The Naked and the Dead (39 page)

            "A lot of people were walking past us," Wyman said, "and we started playing a game, you know guessing how old they were and what they did for a living, and she would try to guess whether they were happy or not. And then we started analyzing all our friends, and we talked a lot."

            Red grinned. "And then you asked her, 'What do ya think of me?' "

            Wyman looked at him with surprise. "How'd you know?"

            "Ah, I just guessed." Red was remembering the park at the end of the main street in the company town. For a moment, he could see Agnes's face again, and the sound of his voice, "You know I don't believe in God." He felt wistful, and then smiled to himself. That evening had had a beauty which he had never felt in exactly the same way again. "What was it, summer time?" he asked Wyman.

            "Yeah, early in the summer."

            Red smiled again. It happens to all the fuggin kids, he thought, and they all think it's something special. Wyman probably had been a shy kid, and he could see him talking in the park, telling a girl things he had never been able to say to anyone else. And of course the girl would have been like him. "I know what you mean, kid," he said.

            "You know she told me she loved me," Wyman said defiantly, as if he expected Red to laugh. "We were really going steady after that night."

            "Wha'd your mother say?"

            "Aw, she didn't like the idea, but I wasn't worried about that. I knew I could bring her around."

            "Sometimes it's hard," Red said. "You don't know what you would have been running into."

            Wyman shook his head. "Red, listen, this sounds stupid, but Claire really made me feel like I could be something. After a date I'd leave her, and walk around for a while by myself, and I don't know, I just
knew
I was gonna be a big guy someday. I was sure of it." He stopped for a moment, absorbed in what he had said.

            Red wondered what to answer. "You know a lot of people feel that way, kid."

            "Aw, it was
different
with us, Red. It was
really
something special."

            Red winced. "I don't know," he muttered. "Lots of people feel like that, and then for some reason they bust up, or they go sour on each other."

            "We wouldn't have busted up, Red. I'm telling ya, she loved me." He thought about this, and his face became tense. He wrapped his blanket around him and then said, "She couldn't have been lying, Red, she's not that kind of girl. She's not cheap." He was silent, and then blurted out suddenly, "You don't think she coulda been lying to me, do ya?"

            "Naw, she wasn't," Red said. He felt a pang. "Naw, she didn't lie, but people change, you know."

            "Not her," Wyman said. "It was different with us." His voice expressed the frustration he felt at being unable to put his feeling into words.

            Red thought of the mother Wyman would have to support if he married his girl, and he had a quick elliptic knowledge of everything that would contain- -- the arguments, the worries over money, the grinding extinction of their youth until they would look like the people who walked by them in the park -- it was all clear to Red. It would not be this girl for Wyman but it would be some other, and it did not matter because both girls would look the same in thirty years and Wyman would never amount to very much. He saw a future vista of Wyman's life, and rebelled. He wanted to be able to tell Wyman something more comforting than the fact that it didn't matter. But he could think of nothing, and he settled back in his blankets. His back was paining. "Aaah, you better try to sleep it off, kid," he said.

            "Yeah, okay," Wyman murmured.

            Like a relapsing fever, Red had again the familiar ache of age and sadness and wisdom.

            Croft and Martinez had not received any mail either; they never got any.

            Ridges was given a letter from his father. It was written laboriously on coarse ruled paper into which the pencil lines had cut deeply. Ridges gave it to Goldstein to read for him.

            It went: Dere Son, we one and al of us miss you, the crop was harvest, and we made som little money, enuff to kepe us, Thank the Lord. Sim grew prette near haff a foot and your other brothers and sisters are kepeing him compeny, ma is felling pretty good. Old man Henry lost his 3 acres, it is a shaim, but the company will not take a no for a answer. We appreshate the monee you sent, you are a gud son, we al saye that. Your loveing father.

            "That's a mighty fine letter," Ridges said when Goldstein had finished. "Pa writes a nice hand."

