The Naked and the Dead (2 page)

            "Pretty fuggin funny," Gallagher muttered half to himself. He was a short man with a bunched wiry body that gave the impression of being gnarled and sour. His face, in character with this, was small and ugly, pocked with the scars of a severe acne which had left his skin lumpy, spotted with swatches of purple-red. Perhaps it was the color of his face, or it might have been the shape of his long Irish nose, which slanted resentfully to the side, but he always looked wroth. Yet, he was only twenty-four.

            The seven of hearts was showing. He looked cautiously at his two buried cards, discovered both of them were also hearts, and allowed himself a little hope. He hadn't had a flush all night, and he told himself he was due. "Even
they
can't fug me this time," he thought.

            Wilson bet a pound, and Gallagher raised him. "All right, let's make this a decent pot," he growled. Croft and Levy came along, and when the other man dropped out, Gallagher felt cheated. "What's the matter?" he asked. "You going chickenshit? You're only gonna get your fuggin head blown off tomorrow." His statement was lost in the skittering of the money onto the folded blanket upon which they were playing, but it left him with a cold shuddering anxiety as though he had blasphemed. "Hail Mary, mother of. . ." he repeated quickly to himself. He saw himself lying on the beach with a bloody nub where his head should have been.

            His next card fell, a spade. Would they ship his body home, he wondered, and would Mary come to his grave? The self-pity was delicious. For an instant he longed for the compassion in his wife's eyes. She understood him, he told himself, but as he tried to think of her, he saw instead a picture of '. . . Mary, mother. . .' which had remained in his memory from some postcard reproductions of religious paintings he had bought in parochial school. What did Mary,
his
Mary, look like? He strained to remember, to form her face exactly in his mind. But he could not at this moment; it eluded him like the melody of a half-recalled song that kept shifting back into other, more familiar tunes.

            He drew a heart on the next card. That gave him four hearts and there would be two more chances to pull the fifth heart. His anxiety eased and then was translated to a vital interest in the game. He looked about him. Levy was folding his hand even before the round of betting started, and Croft was showing a pair of tens. Croft bet two pounds, and Gallagher decided that he had the third ten. If Croft's hand didn't improve, and Gallagher was certain it wouldn't, then Croft would be playing right into his flush.

            Wilson giggled a little and fumbled sloppily for his money. As he dropped it onto the blanket he said, "This yere's gonna be a mighty big pot." Gallagher fingered his few remaining bills and told himself this was the last opportunity to come back. "Raise you two," he muttered, and then felt a kind of panic. Wilson was showing three spades. Why hadn't he noticed it before? His luck!

            The bet, however, was only called, and Gallagher relaxed. Wilson didn't have the flush yet. It was at least even between them, and Wilson might have no other spades in the hole; he might even be trying for something else. Gallagher hoped they both wouldn't check to him on the next round. He was going to raise until his money gave out.

            Croft, Staff Sergeant Croft, was feeling another kind of excitement after the next row of cards was turned up. He had been drifting sullenly until then, but on the draw he picked up a seven, which gave him two pair. At that instant, he had a sudden and powerful conviction that he was going to win the pot. Somehow, he
knew
he was going to pull a seven or a ten for a full house. Croft didn't question it. A certainty as vivid as this one had to mean something. Usually he played poker with a hard shrewd appreciation of the odds against drawing a particular card, and an effective knowledge of the men against whom he played. But it was the margin of chance which existed in poker that made the game meaningful to him. He entered everything with as much skill and preparation as he could bring to it, but he knew that things finally would hang also on his luck. This he welcomed. He had a deep unspoken belief that whatever made things happen was on his side, and now, after a long night of indifferent cards, he had a potentially powerful hand.

            Gallagher had drawn another heart, and Croft figured him for a flush. Wilson's three spades had not been helped by the diamond he had drawn, but Croft guessed that he had his flush already and was playing quietly. It had always struck Croft how slyly Wilson played in contrast to his good-natured, easygoing air.

            "Bet two pounds," Croft said.

