The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [234]
"All right, men," the Lieutenant was calling.
Polack stood up with a grimace. If that lieutenant had anything but rocks in his head, he decided, he'd go back to the beach, and let us toast marshmallows until the boat comes. But all he said was, "I been needing a little exercise." Brown laughed.
The river remained shallow and unobstructed for another few hundred yards. As they walked, Brown and Polack talked idly. "I used to have a lot of ideas when I was a kid," Brown said, "you know, kids and marriage and the rest of it, but you get a little smarter, you see where they ain't many women you can trust."
It's a guy like Brown that lets a dame throw a horse collar on him, Polack thought. All she had to do was yes him when he was talkin' and he thought she had everything.
"No," Brown said, "you get older and you lose a lot of that. You know there ain't too many things you can trust." He got a bitter pleasure from saying this. "The only damn thing that's worth it is money, I'll tell you. In selling you can see the kind of time a big boy can have. I remember some of those hotel parties. Man! the dames at that, the times you'd have."
"You could have a good time," Polack agreed. He remembered a party that his numbers boss, Lefty Rizzo, had given. Polack closed his eyes for an instant, and felt a faint trickle of passion. That blonde, she had known her business. "Yeah."
"If I ever get out of the Army," Brown said, "I'm headin' for the bucks. I'm tired of kickin' around."
"They ain't found anyt'ing better than that yet."
Brown looked at Polack, shuffling through the water beside him. Polack wasn't a bad kid, he thought. Just a little skinny guy who never had any education. The chances were he'd never get anywhere. "What do you figure on doin', Polack?" Brown asked.
Polack recognized the condescension. "I'll get along," he said shortly. Like the flick of a lash, he remembered his family and grimaced. What a dumb Polack his old man had been. Poor all his life. Aaah, it makes you tough, he decided. A guy like Brown could shoot his mouth off, but when you knew the way to make a pile you kept quiet. In Chicago you could do it; that was a town. Women and lots of noise, lots of big operators. "They can keep this goddam jungle," he said. The water was a little deeper and he felt it tickling against the back of his knees. If he hadn't got in the Army he'd probably be workin' right under Kabriskie now. "A-a-ah," Polack said.
And Brown was dejected. He did not know why, but the oppression of the air, the resistance of the current, had exhausted him already. He felt an unreasonable catch of fear. "Boy, I hate these goddam packs," he said.
The river was mounting a series of minor cascades. Coming around a turn the men were almost spilled by the force of the current over a rapids. The water was shockingly cold, and the men scrambled for the bank and held onto the wall of foliage that grew to the river's edge. "C'mon, let's keep goin'," Croft shouted. The bank was almost five feet high, which made it difficult to advance. The men moved along with their bodies parallel to the wet clay walls of the bank, their eyes on a level with the jungle floor. They extended their arms, caught a root, and pulled themselves toward it, their chests scraping against the bank, their feet drudging through the water. Their hands and faces became scratched, their fatigue uniforms covered with mud. For perhaps ten minutes they progressed in this way.
The river leveled again, and they advanced in file a few feet from the bank, toiling slowly through the river mud. At times aware of the intricate liquid rustlings of the brush, the screams of the birds and animals, the murmuring of the river, they were usually conscious