The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [323]
The stupor, the stoicism with which he had protected himself on the patrol so far was rapidly dissolving. He hated Martinez at this second for having said what he did. He had never quite allowed himself to state this fear before on the patrol. "Just like the fuggin Army," he said furiously, and again he felt guilty for having used an obscenity.
"What're you gettin' your balls in an uproar?" Polack asked.
"No priest," Martinez said eagerly. Polack had spoken with such assurance that Martinez was certain he had some answer, some escape from the aisles of the catechism.
"You think it ain't important?" Gallagher asked.
"Listen, you want to know somethin?" Polack said. "You don't got to worry about that stuff. It's all a lousy racket."
They were appalled. Gallagher peeked instinctively over his shoulder at the mountain. Both he and Martinez wished they were not sitting with Polack. "What are you, a fuggin atheist?" This time the profanity did not matter. Gallagher was thinking that it was true the Italians and Polacks always made the worst Catholics.
"You believe that crap?" Polack asked. "Listen, I been t'rough the mill, I know what the score is. It's just a goddam good racket for makin' money."
Martinez tried not to listen.
Polack was riding his anger. A long-repressed hostility was coming out, and with it a sustaining bravado, for he also was afraid. He felt as if he were taunting a guy like Lefty Rizzo. "You're a Mex, and you're Irish, you get some benefits outa the goddam thing. The Polacks they don't get a damn thing. You ever hear of a Polack cardinal in America? Naw. I oughta know, I got a sister a nun." He thought of her for an instant, was bothered again by the sensation of something he could not understand. He looked at Martinez. What was the score? "I'm goddamned if they tie the can to me," he said, not quite sure what he meant, to what he referred. He was terribly angry. "If you know what the hell's goin' on, you're a sucker if you just sit around and let 'em do it to ya," he said furiously.
"You don't know what you're talking about," Gallagher muttered.
"Come on, men, get your packs on." It was Croft again. Polack looked around, startled, shook his head as Croft left. "Yeah, up the mountain, c'mon, c'mon," he jeered. His hands were trembling a little with rage.
Their conversation was truncated there, but each of them was troubled as they marched.
For the rest of the morning, the platoon clambered up the ridge. It seemed endless. They passed along rockly ledges, up knife-edged slopes of kunai grass so steep that they climbed by clutching at the roots as though they were ascending a ladder. They passed through a forest which straddled the ridge and sheered down to the floor of the gullies beneath them. They went farther and farther up until their limbs were trembling and their packs felt like hundred-pound bags of flour. And each time they came to a minor peak they were certain the crest of the mountain was near, and all they saw instead was another half mile of torturous ridge which abutted still another crest. Croft warned them. Several times during the morning, he stopped and said, "You men might jus' as well realize right now that the goddam mountain's pretty big, an' you ain't gettin' to the top in a hurry." They listened to him, but they could not believe him. It was too painful to climb without the supporting notion that their labors would be over soon.
At noon they reached the end of the ridge and had a shock. It dropped for several hundred feet of precipitous rocks into a valley of stone set in the middle of the mountain, and beyond it the center of Mount Anaka rose far above them, ascending as high as they could see in tier upon tier of forest and clay and jungle and rock, rising vertiginously for what seemed like thousands and thousands of feet. They could not even glimpse the peak; it was lost in a coronet of clouds.
"Jesus, have we got to climb that?" one of the men panted.