The Naked and the Dead (75 page)

            MINETTA: I mean what kind of deal is this? Just like the goddam Army, give you something with one hand and take it away with the other, they just make you eat your heart out.

            POLACK: You're getting wise to yourself.

            BROWN: (Sighing) Aah, it makes you sick. (Turning over in his blankets) Good night.

            RED: (Lying on his back, gazing at the pacific stars) That rotation ain't a plan to get men home, it's a plan how not to get them home.

            MINETTA: Yeah, good night.

            (Assorted speeches) Good night. . . good night.

            (The men sleep surrounded by the hills and the whispering silence of the night.)

4

            The platoon passed an uneasy night in the hollow. The men were too tired to sleep well, and shivered in their blankets. When it came each man's turn for guard, he would stumble up to the crest of the hill and stare over the grass into the valley below. Everything was cold and silver in the moonlight, and the hills had become gaunt. The sleeping men in the hollow beneath him were removed and distant. Each man on guard felt alone, terribly alone, as though looking out on the valleys and craters of the moon. Nothing moved, and yet nothing was still. The wind was wistful and reflective; the grass rustled, advanced and retreated in shimmering rustling waves. The night was intensely silent and pendent.

            In the dawn they folded their blankets, made their packs, and ate a K ration, chewing slowly, and without relish, the cold tinned ham and eggs and the square graham crackers. Their muscles were stiff from the previous day's march, and their clothing was damp with yesterday's perspiration. The older men were wishing that the sun was higher; there seemed no warmth left in their bodies. Red's kidneys were aching again, Roth's right shoulder was rheumatic, and Wilson had a spasm of diarrhea after he ate. They all felt dull, without volition; they scarcely thought of the march ahead.

            Croft and Hearn had gone to the top of the hill again, and were discussing the morning's march. In the early morning, the valley was still hazy with mist and the mountain and pass were obscured. They squinted into the north, looking at the Watamai Range. It extended as far as they could see like a cloud bank in the haze, rising precipitously to its peak at Mount Anaka, and dropping abruptly, shudderingly, into the pass at its left, before mounting again.

            "Damn sure seems like the Japs would be watching that pass," Croft commented.

            Hearn shrugged. "They probably have enough to do without that, it's pretty far behind their lines."

            The haze was dissolving, and Croft squinted through the field glasses into the distance. "I wouldn't say, Lootenant. That pass is narrow enough for a platoon to hold it till hell freezes over." He spat. "Course we got to find that out." The sun was beginning to outline the contours of the hills. The shadows in the hollows and draws were considerably lighter.

            "There's not a damn thing else we can do," Hearn murmured. Already he could sense the antipathy between Croft and himself. "With any luck we'll be able to bivouac behind the Jap lines tonight, and then tomorrow we can scout the Jap rear."

            Croft was doubtful. His instincts, his experience, told him that the pass would be dangerous, probably futile, and yet there was no alternative. They could climb Mount Anaka, but Hearn would never hear of that. He spat again. "Ain't nothin' else to do, I suppose." But he felt disturbed. The more he looked at the mountain. . .

            "Let's start," Hearn said.

            They went down again to the men in the hollow, put on their packs, and began to march. Hearn alternated with Brown and Croft in leading the platoon, while Martinez acted as point and scouted ahead, almost always thirty or forty yards in front of them. The grass was slick from the night's dew, and the men slipped frequently as they moved downhill, panted hoarsely as they toiled up an ascending slope. Hearn, however, was feeling good. His body had reacted from the preceding day's march, and was stronger now, the waste burned out of him. He had awakened with stiff muscles and a sore shoulder, but rested and cheerful. This morning his legs were firm, and he sensed greater reserves of endurance. As they crossed the first ridge-line, he hefted his pack higher on his broad shoulders, and turned up his face to the sun for an instant. Everything smelled fine, and the grass had the sweet fresh odor of early morning. "Okay, men, let's hit it," he called to them cheerfully as they passed by. He had dropped back from the point, and he moved from man to man, slowing his stride or increasing it in order to keep pace with them.

