The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [238]
Croft really did not admit all this to himself. With his Army sense, he knew his resentment of Hearn was dangerous, and he also knew his motives on many little actions would not bear examination. He rarely questioned his reasons for doing anything, but now he sensed he could not search himself, and it made him furious. He strode up to Minetta and stared at him with rage. "Goddammit, man, you gonna keep bitchin'?"
Minetta was afraid to answer. He stared back as long as he dared and then dropped his eyes. "Aaah, c'mon," he said to Roth. They picked up their machetes and continued to slash out the trail. Croft watched them for a few seconds and then turned and walked away, filing down the newly fashioned path to the platoon.
Roth felt he was to blame for the incident. He had again the corrosive sense of failure that always dogged him. I'm no good at anything, he bleated to himself. He made a stroke with the machete and the impact snapped it out of his hand. "Ohh." Drearily, he bent down to pick it up.
"You might just as well quit now," Ridges told him. He picked up one of the machetes they dropped, and began to work shoulder to shoulder with Goldstein. As Ridges slashed at the brush with stolid patient motions, his broad short body became less awkward, assumed a strong fluent grace. From the rear he looked like an animal fashioning its nest. He had a simple pride in his strength. As his powerful muscles tensed and relaxed, as the sweat laced his back, he was completely happy, absorbed in the toil, the smells of his body.
Goldstein also found the work acceptable, took the same pleasure in the sure motions of his limbs, but his satisfaction was not so pure. It was cloyed with a prejudice Goldstein had against manual labor. That's the only kind of job I ever find, he told himself wistfully. He had sold newspapers, worked in a warehouse, become a welder, and it had always bothered him that he had never had an occupation where he could keep his hands clean. The prejudice was very deep, brewed out of all the memories and maxims of his childhood. He wavered between warmth and disdain at working well with Ridges. It's all right for Ridges, Goldstein told himself, he's a farmer, but I'd like something better. He had a mild self-pity at his fate. If I could have had an education, culture, I could have done something better with myself.
He was still fretting when they were relieved by the next team. He trudged back along the trail to where he had left his rifle and pack and settled down into his melancholy. Ach, so many things I could have done. Apparently without cause, a deep and limitless sorrow welled in his chest. He pitied himself, but his pity grew larger, swelled to include everybody in his compassion. Ai! it's hard, it's hard, he thought. He could not have said why he made this statement; it seemed a truth he had absorbed in his bones.
The mood did not surprise Goldstein; he was accustomed to it, enjoyed it. He would be cheerful for days, liking everyone, pleased with whatever task was assigned, and then suddenly, almost inexplicably, for the causes already seemed minor, he would wallow in a self-induced gloom.
Now he bathed himself in despondency. Oh, what does it all mean? What are we born for, why do we work? You're born and then you die, is that all there is to it? He shook his head. Look at the Levine family. They had such a promising son, he had a scholarship to Columbia, and then he got killed in