The Naked and the Dead (93 page)

            (The hand on his forearm.) I'd like it tonight, mister, I'm dying for a drink.

            Polack sighs. Look, Jack, here's a buck. Tomorrow when ya get paid y' can give it to Fred.

            The man takes it, stares at it dubiously. You're levelin' with me, mister.

            Yeah, Jack, yeah. (He shrugs off the arm, goes out through the store to his car.) As he drives to the next place, he shakes his head. A deep contempt brews in him.

            Small potatoes. Dumb bastard wins twenty-one bucks, an' he t'inks we're gonna stay up nights to get out o' payin' him. Jesus. It's a pretty small grifter who fugs around for twenty-one bucks.

            Hello, Momma, how're ya doin', how's Casimir's sweetheart?

            His mother stares suspiciously through the slit in the door, then opens it widely as she recognizes him.

            I haven't seen you in a month, Son, she says in Polish.

            Coupla weeks, a mont', what difference it make? I'm around, ain't I? Here's some candy for ya. (At the doubtful look on her face, he frowns.) Ain't ya got your teet' fixed yet?

            She shrugs. I bought a little something else.

            For Crisake, Ma, when the hell ya gonna do it?

            I bought some material for dresses.

            Mary again, huh?

            An unmarried girl needs clothes.

            Aaaah. (Mary has come in, nods coolly at him.) What ya been doin', useless?

            Dry up, Casimir.

            He hitches his suspenders. Why the hell don' ya get married an' give Ma a break?

            'Cause all the men are like you, out for the same thing.

            She wants to become a nun, his mother says.

            A nun, holy cow. He stares at her appraisingly. A
nun!

            Stevie thinks maybe she ought to.

            He looks objectively at her narrow sallow face, the yellowing skin under the eyes. Yeah, maybe she ought to at that. Again he is stirred with contempt, and beneath it a vague compassion. Ya know, Momma, I'm a lucky guy.

            You're a crook, Mary says.

            Keep still, the mother says. All right, Son, if you're lucky, it's good.

            Aaah. (He's annoyed at himself. It's a bad idea to say you're lucky.) Gaw ahead, become a nun. . . How's Steve?

            He works so hard. His Mikey, the little one, was sick.

            I'll see him one of these days.

            You children should stick together. (Two of them are dead, the others married except for Mary and Casimir.)

            Yah. He has given her money for the apartment: the scattered lace doilies, the new upholstered chair, the candlesticks on the bureau are his contribution. But the place is unutterably drab. Aaaah, it's dis-gustin'.

            What, Casimir?

            Nothin', Momma, I gotta go now.

            You just came.

            Yah, I know. Here, here's some money. Will ya get your teet' fixed for Crisake?

            Good-bye, Casimir. (It's Mary.)

            Yah. good-bye, kiddo. He looks at her again. A nun, huh? Okay. Good luck to ya, kiddo.

            Thank you, Casimir.

            Sure, here's a little something for you too. G'wan take it. He presses it into her hand, skips out the door and down the stairs. Some kids are trying to jimmy the hub plate off his car and he scatters them. Thirty bucks left. It's not much to last for three days, and he's been losing lately in the poker games at Lefty's.

            Polack shrugs. Win, lose, it's all in the cards.

            He bounces the little brunette off his knee, saunters over to Lefty and the hood from Kabriskie's outfit. The four-piece band hired for the party is playing softly, and some drinks have been spilled already on the end tables.

            What can I do for ya, Lefty?

            I want ya to meet Wally Boletti. They nod, talk for a little while.

            You're a good man, Polack, Lefty says.

            One of the best.

            Kabriskie's lookin' for somebody to run the girls over in the south end of his section.

            That's it, huh?

            Yeah.

            He mulls it for a moment. (It's more money of course, a lot more, and he can use it, but. . .) It's a touchy setup, he mutters. (A little switch in the political end, a double-cross by some outfit, and he'll be the target.)

            How old are ya, Polack?

