The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [132]
Gallagher flew into a rage. "You fuggin crackers, you're a bunch of animals."
"Aw."
Gallagher smoldered. A guy like Wilson went around taking life easy and making everybody pay for him. It wasn't fair. He looked off into the jungle, righteous, envious.
After a while he calmed, and began to look over his mail again. He had had time the night before to read only the mail he had received from his wife. They were all old letters; the newest was a month old, and he had kept telling himself with surprise that he was probably a father by now. The date his wife had mentioned for the birth of his child had elapsed a few days ago but he was unable to believe it. He assumed that what she wrote about had happened on the same day that he read the letter; if she said that she was going to visit one of her girl friends on the next day, he would be thinking on the day after he read the letter that Mary was seeing her friend at this moment. His reason was always correcting him, but still she lived for him only at the exact time when he read her letters.
Now he was going through the rest of his mail. He skimmed through a letter from his mother, and read aloud to Wilson some of the funnier passages in a letter he had got from Whitey Lydon. Then he opened a long thick envelope and extracted a newspaper from it. It was tabloid size and had only eight pages, which were badly printed. "I used to work for this," he said to Wilson.
"Ah never knew you were a reporter."
"Naw, this is political. The gang over at the party headquarters puts this out before the primaries." He looked at the date. It was printed in June. "This thing's old as hell," he said. He felt a pang of envy as he looked at the names on the masthead; one of his friends who was not in the Army had been put in charge of the advertising department. Gallagher knew what that meant. In the last primary before he entered the Army he had gone from door to door in his ward, soliciting contributions for the paper. The man who brought in the most contributions was called advertising manager, and he usually received a job on the school board in his ward. He had missed out by only a few hundred dollars, but he had been told he would certainly win the next year.
"Just my fuggin luck to get in the Army," he said resentfully. He started reading the paper. A headline caught his attention.
ANDREWS A BIGOT IN WARD 9. LET'S GET HIM OUT
It's just the old Andrews BALLY-HOO in Action, just like the last time he ran for State Leg. when his slogan was ANDREWS VS. COMMUNISM, remember? then what did he do about COMMUNISM? N-O-T-H-I-N-G as far as we can see. One of his workers at his headquarters was a vice-president of CIO and another worker was a director of the Anti-Nazi League of N.Y., remember this league that did not like Father Coughlin and wanted to boycott Catholic Franco.
Now Jimmy Andrews, Old Boy, remember the old gray mare Aint What She Used To Be, so don't start off on the wrong foot, don't kid the Public or the Veterans, make sure what you say. Help The Veteran -- Don't Kid. We're all on to you, Jimmy Andrews, and the voters of Ward 9 don't want a bigot. So watch out for the Company you keep. There's no place in the party for men like you. We're on to that old game.
NO BIGOTS ALLOWED
NO COMMUNISTS
LET'S GET ANDREWS OUT
Gallagher felt a dull anger as he read. It was those kind of guys you had to watch out for, the fuggin Communists. He remembered once when he was driving a truck and the AFL had tried to organize them. He'd mentioned it down at the ward headquarters, and the organizer had never come back. There was something funny there, he'd noticed there were guys in the party who would play around with the Red Labor Outfits, men like Big Joe Durmey, and this Jim Andrews guy, and they had no call to deal with bigots, Gallagher decided. Those were the kind of guys who were always working