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By Root 9091 0

of controlling himself. His love spasms had been quick and nervous; he had wept once or twice in his wife's arms at his failure. He had married so young because he was in love, but also because he had felt cocky and confident. People always told him that he looked old for his age, and he believed in gambling, in assuming burdens because he was confident of carrying them. He had bought the furniture for the same reason and, in his anxiety over that, the demands of his marriage had been overwhelming, and his failure in one had fed on his anxiety in the other.

After he replaced the money, his love-making became a little more accomplished but he always lacked a necessary confidence in it; unconsciously he had longed for the days before his marriage when he had necked with his wife for long passionate hours. Stanley, however, showed very little of this; he never told his wife just how the furniture was bought, and in their coupling he would feign great passion until he began to believe it himself. He had passed on from the garage to an accountant's office, where he worked as a clerk while he studied accounting in night school. He learned other ways of making money, and he conceived their child deliberately. He had new money worries, and more nights when he lay motionless and perspiring in his bed trying to see the ceiling in the darkness. But in the morning he would always be confident and the chances would seem worth the taking.

"It takes a lot for a guy to do it," he said again to Brown. The memories were uncomfortable, and yet they furnished him a deep pride. "If you want to get anywhere you got to know what the score is," he said.

"Yeah, you got to know who to suck," Brown reminded him.

"That's part of it," Stanley said coldly. Brown still had a few tools he could employ against him.

Stanley gazed at the men sprawled on the beach, looking for a better answer to give Brown. He noticed Croft stalking along the edge of the beach, searching the jungle, and he watched him.

"What's Croft up to?" he asked.

"He probably saw something," Brown said. He was getting to his feet. All about them the men in the platoon were beginning to stir like cattle turning their heads toward a new sound or smell.

"Aaah, Croft is always looking for something," Stanley grunted.

"There's something doing," Brown mumbled.

Just then Croft fired a burst into the jungle and dropped to the ground. The sound of the shots was unexpectedly loud and the men in the platoon winced, fell prostrate again in the sand. A Japanese rifle fired back, and the men began to fire indiscriminately into the jungle. Stanley found himself sweating so intensely that he could not focus the sights of his rifle. He lay there with his senses blurred, flinching unconsciously every time a bullet passed. It sounded like a bee humming past, and he thought with surprise, A guy can get hurt. He remembered immediately afterward the joke about that, and began to laugh weakly. Behind him, on the beach, he heard someone scream, and then the firing halted. There was a long uneasy silence among the men, and Stanley watched the air rise shimmering off the sand.

At last Croft got cautiously to his feet, and darted into the jungle. At its edge he motioned for the men nearest him to approach, and Stanley stared at the sand and hoped Croft would not notice him. There was a pause, a wait of several minutes, and then Croft and Wilson and Martinez appeared from the brush, and came strolling back toward the beach.

"We got two of them," Croft said. "I don't think they was any others or they'd have left their packs when they took off." He spat onto the sand. "Who got hit?" he asked.

"Minetta did," Goldstein said. He was leaning over him, holding a first-aid compress against Minetta's leg.

"Let's see it," Croft said. He ripped away Minetta's trouser and gazed at the wound. "Just a scratch," he said.

Minetta moaned, "If you had it, you wouldn't say that."

Croft grinned. "You're gonna live, boy." He turned around and looked at the men in the platoon, who had gathered about him. "Goddammit," he