The Naked and the Dead (65 page)

            Hearn examined their faces. He had made it his business to learn their names immediately, but that was hardly equivalent to knowing anything about them, and it was obviously important that he should form some quick idea of them as individuals. He had talked to a few casually, joked with them, but it was not a process he enjoyed particularly, and he knew his own aptitudes were poorly suited. He could learn more from observation. The only trouble was that observation was necessarily slow, and by tomorrow morning they would land on the beach, begin their patrol, then every bit of knowledge about them would be important.

            As Hearn watched their faces, he was aware of a vague discomfort. It was the kind of physical readiness, the slight guilt, the slight shame, perhaps, that he had felt in walking through a slum neighborhood, conscious of the hostility of the people who watched him pass. Certainly whenever one of the men stared at him, it was a little difficult not to look away. Most of them had hard faces; their eyes were blank with something cold and removed in their expression. As a group they had a forbidding and rigid quality as though they no longer held an excess bit of weight nor a surplus emotion. Their skins had turned sallow, almost yellow, and their faces, their arms and legs, were pocked with many jungles sores. Nearly all of them had shaved before they started out, and yet their faces were unkempt their clothing sloppy.

            He looked at Croft, who had put on a clean fatigue uniform. He was squatting on his cot, sharpening his trench knife against a little whetstone he had withdrawn from his pocket. Hearn knew Croft perhaps best of all, or more exactly he had spent the most time with him that morning discussing the patrol, but actually he did not know him at all. Croft had listened to him, had nodded, spat occasionally to the side, and answered him when necessary with a few bare words, uttered in a low toneless murmur. Croft obviously handled the platoon well, he was tough and capable, and Hearn was reasonably certain that Croft resented him. It would be a difficult relationship to handle, for Croft knew more than he did yet, and unless he was careful the platoon would soon realize it. Almost with fascination, Hearn watched Croft working on his trench knife. He brooded over it, his cold gaunt face examining his hands as he drew the blade back and forth against the stone. There was something frozen about him, something congealed in the set of his tight mouth, the concentration of his eyes. Croft was tough, all right, Hearn told himself.

            The boat was turning now, angling against the swells. Hearn grasped a strut more firmly as it jarred against a wave.

            There was Sergeant Brown, whom he knew slightly; he was the one who looked like a boy with his snubbed nose and freckles and light-brown hair. The Typical American Soldier -- the agreeable composite hatched out of the tobacco smoke and hangovers of the advertising conferences. Brown looked like all the smiling soldiers in the advertisements, a trifle smaller, perhaps, plumper, more bitter than was permissible. Brown had an odd face actually, Hearn decided. Up close there were jungle sores on Brown's skin, and his eyes had become dull and remote, his skin had begun to wrinkle. He looked surprisingly old.

            But, then, all the veterans did. It was simple to pick them out. There was Gallagher, who probably had always looked that way, but still he had been in the platoon for some time. And there was Martinez, who seemed more fragile, more sensitive than the others. His fine features had been nervous, his eyes had blinked as he talked to Hearn that morning. He was the one you would pick instantly to crack up, and yet he was probably a good man. A Mexican had to be to become a good noncom.

            There was Wilson, and the one they called Red. Hearn watched Valsen. That one had a craggy face with a rough boiled look about it which emphasized the blueness of his eyes. His laugh had a hoarse sarcastic edge as if everything disgusted him exactly the way he had known it would disgust him. Valsen was the one who was probably worth talking to, and yet he would be unapproachable.

            Collectively, they lent something to each other, seemed harder and meaner than they would if isolated. As they lay on their cots, their faces seemed the only things alive in the troop well. Their fatigues were old, faded to a pale green, and the boat walls had rusted brown. There was no color, no movement in anything but the flesh of their faces. Hearn threw his cigarette away.

