The Naked and the Dead (77 page)

            They had been in the draw for ten minutes before they discovered Wilson was missing.

5

            When the platoon fell into the ambush, Wilson took cover behind a rock near the tall grass. He had lain there, exhausted, feeling nothing, content to let the skirmish pass above him. When Hearn commanded the retreat, he had stood up obediently, had run back a few steps, and turned to fire at the Japs.

            The bullet hit him in the stomach with the force of a blow to the solar plexus. It turned him around, sent him reeling a few feet, and then pitched him into the tall grass. He lay there a little startled, his first emotion anger. "Who the fug hit me?" he muttered. He rubbed his belly, planning to get up and rush the man who had punched him, but his hand came away wet with blood. Wilson shook his head, hearing the sound of rifle fire again, the shouts of the men in recon from the other side of the rock ledge, only thirty yards away. "Everybody here?" he heard somebody shout.

            "Yeah, yeah, I'm here," he mumbled. He thought he had spoken loudly, but it was no more than a whisper. He rolled on his belly, suddenly afraid. Goddam, them Japs hit me. He shook his head. His glasses had been lost when he fell in the grass, and he squinted. He could see the field only a yard or two from where he lay and its emptiness pleased him. Goddam, Ah'm jus' pooped, that's the mother-fuggin truth. He relaxed for a minute or so, his mind swirling languidly toward unconsciousness. Dimly, he could hear the platoon leaving, but he hardly thought about it. Everything was relaxed and peaceful, except for the dull throbbing in his stomach.

            Abruptly, he realized the firing had stopped. Ah gotta git back in the weeds where the Japs won' find me. He tried to rise but he felt too weak. Slowly, grunting from the effort, he crawled a few yards farther back into the tall grass, and relaxed again, content because he could no longer see the field. His dizziness, his well-being sifted through his body. Feels like Ah'm likkered up. He shook his head in bewilderment. He remembered sitting in a bar once, pleasantly drunk, his hand around the hips of the woman beside him in the booth. He was going home with her in a few minutes, and a tingle of passion flushed through him at the thought. "That's right, honey," he heard himself say, looking at the roots of the kunai grass before his nose.

            Ah'm gonna die, Wilson told himself. A cold charge of fear awakened his body, and he whimpered for a moment. He pictured the bullet tearing through his body, ripping apart the flesh inside, and he felt nausea. A little bile welled out of his mouth. "All that poison inside me is gonna be messin' aroun' now, jus' killin' me." But he drifted away again, settled into the warm lapping content of his drowsiness and weakness. He was no longer afraid of dying. That bullet's gonna clean up mah insides. All the pus'll be comin' out now, an' Ah'll be okay. This cheered him. Pappy said his granpappy used to have an ole nigger woman bleed him wheneveh he had the fever. Tha's jus' what Ah'm doin' now. He looked mistily at the ground. The blood was sopping against his shirt front, which made him slightly uncomfortable. He held his hand over it, smiling faintly.

            His eyes stared at the ground two inches away. Time hung still, unmoving about him. He felt the heat of the sun on his back; he dropped, submerged, in the chattering rhythms of the insect life about him, and the square foot of earth he could see became magnified until every grain stood out perfect and complete. The ground was no longer brown; it was a checkerboard of individual crystals, of red and white and yellow and black; his sense of dimension vanished. He thought he was looking from an airplane at several fields and a patch of wood, and the tall grass blurred a few inches from the ground, became nebulous and shifting like cloud vapors. The roots were surprisingly white with thick scaly bark stippled with brown like birch trees. Everything he saw was proportioned to the size of a forest, but a new forest, one he had never seen before, and quite odd.

            A few ants meandered past his nose, turned about to look up at him, and then waddled on. They seemed the size of cows, or the way cows would look from the top of a high hill. He watched them pass out of his line of vision.

            Goddam, they're cute little buggers, he thought weakly. His head settled on his forearm, and the wood darkened before his eyes, turned upside down as he fainted.

            He awoke, he drifted out of unconsciousness perhaps ten minutes later. And lay there motionless, wavering between wakefulness and sleep. Each of his senses seemed to have sprung free of the other; he would stare emptily at the ground, or close his eyes and breathe, only his ears alert, or his head would roll on the ground, his nose twitching over the faint bouquet of earth, the pungent spice smell of the grass roots, or over the dry decay of mold.

