The Naked and the Dead (66 page)

            "Now, you take this patrol, it's going to be a rough one. We need somebody who knows the score."

            "What do you think of the patrol?" Croft asked softly. He ducked as some spray washed over them.

            Stanley guessed that Croft would be pleased if he accepted the patrol without resentment. But he knew he would have to answer cautiously. If he was enthusiastic, Croft would distrust him, for none of the other men were eager. Stanley fingered his mustache, which was still thin and uneven despite the care he gave it. "I don't know, somebody's got to do it, and it might as well be us. To tell you the truth, Sam," he ventured, "this may sound like bullshit coming from me, but I ain't sorry we caught it. You get tired of hanging around, you want to do something."

            Croft fingered his chin. "That's what you think, huh?"

            "Well, I wouldn't tell it to everybody, but, yes, that's what I do think."

            "Uh-huh." Half purposefully, Stanley had stroked one of Croft's basic passions. After a month of labor details and unimportant security patrols, Croft's senses had become raw waiting for activity. Any big patrol would have appealed to him. But this one. . . the conception of it was more impressive to him. Although he did not show it, he was impatient; the chore was to get through the hours on board this boat. All afternoon he had been debating possible routes, reviewing the terrain in his mind. There had been only an aerial map of the back country, but he had memorized that.

            And once again he felt an unpleasant shock, reminded himself that the platoon and the patrol would not be directed by him.

            "Yeah, it's all right," Croft said. "I'll tell you, that General Cummings is a smart man to have figgered it all out."

            Stanley nodded. "All the guys bitch all the time about how they could do it better, but he's got a hard job."

            "Reckon so," Croft said. He stared away for a moment, and then nudged Stanley. "Look." He was watching Wilson talk to Hearn, and he felt a trace of jealousy.

            Unconsciously, Stanley copied Croft's speech. "Do you reckon old Wilson is sucking?"

            Croft laughed quietly and coldly. "Goddam, I don't know, he's been dicking-off lately."

            "I wonder if he's really sick," Stanley said doubtfully.

            Croft shook his head. "You cain't trust Wilson any further'n you can throw him."

            "That's the way
I
had him tabbed." Stanley felt good. Brown was always saying that nobody could get along with Croft, but he didn't know how to work it. Croft was okay, you just had to approach him on the right tack. It was all right when you could buddy with the noncoms over you.

            Yet Stanley had been very tense all the while he had been talking to Croft. In his first weeks in the platoon he had acted similarly toward Brown, but now that tension was switched to Croft. Stanley never said anything to him without some purpose. It was an automatic process, however. He never thought consciously, It's a good idea to agree with Croft. At the moment he believed what he was saying; his mind worked more quickly, more effectively than his speech, so that sometimes Stanley was almost surprised at his own words. "Yeah, Wilson's an odd guy," he muttered.

            "Uh-huh."

            Yet for a moment Stanley was depressed. Perhaps he had started to buddy with Croft too late. What good was it to him now that the Lieutenant had come into the platoon? One of the reasons he resented Hearn was that he had hoped Croft would be commissioned, and there might have been a chance for him to fill the vacancy. He could not visualize either Martinez or Brown as platoon sergeant. Actually, this ambition was vague precisely because he did not want to halt there. Stanley had no single goal; his dreams were always vague.

            Indeed, as they talked, Croft and Stanley were sensing a similarity between themselves, and it drew them together. Croft felt a mild affection for him. This Stanley kid ain't too bad, he told himself.

            The deck under their feet shuddered as the boat slapped against a few waves. The sun was almost down, and the sky overhead was clouding over. It was the least bit chill, and they drew closer to light cigarettes.

            Gallagher had worked his way up to the bow. He stood quiet beside them, his thin knotted body shivering a little. They listened to the water sloshing about the bottom of the boat. "One minute you're hot, and then you're cold," Gallagher muttered.

            Stanley smiled at him. He felt it necessary to be tactful with Gallagher since his wife had died and it irked him. Basically, he had only contempt for Gallagher and annoyance, for Gallagher made him uncomfortable. "How're you feeling, boy?" Stanley said, however.

