The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [158]
As they were about to back off, he saw Kerrigan looking down at them from the rail. "If ye don't mind, Lieutenant," Kerrigan bawled, "I'd like to have a look at what ye're taking away."
Hearn grinned. "Start the motors," he called to the helmsman, and then looked up blankly at Kerrigan. "Too late, man," he shouted. But the motors coughed, sputtered and died. And Kerrigan, seeing this, began to climb over the side.
"Start those motors," Hearn shouted furiously. He glared at the, helmsman. "Get going!"
The motor sputtered again, caught momentarily, lapsed, and then steadied. From the stern the propeller wake became steady. Kerrigan was halfway down the scramble net. "All right, let's go!" Hearn shouted.
The barge backed off slowly, leaving Kerrigan stranded foolishly in the middle of the net. A few of the seamen looking over the side laughed at him as he started to climb back to the deck. "So long, Kerrigan!" Hearn shouted. He was gleeful. "Goddam, man," he said to the helmsman, "that was a hell of a time to have the motors go back on you." The landing craft was bouncing steadily as it overtook the waves riding toward shore. "I'm sorry, Lieutenant."
"Okay." He felt relaxed, extremely relaxed, in comparison to the tension he had sustained when they were loading the food, and with surprise he noticed how wet his clothing had become. Some spray was washing over the forward ramp, and Hearn stood in the supply well, and let it patter down upon him. Overhead, the sun was breaking through the clouds, the overcast retreating wispily before it like paper curling away from a flame. He mopped his forehead once more, felt his collar gathered like a sodden rope around his neck.
Well, twelve pounds was not bad. Hearn grinned. Kerrigan would have charged him at least fifteen pounds for those supplies, perhaps twenty. That seaman had been an ass, and the General was an ass too. Cummings had expected him to come back with only the whisky. Of course. Yesterday Horton had been talking about a purser. "That sonofabitch won't co-operate at all," Horton had said. And the purser was Kerrigan.
The General had sent him out on a special detail to buy some extras for officers' mess when clearly it was a job for one of the officers in Horton's section. Somehow he had sensed the General's motive, he must have, otherwise why would he have gone to the trouble of bribing the seaman or become so angry when Kerrigan had given him lip? So the General was having an effect on him. Hearn sat down on the tarpaulin covering the supplies, took off his shirt, swabbed his wet body with it, and then, holding it dourly in his hand, he lit a cigarette.
After the boat landed, Hearn had the supplies transferred to a weapons carrier, and rode back with his detail. He reached the bivouac before noon, and dropped in at the General's tent to report, savoring the idea of disappointing Cummings, but the General was not there. Hearn sat down on a foot locker, and surveyed the tent distastefully. Nothing in it had been altered since early morning when Clellan had worked on it, and in the sunlight that glanced through the open flaps the tent was rectangular and unfriendly with all the corners squared, and no sign that anyone ever lived in it. The floor was spotless, the blankets were drawn tautly over the General's mattress, the desk was uncluttered. Hearn sighed, felt a vague uneasiness stirring in him. Ever since that particular night.
The General was putting the screws on him. The things Cummings gave him to do could be done easily enough, but there was always a special brand of humiliation in them. The General knew him in some ways better than he knew himself, Hearn realized. If he had a job he would do it, even if it meant being a bastard about it, but each time he was a bastard it was a little easier to be one the next time. Cute enough. That business with Kerrigan this morning was