The Naked and the Dead (94 page)

            "Yeah."

            "Think we ought to?"

            Brown generated some rage. "Goddammit, Stanley, what the hell's the matter with you?" Again Brown was tempted. A deep lassitude had filled his body; he had no desire to move on. "Come on, men, let's go," he bawled. He saw Ridges lying asleep a few feet away and it enraged him. "Come on, Ridges, will you quit dickin'-off?"

            Ridges woke up slowly, almost leisurely. "Jus' restin', that's all," he complained mildly. "If a man wants to get some rest. . ." He trailed it off, hooked on his belt and walked over to the litter. "Well,
Ah'm
ready."

            They moved on again, but the rest period had been bad for them. They had lost the urgency, the tension, that had driven them forward when everything else was gone. Now after marching a few hundred yards they were almost as tired as they had been when they halted, and the heat of the sun made them dizzy and weak. Wilson began to moan quite steadily.

            This tormented them. Their bodies felt powerless and clumsy; each time he groaned they winced with guilt and empathy, and the torments of his wound seemed to pass through the handles of the stretcher up into their arms. They bickered constantly for the first half mile while they still had wind to speak. Everything they did grated on everybody else, and they snapped at each other continually.

            "Dammit, Goldstein, why don't you watch it?" Stanley would shout after a sudden jar.

            "Watch it yourself."

            "Why don't you men quit the fussin' and do some work?" Ridges would mutter.

            "Aaah, blow it out," Stanley would shout.

            And Brown would interfere. "Stanley, you're talkin' too damn much. Why'n't you do some goddam work?"

            They struggled on, enraged at each other. Wilson began to babble again, and they listened to him dully. "Men, why don' you all lea' me, a man who cain't hold up his end ain't worth a goddam. Ah'm jus' holdin' you back. Jus' lea' me, men, that's all Ah ask. Ol' Wilson'll get along, y' don' have to worry about him. Jus' lea' me, men."

           
"Jus' lea' me, men."

            It tickled in their shoulders, washed down to their fingertips, which seemed to loosen on the litter handles. "What the hell you talkin' about, Wilson?" Brown panted. Each of them was fighting his private battle.

            Goldstein stumbled, and Wilson shouted at him. "Goldstein, you're a no-good bastard, you done that on purpose, Ah been watchin' ya, and you're no good." The name twisted in Wilson's head; he remembered the handle at his right foot being called Goldstein, and when the litter had dipped in that direction, he had bawled out the name. But now it clicked. "Goldstein's no fuggin good, a man who won't take a drink." He giggled weakly, a little blood welling stickily from the parched hollow of his throat. "Goddam, ol' Croft never knew Ah got a free bottle off him."

            Goldstein shook his head angrily, moved forward sullenly, his eyes on the ground. They never forget, the goyim, they never forget, he kept repeating to himself. He felt leagued against all of them. What did this Wilson appreciate of what they were doing for him?

            And Wilson lay back again, listening to the fast taut sounds of their sobbing. They were working for him. He understood it abruptly, held the idea for an instant and then lost it, but the emotion it stirred remained with him. "Man, Ah think a lot of you all for what you're doin', but you don't have to stick with ol' Wilson. Jus' lea' me, that's all." And when there was no answer he became fretful. "Goddammit, men, Ah said you can lea' me." He whined like a feverish child.

            Goldstein wanted to drop the litter handle. He said we should stop, Goldstein said to himself. But immediately afterward he was moved by Wilson's speech. In the heat and the blunting exhaustion of the march he could not think clearly, and thoughts jerked through him like muscular reactions. We can't leave him, he told himself; he's a generous fellow, and then Goldstein thought of nothing at all but the increasing torment in his arm, the muscle pains that extended across his back down into his straining legs.

            Wilson rubbed his tongue against the dry edge of his teeth. "Oh, men, Ah'm thirsty," he chanted. He twisted on the litter, holding up his head toward the leaden glaring sky, his throat poised on the edge of a delicious bliss. Any moment they would give him some water and the torture of his tongue and palate would be assuaged. "Men, gimme a drink," Wilson muttered. "Le's have some water."

            They hardly heard him. He had been babbling for water all day, and they had been paying no attention. He dropped his head back, rolled his thickened tongue in the arid cavity of his mouth. "Le's have some water," he bleated. Once more he waited patiently, fought against the vertigo that seemed to revolve him in circles on the litter. "Goddammit, men, y' gonna gimme some water."