            "All right." But Gallagher was depressed. The grayness of the sky made him mournful; he had been exceptionally sensitive to the moods of the weather since Mary's death, and often now he languished in a gentle melancholy close to easy tears. He felt little volition, and surprisingly little bitterness; the façade of anger remained, even erupted occasionally in a spate of profanity, but Red and Wilson and one or two of the others had recognized the change. "Yeah, I'm all right," he muttered again. Stanley's sympathy irritated him, for he sensed it to be false; Gallagher was more perceptive now.

            He wondered why he had come up beside them, and thought of moving back to his cot, but it was warmer here. The bow lurched and bumped under his feet and he grunted. "How long are they gonna keep us here like goddam sardines?" he growled.

            Croft and Stanley, after a pause, were talking about the patrol again, and Gallagher listened with resentment. "You know what the mother-fugger'll be like?" he blurted. "We'll be lucky to get out of there with our goddam heads on." He felt a quick remorse which was mixed with fear. I got to cut out that swearing, he told himself. In the past week and a half since the last letter had come, Gallagher had been making attempts to reform. His profanity was sinful, he believed, and he was afraid of more retribution.

            The talk about the patrol frightened him, and his remorse at swearing added to this. Once again Gallagher saw himself lying dead in a field, and it loosed a nervous flush along his back which prickled painfully. He could see the dead Japanese soldier whom Croft had killed, still lying in the green draw.

            Stanley ignored him. "What do you figure on doin' if we can't get through the pass?" It was important to know all these things, he told himself; he might end up in command of the platoon. You could never tell what kind of accidents there might be. Skillfully suspended, he conceived the accidents occurring in a vacuum, forcing his mind away from the idea of who might be killed.

            "I'll give you a bit of advice," Croft said. The words felt strange in his mouth; he almost never gave advice. "In the Army, if you can't do somethin' one way you damn sure better do it another."

            "Then what'll you do, go over the mountain?"

            "I ain't in command. The Lieutenant is."

            Stanley made a face. "Aaw." He felt young when he was with Croft, but he did not try to conceal it. Without reasoning why, he assumed Croft would like him better if he wasn't too cocky.

            "But if the platoon was mine, that's the way I'd do it," Croft added.

            Gallagher heard them dully, not quite listening. Their talk about the patrol offended him; always superstitious, his mind was charged with taboos, and he felt it dangerous to talk about combat. He was still depressed, and he saw the patrol ahead in a gloomy vista of fatigue and danger and misery. His feelings boiled over into self-pity, and some tears formed in his eyes. To repress them, he spoke angrily to Stanley. "You think you're going to see something? You'll be lucky if you don't get your head blown off." He almost swore and caught himself.

            This time they could not ignore him. For an instant Stanley remembered the casual, almost ridiculous way Minetta had been wounded, and he was tormented by the emotions he had felt then. His confidence was eroded. "You talk an awful lot," he said to Gallagher.

            "You know what you can do about it."

            Stanley stepped toward him, and then halted. Gallagher was much smaller than he, so there would be no glory in fighting him. Moreover, Stanley saw it vaguely as fighting a cripple. "Listen, Gallagher, I can break you in two," he said. He didn't realize it but this was what Red had said to him the morning they landed on the beach.

            "Aaaaah." Gallagher made no motion, however. He was afraid of Stanley.

            Croft watched them indifferently. He too had been bothered by Gallagher's speech. He had never forgotten the Japanese charge across the river, and occasionally he would dream of a great wave of water about to fall on him while he lay helpless beneath it. He never connected the dream to the night attack, but intuitively he felt the dream signified some weakness in himself. Gallagher had disturbed him, and he thought consciously of his own death for a moment. That's a damn fool thing to kick around in your head, he said to himself. But he could not shake it immediately. Croft always saw order in death. Whenever a man in the platoon or company had been killed he would feel a grim and quiet satisfaction as though the death was inevitably just. What bothered him now was the idea that the wheels might be grinding for him. Croft had none of the particular blend of pessimism and fatalism that Red and Brown felt. Croft did not believe that the longer he was in combat the poorer his chances became. Croft believed a man was destined to be killed or not killed, and automatically he had always considered himself exempt. But now he was not so assured. He had a sense of foreboding for an instant.

