The Naked and the Dead (59 page)

            Thinking about it now, Cummings was a little disappointed. In the few times he had caught a glimpse of Hearn in officers' mess, his face had been as expressionless, as sullen as ever. It was not likely that Hearn would ever show what he was thinking, but still. . . The punishment had lost its effect, become submerged already in the daily routine of small events. The General felt an urge to. . . to extend the humiliation he had inflicted upon Hearn. The picture of their last conversation was not so deeply satisfying to him now. Somehow he had let Hearn off too easy.

            "I've been thinking of transferring him again," Cummings said quietly. "How would you feel about it?"

            Dalleson was confused. He had no objections to losing Hearn, it appealed to him, but he was puzzled by the General's attitude. Cummings had never told him anything about Hearn, and Dalleson still assumed Hearn was one of the General's favorites. He couldn't understand the motive behind Cummings's question. "I don't feel very much about it one way or another, sir," he said at last.

            "Well, it's worth bearing in mind. I have my doubts that Hearn can make a good staff man." If Dalleson were indifferent to Hearn, then it meant little keeping him there.

            "He's about average," Dalleson said carefully.

            "What about a line outfit?" Cummings said casually. "Do you have any ideas about where we might put him?"

            This confused Dalleson more. It was very odd for a general officer to be at all concerned with where a lieutenant was sent. "Well, sir, Baker Company of the 458th is short an officer, 'cause the patrol reports of one of their platoons is always signed by a sergeant, and then there's F Company needs two officers, and I think Charley Company of the 459th needs an officer."

            None of this appealed particularly to Cummings. "Is there anyone else?"

            "There's the I and R platoon of headquarters company here, but they don't really need an officer."

            "Why?"

            "Their platoon sergeant's one of the best men in the 458th, sir. I've been meaning to talk to you about him, I was thinking after the campaign he oughta be made an officer. Croft is his name. He's a good man."

            Cummings considered what Dalleson would call a good soldier. The man's a virtual illiterate probably, he thought, with a lot of common sense and no nerves at all. He fingered his mouth again. In I and R he could still keep an eye on Hearn. "Well, I'll think about it. There's no hurry," he said to Dalleson.

            After Dalleson had gone, Cummings slumped in his chair and sat without moving, thinking for a long time.

            There was still that
thing
with Hearn. The particular set of desires that had culminated in his order to pick up the cigarette had not been appeased, not really. And before him still was the question of getting some Navy support.

            Abruptly, Cummings was depressed again.

            That night Hearn was on duty for a few hours in the G-3 tent. The side flaps were unrolled, the double entrance was raised, and the corners were covered over to make a blackout tent. And as always, it was painfully humid inside. Hearn and the clerk on duty with him sat drowsing in their chairs, their shirts opened, their eyes turned away from the glare of the Coleman lanterns, the perspiration coursing down their faces. It was a convenient time to think, for with the exception of the hourly telephone reports from the front there was no work to do, and the bare tables, the empty desks, and the draped map-boards surrounded them, induced the proper mood of somnolence and absorption. Sporadically, like a muted burst of thunder, they could hear the harassing fire of the artillery sounding in the night.

            Hearn stretched, looked at his watch. "What time do you get relieved, Stacey?" he asked.

            "Two A.M., Lieutenant."

            Hearn was on until three. He sighed, stretched his arms, and slumped down in his chair. There was a magazine in his lap, but he had scanned through it, and a little bored, he tossed it onto a table. After a moment or two, he took a letter from his breast pocket, and read it again slowly. It was from a college friend.

            Here in Washington you can see all the patterns. The reactionaries are frightened. Despite what they want to believe they know this has become a people's war, and the currents of world revolution are in the air. It's a people's movement and they're bringing all the old tools of repression to try to stop it. After the war there's going to be a witchhunt, but it'll fail and the basic will of the people toward communal freedom will be expressed. You've no idea how frightened the reactionaries are. It's the last-ditch fight for them.

