The Naked and the Dead (28 page)

            The conversation wavered back again, passed through a minor discussion, flitted about the campaign. After a decent interval, Hearn left him and went back to his fly tent. But in the darkness, listening to the stiff starched rustle of the leaves on the coconut trees, Hearn found it difficult to sleep. Out around him spread the miles of jungle, the endless spaces of the southern heavens with their unfamiliar stars.

            Something had happened tonight, but already it seemed exaggerated, out of proportion. He did not quite believe what he had heard. The scene was involuted now, something warped by a dream. Only he found himself laughing quietly on his cot.

            The shoddy motive.

            If you searched something long enough, it always turned to dirt. But even in his laughter Hearn had a picture of himself, saw his big body writhing slightly in mirth on his cot, saw his own shock of black hair, his features contorting in this curious convulsive mirth.

            Once a woman who had been his mistress for a time had brought him a mirror in the morning, and said, "Look at yourself, you're just like an ape when you're in bed."

            The mirth was a little exasperated now, his limbs almost feverish. Jesus, what a situation.

            But when morning came, Hearn was no longer sure that anything had happened at all.

Chorus:

WOMEN

           
The second squad is digging a new latrine. It is midafternoon and the sun is lancing through a gap in the coconut trees and refracting brightly from the rough stubbled ground. Minetta and Polack are down in the trench, working slowly. Their shirts are removed and there is a wide band of moisture on their pants under their belts. Every ten or fifteen seconds a spadeful of earth lofts out of the hole and drops with a light pattering sound on the mound of soil beside the latrine.

            MINETTA: (sighing) That lucky wop, Toglio. (He leans his foot against the shovel.) You think we're lucky being back here? Up there you can get wounded and go home. (He snorts.) All right, so he can't move his elbow so good.

            POLACK: Who needs an elbow to screw with?

            BROWN: (He is sitting on a stump beside the hole.) Yeah, let me tell you guys something. Toglio's going to go back and find his wife fooling around with anything that wears pants. There ain't a woman you can trust.

            STANLEY: (He is sprawled beside Brown.) Oh, I don't know, I trust my wife. There's all kinds of women.

            BROWN: (bitterly) They're all the same.

            MINETTA: Yeah, well, I trust my girl friend.

            POLACK: I wouldn't trust those bitches with a nickel.

            BROWN: (picking eagerly at his snub nose) That's what I believe. (He talks to Minetta, who has stopped digging.) You trust your girl friend, huh?

            MINETTA: Sure, I do. She knows when she's got something good.

            BROWN: You think you can give her a better piece of ass than anybody else?

            MINETTA: I ain't been beat yet.

            BROWN: I'll tell you something, you're a kid. You don't know what a good piece means. . . Tell me something, Minetta, you ever been laid with your shoes off? (Stanley and Polack roar with laughter.)

            MINETTA: Haw, haw.

            BROWN: I'll tell you what, Minetta. You just ask yourself a couple of questions. Do you think there's anything special about you?

            MINETTA: That ain't for me to say.

            BROWN: Well, I'll tell you, there ain't. You're just an ordinary guy. There's not a damn thing special about any of us, not about Polack or you or Stanley or me. We're just a bunch of GIs. (Brown is enjoying himself.) Okay. While we're home, and slipping a little meat to them every night, they're all lovey-dovey. Oh, they can't do enough for ya. But the minute you go away they start thinking.

            MINETTA: Yeah, my Rosie thinks of me.

            BROWN: You bet she does. She starts thinking of how good it was to have it steady. Listen, she's a young girl, and if she's as beautiful as my wife is, she's missing her good time. There's lots of guys around, lots of four-Fs and USO commandos, and pretty soon she lets herself be talked into going out on a date. And then she dances and starts rubbing up against a guy. . .

            MINETTA: Rosie wrote me she don't go out to any dances. (Polack and Brown laugh.)

            POLACK: He believes the bitches.

            MINETTA: Well, I tested her plenty of times, and I never caught her in a lie yet.

