The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [119]
It's all there before him. The choice again, but it means admitting he's through. I dunno, Lois, that's the goddam truth. I like ya a lot and you're a good kid, there's no gettin' away from that, an' it's only fair to ya, but I gotta think about it. I ain't made for stay in' in one place, I dunno there's just somethin', it's kind've a big country.
Just be fair, Red. Ya gotta let me know one way or the other.
Only the war starts before he has made up his mind. That night all the drunks in the flophouse are excited.
I was a sergeant in the last one, I'm going to go up there and ask them to take me back.
Yeah, they'll make ya a major.
I'm going to tell you, Red, that they need me. They're gonna need every one of us.
Someone is passing around a bottle, and on an impulse Red sends one of the men down with a ten-dollar bill to buy some whisky.
Lois could use the ten, and he knows the answer then. He can marry her and stay out of the war, but he's not old yet, he's not that tired. In the war you keep on moving.
THERE'S A LONG LONG TRAIL AWINDING, one of the bums sings.
We're gonna do a lot of cleaning up, I hear they got some niggers down in Washington that's a fact, I was readin' it in the newspapers they got a nigger down there tellin' white men what to do.
War's gonna fix all that.
Aaah, balls, Red butts in, the big boys are just gonna get a little more. But he is excited. So long, Lois, no entangling alliances.
And Jackie too. A little pit of misery. But if you stop and quit moving you die.
Have a drink.
It's my liquor, Red bellows, what do ya mean, have a drink! (Laughter.)
On his last pass before he went overseas, Red wandered around San Francisco. He climbed up to the top of Telegraph Hill, and shivered in the fall winds sweeping across the summit. A tanker was heading for the Golden Gate, and he watched it, and then stared across Oakland as far as he could see into the east. (After Chicago the land was flat for a thousand miles, across Illinois and Iowa and halfway into Nebraska. On a train you could read a magazine for an afternoon, then look out the window, and the country would seem exactly the same as when you had stared out before. The foothills began as gentle rolls in the plain and after a hundred miles became isolated as hills, took almost a thousand miles to become mountains. And on the way were the steep brown hills that massed into Montana.) Maybe I should write them a letter. Or Lois.
Aaah, you don't look back.
Two ensigns with young girls in fur coats were laughing and hugging at the other end of the paved summit of Telegraph Hill. I might as well go down.
He walked through Chinatown, ended up in a burlesque house. It was a Tuesday afternoon, and the place was almost empty. The girls dragged languidly through their dances, the comedians fumbled through the skits. After the last strip and the ensemble the lights went on, and the hawkers began to sell Nestle bars and picture books. Red sat in his seat and dozed a little. What a lousy joint.
There seemed nothing to do, and all through the movie he thought of the boat he would be traveling on soon. You keep rolling along and you never know what the hell the score is. When you're a kid they can't tell you a damn thing, and when you ain't a kid no more there's nothing new for you. You just got to keep pushing it, you don't look back.
When the picture ended and the show began again, he listened to the music for a moment and then went out. In the painful sun of late afternoon he could hear the band still playing.
WE'RE GONNA SLAP THE DIRTY LITTLE JAP.
Fug it.
8
Lieutenant (sg) Dove finished covering his bare legs with sand and groaned. "Oh, God, it's brutal," he exclaimed.
"What's brutal?" Hearn asked.
Dove wiggled his toes through the sand. "Just being out here. My God, a hot day like this. A year ago I was in Washington, and if you think there weren't some parties there. Oh, this goddam climate."
"I was in Washington about a year and a half ago," Conn said in his whisky voice.
They were