The Naked and the Dead (56 page)

            "They treat you pretty fair, huh?" Red asked Minetta again.

            Minetta set down his coffee, looked at Red warily. "Yeah, okay."

            Red lit a cigarette, and then hoisted himself awkwardly to his feet. As he washed his mess gear in the hot water cans he debated whether to go on sick call. It seemed shameful to him somehow.

            He compromised at last by stopping off at Wilson's tent. "Look, boy, I think I'm gonna go on sick call. You wanta come along?"

            "Ah don' know. Never did know a doctor did a man any good."

            "I thought you were sick."

            "Ah am. Ah'll tell ya, Red, mah insides are shot plumb to hell. Ah cain't even take a leak any more without it burnin'."

            "You need some monkey glands."

            Wilson giggled. "Yeah, somepin the matter with me."

            "What the hell, we might as well go," Red suggested.

            "Aw, listen, Red, if they cain't see it, you ain't got it. All those sonsofbitches know is to give ya a short-arm or an asp'rin. Besides Ah hate to goof-off on the road. Ah may be a sonofabitch some ways but no man can say Ah don' do mah share of the work."

            Red lit a cigarette, closing his eyes and suppressing a grimace as his back knotted suddenly. When the spasm had passed he muttered, "Come on, we rate a day off."

            Wilson sighed. "Awright, but Ah feel a little low about it."

            They walked over to the orderly room tent, and gave their names to the company clerk. Then they walked across the bivouac to the regimental-aid tent. Some men were standing around inside, waiting to be examined. There were two cots at one end of the tent and a half dozen men were sitting on them, and painting the fungus sores on their bare feet with a red antiseptic. An enlisted man was examining the men.

            "It's a slow goddam line," Wilson complained.

            "All lines are slow," Red said. "They got everything down to a system. Wait in line, wait in line, I tell you they ain't anything worth doing because of the lines."

            "Ah suspec' when we get back we'll be waitin' in line for a woman."

            They talked idly as the line moved forward. When Red reached the medic, he was tongue-tied for an instant. He remembered the old migrants, their limbs warped by rheumatism and arthritis and syphilis. Their eyes had become vacant, and they were usually drunk. Once they had snuffled up to him, and begged for a pill.

            Now it was reversed, and for a second he could not speak. The medic was looking with boredom at him.

            "It's my back," Red muttered in embarrassment at last.

            "Well, take off your shirt, I can't see through your clothing," the medic snapped.

            This broke the spell for Red. "If I took it off you wouldn't know any more," he flared. "It's my kidneys."

            The medic sighed. "You guys can figure out more ways. Go over there to the doctor." Red noticed a shorter line, and walked over to it without answering. He was tense with anger. I don't have to take that crap, he told himself.

            Wilson joined him in a moment. "They don' know nothin'. Jus' shuffle ya from man to man."

            Red was about to be examined when an officer walked into the tent and greeted the doctor. "Come on over," the doctor called to him. They talked for a few minutes as Red listened. "I picked up a head cold," the officer said. "It's this hellish climate. Can you give me something to snap out of it, and I don't want any of your bloody aspirin." The doctor laughed. "I've got something for you, Ed; we got a little of it in the last shipment. Not nearly enough to go around, but you're welcome to it."

            Red turned to Wilson and snorted. "If
we
came in with a cold, they'd give us a t.s. slip." He spoke loudly enough for the officers to hear, and the doctor looked at him coldly. Red glared back.

            The officer left, and the doctor stared at Red. "What's the matter with you?"

            "Nephritis."

            "Let me do the diagnosing if you don't mind."

            "I know what it is," Red said, "I been told by a doctor in the States."

            "All you men seem to know just what your trouble is." The doctor asked him for the symptoms and listened inattentively. "All right, so you have nephritis, what am I supposed to do?"

            "That's what I came here for."

            The doctor looked at the ridgepole with an expression of disgust. "You wouldn't mind going to the hospital, I suppose."

            "I just want to get fixed up." The doctor's words made him uneasy. Was that why he was here?