            BROWN: That just proves she's smarter than you. (Stanley laughs uncomfortably.) Listen, they're no different from you and me, especially the ones that've had their screwing. They like it just as much as men do, and it's a helluva sight easier for them to get it.

            POLACK: (falsetto voice) I don't know why I'm not more popular with the girls. . . I'm such an easy lay. (They all laugh.)

            BROWN: What do you think your girl friend is doing now? I'll tell you what. It's just about six A.M. now in America. She's wakin' up in bed with a guy who can give her just as much as you can, and she's giving him the same goddam line she handed you. I tell you, Minetta, there ain't a one of them you can trust. They'll all cheat on you.

            POLACK: There ain't a fuggin woman is any good.

            MINETTA: (weakly) Well, I ain't worrying.

            STANLEY: It's different with me. I got a kid.

            BROWN: The ones with kids are the worst. They're the ones who're bored and really need a good time. There ain't a woman is worth a goddam.

            STANLEY: (looking at his watch) It's about our turn to dig. (He jumps into the hole and picks up a shovel.) Jesus, you guys are a bunch of goldbricks. Why the hell don't you do your share? (He shovels furiously for a minute, and then halts. He is sweating freely.)

            POLACK: (grinning) I'm glad I ain't got to worry about one of those bitches cheating on me.

            MINETTA: Aaah, fug you. You think you're pretty goddam good.

7

            After the night when the Japanese failed to cross the river, the first squad remained in its position for three days. On the fourth day, 1st Battalion advanced a half mile and recon moved up with A Company. Their new outpost was on the crest of a hill which looked down into a tiny valley of kunai grass; they spent the rest of the week digging new holes, stringing barbed wire, and making routine patrols. The front had become quiet. Nothing happened to the platoon, and they seldom saw any other men except for the platoon of A Company whose positions were on an adjoining hill a few hundred yards away. The bluffs of Watamai Range were still on their right, quite close, and in the late afternoon the cliffs hung over them like a wave of surf about to break.

            The men in recon spent their days sitting in the sun on top of the hill. There was nothing to do except eat their rations and sleep and write letters and stand guard in their foxholes. The mornings were pleasant and new, but by afternoon the men were sullen and drowsy, and at night they found it hard to sleep, for the wind moved the grass in the valley beneath them and it looked like a column of men moving toward their hill. At least once or twice every night, a man on guard would awaken the entire squad and they would sit in their holes for almost an hour searching the field beneath them in the silver uncertain moonlight.

            Occasionally, they would hear the crackling of some rifles in the distance sounding like a bonfire of dry twigs on an autumn day, and often a shell or two would arch lazily overhead, sighing and murmuring before it crashed into the jungle beyond their lines. At night the machine guns would be hollow and deep, and would hold the mournful boding note of primitive drums. Almost always, they could hear some noise like a grenade or a mortar or the insistent shrill tatting of a sub-machine gun, but the sounds were so far away and so muffled that in time they disregarded them. The week went by in an uncomfortable suspended tension which they felt only in their unvoiced fear of the towering mute walls of Watamai Range on their right.

            Every day a ration detail of three men would trudge over to the hill on which the adjacent platoon of A Company was bivouacked, and return with a box of 10-in-l rations and two five-gallon jerricans of water. The trip was always uneventful and the men did not dislike it, for the monotony of the morning was broken and it gave them a chance to talk to someone other than the men in their squad.

            On the last day of the week, Croft and Red and Gallagher filed down their hill, wove through the six-foot kunai grass in the valley beneath them, emerged into a bamboo grove, and from there followed the trail that led to A Company. They filled their empty water cans, strapped them to pack boards, and talked for a few minutes with some of the men in A Company before starting back. Croft was leading them, and when he reached the beginning of the trail he halted, and motioned to Red and Gallagher to come forward.

            "Listen," he whispered. "You men were making too goddam much noise coming down the hill. Just 'cause this is a short distance and you got a little weight on your back don' mean you're supposed to wallow round like a bunch of goddam pigs."

            "Okay," Gallagher muttered sullenly.

