The Naked and the Dead (74 page)

            Hearn spoke to them. "It's three o'clock, men. We've got a lot of ground to cover. I want to make at least ten miles before dark." There was some muttering in the platoon. "What, are you jokers bitching already?" Hearn said.

            "Have a heart, Lieutenant," Minetta called out.

            "If we don't make it today, we'll just have to do it tomorrow," Hearn said. He found himself slightly annoyed. "Anything you care to tell them, Sergeant?"

            "Yes, sir." Croft stared at them, fingering the sodden collar of his fatigue shirt. "I want all you men to remember where the trail is. You can line it up by those three rocks over there, or by that little ol' tree that's bent in half, an' if for any reason one of you troopers gets lost, you wanta remember what these hills look like, so's when you head south and reach the stream, you'll know whether to turn right or left." He paused and readjusted a grenade in his belt. "From now on we're gonna be in open country, an' you gotta keep patrol discipline. I don't want any goddam yelling or messing around, and you damn sure better keep your eyes open. When we cross a ridge-line we do it fast and low. If you're gonna walk like a bunch of sheep you'll be ambushed. . ." He fingered his chin. "I don' know if we're gonna make ten miles or two 'cause you can't tell ahead of time, but we're damn sure gonna do it right, I don't care what distance." There was a low murmur from the men, and Hearn flushed slightly. Croft had virtually contradicted him.

            "All right, men, let's go," he said sharply. They started off in a long loose column, plodding forward wearily. The tropical sun glared on them, reflected from every blade of grass, and dazzled their eyes. The heat made them sweat profusely; their uniforms, which had been wet first by the spray of the boat, had been unable to dry for almost twenty-four hours, and the cloth stuck dankly to their bodies. The sweat ran into their eyes and smarted, the sun burned on their fatigue caps, the high kunai grass lashed against their faces, and the unending hills absorbed their sinews. Their hearts would pound as they toiled up a hill, and they would sob with exertion, their faces burning with fever. An intense pendant silence had settled over the hills, become ominous at last in its depth and pervasiveness. The men had not thought about the Japanese at all while they were in the jungle; the denseness of the brush, the cruelty of the river, had absorbed all their attention. The last thing they had considered was an ambush.

            But now in the great open quiet of the hills they felt a constraint and fear even through their fatigue. The hills stared down on them when they were in a valley, and in crossing a ridge-line the contrast rendered them naked, as though they could be seen for miles. The country was beautiful; the hills were tinted a canary yellow, and spread about them in an unending run of broad smooth curves, but the men did not appreciate the beauty. They had the isolation, the insignificance of insects traversing an endless beach.

            They walked for a mile across a deep flat valley, and the sun blazed on them. The kunai grass grew to terrifying heights. On the plain each blade of grass was an inch wide and many feet high. Sometimes they would trudge for a hundred yards through grass that was over their heads. It roused a new kind of terror in them, drove them on more quickly than was bearable. They felt as though they blundered through a forest, but the forest was not solid. It weaved and swayed, rustled against their limbs, was soft and yielding, and therefore nauseous. They were afraid to let the man in front move too far away, for they could not see more than two or three yards, and so they dogged at each other's heels, the grass whipping nastily into their faces. Every now and then a cloud of gnats would be disturbed and flicker tantalizingly about them, goading their flash with a dozen tiny bites. There were many spiders in the field, and the webs kept trickling across their faces and hands, lashing them forward in a minor frenzy. Pollen and bits of grass teased their exposed skin.

            Martinez led the way like an arrow shot across the field. Most of the time the grass was too tall for him to see, but he directed himself by the sun, never pausing for a moment. It took them only twenty minutes to cross the valley, and then after a short break they trudged over the hills again. Here, the tall grass was welcome, for they grasped tufts of it to aid their ascent, and slowed their fall by clutching it on the downslopes of the hills. The sun continued to beat on them.

