The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [35]
Hobart was easy too; the Great American Bully. Hobart was the only one who had not been a Regular Army first sergeant, but almost as good, he had been a bank clerk or the manager of a chain store branch. With a lieutenancy in the National Guard. He was what you would expect; he never disagreed with anyone above him and never listened to his subordinates. Yet he wanted to be liked by both. He blustered and cajoled, was always the good guy for the first fifteen minutes you knew him, with the rutted gross patois of the American Legion-Rotary-Chamber of Commerce, and afterward distrusted you with the innate, insecure and blinding arrogance of his stamp. He was plump and cherubic with sullen pouting cheeks and a thin little mouth.
Hearn had never doubted these impressions for a moment. Dalleson, Conn and Hobart were always lumped together. He saw the differences, actually disliked Dalleson a little less than the others, recognized the distinctions in their features, their abilities, and yet they were equated in the sweep of his contempt. They had three things in common, and Hearn threw out all the other divergences. They were first of all red-faced, and Hearn's father, a very successful mid-western capitalist, had always been florid. Secondly, they all had tight thin little mouths, a personal prejudice of his, and third, worst of all, none of them for even an instant had ever doubted anything they had ever said or done.
Several people had at one time or another made it a point to tell Hearn that he liked men only in the abstract and never in the particular, a cliché of course, an oversimplification, but not without casual truth. He despised the six field officers at the adjacent table because no matter how much they might hate kikes, niggers, Russians, limeys, micks, they loved one another, tampered gleefully with each other's wives at home, got drunk together without worrying about dropping their guard, went joyously through their income-bracket equivalents of shooting up a whorehouse on Saturday night. By their very existence they had warped the finest minds, the most brilliant talents of Hearn's generation into something sick, more insular than the Conn-Dalleson-Hobarts. You always ended by catering to them, or burrowing fearfully into the little rathole still allowed.
And the heat by now had banked itself in the tent, was almost licking at his body. The mutter, the clatter of tinware against tinware rasped like a file against his brain. A mess orderly scurried by, putting a bowl of canned peaches on each of the tables.
"You take that fellow. . ." Conn mentioned a famous labor leader. "Now, I know for a fact, by God --" his red nose wagging mulishly behind his point -- "that he's got a nigger woman for a mistress."
Dalleson clucked. "Jesus, think of that."
"I've heard on good authority that he's even had a couple of tan little bastards off of her, but that I ain't going to vouch for. All I can tell you is that all the time he's pushing through these bills to make the nigger a King Jesus, he's doin' it for good reason. That woman is runnin' the whole labor movement, the whole country including the President is being influenced every time she wiggles her slit."
The labial interpretation of history.
Hearn heard the sharp cold accents of his own speech coming out of his chest. "Colonel, how do you know all that?" Beneath the table his legs were weak with anger.
Conn turned to Hearn in surprise, stared at him across the six feet separating their chairs, the perspiration tatted lavishly in big droplets on his red pocked nose. He was doubtful for a moment, uncertain whether the question was friendly or not, obviously bothered by the minor breach of discipline involved. "What do you mean, how do I know, Hearn?" he asked.
Hearn paused, trying to keep it within bounds. He was aware abruptly that most of the officers in the tent were staring at them. "I don't think you know too much about it, Colonel."
"You don't, eh, you don't, huh. I know a hell of a sight more about those