by Robert Stone
“No,” Dieter said. “I heard it.” He sat down slowly on a chair beside Hicks’. “Ray—did you put a rocket in a police car? Did you kill an agent down there?”
“They’re killing each other,” Hicks said. “They’re nuts, the greedy bastards. I got a car, that’s all I know. Give me some water.”
Dieter brought him a drink of creek water in a ceramic bowl.
“Where’s your girl?”
“They split.” He stood up, tried to move the arm above his wound and sat down again.
“If they got through they’ll meet me. I’ve got to get to route eight before the heat comes in.”
“Ray, that’s her husband down there. If they’re alive they won’t be looking for you.”
Dieter searched among the shadows for his glass of wine.
“We’ll go,” he said. “We’ll get out of here for a while.” He found his glass atop the refrigerator and drained it. “Maybe for good. Maybe it’s time.”
“I’m gonna walk that wetback trail out of here. She’ll get him to pick me up.” Hicks stood with difficulty and walked to the altar where the pack was and sat down beside it.
Dieter looked at the pack, holding his empty glass.
“The first thing we’ll do is toss that bad medicine.”
Hicks wiped the sweat from his eyes.
“Here’s what you do, Dieter. You take my works and cook up and hit me here—” he tapped his limp left arm with his right hand. “Because I got pain there. Then help me strap the fucker on.”
When he had the shot he nodded off into rain. Dieter had poured something ice cold over the wound and was taping bedsheeting over it with Band-aids.
“You’re bleeding a lot, you know that?”
“You should have seen me last time.”
He put a hand on Dieter’s shoulder to move him out of the way and vomited explosively across the stone floor.
“It looks awful,” Dieter said, when he had finished the bandage. “It’s huge.”
“Beautiful,” Hicks said. “Now strap it on.”
Dieter wiped his hands on the extra sheeting.
“We’re going down to the village. We’ll pick up my boy and ride out with Galindez. Can you walk?”
“I can walk fine,” Hicks said. “Give me a hand with the pack.”
“Galindez won’t carry dope. It’s against his religion.” Dieter picked up the pack and shook it. “This goes, you hear me? You came here to get rid of it and that’s what we’ll do.”
Hicks reached out and seized the pack by a strap. Dieter pried it from his fingers.
“That’s called grasping, remember? Grasping is ignorance.” He backed away, holding the backpack beyond Hicks’ reach. “There is no payoff in grasping.”
“Dieter damnit, don’t fuck around.”
“We’re at a primitive stage in our development,” Dieter said. “But we shall learn from our mistakes.”
Hicks stared at him, fighting off another nod in the rain.
“No nonsense, no vulgarization. No occultism, no lambs, no dope. Strength!” Dieter cried. “Discipline! Love! Words much debased—nevertheless I dare to speak them.”
Hicks turned around in his chair to see whom it was that Dieter was speaking them to.
“You’re drunk, Dieter. Hand it over.”
“I know how you are,” Dieter said. “I understand you better than anyone else in the world. I love you more than anyone else in the world. I know your courage and your obstinacy.” He was red-faced and swaying. He kept shaking the bag. Hicks reached out and made a swipe at it but his fingers never came close. “This is not strength, Hicks. It goes.”
He marched down the altar. On the last step, he tripped and the pack fell from his hands and into the streaks of Hicks’ vomit.
Hicks tried to stand without success.
Dieter scurried after the pack and picked it up.
“Look at it, Hicks. It’s full of puke and blood! On the inside it’s all illusion and false necessity. It’s suffering human ignorance. It’s hell!”
“Sounds good,” Hicks said.
“The truth is,” Dieter said, “that I talk too much.” His slack mouth broke into a smile. “This was perhaps the problem all along.”
“Einsicht! he shouted. “Agenbite of inwit! I’m a runner-over at the mouth. If I had kept my mouth shut—who knows?” He extended the bag toward Hicks. “With this goes my wine and my loquacity.” His eyes filled with tears. “Oh Hicks—listen to me! We begin again. We begin. Again. First I throw it.”