            "Take it easy, Wilson," Brown muttered.

           
"Water,
goddammit."

            Stanley halted, his legs quivering, and they set him down. "Give him some water for God's sakes," Stanley shouted.

            "You can't give him water with a stomach wound," Goldstein protested.

            "What do you know about it?"

            "You can't give him water," Goldstein said. "It'll kill him.'"

            "Water's out," Brown panted.

            "Aaah, you guys gimme a pain in the ass," Stanley bawled.

            "A little water ain't gonna hurt Wilson," Ridges muttered. He felt a touch of surprise and scorn. "Man dies if en he don't get water." To himself he thought, What are they fussin' so much about?

            "Brown, I always thought you were chickenshit. Not even giving a wounded man some water." Stanley reeled in the sunlight. "An old buddy like Wilson an' you won't even give him any water 'cause some doctor starts talking about it." There was a terror back of his speech which he could not quite face. Even in his exhaustion he knew there was something wrong, dangerously wrong, in giving Wilson a drink, but he avoided that, rousing in himself an emotion of certain righteousness. "Try to relieve a man of a little suffering and what the hell do ya get for it? Goddammit, Brown, what the hell do ya want to do, torture him?" He felt himself driven by an excitement, a necessity. "Give him a drink, what will it cost ya?"

            "It would be murder," Goldstein said.

            "Aw, shut up, ya dumb Jew bastard." Stanley spoke with fury.

            "You can't say that to me," Goldstein piped. He was quivering with anger now too, but back of it was the shattering realization that Stanley had been so friendly the night before. You can't trust any of them, he thought numbly with a certain bitter pleasure. At least this time, he was certain.

            Brown interfered. "Let's cut it out, men, let's get movin' again." Before they could say any more, he bent down at one of the litter handles, and motioned the others to take up their positions. Once again they staggered forward into the blare and dazzle of the afternoon sun.

            "Gimme some water," Wilson whined.

            Once more Stanley halted. "Let's give him some, get him out of his misery."

            "Shut up, Stanley!" Brown waved his free arm loosely. "Keep going and cut out all this talk." Stanley glared at him. With his exhaustion he was feeling an intense hatred for Brown.

            Wilson's thoughts rolled back into his pain. He drifted along, not conscious for a while of the jarring of the litter, not even thinking directly of anything about him. Sensations washed through to him through the filter of his delirium. He could feel his wound throbbing, and in his mind he saw a horn boring into his stomach, pausing and then boring forward again. "Ahhhrr." He heard himself groan without feeling his voice stir in his throat. He was so hot. For minutes he floated on the stretcher, his tongue exploring the roots of his teeth for moisture. He was convinced that his legs and feet were on fire, and he twitched them experimentally, rubbing them together as if to extinguish the blaze. "Put it out, put it out," he mumbled from time to time.

            A new pain caught him, familiar and demanding. He felt a cramp in his lower belly, and the sweat stirred on his forehead, mounted into individual droplets. He fought against it with a childish fear of punishment and then relapsed into the heat and pleasure of voiding, the good strain on his bowels. For a moment he was lying again with his back upon the broken fence outside his father's house, the southern sun imparting a lazy sensuality in his loins. "Hey, nigger, what's that mule's name?" he mumbled, and then giggled weakly, content and drained. For a moment his hand clutched the litter, and he watched the colored girl walking by, twisted his head. The woman beside him was caressing his stomach. "Woodrow, do ya always spit before ya piss?"

            "Jus' for good luck," he mumbled aloud, trying now on the litter to empty his bladder. But another pain, sharp and grinding, tore through his loins. He remembered, or at least his groin muscles recalled the difficulty, knotting in resistance. It shattered the images, left him aware and troubled and perplexed, conscious for the first time of the way he had soiled himself. He had a picture of his loins putrefacted and a deep misery passed through him. Why in the hell did it have to happen to me? What's it got to do with what Ah been doin? And he lifted up his head and mumbled again, "Brown, you think that wound's gonna git all the pus outa me?"

            But no one answered, and he fell back again, brooding over his illness. A chain of unpleasant memories bothered him, and he became conscious again of the discomforts of the stretcher, the effort it cost him to remain lying on his back for so many hours. He made a feeble attempt to turn over, but it was too painful. He felt as if somebody were leaning against his stomach.

