The Naked and the Dead (57 page)

            An hour later, after he has stripped it and reassembled it, he grins happily. They ain't nothin' like a piece of machinery. He feels a deep content as he traces in his mind the wires and nuts and levers that make up the hand brake.

            All that machinery is simple, you jus' got to work it out for yourself. He whistles a little, pleased with himself. Ah bet in a coupla years they won't be anythin' Ah cain't fix.

            But in a couple of years he is working in a hotel. The bicycle shop shuts down in the depression, and the only job he can get is as a bellhop working for tips in the fifty-room hotel at the end of the main street. He makes a little money and there are always women and liquor to be had. On night duty there seldom is a time when he can't find a girl in the hotel to spend a few hours with.

            One of his buddies has an old Ford, and on weekends when he's off he goes tearing around the sandy roads with him, a gallon jug between them rattling over the loose rubber pads near the gear shift. Sometimes they take a couple of girls with them, and many Sundays they wake up in a strange room, not knowing what happened.

            One Sunday he wakes up married. (Turning in bed drowsily, slipping his arm about the round belly beside him. The sheets are over his head and he looks at the warm skin and the deep black hair of the triangle. He places his finger in her navel.) C'mon, wake up. He is trying to remember her name.

            Mornin', Woodrow. She has a heavy strong face, and she yawns evenly and turns to him. Mornin', hubby.

            Hubby? He shakes his head and slowly assembles the events of the past night. You two sure you want to get married? the j.p. had said. He begins to laugh. Goddam! He is trying to think of where he met her.

            Where's ol' Slim?

            He'n Clara are in the nex' room.

            Ol' Slim's married too? That's right, he is. Wilson begins to laugh again. He is beginning to remember their making love, and he feels a spasm of heat. Slowly he caresses her. You're pretty good, honey, as I remember.

            You're a fine man, Woodrow, she says huskily. Yea-a-ah. For a moment, he is thinking. (Guess Ah had to git married, sometime. Ah can move out from Pa's, and git that house over on Tolliver Street, an' we can set up.) He looks at her again, gazes at her body. (Knew what Ah was doin' even if Ah was drunk.) He giggles. Married, goddam, let's give us a kiss, honey.

            The day after his first child is born, he talks to his wife in the hospital.

            Alice, honey, Ah want ya to gimme some money.

            What for, Woodrow, you know why Ah been keeping the money, same thing's gonna happen as last time, Woodrow, we need that money, we got the kid to pay for, bein' born in a hospital.

            He nods. Alice, a man wants to git drunk once in a while, Ah been workin' goddam hard at the garage, and Ah feel like havin' me a little time, Ah couldn' be more hones' with ya.

            She looks at him suspiciously. You ain't gonna be layin' up with no woman.

            Ah'm sick an' tired of that, Alice, ifen you don' trust your own husband, you're pretty bad off, Ah'm kinda hurt you talk like that.

            She signs a check for ten dollars, scrawling her name laboriously. He knows she's proud of the checkbook. You write mighty fine, he says.

            Come back tomorrow mornin', honey?

            Sure.

            On the street, after he has cashed the check, he stops for a drink. Ah don' know, a woman's the goddamnedest animal God eveh made, he announces. You marry 'em an' they're one thing, and damn ifen they don't turn out plumb opposite. You marry a girl that's cherry and she turns out a whore, an' you marry a whore and damn if she don't cook and sew and keep her legs clos' for everyone but you, and goddam ifen by the time she's done she don' keep 'em closed for you too. (Laughter.) Ah tell ya Ah'm gonna be a free man for a couple of days.

            He wanders down the road, and hitches a ride on an automobile through the shrub lands. After he has been let off, he hefts his gallon of corn to his shoulder and trudges down a trail through the stunted pines. At a farm cabin he stops and kicks the door open. Clara, honey.

            Woodrow -- ya got here, huh?

            Yeah, figgered Ah'd see ya awhile. Ol' Slim oughts know better than to be away for a week, job or no job.

            Thought he was a friend of yours.

