The Naked and the Dead (33 page)

            The men descended the ridge and struck out along the road leading back to the bivouac area. They passed a gutted tank which lay moldering off the road, its treads broken and rusted, looking like the skeleton of a lizard. "Goddam snake like that soon," Martinez said. Red grunted. He was looking at a corpse which lay almost naked on its back. It was an eloquent corpse, for there were no wounds on its body, and its hands were clenching the earth as if to ask for a last time the always futile question. The naked shoulders were hunched together in anguish, and he could easily conceive the expression of pain that should have been on the corpse's mouth. But the corpse lay there without a head, and Red ached dully as he realized the impossibility of ever seeing that man's face. There was only a bloody fragment at the terminus of the neck. The body seemed to lie in a casing of silence.

            Abruptly Red realized he was sober and very weary. The other men were already many yards ahead of him on the road, but he continued to look, drawn by some emotion he could not express. Very deep inside himself he was thinking that this was a man who had once wanted things, and the thought of his own death was always a little unbelievable to him. The man had had a childhood, a youth and a young manhood, and there had been dreams and memories. Red was realizing with surprise and shock, as if he were looking at a corpse for the first time, that a man was really a very fragile thing.

            The stench of the cave was still in his nostrils, and the cadaver gave him the same kind of horror that he had felt once in stepping on a coil of human feces in the middle of a lawn. There had been a strange self-sufficiency about that as there was now in the torso and limbs of this body. He realized that in a little while the fetidness of this corpse would seep into the earth and be lost, but now it was horrible in its stench. It caused him a deep pang of fear. He could still recall the odor of the cave, and it combined with this to terrify him -- he passed from the first warm smell of decay into the pungent quivering core of the stink, a clear nauseous odor that shocked him with cold fingers. It was the smell he would have expected if he had lifted a coffin lid, and it remained in him for a long bad moment in which he looked at the body and didn't look, thought of nothing, and found his mind churning with the physical knowledge of life and death and his own vulnerability.

            Then it was all over and he continued to walk, looking at the tangle of war on the left and right of the road. The smell continued to oppress him. The way a bunch of ants would kill each other, he thought. He trotted after the other men, and walked moodily beside them through the coconut grove and along the trail. The liquor was wearing off for all of them, and they were silent. Red had a headache. He stumbled over a root, and swore, and then without any relation to what they had been talking about, he muttered, "There damn sure ain't anything special about a man if he can smell as bad as he does when he's dead."

            Back at 2d Battalion, Wyman had just wounded an insect. It was a long hairy caterpillar with black and gold coloring, and he had jabbed a twig into its body. The caterpillar began to run about in circles and then flopped over on its back. It was struggling desperately to right itself until Wyman held his burning cigarette near the insect's back. The insect writhed, and lay prostrate again, its back curled into an L and its legs thrashing helplessly in the air. It looked as if it were trying desperately to breathe.

            Ridges had watched this with displeasure, his long dumpy face wrinkled in a scowl. "That ain't the right way to treat a bug," he said.

            Wyman was absorbed in the convulsions of the insect, and the interruption irritated him. He felt a trace of shame. "What do you mean, Ridges? What the hell's so important about a bug?"

            "Shoot," Ridges sighed, " ' tain't doin' you no harm. Jus' mindin' its own business."

            Wyman turned to Goldstein. "The preacher's gettin' all excited over a bug." He laughed sarcastically, and then said, "Killin' one of Gawd's creatures, huh?"

            Goldstein shrugged. "Every man has his own viewpoint," he said gently.

            Ridges lowered his head stubbornly. "Not sayin' 'tain't hard to make fun of a man if he believes in the written Word."

            "You eat meat, don't ya?" Wyman demanded. He was pleased to have the better arguments, for usually he felt inferior to most of the men in the squad. "Where the hell's it say you can eat meat but you can't kill a bug?"

            "Meat ain't the same. Y' don' eat a bug."

            Wyman poured a little dirt over the caterpillar and watched it struggle to free itself. "I don't see you caring if you kill a Jap or two," he said.

