Dog Soldiers

by Robert Stone

  Converse drank and washed his face under the tap. He held to the sink to keep from falling over. When he had finished, he hopped back into a chair across the room from Smitty.

  There was a red binding mark around Smitty’s spindly arm; the skin in the crook of his elbow was black and blue. His undersea eyes were at peace.

  “You from New York?” Smitty asked.

  “Yes,” Converse said.

  “You know Yorkville?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know Klavan’s?”

  Converse knew Klavan’s well. It was a bar on Second Avenue in which he had drunk illegally when under the required age. On St. Patrick’s Day, 1955, he had been beaten up there and it was there he had attempted the seduction of Agnes Comerford, a nursing student at Lenox Hill Hospital. He had invested a considerable amount of his life’s energy in transporting himself as far from Klavan’s, in every respect, as he was capable.

  “No,” he said.

  The idea of being held prisoner in a California motel by a denizen of Klavan’s was profoundly distasteful to him.

  “You know, I was in Vietnam too,” Smitty said. “I got fucked up there.”

  “What happened?”

  “I stepped on a pungi stick. Hurt? Jesus! It got me the fuck out of there, though.”

  “Good,” Converse said.

  Smitty glanced over his shoulder at the bed, and listened with satisfaction to Danskin’s asthmatic breathing.

  “Some nut, huh?”

  Converse grunted.

  “You know what his I.Q. is? One hundred and seventy. A rating of genius.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Converse said.

  “You’re riding with the guy and some classical music comes on the pipe—he says that’s Mozart. That’s Beethoven. What good does it do him?”

  “How do you know each other?”

  “Through Antheil. He introduced us.”

  “Antheil’s quite a fella.”

  “He’s the coolest,” Smitty said. “Fuckin’ guy’s got bread stashed away, a beautiful home, chicks coming and going. They say the system don’t work, man—don’t tell that to Antheil.”

  “Does he pay you?”

  “You think I’m out here for nothing? You think I’m a buff?” He tossed his head with self-satisfaction. “I got a crack at a job with the agency after this.”

  “Don’t you have a record?”

  “That don’t mean shit. If Antheil says you’re in, you’re in. And I could really go for that, man.”

  “You could be a second Antheil.”

  “You’re not kidding,” Smitty said.

  “How about Danskin? Does he want to work for the agency too?”

  Smitty looked over his shoulder again and lowered his voice.

  “He’s a brute, man, a psycho. A dude like that couldn’t deal with the public.”

  Converse nodded thoughtfully and slid back onto the floor to sleep. After a few moments, he heard Smitty approach softly. He opened his eyes and turned over on his side.

  “I was married,” Smitty said.

  “Is that right?”

  “I had enough of that, though. It’s stupid.”

  “I suppose it’s a matter of personnel,” Converse said.

  “Look at you,” Smitty told him. “Look at the grief you got.”

  “It’s a funny situation.”

  “You’re lucky we came along, man. We’ll give you some peace of mind.”

  Converse turned his back on Smitty and leaned on his elbow.

  “I seen your old lady,” Smitty said. “She’s big.”

  “Big?” Converse said. “She’s not big.”

  “Yeah, she is. I seen her.”

  “You’re mistaken.”

  “Maybe so,” Smitty said.

  Converse eased away from him. He had been drawing closer and he smelled.

  “My wife’s in Staten Island,” he told Converse. “She got hot pants for this guy twice her age. A guy that owned a restaurant out there.”

  “Maybe,” Converse suggested, “you shouldn’t talk about it.”

  “When I was in the can,” Smitty said, “we did this thing. We’d talk about our old lady—like where they were, what they were doing.”

  Converse pretended sleep.

  “What they look like. How they like to fuck. Whether they were fucking somebody.” He put his hand on Converse’s shoulder and shook him. “Right?”

  “Right,” Converse said.

  “Some guys couldn’t take it, they went batshit. It would drive you nuts.”

  His hand slid from Converse’s shoulder, along his side, to the inside of his thigh. Converse rolled over convulsively and faced him.

