The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [202]
"Yes, sir."
Dalleson and Stacey were scrabbling on the floor picking up the portions of the map that had torn in the fall. Hearn looked at Cummings, his eyes expressionless, and then stooped down for the overlay.
"Does it hurt, sir?" His voice was flatly solicitous.
"It's all right, thank you."
In the tent, the heat had become even more oppressive. Cummings felt a little faint. "After you get the map fixed, will you take care of that movement, Major," he said.
"Yes, sir," Dalleson said from the floor.
Cummings stepped outside, leaning against the corner pole for a few seconds. The night air was almost cold against his wet clothing. He looked about and then kneaded his shin tenderly before limping across the bivouac.
He had extinguished the Coleman lantern in his own tent before leaving, and he lay down on his cot in the darkness, and stared at the dim outlines of the tent. Like a cat his eyes reflected some light, and a man entering the tent would have been able to discern them in the darkness before he could see anything else. His shin was throbbing powerfully now, and his stomach felt a little upset. The crack of the map-board against his legs had unseated all the disorders that the tension and absorption of the past two months had spawned. His flesh crawled as if he had a scabies, and his body was laved with an unreasonable sweat. He was familiar with the process, called it "coming apart at the seams," and it had happened to him at Motome, and at specific times in the past. It was a demand his body exacted of him and with a passive, almost a submissive acceptance, Cummings would let it have its course, allowed his mind to follow in its wake for a miserable hour or two, and then always he would recover from it in a night's sleep, feel refreshed and puissant by the following morning.
This time he took a mild sedative, and fell asleep in less than an hour. When he awakened it was still dark, but he felt restless, and his mind was extremely active. The shin was still sore, and after massaging it for a minute or two in the dark he lit the Coleman lantern by his cot, and examined the bruise gingerly.
It had been no accident. Hearn had dropped the board purposely, or at the very least it had been only a partial accident, Cummings was certain. And in reassurance his heart began to thump powerfully. Perhaps he had even wanted it to happen; there had been a certain alertness to Hearn, an awareness of him, when he had told him to bring over the map-board. Cummings shook his head. It was unprofitable to plumb that sort of thing. He understood himself and it was best to let it go at that. Although he had awakened only a few minutes previously, his mind was painfully clear, and beneath the threshold of speech he was containing anxiety.
He would transfer Hearn. It would be dangerous to keep him under his thumb. There would be further episodes, further rebellions, and it might come to a court-martial, which was always messy, always unpleasant. That time with the cigarette butt, he would have carried it through, as he would now if anything developed, but the appeal could be nasty for him. They would never override him in higher echelons, but it could be a black mark.
Hearn would have to go. Cummings was feeling a mingled triumph and frustration. He could move Hearn where he wanted, and yet there was still an area of rebellion he had not been able to override completely. That was the burr. He squinted his eyes against the glare of the lantern, turned it down a trifle, and then kneaded his thigh with one of his hands, realizing with annoyance it was one of Hearn's gestures.
Where should he send him? It was not terribly important; that reconnaissance platoon Dalleson had mentioned would do well enough. And it would keep Hearn in headquarters. He would have an idea of what was happening