The Naked and the Dead (79 page)

            "Sure."

            Stanley was not certain what he wanted. He was relieved to be heading back for the beach, to be out of the patrol, but still he felt cheated. If he stayed with the platoon, there would be better chances later with Croft and the Lieutenant. He didn't want any more combat, not like that ambush certainly, but still. . . It was Brown's fault, he told himself. "If you think I oughta go, I'll go, Sam, but I kinda feel as if I ought to stay with the platoon."

            "Naw, you go with Brown." Any answer would have left Stanley unsatisfied. It was like spinning a coin to decide your decision, and wishing the coin had landed on the other side. He was silent.

            Hearn scratched his armpit. What a goddam mess! He chewed on some grass, spat it out quietly. When they had brought Wilson back, he had been. . . all right, he had been annoyed. That was the first emotion, the honest one. If they hadn't found him the patrol would be relatively simple, and now they were shorthanded. It was a hell of a thing for a platoon leader to feel. He had to face some things; this patrol meant more to him than it should. And everything was loused up, he didn't know what they were going to do now. He had to get away by himself, think it out.

            "Where the hell are those men with the poles for the stretcher?" Croft asked irritably. He was depressed for once, almost a little frightened. Their talk was finished and they stood about uncomfortably. A few feet away, Wilson was moaning deliriously, shivering under his blanket. His face was very white, and his full red mouth had turned a leaden pink, pinched at the corners. Croft spat. Wilson was one of the old men, and it hurt more, stirred him more, than if they had lost one of the replacements. There were so few of the old men left -- Brown, and his nerves were shot; Martinez; Red, who was sick; and Gallagher, who wasn't much use now. There were all the men who had been lost when the rubber boats were ambushed, the few others who had been wounded or killed in the months on Motome. And now Wilson. It made Croft wonder if his turn was coming due. His mind would never release the memory of the night when he had shuddered in his foxhole, waiting for the Japanese to cross the river. His senses were raw, a little inflamed. He remembered with a thick lusting anger in his throat how he had killed the prisoner in the draw. Just let me get ahold of a Jap. He felt balked on this patrol, infuriated; his rage extended to include everything. He stared up at Mount Anaka as if measuring an opponent. At that moment he hated the mountain too, considered it a personal affront.

            A hundred yards away, he could see the stretcher detail straggling back toward the hollow, the poles they had cut balanced on their shoulders. Lazy sonsofbitches. He restrained himself from calling out to them.

            Brown watched their approach dourly. In a half hour he would be setting out with his litter-bearers, and they would toil a mile or more, perhaps, and then bivouac for the night, alone in this wilderness with only a wounded man for company. He wondered if he knew the way back, felt completely unsure of himself. What if the Japs sent out patrols? Brown felt bitter. There was no way out of it. It seemed like a plot against them all. They were betrayed, that's all. He could not have said who betrayed them, but the idea fed his bitterness, was fragilely pleasant.

            In the grove while they were cutting the stretcher poles, Roth found a bird. It was a tiny thing, smaller than a sparrow, with soft dun-colored feathers and a crippled wing, and it hopped about slowly, chirping piteously, as if very tired. "Oh, look at that," Roth said.

            "What?" Minetta asked.

            "That bird." Roth dropped his machete and approached it warily, clucking with his tongue. The bird made a little beeping sound, ducking its head to one side like a shy girl. "Ah, look at that, it's hurt," Roth said. He extended his hand, and when the bird didn't move, he grasped it. "Aw, what's the matter," he said to it softly, lisping a little as if talking to an infant or a dog. The bird strained in his hand, tried to flutter away, and then subsided, its tiny eyes examining his fingers fearfully.

            "Hey, let's see it," Polack demanded.

            "Leave it alone, it's frightened," Roth whined. He turned away to hide it from the others, holding it a few inches from his face. He made little kissing sounds. "What's the matter, baby?"

            "Aaah, for Christ's sake," Minetta muttered. "Come on, let's go back." They had finished trimming the poles, and he and Polack each picked up one of them, while Wyman gathered the two crosspieces and the machetes. They strolled back toward the hollow, Roth following with the bird.

            "What the hell took you men so long?" Croft snapped.

