The Naked and the Dead (38 page)

            They were dopes.

            And he was alone, a wise man without a skin.

            The tide was coming in, and the sand spit on which Major Dalleson had been firing his carbine was beginning to be inundated. He retreated a step or two as a wavelet pattered around his ankles, and then bent down to pick up another pebble. He had been shooting pebbles for almost an hour now, and he was beginning to weary. His large chest and belly had reddened in the sun, his body hair was slicked with perspiration, and the waist band of his cotton shorts, the only clothing he was wearing, had become quite wet. He grunted, looked at the pebbles in his hand, and selected one which he held between his forefinger and thumb. Then he slumped forward like a buffalo, his head almost parallel to the sand, the muzzle of his carbine pointing vertically downward just past his toe. He bent farther forward until his head was not more than a foot from his knees, and then he straightened abruptly, throwing the pebble into the air with his left hand and raising his carbine with his right arm. For just an instant he caught the pebble in his rear sight, a tiny speck of dust against the blue of the sky, and then he squeezed the trigger and the pebble spattered.

            "Goddam," Dalleson said with satisfaction, wiping the sweat from his eyes with his heavy forearm, licking the dried salt at the corners of his mouth. That pebble made four in a row he had hit.

            He selected another one, went into his motion, threw it up, and missed this time. "Well, anyway, I been hitting them about three out of five on an average," he told himself. It was all right; he hadn't lost his eye. He'd have to write a letter to his rifle club back in Allentown telling them about this.

            That skeet shooting was all right. He'd have to try it when he got back. If he could hit pebbles three out of five with a carbine, they'd have to blind him before he'd miss a clay plate with a shotgun. His ear ached slightly, comfortably, from the noise of firing the carbine.

            Conn and Dove were sporting in the water about a hundred yards away and he waved to them. Another wavelet encircled his ankles. Or better than writing to the rifle club, he could send them a picture.

            Dalleson turned around and looked over the sand at the officers playing bridge. "Hey, Leach, where the hell are you?" he bellowed.

            A tall slim officer with a lean face and silver-rimmed glasses sat up in the sand. "I'm over here, Major, what do you want?"

            "Did you take your camera along?" Leach nodded dubiously. "Well, bring it over, will ya?" Dalleson shouted. Leach was his assistant, a captain, in operations and training.

            Dalleson grinned at him as he came over. Leach was a good fellow, agreeable, did his work all right, anxious to please. "Listen, Leach, I'd like ya to take a picture of me shooting some pebbles."

            "It's going to be kind of hard, Major. This's just a little ol' box camera, and it's only got a shutter speed of one-twenty-fifth of a second."

            Dalleson frowned. "Aw hell, it'll be good enough."

            "Well, I'll tell you, Major, I'll be frank about it" -- Leach's voice was soft with a southern accent -- "I'd like to oblige you but I only have but three pictures left, and it's kinda hard to get film."

            "I'll pay you for it," Dalleson offered.

            "Aw, no, I wasn't thinking of that, but, well, you see --"

            Dalleson interrupted him. "Come on, man, all I'm asking you for is a picture. What the hell are you gonna shoot it up of, except some of these other Joes around here?"

            "All right, Major."

            Dalleson beamed. "Okay, now look, Leach, what I want is for you to get out on that spit a little bit, and I want you to get me in, of course, and the jungle in back so my friends'll know where the hell it was taken, and also I want you to get that pebble when it busts in the air."

            Leach looked distressed. "Major, you can't get all that in. That would include a ninety-degree arc, and the angle of lens of this camera isn't more than thirty-five degrees."

            "Well, look, man, don't give me all those goddam facts and figures. It seems to me it ain't that goddam hard to take a little picture."

            "I might be able to take you from the back with you in the foreground and tilt the camera up so it catches the pebble, but I'll tell you, Major, it's just a waste of film because that pebble isn't even gonna register. It's too small."

