The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [321]
Now, as he thought of it, he felt some anxiety for a moment, wished he had been kinder as if that would allay his own fate. Nah, he thought, that's superstitious. It hasn't got anything to do with this. He wondered if Croft perhaps felt the same way when he was cruel, but that was ridiculous. It's something in the past, forget it, he told himself. But he was afraid.
And Wyman was thinking of a football game he had played once on a sandlot. It had been the team on his block against the team from another one, and he had been playing tackle. In the second half his legs had given out and he had a humiliating memory of the opposing runners cutting through his position almost at will while he had dragged himself unwillingly through each play. He had wanted to quit and there were no substitutes. They had lost by several touchdowns but there had been a kid on his team who had never given up. Almost every play that kid had been in on the tackles, yelling encouragement, getting angrier and angrier at every advance the other team made.
He just wasn't like that, Wyman decided. He wasn't the hero type, and he realized it with a suddenness and a completeness which would have crushed him months before. Now it only made him wistful. He would never understand men like Croft; he only wanted to keep out of the way of them. But still, what made them tick? he wondered. What were they always going for?
"I hate this damn mountain," he said to Roth.
"Likewise." Roth sighed again. The mountain was so open, so high. Even when he lay on his back he could not see the top of it. It just reared above him, ridge beyond ridge, and higher up it seemed made entirely of rock. He had hated the jungle, had started with terror every time an insect crawled over him or a bird chattered suddenly in the brush. He had never been able to see anything, and it had been rife with so many foul odors which choked his nostrils. There had seemed no room to breathe, and yet now he wished he was back in the jungle. It was so secure in contrast to these naked ridges, these gaunt alien vaults of stone and sky. They would keep going up and up and there was no safety in it. The jungle was filled with all kinds of dangers but they did not seem so severe now; at least he was used to them. But here, one misstep and it would be death. It was better to live in a cellar than to walk a tightrope. Roth plucked angrily at the grass again. Why didn't Croft turn back? What could he hope to gain?
Martinez's body ached. He was feeling a reaction from the previous night, and all morning as they had worked up the mountain he had plodded along, wretched with anxiety, his limbs trembling, his body wet with perspiration. His mind had played a few necessary tricks on him; the connection between his reconnaissance and Hearn's death was happily smudged, or at least on the surface, but ever since the second ambush he had been feeling the apprehension of a man in a dream who knows he is guilty, is waiting for his punishment, and cannot remember his crime.
Toiling up the first slopes of the mountain, Martinez brooded about the Japanese soldier he had killed. He could see his face clearly, far more vividly now in the cruel dazzle of the morning sun than he had the night before, and in his memory he traced over every motion the Jap had made. Once again Martinez could feel the blood trickling over his fingers, leaving them sticky. He examined his hand, and with a pang of horror discovered a dried black thread of blood in the webbing between two of his fingers. He grunted with disgust and the excessive fear one feels in crushing an insect. Ahrr. And immediately afterward he could see the Jap picking his nose.
He was to blame.
For what? They were on the mountain now, and if he didn't. . . if he hadn't. . . No kill Jap, go back to beach, he told himself. But that made no sense either, and his anxiety prickled along his back. He gave up the effort to think and trudged along in the middle of the platoon, finding no release in the exertion of the ascent. The more tired he felt the tauter his nerves became.