            "We did it fast as we could, Sergeant," Wyman said meekly.

            Croft snorted. "All right, come on, let's make the stretcher." He took Wilson's blanket, spread it out smoothly on top of his poncho, and then laid the poles along each side, parallel and about four feet apart. He flipped the blanket and poncho over each pole, and then they began rolling it up like a scroll, tightening it as much as possible. The struts were notched at each end, and when the poles were about twenty inches apart, he slipped the struts in place, one at each end, about six inches from the tips. Then he took his belt and Wilson's and lashed them in a loop about each strut to make it secure. When he had done he picked up the stretcher and dropped it again. It held together, but he was not satisfied. "Give me the belt to your pants," he told them. He worked busily for a few minutes and when he had done, the stretcher was a rectangle formed by the two poles and the two struts, with the blanket and poncho substituting for a canvas. Underneath them, the belts were fastened diagonally like stays to keep the stretcher poles from shearing. "I think that oughta hold," he muttered. He frowned and looked up to see most of the platoon gathered in a circle about Roth.

            Roth was completely absorbed in the bird. Each time it would open its tiny beak and try to bite his finger, he would feel a protective pang. Its jaws were so weak. Its entire body would flutter and vibrate from the effort, and yet there was hardly any pressure at all on his finger. In his hand, its body was warm with a delicate musky odor, reminiscent of face powder. Despite himself he would bring the bird up to his nose and sniff it, touching his lips against its soft feathers. Its eyes were so bright and alert. Roth had fallen in love with the bird immediately. It was lovely. And all the frustrated affection he had stored for months seemed to pour out toward the bird. He fondled it, breathed its bouquet, examined its injured wing, filled with tenderness toward it. He felt exactly the same joy he knew when his child had plucked at the hairs on his chest. And back of it, not quite conscious, he was also enjoying the interest of the men who had crowded around him to look. For once he was the focus of attention.

            He could not have picked a worse time to antagonize Croft.

            Croft was sweating from the labor of making the stretcher; when he finished, all the difficulties of the patrol were nagging at him again. And deep within him his rage was alive again, flaring. Everything was wrong, and Roth played with a bird, while nearly half the platoon stood about watching.

            His anger was too vivid for him to think. He strode across the hollow, and stopped before the group around Roth.

            "Jus' what the hell you men think you're doin'?" he asked in a low strained voice.

            They all looked up, instantly wary. "Nothin'," one of them muttered.

            "Roth!"

            "Yes, Sergeant?" His voice quavered.

            "Give me that bird."

            Roth passed it to him, and Croft held it for a moment. He could feel the bird's heart beating like a pulse against his palm. Its tiny eyes darted about frantically, and Croft's anger worked into his fingertips. It would be the simplest thing to crush it in his hand; it was no bigger than a stone and yet it was alive. Strange impulses pressed through his nerves, along his muscles, like water forcing itself through fissures in a rock mass. He wavered between compassion for the bird and the thick lusting tension in his throat. He didn't know whether to smooth its soft feathers or mash it in his fingers, and the impulse, confused and powerful, shimmered in his brain like a card on edge about to fall.

            "Can I have it back, Sergeant?" Roth pleaded.

            The sound of his voice, already defeated, worked a spasm through Croft's fingers. He heard a little numbly the choked squeal of the bird, the sudden collapsing of its bones. It thrashed powerlessly against his palm, and the action aroused him to nausea and rage again. He felt himself hurling the bird away over the other side of the hollow, more than a hundred feet. His breath expelled itself powerfully; without realizing it, he had not inhaled for many seconds. The reaction left his knees trembling.

            For a long instant no one said anything.

            And then the reaction lashed about him. Ridges stood up in a fury, advanced toward Croft. His voice was thick with wrath. "What you doin'. . . why'd you do that to the bird? What do ya mean. . .?" In his excitement, he stammered.

            Goldstein, shocked, genuinely horrified, was glaring at him. "How can you do such a thing? What harm was that bird doing you? Why did you do it? It's like. . . like. . ." He searched for the most heinous crime. "It's like killing a baby."

            Croft, unconsciously, retreated a step or two. He was startled momentarily into passiveness by the force of their response. "Git back, Ridges," he mumbled.