“Sounds good but it’s my dope. You bring it back here.”
Dieter watched him as slowly and painfully he unslung the M-16 from around his good shoulder. He stood the weapon on its stock and caught it by the trigger housing as it tipped.
“You’re wired into grasping,” Dieter told him. “You’ve got to fight.”
“Dope got you up this mountain, Dieter, and you figure dope’s gonna get you down. Dope is what you’re all about, man. You think I don’t know the difference between what’s real and what’s not? You think you’re gonna bluff me out of my good shit and con yourself another mountain with it?”
“It appears to be evil,” Dieter assured some interested presence, “but it is in fact mere ignorance. The first is actually nonexistent and the second is mistaken for it.”
He started for the door. He was afraid and Hicks found his fear enraging.
“Where do you think you’re going, Dieter? I’ll kill you, man!”
Dieter turned, his mouth quivering with fear and disgust.
“I’ll kill you, man!” he shouted mockingly back at Hicks. “That’s the slogan of this stupid age! The land of dope and murder! You accuse me of coveting this filth?”
“You’re the greatest show on earth,” Hicks said. “But you’re not conning me out of that pack.”
Dieter’s legs trembled.
Hicks lowered his good shoulder to cradle the stock under his arm and started down the steps.
“Bring it here, Dieter.”
“It goes,” Dieter said. “You’re stoned, you’re delirious.” He backed further away, toward the door. “Dope is not what I’m all about,” he said. “What I’m all about is much stronger than this.” He drew himself up and closed his eyes for a moment, trying for instant serenity. “This is one I have to win.”
He turned and walked carefully out the front door and down the steps.
Hicks sauntered after him.
The space outside the mission building was bathed in light from the spotlights on the tower. Dieter was striding purposefully across the plaza toward the cliff. Darkness commenced about thirty feet ahead of him, and the paths down began in that darkness. Hicks smiled at Dieter’s cleverness.
“Hey, Dieter. You’re not gonna make it, man.” He released the safety and brought the clip up into Fire position.
Well, they just kept coming, he thought, one of them after another. Pieces and bayonets, lies and cunning and deviousness but none of them were worth a shit. None of them could take him off.
“You’re not gonna make it, Dieter.”
Dieter stopped and turned toward him.
Hicks sighed and sat down on the top step.
“Please,” Dieter said. His own spotlights dazzled his eyes. He raised a hand to shield them.
Hicks laughed.
“No, Dieter. No, Dieter. You just bring that on back here, man.”
Dieter performed a fat man’s shuffle and began running for darkness.
Hicks spread his legs out behind him on the top step and crouched over his weapon. He brought the barrel up.
All right—
Dieter made for the darkness, for a moment he was out of sight. A moment later his running figure was visible against trees, totally available against the moonlit sky.
You dumb—
A little man running against the trees, Hicks thought, I’ve hit that one before. And Dieter wasn’t so little, he was paunchy and slow.
Son of a bitch.
Look at his dumb ass up against that pretty sky.
All right you dumb son of a bitch.
An automatic round—it sprayed him with shells and splintered the fence he was trying to climb. Hicks walked down the steps through the smoke and over the still clattering cartridges. He went across the plaza toward the cliff. In Nam, he would have fired another two clips into the darkness as he came.
Dieter was lying on his belly under the remnants of his fence. His wrist jerked. Hicks walked up and kicked him. The pack was not beneath his body.
After a while, Hicks found it, quite near the cliff edge.
So he threw it, Hicks thought. He was running for the edge and he threw it.
“For Christ’s sake,” Hicks said.
Dieter had not been taking him off. Of course not. Not Dieter.
It was a gesture. A gesture—he was going to throw it over because there was no fire for him to throw it in.
Throw it over was what he had said. A gesture.
“What the hell, Dieter,” Hicks said. “I thought you were taking me off.”
It was one he had to win. He was trying to get it on again. He was being stronger.
