The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [268]
His anger was too vivid for him to think. He strode across the hollow, and stopped before the group around Roth.
"Jus' what the hell you men think you're doin'?" he asked in a low strained voice.
They all looked up, instantly wary. "Nothin'," one of them muttered.
"Roth!"
"Yes, Sergeant?" His voice quavered.
"Give me that bird."
Roth passed it to him, and Croft held it for a moment. He could feel the bird's heart beating like a pulse against his palm. Its tiny eyes darted about frantically, and Croft's anger worked into his fingertips. It would be the simplest thing to crush it in his hand; it was no bigger than a stone and yet it was alive. Strange impulses pressed through his nerves, along his muscles, like water forcing itself through fissures in a rock mass. He wavered between compassion for the bird and the thick lusting tension in his throat. He didn't know whether to smooth its soft feathers or mash it in his fingers, and the impulse, confused and powerful, shimmered in his brain like a card on edge about to fall.
"Can I have it back, Sergeant?" Roth pleaded.
The sound of his voice, already defeated, worked a spasm through Croft's fingers. He heard a little numbly the choked squeal of the bird, the sudden collapsing of its bones. It thrashed powerlessly against his palm, and the action aroused him to nausea and rage again. He felt himself hurling the bird away over the other side of the hollow, more than a hundred feet. His breath expelled itself powerfully; without realizing it, he had not inhaled for many seconds. The reaction left his knees trembling.
For a long instant no one said anything.
And then the reaction lashed about him. Ridges stood up in a fury, advanced toward Croft. His voice was thick with wrath. "What you doin'. . . why'd you do that to the bird? What do ya mean. . .?" In his excitement, he stammered.
Goldstein, shocked, genuinely horrified, was glaring at him. "How can you do such a thing? What harm was that bird doing you? Why did you do it? It's like. . . like. . ." He searched for the most heinous crime. "It's like killing a baby."
Croft, unconsciously, retreated a step or two. He was startled momentarily into passiveness by the force of their response. "Git back, Ridges," he mumbled.
The vibration of his voice in his throat stirred him, revived his anger. "I'm tellin' you men to shut up. That's an order!" he shouted.
The revolt halted, hovered uncertainly. Ridges had been complaisant all his life, was unaccustomed to rebellion. But this. . . Only his fear of authority kept him from leaping at Croft.
And Goldstein saw a court-martial and disgrace and his child starving. He halted too. "Ohhh," he exclaimed meaninglessly, choked with frustration.
Red moved more slowly, more deliberately. The hostility between him and Croft had to come to an issue sooner or later; he knew it, and he also knew without ever admitting it that he was afraid of Croft. He didn't say all this to himself; what he felt was anger and the understanding that this was a propitious time. "What's the matter, Croft, you throwing orders around to save your ass?" he bellowed.
"I've had enough, Red."
They glared at each other. "You bit off a little too much this time."
Croft knew it. Yet, A man's a damn fool if he don't follow something through, he told himself. "Anything you're gonna do about it, Red?"
This was very fundamental for Valsen. Croft had to be halted sometime, he told himself, or he'd run over them completely. Back of his anger and his apprehension, he felt a certain necessity. "Yeah, there is."
They continued to watch each other for perhaps a second, but the second was broken into many units of alertness, of decisions made and broken to launch the first blow. And then Hearn interrupted them, pushed them apart roughly. "Break