The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [223]
This time they could not ignore him. For an instant Stanley remembered the casual, almost ridiculous way Minetta had been wounded, and he was tormented by the emotions he had felt then. His confidence was eroded. "You talk an awful lot," he said to Gallagher.
"You know what you can do about it."
Stanley stepped toward him, and then halted. Gallagher was much smaller than he, so there would be no glory in fighting him. Moreover, Stanley saw it vaguely as fighting a cripple. "Listen, Gallagher, I can break you in two," he said. He didn't realize it but this was what Red had said to him the morning they landed on the beach.
"Aaaaah." Gallagher made no motion, however. He was afraid of Stanley.
Croft watched them indifferently. He too had been bothered by Gallagher's speech. He had never forgotten the Japanese charge across the river, and occasionally he would dream of a great wave of water about to fall on him while he lay helpless beneath it. He never connected the dream to the night attack, but intuitively he felt the dream signified some weakness in himself. Gallagher had disturbed him, and he thought consciously of his own death for a moment. That's a damn fool thing to kick around in your head, he said to himself. But he could not shake it immediately. Croft always saw order in death. Whenever a man in the platoon or company had been killed he would feel a grim and quiet satisfaction as though the death was inevitably just. What bothered him now was the idea that the wheels might be grinding for him. Croft had none of the particular blend of pessimism and fatalism that Red and Brown felt. Croft did not believe that the longer he was in combat the poorer his chances became. Croft believed a man was destined to be killed or not killed, and automatically he had always considered himself exempt. But now he was not so assured. He had a sense of foreboding for an instant.
The abortive fight over, they stood silently behind the ramp, feeling the lethargic sullen power of the ocean beneath the thin metal of the deck. Red had joined them, and they stood quiet, hunched against the spray, shivering from time to time. Stanley and Croft began talking again about the patrol, and Red listened with dull resentment. His back was aching, which made him irritable. The slapping and pounding of the assault boat, the constraint of the cots and men in their tiny space, even the sound of Stanley's voice, were offensive.
"You know," Stanley was confiding to Croft, "I'm not saying I'm happy about the patrol, but still it's going to be an experience, you know. You can't be a lower kind of noncom than I am, but still you got duties, and you need experience to carry it out right." His speech had a modest tone, too modest for Red, who snorted scornfully.
"Jus' keep your eyes open," Croft said. "Most of the men in the platoon walk around like a bunch of goddam sheep lookin' at the ground."
Red sighed to himself. Stanley's ambition made him contemptuous, but there was an uneasy basis to his scorn which he partially understood. He was the least bit envious. The contradiction ended by depressing him. Aaah, he thought, every man jack eats his heart out, and what does it get him? He could see Stanley rising higher and higher in the months to come, and yet he would never be happy. Any of us'll be lucky if we don't get a bullet in our gut. He felt his skin tightening across his back, and despite himself he turned around to look at the bare metal wall of the bow ramp. Since the day when he had lain helpless on the ground waiting for the Japanese soldier to kill him he had been feeling a recurring anxiety. Often in the night he would awaken with a start, and turn around