  “Keep your hands off me.”

  Smitty was not discouraged.

  “Your wife is fucking that guy, you know that.”

  “Just keep your hands off me,” Converse said.

  “Keep your hands off him,” Danskin said.

  Smitty jumped as though he had been struck. Danskin was sitting up in bed staring at them with an expression of deep melancholy.

  “Get in bed,” he told Smitty.

  Smitty stood up quickly, brushing his hair.

  “You didn’t take a shower,” Danskin said. “When you gonna take one?”

  “In the morning.”

  “Take one now.”

  Smitty went into the bathroom to take a shower. Converse huddled against the wall, with the feeling that Danskin was watching him from the bed.

  In a few minutes, Smitty came out of the bathroom, turned out the table lamp, and climbed into bed with Danskin. It shortly became apparent to Converse, as he lay in the darkness, that Smitty and Danskin were having sex together. As they went at it, he eased silently across the carpet to where the Bacardi was and very carefully brought it down to the floor with him.

  Only fear kept him from retching when he had taken a long drink. When Danskin and Smitty were silent, he crawled to the cot which the management provided for third guests, climbed in it, and pulled the spread over him.

  He dreamed of Charmian.

  The following morning they started early and drove almost until dusk without stopping. It was superhighway driving through the desert; Danskin and Smitty took turns behind the wheel and they became more tense as the day passed. There were dried apricots and candy to eat and more Bacardi. Converse drank the better part of the rum. They did not make him wear cuffs in the car.

  About seven, they left the Interstate and drove with the declining sun on their right through fields of green crops and small farming towns. High brown mountains rose ahead of them.

  Once Converse woke to conversation.

  “You told him you were in Vietnam. I heard you.”

  “I was,” Smitty said.

  Danskin looked over his shoulder and saw that Converse was awake.

  “He was never in Vietnam. He was never anywhere except Haight-Ashbury and the slammer.”

  Smitty sat and sulked.

  “But when he gets going,” Danskin said, “he tells stories like you could never forget. Ears cut off. Balls cut off. Little kiddies on bayonets. The most awful shit you ever heard.” He turned to smile at Smitty and wiped sweat from his forehead. “And the kicker is—he was never there.”

  “How do you know I was never there?” Smitty said.

  “That’s his way of making out, you know what I mean. He meets a chick and right away she’s hearing about the atrocities. ‘And then I machine-gunned all the kids. And then I strangled all their grannies. And then we set the mayor on fire.’ He goes on and on—and you know what?”

  “They love it,” Converse said.

  Danskin laughed with satisfaction.

  “Your fuckin’ A. They love it. The more ghastly, the more horrible, the more they love it.”

  “Jesus,” Smitty said, “you’re embarrassing.”

  “Then he gives them the switcheroo. He tells them how he was punished for disobeying orders. The general, ‘
Smitty, take these nuns out and bury them alive in shit.’ Smitty says, ‘Fuck you, general.’ He punches the general in the mouth and they put him in the joint. That’s what he did time for, he tells them.”

  “I don’t know,” Converse said.

  “What don’t you know? Did they do all that shit over there? Is it all true?”

  “Some of it isn’t, obviously. Some of it is.”

  “Man,” Smitty said, “if I was a writer I’d be rich. I ought to do that with you, Converse. I tell you stuff and you write it down.”

  “You stupid fuck,” Danskin said, “people always say that to writers. Now he thinks you’re an asshole.”

  “Not necessarily,” Converse said. “Sometimes people tell me things and I write it.”

  “Then you get the bread,” Smitty said, “and they get shit.”

  “Not anymore,” Converse said. As they drove through fields he told them about the stories he had written for Nightbeat. He told them about the Skydiver and the Mad Dentist. He told them Exploding Cigar Kills Nine, Hoarder Crushed By Small Change, and Wedding Night Trick Breaks Bride’s Back. They were amused and it passed the driving time agreeably.

  Smitty was a bit shocked.