            Their first fear of being observed by enemy troops had ebbed in the physical demands of the march, but a new and subtler terror began to obsess them. The land extended so far, was so completely silent, that they became acutely conscious of its unexplored weight, its somnolent brooding resistance. They remembered a rumor that natives had once lived in this portion of the island, and had died decades ago in a plague of scrub typhus, the survivors moving to another island. Until now they had never thought about the natives except to miss their labor, but in the vast buzzing silence of the sun and the hills the men forced themselves onward in nervous spasms, halting and starting, their limbs quivering with exertion. Martinez led them at a cruel pace as if pursued. Even more than the others, he was awed by the thought of the men who had lived on this island and died. It seemed sacrilegious to him to move through this empty land disturbing the long untrampled earth.

            Croft experienced it in a different way. The land was foreign to him, and spawned a deep instinctive excitement at the thought that no one had trod this earth for many years. He had always known land well; he knew by heart every rock outcropping on every hill for miles about his father's ranch, and this country, unexplored, appealed to him deeply. Each new vista that the summit of a hill might furnish him was gratifying. It was all his, all terrain which he could patrol with the platoon.

            And then he remembered Hearn, and shook his head. Croft was like a high-spirited horse, unused to the bit, reminded he was no longer free by an occasional harsh pressure on his jaws. He turned around and spoke to Red, who was behind him. "Pass this back. Tell them to snap it up."

            The order passed through the column, and the men moved forward even more quickly. As they progressed farther away from the jungle their fear mounted, each hill behind them an added obstacle to their return. The platoon propelled itself with a nervous dread. They marched for three hours with only a few halts, lashed by the silence, forcing themselves onward in a tacit accord. At dusk, when they halted for their night's bivouac, the strongest men in the platoon were drained and overtired, and the weaker ones were close to collapse. Roth lay on the ground for half an hour without moving, his hands and legs twitching uncontrollably. Wyman lay hunched over, retching emptily. They had continued for the last two hours only through their fear of being left behind; their nerves had charged them temporarily with a spurious energy, and now that they had halted they felt too weak, their fingers were too numb, to undo the buckles on their packs and withdraw their blankets for the night.

            None of the men talked. Grouped together in a rough circle against the coming night, those who could stomached their rations, drank their water, and spread out their bedding. They had bivouacked in a hollow near the crest of a hill, and before it was dark Hearn and Croft hiked through a small orbit from the bivouac to determine the best place to post a guard. Thirty yards above the men, at the top of the hill, they looked out at the terrain they would have to cross the next day. For the first time since they had entered the jungle, they were able to see Mount Anaka again. It was closer than they had ever seen it before, although the peak must have been twenty miles away. But past the valley beneath them, the yellow hills extended only a short distance before altering into darker tans and browns and the gray-blue of rock. In the evening a haze was spreading over the hills, obscuring the pass to the west of Mount Anaka through which they must travel. Even the mountain was growing indistinct. It was colored a deep lavender-blue, its mass dissolving, becoming transparent in the late twilight. Only the ridge-lines remained distinct. Above the peak a few delicate clouds perched tenebrously, their forms lost in mist.

            Croft put up his field glasses and stared through them. The mountain looked like a rocky coast and the murky sky seemed to be an ocean shattering its foam upon the shore. The movement of the clouds across the peak seemed like mist spray. Through the glasses, the image became more and more intense, holding Croft in absorption. The mountain and the cloud and the sky were purer, more intense, in their gelid silent struggle than any ocean and any shore he had ever seen. The rocks gathered themselves in the darkness, huddled together against the fury of the water. The contest seemed an infinite distance away, and he felt a thrill of anticipation at the thought that by the following night they might be on the peak. Again, he felt a crude ecstasy. He could not have given the reason, but the mountain tormented him, beckoned him, held an answer to something he wanted. It was so pure, so austere.

            He realized with anger and frustration that they would not climb the mountain. If the next day went without incident, they would advance through the pass by nightfall, and he would never have a chance to attempt the mountain. He was balked as he handed the glasses to the Lieutenant.

