The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [281]
Hello, Eloise? he asks. The woman's voice crackles at him from the other end.
It's more fun being out with the gang from the office on a tear.
I tell ya I never saw anything like it, picking up a half dollar like that, why, she just picked it right off the edge of the table. I suppose if it wasn't the place where I saw it you'd have to go to Paris or a nigger whorehouse anyway.
It takes all kinds to make a world.
Yeh, that's about the way I look at it, there's a lot of things go on in people's heads you don't know nothing about
What do you figure goes on in the Chief's head?
Uh-uh, we ain't talking shop tonight, that's understood. Come on, let's start a round going.
They drink up, exhaust the circle of rounds owed.
I'm going to tell you men something, Brown says, a lot of people think we might have a soft job selling, but the God's honest truth of it is that we work hard as any man jack, am I right?
None harder.
Exactly. Now when I was up at the university before I flunked out, I flunked out I want you to know 'cause I think a man's a goddam fool if he's got false pride, I don't believe in making out you're exactly what you ain't. I'm as ordinary as an old shoe and I'll admit it to anyone who asks me.
Brown, you're a good old sonofabitch.
Well, now, I'm glad to hear you say that, Jennings, because I know you mean it, and it means a lot. A man works his fool ass off and he wants to have some friends, people he knows will trust him and like him, 'cause if he ain't got that what's the point to his working?
That's exactly it.
I'm pretty fortunate, I'll say that to any man in his face, but of course I've had my troubles, who the hell hasn't, but we're not here to cry about that tonight, now, are we? I want to tell you men, I got a beautiful wife, now, that's the truth.
One of the gang guffaws. Brown, I got a beautiful wife too, but I swear after you been married two years a woman might just as well look like a coon dog for all the good it does you.
I can't quite agree, Freeman, but there's a point to what you say. He feels his words dribbling out of his mouth, lost in the babel of glasses and conversation.
Come on, let's be goin' over to Eloise's.
And the inevitable coming back.
Freeman, you said something a while ago that kinda put a stir in me, but I want to tell you I got a beautiful wife, and there's no one could improve on her a bit. I think it's a goddam shame the way we go around screwing God knows what, and then goin' back to our wives, it's a helluva note I want to tell you that. When I think of her and then what I do I'm pretty goddam ashamed of myself. It's a hell of a note.
Exactly. You'd think we have some sense, but the damn truth of it is we just go around screwing and drinking and. . .
And having a hell of a good time.
Having a hell of a good time, Brown finishes. That's exactly what I was gonna say, Jennings, but you beat me to it. He stumbles, sits down on the pavement.
Helluva note.
He wakes up in his bed with Beverly undressing him. I know what you're gonna say, honey, he mumbles, but I got my troubles, you just keep pushing something through, trying to make ends meet, trying to produce 'cause that's what you gotta pay off on, and it takes a long time, it's, it's a hard life, as the preacher says.
And in the morning, massaging his headache, examining an estimate, he wonders what Beverly did last night.
(The sly winks, the droll expressions of anguish among the men who had gone out the night before. At ten in the lavatory, Freeman joins him.)
Oh, what a bag I got on.
I feel rocky today, Brown says. What the hell we do it for?
Got to get out of the rut, I guess.
Yeah. Oh, man!
6
This same night, on the other side of the mountain range, Cummings was making a tour of his positions. The attack had been progressing favorably for a day and a half, and his line companies had advanced from a quarter to a half mile. The division was moving again,