The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [237]
Roth and Minetta were wretched, however. Minetta was in poor condition from his week in the hospital, and Roth had never been very strong. The long march up the river had fagged them brutally; overtired, the rest periods did them little good and laboring on the trail was torture. After thirty seconds, after three or four slashes with his machete, Roth was unable to raise his arm. The machete felt heavy as an ax. He lifted it with both hands, dropped it feebly on the branch or vine before him. Every half minute, the knife slipped out of his sweating nerveless fingers and went clattering to the ground.
Minetta's fingers had begun to blister and the handle of the machete rasped against his palm, rubbed sweat into all the sores on his hand. He would attack a bush violently and clumsily, forcing himself into a rage at its stubbornness, and then he would halt, winded, cursing between his sobs at the dank pappy mesh of verdure before him. He and Roth worked side by side, cramped together in the narrow aisle of the trail. In their exhaustion they often blundered against each other, and Minetta would swear with irritation. They disliked each other as intensely as they hated the jungle, the patrol, and Croft. Minetta brooded because Croft was not working; it became the crux of his bitterness. "It's easy enough for that goddam Croft to tell us what to do, but he ain't doin' it. I don't see him working his ass off," Minetta muttered. "If I was a platoon sergeant, I wouldn't treat the guys like that. I'd be right with them, working."
Ridges and Goldstein were standing about five yards behind them. The four men made up one of the teams, and theoretically they were supposed to divide their five-minute shift. But after an hour or two, Goldstein and Ridges were working for three minutes and then four minutes. Watching Minetta and Roth hack with their machetes, Ridges was indignant. "Shoot," he would reprove them, "ain't you city fellers ever learned to use a little ol' knife like that?"
Breathless, enraged, they would make no answer, and this would annoy Ridges more. He had a lively discernment of injustice toward other men and toward himself, and thought it was decidedly unfair for Goldstein and him to work more than the other pair. "Ah done the same work you done," he would complain, "Ah went up the same river you did, an' they ain't no reason 'tall why Gol'stein and me gotta be doin' all yore work."
"Blow it out," Minetta shouted back.
Croft had come up behind them. "What's the matter with you men?" he demanded.
"Ain't nothin'," Ridges said after a pause. He gave his horsy guffaw. "Shoot, we jus' been talkin'." Although he was displeased with Minetta and Roth, he did not think of complaining to Croft. They were all part of the same team, and Ridges considered it heinous to complain about a man with whom he was working. "Ain't nothin' wrong," he repeated.
"Listen, Minetta," Croft said with scorn, "if you an' Roth ain't the meanest wo'thless shiftless pair of bastards I ever had. You men better get your finger out of your ass." His voice, cold and perfectly enunciated, switched them like a birch branch.
Minetta, if harried enough, was capable of surprising courage. He threw down his machete, and turned on Croft. "I don't see you working. It's pretty goddam easy. . ." He lost all idea of what he wanted to say, and repeated, "I don't see you working."
Smart New York kid, Croft said to himself. He looked at him furiously for an instant.