            "It's a very nice letter," Goldstein said. He read over again the last lines of one of the letters his wife had sent him. "Danny asked about you yesterday, I've been telling him all the time that daddy is in the Army, and he hasn't forgotten you one bit. He's so cute, oh, Joey, I wish you could see him growing up, there's nothing like it. He said yesterday, 'When does Daddy come back from going boom-boom?' I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Manny Straus promised he'd take some pictures of him. . ."

            Goldstein sipped his beer and felt an awful longing.

            Wilson had Gallagher reread one of the letters from Wilson's wife next morning. He laughed angrily several times as Gallagher read.

            "I am not going to stand for this I hav been a gud wife to you and you no that, I hav alwaze giv you all the monie you want, and I am entitel now to one hunedird and twentie dollar everie monthe I was tawking to Wes Hopekinds down at the cowntie clerke offis and he saiy that you hav to giv me the monie the armie take care of it thair is no thing you can do abowt it. Unles you do that yurselfe Woodrow I am goeing to rite a leter to the armie I no the adres cawze Wes done tolde me how to go abowt it. I am tird of be a gud wife to you cawze you do not unnderstan. . ."

            "Well, now, how do you like that ol' shit?" Wilson said. He was angry and he brooded over his answer. "You're gonna write a letter for me, tonight. Ah'm gonna tell her that she cain't get away with none of that stuff." He phrased a few sentences to himself. "Ah'm tellin' ya, y' better start actin' like a decent wife, and cut out all that fussin' an' naggin' or I damn sure ain't gonna come back to ya." He censored "damn." Wilson had an obscure prejudice against using profanity in a letter. "There's plenty of women would be glad to have me, an' you know it. Ah cain't stan' a woman who's always tryin' to take away the last cent from a man. If Ah want a little money in the Army, Ah'm gonna have it. Ah don' want no more talk about this "lotment." Wilson felt bitter and righteous, and the act of composing had given him a heady pleasure. His mind was filled with things to tell her, and he felt a glow each time he conceived a biting phrase.

            He sat on the edge of the hole at the tent entrance and squinted at the sun. "Y' take that other gal," he said to Gallagher, "she's awright. Ah got a letter from her Red read me last mail call we had, an' she tol' me she was jus' waitin' for me to come back to Kansas so we could git married an' then go on south. That was a woman. Use' to cook for me, mend my clo'es, starch up my shirts for Satidday inspection, an' she gave me as good lovin' as Ah've had for a long time."

            Gallagher spat with disgust and envy. "What a bastard you are. If you like her so goddam much why don't you tell her you're married, and give her a break?"

            Wilson looked at him as if Gallagher were stupid. "Hell, man," he protested, "why should Ah tell her? Ah never can tell how Ah'm gonna be feelin' when Ah git out of the Army. Maybe Ah'm gonna want to go to Kansas and hook up with that other woman. There's no way of sayin'. Be a damn shame if en Ah was to tell her, an' she wasn't around when Ah got out, an' Ah wanted her." He shook his head and giggled. "The less you tell a woman the better off y'are."

            Gallagher flew into a rage. "You fuggin crackers, you're a bunch of animals."

            "Aw."

            Gallagher smoldered. A guy like Wilson went around taking life easy and making everybody pay for him. It wasn't fair. He looked off into the jungle, righteous, envious.

            After a while he calmed, and began to look over his mail again. He had had time the night before to read only the mail he had received from his wife. They were all old letters; the newest was a month old, and he had kept telling himself with surprise that he was probably a father by now. The date his wife had mentioned for the birth of his child had elapsed a few days ago but he was unable to believe it. He assumed that what she wrote about had happened on the same day that he read the letter; if she said that she was going to visit one of her girl friends on the next day, he would be thinking on the day after he read the letter that Mary was seeing her friend at this moment. His reason was always correcting him, but still she lived for him only at the exact time when he read her letters.

            Now he was going through the rest of his mail. He skimmed through a letter from his mother, and read aloud to Wilson some of the funnier passages in a letter he had got from Whitey Lydon. Then he opened a long thick envelope and extracted a newspaper from it. It was tabloid size and had only eight pages, which were badly printed. "I used to work for this," he said to Wilson.

            "Ah never knew you were a reporter."

