“Watch this!” Elmer told Frances. He leaned a hand on Converse’s shoulder like a track coach. “Birds what?”
Douglas Dalton came grimly forward with his revised version of “Mad Hermit Rapes Coed Campers.” Frances read it with impatience. Elmer kept his hand on Converse’s shoulder.
“C’mon, Douglas,” Frances sighed. “Pizzazz.”
“Yes,” Douglas Dalton said. He took the story back to his typewriter.
“Birds what?” Elmer asked softly.
“Birds nothing!”
Elmer removed his hand. “Birds Starve to Death!”
Converse sat down on a desktop.
“Starving birds,” he said. “All right!” He turned to Elmer in weary anger. “Skydiver Devoured By Starving Birds!”
Frances stared at him in astonishment.
“I’m going nuts,” Converse said.
Elmer was already sketching it on a layout sheet.
“Excellent. I love it. Only you can write it. Now gimme another beauty. Gimme a rapist.”
“Let’s pack it in, Elmer.”
“A rapist,” Elmer said. “Please.”
“Rapist,” Converse said dully. “Rapist Starves to Death.”
“Pussy-Eating Rapist Starves To Death!” Frances frowned. “That’s not what I call pizzazz.”
“Scuba-Diving Rapist?” Elmer shook his head. “We already got a skydiver.” He paused thoughtfully. “Skydiving Rapist?”
“Housewife Impaled By Skydiving Rapist,” Converse said.
Frances shrugged. “Jesus! That almost makes it.”
“Enough,” Elmer declared. “He’s gone cold. He has too much on his mind.”
When Douglas Dalton came forward with the last rewrite of “Mad Hermit Rapes Coed Campers,” Frances hardly troubled to read it.
“This is just filth,” she told him.
When Elmer and Frances went home to Atherton, Con verse and Douglas Dalton sat at Douglas’ desk and drank bourbon from the bottle Douglas kept in the bottom compartment. It was his night to carry the completed layouts to the Greyhound Bus station, whence they would be conveyed to a non-union printer in San Rafael. He had finished with the mad hermit’s excesses and was bracing himself for the walk along Mission and the longer one to his hotel on Sutter Street.
Douglas kept plastic cups to drink from. Converse had assembled a bunk from four chairs and across them had draped an ancient sleeping bag which Elmer Bender kept in a closet with his illegal telephone.
“All I need to know,” Douglas kept telling Converse, “is that you’re in trouble. That’s enough for me.”
Converse thanked him repeatedly.
“It’s a long time since I’ve been able to help a pal. God’s Blood, you look out of it. Am I keeping you awake?”
“I’ll drink another one,” Converse said. Douglas nodded happily. “Helping a pal was always very important to us. When I say us, I mean my crowd. That old gang of mine.” He
poured and consumed his third full cup of bourbon.
Drinking seemed to make him grow paler.
“Who are they?”
“They’re gone. Dead. Scattered. Reformed. All but yours truly — the last of a dirty old breed. I can’t count Elmer. Elmer’s a prince but he can’t drink.”
Converse allowed Douglas to pour him a measure.
“‘When like her O Saki,’” Douglas said, “‘you shall pass among the guests star-scattered on the grass, and in your joyous errand reach the spot where I made one — turn down an empty glass!’ Do you know who wrote that?”
“Yes,” Converse said.
“It wasn’t Lawrence Ferlinghetti.” He drained the cup and unsteadily poured another. Converse lay back on his row of chairs.
“Tell me what it was like,” Douglas said suddenly. “What was it like?”
“Vietnam?”
Douglas nodded solemnly.
Converse sat up.
“You should really ask a grunt. For me it was expeditions. A lot of time I was in hotels. Sometimes I went out to the line. Not a lot. I was too scared. Once I was so scared I cried.”
“Is that unusual?”
“I have the impression,” Converse said, “that it’s fairly unusual. I think it’s usual to cry when you’re hurt. But to cry before is uncool.”
“But you went,” Douglas said. “That’s the important thing.”
Converse did not see how it was the important thing, but nodded anyway. Douglas poured himself another drink. It was not pleasant to watch him drink.
“I too went,” Douglas declared. “I was like you. But I was younger — you’re twenty-five?”
“Thirty-five.”
“Yes,” Douglas said. “Well, I was twenty. My father tried to stop me, but I wouldn’t hear of it. Do you know the Biltmore Hotel in New York?”
“I think so.”
“You must know it. It’s a block from the Roosevelt. Didn’t you ever meet your date under the clock at the Biltmore?”
“No,” Converse said.
“Well, my father met me in the Men’s Bar of the Biltmore. It was the first time he and I drank together. As I recall, it was also the last time. He said to me — You’re going to die in a ditch for Communism, and it’ll serve you right. Do you know what I told him? I said — Father, if that should be my small place in the world’s history, I am the proudest man in this place.”
Converse watched Douglas’ features compose themselves into a dyspeptic expression which he deduced was silent laughter.
“And the place, mind you — the place was the Men’s Bar at the Biltmore Hotel!” He slapped Converse on the knee.
“The same night — the very same night—I went on board the Carinthia for Havre. Three days later I was in Spain.” He seemed to hesitate for a moment and then poured himself another shot. “So I was just like you. I went.”
“Douglas,” Converse said, “the two things aren’t the same. Fucking around Saigon is not like volunteering for Spain. I mean, essentially we were on different sides.”
“Who?” Douglas asked. “Different sides? You and me?”
He laughed and waved a hand. “I suppose you’re a Fascist.”
“Objectively, I suppose so.”
Douglas was delighted.
“Objectively! Objectively this and objectively that. Elmer used to talk like that. Did you know he was our political officer? He used to tell us that there was no difference between Mrs. Roosevelt and Hitler. Objectively! And that wasn’t the line then — that was Elmer talking.”
Converse pulled the sleeping bag over himself and leaned on an elbow.
“I had a friend at Amherst named Andy Stritch. I’ve always thought about Andy. He was killed at the Jarama. And there was a boy from the University of Indiana, his name was Peter Schultz. And there was a boy named Gelb who was only eighteen. He was straight from high school, can you imagine? They were all killed at the Jarama.”
To Converse’s astonishment he began to sing.
“There’s a valley in Spain called Jarama.” It went to the tune of “Red River Valley.” He stopped after the first line.
“Oh, don’t sing it,” he said to someone or other.
“The Moors! They were Moors. I thought — being very young — this is like the Chanson de Roland. Moors. They would come up to the wire and pretend to surrender. Some of them spoke English. And we poor little clots, we always wanted to believe them. Some of the fellas would let them come over and get a dagger in the gut for it.”
“The gooks are like that,” Converse said. “Objectively.”
“You shouldn’t call them gooks,” Douglas said. “We didn’t.”
“They call us Thong Miao. It means gooks in Vietnamese.”
“I had another Amherst friend — his name was Pollard. They shot him for cowardice. They wanted to shoot me. For cowardice. Not that I’d been all that cowardly, mind you. Elmer saved my life. But it hurt my feelings, do you see? It hurt my feelings very very badly. I wasn’t in com bat in the Second War.”