Robert Stone - Dog Soldiers

“We’ve dealt with the moral objections,” Converse said.

Hicks slumped down in his chair and leaned his chin on his fist, watching Converse.

“Let me tell you something funny,” he said. “I met Mary Microgram in Frisco last year.”

Mary Microgram was a girlfriend of Converse’s. They had parted bitterly.

“You know what she told me? She told me you said I was a psychopath.”

Converse looked chastened.

“It must have been some drunken piss-off. I really know better than that.”

Hicks laughed.

“You bad-mouth me. You threaten me with the fucking CIA and claim you turned me. Then when you need honesty and self-discipline you come to me.”

“When I was with Mary,” Converse said, “I was very fucked up.”

“It’s outrageous,” Hicks said. “I was hurt.”

A burst of automatic-weapons fire sounded from across the bay. Searchlights played on the water, sweeping the line of palms on the far shore. Converse turned wearily in the direction of the noise.

“Sappers?”

“There ain’t no sappers,” Hicks said. “It’s all a beautiful hoax.”

Why not, he thought. There was nothing else going down. He felt the necessity of changing levels, a little adrenalin to clean the blood. It was interesting and kind of scary. Converse and his old lady would be a scene; he had never seen her.

“I’ll carry your scag, John. But you better see I get treated right. Self-defense is an art I cultivate.”

Converse was smiling.

“I didn’t think there was ever much question about it.”

“No,” Hicks said.

Converse looked at the briefcase.

“You have anything you want in that case,” Hicks said, “take it with you now. Otherwise just leave like it is.”

“Just like that?”

“Like it is.” Converse went downstairs and brought up two cans of beer and two large gin and tonics. When he had taken a sip of the cold drink, he began to tremble again. “You’re mad,” Hicks told him, “a great mind — warped — twisted.” It was an old movie line they had played with twelve years before in the Marine Corps.

Converse seemed particularly elated. He raised his glass.

“To Nietzsche.”

They drank to Nietzsche. It was adolescence. A time trip.

Another burst of fire came from the opposite shore.

“I better get back to the Oscar,” Converse said. “I’ll miss curfew.”

Hicks set his empty beer can down.

“What did you come here for? If I’m a psychopath, what are you?”

Converse was still smiling.

“I’m a writer. I wanted to see it.” His eyes followed the searchlights on the bay. “I suppose there was an element of guilt.”

“That’s ironic.”

“Yes,” Converse said. “It’s distinctly ironic.”

They fell silent for a while.

“I’m tired of being bothered,” Converse said. He rested his hand on the briefcase. “I feel like this is the first real thing I ever did in my life. I don’t know what the other stuff was about.”

“You mean you enjoy it?”

“No,” Converse said. “I don’t mean that at all.”

“It’s a funny place,” Hicks said.

“Let smiles cease,” Converse said. “Let laughter flee. This is the place where everybody finds out who they are.”

Hicks shook his head.

“What a bummer for the gooks.”

Converse looked at his watch and then rubbed his shoulders as if he were warming them.

“You can’t blame us too much. We didn’t know who we were till we got here. We thought we were something else.” He took a large swallow of gin and tonic. “Hey, did you hear about the elephants?”

Hicks smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “The poor elephants.”

“The poor elephants,” Converse said. They laughed together in the dark.

Converse’s face was as wet as if he had been immersed. The drink was making him sweat.

“It’s a Buddhist country. They must have a fantastic traffic in the transmigration of souls. Elephants and missionaries. Porpoises, sappers, lizards. Listen,” he said suddenly, “I’m cold. Is it cold?”

“It’s your fever. Go see the duty master-at-arms across the road. Maybe he can get you a ride to the gate.”

Converse stood up and turned his back on the briefcase.

“You’d better be careful,” Hicks told him. “It’s gone funny in the states.”

“It can’t be funnier than here.”

“Here everything’s simple,” Hicks said. “It’s funnier there. I don’t know who you’re running with but I bet they got no sense of irony.” Converse stood over him, a bit unsteadily. He swung his arm in a broad gesture. “As of now it can rain blood and shit,” he said. “I got nowhere to go.”

He walked down the wooden steps carefully. His sore right arm swung liberated; he felt gloriously free. As he reached the bottom step, it occurred to him that Hicks was probably a psychopath after all.

THE LAST MAN STOOD AT THE WINDOW, SQUINTING AS though he saw his life’s resolution off at a great distance, bathed in light. When the ticket popped out, he spread his thick fingers over the smooth metal surface of the dispenser and groped for it unseeing.

A true groper, Marge thought. His fingers sought the pink ticket like blind predatory worms; finding it, they came moistly together, pressed it down, and slid it out of sight over the ledge. Marge identified with the ticket.

Every once in a while, Marge would steal a glance at the faces of her customers but for the most part she watched their fingerwork.

The last man paused for a moment at the rear of the booth to peer downward through the glass. He had transferred the ticket to his left hand; the talented right was already in his trouser pocket. Marge was not alarmed. She realized that the man wanted to see her ass. But Marge had hung her sweater over the back of her chair so there was nothing to see. She had not done it out of spite but merely for convenience.

“C’mon, Jack,” Holy-o told the last man. Holy-o stood beside the tin doors and took tickets. He took the last man’s ticket, dropped the house stub in a wooden box, and closed the doors.

Holy-o had a truncheon in which he had carved designs — animal shapes and what he imagined to be the gods of his native Samoa. The truncheon hung by a leather thong from a screw eye in the oak ticket box. With the doors closed on the last man, Holy-o took his truncheon from its hook and stood out on the sidewalk in front of Marge’s booth, cradling the club in his hands like a riot policeman.

Marge and Holy-o were waiting for the fellas to arrive.

The fellas arrived within two minutes of the last man. They double-parked their Thunderbird directly in front of the box office and climbed out briskly. They were well-groomed, clean-shaven young men with olive complexions. They both wore khaki half coats and one of them had a peaked waterproof cap with a belt that buckled in the back.

“Hiya, Holy-o.” They came directly to the door of Marge’s booth.

“Hiya, fellas,” Holy-o said.

Marge opened up while the fellas looked the street over. Sometimes when they came, the fellas would see people whose appearance troubled them. If the troublesome-look ing people were white, the fellas called them hard-ons. If they were black, they called them jigs. The fellas called the regular Third Street people and the customers of the theater mooches or mushes. Marge was never sure which.

“Hiya, sweetheart.” It was the one with the hat who carried the bag. Marge slipped her cash drawer out of its place and locked it.

“Hi,” she said. She thought of him as Hat. Once when she had been really fucked up she had said, “Hi, Hat.” She had been so fucked up that night she had been shortchanging herself instead of the mooches. Or mushes.