This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Salvatore Skibona read his story,

Do Not Stop, from the January 21st, 2019 issue of the magazine.

Skibona's first novel, The End, was a finalist for the National Book Award and a winner of the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award.

His second novel, The Volunteer, from which this story was adapted, will be published in March.

Now here's Salvatore Skabona.

Do not stop.

Okinawa was a fever dream of mosquitoes and false staff beer. A Marine Corps rule said they couldn't

put volley on the plane to deploy if he was too drunk to

walk unassisted across the tarmac and up the stairs into the bird. Why did Command make a rule

like that if they were going to give you liberty to see the town the night before you flew out?

A buddy he'd met stateside in survival training, a ranch hand from New Mexico, was teaching

Vali to drink himself sick.

"'The belly got to get swole up,' his companion said.

"'Lose that belt.

"'Let the bubbles in down deep.

"'You're a beer camel now.

"'They'll put me on that plane in ten pieces is the only way.

"'Tie me together and the cargo hold.

We used to keep camels on the ranch. Two of them. Brother, could they drink up the whole irrigation ditch?

See, now, the way you're doing, either breathing or drinking, that there is a mistake. You got to keep up breathing while the beer goes down. He had a head full of cuspate teeth,

...