            "We got a report from the hospital today to watch out for malingerers. How do I know you're not faking the symptoms?"

            "There's some tests you can give me, ain't there?"

            "If there wasn't a war on." He reached under his table, and handed Red a package of wound tablets. "Drink these with a lot of water, and if you're faking the whole thing, just throw them away." Red became pale. "Next man," the doctor said.

            Red turned and strode out of the tent. "That's the last goddam time I ever fool around with those fuggin medics." He was quivering with rage. "If you're faking. . ." He thought of the places he had slept, the park benches, and frigid hallways in the middle of the winter. Aaah, fug 'em.

            Red remembered a soldier who had died in the States because he had not been admitted to the hospital. He had gone through training for three days with a fever because the post hospital had a rule that no men could be taken into the hospital unless their temperature was over 102. The soldier had died a few hours after he came into the hospital on the fourth day; he had had galloping pneumonia.

            Sure, they got it all figured out, Red thought. If they get ya to hate 'em enough you'll crack a nut before you'll go to 'em, and that way they keep ya on the line. Of course a guy dies every now and then, but what the hell's another guy to the Army? Those quacks get their orders to be sonsofbitches from the top. He felt a bitter righteous pleasure in the knowledge. You'd think we weren't men.

            But immediately afterward he knew that his anger also stemmed from fear. Five years ago I woulda told that doctor off. It was one of the old jokers, and it was even worse in the Army. A man had to take crap even if it was just by keeping his mouth shut. You don't last a month if you do everything you want, he told himself. And yet nothing was worth doing if you let yourself be pushed around. There was no way to figure that one out.

            He was startled by Wilson's voice. "C'mon, Red, let's go."

            "Oh." They began to walk together.

            Wilson was silent, and his broad high forehead was puckered in a frown. "Red, Ah wish we hadn't gone on that sick call."

            "Yeah."

            "Ah gotta have an op-per-ration."

            "You going to the hospital?"

            Wilson shook his head. "Naw, that doc said it can wait till the campaign's over. Ain't no hurry."

            "What's the matter with ya?"

            "Damn if Ah know," Wilson said. "That guy in there said Ah'm all shot to hell inside. Peter trouble." He whistled for a moment, and then added, "Mah old man died from an op-per-ration an' Ah don' like none of it."

            "Aaah," Red said, "it ain't too bad, or they'd be doin' it now."

            "Ah jus' cain't figger it out, Red. You know Ah had a dose five times and Ah cured it every single time. Buddy of mine told me about this thing, it's called pirdon or pridion or somepin like that, and Ah jus' took it, an' it fixed me up fine, but that doc says it didn't.''

            "He don' know what the score is."

            "Aw, he's a sonofabitch, all right, but the thing is, Red, Ah'm all shot to hell inside. Ah cain't take a leak easy, and mah back hurts, and Ah gets the cramps sometimes." Wilson snapped his fingers deprecatingly. "It's a hell of a note, Red. You take somethin' like lovin', it's so nice and warm and you get to feelin' like jelly, an' then it ends up ru'nin' your insides. Ah cain't understand it, Ah tell ya Ah think that man is wrong. Ah'm sick counta somepin else. Lovin' ain't goin' to hurt a man."

            "It can," Red said.

            "Well, there's somepin all fugged up, that's all Ah can say. It jus' don' make sense for a good thin' like that to end up hurtin' ya." He sighed. "Red, Ah swear the whole thing is confusin' as hell." They walked back to their tents.

The Time Machine:

WOODROW WILSON

THE INVINCIBLE

           
He was a big man about thirty with a fine mane of golden-brown hair and a healthy ruddy spacious face whose large features were formed cleanly. Incongruously, he wore a pair of round silver-rimmed glasses which gave him at first glance a studious or, at least, a methodical appearance. "With all the gals Ah've had, Ah'll never forget that little old piece," he said, wiping the back of his hand against his high sculptured forehead, sliding it up over his golden pompadour.

