The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [252]
MINETTA: You're fuggin ay I wouldn't, I got my self-respect.
BROWN: But I'm not kidding, Red, maybe you and me'll be in it.
RED: How many did they have last month?
MARTINEZ: One man, month before two men.
RED: Yeah, one man out of a company. We got a hundred men in headquarters got eighteen months in. Listen, Brown, cheer up, all you got to do is wait a hundred months.
MINETTA: Aaah, it's a screwing.
BROWN: What do you care, Minetta? I swear, you ain't been overseas long enough to get a tan.
MINETTA: If you guys don't get out of here, I never will when my eighteen months come up. Just like a prison sentence, Jesus.
BROWN: .(Thoughtfully) You know, that's always when you get it. Remember Shaughnessy in P and D? Supposed to go home on rotation, got his orders and everything, and they send him out on a security patrol and he gets it.
RED: Sure, that's why they picked him. Listen, boy, forget about it, you ain't gonna get out of the Army, ain't any of us gonna get out.
POLACK: You wanta know something, if I had eighteen months, I could work that rotation. You just gotta start sucking Mantelli, or that fat fug first sergeant, and you win a little money in poker, slip them twenty-thirty pounds, and say, 'Here, for a cigar, for a rotation cigar, get it!' There's ways.
BROWN: By God, Red, Polack could be right, you remember when they picked Sanders, who the hell was he, not a goddam thing to recommend him except that he had his nose up Mantelli for the last year.
RED: I'll tell you what, don't try it, Brown. You start sucking Mantelli and he'll get to like you so much he couldn't bear to let you go.
MINETTA: I mean what kind of deal is this? Just like the goddam Army, give you something with one hand and take it away with the other, they just make you eat your heart out.
POLACK: You're getting wise to yourself.
BROWN: (Sighing) Aah, it makes you sick. (Turning over in his blankets) Good night.
RED: (Lying on his back, gazing at the pacific stars) That rotation ain't a plan to get men home, it's a plan how not to get them home.
MINETTA: Yeah, good night.
(Assorted speeches) Good night. . . good night.
(The men sleep surrounded by the hills and the whispering silence of the night.)
4
The platoon passed an uneasy night in the hollow. The men were too tired to sleep well, and shivered in their blankets. When it came each man's turn for guard, he would stumble up to the crest of the hill and stare over the grass into the valley below. Everything was cold and silver in the moonlight, and the hills had become gaunt. The sleeping men in the hollow beneath him were removed and distant. Each man on guard felt alone, terribly alone, as though looking out on the valleys and craters of the moon. Nothing moved, and yet nothing was still. The wind was wistful and reflective; the grass rustled, advanced and retreated in shimmering rustling waves. The night was intensely silent and pendent.
In the dawn they folded their blankets, made their packs, and ate a K ration, chewing slowly, and without relish, the cold tinned ham and eggs and the square graham crackers. Their muscles were stiff from the previous day's march, and their clothing was damp with yesterday's perspiration. The older men were wishing that the sun was higher; there seemed no warmth left in their bodies. Red's kidneys were aching again, Roth's right shoulder was rheumatic, and Wilson had a spasm of diarrhea after he ate. They all felt dull, without volition; they scarcely thought of the march ahead.
Croft and Hearn had gone to the top of the hill again, and were discussing the morning's march. In the early morning, the valley was still hazy with mist and the mountain and pass were obscured. They squinted into the north, looking at the Watamai Range. It extended as far as they could see like a cloud bank in the haze, rising precipitously to its peak at Mount Anaka, and dropping abruptly, shudderingly, into the pass at its left, before mounting again.
"Damn sure seems like the Japs would be watching that pass," Croft commented.
Hearn shrugged.