The Naked and the Dead (24 page)

            "Couldn't stand to have anyone beat him in anythin'.

            "Never could lick him. Ah'd beat the piss out o' him, and he'd never make a sound. Jus' stand there lookin' at me as if he was fixin' to wallop me back, or maybe put a bullet in mah head."

            Croft hunted early. In the winter, in the chill Texas desert, it used to be a cold numbing ride across twenty miles of rutted hard-baked road with the dust blowing like emery into the open battered Ford. The two big men in the front would say little, and the one who was not driving would blow on his fingers. When they reached the forest, the sun would still be straining to rise above the brown-red line of ridge.

            Now, look, boy, see that trail, that's a deer run. They ain't hardly a man is smart enough to track down a deer. You set an' wait for 'em, and you set where the wind is blowin' down from the deer to you. You got to wait a long time.

            The boy sits shivering in the wood. Ah'm fugged if Ah'll wait for any ole deer. Ah'm gonna track 'em.

            He stalks through the forest with the wind on his face. It's dark, and the trees are silver-brown, and the ground is a deep-olive velvet. Where is that ole deer? He kicks a twig out of his way, and stiffens as a buck goes clattering through the brush. Goddam! Ole deer is fast.

            Next time he is more cautious. He finds a deer track, kneels down and traces the hoofprint tenderly, feeling a thrill. Ah'm gonna track this old deer.

            For two hours he creeps through the forest, watching where he places his feet, putting his heel down first, then his toes before he shifts his weight. When the dried thorny branches catch in his clothing, he pulls them free quietly, one by one.

            In a little clearing he sees a deer and freezes. The wind is blowing gently against his face, and he thinks he can smell the animal. Goddam, he whispers to himself. What a big ole bastard. The stag turns slowly, looks past him from a hundred yards. Sonofabitch cain't see me.

            The boy raises his gun, and trembles so badly the sights waver. He lowers it, and curses himself. Jus' a little ole woman. He brings it up again, holding it steadily, moving the front sight over until it points a few inches below the muscle of the foreleg. Ah'm goin' to git him through the heart.

            BAA-WOWWW!

            It is someone else's gun, and the deer drops. The boy runs forward almost weeping. Who shot him? That was mah deer. I'll kill the one sonofabitch who shot him.

            Jesse Croft is laughing at him. Ah tole you, boy, to set where Ah put you.

            Ah tracked that deer.

            You scared that deer into me. Ah yeard ya footing it from a mile away.

            You're a liar. You're a goddam liar. The boy throws himself at his father, and tries to strike him.

            Jesse Croft gives him a blow across the mouth, and he sits down. You ole sonofabitch, he screams, and flings himself at his father again.

            Jesse holds him off, laughing. Little ole wildcat, ain't ya? Well, you got to wait ten years 'fore you can whop your pa.

            That deer were mine.

            One that wins is the one that gits it.

            The tears freeze in the boy's eyes and wither. He is thinking that if he hadn't trembled he would have shot the deer first.

            "Yes, sir," Jesse Croft said, "they wa'n' a thing my Sam could stand to have ya beat him in. When he was 'bout twelve, they was a fool kid down at Harper who used to give Sam a lickin'." (Scratching the back of his gray scraggly hair, his hat in his hand.) "That kid would lick Sam every day, and Sam would go back and pick a fight the next day. Ah'll tell ya, he ended up by whoppin' the piss out of that kid.

            "And then when he was older, about seventeen maybe, he used to be bustin' horses down to the fair in August, and he was known to be 'bout the best rider in the county. Then one time a fella all the way from Denison came down and beat him in a reg'lar competition with judges and all. I 'member Sam was so mad he wouldn't talk to no one for two days.

            "He got good stock in him," Jesse Croft declared to his neighbors. "We was one of the first folks to push in here, must be sixty years ago, and they was Crofts in Texas over a hunnerd years ago. Ah'd guess some of them had that same meanness that Sam's got. Maybe it was what made 'em push down here."

