Robert Stone - Dog Soldiers

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

Smitty appeared at the top of the rock; his arms flapped 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.”

“Antheil should have cooled them.”

“If we get stopped and rousted,” Danskin said, “we take the fall and keep quiet. Antheil can take care of it after. That means you too,” he told Converse.

They rounded curve after curve in the darkness. There were mule deer in the hills and several times Danskin had to halt the car and kill the lights to let them cross the road. Smitty went to sleep in the back.

Converse was dozing when he felt Danskin nudge his elbow.

“Talk,” Danskin said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I’m going to sleep here. Say something and piss me off.” Converse looked at him for a moment and then leaned his head back on the seat and closed his eyes.

“Converse.”

“Yeah?”

“I was locked up for nine years, you know that? In the madhouse. For a violent act.”

“Maybe,” Converse suggested, “you’d rather not talk about it.”

“You don’t want to hear?”

Converse hesitated.

“No,” he said.

Having said it, he turned an anxious glance. He could see Danskin’s face dimly in the panel lights; he seemed to be smiling but one could never be sure. Converse shivered.

“You’ve already impressed me,” he told Danskin. “Save it for the next guy.”

“You ever locked up, Converse?”

“Never.”

“Then you’re a fucking virgin. You don’t know what anything’s about.”

“Yes, I do,” Converse said. “Nineteen sixty to nineteen sixty-nine, I was inside.”

“You missed a lot.”

“You think so?” Danskin snorted with contempt. “I missed nothing. Anything was going on outside, man it was going on in there. Sometimes stuff started in there and hit the street later.”

“That I can believe.”

“When I got there, Converse, I was in a dungeon. There was a guy there — anything they put in with him, he’d eat it. A mattress. Your arm.”

Converse nodded.

“I learned to be a pussycat in there. They’d take me down to the shrink and he’d try to piss me off so the goons could bounce me off the wall. I’d smile.

“Finally I got out into population and that was O.K. Nurses, all kinds of dope. I saw it all, Converse — everything you think I missed. We had civil rights assholes come in there. We had a guy who checked into a hotel in Mobile and lived on canned tortillas and tried to radiate love energy all over Alabama until the cops took him out and tied him up. We had a beatnik poet who wore salami patches on his tweed sport coat. The real Mr. Clean — he was there, he was gonna sue Procter and Gamble. A guy who said he was Fred Waring. Another guy, he took a shotgun and blasted four secretaries at Adelphi College. If I hadn’t been there I wouldn’t be talking to you because it was dope and politics in that place, just like outside. But man, they did not want me out of there. I didn’t ever think I’d make it. It was kind of a famous case.”

“All right,” Converse said. “What did you do?”

Danskin nodded with satisfaction.

“You know Brooklyn?”

“Sure.”

“Saturday night,” Danskin said. “The Loew’s Lido, East Flatbush. The Searchers is playing. John Wayne.

“I was seventeen years old, I was a freshman at Brooklyn College. I was a virgin. I had never had a girlfriend. So, it’s Saturday night and I’m going to the movies by myself.