The Naked and the Dead (102 page)

            At the point where the trail reached the river they took a long break. It came about through no decision on their part; they had halted to rest for a moment, and the minute passed, stretched out to half an hour. Toward the end, Wilson became restless and began to thrash about on the litter. They crawled over to him, attempted to quiet his movements, but he seemed absorbed in something and waved his big arms, cuffing them feverishly.

            "Rest a little," Goldstein said.

            "They're gonna kill me," Wilson wailed.

            "No one's gonna touch ya." Ridges tried to restrain his arms but Wilson wrestled free. Sweat laved his forehead again. "Oh, man," he whimpered. He made an effort to slide off the litter but they forced him back. His legs kept twitching, and every few seconds he would begin to sit up and then groan, fall back again. "Baawoowwwwwm," he mumbled, imitating the sound of a mortar, his arms protecting his head. "Oh, here they come, here they come." He whimpered again. "Sonofabitch what the fug 'm Ah doin' here?"

            The memory frightened them all. They sat quiet beside him, averting each other's faces. For the first time since they had re-entered the jungle it seemed malign.

            "Quiet down, Wilson," Ridges told him. "You'll be gettin' the Japs on us."

            "Ah'm gonna die," Wilson mumbled. He started up, almost reached a sitting position, and then fell back. When he looked at them again his eyes were clear but very weak. After a moment or two he spoke. "Ah'm in bad shape, men." He spat tentatively but the spittle did not quite clear his chin. "Can't even feel the hole in mah belly." His fingers trembled toward the soiled clotted dressing of the wound.

            "Fulla pus." He sighed, licked his tongue dryly over his lips. "Ah'm thirsty."

            "You can't have any," Goldstein said.

            "Yeah, Ah know, cain't have any." Wilson laughed feebly. "You're a goddam woman, Goldstein. If you wasn't so chicken you'd be a pretty good boy."

            Goldstein made no answer. He was too weary to get any sense from the words.

            "What you want, Wilson?" Ridges asked.

            "Water."

            "Y' had some."

            Wilson coughed and more blood inched out of the crusted sticky corners of his mouth. "Mah ass's givin' blood too," he grunted. "Aaah, git away, you men." He was silent for several minutes, his lips working abstractedly. "Never could figger out if Ah'd go back t' Alice or t'other one." He could feel new processes going on inside himself. His wound seemed to have dropped through his body; he had the sensation he could put his hand in the hole and find nothing. "Oh." He looked wearily at the men. For an instant or two his vision focused, and he saw them clearly. Goldstein's face had drawn back so that his cheekbones stood out and his nose was beak-like. His irises had become a bright painful blue in the reddened ovals of his eyes, and his blond beard looked red and brown and filthy, was matted over the jungle sores on his chin.

            And Ridges looked like an overworked animal. His heavy features hung even more slack than usual, his mouth open, his lower lip drooping. He breathed with a regular panting rhythm.

            Wilson wanted to say something to them. They were good men, he thought. They didn't have to carry him this far. "Ah 'preciate what you done, men," he mumbled. But that wasn't it. He had to give them something.

            "Listen, men, they's a goddam little still Ah been wantin' to build out in the woods yonder some'eres, on'y damn trouble is we never stay put long enough. But Ah'm gonna git it goin'." A last facsimile of enthusiasm worked in him. He believed himself while he spoke. "Ain't any 'mount of money a man cain't make ifen he gits one set up. Jus' turn it out, an' have all y' want to drink yourself." He was drifting, and he forced himself back. "But Ah git one made soon as we git back, an' Ah'll give you men a canteenful of it each. Jus' a free canteen." There was no expression on their gaunt faces, and he shook his head. It wasn't much to offer for what they'd done. "Men, Ah'll give ya all y' want to drink anytime, don' matter a goddam. You jus' ast me for it an' it'll be yours." He believed all of it; his only regret was that he had not built it already. "Jus' all y' want." His belly dropped again, and then a spasm seized him, and he slid backward into unconsciousness, grunting once with surprise as he felt himself turning over. His tongue protruded, and his breath gave a last rasping sound. He rolled out of the litter.