            But something was wrong. He raised his head, listened, and heard some men talking softly in the field ten yards away. He stared through the tall grass, unable to see clearly. He thought it was someone in the platoon perhaps, and he worked his throat to speak, and then stiffened.

            There were Japanese in the field, or at least he heard men talking in a strange guttural, pitched in odd tones, rather breathless. If them Japs get me. . . He felt a choking horror. Tag ends of all the stories of Jap torture flicked his brain. Sonofabitch, they'll cut mah nuts off. He felt his breath escaping through his nose, slowly, with compression, stirring the hairs in the nostril. He could hear them puttering around, their words slicing abruptly against his ears.

            "Doko?"

            "Tabun koko."

            They were thrashing the grass, moving around again. He heard them coming nearer. Absurdly, he began to repeat a jingle to himself. "Doko koko cola, doko koko cola." He buried his face in the earth, mashing his nose against the ground. Every muscle in his face was working to keep from making a sound. Ah gotta git my rifle. But he had left his gun a yard or two away when he crawled deeper into the grass. If he moved to get it, they would hear him.

            He tried to decide, and in his weakness he felt like weeping. It was all too much for him, and he burrowed his face into the ground and tried to hold his breath. The Japanese were laughing.

            Wilson remembered the bodies he had disturbed in the cave, and he began to argue silently as if he had already been captured. Shoot, Ah was jus' lookin' for a little souvenir, you men understan' that, they wa'n' no harm done. You can do the same to mah buddies, Ah don' give a damn. A man's dead, he's dead, don' do him no harm. They were swishing the grass only five yards away. He thought for an instant of making a rush for his gun, but he had forgotten in which direction he had crawled. Already the grass had straightened, leaving no swath. Oh, goddam. He tensed his body, squeezed his nose against the earth. His wound was throbbing again, and beneath his eyelids a suite of concentric circles, colored blue and gold and red, bored into his mind. If Ah jus' get out of this.

            The Japanese had sat down, were talking. Once, one of them lay back in the grass, and the rustle traveled to his ears. He tried to swallow, but something gagged in his throat; he was afraid of retching and lay with his mouth open, spittle dribbling over his lip. He could smell himself, the sharp bite of his fear and the sour flat odor of the blood like stale milk. His mind carried him for an instant back to the room where his child, May, had been born. He smelled her baby scent, of milk and powder and urine, which blended back into his own stench. He was afraid the Japs would smell him.

            "Yuki masu," one of them said.

            He could hear them stand up, laugh a little again, and then walk away. His ears were ringing, his head had begun to throb. He gritted his fists, forced his face against the ground once more to stifle his blubbering. All of his body felt weaker, more spent, than he had ever known it. Even his mouth trembled. Sonofabitch. He was growing faint, and he tried to rouse himself, but it was hopeless.

            Wilson didn't awake for half an hour. He came to slowly, floating back to consciousness uncertainly, his mind quite dull. For a long time he lay still, his hand under his belly to catch the trickling of the blood. Where the hell is ever'body? he wondered. He had realized for the first time that he was completely alone. Jus' take off an' leave a man. He remembered the Japs who had been talking a few feet from him, but he could no longer hear them. A residue of his fear returned. For a few minutes he remained motionless again, not believing that the Japanese had departed.

            He wondered where the platoon had gone, and was bitter because they had deserted him. Ah been a damn good buddy to a lot of them men, and they jus' took off an' lef me. It's a hell of a way to do. If it been one of them, I damn sure woulda stuck with him. He sighed, and shook his head. The injustice seemed remote, a little abstract.

