Dog Tags

by Stephen Becker

  Still trembling, giddy, nitwitted, he sat huddled on the edge of a club chair. The pistol lay before him on a footstool. “Don’t touch it,” he had said. “Maybe one more brandy,” he had said, and Jacob and Amos joined him, and the women sat pale and silent. His pulse thudded; the glass shook. “Unbelievable,” Amos said angrily. “In a place like this, the countryside. Something should be done about people like that.”

  “A peasant,” Jacob said.

  “You’re all crazy,” Benny said shakily. “You should never have come outside.”

  “You poor man,” Carol said, “poor old Benny, with his wide circle of interesting friends.” She surprised him with a warm kiss, and he patted her aft. “That woman,” she went on, “slept right through it.”

  “Thank God,” Benny said. “All we needed. A cheerleader.”

  Jacob said, “It took me back. All those years I worried, you’d be killed, or you’d kill somebody.”

  They considered this enormity.

  “I suppose it was written somewhere,” Benny said lightly. “I was not meant to do harm.”

  Sarah said, “You knew it was empty.”

  “I did not know,” Benny said.

  A log popped; the room was heavy with peace, and Benny was sleepy.

  “A happy birthday after all,” Jacob said.

  “After all,” Benny agreed. “You called Frank Cole?”

  Carol said, “Frank Cole?”

  Benny set down his snifter. “My God,” he said. “You never called?”

  “Listen,” Sylvia said, “don’t get involved.”

  Do bears sweat? He wondered that, sitting naked, head bowed, on his bed, aware now that he had sweated plenty. The room was warm and he was sober, and the hair on his chest was gray but on his thighs and in his crotch it was dark and springy. The light was golden and pulsed, and his eyes burned; he was overfull and logy, and seemed to jounce with each beat of his blood. Sad body. How romantic to think of himself as a bear, when he was only overweight.

  He showered, dried, brushed his teeth. Wearily he donned his new paisley pajamas, and remembered the days of his youth when he had slept naked and hopeful. Abishag, soon enough. Drowsy, he became aware that he was stiff and sore. Fear? Or the brief wrestle?

  Carol came in quietly and shut the door. “Hello,” he said. “My hero,” she said, in a dark blue kimono, wide sleeves like wings. “You might have sent her to the hospital. Is she a floozy or a slut?”

  Rebukes. He did not deserve rebukes tonight, but he subdued unworthy resentments. It could be worse, always: he might be blind, crippled or dead. A frequent thought. “I couldn’t do that,” he said. “The baby lost an eye. She’ll know soon enough. If he dies we’ll tell her then. Or if he lives. But somebody would have let it slip.”

  “Oh my God,” Carol said.

  “So it doesn’t really matter if she’s a slut, does it.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Lazily, love canceling gall so that his tone was indifferently light, he pursued: “Still, you’re right; she’s a slut. A funny thing,” he went on, with an eye for a lie and a tooth for a truth, “but I like her a lot. Most of the women I’ve ever liked were broads. Warm and giggly. Give me a good round broad who jiggles when she laughs and nurses her baby at the blacksmith’s picnic. Those others are killers. I’m a doctor.”

  She startled him: “Yes. I know. I meet them too.”

  “Come here,” he said. “Lie down. I won’t hurt you. We’re very different, you know.” She lay beside him and he held her close. “Some sort of birth defect, I suppose. I’m a doctor and a lecher, and I hope to live and die doing one or the other. Never really grew up. Never really wanted to.”

  “You’re a slut,” she murmured.

  “All heart, that Benny.”

  They lay still, warm and silent, and soon she kissed him and left him, and he slept.

  21

  He woke at seven much refreshed, and his blood bated at the memory of that dry, shocking click, the savage disappointment, unjust, unjust, a last stab of frustration racking his body as Coughlin fled beyond the light. “Thank God,” he said aloud, and luxuriated in pure, sweet relief, the aftermath of nightmare. “Thank God,” he said, and set about his morning’s work: ablutions, exercise, clothes. A sunny morn. In the bosom of family and friends. He grunted and hummed, Achilles about to leave his mildewed tent and amble down to inspect the black ships.

  Clean and empty, in rural garb, he trod the hallway with a glance askance at Sarah’s room and a shady ode to the two cookies therein. Goat-footed Benny greeting the sun, a pinch of incense to the infinite possibilities of every day. Wheat and soybeans. Outside the back door he squinted in the sudden blaze, and winkled off through the wet grass. Heavy dew caught the light and dazzled; he saw two fat robins, and rejoiced. The boat and the stake were where he had left them. The waters had risen, and had ceased to rise, and his lake was breath-taking, silver and gold, green and blue, and the tips of drowned trees waving a welcome. He exulted, and stood on a bank beaded with gems: an elderly party, beautifully tricked out, rich, fat, and about to undertake a voyage of discovery.

