The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [161]
"I don't know any, sir."
"Have you got a sweetheart?"
"I'm married, sir."
"Do you want to see your wife again?"
Lanning reddened. "She left me about a year ago, sir. I got a Dear John."
The General's shoes made a dry scraping sound as he turned away. "Major, you can bring this man up for court-martial tomorrow." He paused in the doorway. "Lanning, I warn you, you'd better tell the truth. I want the name of every noncom in your company who's been doing this."
"There weren't any I know of, sir."
Cummings stalked out and walked across the bivouac, his knees weak with impotent anger. The cheek of Lanning, "There weren't any I know of, sir." The entire front was made up of noncoms like him, and the chances were that three-quarters of the reports they gave were false; probably even the line officers were faking their patrols. And the worst of it was that he could do nothing about it. If he was to bring Lanning up before a general court-martial, the sentence would be reviewed, and it would be common knowledge throughout the South Pacific that his men had become unreliable. Even if Lanning told him who the other noncoms were, he could take no action. The men who would replace them would probably be even worse. But he'd be damned if he'd send Lanning back to his company without any punishment. Let him wither on the stalk. They could wait until the campaign was over to bring him up to trial (if it ever ended) and in the meantime there could be any number of interrogations, any number of promises that he would be tried the next day or the day after. The General walked along, spurred by an angry satisfaction which fed itself. If that didn't break Lanning, there were other ways. But the men were going to learn if he had to rub their noses in the dirt that the line of their least discomfort lay in winning the campaign. They liked their bivouacs, did they? Well, there were methods of fixing that. Tomorrow there could be a general troop movement to one side or another, adjustments of a few hundred yards with new foxholes to be dug, new barbed wire to be laid, new tents to be put up. And if they started laying duckwalks again, and improving their latrines, there could be still another movement. It was the American's capacity for real estate improvement; build yourself a house, grow fat in it, and die.
The discipline had to be tightened all through the division. If men were dicking off on patrols, then there were malingerers in the hospital. He'd have to send a memo down to Portable Surgical to crack down on all the doubtful cases. There was entirely too much coddling going on in the outfit, and there were too many men resisting his authority, thwarting him. Oh, they'd be happier with a new general in command, a butcher who would waste their lives to no purpose. Well, if they didn't perk up, they'd be having their butcher soon. There were always enough military hacks around.
In a fury he came back to his tent, sat down at his desk, and found himself doodling with a pencil. He threw it down and stared with a febrile loathing at the map board by his cot. By now, it was a taunt to him.
But something was wrong with the tent. Something was changed since Clellan had fixed it this morning. He turned around, gazed about the room with a feeling of inordinate anxiety.
"God!" It came out as something between a grunt and a choked exclamation. A deep pang of pain and fear lanced through his chest. On the middle of his floor was the match and the cigarette butt, mashed into the duckboards in a tangled ugly excrement of black ash, soiled paper, and brown tobacco.
There was a note for him, too, on the desk, which he had not noticed:
Sir,
Waited for you but you didn't show up. I brought back the supplies you indicated.
Hearn.
Then it was Hearn who had soiled his floor. Of course. Cummings walked over to the match and cigarette butt, picked them up with intense distaste and dropped them in a wastebasket. There was a little black ash left, which he scattered with his foot. Despite himself he felt obliged to keep sniffing his fingers although