            Wilson threw two into the pot, and then Gallagher jumped him. "Raise you two." That made it certain Gallagher had his flush, Croft decided.

            He dropped four pounds neatly on the blanket. "And raise
you
two." There was a pleasurable edge of tension in his mouth.

            Wilson chuckled easily. "Goddam, this is gonna be a big pot," he told them. "Ah ought to drop out, but Ah never could git out of the habit of peekin' at that last card."

            And now Croft was convinced that Wilson had a flush too. He could see that Gallagher was uncertain -- one of Wilson's spades was an ace. "Raise you two," Gallagher said a little desperately. If he had the full house already, Croft told himself, he'd raise Gallagher all night, but now it would be better to save some money for the last round.

            He dropped two more pounds on the pile over the blanket, and Wilson followed him. Levy dealt the last card face-down to each of them. Croft, containing his excitement, looked about the half-dark hold, gazed at the web of bunks that rose all about them, tier on tier. He watched a soldier turn over in his sleep. Then he picked up his last card. It was a five. He shuffled his cards slowly, bewildered, wholly unable to believe that he could have been so wrong. Disgusted, he threw down his hand without even checking to Wilson. He was just beginning to feel angry. Quietly, he watched them bet, saw Gallagher put down his last bill.

            "Ah'm makin' an awful mistake, but Ah'll see ya," Wilson said. "What ya got, boy?"

            Gallagher was truculent as though he knew he were going to be beaten. What the fug do ya think I got -- it's a flush in hearts, jack up."

            Wilson sighed. "Ah hate to do this to ya, boy, but Ah got ya in spades with that bull." He pointed to his ace.

            For several seconds Gallagher was silent, but the dark lumps on his face turned a dull purple. Then he seemed to burst all at once. "Of all the mother-fuggin luck, that sonofabitch takes it all."

            He sat there quivering.

            A soldier in a bunk near the hatch raised himself irritably on one elbow, and shouted, "For Chrissake, Jack, how about shutting up and letting us get some sleep."

            "Go fug yourself," Gallagher yelled. "Don't you men know when to quit?"

            Croft stood up. He was a lean man of medium height but he held himself so erectly he appeared tall. His narrow triangular face was utterly without expression under the blue bulb, and there seemed nothing wasted in his hard small jaw, gaunt firm cheeks and straight short nose. His thin black hair had indigo glints in it which were emphasized by the light, and his gelid eyes were very blue. "Listen, trooper," he said in a cold even voice, "you can just quit your pissing. We'll play our game any way we goddam please, and if you don't like it, I don't figure there's much you can do, unless you want to mess with four of us."

            There was an indistinct muttered reply from the bunk, and Croft continued looking at him. "If you're really looking for something, you can mess with me," Croft added. His speech was quiet and clearly enunciated with a trace of a southern accent. Wilson watched him carefully.

            This time the soldier who had complained made no answer at all, and Croft smiled thinly, sat down again. "You're lookin' for a fight, boy," Wilson told him.

            "I didn't like the tone that boy was using," Croft said shortly.

            Wilson shrugged. "Well, let's get goin' again," he suggested.

            "I'm quitting," Gallagher said.

            Wilson felt bad. There just wasn't any fun in it, he decided, to take a man for all the money he had. Gallagher was most of the time a nice fellow, and it made it doubly mean when you took a buddy you'd slept in the same pup tent with for three months. "Listen, boy," he offered, "they ain't no point in bustin' up a game 'cause a man goes broke. Lemme stake you to some of them pounds."

            "Nah, I'm quitting," Gallagher repeated angrily.

            Wilson shrugged again. He couldn't understand these men like Croft and Gallagher who took their poker so damn hard. He liked the game, and they wasn't gonna be much of a way to pass the time now till morning, but it wasn't
that
important. A stack of money spread before you was a good feeling, but he'd rather drink. Or have a woman. He chuckled sadly. A woman was a long way off.