            They pushed him back. Goldstein picked up Wilson's wrist and searched for a pulse, but his fingers felt too weak to support the arm. He dropped it, and then prodded with his forefinger along the flesh of Wilson's wrist. But his fingertips were too blunted. He could not feel the skin. After a while he just looked at him. "I think he's dead."

            "Yeah," Ridges mumbled. He sighed, thought vaguely of praying.

            "Why, he was just. . . talking." Goldstein reeled through the shock, balanced for a moment in his mind all the unutterables.

            "We might as well be goin'," Ridges mumbled. He stood up heavily, and began to fit the litter straps over his shoulders. Goldstein hesitated, and then followed him. When they were ready, they staggered out onto the flat shallow falls of the river and began moving downstream.

            They did not think there was anything odd about moving this way with a dead man. They were too accustomed to picking him up at the end of each halt; the only thing they understood was that they must carry him. Even more, neither of them really believed he was dead. They knew it but they did not believe it. If he had shouted for water they would not have been surprised.

            They even talked about what they would do with him. In one of the breaks Ridges said, "When we git him back, we'll give him a Christian burial 'cause he repented."

            "Uh-huh." And even so they talked without feeling the words. Goldstein did not want to realize Wilson was dead; he held his mind away from the knowledge rigidly, thinking of nothing, merely sloshing forward through the shallow water upstream, his shoes sliding on the flat smooth rocks. There was something he could not face once he understood.

            And Ridges was bewildered too. He was not convinced Wilson had begged for forgiveness; it was all jumbled in his mind, and he fastened on the thought that if he could get Wilson back, get him buried decently, the conversion would take. And more, both of them felt a natural frustration with having carried him this far only to die. They wanted to complete their odyssey with success.

            Very slowly now, more slowly than they had moved at any time, they shambled through the water, the litter swaying between them. Overhead the trees and foliage met; as before, the river wound a tunnel through the jungle. Their heads drooped, their legs moved stiffly as if afraid of collapsing if they were hinged at the knee. Now when they rested they would flop in the shallow water, leaving Wilson half submerged while they sprawled beside the litter.

            They were almost unconscious. Their feet blundered along the floor of the stream, crunching on the river pebbles. The water flowing past their heels was chill, but they hardly felt it. In the dim light of the jungle aisle they stumbled onward, following the current dumbly. The animals chattered at their approach, the monkeys screaming and scratching at their haunches, the birds calling to one another. And then as they would pass the animals would be silent, and remain quiet for many minutes after they had gone. Ridges and Goldstein reeled forward like blind men, their bodies expressing a mute eloquence. Behind them the animals were silent, passing a warning through the congested channels of the jungle. It might have been a funeral march.

            They descended a waterfall from one flat waist-high rock to another, Ridges dropping down first, and standing in the foam while Goldstein slid the litter over, and flopped down to join him. They struggled through the deeper water, which lashed at their thighs, floating the litter between them. They worked along the riverbanks, splashed through shallow water again. They stumbled and staggered and fell many times, Wilson's body almost washing away. They could not go more than a few feet without halting, and their sobbing fitted into the murmurs of the jungle, was lost in the washing of the water.

            They were bound to the stretcher and the corpse. Whenever they fell they would lunge first at Wilson's body, and become conscious only when they had secured him of the water pouring into their own mouths. It went deeper than any instinct they had ever had. They did not think of what they would do with him when they reached the end, they did not even remember any longer that he was dead. His burden had been the vital thing. Dead, he was as much alive to them as he had ever been.

            And yet they lost him. They came to the rapids where Hearn had carried the vine diagonally across the stream. It had washed away in the four days that had elapsed and the water churned viciously through the rocks now with no support to guide them. They hardly realized their danger. They stepped down into the rapids, took three or four steps, and were upset in the swirling of the water. The litter ripped out of their enfeebled fingers, dragged them in their harness after it. They wallowed and tumbled through the rough water, glancing off rocks, choking and swallowing. They made feeble efforts to free themselves, tried desperately to stand up, but the current was too violent. Half drowned, they let the water carry them.

