Robert Stone - Dog Soldiers

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.

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 happening 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 the 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 that 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.

List of things that don’t hurt: Birds. Mountains. Water.

It really is all one though, he thought. Contrary to sense as it might seem.

He took a drink of water to balance the pain and it became apparent to him that what hurt and what didn’t could come together in a hurry and that throwing up was a fine example. He leaned forward clutching the rifle butt and retched over the tracks.

Fine mixture of sensations but you lose all your water that way.

Expedite. The triangle will assemble to the rear and to the left of the right ear under the direction of the duty NCO…

Dress it up. Bracing the back in the specified position, bring up the weight with a smart twist. He opened his mouth in surprise at the sudden wrenching. Pain within pain. Do not twist too hard. Do not twist suddenly. Proceed resolutely in a military manner.

It turned out there were birds, but he could never have heard them. Hawks, three of them, way up there, gliding on the wind. There was a jet trail over them.

“Some of you birds think I’m down here to play fiddle fuck around,” Hicks told them. “Let me be the first to inform you that I’m not. Any bird who makes that mistake will encounter the meanest crudest son of a bitch they could conceive of. If I catch a bird grab-assing, that bird can give his soul to Jesus because his ass belongs to me.

Belay that. Give Jesus the ass, I’ll take the soul.

I’ll trade these one-after-another railroad tracks for the soul and fly out of here.

What I need railroad tracks for I got no railroad.

Whatcha doin down there on those tracks, little speck?

Playing I’m a train, sir.

Water. Hold it down because it’s so nice. It’s the real thing.

Without the weapon, without the pack, things would be so much easier. He recalled that the pack was what he wanted so he would have to carry it. Serious people existed in order to want things, and to carry them.

As for the weapon, he thought, I didn’t abandon the creature at the Battle of Bob Hope, I won’t give them the satisfaction now.

The Battle of Bob Hope was in the rain. Like Austerlitz.

Slipping and sliding around the Rockpile, the warm rain that never dried out. AKA-47s, the Big Sound of Charles. The fuck it isn’t, that’s them! There they are and there they are and now I fall on my ass. Yes they are, they’re all over the place. Don’t follow them, they’re being wasted down there.

NVAs I think it is, pith helmets.

He fired the rockets where they figured he’d come out — ka-thop ka-thop . Whee it’s football, fake with rockets and then, clever, I’m off like a fucker through the bad smelling green and oh boy they’re gonna get me but they don’t and then, oh my goodness, they do.

Blind through the asparagus to the land where the friendlies are. Hello, friendlies, you no shoot. Me U S Maline. LBJ number one!

Worse time I ever had, worse than now.