            And there was more in the same tenor. Hearn finished the letter and shrugged. Bailey had always been an optimist. A sound Marxian optimist.

            Only that was all bullshit. There would be the witch-hunt after the war all right, but it would hardly be a frightened witch-hunt. What was it Cummings had said? America's energy had become kinetic and it would not be reversed. Cummings wasn't frightened, not in that sense. The terrifying thing in listening to him was his calm and unshakable certainty. The Right was ready for a struggle, but without anxiety this time, with no absorbed and stricken ear listening to the inevitable footstep of history. This time they were the optimists, this time they were on the offensive. There was the thing Cummings had never said, but it was implied tacitly in all his arguments. History was in the grasp of the Right, and after the war their political campaigns would be intense. One big push, one big offensive, and history was theirs for this century, perhaps the next one. The League of Omnipotent Men.

            It wasn't that simple, of course, nothing ever was, but still there were powerful men in America, on the march and aroused, some of them perhaps even conscious in their particular dream. And the tools were all ready to hand, the men like his father, the ones who would function in instinctive accord, not knowing, not even caring where the road led them. It could be narrowed probably to a dozen, two dozen men, not even in communication with each other, not even all on the same level of awareness.

            But it was much more than that. You could kill the dozen men, and there would be another dozen to replace them, and another and another. Out of all the vast pressures and crosscurrents of history was evolving the archetype of twentieth-century man. The
particular
man who would direct it, make certain that "the natural role. . . was anxiety." The techniques had outraced the psyche. "The majority of men must be subservient to the machine and it's not a business they instinctively enjoy." And in the marginal area, the gap, were the peculiar tensions that birthed the dream.

            Hearn flipped over the letter a little distastefully. "Man had to destroy God in order to achieve Him, equal Him." Cummings again. Or had Cummings said it? There were times when the demarcation between their minds was blurred for him. Cummings could have said it. Effectively, it was Cummings's idea. He folded the letter and put it away again.

            Where did all this leave him? All right, just where? There had been a time, many times when it would have appealed, more than appealed, to whatever impulse there had been in him to. . . to do what Cummings was capable of doing. That was it. Divorced of all the environmental trappings, all the confusing and misleading attitudes he had absorbed, he was basically like Cummings. Without "the wife is a bitch" kind of urges, but even there, could he label it for certain? Cummings had been right. They were both the same, and it had produced first the intimacy, the attraction they had felt toward each other, and then the hatred.

            It was between them still as far as he was concerned. Every time he saw Cummings, if even for an instant, there was the same clutch of fear and hatred inside him, the same painful evocation of that moment when he had stooped to pick up the cigarette. It was still humiliating, still informative. He had never realized the extent of his own vanity, the hatred it was capable of generating when wounded. Certainly, he had never hated anyone the way Cummings affected him now. The week he had spent in G-3 under Dalleson had been lived at half-throttle; he had absorbed the procedures, done his work automatically, and had smoldered inside with an almost unbearable frustration. Lately, he had begun to step out; this afternoon he had been flip with Dalleson, and that was an indication of something else, something not so pleasing. If he remained here he was likely to dissipate himself in a series of insignificant rebellions that would end only in further humiliation. The thing to do was to move out, be transferred, but Cummings would not let him. And the rage he had kept tightly throttled all week was surging again. If only he could go up to Cummings and ask for a front-line platoon, but that would be fatal. Cummings would give him anything but that.

            The phone rang, and Hearn picked it up. The voice at the other end spluttered at him. "This is Paragon Red, negative report from 0030 to 0130."

            "Okay." Hearn hung up, and stared at the message he had scribbled on a pad. It was a completely automatic report which was phoned in every hour from every battalion. On an ordinary night fifty such reports would come in. He picked up his pencil, about to mark it in the Journal, when Dalleson stepped into the tent. Stacey, the clerk, who had been drowsing over his magazine, straightened up. Dalleson's hair had been been quickly combed, and his heavy face was reddened from sleep; he looked inquiringly about the tent, his eyes blinking from the light. "Everything okay?" he asked.