            The litter split against a rock, and they heard the canvas ripping, but the sound was only an isolated sensation in the panic they felt at swallowing water. They thrashed once more and the litter broke completely in two, the harness ripping free from their shoulders. Gasping, virtually insensible, they washed out of the worst part of the rapids, and stumbled toward the bank.

            They were
alone.

            A fact which obtruded slowly through their bewilderment. They could not quite grasp it. One moment they had been carrying Wilson, and now he had disappeared. Their hands were empty.

            "He's gone," Ridges mumbled.

            They staggered down the river after him, pitching and falling, and reeling on again. At a turn in the stream they could see for several hundred yards, and far in the distance Wilson's body was just disappearing around a bend. "C'mon, we gotta catch him," Ridges said weakly. He took a step and fell forward on his face in the water. He got up very slowly, and then began to walk again.

            They came to the other bend and stopped. The stream spread out into a swamp beyond the turn. There was a thin ribbon of water in the middle and bog land on either side. Wilson had washed into it, was lost somewhere in the foliage and swamp. It would take days to find him if he did not sink.

            "Oh," Goldstein said, "he's lost."

            "Yeah," Ridges mumbled. He took a step forward and stumbled in the water once more. It felt pleasant lapping against his face, and he had no desire to stand up. "Come on," Goldstein said.

            Ridges began to weep. He struggled to a sitting position, and cried with his head on his folded arms, the water swirling around his hips and feet. Goldstein stood over him tottering.

            "Mother-fuggin sonofabitch," Ridges mumbled. It was the first time he had cursed since childhood, and the words pulled out of his chest one by one, leaving behind a vacuum of anger and bitterness. Wilson would not have his burial, but somehow that was not important now. What counted was that he had carried this burden through such distances of space and time, and it had washed away in the end. All his life he had labored without repayment; his grandfather and his father and he had struggled with bleak crops and unending poverty. What had their work come to? "What profit hath man of all his labour wherein he laboureth under the sun?" The line came back to him. It was a part of the Bible he had always hated. Ridges felt the beginning of a deep and unending bitterness. It was not fair. The one time they had got a decent crop it had been ruined by a wild rainstorm. God's way. He hated it suddenly. What kind of God could there be who always tricked you in the end?

            The practical joker.

            He wept out of bitterness and longing and despair; he wept from exhaustion and failure and the shattering naked conviction that nothing mattered.

            And Goldstein stood beside him, holding onto Ridges's shoulder to steady himself in the current. From time to time he would move his lips, scratch feebly at his face. "Israel is the heart of all nations."

            But the heart could be killed and the body still live. All the suffering of the Jews came to nothing. No sacrifices were paid, no lessons were learned. It was all thrown away, all statistics in the cruel wastes of history. All the ghettos, all the soul cripplings, all the massacres and pogroms, the gas chambers, lime kilns -- all of it touched no one, all of it was lost. It was carried and carried and carried, and when it finally grew too heavy it was dropped. That was all there was to it. He was beyond tears, he stood beside Ridges with the stricken sensation of a man who discovers that someone he loves has died. There was nothing in him at the moment, nothing but a vague anger, a deep resentment, and the origins of a vast hopelessness.

            "Let's go," he mumbled.

            Ridges got up at last, and they wavered slowly through the water, feeling it recede to their ankles, become shallow once more. The stream broadened, rippled over pebbles, became muddy and then sandy. They staggered around a bend and saw the sunlight and the ocean beyond.

            A few minutes later they staggered up on the beach. Despite their exhaustion they walked on for a hundred yards. Somehow it was distasteful to stay too near to the river.

            As if in mutual accord, they sprawled out on the sand and lay there motionless, their faces on their arms, the sun warming their backs. It was the middle of the afternoon. There was nothing to do but wait here for the platoon to return and the landing craft to fetch them. Their rifles had been lost, their packs, their rations, but they did not think about this. They were too depleted, and later they could find food in the jungle.