            "How's it going today, Wyman, you feel any better?"

            Wyman nodded. "Yes, sir. I'm sorry I pooped out yesterday."

            "Hell, we all were bushed, it'll be better today." He clapped Wyman on the shoulder and dropped back to Ridges.

            "Lot of country, heh, boy?"

            "Yeah, Lootenant, always enough country." Ridges grinned.

            He walked for a while beside Wilson, kidding him. "Still fertilizing the ground, boy?"

            "Yeah, Ah lost mah petcock, ain't nothin' to hold it in now."

            Hearn nudged him in the ribs. "Next break we're gonna cut a plug for you."

            It was easy, it was swell. He hardly knew why he was doing it, but it gave him a great deal of pleasure. He had suspended all judgments, scarcely cared now about the patrol. They would probably be successful today, and by tomorrow night they would be ready to start back. In a few days the patrol would be over, and they would be in bivouac.

            He thought of Cummings, an felt a sour hatred, had no desire suddenly for the patrol to end. His mood was spoiled momentarily. Whatever they accomplished would be for Cummings's benefit.

            To hell with it. If you ever traced anything out to the end, you found yourself in trouble. The trick was to keep putting one foot in front of the other. "Okay, men, let's keep moving," he said quietly, as they filed past him on a slope. "That's it, hit it."

            And there were other problems. There was Croft. As never before he would have to keep his eyes open, absorb things, learn in a few days the lessons Croft had acquired over months and years. Now he was in command only through the most delicate of balances. In a sense Croft could kick it over whenever he wanted to. Last night on the hilltop. . . Croft had the wrong kind of command, a frightening command.

            He continued talking to the men as they marched, but the sun was hotter, and everyone was tired again, a little irritable. His own approach was less spontaneous now.

            "How's it going, Polack?"

            "No kicks." Polack kept walking silently.

            There was a resistance they had toward him. They were cautious, perhaps distrustful. He was an officer, and instinctively they would be wary. But there was more to it, he felt. Croft had been with them so long, had controlled the platoon so completely, that probably they could not believe Croft was no longer the platoon leader. They were afraid to respond to him, afraid Croft would remember whenever he resumed his command. The thing was to make them understand that he would be with the platoon permanently. But that would take time. If only he had had a week with them in bivouac, a few minor patrols before this. Hearn shrugged again, wiped some sweat from his forehead. The sun was fierce once more.

            And the hills were always rising. All morning the platoon plodded through the tall grass, climbing slowly, trudging through valleys, laboring awkwardly around the slopes of the hills. Their fatigue started again, their breath grew short, and their faces burned from the sun and the exertion. Now, no one was talking, and they progressed sullenly in file.

            The sun clouded over, and it began to rain. This was pleasant at first, for the rain was cool and stirred a breeze along the top of the grass, but soon the ground turned soft and their shoes fouled with mud. By degrees they became completely wet again. Their heads drooping, their rifle muzzles pointed toward the ground to avoid the rain, the file of men looked like a row of wilted flowers. Everything about them sagged.

            The terrain had altered, become rockier. The hills were steeper now, and some of them were covered with a waist-high brush of low thickets and flat-leafed plants. For the first time since they had left the jungle they passed a grove of trees. The rain halted, and the sun began to burn again, directly overhead. It was noon. The platoon halted in a tiny grove, and the men stripped their packs, and ate another ration. Wilson fingered his crackers distastefully, mouthed down a square of cheese. "Ah heard this binds a man up," he said to Red.

            "Hell, it must be good for something."

            Wilson laughed, but he was confused. All morning his diarrhea had plagued him, his back and groin had ached. He could not understand why his body had deserted him so. He had always prided himself on being able to do as much as any other man, and now he had to drag along at the tail of the column, pulling himself over even the smallest hills by tugging at the kunai grass. He had been doubled up with cramps, had sweated terribly, his pack abusing his shoulders like a block of concrete.

            Wilson sighed. "Ah swear, Red, Ah'm jus' shot to hell inside. When Ah get back Ah'm gonna have that op-per-ration. Ah ain't good for a fuggin thing without it."