            "They're
heathen,"
Ridges said.

            "Excuse me," Goldstein said, "but I don't think you're quite right. I was reading an article a few months ago which said there were over a hundred thousand Christians in Japan."

            Ridges shook his head. "Well, Ah wouldn' want to be killing one of them," he said.

            "But you'll have to," Wyman said. "Whyn't you admit you're wrong?"

            "The Lord'll keep me from shooting a Christian," Ridges said stubbornly.

            "Aaaaah."

            "That's what Ah believe," Ridges said. Actually, he was quite upset. The writhing of the insect had recalled to him the way the bodies of the Japanese had looked the morning after they had tried to cross the river. They had seemed the same as the animals who had died on his father's farm. He had told himself that it was because they were heathen, but now after Goldstein's statement he was confused. One hundred thousand was a vast number to him; he assumed that was at least half the people in Japan, and now he was thinking that some of the dead men he had seen in the river must have been Christians. He brooded over it for a moment or two, and then understood. It was very simple to him.

            "You believe man got a soul?" he asked Wyman.

            "I don't know. What the hell is a soul?"

            Ridges chuckled. "Shoot, you ain't so smart as you think y'are. The soul's what leaves a man after he dies -- that's what goes up t' heaven. That's why he looks so bad when you see him jus' lyin' in the river, it's because he ain't what he was before. That somethin' that's important, his soul, that's gone from him."

            "Who the hell knows," Wyman said. He felt philosophical.

            The insect was dying under the last handful of earth he had poured over it.

            Wilson finished the last canteen of whisky by himself while he was on guard that night. It made him a little drunk again, and it revived his restlessness. He sat on the edge of his foxhole, and peered irritably through the barbed wire, shifting his position every few minutes. His head was lolling from side to side, and he found it difficult to keep his eyes open. There was a bush about fifteen yards beyond the barbed wire and it bothered him. It threw a shadow which extended into the jungle and made it impossible for him to see a certain section of the perimeter. The more he gazed at it, the more irritable he became. Goddam bush, he told himself, think you're gonna hide a Jap, don't ya? He shook his head. No goddam Jap's gonna sneak up on me.

            He got out of the hole and walked a few steps away. His legs were unsteady, which annoyed him. He sat down in the hole again, and peered at the bush. "Whoinhell tol' ya to grow there?" he asked. When he closed his eyes he was very dizzy and his jaws felt as though they were chewing a piece of sponge. Man cain't even sleep on guard with the goddam bush, he told himself. He sighed, and then pulled the bolt of the machine gun back and forth. He sighted along the barrel and aimed it at the base of the bush. "Ah coulda tole ya not to grow there," he muttered and then pulled the trigger. The handle of the gun bucked viciously as he fired a long burst. When he had finished the bush was still standing, and in anger he fired the machine gun again.

            To the men in recon, who were sleeping about ten yards back of him, the sound of the machine gun was terrifying. It tore them violently out of their sleep as if an electric charge had bored through them, ground their heads into the dirt, and then pulled them to their knees. They did not know that Wilson was firing; they thought it was a Japanese attack again, and they staggered through several terrible seconds between sleep and wakefulness while all kinds of thoughts and fears went through their heads.

            Goldstein thought he was on guard and had fallen asleep. He whispered desperately several times, "I wasn't sleeping, I was only closing my eyes to fool the Japs, I was ready, I swear I was ready."

            Martinez whimpered, "I give back the teeth, I promise I give back the teeth."

            Wyman dreamed he was letting go of the antitank gun, and said, "It really wasn't my fault. Goldstein let it go." He felt guilt, and then was awake in the next instant, and had forgotten everything.

            Red lay on his stomach, and thought it was the soldier with the bayonet who was shooting at him. "Come on, you sonofabitch, you sonofabitch," he kept muttering.

            Gallager thought, They're out to get ME.