  “How can they put stuff in the papers if it’s not true? Isn’t it against the law?”

  Danskin whooped in scorn.

  “Not at all,” Converse said.

  “You should talk,” Danskin said to Smitty. “Not a true word comes out of your mouth.” He sat thoughtfully for a few minutes and then exploded with laughter.

  “You and your pungi stick,” he cried. “One time you’re gonna tell that story one time too many, man. Then you know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna make one of those things and put it right through your foot.” He leaned into the back seat and slapped Converse on the shoulder. “Right through his fuckin’ foot I’ll put it. Then he could talk about how it hurts.”

  They drove through long shadows in golden light; the road followed a ridge overlooking the valley, then turned south in hairpin curves over high treeless passes through the mountains. In one of the passes they pulled off the paved highway and parked out of sight of it, among limestone boulders. Below, the ground sloped to a brown depression with a pool of slow-moving muddy water at its bottom.

  “Let’s take a rest,” Danskin said.

  They climbed out of the car and made their way down the slope. Danskin carried the rum and a plastic gallon can.

  “It’s a hole,” Danskin said, looking up to the hills around them. “It’s a literal hole.” He threw the plastic can to Smitty. “Fill it up for the radiator. It’s all dry from here.”

  He took a sip of rum and passed the bottle to Converse.

  “How you doing, Mr. Converse?”

  “O.K.,” Converse said.

  “You’re pretty cool, considering.”

  “Well, I decided to come. I might as well live with it.”

  “You decided? What do you mean you decided? You think you could have walked away?”

  Converse looked at the sky. Far above, beyond hearing, the tiny silver body of an airplane inched across the cloudless blue. It occurred to him that he had spent a great deal of time on the ground wishing he were in the air, and rather a lot of time in aircraft wishing he were on the ground.

  “Well, it doesn’t matter now, does it?” It was a perfect place to kill someone, he thought. A shot would probably be heard for miles—but there was no one within miles to hear. From the top of the pass they had not seen a single sign of human habitation, not a fence, not a wire. Only the plane, six miles up.

  “You’re indifferent?”

  “I’m trying.”

  Danskin reached inside his gray cardigan and removed a pistol. He sat down on a rock and leaned the gun on his knee so that the barrel was pointed a few inches to the left of Converse’s leg.

  “See this thing?”

  Looking at the gun made Converse sleepy. His eyelids grew heavy.

  “Sure I see it.”

  “Looks like a regular thirty-eight?”

  “I don’t know anything about handguns. I had a forty-five once. I could take it apart and clean it.” He shrugged. “That was a while ago.”

  “This is what it shoots.” Danskin took a small canvas roll from his breast pocket and held it out for Converse’s inspection. “That’s the slug. It doesn’t penetrate. It flattens out on contact and mashes the shit out of anything it hits. Makes a wide shallow hole.”

  Converse yawned.

  “That’s what the air marshals carry,” Danskin said. “Remember that if you feel like hijacking a plane.”

  Smitty was carrying the plastic can up the side of a rock where wildflowers grew. The climb was steep and he went slowly.

  “Work for it,” Danskin called to him. “Work for it, mother.” He shook his head. “He’s gonna do up,” he told Converse.

  “Has he a habit?”

  Danskin shrugged.

  “Sometimes he shoots a bag by himself. Sometimes he doesn’t. I think it’s the spike he likes.”

  They watched him climb until he disappeared behind the top of the rock.

  “He’s shy,” Danskin said primly.

  “He tells me he’s looking for a job in the agency.”

  “Who, Smitty? Smitty doesn’t have the intelligence of an Airedale. He can’t tell the difference between a nickel and i a quarter. How’s he gonna be in the agency?”

  “He says Antheil’ll get him in.”

  “Sure. He can be whatever he wants. He can be governor, he can fly. That’s what Antheil tells him.”

  “What does he tell you?”

  Danskin shook his head slowly. “Don’t, man.”

  “Just curiosity,” Converse said. “I know why Smitty works for him. I couldn’t help wondering why you did.”