            On his left was the island, not more than half a mile across the water. The beach was narrow at this point and the coconut trees grew almost to the water's edge; behind them grew the brush, a dense tangle of roots and vines and plants, of trees and foliage. Inland there were hills, set heavily on the earth, their ridge-lines lost in the forests that covered them. Their lines were ugly, broken and scraggly, with bald patches of rock like the hide of a bison when it is shedding in summer. Hearn felt the weight and resistance of that land. If the terrain was similar at the place where they landed tomorrow, it would be hell working through it. Abruptly, the idea of the patrol seemed a little fantastic to him.

            For a moment he became aware again of the steady grind of the assault craft's motors. Cummings had sent him out on this, and therefore he could distrust the mission of the patrol, distrust Cummings's motives in initiating it. It seemed a little inconceivable that Cummings should have made the mistake of transferring him; certainly the General must have known that this was what he preferred.

            Was it remotely possible that the decision to transfer him had come from Dalleson? Hearn doubted it. With ease he could imagine the scene in which Cummings had given the idea to Dalleson. And the patrol was quite likely an extension of the General's motives in assigning him to recon.

            But that seemed a little extravagant. He had discovered the hatred Cummings was capable of bearing, but he could not imagine Cummings expending a platoon for a week in order to work out a minor vengeance. There were other and easier ways; besides, Cummings was too much of a military craftsman to be wasteful. Consciously, he must have considered the patrol as an effective maneuver. What bothered Hearn was that the General might not be aware of his own motives.

            Certainly, it seemed a little unbelievable that they could march for thirty or forty miles through unexplored jungle and hills, go through a mountain pass, scout the Japanese rear and return; the more carefully he considered it the more difficult it became. He was inexperienced, of course, and the mission might actually be easier to accomplish than he estimated, but at best it was a doubtful business.

            It softened the edge of his satisfaction at being given a platoon. Whatever Cummings's reasons, there was no assignment Hearn preferred more. He foresaw the annoyances, the dangers, the inevitable disillusionments, but at least this was a positive action. For the first time in many months there were a few things he wanted again, simply and honestly. If he could manage it, if it turned out the way he wanted, he could establish some kind of liaison with the men. A good platoon.

            It rather surprised him. It was a little too naïve, too ideal an attitude for himself. The moment it was established in another frame it became ridiculous. A good platoon. . . to do what, to work a little better in an institution he despised, whose ligaments Cummings had exposed to him? Or perhaps because it was his platoon, his baby? The private property concept. And he could detect elements of that in himself. Paternalism! The truth was, he grinned, he wasn't ready for Cummings's brand-new society in which everything was issued and never owned.

            In any case he would discover his own motives later. Now he knew intuitively that it was better for himself. He had liked most of the men in the platoon, quickly and instinctively, and quite astonishing to himself, he had wanted them to like him. He had even made efforts, given little hints that he was a good guy, employing the tricks he had unconsciously absorbed from certain officers, his own father. There was a particular kind of buddying you could get away with when you dealt with Americans; it was close but not dangerously so, and you never let it get out of hand. That was a technique you could perform and still be a bastard essentially, but he wanted to go a little further than that.

            What was at the core of it? To prove Cummings was wrong? Hearn wondered for a moment, then let it go. To hell with the introspection. It never paid to think until you knew a lot, and he had been in the platoon for too short a time to decide anything.

            Directly beneath him, lying on adjacent cots, Red and Wilson were talking. On an impulse, he climbed down into the troop well.

            He nodded to Wilson. "How're your GIs coming along?" he asked. About an hour ago, amid the laughter of the men, Wilson had climbed up on the side wall of the boat, and squatted over the edge.

            "Aw, they ain't too bad, Lootenant," Wilson sighed. "Ah jus' hope to hell Ah git over 'em by tomorrow."

            Valsen snorted. "You ain't got nothing a gallon of paregoric ain't gonna cure."

            Wilson shook his head, his genial face reflective suddenly, a little worried, the expression at odds with his bland features. "Ah jus' hope that damn fool doctor is wrong and Ah don' have to have no op-per-ration."

            "What's the matter with you?" Hearn asked.

