The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [29]
"I can't complain," Minetta said. "You talk like something out of a comic book." He yawned. "Anyway, one thing nobody ever beat was the Army."
"I ain't done so bad," Polack said.
"You're doing bad till the day you get out of it," Minetta told him. He clapped his hand against his forehead, and sat up. "The goddam mosquitoes," he said. He rummaged underneath his pillow, a towel wrapped about a soiled shirt, and drew out a small bottle of mosquito lotion. As he rubbed it over his face and hands he grumbled. "What a way for a guy to live." He propped himself on an elbow and lit a cigarette. He remembered he was not supposed to smoke at night, and for a moment debated with himself. "Aaah, fug it," he said aloud. Unconsciously his hand shielded the cigarette, however. He turned toward Polack and said, "Boy, I don't like to live like a pig." He pounded his pillow smooth. "Sleeping on top of your own filthy clothes, wearing dirty clothes to sleep. Nobody lives like that."
Polack shrugged. He was next to the youngest of seven brothers and sisters, and until he went to an orphanage he had always slept with a blanket spread out on the floor near a coal stove in the center of the room. When the fire died down in the middle of the night the first child to become chilled would get up and fill the stove again. "It ain't so bad wearin' dirty clothes," he told Minetta, "it keeps the bugs off ya." He had washed his own clothing since he was five years old.
"Ain't that a hell of a choice?" Minetta asked. "Smell your own stink or get carried away by the bugs." He was thinking of the clothes he used to wear. He was always known as the best dresser on the block, the first kid to pick up the new dance steps, and now he had a shirt which was two sizes too big for him. "Hey, did you hear that joke about Army clothes?" he asked. "It comes in two sizes, too large and too small."
"I heard it," Polack said.
"Aaah." Minetta remembered the way he would spend an hour in the middle of an afternoon dressing himself carefully, and combing his hair several times. It gave him pleasure to do that even when he had no place to go. "You tell me how to get out of the Army, and I'll say you can beat every game."
"There's ways," Polack said.
"Sure, you can go to heaven too, but who does?"
"There's ways," Polack repeated mysteriously again, nodding his head in the darkness. Minetta could just make out his profile, and he decided that he looked like a cartoon of Uncle Sam with his hooked broken nose and his long jaw slanting back to his receded gums.
"Well, what way?" Minetta asked.
"You ain't got the guts for it," Polack said.
"I don't see you getting out," Minetta persisted.
Polack's voice was rasping and humorous. "I like it in the Army," he said.
Minetta was becoming irritated. It was impossible ever to win an argument with Polack. "Aaah, fug you," he said.
"Yeah, fug you too."
They turned away from each other and settled down in their blankets. A mist was blowing in from the ocean, and Minetta shivered a little. He thought of the reconnaissance platoon to which they had been assigned, and wondered with a little quiver of fear if he could take combat. He started to drowse, and thought dreamily of returning to his block wearing his overseas ribbons. It would be a long time, he realized, and the fear of combat came back again. He heard a battery fire a few miles away, and pulled the blanket over his shoulder. It gave him a cozy sensation. "Hey, Polack," he said.
"Wha. . . at?" Polack was almost asleep.
Minetta forgot what it was he wanted to say, and on an impulse he asked, "You think it'll rain tonight?"
"Cats and dogs."
"Yeah." Minetta's eyes closed.
That same night Croft was discussing the new arrangement of the platoon with Martinez. They were squatting on the blankets inside their pup tent. "That Mantelli's a funny wop," Croft said.
Martinez shrugged. Italians were like Spanish, like Mexicans. He didn't like this kind of conversation. "Five new men," he mumbled thoughtfully. "Goddam big platoon." He smiled in the