            After a long while, Red got tired of lying in his bunk and sneaked past the guard to go up top. On deck, the air seemed chill after being so long in the hold. Red breathed it deeply, and moved about cautiously for a few seconds in the darkness until the outline of the ship formed for him. The moon was out, limning the deck-housings and equipment with a quiet silver sheen. He stared about him, aware now of the muted wash of the propellers, the slow contained roll of the ship which he had felt down below in the vibration of his bunk. He felt at once much better, for the deck was almost deserted. There was a sailor on watch at the nearest gun but in comparison to the hold this was isolation.

            Red walked over to the rail and looked out to sea. The ship was hardly moving now, and all the convoy seemed to be pausing and nosing its way through the water like a hound uncertain of the scent. Far off against the horizon the ridge line of an island rose steeply, formed a mountain, and fell away again in one descending hill after another. That was Anopopei, he decided, and shrugged. What difference did it make? All islands looked the same.

            Blankly, without any anticipation, he thought of the week ahead. Tomorrow, when they landed, their feet would get wet and their shoes would fill with sand. There would be one landing boat after another to be unloaded, crate after crate to be toted a few yards up the beach and dropped in a pile. If they were lucky there would be no Jap artillery, and not too many snipers left. He felt a tired dread. There would be this campaign and then another and another, and there would never be an end to it. He massaged his neck, looking dourly at the water, his long thin body sagging at every joint. It was about one o'clock now. In three hours the guns would start and the men would bolt a hot nauseating breakfast.

            There was nothing to do but to go from one day into the next. The platoon was lucky, for tomorrow anyway. They'd have recon working on the beach detail for a week probably, and the first patrols where all the trails were strange would be made already, and the campaign would have dropped into a familiar and bearable rut. He spat again, kneading with his blunt scarred fingers the knurled swollen knuckles of his other hand.

            In silhouette against the rail, his profile consisted almost entirely of a large blob of a nose and a long low-slung jaw, but in the moonlight this was misleading for it did not show the redness of his skin and hair. His face always seemed boiled and angry except for his eyes, which were quiet, a pale blue, marooned by themselves in a web of wrinkles and freckles. When he laughed his teeth showed, big and yellow and crooked, his rough voice braying out with a contemptuous inviolate mirth. Everything about him was bony and knobbed, and although he was more than six feet tall, it was unlikely that he weighed one hundred and fifty pounds.

            His hand scratched his stomach, explored about for a moment or two and then halted. He had forgotten his life belt. Automatically he thought of going back to the hold for it, and was angered at himself. "Goddam Army gets you so you're afraid to turn around." He spat. "You waste half your time trying to remember what they told you to do." Still he debated for a moment whether he should fetch it, and then grinned. "Aaah, you can only get killed once."

            He had told that to Hennessey, a kid who had joined recon only a few weeks before the division's task force had loaded ship for this invasion. "A life belt, that's something for Hennessey to worry about, a life belt," he said to himself now.

            They had been up on deck together one night when an air raid sounded, and they had squatted under a life raft, watching the ships in convoy lashing through the black water, the crew at the nearest gun standing tensely by the breech. A Zero had attacked and a dozen searchlights had tried to focus on it. Hundreds of tracer arcs had lined red patterns through the air. It had all been very different from the combat he had previously seen, without heat, without fatigue, beautiful and unreal like a technicolor movie or a calendar picture. He had watched in absorption, not even ducking when a bomb had exploded in a livid yellow fan over a ship a few hundred yards away.

            Then Hennessey had destroyed his mood. "Jesus, I just remembered," he had said.

            "What?"

            "I ain't got any air cartridges in my life belt."

            Red had guffawed. "I'll tell you what. When the ship goes down, you just ride a nice fat rat to shore."

            "No, this is serious. Jeez, I better blow it up." And in the darkness he had fumbled for the tube, found it, and inflated the belt. Red had watched him with amusement. He was such a kid. The way they turned them out now, all the kids wanted to obey the rules. Red had felt almost sad. "You're all set for everything now, huh, Hennessey?"

            "Listen," Hennessey had boasted, "I ain't taking any chances. What if this boat should get hit? I ain't going into the water unprepared."