            "Aw, mah insides are jus' shot to hell, Lootenant. Ah got a lot of pus in 'em, an' that doctor said he'd have to cut it out." Wilson shook his head. "Ah just cain't figger it," he sighed. "Ah had a dose many a time but it don' take nothin' to get rid of the clap."

            The boat slapped and pounded as it passed through a series of swells, and Wilson bit his mouth from a sudden pang.

            Red lit a cigarette. "For Crisake if you believe a fuggin sawbones. . ." He stood up for a moment and spat over the side wall, watching his spittle sucked away instantly in the foam of the wake. "All a doctor ever has is a pill and a pat on the back, and you stick them in the Army and all they got left is the pill."

            Hearn laughed. "Talking from experience, Valsen?"

            But Red didn't answer, and Wilson after a moment sighed again. "Ah wish to hell they didn't send us out just today. If en we gotta do somethin' Ah don' give a damn, put me on a detail, send me out on this, it don' matter, but Ah jus' hate to be sick like this."

            "Hell, you'll pull out of it," Hearn said easily.

            "Ah hope so, Lootenant." Wilson nodded. "Ah'm no fug-off an' any of the men'll tell you Ah'd rather work than jus' lay around an' get all hot an' bothered, but lately with this misery it makes me feel like Ah ain't worth a good goddam, Ah jus' cain't seem to do what Ah use' to do." He shook one of his long broad fingers at Hearn, who watched the sunlight glint on the blond-red hairs at his wrist. "Maybe this las' week Ah been havin' to goof-off a little, an' Croft's been on my ass the whole time. It's a helluva note when a buddy you been with in the same platoon for two years figgers you're goofin'-off on him."

            Red snorted. "Take it easy, Wilson, and I'll tell that goddam engineer to take it easy with this boat over the bumps." Their pilot was a man from an engineer company. "I'll tell him to set you down easy." Red's voice was sarcastic with a touch of disgust.

            Hearn realized that Valsen hadn't said a word directly to him since he had begun talking to them. And why was Wilson telling him all this? As an alibi? But Hearn didn't think so. All the time Wilson had been talking his voice had been a little abstracted as though explaining something to himself. Wilson was unconscious of him, and Valsen seemed to resent him.

            Well, then, the hell with it. He wouldn't force himself on them. He stretched, yawned a little, and said, "Take it easy, men."

            "Yeah, Lootenant," Wilson murmured.

            Red made no answer. His face, still sullen and irritable, stared coldly at him as Hearn climbed up again on the pilot hatch.

            Croft had finished sharpening his trench knife, and while Hearn and Wilson were still talking, he worked his way forward to the shelter of the front ramp. Stanley, seeing an opportunity, joined him. It was almost comfortable talking there, for although the floor was wet, the bow was raised slightly. The spray that lashed into the boat was washed toward the stern, leaving no puddles.

            Stanley was busy talking. "I think it was a goddam shame the way they stuck an officer in on us. There isn't anybody can handle the platoon better than you, and they shoulda commissioned you before sticking in some ninety-day wonder."

            Croft shrugged. Hearn's transfer had been a shock to him, deeper than he cared to admit. He had been in command of the platoon for so long it was a little difficult for him to realize that he had a superior. Even in the day Hearn had been with them Croft had been forced to remind himself many times before giving an order that he was no longer in charge.

            Hearn was his foe. Without even stating it to himself, the attitude was implicit in everything Croft did. Automatically he considered it Hearn's fault that the transfer had been made, and resented him instinctively for it. But it was more confused than that. He could not acknowledge his own animosity, for he had been grounded in Army orders for too long. To resent an order, to be unwilling to carry it out, was immoral to Croft. Besides, he could do nothing about it. "If you can't do nothin', keep your mouth shut," was one of his few maxims.

            He didn't answer Stanley, but still he was pleased.

            "I kinda think I know human nature," Stanley said, "and I damn sure can tell you that I'd rather have you running this patrol than some looey they hand us on a platter."

            Croft spat. Stanley was pretty sharp, he told himself. Of course he was a brown-nose, but if a man was all right outside of that, he wouldn't hold it against him. "Mebbe," he admitted.