Robert Stone - Dog Soldiers

Another was that in the single moment when the breathing world had hurled itself screeching and murderous at his throat, he had recognized the absolute correctness of its move. In those seconds, it seemed absurd that he had ever been allowed to go his foolish way, pursuing notions and small joys. He was ashamed of the casual arrogance with which he had presumed to scurry about creation. From the bottom of his heart, he concurred in the moral necessity of his annihilation.

He had lain there — a funny little fucker — a little stingless quiver on the earth. That was all there was of him, all there ever had been.

He walked from the Red Field into the lobby and there was no place to sit. People passed him and he avoided their eyes. His desire to live was unendurable. It was impossible, not to be borne. He was the celebrated living dog, preferred over dead lions.

Around him was the moronic lobby and outside the box-sided street where people hunted each other. Take it or leave it.

I’ll take it, he thought. To take it was to begin again from nowhere, the funny little fucker would have to soldier on.

Living dogs lived. It was all they knew.

SHE WOKE TO MOONLIGHT, PHOSPHORESCENCE BEHIND HER EYES dimming to sparkles. There was the slamming of a car door. At first she could make no sense of the place.

Hicks was asleep in a chair, his feet up on the writing desk. Moonlight lit half his face.

Standing, her knees trembled, a strange liquescence rippled under her skin. There was a tart chemical taste in her mouth. But it was not sickness, not unpleasant.

Another door slammed, footsteps sounded on the cement patio. She moved the hanging blind and saw Eddie Peace with a red bandana at his throat. It seemed to her that figures moved behind him — but she stepped back when his eyes swept the window where she stood.

Hicks was awake, rubbing his stiff legs.

“It’s them,” she said. “It’s Eddie.”

He went past her in shadow to crouch at the blind.

There was a knock at the door. Over Hicks’ shoulder she saw Eddie Peace before the bungalow door; a blond couple stood behind him. The couple looked very much alike and they were both a head taller than Eddie Peace. They did not, in the odd seconds before Hicks let the blind fall, appear to be the sort of people who knew everyone’s weakness.

“Hello,” Eddie Peace said.

Hicks sped across the room toward the moonlit picture window. “Tell them wait.”

“Just a minute,” Marge called. He peered into the moonlight, pressing his face against the glass.

“Can’t see shit that way.”

“Hey,” Eddie Peace said.

“Don’t let them in yet.”

“Coming,” Marge said.

He seized the backpack from beside the bed, shook it, and disappeared into the bathroom.

“O.K.,” she heard him say through the bathroom door.

She opened to Eddie Peace’s thick-lipped smile.

“Hello ‘dere.”

Eddie led his friends inside. The blonds nodded soberly as they passed.

“Jesus Christ,” Eddie said, “could we have some light?”

When she turned the lights on, Eddie looked around the room.

“So where is he?”

Marge had no answer. The blond couple watched Eddie Peace.

“What’d he do? Take off on you?”

When Hicks came out of the bathroom he held a pistol in either hand; he bore the weapons before his shoulders with the barrels raised like a movie-poster cowboy.

Eddie drew himself and displayed empty hands.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Eddie said. “Look at this!”

The woman looked at Hicks with a sensitive frown. Her companion moved in front of her.

“Buffalo Bill,” Eddie said.

Hicks stared at him and glanced about the room. He was looking for a place to put the pistols down.

“You asshole,” Eddie said. “If I was the narks your ass would be dead.”

“So would yours,” Hicks said. Marge went into the bathroom and brought the backpack out. Hicks put the pistols inside it and slung it around his shoulder by one strap. Then he went to the door and looked outside.

“Don’t you love the guy?” Eddie asked his friends.

The man nodded sadly as though Hicks represented a mode of behavior with which he was wearily familiar. He was a big soft man. He had steel-rimmed spectacles and dim blue priestly eyes. The woman was very like him, as bland to look at but perhaps a shade meaner. They were both wearing light-colored leather jackets and bell-bottom pants. The clothes appeared brand new.

Hicks came back from the door and sat on the bed beside Marge. He set the backpack between them.

“If these people are buying weight,” he told her softly, “things are really getting fucked up.”

Eddie Peace had linked arms with the couple; he hauled them before Hicks’ blank stare.

“These folks, Raymond, are the nicest folks you could ever want to meet. Gerald and Jody — this is Raymond.”

Jody stooped to shake Hicks’, hand as though he were an Indian or a lettuce picker. Gerald saluted briskly.

“Sit,” Hicks said.

Jody spread herself cross-legged on the carpet. Gerald and Eddie Peace took the only chairs.

“Gerry is a writer,” Eddie Peace explained, “and he’s one hell of a writer too. He wants to see the scene.”

“What scene?”

“Oh man, like the old Malibu scene. You know.”

“Man,” Hicks said, “I don’t have a notion.”

“He wants to look at some scag,” Eddie said. “For atmosphere.” He turned toward Gerry in coy apology. “I’m sorry, Gerry — I’m just teasing you. Why don’t you explain yourself to the man.”

“That may not be easy,” Gerald said modestly. He did not like to be called Gerry. Everyone watched him.

“I’m a writer,” he said.

Eddie Peace joined the tips of his thumb and index finger like a billboard chef and blew him a kiss.

“Now scag is a problem… or a phenomenon… that’s important. It’s a subject which has a lot of significance, particularly right now.”

“Particularly right now,” said Eddie.

“I mean,” Gerald told them, “I’ve done dope like a lot of people have. I’ve blown acres of pot in my time and I’ve had some beautiful things with acid. But in all honesty I’ve never been in a scag environment because it just wasn’t my scene.”

“But now,” Marge suggested, “it’s your scene.”

Gerald blushed slightly.

“Not exactly. But it’s something I feel I should address. As a writer. Because of the significance it has.”

“Particularly now,” Marge said.

Eddie looked at her good-humoredly, avoiding Hicks’s eyes.

“Why don’t you shut up?” he asked.

Gerald was looking thoughtfully at Hicks’s bottle of Wild Turkey which stood on the floor beneath the picture window.

“My next project concerns…” he paused for the appropriate word… “drugs. I want to do something honest and real about the heroin scene.”

Eddie Peace nodded approvingly.

“I see it,” Gerald told them, “as a chain. People linked to each other through this incredible almost superhuman need. A chain of victims.”

“Like our whole society,” Jody said.

Eddie Peace sat straight up in his chair.

“That would be a great title for a flick, right, Jody? Chain of Victims!” He winked at Hicks very quickly.

“But somehow I don’t feel as though I have a right to it.” His hands orchestrated a moral balance. “I don’t think I can approach it as a project if I haven’t paid my dues.”

“He wants to cop,” Eddie explained. “He wants you to turn him on. He’ll pay for it.”

“It must strike you as weird,” Gerald said. “It strikes me as weird — but it’s a way of connecting with the project. I mean whatever the risk is I’m prepared to take it. Experience is what makes work valid.” He fixed his earnest eyes on Hicks. “I hope I’m not making you paranoid.”