            Deer hunting and fighting and busting horses at the fair make up in hours a total of perhaps ten days a year. There are the other things, the long flat sweeps of the terrain, the hills in the distance, the endless meals in the big kitchen with his parents and brothers and the ranch foremen.

            There are the conversations in the bunkhouse. The soft reflective voices.

            Ah tell ya that little gal is gonna remember me unless she was too goddam drunk.

            Ah jus' looked at that nigger after that, an' Ah said, Boy, you no-good black bastard, an' Ah jus' picked up that hatchet an' let him have it right across the head. But the sonofabitch didn't even bleed much. You can kill an elephant about as fast as you can kill a nigger in the head.

            A whoor is no damn good for a man, Ah gotta have it at least five six times 'fore Ah'm satisfied, and that ole business of stickin' it in once an' then reachin' for your hat jus' leaves me more fussed than it's worth.

            Ah been keepin' an eye on that south herd leader, the red one with the spot 'hind his ear, an' he's gonna be gittin' mean when the hot weather comes.

            The Education of Samuel Croft.

            And always, day after day, the dust of cattle through the long shimmering afternoons in the sun. A man gets bored and it's uncomfortable falling asleep in a saddle. Thinking of town maybe. (Bar and a whorehouse, dry goods.)

            Sam, you gittin' itchy?

            A lazy somnolent pulsing in his loins. The sun refracts from the hide of his horse, bathes his thighs in a lazy heat. Yeah, some.

            They're fixin' to start a National Guard outfit in Harper.

            Yeah?

            Ah figger they'll be some women hangin' round the uniforms, an' ya git to do a lot of shootin'.

            Maybe I'll go down with ya. He wheels his horse to the left and rides out to turn back a straggler.

            The first time Croft ever killed a man he was in a National Guard uniform. There was a strike on at Lilliput in the oil fields, and some scabs had been hurt.

            They called the Guard. (The sonsofbitches started this strike come from up north, New York. They's some good boys in the oil fields but they got they heads turned by Reds, an' next thing they'll have ya kissin' niggers' asses.) The guardsmen made a line against the gate to the plant and stood sweating in a muggy summer sun. The pickets yelled and jeered at them.

            Hey, drillers, they called out the Boy Scouts.

            Let's rush 'em. They're jus' company scabs too.

            Croft stands in line with his mouth tightening.

            They're gonna rush us, the soldier next to him says.

            The Guard lieutenant is a haberdashery salesman. If there're rocks being thrown you better lie down, men. If it should git real bad, fire a couple of rounds over their heads.

            A stone lofts through the air. The crowd is sullen outside the gate, and every now and then one of them shouts some curses at the soldiers.

            No sonofabitch'll talk to me that way, Croft says.

            A rock strikes one of the soldiers, and they lie down on the ground and point their rifles above the heads of the advancing crowd.

            Let's rip the place apart.

            About ten men start to walk toward the gate. Some stones fly over their heads and scatter among the soldiers.

            All right, men, the lieutenant pipes, fire over them.

            Croft sights down his barrel. He has pointed his gun at the chest of the nearest man, and he feels a curious temptation.

            I'll just squeeze the trigger a little bit.

            BAA-WOWWW! The shot is lost in the volley, but the striker drops.

            Croft feels a hollow excitement.

            The lieutenant is cursing. Goddam, who shot him, men?

            Guess they's no way to find out, Lieutenant, Croft says. He watches the mob retreating in a panic. Bunch o' dogs, he tells himself. His heart is beating, and his hands feel very dry.

            " 'Member that gal, Janey, he married. Ah'll say one thing for her, she was a reg'lar ole tomcat," Jesse Croft said. (He spewed an oyster of phlegm, and ground it reflectively with his boot.) "Jus' the meanest little ole girl, Ah'll tell ya she was a mate for him till they busted up. They ain't one of the gals my boys've married that I woulda taken up against her. Ah'm an old man, but Ah'll tell ya, mah balls would git to itchin' when Ah'd look at her and jus' think of lovin' up to her." (Scratching his pants vigorously.) "Trouble with Sam he shouldn'ta married her. When a man can knock off a piece with a woman without slippin' her a weddin' ring, it don' pay to git any ideas about settlin' down with her. A woman that likes her nookie ain't gonna be satisfied with one man after she gits used to him." (Pointing his finger at the man he is talking to.) "Reckon that's a law of life."

