Robert Stone - Dog Soldiers

When the lamp failed, he missed her eyes, although she clung to him.

He tried to make himself believe she had been with him in the shivering moment from which they had begun; there were no words to ask with. Not knowing caused him a stab of loneliness before he slept.

Much later, he woke up in darkness, thinking he heard footsteps outside. He rose quickly, stepped over her and prowled the windows. She was awake when he came back.

“What happens tomorrow?” she asked.

“Dig it.” He put his finger against her belly and moved it downward until the tip pressed her labia. His lips were close against her ear. “We’re dead.”

SOMEONE HAD DRAWN A DEVIL ON THE WALL ABOVE Janey’s crib. It had horns and bat wings and a huge erect phallus; there was enough characterization in the details of the face to make it distinctly frightening.

Converse sat in Janey’s bedroom with his back to the thing. He had found the refrigerator working, but the meat in it had blackened and the milk soured. There had also been a bottle of cassis inside and Converse drank some with the idea that it might keep him awake while he decided what to do. He was nearly too tired to sit upright.

When she had not turned up at the airport and no one had answered the phone, he had taken a taxi from Oakland which had cost him over twenty-five dollars.

Through the back-door windows he could watch evening drawing over the hills. From time to time he would turn on the drawing, acting out the thought that it might disappear, a hallucination of his fatigue. But it did not disappear and before long he could not stop looking at it. Sometimes he thought he recognized people he had seen somewhere, and he searched the features for some sort of clue.

Things were funnier over here.

After sitting for an hour, Converse decided to have a word with Mr. Roche, his landlord. Mr. Roche was a tiny man who lived in a bungalow behind the apartment building. As Converse walked across Mr. Roche’s lawn, the unfamiliar wind, cold and sour, chilled him and added to his fear.

It took Converse several minutes to draw Mr. Roche from cover. Although Mr. Roche owned the building in which Converse lived, it pleased him to pretend to be the manager. In that capacity he could refer to himself reverentially as “The Boss.” Mr. Roche stood slightly over five feet and had fine womanly Irish features. His face, like his apartment house, was his late mother’s. Converse ad dressed him across two lengths of chain lock.

“Hi,” Converse said, as though attempting to elicit a welcome of some sort. Mr. Roche seemed to dislike Converse and his family, so intensely that Converse often wondered why he had rented to them in the first place.

Mr. Roche smiled a great deal; his life was not easy.

“I’m just back from overseas,” Converse explained. “My wife’s out now and I wondered if she left any messages for me.”

“No,” Mr. Roche said. His smile broadened and his eyes twinkled with whimsy.

Mr. Roche was a member of the parish Holy Name Society and of the American Party. He had once owned a dog named MacDuff. One evening while Mr. Roche was walking MacDuff on Ponderosa Street, a column of Gypsy Jokers had rounded the corner and the point rider’s ma chine had struck MacDuff and crushed his spine. The rider was overthrown. When Mr. Roche, in his bereavement, had remonstrated with the group, the thrown Gypsy Joker had seized him and battered his small head against the curb until he was unconscious. It had been expensive, even with Blue Cross and Medi-Cal. The incident had made Mr. Roche, who was not adventurous, even more wary. When a representative of the American Party called on Mr. Roche to solicit contributions and discuss American ism, Mr. Roche denied his membership and even pretended to be someone else altogether.

“Well,” Converse asked, “do you know when she went out?”

“Days ago,” Mr. Roche said. “Days ago.” He shook his head in what appeared to be good-natured disapproval. “I understand there was some kind of trouble,” he added softly.

“What kind of trouble? Where did you hear about trouble?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Mr. Roche said. “I think it was one of the fellas that drives the trucks.”

“Trucks?” Converse asked. He yawned convulsively.

“She didn’t pay any rent for next month. The boss’ll want you out.”

“Look, I’ll write you a check tomorrow. Don’t worry about rent.”

“He’ll want you out. There’s been people coming in.”

Mr. Roche closed the door.

From the apartment, Converse telephoned the Odeon. A girl there told him that Marge had not turned up for a week or so. He drank another glass of cassis, looked at the devil picture for a while, and picked up the telephone to call Elmer.

But in the course of dialing he became uneasy about the security of his telephone. He replaced the receiver and decided to use the pay phone in the liquor store on the corner.

He went quickly along the block. It was nearly dark; the empty sidewalks and the ranks of huge headlighted American cars at the intersection frightened him. Passing under the dead eyes of the liquor store clerks, he dialed Elmer’s special number at a phone beside the beer cooler. Elmer believed, with some reason, that Pacific Publications’ phones were tapped and he had personally installed a separate phone in one of the Nightbeat closets for the purpose of receiving private calls.

“Jesus Christ,” Elmer said. “Where are you calling from?”

“A pay phone in Berkeley. Look — something weird is happening.”

Elmer cut him off. “I know about it. Come and see me.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now. Do you know who’s following you?”

“Nobody,” Converse said, realizing at the same moment that he must be wrong.

“That’s impossible. Find out who it is and lose them on your way here. Do it right.” Converse’s weary brain resisted instruction. He leaned his forehead on the cold metal surface of the freezer.

“I guess I’m in trouble.”

“So it would seem,” Elmer said.

As he walked out of the store a peculiar image thrust itself on his recall. The image was of steam rising from the shower room of the Yokasuka brig. For a moment, he experienced the image with intense clarity — the steam, the sound of the water needling the gray cement, the prisoners’ voices. Converse had once stood by outside the showers while the CMPs, the prisoners, beat up a white rat. They had done it on Converse’s watch because they knew he would not interfere. The recollection induced in Converse a sense of utter despair which he found soothing.

For a short time he stood in front of the store, studying the street with as much indifference as he could affect. The corner was empty and, as far as he could tell, so were the parked cars along the curb. He went back into the liquor store and called Yellow Cab.

It was fifteen minutes before the cab arrived. Converse purchased a pint of Gold Leaf Cognac to cultivate the management. When the cab pulled up, he slipped into the back seat and told the long-haired driver to take him to Macy’s. As soon as they were out in traffic, Converse noticed that the headlights of a car parked across the street from the store went on. It was an ordinary-looking tan-colored car and Converse, who knew little about cars, could not tell what make it was without closer examination. It stayed several lengths behind them, all the way across the bridge and into downtown San Francisco. Converse drank his cognac without economy. He could hardly bring it into Macy’s.

At the Grant Avenue doors, he eased the bottle onto the taxi floor, thrust a ten into the driver’s hand, and hurried into Macy’s without looking behind him. He hurried across the crowded street level with such haste and obvious alarm that shoppers turned to look after him. Macy’s was number ten. It smelled of perfume and breath and there were horrible little bells.