            "Naw, this is political. The gang over at the party headquarters puts this out before the primaries." He looked at the date. It was printed in June. "This thing's old as hell," he said. He felt a pang of envy as he looked at the names on the masthead; one of his friends who was not in the Army had been put in charge of the advertising department. Gallagher knew what that meant. In the last primary before he entered the Army he had gone from door to door in his ward, soliciting contributions for the paper. The man who brought in the most contributions was called advertising manager, and he usually received a job on the school board in his ward. He had missed out by only a few hundred dollars, but he had been told he would certainly win the next year.

            "Just my fuggin luck to get in the Army," he said resentfully. He started reading the paper. A headline caught his attention.

ANDREWS A BIGOT IN WARD 9. LET'S GET HIM OUT

            It's just the old Andrews BALLY-HOO in Action, just like the last time he ran for State Leg. when his slogan was ANDREWS VS. COMMUNISM, remember? then what did he do about COMMUNISM? N-O-T-H-I-N-G as far as we can see. One of his workers at his headquarters was a vice-president of CIO and another worker was a director of the Anti-Nazi League of N.Y., remember this league that did not like Father Coughlin and wanted to boycott Catholic Franco.

            Now Jimmy Andrews, Old Boy, remember the old gray mare Aint What She Used To Be, so don't start off on the wrong foot, don't kid the Public or the Veterans, make sure what you say. Help The Veteran -- Don't Kid. We're all on to you, Jimmy Andrews, and the voters of Ward 9 don't want a bigot. So watch out for the Company you keep. There's no place in the party for men like you. We're on to that old game.

            NO BIGOTS ALLOWED

            NO COMMUNISTS

            LET'S GET ANDREWS OUT

            Gallagher felt a dull anger as he read. It was those kind of guys you had to watch out for, the fuggin Communists. He remembered once when he was driving a truck and the AFL had tried to organize them. He'd mentioned it down at the ward headquarters, and the organizer had never come back. There was something funny there, he'd noticed there were guys in the party who would play around with the Red Labor Outfits, men like Big Joe Durmey, and this Jim Andrews guy, and they had no call to deal with bigots, Gallagher decided. Those were the kind of guys who were always working against him; no wonder he had never got anywhere. He felt a pang of envy as he thought of Whitey Lydon. Everybody was getting ahead of him while he was stuck here. There wasn't anybody you could trust. Dog eat dog.

            He folded the paper and crammed it into his pocket. Croft was calling to them and they got out of their tents, and strolled toward the truck that was to take them to the section of road upon which they were working. The sun had been up for only an hour and the morning still had a fine clear youth. It was not yet hot. Gallagher thought vaguely of early summer mornings when he set out for work, and the pavements were still cool and fresh from the summer night. He had forgotten the newspaper and was humming to himself as he climbed on the truck.

            In the mail room, a pyramidal tent with two field desks, the mail clerk was sorting some of the letters that had been misaddressed. There was a stack of twenty letters for Hennessey, tied together with a thin piece of twine, and they lay for several hours on a corner of the desk. At last the mail clerk noticed them. He prided himself on remembering the name of every man in the regiment, and he was annoyed now because he could not place Hennessey.

            "Was Hennessey transferred from headquarters company?" he asked his assistant.

            "I don't know, name's familiar." The assistant thought a moment and then said, "Wait a minute, I temember, he was knocked off the day we came in." The assistant was pleased that he had recalled it when the mail clerk had forgotten.

            "That's right," the mail clerk said hastily. "He got it right on the beach, I was talking to Brown about it." He looked at the tied bundle of envelopes, sighed, and stamped on them, "Addressee Killed in Action." He was about to put the letters in one of the bags at his feet, when he noticed the return address. He skimmed through the envelopes and discovered it was the same on all of them. "Hey, look at this," he said to the assistant.

            The return address on the letters was "Mom and Dad, 12 Riverdale Avenue, Tacuchet, Indiana." The assistant read it to himself, and thought for a moment of a rosy-cheeked man and woman with graying hair, the Mom and Pop of a thousand billboard ads for soft drinks and mouthwashes and toothpastes. "Gee, isn't that sad," he said.