            Sure, but his wife's prettier. (They laugh.) Commere, honey, let's have a drink. He strips his shirt, and holds her on his lap. It is intensely hot in the cabin and he strains against her. Ah'm gonna tell ya somethin', they was a little old whore Ah had back a while ago that Ah took twelve times in a night, and the way Ah'm fixin' now, what with the honey in mah insides, Ah'm gonna beat that with you.

            Better not drink too much, Woodrow, it'll keep ya down.

            Nothin' keeps me down, Ah'm a man likes his lovin'. He tilts the jug to his mouth, and bridles his neck pleasurably as a trickle of liquid slips over his ear to be lost in the golden hairs on his chest.

            Woodrow, Ah think you're pretty goddam mean, they ain't nothin' so low as a man'll lie to his wife, and spend all their money while she's in the hospital with his baby. (Alice's voice is whining.)

            Ah ain't gonna say nothin', Alice, but let's cut out this talk, Ah'm a good husband to ya mos' of the time, an' they ain't no call for ya to talk to me like that, Ah jus' wanted a little fun and Ah took it and ya better quit messin' with me.

            Woodrow, Ah'm a good wife to ya, Ah been faithful as a woman can be since the day we was married, an' you got a child now an' you gotta settle down, how do ya think Ah felt when Ah found out you wrote out another check in mah name, an' jus' took out all the money we had.

            Ah figgered you'd be glad to see me havin' a decent time, but all a woman wants is for ya to stay right close by her.

            An' then you had to pick up a disease from that no-good bitch.

            Now, you quit messin' with me, Ah got some pyridin or whatever the hell it is, and it's fixin' me up jus' right, Ah've fix mahself up with it plenty of times.

            A man can die from that.

            You jus' talk nonsense. (He feels a tremolo of fear, which he represses quickly.) On'y kind of man that ever gets sick is the kind that jus' sticks in a corner. You have your funnin' an' it keeps ya all right. (He sighs and pats her on the arm.) Now, come on, honey, let's quit your fussin', you know Ah love ya, an' Ah can be awful sweet to ya at times.

            He sighs again to himself. (Ifen you could just do what ya wanted, a man'd never get in no trouble. This way Ah gotta lie, an' fool around, an' walk fifty yards to the south ifen Ah want to walk ten to the no'th.)

            He walks down the main street with his oldest girl, who is now six. Now, what y'lookin' at, May?

            Daddy, Ah'm jus' lookin'.

            Okay, honey.

            He watches her stare at a doll in the store window. At its feet is a price tag for $4.59. What's the matter, ya want that doll?

            Yes, Daddy.

            She is his favorite, and he sighs. Honey, you're gonna make your daddy broke. He feels in his pocket and holds the five-dollar bill; it has to last him for the rest of the week and it's Wednesday now. All right, let's go in, honey.

            Daddy, Momma gonna be mad at you for buyin' me it?

            Naw, honey, Daddy'll take care of Mommy. He laughs internally. (What a smart little bugger she is.) He pats her affectionately on her tiny rump. (Some man's gonna be lucky one of these days.) Come on in, May.

            As they walk home, he thinks of the quarrel Alice will start over the doll. (Aw, shoot, Ah don' give a damn. She starts messin' up, an' Ah'll jus' throw a little ol' fit, and she'll quit right fast. Jus' git 'em afraid, that's only way a woman understands.) Come on, May.

            He walks back along the street with her, nodding and calling to his friends. (Ah jus' don' understand how screwin' makes a kid, one thing's one thing, and t'other's t'other. It's jus' too damn confusin' when you set down and try to start thinkin' things out, wonderin' what you're gonna do next. Hell, ya jus' let it happen to ya and you go along all right that way.)

            The child's steps lag, and he picks her up. Come on, honey, you hold the doll and Ah'll hold you, and we'll git along okay.

            (All a man got to do is take it easy an' he'll enjoy himself.) Feeling pleased and content, he continued home. When Alice started complaining about the price of the doll, he threw his little ole fit, and poured himself a drink.

13

            Cummings put in a busy week after Hearn was transferred to Dalleson's section. The final and major assault on the Toyaku Line, which Cummings had been postponing for almost a month, had become virtually a necessity. The character of the messages he had been receiving from Corps and Army permitted no further delay and Cummings had his informants in higher echelons as well; he knew he would have to produce some success in the next week or two. His staff had developed the attack plan through its final variations and details, and the assault was scheduled to start in three days.

