The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [106]
Wilson laughed. "Shi-i-i-it," he drawled. He had forgotten his scheme already.
Red was thinking once more of the bodies in the draw. He felt a curious fascination as he remembered how they had looked. A wash of fear penetrated through the whirling in his mind, and he looked over his shoulder again. "Why don't we go looking for souvenirs?" he shouted furiously.
"Where?"
"There ought to be some dead Japs around here," Red said. He resisted the impulse to look behind him.
Wilson giggled. "They is, they is," he said suddenly. "Down 'bout two-three hunnerd yards from that mess sergeant's still, they was a battle. Ah 'member we passed right by it, jus' right by it."
Martinez spoke up. "Night we go up to the river, and the Japs come. That night Japs come down almost to here."
"Tha's right," Wilson said. "Ah heard they had tanks down 'bout here."
"Well, let's go lookin' then," Red muttered. "We rate a couple of souvenirs."
Wilson stood up. "If they's one goddam thing Ah gotta do when Ah get likkered up it's to start roamin' round." He stretched his arms. "Well, men, let's git goin'."
The others looked at him dumbly. They had settled into a stupor and their conversation had been random and purposeless. They had talked without thinking of what they said, and now they were bewildered by Wilson's energy. "Come on, men," he repeated.
They obeyed him because they were passive and would have obeyed anybody who told them to do something. Wilson picked up his rifle, and the others, seeing him do this, slung theirs also.
"Where the hell do we go?" Gallagher asked.
"Jus' follow me, men," Wilson said. He let out a drunken whoop.
They tailed along behind him in a rough straggling file. Wilson led them through the bivouac area. His good spirits revived again. "Show me the way to go home," he sang.
Some soldiers stared at them, and Wilson halted. "Men," he said, "they's gonna be some goddam officers lookin' at us, so goddammit let's look like soldiers."
"Eyes right," Red bawled. He felt suddenly gleeful.
They began to move with exaggerated caution, and when Gallagher stumbled once the others turned on him. "Goddammit, Gallagher," Wilson reproved softly. He was walking jauntily, his legs just the least bit unsteady, and he began to whistle. They reached a gap in the barbed wire, and trudged through a chest-high field of kunai grass. Gallagher kept falling and cursing, and Wilson would turn around each time and hold his finger to his lips.
After a hundred yards the jungle encircled them again, and they weaved through the grass parallel to it until they found a trail. Far in the distance an artillery battery was firing, and Martinez shivered. He was sweating freely from the walk and he felt very depressed. "Where goddam battlefield?" he asked.
"Jus' at the end of the trail," Wilson said. He remembered the fourth canteen of whisky, which he had hidden, and he began to giggle again. "Jus' a little while," he told them. They stumbled along the trail for a hundred and fifty yards before it debouched into a narrow road. "This's Jap road," Wilson said.
"Where's the fuggin Japs?" Gallagher asked.
"Oh, they's miles away," Wilson assured him. "This yere's where we pushed them back."
Gallagher sniffed. "I can smell them already," he announced.
"Oh, yeah," Wilson said. "I hear they's lots of them round here."
The road passed through a coconut grove and then extended into a field of kunai grass. Gradually, as they walked they had become aware of a familiar stench rising from the plain on either side of them. It was a smell of decay not exactly sweet but a good deal like ordure leavened with garbage and the foul odor of a swamp. The smell varied in intensity and quality; sometimes it struck their noses with the acute loathsome scent of rotting potatoes, and sometimes it was more like the lair of a skunk.
"Jesus," Red swore. He stepped around the dead body of a Japanese soldier that lay crushed on the road.
In the coconut groves at the edge of the field, the trees were stripped of leaves and