Damn it, if you’re going to make a gesture you have to have some grace, some style, some force. You have to have some Zen. If you act like a drunken thief, and people haven’t seen you in a while, they’re likely to think that’s what you are.
He had certainly fucked his gesture.
“Semper fi,” Hicks said. The pain came up again, he sat on a standing part of the fence in the rain.
Lousy stupid thing. Like the Battle of Bob Hope. Like everything else.
During the long and painful time it took to get the pack on his back, he put it out of his mind.
Walk.
The first part of the walk was through happy forest; Dieter’s knickknacks flickered in the moonlight and the earth was soft and mossy under his feet. He fell several times, experiencing with gratitude the tenderness of the ground and its reluctance to injure. Disneyland. Each time he had to stand up again, he felt the throb and although it was diffused, its fangs drawn by the drug, he was sorry that it had happened.
Another sort of light was creeping up on him; it seemed at first to come from the trees. Morning. In spite of what it meant, he was innocently glad to see it.
His satisfaction in the coming light made him feel like an ordinary man with a child at his core, out walking one morning for pleasure. He was tempted by anger and self-pity.
The light was not good news and the sentiments were the stuff that killed, the warrior’s enemy.
Hungry bluejays chattered. He touched his side and felt blood flowing. When the pie was opened, his child’s voice prattled, the birds began to sing. He wondered if in their hunger and ferocity the screeching jays might not be tempted by the blood and the mauled flesh. There were things that lived in wounds.
At the edge of the trees was a cattle gate strung with wire. He unhooked the wire loop and stepped carefully over a rusted grid and into a high meadow where the tall dew-covered grass soaked his trouser legs. The sun was rising over purple hills behind him; the track ahead led downward into a canyon that was crowned with tortured rock spires like the towers of the pagodas along the Cambodian Mekong.
He walked down on his heels, arching his back to support the weight of the pack, gripping the stock of his slung M-70 to keep it from knocking against his thigh.
The Fool.
Down had a rhythm of its own, bad for discipline because the lowered foot on striking sloping ground caused the body to lurch and lose cadence, broke up concentration. The temptation was to coast, let the feet find their own quick way down—an ankle buster. To hold back and descend deliberately was work. He detached, thought of the water that would be at the bottom, watched for rattlesnakes, and imagined the wild pigs whose tusks had tested the trail for buried oak balls. By the time the rising sun touched the tops of the pagoda spires over the canyon, he was into shade. The canyon bottom was cool, but windless and rank smelling. It filled him with suspicion and he walked tensely, ready to crouch and unsling his weapon.
The canyon opening was a hole in the wall, so narrow that he had to turn sideways to advance through it. When he was out, he saw the flat before him. The near edge of it was still in shade; across its yellow stony surface, balls of tumbleweed ran before a wind he could not feel in his protected place. At the end of it were round brown mountains; they were an insupportable distance away, but he would not have to walk that far to reach the road. Miles out, the dun color of the ground gave way to something unearthly, a glowing twinkling substance without color that grew brighter as the sun strengthened and sent off waves of heat that made the mountains shimmer. A line of rusted tracks, supported by mummified crossties, shot dead straight across the barren.
Between the desert and himself were shaded grass and a small stream that ran down from red boulders to nourish three cottonwoods and a lone stunted oak. He followed the stream and rested among the trees, ran the cold water over his face and filled his canteen. In trying to drink from it, he did a foolish thing. As he lowered his face to the water, the backpack slid forward over his neck and the strap tightened on his torn underarm; the pain made him straighten up and increased the pressure. He let himself slip into the water and got the pack so that he had it hanging from one strap balanced on his right shoulder. The water hurt at first, but in a few moments it felt very good indeed. When he climbed out, he noticed for the first time how swollen his left arm was and that he could not move it, not at all. Spot of bother.
He threw away the captured pistols and most of his M-16 clips. In spite of its weight, he could not bring himself to leave the rifle. Conditioning, something—he could not imagine such a walk without it. He kept two clips, one in the weapon, an extra in the pack.