            But Cummings was unhappy with it. The force he could muster would be relatively powerful for the few thousand men involved, but it was a frontal attack and there was no reason to assume it would be any more successful than the attack that had preceded it and failed. The men would advance, and halt probably to a crawl at the first serious resistance. There would be no compulsion for them to keep moving.

            Cummings had been toying with another plan for several weeks, but it depended on receiving some naval support, and that was always doubtful. He sent out a few cautious feelers and received some contradictory answers which had left him undecided; the secondary plan had been sidetracked in his mind before the need to produce something tangible and effective. But it was this other plan that intrigued him, and at a conference of his staff officers one morning he decided to draw up an additional set of plans which would incorporate the naval support.

            This other plan was simple but powerful. The extreme right flank of the Toyaku Line was anchored on the water's edge a mile or two behind the point where the peninsula joined the island. Six miles to the rear of that was a small cove called Botoi Bay. The General's new plan was to land about a thousand men at Botoi and have them drive inland on a diagonal to take the center of the Toyaku Line from the rear. At the same time his frontal attack, reduced in strength, of course, would drive forward to meet the invading troops. That invasion could work if the landing was successful.

            Only that was the doubtful part of it. The General had enough landing craft assigned him for ferrying supplies from freighters off the island to be able to transport his invasion troops in one wave if necessary, but Botoi Bay was almost out of range of his artillery, and air reconnaissance had shown that fifty or perhaps even a hundred Japanese troops were entrenched in bunkers and pillboxes on that stretch of beach. Artillery couldn't drive them out nor dive bombers. It would take at least one destroyer and preferably two firing at point-blank range, perhaps a thousand yards offshore. If he were to send a battalion in without naval support a bloody and disastrous massacre would occur.

            And the beach at Botoi Bay was the only place where he could land troops for at least fifty miles down the coast. Past Botoi some of the densest jungle forests on Anopopei grew virtually into the water, and nearer his own front line were bluffs too steep to be scaled by invasion troops. There was no alternative. To take the Toyaku Line from the rear they would need the Navy.

            The thing that appealed to Cummings about this flanking invasion was what he called its "psychological soundness." The men who would land at Botoi would be in the enemy rear without any safe way to retreat, and their only security would be to drive ahead and meet their own troops. They would
have
to advance. And, conversely, the troops attacking frontally would do so with more enthusiasm. Cummings had found from experience that men fought better when they believed their share of an assignment was the easy part. They would be pleased they missed the invasion, and even more important, they would believe that the resistance before them would be softer, less decisive, because of the movement in the rear.

            After the battle plan for the frontal assault had been completed, and it was merely a question of waiting a few days until all the supplies had been brought up to the front, Cummings called a special conference of his staff officers, outlined the new plan to them, and gave orders that it should be developed as a corollary of the major attack, to be used as opportunity granted. At the same time he sent a request through channels for three destroyers. Then he put his staff to work.

            After a hurried lunch, Major Dalleson returned to his G-3 tent, and began to draw up the plans for the Botoi invasion. He sat himself down before his desk, opened his collar, sharpened a few pencils with slow absorbed motions, his heavy lower lip dangling pensively and moistly, and then he selected a blank piece of paper and wrote "Operation Coda" in large block letters at the top of his sheet. He sighed pleasurably and lit a cigar, diverted momentarily by the word "coda," which was unfamiliar to him. "Code, it means probably," he muttered to himself, and then forgot about it. Slowly, laboriously, he forced himself to concentrate on the work before him. It was a problem for which he was quite suited.

            A more imaginative man would have loathed the assignment, for it consisted essentially of composing long lists of men and equipment and creating a timetable. It demanded the same kind of patience that is needed to construct a crossword puzzle. But Dalleson relished the first portion of the work before him because he knew he could do it, and there were other kinds of work about which he was not so certain. This was the type of job that could be managed by following the procedures to be found in one Field Manual or another, and Dalleson had the kind of satisfaction a tone-deaf person might know in recognizing a piece of music.