            "Leach, it ain't that complicated. I've taken pictures. All you got to do is press a damn button. Now let's cut out all this jawing."

            Obviously miserable, Leach squatted behind Dalleson and hopped around for a few seconds trying to find the proper angle. "Will you throw a practice pebble up, Major?" Leach asked. Dalleson flipped one in the air. "Let's get these dry runs over," he grumbled.

            "All right, I'm ready now, Major."

            Dalleson bent over, straightened, and fired at the pebble when it was at the top of the parabola. He missed, and turned around to Leach. "Let's try another one."

            "All right," Leach said grudgingly.

            This time Dalleson hit the pebble, but Leach had reacted too late, and he snapped the shutter after the pebble fragments were dispersed. "Goddammit, man!" Dalleson roared.

            "I'm doing my best, Major."

            "Well, let's not drop the ball next time." Dalleson threw away the pebbles in his hand and searched for a larger one.

            "This's the last picture in the roll, Major."

            "Hell, we'll make it." Dalleson wiped the sweat out of his eyes again, bent over, and stared at his knees. His heart was beating a little rapidly. "You snap it soon's you hear the carbine go off," he growled.

            "Yes, sir."

            Up went the pebble and his rifle pointing after it. There was a panicky instant when he couldn't locate it in his sights, and then as it started to fall he caught it over the front-leaf sight, adjusted instinctively, and felt the reassuring minor jolt of the stock, the slight kick, as he pressed the trigger.

            "I got it that time, Major."

            Ripples on the water were still spreading from the fragments of the pebble. "Goddam," Dalleson said again with enjoyment. "I appreciate this, Leach."

            "That's okay, sir."

            "Lemme pay you for it."

            "Well. . ."

            "I insist," Dalleson said. He slipped the magazine out of the carbine, and fired the round remaining in the chamber into the air. "Let's call it a quarter for the three pictures. I sure hope they come out good." He patted Leach on the back. "C'mon, son, let's you and me go for a swim. Hell, we deserve it."

            This was
all right.

9

            Recon began working on the road again after they returned from the front. The line companies advanced their positions several times and the men in the rear heard rumors that they were close to the Toyaku Line. Actually they knew very little about what was happening in the campaign; the days repeated themselves without incident, and they were no longer able to distinguish between things which had happened a few days before. They would stand guard at night, awaken a half hour after dawn, eat breakfast, wash their mess kits, shave, and load onto trucks which drove them through the jungle to the stretch of road upon which they were working. They would return at noon, go out again after chow, and work until late afternoon when they would come back for supper, take a bath perhaps in the stream just outside the bivouac, and then go to sleep soon after dark. They had about an hour and a half of guard each night, and they were thoroughly accustomed to it; they had forgotten what it was like to sleep for eight consecutive hours. The rainy season had come on and they were always wet. After a time it was no longer a discomfort. The dampness of their clothing seemed perfectly natural to them, and it was very difficult to remember just what it had felt like to wear a dry uniform.

            About a week after they had come back, a load of mail came to the island. They were the first letters the men had received in several weeks, and for a night it relieved the changeless pattern of their lives. One of the infrequent rations of beer was given out the same night, and the men finished their three cans quickly, and sat about without saying very much. The beer had been far too inadequate to make them drunk; it made them only moody and reflective, it opened the gate to all their memories, and left them sad, hungering for things they could not name.

            On the night they got their mail, Red drank his beer with Wilson and Gallagher, and did not return to his tent until dark. He had received no letters, which did not surprise him since he had not written to anyone in over a year, but he had felt a trace of disappointment. He had never written to Lois, so he never heard from her; she didn't even know his address. But once in a while, usually on mail-call nights, he had a momentary and irrational little hope. The business with Lois was dead, but even so. . .

            His depression had increased while he was with the other men. Gallagher was busy writing to his wife, leafing through the fifteen letters that had come from her in order to answer some of her questions, and Wilson had been complaining about his wife. "Ah gave that damn woman lovin' she'll never forget, and now she's always fussin' over why Ah don' send some o' my pay."