            Wilson yawped onto the grass. The odor was faintly unpleasant, and he drew his head away, and crawled off a few feet. His bitterness, abruptly, became acute. Ah done so damn much for them men, an' they never did 'preciate it. That time Ah got the liquor for 'em, ol' Red thought Ah was cheatin' him. He sighed. What the hell kind of way was that not to trust a buddy? Thinkin' Ah cheated him. He shook his head. An' then when Ah jus' shot that little ol' bush away, an' Croft grabbed me like that. He's jus' a itty-bitty fellow, Ah coulda broken him in half if he didn't take me by surprise. But that was a hell of a way to act jus' 'cause Ah was pissin' around a little. His thoughts ambled along, drawing a righteous contentment from all the times the men had misunderstood him. Ah give Gol'stein a drink, or at least Ah wanted to but he was so damn chickenshit about it, he wouldn't even take it. And then Gallagher callin' me a dumb cracker, and po' white trash. He didn't have to do that, Ah was damn nice to him when his wife died, but none of them 'preciate anythin', they jus' take off an' save they own ass, and to hell with anybody else. He felt very weak. Croft didn't have to ride me since Ah got sick, Ah cain't he'p it if mah insides are shot plumb to hell. He sighed again, the grass blurring before his eyes. Jus' took off an' left me alone, don' give a damn what happens to me. He thought of all the distance they had covered, and wondered if he could crawl back. He dredged himself over the ground for a few feet, halting in pain. His mind hovered about the realization that he was badly wounded, marooned miles and miles from anywhere, alone in a barren wilderness. But he could not grasp it, sinking back again into a partial stupor from the effort it had cost him to crawl. He heard someone groan, then groan again, and realized with surprise that he was making the sounds. Goddam.

            The sun was burning on his back, laving his body with a pleasant heat. Slowly he could feel himself sinking into the earth, its warmth spreading about, supporting him. All the grass and the roots and the ground smelled of sunlight, and his mind eddied back through the images of plowed earth and steaming horses, back to the afternoon when he had sat on a stone by the side of the road, and watched the colored girl walk by, her breasts jouncing against her cotton frock. He tried to remember the name of the girl he was going to see that night, and began giggling. Wonder if she knows Ah'm sixteen? His wound had roused a warm and blunted nausea in his belly, almost like the bubbling of passion in his groin, and he floated along, not quite anchored to either the road beside the house where he had been born or to the valley of grass in which he lay. Vague lusts chased themselves through his head. The tall grass, nebulous and waving, seemed as high as a forest to him; he could not remember if he was in the jungle or not, and his nose amplified the odors here, blended them into his memory of the rich fetor of the jungle. Goddam, just to smell a woman again.

            The blood was trickling faster over his fingers, and he sweated, thinking of liquid things, lost in a welter of lovemaking, recalling acutely the feel of a woman's belly and hips, her mouth. The sun was very bright, very satisfactory. Plays hell on a man when he don' get his ass regular. Ah bet that's why mah insides turned back on me, an' got full of pus. His reverie was shattered by the thought. Ah don' want no op-per-ration, they gonna kill me with it. When Ah git back, Ah'll tell 'em, Ah won' take no truck, Ah'll jus' tell 'em that all the pus jus' bled out of me, an' mah insides are fixed up. He began to giggle weakly. Goddam, when that ol' wound closes, Ah'm gonna have two belly buttons, one right under t'other. Wonder what t' hell Alice'll say when she sees it?"

            The sun passed behind a cloud and he felt cold and shivered. His senses cleared again for a minute or two and he was frightened and miserable. They cain' jus' lea' me alone here, the men gotta come back for me. The grass was rustling in the wind, and he listened to it mournfully, hovering near a knowledge he did not want to confront. Ah gotta hold on. He roused himself, managed to stand up in the grass for a moment, caught sight of the hills and the cliffs of Mount Anaka, and then pitched forward, sweating coldly. Ah'm a man, he told himself, Ah cain't go to pieces. Ah never took no crap from no one, an' Ah ain't gonna start now. If a man's chicken, he ain't worth a goddam.

            But his limbs were cold, and he shuddered continually. The sun has come out but it gave him no warmth. He heard the sound of groaning again, and then once again; he writhed from a sudden convulsion. That was me made that noise. The pain returned, hammered at his entrails. "Goddam sonofabitch," he bawled out suddenly. He felt a passionate rage at the pain, heard himself coughing blood over his fingertips. It seemed like someone else's blood, and he was surprised how warm it felt. "Ah jus' gotta hold on to myself," he mumbled, as he lost consciousness again.

            Everything had gone wrong. The entrance to the pass was closed, and even at this moment probably the Japanese were relaying a message to their headquarters. All the secrecy of the patrol was lost. Croft almost bellowed with rage when he learned Wilson had been left behind. He sat down on a rock, his thin mouth white and furious, and smacked his fist into his palm several times, his eyes glaring.