The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [100]
Red looked up irritably. "What the hell you gonna use for money? I thought you lost it all up on the hill." They had been playing poker every day.
Wilson was hurt. "Listen, Red," he confided, "they ain't ever a time when Ah been broke. Ah don't claim to be no poker player, but Ah'll bet ya they ain't many men who can say they busted me in a game." Actually he had lost all his money, but an obscure pride kept him from admitting it. At this moment, Wilson was not thinking of what he would do if he could find some whisky without having the money to purchase it. He was interested only in finding the whisky. Jus' lemme see some likker, he thought, an' Ah'll fin' a way to drink it.
He got up and walked away. In about fifteen minutes he returned grinning. He sat down beside Croft and Martinez, and began to poke at the ground with a twig he was holding. "Listen," he said, "they's a little ole mess sergeant here who's got a still out in the woods yonder. Ah was talkin' to him, and Ah manipilated him into settin' us a price."
"How much?" Croft asked.
"Well, Ah'll tell ya," Wilson said, "it's kinda high. . . but it's good stuff. He been usin' canned peaches and apricots and raisins with lots of sugar and yeast. He let me sample it, an' it's goddam good."
"How much?" Croft asked again.
"Well, now, he wants twenty-five of them pounds for three canteens full. Ah never could figger out them damn pounds, but Ah reckon it ain't much over fifty dollars."
Croft spat. "Fifty dollars, hell. It's all of eighty bucks. That's pretty steep for jus' three canteens."
Wilson nodded. "Yeah, but then what the hell, we're jus' gonna get our haids blown off tomorrow." He paused and then added, "Ah tell ya, we can get Red and Gallagher in on it, and then it jus' makes five pound apiece 'cause they'll be five of us. Five time five, twenty-five, ain't it?"
Croft deliberated. "You get Red and Gallagher in, and Martinez and me'll put up."
Wilson went over to talk to Gallagher, and left him with five Australian pounds in his pocket. He stopped to chat with Red, and mentioned the price. Red exploded. "Five pounds apiece for three lousy canteens? Wilson, you can get five canteens for twenty-five pounds."
"Now, you know you cain't, Red."
Red swore. "Where the hell's your five pounds, Wilson?"
Wilson took out Gallagher's money. "That's it, Red."
"It wouldn't be one of the other men's money, would it?"
Wilson sighed. "Honestly, Red, Ah don' know how the hell you can think those kind of things about a buddy." At the moment he was completely sincere.
"All right, here's five," Red growled. He still thought Wilson was lying, but it didn't really matter. He needed to get drunk anyway, and he did not have the energy to find some liquor for himself. His body stiffened for a moment in a duplication of the panic that had caught him when he was walking alone on the trail and had heard the shot from Croft's gun. "All we ever do is screw each other anyway, what the hell." He could not shake the death of the Japanese prisoner. It had been wrong somehow. When the Jap hadn't been killed the first time, he rated being taken in as a prisoner. But it was more than that. He should have stayed. The whole week up there, the night on the river, the killings. He sighed heavily. Let Wilson have his good time; it was getting hard to find.
Wilson collected the rest of the money from Croft and Martinez, picked up four empty canteens, and went off to see the mess sergeant. He paid the twenty pounds he had promoted, and returned with the four canteens filled. One of them he hid under a folded blanket in his pup tent, and then he joined the other men and unhitched the canteens from his belt. "We better drink 'em up fast," he said. "That alcohol might eat on the metal."
Gallagher took a swig. "What the fug is it made of?" he asked.
"Oh, it's good stuff," Wilson assured him. He took a long drink and exhaled pleasurably. The liquor flushed its