            And Croft felt a paralyzing instant of fear while the Japanese charged across the river and he sat tied hand and foot by his machine gun. The second burst of fire loosed his bonds, and he roared, "COME AND GET ME!" The sweat formed on his face, and then he was crawling along the ground toward Wilson's gun. "RECON, UP, UP ON THE LINE!" he bellowed. He was still uncertain whether they were on the river or not.

            Wilson fired again, and Croft realized that he was shooting and not the Japanese. In the next instant he understood that they were far from the river, and this was the 2nd Battalion bivouac. He dropped into the hole beside Wilson and jerked his arm. "What're you firing at?" It had taken until now for Croft to awaken completely.

            "Ah got it," Wilson said. "Ah knocked down the sonofabitch."

            "What?" Croft whispered.

            "The bush." He pointed. "Yonder. Ah couldn' see through it. Was gettin' me all in a lather."

            The other men in recon were crawling cautiously toward them. "You didn't hear any Japs?" Croft said.

            "Hell, no," Wilson said. "Ah wouldn' use a machine gun if Ah saw a Jap, Ah'd use a rifle. Don' want me to spot the position for one lousy Jap, do ya?"

            Croft was repressing a violent rage. He grasped Wilson by the shoulders and shook him although Wilson was much larger than he. "I swear, I swear," he said thickly, "you ever pull a trick like that again, Wilson, and I'll shoot you myself. I'll. . ." He broke off, shaking from his violence. "Go on back," he called to the men who were crawling up. "It was a goddam false alarm."

            "Who fired?" someone whispered.

            "Go on back!" Croft commanded.

            He turned to Wilson again. "Of all the tricks you've ever pulled. Man, you're on my shit-list from now on." He stepped out of the hole, and walked back to his blankets. He could feel his hands still trembling.

            Wilson was bewildered. He kept thinking of how merry Croft had been that afternoon, and he couldn't understand his sudden rage. What's there to get a man so fussed about? he wondered. He chuckled to himself, and then remembered how Croft had shaken him. This made him angry. Ah don' care how long Ah know him, Wilson told himself, they ain't no call for him to handle me any ol' way. Next time he do somethin' like that, Ah'll give him a belt or two. He broke off moodily, and looked out across the barbed wire. The bush had been sheared away at its roots, and he had a fine field of view. Shoulda done that long ago, he told himself. He was feeling very hurt by Croft's anger. Jus' a little ol' burst o' machine-gun fire. Abruptly, he realized that the entire bivouac probably was awake now, and men everywhere were listening tensely. Goddam, Wilson sighed, Ah get in
more
trouble when Ah get drunk. . . He began to giggle to himself.

            Next morning the squad returned to the bivouac of headquarters and headquarters company. They had been away for seven days and eight nights.

The Time Machine:

RED VALSEN

THE WANDERING MINSTREL

           
Everything about him was bony and knobbed. He was over six feet tall without weighing one hundred and fifty pounds. In silhouette his profile consisted almost entirely of a large blob of a nose and a long low-slung jaw, a combination which made his face seem boiled and angry. He had an expression of concentrated contempt but behind it his tired eyes, a rather painful blue, were quiet, marooned by themselves in a web of wrinkles and freckles.

            The horizon is always close. It never lifts beyond the hills that surround the town, never goes past the warped old wood of the miners' houses or rises above the top of the mine shafts. The pale-brown earth of the Montana hills has settled over the valley. You must understand that The Company owns everything. A long time ago they laid the track into the valley, bored the mine shafts, built the miners' frame houses, threw up the company store, and even gave them a church. Since then, the town is a trough. The wages skid out of the shafts and end up in a company hopper; what with drinking in the company saloon, buying food and clothing, and paying the rent, there is nothing left over. All the horizons end at the mine elevator.

            And Red learns that early. What else is there to learn once his father is killed in a mine-shaft explosion? Some things are inflexible and one of them is that in The Company's town, the oldest single son supports the family if the father is killed. In 1925, when Red is thirteen, there are other miners' sons who are younger than him also working in the shafts. The miners shrug. He is the oldest man left in the family and that suffices.