            Oh, give it to me, you sonofabitch, give it to me, I'LL KILL YOU IF YOU STOP.

            Who's your man?

            You're my man, you give it to me, give it to me, give it to me.

            They ain't nobody can make love to you like me.

            They ain't anybody, anybody, oh, you're just a goddam fuggin machine.

            The long sliding of a belly against a belly.

            I love ya better than any man ever could.

            You do, baby, you do.

            Ah'm jus' an old fuggin machine. (Crack. . . that. . . whip! Crack. . .that. . .WHIP!)

            After they married, Croft rented a little house on the ranch from his father. He and Janey petered out for each other through a slow taciturn year, through a thousand incidents which they forgot while the effects still remained. At night they would sit by themselves in the parlor, listen to the radio and seldom talk. In a dumb instinctive way, Croft would search for an approach.

            Want to go to bed?

            It's early, Sam.

            Yeah. And an anger would work in him. They had torn at each other once, had felt sick when they were close together and other people were with them. Now, in sleep their bodies intruded; there was always a heavy limb in the way. And the nights together working on them, this new change, this living together between them like a heavy dull weight, washing dishes and mouthing familiar kisses.

            The buddy system.

            But he wanted no buddy. In the quiet nights in the cheap parlor of this house set on the Texas plains, an undefined rage increased and increased. There were the things he did not know how to utter (the great space of the night), the fury between them balked almost completely now. There were the trips to town, the drinking bouts between them, the occasional kindling of their bodies in a facsimile of their earlier passion, only confusing and protracting the irreversible reaction.

            It ended with him going to town alone, and taking a whore when he was drunk, beating her sometimes with a wordless choler. And for Janey it resulted in other men, ranch hands, once one of his brothers.

            "It jus' don' pay to marry a woman with hot pants," Jesse Croft said later.

            Croft found out in a quarrel.

            And another thing, you go tomcattin' to town, and jus' hellin' around, well, don' be thinkin' Ah'm jus' sittin' around. They's things Ah can tell you too.

           
What things?

            You want to know, don't ya? You got yore water hot. Jus' don't push me around.

           
What things?

            She laughs. Jus' a way of talkin'.

            Croft slaps her across the face, catches her wrists and shakes her.

            WHAT THINGS?

            You sonofabitch. (Her eyes glaring.) You know what kind of things.

            He strikes her so heavily that she falls.

            That's one thing you ain't best in, she screams.

            Croft stands there trembling and then wrenches out of the room. (Goddam whore.) He feels nothing and then anger and shame and then nothing again. At this moment his initial love, his initial need of her is full-throated again. (Jus' an ole fuggin machine.)

            "If Sam coulda found any of the boys who was scooting up her pants, he'da killed 'em," Jesse Croft said. "He tore around like he was gonna choke us all with his hands and then he took off for town and threw himself about as good a drunk as Ah've seen him indulge. And when he got back he'd enlisted himself in the Army."

            After that there were always other men's wives.

            You must think I'm a pretty cheap woman going out with you like this.

            Wouldn't say that. Everybody likes to have a good time.

            That's it. (Drinking her beer.) That's my philosophy. Need to have a good time. You don't think a bit cheap of me, do you, soldier?

            Hell, you're too good-lookin' a woman for me to think cheap. (Have another beer.)

            And later. Jack don't treat me right. You understand me.

            That's right, honey, I understand you. They roll together in bed.

            Ain't nothing wrong with that philosophy, she says.

            Not a damn thing wrong. (And. . . crack. . . that. . . WHIP!)

            You're all fuggin whores, he thinks.