The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [322]
In the break he flopped down beside Polack and Gallagher. There was something he wanted to talk to them about, but he was not quite sure what it could be.
Polack was grinning at him. "Whadeya say, scout?"
"Oh, nothing," he said in a low voice. He never knew what to answer to "Whadeya say?" and it always made him uneasy.
"They ought to give ya the day off," Polack said.
"Yah." He had been a poor scout the night before, he had done everything wrong. If he hadn't killed the Jap -- that was the keystone of all his mistakes. He could not have named them, but he was convinced that he had made many mistakes.
"Nothin' happened, huh?" Gallagher asked.
Martinez shrugged, saw Polack looking at the dried blood on his hand. It would look like dirt, but he found himself saying, "Japs in the pass, I kill one." He felt relieved.
"Huh?" Polack said, "what's the score? That looey told us the pass was empty."
Martinez shrugged again. "Damn fool. He argue with Croft, say pass empty, after I come back, see Japs. Croft tell him Martinez good man, know what he see but Looey he don't want to listen, stubborn damn fool."
Gallagher spat. "Ya had to knock off a Jap and he didn't believe it?"
Martinez nodded, believing this was the truth now. "I listen them talk, man damn fool, I don't say nothing, Croft tell him." The entire sequence was confused in his mind. He could not have sworn to it, but at that moment he felt he remembered Croft and Hearn arguing, Hearn saying that they must go through the pass and Croft disagreeing. "Croft tell me keep my mouth shut when he talk to Hearn, know Hearn damn fool."
Gallagher shook his head unbelievingly. "What a dumb stubborn fug that looey was. Well, he got it."
"Yeah, he got it," Polack said. This was all mixed up. If a guy is told there's Japs in the pass, and he decides just like that there ain't any. . . That was a little bit too dumb. Polack didn't know. He felt an annoying frustration as if there were something under his finger, something he could point to. He felt unaccountably angry.
"So ya had to knock off a Jap," Gallagher said with a grudged admiration.
Martinez nodded. He had murdered a man, and if he were to die now, be killed on the mountain or on the other side of it, he would be lost with a mortal sin. "Yes, I kill him," he said, feeling even now a trace of sustaining pride. "Sneak up back of him and cahoootz. . ." He made a ripping sound. "And the Jap is . . ." Martinez snapped his fingers.
Polack laughed. "Takes moxie, you know. You're okay, Japbait."
He ducked his head shyly accepting the praise. He was hovering between merriment and depression when he remembered the gold teeth he had smashed out of the corpse's jaw on the battlefield, and he was marooned suddenly in a blanket of misery and fear. That sin he had not confessed and now this one too. His first emotion was bitterness. It seemed unfair that there should be no chaplain nearby who could save him. For just a moment Martinez thought of sneaking away from the platoon and heading back across the hills to the beach, where he could return safely and be confessed. But immediately afterward he knew it was impossible.
And he realized why he had dropped down beside Polack and Gallagher. They were Catholics and they could understand this. He was so deeply absorbed in his mood that he assumed instinctively they were feeling the same way. "You know," he said, "we get hit, pop off, no priest."
The words lashed Gallagher like a wet towel. "Yeah, yeah, that's right," he mumbled, caught up suddenly in a train of fear and unpleasant anticipation. He pictured automatically the postures of all the men in the platoon who had been wounded or killed, capped it off by seeing himself bleeding on the ground. The mountain yawed shiveringly above them, and Gallagher was filled with dread. He wondered for a moment if Mary had received absolution, was convinced she hadn't, and felt a little resentful toward her. Her sin would be visited on him. But that was dissipated immediately