            "C'mon, let's go," Red muttered. He and Croft had hardly spoken to each other all week.

            The three men filed slowly down the trail keeping a distance of ten yards between them. Red found himself treading warily, and he realized with a trace of anger that Croft's command was influencing him. He walked along for many yards trying to determine whether he was afraid of Croft's anger or his caution came from habit. He was still debating this when he saw Croft stop abruptly, and creep through some bushes on the side of the trail. Croft turned around and looked at Gallagher and him, and then waved his arm forward in a slow silent motion. Red looked at his face; Croft's mouth and eyes were expressionless but there was a poise and tension about his entire body which was imperative. Red crouched and moved up beside him. When the three of them were together, Croft held his finger to his mouth, and then pointed through a break in the foliage beside the trail. About twenty-five yards away there was a tiny hollow. It was actually no more than a small clearing, encircled by jungle, but in the middle of it three Japanese soldiers were sprawled on the ground, resting with their heads on their packs, and a fourth soldier was sitting beside them with his rifle across his lap, his chin resting on his hand. Croft looked at them for a long tense second, and then stared fiercely at Red and Gallagher. His jaw had tightened, and a small lump of cartilage beneath his ear quivered once or twice. Very carefully, he slipped off his pack board and laid it noiselessly on the ground.

            "We can't get through that brush without making a noise," he whispered almost soundlessly. "Ah'm gonna throjw a grenade, and then we all rush together. Y'understand?"

            They nodded dumbly, stripping their packs. Then Red peered through the yards of brush that separated them from the draw. If the grenade failed to kill the Japs, all three of them would be exposed as they went charging through the brush. Actually he hardly thought of this; he rebelled against everything in the situation. It was unbelievable. He always had a similar reaction when he knew he would be in combat in a few seconds. It always seemed impossible he would move or fire his gun, expose his life, and yet he always advanced. Red was feeling now the anger that always followed this, a rage at his desire to avoid the moment to come. I'm as good as any man jack, he told himself numbly. He looked at Gallagher, whose face was white, and Red felt a surprising contempt although he knew that he was himself equally frightened. Croft's nostrils had dilated, and the pupils of his eyes looked cold and very black; Red hated him because Croft could enjoy this.

            Croft slipped a grenade out of his belt, and pulled the safety pin. Red looked through the foliage again and stared at the backs of the Japanese soldiers. He could see the face of the man who was sitting up, and it added to the unreality; he felt as though something were choking him. The Japanese soldier had a pleasant bland face with wide temples and a heavy jaw; he looked cow-like and his thick hands appeared sturdy and calloused. Red had for a moment an odd detached pleasure, quite incongruous, which stemmed from the knowledge that he was unobserved. And yet all of this was mixed with dread, and the certainty that none of it was real. He could not believe that in a few seconds the soldier with the broad pleasant face was going to die.

            Croft opened his fingers, and the handle of the grenade snapped off and spun a few feet away. The fuse in the grenade popped, and a sputtering noise destroyed the silence. The Japanese heard it, sprang to their feet with sudden cries, and moved a few steps uncertainly back and forth in the tiny circle of the draw. Red watched the expression of terror on one soldier's face, heard the sizzling of the grenade, the sound mixing with the ringing in his ears and the pounding of his heart, and then dropped to the ground as Croft lofted the grenade into the draw. Red grasped his tommy gun and stared intently at a blade of grass. He had time before the grenade exploded to wish he had cleaned his gun that morning. He heard a terrifying shriek, thought once of the soldier with the broad face, and then found himself afoot, crashing and stumbling through the brush.

            The three of them halted on the edge of the draw and looked down. All four of the Japanese soldiers were lying motionless in the trampled kunai grass. Croft gazed at them and spat softly. "Go down and take a look," he told Red.

            Red slid down the bank to the gully where the bodies lay sprawled. He could tell at a glance that two of the men were certainly dead; one of them reposed on his back with his hands clawed over the bloody mash of what had once been his face, and the other was crumpled on his side with a great rent in his chest. The other two men had fallen on their stomachs and he could see no wounds.