            Hearn was very weary. He had survived the march without incident, had even felt capable of marching farther, but his body demanded rest. He was gloomy, and as he stared through the glasses the mountain troubled him, roused his awe and then his fear. It was too immense, too powerful. He suffered a faint sharp thrill as he watched the mist eddy about the peak. He imagined the ocean actually driving against a rockbound coast, and despite himself strained his ears as though he could hear the sound of such a titanic struggle.

            Far in the distance, past the horizon, was something which did sound like surf, or perhaps like rolling muted thunder.

            "Listen!" He touched Croft's arm.

            The two of them lay rapt and attentive, their bodies prone at the crest of the hill. Again he could hear the thunder coming faintly, dully, through the falling night.

            "That's artillery, Lootenant. It's coming from the other side of the mountain. I guess they's an attack goin' on."

            "You're right." They were silent again, and Hearn handed Croft the field glasses. "You want to look again?" he asked.

            "Don't mind if I do." Croft put up the glasses to his eyes again.

            Hearn stared at him. There was an expression on Croft's face. He could not name it, but it sent a momentary shudder along his spine. The face was consecrated for that instant, the thin lips parted, the nostrils flared. For an instant he felt as if he had peered into Croft, looked down into an abyss. He turned away, gazed at his hands. You can't trust Croft. Somehow there was reassurance in stating it so banally. He looked out for a last time at the clouds and the mountain. This time it disturbed him more. The rocks were very great, and the darkening sky flowed over it in wave after wave of swirling mist. It was the kind of shore upon which huge ships would founder, smash apart, and sink in a few minutes.

            Croft returned the glasses, and he put them back in the case. "Come on, we have to settle the guard before it's too dark," Hearn said.

            Turning, they slid down the hill to the men in the hollow beneath them.

Chorus:

ROTATION

           
In the hollow that night, lying side by side.

            BROWN : Listen, you know, before we left, I heard a rumor that the rotation quota is coming in next week, and headquarters company this time is gonna have ten men.

            RED: (Snorting) Yeah, they'll clean out the orderlies.

            MINETTA: How do you like that, though, here we are goin' out shorthanded, and they got a dozen orderlies back there for those lousy officers.

            POLACK: You wouldn't take a job being orderly?

            MINETTA: You're fuggin ay I wouldn't, I got my self-respect.

            BROWN: But I'm not kidding, Red, maybe you and me'll be in it.

            RED: How many did they have last month?

            MARTINEZ: One man, month before two men.

            RED: Yeah, one man out of a company. We got a hundred men in headquarters got eighteen months in. Listen, Brown, cheer up, all you got to do is wait a hundred months.

            MINETTA: Aaah, it's a screwing.

            BROWN: What do you care, Minetta? I swear, you ain't been overseas long enough to get a tan.

            MINETTA: If you guys don't get out of here, I never will when my eighteen months come up. Just like a prison sentence, Jesus.

            BROWN: .(Thoughtfully) You know, that's always when you get it. Remember Shaughnessy in P and D? Supposed to go home on rotation, got his orders and everything, and they send him out on a security patrol and he gets it.

            RED: Sure, that's why they picked him. Listen, boy, forget about it, you ain't gonna get out of the Army, ain't any of us gonna get out.

            POLACK: You wanta know something, if I had eighteen months, I could work that rotation. You just gotta start sucking Mantelli, or that fat fug first sergeant, and you win a little money in poker, slip them twenty-thirty pounds, and say, 'Here, for a cigar, for a rotation cigar, get it!' There's ways.

            BROWN: By God, Red, Polack could be right, you remember when they picked Sanders, who the hell was he, not a goddam thing to recommend him except that he had his nose up Mantelli for the last year.

            RED: I'll tell you what, don't try it, Brown. You start sucking Mantelli and he'll get to like you so much he couldn't bear to let you go.