The Naked and the Dead (87 page)

            Wasn't he? He wondered, and then edged away from the question. He was weary and Roth's appeal had moved him despite himself. As often happened when he was very tired, his mind had become clear and he felt as if he understood everything, but at times like this the knowledge was always wistful, burdened with the exhaustion of living. He thought of Wilson, saw him very clearly for a moment as he had looked in the assault boat months before when they had invaded the island. "C'mon in, y'old billygoat, the water's nice an' cold," Wilson had shouted to him.

            "Up yours," or it had been something like that he had answered, but what difference did it make? Wilson was a mile or two away, perhaps dead by now, where the hell did it all come out?

            Aaah, everybody loses. Red almost said this aloud. It was true. He knew it, they all knew it, every one of them. He sighed again. They knew it, and yet they still were soft, still didn't get used to the idea.

            Even if we do get back we'll get a fuggin. What did it matter if they ever got out of the Army? It would be the same thing on the outside. Nothing ever turns out the way want it. And yet they weren't really tough, they still believed it would all be perfect in the end, they separated all the golden grains in the sand and looked at them, only at them -- with a magnifying glass. He did it himself, and he had nothing to look forward to but a succession of barren little towns and rented rooms, of nights spent listening to men talk in barrooms. What would there be outside of a whore and some tremors in his groin?

            Maybe I ought to get married, he thought, and snickered immediately afterward. What was the use? He had had his chance, and turned it down, he could have had Lois, and he skipped out on her. When you're like me you're scared to admit you're getting old. That was it, nice and simple. You started out with something, something they all had, and it was just pissed away. For an instant he remembered Lois getting up in the middle of the night to look at Jackie, and then coming back to bed, shuddering against him until her body warmed. His throat choked on it for an instant and he forced it back. He had nothing to give a woman, nothing to give anybody. What do you tell them, that it's all bloody noses? Even a wounded animal went away alone to die.

            In affirmation, his kidneys were aching again.

            Still he could see a time when these years he was living now would seem different, when he could laugh at the men he'd known in the platoon and remember the way the jungle and the hills sometimes looked in the dawn. He might even want the kind of tension there was in stalking a man. It was stupid. He hated this. He hated it more than anything he had ever done and yet if he lived he knew that in the end it might turn mellow. The magnifying glass on the gold grains.

            He grimaced. You always get caught. He had been caught himself once; with all he knew he had still got burned. He had believed a newspaper. The newspapers were written for guys like Toglio to believe in, and sure enough Toglio had got a million-dollar wound, and would go home, and make speeches for bond drives, believing every word of it. "Shall the GIs have died in vain?" He remembered an argument he had with Toglio about a clipping of an editorial one of the men received from his mother. "Did the GIs die in vain?"

            He snorted. Who didn't know the answer? Of course they died in vain, any GI knew the score. The war just t.s. to them who had to fight it.

            "Red, you're too cynical," Toglio had told him.

            "Yeah, fighting a war to fix something works about as good as going to a whorehouse to get rid of a clap."

            He stared up at the moon now. Maybe it did count for something. He didn't know, and there was no way he'd ever find out, no way any of them ever would. Aaah, just chalk it off, it's down the drain and who gives a goddam.

            He wouldn't live long enough to find out anyway, he thought.

            Hearn couldn't sleep either. He was extremely restless, and an odd febrile fatigue had settled in his legs. For almost an hour he turned over continually in his blanket, staring at the mountain, the moon above them, the hills, the ground before his face. Since the ambush, he had been feeling something, not exactly definable, but close to anxiety and unrest, and it had been driving him. It was almost painful to remain still. After a while he stood up, and walked through the hollow. The guard on the hilltop saw him and raised his rifle. He whistled softly, and then said, "Who is it -- Minetta? This is the Lieutenant."

            He climbed up the slope and sat down beside Minetta. Before them in the moonlight the grass swayed in silver waves over a valley and the hills looked like stone.

            "What's up, Lootenant?" Minetta asked.

            "Not a damn thing, just stretching my legs." They talked in whispers.

            "Jesus, it's a bitch being on guard after that ambush."

            "Yeah." Hearn massaged his legs, trying to soothe them.

            "What're we doing tomorrow, Lootenant?"

            Well, what were they doing? This was what he had to face. "What do you think, Minetta?"

            "I think we ought to turn around and go back. The damn pass is closed, ain't it?" Minetta's voice, even muted, was indignant as if he had been thinking about this for a long time.

            Hearn shrugged. "I don't know, maybe we will." He sat up there with Minetta for a few minutes more, and then went down into the hollow again, slipped under his blanket. It was as simple as that. Minetta had said it. Why didn't they turn around and go back, since the pass was closed?

            All right, why?

            The answer was simple enough. He didn't want to turn around and call the patrol off. Because. . . because. . . The motives this time would be shoddy enough. Hearn put his hands under his head and stared up at the sky.

            The patrol no longer had the chance of a snowball in hell. Even if the pass were open now, the Japs would know where they were, guess their mission easily enough. If they ever got into the Japanese rear, it would be almost impossible to remain unobserved. Looking back on it now, the patrol had never had a chance of succeeding. This was one time Cummings had dropped the ball.

            And he didn't want to go back, because it meant approaching Cummings with empty hands, excuses and failure. It was the supplies off the Liberty ship all over again. Kerrigan and Croft. That had been the thing that had been back of his actions the first two days; a liaison with the platoon -- that was ridiculous. He had wanted to get along with them because it would increase the chances for the patrol's success. The truth was that he didn't give a damn about them if he plumbed himself. Through the fatigue, the exertion, the tug of war with Croft, the real motive had been to get a little of his own back from Cummings.

