The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [262]
The sun was burning on his back, laving his body with a pleasant heat. Slowly he could feel himself sinking into the earth, its warmth spreading about, supporting him. All the grass and the roots and the ground smelled of sunlight, and his mind eddied back through the images of plowed earth and steaming horses, back to the afternoon when he had sat on a stone by the side of the road, and watched the colored girl walk by, her breasts jouncing against her cotton frock. He tried to remember the name of the girl he was going to see that night, and began giggling. Wonder if she knows Ah'm sixteen? His wound had roused a warm and blunted nausea in his belly, almost like the bubbling of passion in his groin, and he floated along, not quite anchored to either the road beside the house where he had been born or to the valley of grass in which he lay. Vague lusts chased themselves through his head. The tall grass, nebulous and waving, seemed as high as a forest to him; he could not remember if he was in the jungle or not, and his nose amplified the odors here, blended them into his memory of the rich fetor of the jungle. Goddam, just to smell a woman again.
The blood was trickling faster over his fingers, and he sweated, thinking of liquid things, lost in a welter of lovemaking, recalling acutely the feel of a woman's belly and hips, her mouth. The sun was very bright, very satisfactory. Plays hell on a man when he don' get his ass regular. Ah bet that's why mah insides turned back on me, an' got full of pus. His reverie was shattered by the thought. Ah don' want no op-per-ration, they gonna kill me with it. When Ah git back, Ah'll tell 'em, Ah won' take no truck, Ah'll jus' tell 'em that all the pus jus' bled out of me, an' mah insides are fixed up. He began to giggle weakly. Goddam, when that ol' wound closes, Ah'm gonna have two belly buttons, one right under t'other. Wonder what t' hell Alice'll say when she sees it?"
The sun passed behind a cloud and he felt cold and shivered. His senses cleared again for a minute or two and he was frightened and miserable. They cain' jus' lea' me alone here, the men gotta come back for me. The grass was rustling in the wind, and he listened to it mournfully, hovering near a knowledge he did not want to confront. Ah gotta hold on. He roused himself, managed to stand up in the grass for a moment, caught sight of the hills and the cliffs of Mount Anaka, and then pitched forward, sweating coldly. Ah'm a man, he told himself, Ah cain't go to pieces. Ah never took no crap from no one, an' Ah ain't gonna start now. If a man's chicken, he ain't worth a goddam.
But his limbs were cold, and he shuddered continually. The sun has come out but it gave him no warmth. He heard the sound of groaning again, and then once again; he writhed from a sudden convulsion. That was me made that noise. The pain returned, hammered at his entrails. "Goddam sonofabitch," he bawled out suddenly. He felt a passionate rage at the pain, heard himself coughing blood over his fingertips. It seemed like someone else's blood, and he was surprised how warm it felt. "Ah jus' gotta hold on to myself," he mumbled, as he lost consciousness again.
Everything had gone wrong. The entrance to the pass was closed, and even at this moment probably the Japanese were relaying a message to their headquarters. All the secrecy of the patrol was lost. Croft almost bellowed with rage when he learned Wilson had been left behind. He sat down on a rock, his thin mouth white and furious, and smacked his fist into his palm several times, his eyes glaring.
"That big dumb bastard," he muttered to himself. His first impulse was to leave him. But they had to go back for Wilson; that was