The Naked and the Dead (15 page)

            Goldstein and Ridges were completely wet. When the rain had started, they had got out of their tent and pounded down all the stakes. Goldstein had crammed the blankets into the rubber bag of his jungle pack, and he crouched on his knees now inside the tent, trying to hold it down in the wind. "This is terrible," he shouted.

            Ridges nodded. His ugly dumpy face was covered with drops of water, and his straight sandy hair had plastered itself in a spiral about his head. "Nuttin' to do but wait," he shouted back. His voice was lost in the wind, and Goldstein could hear nothing but "wait," which had a long wailing quality that pebbled his flesh with a sudden shudder. There seemed nothing in the universe but the gray violence roaring about them. Goldstein felt his arm wrenched cruelly as the ridgepole lashed upward with an abrupt vicious snap. He was so wet that his green fatigues looked black.

            The bottom of the ocean would look like this, he told himself. There were subterranean storms that he had read about, and this must be like them. Apart from his awe, and his concern that the tent should remain up, Goldstein was watching the storm with a fascinated interest. Probably the world had been something like this when it first began to cool, he thought, and felt a deep excitement as if he were witnessing creation. It was silly to think about the tent in the same moment, but he could not help himself. He was convinced that it would remain standing; the stakes were three feet deep, and the soil was the clay type that could take extreme stresses. If he had only known a storm like this was coming, he could have built a shelter that would last through anything, and he could lie underneath it, completely dry without the slightest worry. Goldstein was annoyed at Ridges. He should have told him what kind of storms there were; he was a veteran and he should have been prepared. Already Goldstein was planning the next tent he would build. His shoes had filled with water and he worked his toes to warm his feet. Squeegee action, he thought; probably the man who invented the squeegee had an experience like mine.

            Ridges was watching the typhoon with panic and acceptance. Mighty sponges o' God swelling, he said to himself. The foliage of the jungle was churning turbulently, and the leaden-green sky painted it with greens so varied and brilliant that Ridges thought it looked like the Garden of Eden. He felt the throbbing of the jungle as a part of himself, the earth, which had turned to a golden mud, seemed alive to him. He kept looking at the fantastic green of the jungle and then at the orange-brown earth, febrile and pulsing as though the rain were cutting wounds into it. Ridges flinched before the power of it.

            The Lord giveth and He taketh away, Ridges thought solemnly. Storms were a basic part of his life; he had come to fear them, to bear with them, and finally to expect them. He saw his father's reddened wrinkled face with the sad quiet blue eyes. "I'll tell you, Ossie," his father had said, "a man works and he toils, he puts in his good sweat tryin' to pull out a livin' from the land, and when all his work is done, if the good Lord sees it fitten, it's taken away in a storm." Perhaps that was the deepest truth in Ridges's nature; it seemed to him that all his life, he and his father had struggled with barren land and insects and blights, had worked their fields with one aging mule, and often as not, their work had been ruined in one black night.

            He had helped Goldstein pound in the stakes because you helped your neighbor when he asked for it, and Ridges had decided the man you bunked with, even if he was a stranger, was still your neighbor; but secretly he had felt that their attempts to secure the tent would be useless. God's ways were God's ways, he told himself, and a man did not try to brook them. If the storm was meant to blow away their tent, it would do it even if they had a plow to hold it down. Now, because he did not know it was not raining in Mississippi, he prayed that the storm should not destroy his father's crops. They jus' been planted, Lord. Please don' wash them away. And even in his praying Ridges had no hope; he prayed to show that he was respectful.

            The wind tore through the bivouac area like a great scythe, slashing the palm fronds from the coconut trees, blasting the rain before it. As they looked, they saw a tent jerk upward from its mooring, and then stream away in the wind, flapping like a terrified bird. "I wonder what's happening up at the front," Goldstein shouted. He had realized with a shock that there were other bivouacs like this, scattered for miles into the jungle. Ridges shrugged. "Holdin' on, Ah guess," he shouted back. Goldstein wondered what it looked like up forward; during the week he had been with recon, he had seen only the mile or two of road upon which they were working. Now he tried to conceive of an attack being made during this storm and winced before the prospect of it. All his energies had to be concentrated on the ridgepole, which he held with both hands. The Japs might even be attacking their area now, he thought. He wondered if anyone was on guard in the machine gun emplacements. "A smart general would start an attack now," he said.

            "Reckon," Ridges answered quietly. The wind had lapsed for a moment, and their voices had a subdued uncertain quality as if they were talking in a church. Goldstein released the pole, and felt the strain flowing out of his arms. Fatigue products being carried away by the bloodstream, he thought. Perhaps the storm was practically over. In the hole, the ground was hopelessly muddy, and Goldstein wondered how they would sleep that night. He shivered; abruptly he had realized the chill weight of his sodden clothing.

            The wind started again, and their mute tense struggle to preserve the tent began once more. Goldstein felt as though he was holding onto a door which a much stronger man was trying to open from the other side. He saw two more tents tear off into the wind, and he watched the men running to find shelter somewhere else. Wyman and Toglio, laughing and cursing, dropped into their hole. "Our tent just went," Wyman shouted, his young bony face spread in a great grin. "Gee, this is something!" he roared, and the expression on his face was somewhere between delight and wonder as though uncertain whether the typhoon was a catastrophe or a circus.

            "What about your stuff?" Goldstein shouted.

            "Lost. Blew away. I left my M-one in a puddle of water."

            Goldstein looked for his rifle. It was on a ledge above the hole, splattered with water and mud. Goldstein was disgusted because he had not wrapped it in his dirty shirt before the storm began. He was still a rookie, he told himself; a veteran would have remembered to protect it.

            Water was dripping from Toglio's big fleshy nose. He moved his heavy jaw and shouted. "Think your tent'll hold?"