            Was it revenge? Only it became even dirtier than that. For at the heart of it was not revenge but vindication. He wanted Cummings to approve of him again. Hearn turned over on his stomach.

            Leadership!

            It was as filthy as everything else. And he enjoyed it now. After the ambush, after the unique excitement, call it the unique ecstasy, of leading the men out of the field, he had been replaying those few minutes over and over again in his head, wishing it could happen again. Beyond Cummings, deeper now, was his own desire to lead the platoon. It had grown, ignited suddenly, become one of the most satisfying things he had ever done. He could understand Croft's staring at the mountain through the field glasses, or killing the bird. When he searched himself he was just another Croft.

            That was it. All his life he had flirted with situations, jobs, where he could move men, and always, as if he had sensed the extent of the impulse within himself, he had moved away, dropped things when they were about to develop, cast off women because deep within him he needed control and not mating.

            Cummings had once said, "You know, Robert, there really are only two kinds of liberals and radicals. There are the ones who are afraid of the world and want it changed to benefit themselves, the Jew liberalism sort of thing. And then there are the young people who don't understand their own desires. They want to remake the world, but they never admit they want to remake it in their own image."

            It had been there all the time, partially realized, always submerged. It had a jingle to it.

            Not a phony but a Faust.

            Clear enough, and what was he going to do about it? Knowing this, he had no right to go on with the patrol; objectively he was playing with the lives of the nine men left, and he didn't deserve the responsibility. If there was anything worth while left in him, he would turn back in the morning.

            There was the inner smirk.
He ought to, but he wouldn't.
The shock, the self-disgust that followed this was surprising, almost pleasing in its intensity. He was almost horrified with this sick anguished knowledge of himself.

            He
had
to turn back now.

            Once more he got out of his blanket, and strode through the hollow to where Croft was sleeping. He knelt, about to shake him, when Croft turned toward him. "What you want, Lootenant?"

            "You awake?"

            "Yeah."

            "I've decided to go back in the morning." Once he told Croft, he could not renege on himself.

            The moonlight outlined the side of Croft's face, which was motionless. Perhaps his jaw muscle quivered. For several seconds he was quiet, and then he repeated, "Go back in the morning?" His legs were out of the blanket now.

            "Yes."

            "Don't you think we ought to look around a bit more?" Croft was stalling for time. He had been drowsing when Hearn came up, and the decision hurt him powerfully. His chest felt numb.

            "What's the point to looking around?" Hearn asked.

            Croft shook his head. There was the core of an idea, but he could not seize it. His mind, even his muscles, were tense, seeking for some handhold, some advantage. If Hearn had touched him at that instant, Croft would have shuddered. "We oughtn't to give up right away, Lootenant." His voice was husky. Slowly as he realized the situation, his hatred for Hearn was working again. He felt the same frustration that he had experienced when Hearn commanded him to apologize to Roth, or when he had gone to recover Wilson and had realized the entrance to the pass was empty.

            The shadow of the idea passed through his mind again. He heard himself speaking with some surprise. "Lootenant, those Japs scooted after the ambush."

            "How do you know?"

            Croft told him about Wilson. "We could make it through now."

            Hearn shook his head. "I doubt it."

            "Ain't you even gonna give it a chance?" He was trying to understand Hearn's motive, and he realized dimly that Hearn was not turning back because he was afraid. The intuition frightened him, for if it was true, Hearn would be less likely to change his mind.

            "I'm not going to take the platoon through the pass after what happened today."

            "Well, why don't you send out one man tonight, let him make a reconnaissance? Goddam, that's the least we can do."

            Hearn shook his head again.

            "Or we could climb the mountain."

            Hearn scratched his chin. "The men couldn't do it," he said finally.

            Croft tried one last gambit. "Lootenant, if we could make this patrol okay, it might tie up the campaign, you never can tell."

            The final factor in the equation. It was becoming too complicated. For there was a nub of truth in that, Hearn realized. If the patrol did succeed, it would be one of those tiny plus contributions to the war, one of the intangibles he had talked about a long time ago to the General. "How do you measure if it's better that the war end sooner and so many men go home, or if they all stay over here and go to pot?"

            If the campaign ended soon, it would be concretely good for the men in the division. It was with that line of thought that he had decided to give up the patrol, help the men in the platoon. It was too complex to work out at this instant. There was only the necessity of answering Croft, who squatted inflexibly beside him like a sullen piece of metal, bending only slightly.

            "All right, we'll send out one man tonight through the pass; if he runs into anything, we turn back." Was that rationalization? Really, was he only fooling himself, looking for another excuse to continue with the patrol?

            "You want to go, Lootenant?" Croft's voice mocked him slightly.

            He couldn't go, however. If he was knocked off, that would suit Croft perfectly. "I don't think I'm suited for it," he said coldly.

            Croft was reasoning the same way. If he himself went and was killed, the platoon would certainly turn back. "I think Martinez is about the best man for it."

            Hearn nodded. "All right, send him out. In the morning we'll make a decision. And tell him to wake me when he gets back." Hearn looked at his watch. "I'm about due for guard now. Tell him to check with me before he sets out so I'll know it's him moving around."

            Croft looked about the hollow and picked out Martinez's blankets in the moonlight. He stared at Hearn for an instant, and then strode over to Martinez and awakened him. The Lieutenant was climbing up the hill to relieve the guard.

            Croft told Martinez what his mission would be, and then in a low voice he added, "If you see any Japs bivouacking, try to work around them and keep on going."

            "Yeah, understand." Martinez was tying his shoes.

            "Just take a trench knife."

            "Okay, I be back in three hour maybe. Tell guard," Martinez whispered.