  He cast off, and rowed with animal pleasure. The house too was handsome, painted last fall, bright and safe in the clear light of a spring day. He plowed a straight wake. When he reached the maple he was warm, and doffed the worn jacket. The nest was head-high; he considered the problem. At the rattle and flash of a blue and russet kingfisher he offered ardent thanks; almost he wept. He stumped carefully to the bow, tied the painter to a low branch and hoisted himself to a narrow crotch. The bark was black and slippery, and a breeze off the water blew his sweat cold; he shivered. The nest was larger than he had thought, three feet across, a primeval tangle of twigs, small boughs, dead straw, feathers, hanks of still waxy twine. He wrapped his legs about the thinner trunk, grasped a branch above him and hitched higher. Feeling like a boy, a foolish boy, he peered into the nest. It was empty. He had expected that. No egg, no diamond. No parchment. A mass of dried twigs, the faint rank residue of lake and lime. The secret of life, aha. Lodged among the twigs were the remains of dried droppings. He felt that he should leave an offering, but he had not furnished himself with a suitable ex voto. Reverently he took aim and spat. It would have to do.

  He descended with care, freed the painter and wiped his hands on his dirty khakis. He was breathing hard; too much party. He wondered if Coughlin was properly jugged. Must call the hospital. And Cole. And Artie Burris. Well, plenty of time. The true peace of God, he remembered, descends a thousand miles from the nearest land, and he would not admit the day’s cares until he was ashore. Rowing back he steered by the maple, and his shoulders ached. As he watched, a patrol of crows swooped down upon the tree and sat; seven crows, like stern pudgy monks. The oars dragged. A foolish old man. But he had waited years to look into that nest, and was pleased with the day.

  The prow touched; as he shipped the oars he felt another tug, and looked behind him to see Carol hauling at the painter. She helped him ashore and said good morning. “Good morning,” he said, and they shared a swift hug. “Beautiful day,” he said. “You too.” She was, yes; twenty years now, but given half a chance he would not tire of it. He squeezed her happily here and there. “Oh dear,” she laughed, dodging away.

  “I know,” he said, “I know, they’re all lined up at the windows watching.” This morning he did not mind. They would catch Coughlin and the baby would improve and soon the family would assemble for a noble breakfast, champagne perhaps, and they would turn down a glass for Joe. Benny thought he might try to be a good doctor and a loving husband.

  They walked on the lawn with the sun in their eyes, and Benny slipped into his jacket and blinked cheerfully, and laid a happy hand on Carol’s far hip. She slipped her arm inside his and hooked her thumb on the back of his belt, and he bumped her near hip slyly with his own. Benny was forty-six years old and for a moment wanted desperately to be twenty-two. But the moment passed and did not sadden
him.

  “What was in the nest?”

  “Well,” he said, “a little fellow in a pointed hat with stars and moons all over it. He said I was going to make a long voyage by water, and at the end of it there would be a beautiful princess with blue eyes and black hair, and we’d have twenty-four children and you’d be a good round woman and nurse them at the blacksmith’s picnic.”

  Their shoes scattered the dew in tiny showers. They turned up the slope toward the house.

  “Benny,” she said, “I’m sorry, but I have to ask.”

  He knew but waited.

  Her hand pressed his back, her head his shoulder: “Benny, is that baby yours?”

  He smiled upon her with love. “Carol, Carol,” he said, “they’re all mine.”

  He stumbled then, and fell heavily, so that the pain was sharp, he seemed to have fallen on his chest, and Carol had gripped his arm, much too tightly; he wanted to call out to her and ask her to ease her grip. His face was pressed into the wet grass, and the blades of grass were gigantic; there was one directly before his eyes, a gigantic bowed blade of grass with a single swollen drop of dew perched upon it, shot with all the colors of all the rainbows he had ever seen. He thought of nothing and no one. He heard his name called, a high, quavering morning cry; and that was all.

  Where do we walk? Into the night. How do we walk? Heads up and ready for trouble. (Jacob said nothing, but wept, and rent his garments, and grew small.) Life is a riddle and death is the only answer, and each man dies alone. (Carol raged and ached: “Now what? Now what?” She learned what widows learn: to go on.) Benny’s journey took him the road of good and evil, which wizened to better or worse, as love and hate wizened to rue and scorn; he never solved the riddle, but he never quit the quest. (Joseph and Sarah survived.) Benny knew that the answer was unimportant, a mere ceasing, and only the riddle mattered, or the riddling, the seeking and straining, yes, the old word, the striving, the strength to say no, to hold out, to do justly and love mercy, to see your own sins in the sins of others, to resist the strong and succour the weak, and to love men and women and children, the whole miserable, selfish, cowardly, pullulating lot of them, with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might, because then weeds beat scurvy! and Benny lives!

  About the Author

  Stephen Becker (1927–1999) was an American author, translator, and teacher whose published works include eleven novels and the English translations of Elie Wiesel’s The Town Behind the Wall and André Malraux’s The Conquerors. He was born in Mount Vernon, New York, and after serving in World War II, he graduated from Harvard University and studied in Peking and Paris, where he was friends with the novelist Richard Wright and learned French in part by reading detective novels. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Becker taught at numerous schools throughout the United States, including the University of Iowa, Bennington College, and the University of Central Florida in Orlando. His best-known works include A Covenant with Death (1965), which was adapted into a Warner Brothers film starring Gene Hackman and George Maharis; When the War Is Over (1969), a Civil War novel based on the true story of a teenage Confederate soldier executed more than a month after Lee’s surrender; and the Far East trilogy of literary adventure novels: The Chinese Bandit (1975), The Last Mandarin (1979), and The Blue-Eyed Shan (1982).

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1973 by Stephen Becker

  Cover design by Kat JK Lee

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-2692-5

  This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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