Dog Soldiers (20 page)

Marge bit her nails.

“
We should have let them have it. If I
’
d been there alone

I would have.
”

“
It isn
’
t yours anymore,
”
he said. He regretted it immediately. She was not without courage, capable certainly of spite and there was no point in asking for trouble. She seemed more troubled than angry, as though the problem were a moral one.

“
Whose is it?
”

He felt that he would have to explain it philosophically or she would refuse to understand.

“
It belongs to whoever controls it.
”

“
So is it yours now?
”

He went back to the sink for more whiskey.

“
I been juicing ever since I
hit this beach. I gotta stop to
morrow, you remind me.
”

“
Why didn
’
t you tell me in Berkeley about who controls it?
”

“
I had other things on my mind.
”

“
What am I supposed to do,
”
she asked with a thin smile,
“
go home and forget about it? Because it doesn
’
t look like I can do that now.
”

On the drive down, he had given some thought to using her as a decoy. Set in motion, she would soon be traced and while they ran her down he might sell out and get clear. But he could not simply turn her loose because there was a chance that she would crumble and go to law. He had devised false errands for her and rendezvous, all of them plausible.

“
If you wanted to rip us off,
”
she said,
“
you should have done it before. You should never have turned up with it.
”
He brought the bottle o
ver to the stove and poured him
self another shot.

“
I can see where you could be a real pain in the ass,
”
he told her. It was pathetic, he thought, the satisfaction they took in being logical.

“
I mean what are you saying? That you want your rights? Sue me.
”

She watched him in self-righteous silence. Arrogance.

“
All right — it
’
s your dope. You want it back? Take it and get on the road with it. Run it over to East L.A. and sell it to the pachucos. C
’
mon, man, you fucked up — that
’
s all. You can
’
t do nothing with that shit.
”

“
Why bring me all the way down here to tell me that?
”
she asked.

“
Why
’
d you come down?
”

“
To tell the truth,
”
Marge said,
“
I was just following you.
”

He stood up and walked over to the small single window and saw his own reflection in the lamplight.

“
We ought to shitcan it and run.
”

“
Now you
’
re really scaring me,
”
Marge said.

“
That
’
s the truth.
”
He began to pace back and forth from the sink to the stove.
“
I got hardly any time. I never moved smack in my life. I can
’
t move it without making myself known and when I do it
’
s wide open city.
”

“
What about our friends from this morning?
”
she said after a minute.
“
Do you think we could sell to them after all? They offered you a deal. Maybe we could make one.
”

“
Who
’
s we?
”
he said. He sat down again beside her, laughing a little.
“
If I hadn
’
t been so hung over and pissed off this morning this shit wouldn
’
t ever have come about.
”

She moved away slightly, contentious.

“
What about them?
”

“
Right. I thought about that. First thing, I don
’
t know who they are.
”

“
John must know. We could call him and maybe set something up.
”

Hicks shook his head.

“
You gotta figure intangibles. They know what fuck-ups we are. They got their pride. I don
’
t think we could pull it off.
”

“
I think they
’
re fuck-ups too,
”
Marge said.

Hicks nodded.
“
They
’
re animals. I wonder who the hell they are.
”

“
John knows.
”

He smiled.

“
You don
’
t respect him very much, do you?
”

“
Sure,
”
Hicks said.

“
Why did you carry for him?
”

“
Why do you have to have it all figured out? I don
’
t always have a reason for the shit I do.
”
He picked up the jar she had been drinking from.
“
Drink with me.
”

She let him fill the jar. When she raised it to drink, he saw that she was clutching something in her other hand. He took the hand and spread the fingers and took a Percodan from her cold palm.

“
How come you
’
re taking Percodan?
”

She sat stiffly back against the wall.

“
Pain.
”

“
Don
’
t bullshit me. I asked you if you were a junkie. You can
’
t fake it.
”

“
I
’
ve been doing a lot of dilaudid. I wanted to quit. So I
’
m taking Percodan.

He gave her back the pill
and she swallowed it with whis
key, gagging slightly.

“
How much dilaudid?
”

She turned away. He set his drink down and stretched out on the floor. He had taken the thirty-eight out of his pocket and set it down on the floor between them and as he lay beside her he became intensely aware of it. She was holding her hand out stiffly seeming to measure its steadi ness. The hand hovered over his chest and he thought she must be about to touch him, but it was the pistol she took hold of. She turned it round in her hands, inspecting it. He watched her from the corners of his eyes until she set it down.

The wood stove was burni
ng down, the oil in the lamp al
most gone. Hicks moved closer to the stove, partly turning
his back on her.

He had no rest there. When he turned toward her again, she was staring at him wide-eyed. Her stare made him lonely; it was utterly
without warmth, without recogni
tion — he might have been a snake.

“
What are you doing?
”
he asked her, ashamed of the lame trivial question. Her gray eyes looked paler in the dim light. He wanted to ask her what it was she saw.

She laughed and he shivered, and at the same moment so did she.

The instant remained. He held his breath. Cold Zen.

He wondered if she had been aware of it.

As they undressed, their throats were close together, guarded. When she pressed herself against him, he held her away for a moment wanting to see her, the light on her breasts, the gray eyes, wanting to know the life under his hands that he could draw up from her mouth and breathe back inside her.

On the army blankets, she bent to his penis, a resolute harakiri, self-avenging; he could feel the abnegation, the death. He did not pull back or intimate any warning when he came. Withdrawn, he pulled her up to himself—she drew breath hard and
he knew she must have paused be
tween need and revulsion and the knowledge inflamed him again.

Because of his nature and
circumstances, the most satisfy
ing part of Hicks
’
sexu
al life had come to be masturba
tion— he preferred it to prostitutes because it was more sanitary and took less time. He did not take it lightly when, rarely, one woman pleased him, and his deepest pleasures were intellectual and emotional. He became a hoarder, careful and slow to the point of obsessiveness, a thinker.

He eased her toward the light, his strength in his tongue, stroking the sweet-sour depths and surfaces. When he was ready he went in, striking for the deepest darkest part of her the limits of himself could reach, then eased up, stir ring, stroking from inside. She came and spoke to him; he thought she said,
“
Find thee.
”

And again — and he spent himself again — less thought fully, in lubricious happy chaos.

Lying beside her, he was at peace. He propped his head on his elbow, lights flashing in his brain, his spinal column denuded of sacred vital fluids
, and inclined his head in grat
itude. He was bound. He felt strong and in complicity with fortune.

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.
”

S
omeone 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 bung
alow behind the apartment build
ing. As Converse walked across Mr. Roche
’
s lawn, the un
familiar 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 pleas
ed him to pretend to be the man
ager. In that capacity he
could refer to himself reveren
tially 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.