            "Yes," Hearn said. He realized suddenly that Dalleson had awakened worrying about the campaign and it amused him.

            "I heard the phone ringing," Dalleson said.

            "It was Paragon Red, negative report, that's all."

            "Did you record it yet?"

            "No, sir."

            "Well, then do it, man." Dalleson yawned.

            Hearn had recorded few reports in the Journal and he looked at the preceding one to check on the form. Then he copied it.

            Dalleson walked toward him, and examined the Journal, fingering the spring clip on the beaverboard. "Let's do it more neatly next time."

            He'd be damned if Dalleson would lecture him like a child. "I'll do my best, Major," he murmured sarcastically.

            Dalleson ran his thick index finger under the notation. "What time is this report for?" he asked abruptly.

            "0030 to 0130."

            "Then whyinhell can't you put it down like that? Goddammit, man, you've got it for 2330 to 0030. Can't you even read? Don't you know what the hell time it is?"

            He had even copied the time on the preceding report. "Sorry," Hearn muttered, furious with himself for the error.

            "What else you gonna do with this report?"

            "Damn if I know. This isn't the work I've been doing."

            "Well, now, I'll tell you," Dalleson said with relish. "If you'll get the cobwebs off your brain you'll know that this is a Combat Report, so after you mark it in the Journal and on the map, you put it in the file for my Periodic Report, and when I'm done with it, which'll be tomorrow, you empty the file of the previous day, and put it in the Historical File, and you have one of the clerks make a copy and put it in the Journal File. Nothing too hard about that for a man with a college education, is there, Hearn?"

            Hearn shrugged. "Since the report doesn't say anything, why go to all that bother?" He grinned, enjoying the opportunity to lash back. "It doesn't make much sense to me."

            Dalleson was enraged. He glowered at Hearn, his jowls darkening, his mouth pressed thin by the powerful clamps of his jaws. A first trickle of sweat slid past his eye and outlined his cheek. "It doesn't make sense to you, eh," he repeated, "it doesn't make sense to you." Like a shot-put hurler hopping on one foot to increase his momentum, Dalleson turned to Stacey and said, "It doesn't make sense to Lieutenant Hearn." Stacey tittered uncomfortably, while Dalleson balanced on an infuriated sarcasm. "Well, now, I'll tell you, Lieutenant, maybe there's a lot of things that don't make sense, maybe it don't make sense for me to be a soldier," he sneered, "maybe it ain't natural for you to be an officer, maybe it don't make sense," he said, repeating the original phrase. "Maybe I'd rather be anything else than a soldier, maybe, Lieutenant, I'd rather be a. . . a. . ." Dalleson searched for a sufficiently damning word, and then clenching his fist powerfully he shouted, "Maybe it would be more natural for me to be a
poet."

            Hearn had been growing increasingly pale as the tirade continued. He was incapable of speech for a moment in his anger. And behind it was a bewildered amazement at the force of Dalleson's reaction. If you knocked out Army procedure, Dalleson was a man carrying packages with his suspenders about to rip loose. Hearn swallowed, gripped the edge of the table. "Take it easy, if you please, Major," Hearn muttered.

            "What was that?"

            But they were interrupted by Cummings's entering the tent. "I was looking for you, Major, I had an idea you might be here." Cummings's voice was odd, extremely precise and clear, but without any feeling at all. Dalleson stepped back and straightened instinctively as though coming to attention. "What is it, sir?" And Hearn was angered at himself for the relief he felt at the interruption.

            Cummings fingered his chin slowly. "I received a message from one of my friends at GHQ." He spoke abstractedly as if he were not concerned with it. "It just came from message center."

            The explanation was not necessary, and it was odd for Cummings to repeat himself. Hearn stared at him. The General was upset, he realized. Until now Hearn had been standing rigid, his flesh sweating in painful recognition of the General's presence, his heart pumping. It was painful to be near Cummings.