The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [156]
After a few minutes' wait, he was able to requisition a landing craft, and they rode out over the water to where the freighters were anchored. A mile or two away over the sullen torpid water, Anopopei was almost obscured by haze, and the sun, a smudged yellow, burned a fierce gap through the sluggish vault of the clouds. Even on the water it was extremely hot.
The landing craft cut off its motors, and drifted in against the side of the freighter. When it bumped against the side, Hearn caught the ladder and climbed up to the deck. Above him on the rail were a number of seamen staring at him, and the blank look on their faces, critical and slightly disdainful, irritated him. He stared down through the rungs of the ship ladder at the landing craft, which had backed off toward the loading crane at the bow of the ship. Hearn found himself sweating again from the minor exertion of climbing the ladder.
"Who's in charge of ship's stores?" he asked one of the seamen at the rail.
The sailor looked at him, and then without speaking jerked a thumb in the direction of a hatch. Hearn walked past him, pushed open the heavy hatch door, and started down a ladder. The heat smote him with an unexpected shock; he had forgotten how unbearable a ship's hold could become.
And of course it stank. He felt like an insect crawling through the entrails of a horse. "Damn," he muttered in disgust. As usual the ship smelled of stale cooking -- fat mixed with something as nauseous as the curds from a grease trap. Abstractedly, he rubbed his finger against a bulkhead and drew it away wet. All over the ship the bulkheads sweated a film of oil and water.
He stepped warily along the passageway, narrow and lighted poorly, the metal floor plates obstructed by an occasional pile of equipment sloppily covered with a small tarpaulin. Once he skidded and almost fell on some oil slick. "Goddam filthy place," he swore. He was enraged, inordinately angry, and it seemed without cause. Hearn paused, wiping his forehead roughly with his sleeve. What the hell's the matter with me?
"Are you junior officers getting your liquor supplies?" the General had asked, and something had leaped in him at that moment, left his nerves raw and displaced since then. What had the General meant?
After a moment or two he pushed down the corridor again. The ship's stores office was in a medium-sized cabin off the passageway. It was cluttered with odd ration crates, bits of wood from broken boxes, a pile of papers which had overflowed from a wastebasket, and a large worn desk pushed into one corner.
"Are you Kerrigan?" Hearn asked the officer sitting at the desk.
"That's right, sonny, what can I do for you?" Kerrigan had a lean, rather battered face with a few teeth missing.
Hearn stared at him a moment, his anger pulsing again. "Let's cut out all this 'sonny' crap." He was rather startled by his own rage.
"Anything you say, Lieutenant."
Hearn controlled himself with an effort. '"I've got a landing barge over the side. Here's the requisition for the supplies I want. I'd like to get out of here without taking up too much of your time or mine."
Kerrigan went through the slip. "This's for officers' mess, eh, Lieutenant?" He ticked off the items aloud. "Five cases of whisky, a carton of salad oil, carton of mayonnaise" -- Kerrigan pronounced it "myonize" with an amused brogue -- "two crates of boned canned chicken, a box o' condiments, a dozen bottles of Worcestershire, a dozen bottles of chili, a crate of ketchup. . ." He looked up. "It's a small list. Restrained tastes y' have. I surmise tomorra you'll be sendin' out a barge to pick