            "You're gonna die in jail," Red had snorted.

            By the time he returned to his own tent, he was very depressed. At the entrance he kicked aside an empty beer can and crawled into the hole. As he straightened his twisted blankets in the dark, he swore a little. "It's just like the goddam Army," he said to Wyman, "three cans of beer. They got more ways to tease a man."

            Wyman twisted over in his bedding, and spoke up softly. "I only drank one of my beers. Why don't you take the other two, Red?"

            "Well, thanks, kid." Red hesitated. A tacit friendship had developed between them since they had been bunking together, but Wyman was making more and more overtures lately. You start buddy-buddying with 'em and they get knocked off, Red thought. More and more Wyman reminded him of Hennessey. "You better drink the beer yourself, kid," he said, "they ain't gonna give 'em out again for a while."

            "Naw, I don't like beer much."

            Red opened a can and passed it to Wyman. "C'mon, we'll each have one." If he had kept both of them and drunk them it might have muddled him enough to fall asleep easily. Ever since the night they had marched up to the front, Red's kidneys had been bothering him steadily, keeping him awake at night. And with insomnia there was always a re-enactment of the moment when he had waited for the Japanese soldier to stab him. But even so, two beers was a big favor, too big a one. It would give Wyman a call on him. It was better when you didn't owe anybody.

            They drank silently for a few minutes. "You get lots of mail, kid?" Red asked.

            "I got a batch from my mother." Wyman lit a cigarette and looked away.

            "What about your girl friend, what's-her-name?"

            "I don't know, I didn't get anything from her."

            In the dark, Red grimaced. The whole setup should have told him. Giving away a beer, mooning by himself in the tent -- he should have guessed what was wrong with Wyman and avoided a conversation. "Aw, hell, kid, she'll write you," he blurted.

            Wyman fingered his blanket. "I can't figure it out, Red. I haven't got any mail from her since I been overseas. Back in the States she used to write me every day."

            Red rinsed his mouth with a swallow of beer. "Aaah, it's just the Army's got the mail fugged up," he said.

            "I used to think that, but I don't believe it any more. When I was in the replacement depot I didn't expect to get any, but now we've had two mail calls here, and I got a bunch of letters from my mother each time, and nothing from her."

            Red fingered his nose and sighed.

            "I'll tell you the truth, Red, I'd be scared to get a letter from her now. It'd probably be a Dear John."

            "There's lots of women, kid. You're better off if you learn early."

            Wyman's voice was troubled and hurt. "She ain't like that, Red. She's really a swell kid. Oh, Jeez, I don't know, there was something real different about her."

            Red grunted. Wyman's emotion was embarrassing him, and he knew he would have to listen. He drank some beer, and smiled wryly. I'm paying for the goddam drink, he said to himself. Abruptly, he pictured again Wyman brooding by himself all evening, and the thought softened him. "It's kind of hard just to sit around and think," he said. By now he had stirred at best only a partial sympathy. Other men's troubles usually bored him. Everybody gets his share of bloody noses, and it's Wyman's turn now, he thought.

            "How'd you meet her?" he asked.

            "Aw, she was the kid sister of Larry Nesbitt, you remember he was that buddy of mine I was telling you about?"

            "Yeah." Red had a vague recollection.

            "Well, I always used to see her around his house, and she was just a kid, I never paid any attention to her. But then one time a couple of months before I came into the Army, I went over to his house and he wasn't in, and I noticed her. You know, she'd sort of grown up. So I asked her to go for a walk with me, and we sat in the park and talked, and. . ." Wyman broke off. "I could talk to her about a lot of things, and I don't know, we just sat there on a park bench, and I told her I wanted to be a sports writer, and she said she wanted to design dresses, and I started laughing until I realized she was serious, and we talked a long time about what we wanted to do with ourselves." He swallowed his beer.