            Twenty-four, he lies.

            Damn young, Wally says.

            I want to t'ink the damn thing over, Polack says. It is the first time he has been unable to make a decision in his life.

            No hurry, but no sayin' it's gonna be open next week.

            I'll take the chance.

            Only, the next day while he is still debating a letter comes from his draft board. He swears dully. There's a guy over on Madison Street who pricks eardrums, and he gives him a ring.

            But on the way over, Polack changes his mind.

            Aaaah, t' hell wit' it, the percentages are runnin' out. He turns around and drives back calmly. Beneath his mind a wonder is working.

            It's a big thing, he mumbles.

            Only, that's not it. Polack has never heard of a
deus ex machina,
and it's a new idea to him.

            You figger all the angles and then somethin' new comes up. He grins to himself. There ain't anyplace I ain't gonna get along.

            His wonder is smothered. Even when the new angles come, there's always a gimmick if ya go looking hard enough for it.

            BEEEEEEEEEEEP. He bangs down his horn, whips past a truck.

9

            A few hours later at noontime, miles away, the litter-bearers were struggling with Wilson. They had carried him all morning under the burnished metallic heat of a tropical sun, their strength and their will coursing out of their bodies with their perspiration. Already they moved stupidly, the sweat blinding their eyes, their tongues clapped against their dry and enraged palates, their legs quivering constantly. The heat rose from everything, shimmered over the grass, swirled about them with the languid resistance of water or oil. Their faces felt swathed in velvet, and the air they breathed was superheated, without refreshment, a combustible mixture which seemed to explode in their chests. They shambled along, their heads lolling, sobbing loudly with rending sounds which lacerated their throats. After hours of this they were men walking through flame.

            They carted Wilson as if they were wrestling with a stone, struggling forward with agony for fifty yards or a hundred or even two hundred, with the hasty scrambling motions of laborers moving a piano, and then they would set him down, and remain swaying on their feet, their shoulders heaving for the air they could not find under the leaden arch of the sky. In a minute, afraid to rest, feeling anchored to him, they would pick up the litter and labor forward for another short increment over the endless green and yellow hills. On the upslopes they would bog down, remain holding him for seconds, their legs incapable of climbing any farther, and then they would strain upward again, advance a few more feet, and stand watching each other.

            And in the places where they went downhill their thighs would quiver with the effort it took to brake themselves from dropping into a full run, and the muscles in their calves and around their shins would knot painfully, tempting them to stumble and lie motionless in the grass without moving for the rest of the day.

            Wilson was conscious and in pain. Every time they jolted him he would groan, and he was continually thrashing about on the litter, disturbing the balance and making them stumble. From time to time he would curse at them, and they writhed under it. His screams and shouts flicked through the layers of heat that played over them, goaded them on for a few additional yards.

            "Goddammit, you men, Ah been watchin' ya, why in the hell cain't you treat a wounded man proper, jus' shakin' me up an' knockin' all the pus around inside, Stanley, you been doin' it jus' to give me the misery, Ah think it's a pretty low mean old thing jus' treatin' a buddy like this. . ." His voice would become thin, querulous. Every now and then he would scream from a sudden bump.

            "Goddammit. Lea' me alone, men." From pain, from the heat, he would blubber like a child. "Ah wouldn' do to you like you been doin' to me." He would lie back, his mouth open, his breath stirring in the arid cave of his throat like steam vibrating out of the spout of a kettle. "Aw, men, take it easy, sonofabitch, men, take it easy."

            "We're doin' what we can," Brown would croak.

            "You men are actin' pretty piss-poor. Wilson ain't gonna forget.
Goddammit,
men."

            And they would labor for another hundred yards, set him down, and gaze stupidly at each other.