            "Yeah."

            "Ah mean it, Red, Ah'm jus' holdin' back the whole platoon."

            Red guffawed. "You think we're in a hurry?"

            "Naw, but Ah cain't help frettin' over it. What ifen we fall into somethin' when we're goin' through the pass. Man' Ah've plumb forgot what a tight ass-hole feels like."

            Red laughed. "Aaah, you just take it easy, boy." He was unwilling to involve himself with Wilson's trouble. Nothin' I can do, he told himself. They went on eating slowly.

            In a few minutes Hearn gave the order to move again, and the platoon filed out of the grove, and trudged forward in the sun. Although the rain had halted, the hills were mucky, and steam arose from them. The men marched with drooping bodies, the line of hills extending endlessly before them. Slowly, strung out in a file almost a hundred yards long, they weaved through the grass, absorbed in the varied aches and sores of their bodies. Their feet were burning, and their thighs quivered with fatigue. About them the hills shimmered in the noon heat, and a boundless nodding silence had settled over everything. The whirring of the insects was steady and not unpleasant. To Croft and Ridges, even to Wilson, it brewed vague warm images of farm lands in summer heat, quiet and bountiful, stirring only in the fragile traceries a butterfly might make against the sky. They drifted through a train of memories, idly, as if they were sauntering down a country road, seeing again the fertile roll of the fields, smelling in the musty damp germination of this earth after the rain the ancient redolent odors of plowed land and sweating horses.

            The sunlight, the heat, was everywhere, dazzling.

            For an hour they marched uphill almost constantly, and then halted at a stream to fill their canteens. They rested for fifteen minutes and went on again. Their clothing had been wet at least a dozen times, from the ocean spray, from the river, their sweat, from sleeping on the ground, and each time it dried it left its stains. Their shirts were streaked with white lines of salt, and under their armpits, beneath their belts, the cloth was beginning to rot. They were chafed and blistered and sunburned; already some of them were limping on sore feet, but all these discomforts were minor, almost unnoticed in the leaden stupor of marching, the fever they suffered from the sun. Their fatigue had racked them, exploited all the fragile vaults of their bodies, the leaden apathy of their muscles. They had tasted so many times the sour acrid bile of labor, had strained their overworked legs over so many hills, that at last they were feeling the anesthesia of exhaustion. They kept moving without any thought of where they went, dully, stupidly, waving and floundering from side to side. The weight of their packs was crushing, but they considered them as a part of their bodies, a boulder lodged in their backs.

            The bushes and thickets grew higher, reached almost to their chests. The brambles kept catching in their rifles, and hooking onto their clothing. They thrashed forward, plunging through the brush until halted by the barbs clinging to their clothing, and then stopped, picked the barbs loose, and swooped forward again. The men thought of nothing but the hundred feet of ground in front of them; they almost never looked upward to the crest of the hill they were climbing. In the early afternoon, they took a long break in the shadow of some rocks. The time passed sluggishly in the chirping of the crickets, the languid flights of the insects. The men, wretchedly tired, began to sleep. Hearn had no desire to move, but the break was too prolonged. He stood up slowly, hitched on his pack, and called out, "Come on, men. On your feet." There was no response, which furnished him with a sharp irritation. They would have obeyed Croft quickly. "Come on, let's get going, men. We can't sit around on our butts all day." His voice was taut and impersonal, and the soldiers rose out of the grass slowly and sullenly. He could hear them muttering, was aware of a glum crabbed resistance.

            His nerves were more keyed than he had realized. "Quit the bitching and let's go," he heard himself piping. He was damn tired of them, he realized suddenly.

            "That sonofabitch," one of them muttered.

            It shocked him, and generated resentment. He repressed it, however. What they were doing was understandable enough. In the fatigue of the march, they had to have someone to blame, and no matter what he did they would hate him sooner or later. His approach would end by confusing and annoying them. Croft they would obey, for Croft satisfied their desire for hatred, encouraged it, was superior to it, and in turn exacted obedience. The realization depressed him. "We've still got a long way to go," he told them more quietly.