  “I like it. I’m a student of the passing parade.”

  Smitty appeared at the top of the rock; his arms napped loosely at his sides as he scampered down the face of it. He waddled in a contracting circle beside the water and sprawled on the ground.

  “Hey, man,” Smitty called happily.

  Danskin smiled indulgently down at him.

  “Hey, Smitty.”

  “You know what, Danskin? It’s too bad we can’t have a fire.”

  “It’s too bad we can’t toast marshmallows. It’s too bad we can’t have a sing-a-ling.” Asthmatic laughter shook him, he wrinkled the folds of flesh around his eyes. “You’re a child.”

  Danskin walked over to where Smitty lay and stood over him.

  “You want me to tell you scary stories?”

  Giggling, Smitty covered up and crawled away from Danskin’s feet.

  “No, man.”

  “All right for you. No stories.” He turned to Converse and his stare hardened.

  “Why don’t you tell us about Vietnam? What did you do there besides cop scag?”

  “I hung around.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Once I went up the Mekong on a patrol craft with the Navy. And I went into Cambodia with the First Division.”

  Smitty was looking up at him with a loose smile.

  “You kill anybody?”

  “I wasn’t a combatant. I didn’t carry a weapon.”

  “Man, I would have,” Smitty said. “I woulda carried every fuckin’ weapon.”

  “For most people in the line it was firing at leaves or points of light. There isn’t a lot of personal combat.”

  He turned to Danskin and saw in the man’s face a sudden hatred which surprised him, and frightened him as the gun had not.

  “You disapprove of that shit, right?” Dumb unreasoning fury welled in Danskin’s eyes. Converse looked away quickly. “You’re against violence and killing. You’re above it.”

  “I’ve always . . .” Converse began. “Yes,” he said, “I’m against it. I don’t know about being above it.”

  “You have contempt for it, right?”

  He looked into Danskin’s
mad eyes and felt anger. It was an unfamiliar sensation.

  “I’ve seen people kill,” he told Danskin. “It’s not all that terrific. A snake can do it. So can a mosquito or a few thousand ants.”

  “You’re O.K., Converse,” Danskin said. “First you bring people Vietnam scag, then you tell them how it is. So they shouldn’t do the wrong thing and bring you down.” He reached out and gently took the tab of Converse’s collar between his fingers. “Don’t shit me,” he told Converse softly. “You’re a vindictive nasty little prick—I can tell that by looking at your face. But you’re a coward. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Maybe,” Converse said.

  “Maybe, hah? Listen, man, you think I don’t know what you bastards are like? You think I don’t know how you have fantasies—the guy kicks sand in your face you’re gonna kill him? You karate the walls, you talk tough to the mirror. You eat shit all your life and you hate every fucking minute of it and you’d like to fuck over half the country but you have to swallow it because you got no guts.

  I don’t know about that, huh Converse? You think I’m stupid?”

  “No,” Converse said.

  “You think I’m sick?”

  “No.”

  “What am I then?”

  “Ah, man,” Smitty said. “Don’t get twisted. Take it easy.”

  “I could beat you to death, you know that?”

  Smitty stood up and dusted himself off.

  “Sure he knows it, man. What are you trying to prove?”

  “He thinks he’s superior,” Danskin said. “The guy’s a heroin hustler and not even a good one.”

  Biting his lip, he walked away from Converse and started up the slope to the road.

  “Let’s get going. We’ll drive tonight.”

  Smitty gave Converse an apologetic smile.

  “Don’t argue with him, Converse. Let him wail when he’s pissed off.”

  It was nearly dark, the brown hills melding into shadow, the stars out.

  Danskin looked up and down the darkened road and climbed behind the wheel.

  “Sit up here,” he told Converse.

  Smitty climbed in the back and slammed the door.

  “You think it’s a good idea to drive at night like this?” he asked Danskin. “The border patrol rides around up here.”

  Danskin switched on the car lights and started up.

  “They have enough to look for. They don’t have our plates on their list, they shouldn’t bother us.”