The edge of shade had narrowed when he started out. The farther he went from the canyon wall, the more the wind rose and it was against him. That shaded part was a stroll. The moment he stepped out under the sun, the wound began to bother him.
A triangle and a song. First to keep the brilliant sunlight from the base of his skull, then to assemble the figure—black background, blue triangle, red circle. The pain in the circle looked like it might catch fire in the heat. It wasn’t easy to get it all in there, it took a while. The song wasn’t easy either because there were so many things to think about.
Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate bodhi swaha. That was cool all right, that was lovely but you might disappear into it, pass out and bake.
Form is not different from nothingness. Nothingness is not different from form. They are the same.
Try a little nothingness.
Nothingness was cool too but you couldn’t count cadence to it. It helped with the triangle but it certainly didn’t make you feel like walking.
Well, he thought, the old songs are the good songs, they used to say.
He sang as he walked beside the tracks. He had tried walking over the ties and of course that was murder. Walking beside them was the only way.
“I don’t know,” he sang.
“But I been told
Eskimo pussy
Is Mighty Cold
Your left.”
P.I. without sandfleas and hotter. P.I. reminded him of salt. He took the shaker bag from his pocket and had a lick. Your left. The pain was contained, he was covering ground.
Can pussy be cold? Yes. No.
Philosophical discussion at the Little Tun, Yokasuka, F.P.O. San Francisco.
Converse, can pussy be cold? How would he know?
Eskimo pussy might be funky from wintering fur pants but it wouldn’t be cold in any weather. An eskimo granny—put her out on the ice to starve, by and by her pussy will be cold.
That’s not what the song’s about. The song’s about walking—picking them up and putting them down, that’s what the song’s about.
Etsuko was a clean girl. And smart. Full of surprises, always something happenin
g with her. Very straight head, many laughs.
Look at me Etsukee, I’m out here with my weapon in this terrible place, how you like them apples?
I don’t worry ’cause it makes no difference now.
No Hank Williams songs, please, it bothers the triangle.
It seemed to him that he could still hear the birds in Dieter’s forest. He resisted thè impulse to run and gauge the distance he had covered. It wasn’t possible. It was too far, there were no birds where he was, there was no place for them to lit, nothing for them out there. We hope.
More blood, and we don’t really know how bad it is. Nothing to do but walk however.
There was one really subversive thought, one sorry piece of negative thinking: You’ll never do it twice. Walking away from the Battle of Bob Hope was one thing and this was something else. This was twice.
Negativity.
He took a deep breath and gathered up the pain. It was hard to gather. Stack it like hay? Draw it up with a siphon? Put it in something.
Where’s thai triangle?
But maybe it’s a mistake to separate it like that. Maybe it’s ignorant to keep it off by itself where it just gets angrier and angrier, festers in there waiting to creep out and cripple you. If you set it in there locked up like that you might be keeping it going.
Experiment. Get with it, and for all you know it’ll disappear. It’s part of you—you’ve always got something sore on you, burned lips, hangnails, blisters, toothaches. It’s just you, there’s always some pain around.
Merge, it’s you, you’re it. The triangle dissolved and he embraced the pain.
No, he decided immediately. Indeed not!
The experiment had gone so badly he had to stop walking. It was unmanageable.
He stood staring down at the tracks. The hot metal glowed right through its coat of dust and oxidation, blinding him.
Get back in there, you fucker, you ain’t no friend of mine.
Those All Is One numbers were very difficult to employ in practice.
I’ll try it again, he thought, when I’m a hundred and ten years old and the birds bring me flowers.
It broke down between what hurt and what didn’t and the difference seemed very important. That was as it should be. If you couldn’t tell the difference between what hurt and what didn’t, you had no business being alive. You can’t have any good times if you can’t tell. If you don’t know the difference between busting your toe and a glass of beer, where are you? That was Converse’s trouble.