            Wilson's wound was throbbing painfully. The muscles in his stomach were sore and exhausted from fighting against the pain, and a dry fever had settled in his body. Under the sun all his limbs had become leaden and aching, his chest and throat congested, completely dry. Each jolt of the stretcher shocked him like a blow. He felt the exhaustion of having fought against a man much bigger, much stronger than himself for many hours. He teetered often on the edge of unconsciousness, but always he would be jarred back into his pain by a sudden wrench of the litter. It brought him close to weeping. For minutes at a time he would lie stiff on the stretcher waiting for the next jolt, his teeth clenched in preparation. And when it came, the blow would travel through all the slumbering agonies of his wound, rasping his inflamed nerves. The pain would seem motivated by the litter-bearers and he hated them with the same rage that a man feels for a moment at a piece of furniture when he has barked his leg against it. "You sonofabitch, Brown."

            "Shut up, Wilson." Brown shambled forward, almost reeling, his fingers slowly separating on the litter handle. When he would feel the stretcher about to rip out of his hand, he would shout, "Drop him," and kneel beside Wilson trying to regain his breath, massaging one hand with the numb fingers of the other. "Take it easy, Wilson, we're doin' what we can," he would gasp.

            "You sonofabitch, Brown, you been shakin' me on purpose."

            Brown wanted to cry or to strike him across the face. The jungle sores on his feet had come open and were bleeding inside his shoes, smarting unbearably whenever he halted and became conscious of them. He did not want to go on, but he could see the other litter-bearers staring at him. "Come on, men," he muttered.

            They advanced like this for several hours, toiling under the brow of the midday sun. Slowly, inevitably, their will and their resolution were dissolved. They struggled forward through a glare of heat, bound to each other in an unwilling union of exhaustion and rage. Each time one of them stumbled the others hated him, for the load was suddenly increased on their arms, and Wilson's growls of pain bored through their apathy, startled them like a whiplash. They plumbed one level of misery after another. For minutes at a time their vision would blank out almost completely in a flood of nausea. The ground before them would darken, and they would taste their heartbeat in the acrid bile that filled their mouths. They toiled forward numbly, unquestioningly, suffering more than Wilson. Any one of them would have been pleased to have shifted positions with him.

            At one o'clock Brown halted them. His feet had been numb for minutes at a time, and he was close to collapse. They left Wilson lying in the sun while they sprawled beside him, their faces close to the earth, drawing great gasping bursts of air. All about them the hills shimmered in the early afternoon heat, refracting their glare from one slope to another without relief. There seemed no breeze at all. Wilson would mumble and rant from time to time but they paid no attention to him. The rest period gave them no relief; all the submerged effects of their exhaustion were being exhumed now, bothered them directly. They retched, languished through long flaccid minutes when they seemed close to unconsciousness, and suffered from recurring spasms of shivering when there seemed no heat left in their bodies.

            After a long while, perhaps an hour, Brown sat up, swallowed a few salt tablets and drank almost half his canteen of water. The salt rumbled uncomfortably in his stomach, but he felt some relief. When he stood up to walk over to Wilson, his legs moved without familiarity, weakly, like a man who is out of bed after a long illness. "How're you feelin', boy?" he asked.

            Wilson stared at him. With a groping motion his fingers had fluttered up to his forehead, removed the dampened cloth. "You men better leave me, Brown," he croaked feebly. In the past hour, lying on the stretcher, he had slid between consciousness and delirium, and now he was very tired, very spent. To Wilson there was no point in moving on any farther. He was perfectly content at the moment to remain here; he did not think at all of what would happen to him. He knew only that he didn't want to be carried again, could not bear the agony of being jolted on the stretcher.

            Brown was tempted, so tempted that he did not dare to believe Wilson. "What are you talking about, boy?"

            "Lea' me, men, jus' lea' me." Weaks tears came into Wilson's eyes. Remotely, almost as if it did not concern him, he shook his head. "I'm holdin' ya back, men, jus' lea' me behind." It was all confused in his mind again; he thought they were on a patrol and he was lagging back because of his sickness. "When a man gotta be crappin' all the time, it jus' slows ya up."

            Stanley had come up beside Brown. "What does he want us to do, leave him?"