinked luxuriously in the molten light; oily, she gleamed. The ketch bobbed offshore. “Anyway I’m supposed to be learning from you. That’s what all the papers say.”

  “No way,” she said. “You don’t groove on rock.”

  “I like the Beatles.”

  “You would. How’s Mom?”

  “I thought you’d never ask. She’s absolutely fine. Misses you badly. Alone, the two of you gone, the two of us working; she bustles and makes cheerful noises, but I think she’d love another family.”

  “Oh, how funny!” Sarah sparkled. “My God, if she had five more.”

  “You jest.” Benny drank, comfortable and happy. “You and Joe were plenty. I used to lie awake dreading disasters. Auto accidents, dope, rape. We were lucky. A little of each, but no harm done.”

  “We were lucky. How’s Joe?”

  “Okay, I guess. I wish I knew more about him. What kind of trip did you have?”

  “Good.” She too drank, and tucked up her feet, and smiled Carol’s heartbreaking smile. “Good. Skied the whole way home, almost. Stopped off everywhere, then moved on. I couldn’t stay in one place because I didn’t have enough clothes. Clothes are very important.”

  Benny clucked. “False values. Bourgeois society.”

  “You bet,” she said. “It cheered me up after Lonnie. All those apple-cheeked boys breathing frost and lusting after me.”

  Apple-cheeked boys. Benny felt himself glitter slightly, an old goat’s last caper. Would you start again? Give them up, annihilate them, exchange them for the gift of the gods? Be an apple-cheeked boy with an old goat’s art? Carol, Sarah, Joe, obliterated in an instant, painlessly of course. Faustus. The God of Abraham and Isaac glared. Yah. Who can you sell your soul to these days? “What now? Or shouldn’t I ask?”

  “Home,” she said, and mouthed a kiss. “I’m going to go on a diet and read elevating literature and bring my daddy his slippers at night.”

  “Godsake,” Benny said, popeyed. “Just what I always wanted.”