            The vibration of his voice in his throat stirred him, revived his anger. "I'm tellin' you men to shut up.
That's an order!"
he shouted.

            The revolt halted, hovered uncertainly. Ridges had been complaisant all his life, was unaccustomed to rebellion. But this. . . Only his fear of authority kept him from leaping at Croft.

            And Goldstein saw a court-martial and disgrace and his child starving. He halted too. "Ohhh," he exclaimed meaninglessly, choked with frustration.

            Red moved more slowly, more deliberately. The hostility between him and Croft had to come to an issue sooner or later; he knew it, and he also knew without ever admitting it that he was afraid of Croft. He didn't say all this to himself; what he felt was anger and the understanding that this was a propitious time. "What's the matter, Croft, you throwing orders around to save your ass?" he bellowed.

            "I've had enough, Red."

            They glared at each other. "You bit off a little too much this time."

            Croft knew it. Yet, A man's a damn fool if he don't follow something through, he told himself. "Anything you're gonna do about it, Red?"

            This was very fundamental for Valsen. Croft had to be halted sometime, he told himself, or he'd run over them completely. Back of his anger and his apprehension, he felt a certain necessity. "Yeah, there is."

            They continued to watch each other for perhaps a second, but the second was broken into many units of alertness, of decisions made and broken to launch the first blow. And then Hearn interrupted them, pushed them apart roughly. "Break it up, are you men crazy?" Not more than five seconds had elapsed since Croft had killed the bird, and he had crossed from the other side of the hollow. "What's happened here, what's going on?"

            They moved apart slowly, sullenly. "Not a damn thing, Lootenant," Red said. To himself, he thought, I'll be fugged if I need a goddam looey to help me. He was feeling proud and relieved, and yet in another sense he was uneasy that the outcome was postponed.

            "Who started all this?" Hearn was demanding.

            Ridges spoke up, "He didn't have no call to kill that little ol' bird. He jus' stopped up and took it outen Roth's hand, and jus' killed it."

            "Is that true?"

            Croft was uncertain how to answer. Hearn's voice angered him. He spat to the side.

            Hearn hesitated, staring at Croft. Then he grinned, slightly conscious of how much he was enjoying this moment. "All right, let's cut this out," he told them. "If you have to fight, don't fight with noncoms." Their eyes had turned bitter. For a moment Hearn sensed the impulses that had made Croft kill the bird. He turned to him, staring down into the emotionless glitter of Croft's eyes. "You happen to be wrong, Sergeant. Suppose you apologize to Roth." Someone tittered.

            Croft looked at him in disbelief. He took several deep breaths. "Come on, Sergeant, apologize."

            If Croft had been holding a rifle in his hand, he might have shot Hearn at this instant. That would have been automatic. But to deliberate, and then disobey him was in another category. He knew he had to comply. If he didn't, the platoon would fall apart. For two years he had molded it, for two years his discipline had not relaxed, and one breach like this might destroy everything he had done. It was the nearest thing to a moral code in him. Without looking at Hearn, he paced over to Roth and stared at him, the corner of his mouth twitching. "I'm sorry," he blurted, the unaccustomed words dropped leadenly from his tongue. He felt as if his flesh were crawling with vermin.

            "All right, that chalks it off," Hearn said. He had some idea of how he had provoked Croft, and was amused by it faintly. Except that. . . Cummings had probably felt the same way when he had obeyed the order to pick up the cigarette butt. Abruptly, Hearn was disgusted with himself.

            "Let's have all the platoon here, except the guards," he called out.

            The rest of the men shuffled over. "We've decided to send Sergeant Brown and Corporal Stanley and Goldstein and Ridges back with Wilson. You want to make any changes, Sergeant?"

            Croft stared at Valsen. He was unable to think; he worked at the idea as if wrestling with pillows. It would be better to get rid of Valsen now, and yet he couldn't. By coincidence, two of the other men who had opposed him were going on the litter detail. If he sent Red, the men would think he was afraid of him. This was such a new attitude for Croft, so contrary to all his thinking in the past that he was confused. All he knew was that someone must pay for his humiliation. "Naw, no changes," he blurted again. He was surprised at the difficulty with which he spoke.