            "Git off, men," he shouted.

            And then he remembered the weight. On the night so many weeks before when the Japanese had tried to cross the river he had felt that same pressure in his chest and stomach as he had waited behind the machine gun.

            "We-you-coming-to-get." They had shouted that at Croft and him, and he shuddered now, bringing his hands up before his face. "We got to stop 'em, men, they're comin' now," he moaned, pitching on the litter. "Banzaaiiiigh, aaiiiiiiiigh!" he shouted, the sounds gurgling in his throat.
"Come on, recon, up, git up here!"

            The litter-bearers halted and set him down. "What's he yellin' about?" Brown asked.

            "I cain't see 'em, I jus' cain't see 'em. Where the hell's the flares?" Wilson bawled. He was grasping a machine-gun handle in his left palm, his forefinger extended to the trigger. "Who the hell's at the other gun? I cain't remember."

            Ridges shook his head. "He's talkin' 'bout that Jap attack on the river."

            Something of Wilson's panic transferred to the other men. Goldstein and Ridges, who had been on the river, stared at Wilson uneasily. The vast barren stretches of the hills about them seemed a little foreboding now.

            "I hope we don't run into any Japanese," Goldstein said.

            "They ain't a chance," Brown told him. He mopped the sweat out of his eyes, stared weakly into the distance. "Nobody around," he panted, but a feeling of weakness, of desperation welled in him. If they were to fall into an ambush now. . . He felt like crying again. There were too many things asked of him, and he was so enfeebled. A vortex of nausea resolved itself in his stomach, and he retched emptily, obtaining a mild relief from the coldness of his sweat. He couldn't let go. Brown heard himself saying, "We gotta move on, men."

            Underneath the moistened handkerchief, Wilson could barely see. The cotton was colored olive drab, and it glared under the sun with yellow and black colors that seemed to beat into his brain. He felt as if he were choking a little for air. Once more his arms thrashed up toward his head. "Goddammit," Wilson cried, "let's move those Japs, men, if we gonna get a goddam souvenir." He struggled again on the stretcher. "Who put that bag on my head? Red, that's a lousy trick to play on a buddy. I cain't see in this fuggin cave, move that Jap off my head."

            The handkerchief slipped down over his nose and Wilson blinked into the sun and closed his eyes once more. "Watch out, that snake!" he shouted suddenly, his body cringing. "Red, you got to shoot it careful, take a good bead, take a good bead." He mumbled something, and then his body relaxed. "Ah tell you, a dead man look jus' like a shoulder o' lamb been lying around too long."

            Brown replaced the handkerchief, and Wilson struggled beneath it. "Ah cain't breathe. Goddammit, they're shootin' at us, you know how to swim, Taylor, goddammit lemme get behind the boat!" Brown shuddered. Wilson was talking about the Motome invasion. Once more Brown was choking in the salt water, knowing the final resigned terror that came with accepting death. In his exhaustion, he felt for a moment as if he were swallowing the water again, feeling the same numb surprise at realizing that he could not control himself from gulping; the water had washed down his throat with a momentum and will of its own.

            That was the cause of it all, he thought now bitterly. The memory always loosed such panic and weakness in him. He had learned then that he was helpless in the shattering gyre of the war, and he could never shake the recollection. Doggedly, through his exhaustion, he told himself that he had to bring Wilson back, but he did not believe it now at all.

            Through the afternoon the litter-bearers continued on their march. About two o'clock it began to rain, and the ground quickly became muddy. The rain at first was a relief; they welcomed it on their blazing flesh, wriggled their toes in the slosh that permeated their boots. The wetness of their clothing was pleasurable. They enjoyed being cold for a few minutes. But as the rain continued the ground became too soft, and their uniforms cleaved uncomfortably to their bodies. Their feet began to slip in the mud, their shoes became weighted with muck and stuck in the ground with each step. They were too fagged to notice the difference immediately, their bodies had quickly resumed the stupor of the march, but by half an hour they had slowed down almost to a halt. Their legs had lost almost all puissance; for minutes they would stand virtually in place, unable to co-ordinate their thighs and feet to move forward. On the hills they would climb upward only a foot or two at a time and halt, staring stupidly at each other, their chests panting, their feet sinking deeper into the mud. Every fifty yards they would lay Wilson down, pause for a minute or two, and then trudge forward.