            The abortive fight over, they stood silently behind the ramp, feeling the lethargic sullen power of the ocean beneath the thin metal of the deck. Red had joined them, and they stood quiet, hunched against the spray, shivering from time to time. Stanley and Croft began talking again about the patrol, and Red listened with dull resentment. His back was aching, which made him irritable. The slapping and pounding of the assault boat, the constraint of the cots and men in their tiny space, even the sound of Stanley's voice, were offensive.

            "You know," Stanley was confiding to Croft, "I'm not saying I'm happy about the patrol, but still it's going to be an experience, you know. You can't be a lower kind of noncom than I am, but still you got duties, and you need experience to carry it out right." His speech had a modest tone, too modest for Red, who snorted scornfully.

            "Jus' keep your eyes open," Croft said. "Most of the men in the platoon walk around like a bunch of goddam sheep lookin' at the ground."

            Red sighed to himself. Stanley's ambition made him contemptuous, but there was an uneasy basis to his scorn which he partially understood. He was the least bit envious. The contradiction ended by depressing him. Aaah, he thought, every man jack eats his heart out, and what does it get him? He could see Stanley rising higher and higher in the months to come, and yet he would never be happy. Any of us'll be lucky if we don't get a bullet in our gut. He felt his skin tightening across his back, and despite himself he turned around to look at the bare metal wall of the bow ramp. Since the day when he had lain helpless on the ground waiting for the Japanese soldier to kill him he had been feeling a recurring anxiety. Often in the night he would awaken with a start, and turn around in his blankets, trembling unreasonably.

            What the hell do I want to be a noncom for? he asked himself. You get a guy killed in your squad and you never stop thinking about it. I don't want to take no orders from nobody, and I don't want nobody to give 'em to me. He looked at Hearn standing in the rear of the boat, and felt a dull anger working in his throat. The goddam officers. Red snorted. A bunch of college kids who think it's like going to a football game. That bastard is glad to be going out on this. Deep within him a passionate hatred was brewing for everyone in the Army who endangered his life. What the hell is it to the General if we get knocked off? Just an experiment that got fugged-up. Guinea pigs.

            Stanley amused him, roused his irony. His emotions finally boiled into speech. "Hey, Stanley, you think they'll give you a Silver Star?"

            Stanley looked at him, tensing instantly. "Fug you, Red."

            "Just wait, sonny," Red said. He guffawed loudly and turned to Gallagher. "They'll give him the Purple Ass-hole."

            "Listen, Red," Stanley said, trying to edge some menace into his voice. He knew that Croft was watching him.

            "Aaah," Red snorted. He didn't want to fight at all. His back, even when it did not ache, left him weak and lethargic. He realized abruptly that he and Stanley had changed in the few months they had been on Anopopei; Stanley looked fatter and sleeker, more self-assured. He was still growing. Red felt the tired leanness of his own body. Because of all this, because of his doubt, his pride made him go on. "You're biting off more than you can take, Stanley."

            "What's the matter, you ganging up with Gallagher?"

            Gallagher was frightened again, unwilling to be involved. In the past weeks he had drawn in upon himself, become passive. His occasional bursts of rage left him apathetic. Yet he could not withdraw now; Red was one of his best buddies. "Red don't need to gang up with me," he muttered.

            "You guys think you're pretty tough 'cause you been around a little longer than me."

            "Maybe," Gallagher said.

            Stanley knew he had to tell Red off if he was to hold Croft's respect. But he felt incapable of it. Red's taunt about combat had lacerated his confidence again; abruptly he was forced to face the knowledge that he was terrified at the thought of it. He took a deep breath. "This ain't the time, Red, but wait'll we get back."