            "Don't know," Goldstein roared. "The stakes will." The four men were cramped in the hole even though they were squatting on their heels. Ridges watched his feet sink into the mud, and wished he was not wearing shoes. Man's jus' more fussed tryin' to keep 'em dry than the whole thing's worth, he thought. A rill of water kept running into the tent along the ridgepole and trickling onto his bent knee. His clothing was so cold that the drops of water seemed warm. He sighed.

            A tremendous gust of wind bellied under the tent, blew it out like a balloon, and then the ridgepole snapped, tearing a rent in the poncho. The tent fell upon the four men like a wet sheet, and they struggled stupidly under it for a few seconds before the wind began to strip it away. Wyman got the giggles, and began to feel around helplessly. He lost his balance and sat down in the mud, struggling feebly under the folds of the tent. "Jesus," he laughed. He felt as if caught in a sack, and he subsided into helpless laughter. Too weak to punch my way out of a paper bag, he said to himself, and this made everything seem even more ludicrous. "Where are you?" he shouted, and then the folds of the tent filled out again like a sail, ripped loose completely, and went eddying and twisting through the air. A little piece of the poncho had been left on one of the stakes, and it flapped in the gale. The four men stood up in the hole, and then crouched before the force of the wind. They could still see the sun just above the horizon in one clear swatch of sky that seemed infinite miles away. The rain was very cold now, almost frigid, and they shuddered. Almost all the tents were down in the bivouac area, and here and there a soldier would go skittering through the mud, staggering from the force of the wind with the odd jerking motions of a man walking in a motion picture when the film is unwinding too rapidly. "Christ, I'm freezin'," Toglio shouted.

            "Let's get out of here," Wyman said. He was covered with mud and his lips were chattering. "Goddam rain," he said.

            They stumbled out of the hole, and began to run toward the motor pool where there would be some shelter in the lee of the trucks. Toglio staggered as though he had lost some necessary ballast and was being driven downwind without any way to control himself. Goldstein shouted to him, "I forgot my rifle."

            "You don't need it," he bawled back.

            Goldstein tried to halt and turn around but it was impossible. "You never can tell," he heard himself shout. They were running side by side, but it felt as if they were roaring to each other across a vast room. Goldstein had a moment of glee.

            For a whole week they had worked on improving their bivouac. Every spare moment, there had been something new to set up. And now his tent was lost, his clothing and writing paper were sopping, his gun would probably rust, the ground would be too wet for sleeping. Everything was ruined. He had the kind of merriment a man sometimes knows when events have ended in utter disaster.

            He and Toglio were blown into the motor pool. They collided as they tried to turn and went sprawling in the mud. Goldstein felt like lying there without getting up, but he put his hands against the ground, pushed and went staggering behind one of the trucks. Almost the entire company was in the trucks or bunched together in the lee of them. There were about twenty men clustered together behind the truck he had reached. They stood there shivering and huddled together for warmth, their teeth chattering from the icy rain. The sky was an immense dark bowl that crashed and quaked with thunder. All Goldstein could see was the green truck, and the wet green-black uniforms of the men. "Jesus," somebody said.

            Toglio was trying to light a cigarette, but it soaked through and came apart in his mouth before he could get his matches out of his waterproof pouch. He threw it to the ground and watched it dissolve in the mud. Despite the fact that he was completely wet, the rain still hurt; every drop that went down his back was like a cold slug, shocking and loathsome. He turned to the man next to him, and shouted, "Your tent go down?"

            "Yeah."

            It made Toglio feel better. He rubbed his black unshaved chin, and felt intimate suddenly with all the men, liked them immensely with a burst of warmth. They were all good guys, good Americans, he told himself. It took Americans to stand something like this and laugh about it, he decided. His hands were cold, and he stuck them in the baggy pockets of his fatigue pants.

            Red and Wilson, who were standing a few feet away, had begun to sing. Red's voice was deep and gruff, and Toglio laughed as he listened to them.

           
Once I built a railroad, made it run,

            Made it race against time. . .

they sang, and jogged up and down to warm their feet.

           
Once I built a railroad, now it's done,

            Brother, can you spare a dime?

            Toglio found himself roaring with laughter. Red was a comic, he told himself, and began to hum with them.

           
Once I built a tower to the sun,

            Bricks and, rivet and lime,

            Once I built a tower, now it's done,

            Brother, can you spare a dime?

            Toglio joined in on the last line, and Red beckoned to him. The three of them kept singing as loudly as they could, their arms about each other for warmth. The wind had abated to some degree, and they could hear their voices clearly every now and then, but they sounded distant and a little unreal, like a radio in another room being turned up and down, up and down.

           
Once in khaki suits

           
Gee, we looked swell

           
Full of that Yankee Doodly Dum.

           
Half a million boots went sloggin' thru Hell,

           
I was the kid with the drum.

           
Say, don't you remember, they call me Al?

           
It was Al all the time.

           
Say, don't you remember, I'm your pal?

           
Buddy, can you spare a dime?

            They started laughing as they finished, and Toglio yelled, "What do we sing next? How about 'Show Me The Way to Go Home'?"

            "I can't sing," Red shouted. "My throat's too dry. I need a drink." He pursed his mouth and rolled his eyes, and Toglio laughed into the rain. What an ugly comical guy Red was. They were all good guys.

            "Show me the way to go home," Toglio sang, and several other men began to sing with them.

           
I'm tired and I want to go to bed,

            I had a little drink about an hour ago,

            And it's gone right to my head.

            The rain had become hard and steady, and Toglio had a wistful mellow feeling as he chanted the words. He was cold, and despite the bodies about him he kept shivering. He had an image of driving in a car on a winter twilight, approaching a strange town which beckoned to him with its warmth and lights.