            Clichés like lazy decadence, death and disease, monotony and violence, well up in your mind. The main street has assumed its tawdry prosperity with discomfort; it is hot and packed with people and the stores are small and dirty. Languid and feverish, the girls walk by on thin legs, with painted faces, staring at the movie houses with gaudy placards, picking at the sore on their chin, squinting with their pale insolent eyes as the sun glares on the dirty asphalt and models the dust-filled pores of the trampled papers underfoot.

            A hundred yards away the back streets are green and lovely, and the foliage of the trees meets overhead. The houses are old and pleasant; you cross a bridge and look down on a tiny stream winding and twisting gently over some soft rounded rocks; there are the sounds of things growing and the soughing of the leaves in the swollen torpid May breeze. A little farther on, there is always the small rotting mansion with its broken shutters, its peeling columns, and the dull black-gray of its walls like a tooth after the nerve has been killed. The mansion alters the loveliness of the streets, limns it with darker mortal lines.

            The grass enclosure in the center of the town square is deserted, and the statue of General Jackson stands on its pedestal and looks with calculation at the cannon balls pyramided in cement, the old cannon whose breech is missing. Behind him the Negro quarter stretches out along the sandy roads into the farm lands.

            There, in the black ghetto, the shacks and two-room shanties sag on their stilts, the wood dry and splintered and dead, the rats and roaches scurrying across the sapless planks. Everything withers in the heat.

            Toward the end, almost out in the country, the poor whites live in similar huts, hoping to graduate to the other side of town where the shoe clerks and the bank tellers and the mill foremen live in cubical houses along rigid streets where the trees are not old enough to cover the sky.

            Over it all hangs the torpid sullen breeze of May, stifling in the late spring.

            Some people feel only the heat. Woodrow Wilson, almost sixteen, sprawls on a log along the sandy road, and drowses in the sun. His loins are warm and a lazy delight drifts along his body. In a couple hours Ah'll go see Sally Ann. Warm smells, the image of teat and female pubes, tickle his nose with passion. Ah, man, Ah wish this here evenin' was over. A man'll melt in the sun thinkin' about nookie. He sighs, moves his legs leisurely.

            Guess Pa's sleepin' it off.

            Behind him, on the slanting warped porch above the stilts, his father sleeps in a rusty swinging couch, his undershirt gathering soddenly about his chest.

            Ain't anyone can drink like Pa. He giggles to himself. 'Cept me, come a year or two. Goddam, ain't anythin' a man wants to do but lie in the sun.

            Two colored boys walk by, leading a mule by the halter. He rouses himself.

            Hey, you niggers, what's that mule's name?

            The boys look up frightened and one of them rubs his foot in the dust. Josephine, he mumbles.

            Okay, boy. He chuckles easily to himself. Man, Ah'm glad Ah don' have to work today. He yawns. Hope Sally Ann don' find out Ah ain't nineteen. She like me anyway, she's a good little ole gal.

            A colored girl about eighteen walks past him, her bare feet swirling tiny clouds of dust before her. Under her sweater she wears no brassiere, and her pendulant breasts look very full and soft. She has a round sensual face.

            He stares at her, and moves his legs again. Goddam. Her strong hips roll slowly, and he watches her stroll away with pleasure.

            One of these days Ah'm gonna try somethin' like that.

            He sighs again easily, and yawns. The sun feels almost unbearably delicious on his loins. Ah guess it jus' don't take much to keep a man happy.

            He closes his eyes. They's jus' an awful lot of fun a man can have.

            In the bicycle shop it is dark, and the benches are stained with grease. He turns the bicycle about, scanning the hand brakes. He has never seen anything but a coaster brake until now and he is confused. Ah guess Ah'll ask Wiley how to fix these little buggers; he turns toward his boss and then halts. Might as well work it out for mahself, he decides.

            He squints in the gloom, traces the tension of the brakes along the connecting rod, pushes the metal pad against the metal of the wheel. After a search, he finds a loose nut where the connecting wire fails to bind, and he tightens it. The brakes work now.

            That's a smart man invented that, he says to himself. He is about to put the bike away when he decides to take it apart. Ah'm gonna learn all the little doodads in that brake.