The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [356]
The sneak. Well, he'd been everything else in his time.
And Goldstein lay on his bunk with his arms under his head and thought dreamily about his wife and child. All the bitterness and frustration of losing Wilson had been tucked away in his brain, encysted temporarily by the stupor that had followed. He had slept for a day and a half, and the journey with the litter seemed remote. He even liked Brown and Stanley because they were a little uneasy with him and seemed afraid to bother him. He had a buddy too. There was an understanding between Ridges and him. The day they had spent on the beach waiting for the rest of the platoon had not been unpleasant. And automatically they had selected bunks next to each other when they got on the boat.
He had his moments of rebellion. The goy friend he got was a goy -- a peasant, an outcast himself. He would get somebody like that. But he was ashamed for thinking this, with almost the shame he felt whenever a random caustic thought about his wife slipped through his head. It ended by his being defiant. For a friend he had an illiterate, but so what? Ridges was a good man. There was something enduring about him. The salt of the earth, Goldstein told himself.
The boat wallowed along about a mile offshore. As the afternoon wore by the men began to move about a little, and stare over the side. The island skidded by slowly, always impenetrable, always green and opaque with the jungle skirting the water. They passed a small peninsula which they had noticed on the trip out, and some of them began to calculate how long it would be before they reached the bivouac. Polack climbed up on the rear hatch where the pilot was steering the boat and rested under the canvas canopy. The sun shifted over the water, reflecting brightly from each ripple, and the air held a subtle bouquet of vegetation and ocean.
"Jeez, it's nice out here," Polack said to the driver.
The man grunted. His feelings were hurt because the platoon had been spitting in the boat.
"Aaah, what's eatin' ya, Jack?" Polack asked.
"You were one of the wise guys who was giving me some lip before."
Polack shrugged. "Aaah, listen, Jack, you don' wanta take an attitude like that. We been t'rough a lot, our nerves are up in the air."
"Yeah, I guess you did have a rough go."
"Sure." Polack yawned. "Tomorrow they'll have our ass out on patrol, you watch."
"It's only mopping up."
"Where do ya get that stuff, moppin' up?"
The pilot looked at him. "Jesus, I forgot you men were out on patrol for six days. Hell, man, the whole fuggin campaign blew sky high. We killed Toyaku. In another week there won't be but ten Japs left."
"Wha. . . ?"
"Yeah. We got their supply dump. We're slaughtering them. I saw that Toyaku Line myself yesterday. They had concrete machine-gun emplacements. Fire lanes. Every damn thing."
Polack swore. "The whole thing's over, huh?"
"Just about."
"And we broke our ass for nothin'."
The pilot grinned. "Higher strategy."
Polack climbed down after a while and told the men. It all seemed perfectly fitting to them. They laughed sourly, turned over in their bunks, and stared at the side bulkhead. But soon they realized that if the campaign was over they would be out of combat for a few months at least. It confused them, irritated them, they didn't know whether the news pleased them or not. The patrol should have been worth something. In their fatigue this conflict brought them close to hysteria and then shifted them over to mirth.
"Hey, you know," Wyman piped, "before we went I heard a rumor they're going to send the division to Australia to make MPs out of us."
"Yeah, MPs." They roared at this. "Wyman, they're sendin' us home."
"Recon's gonna be personal bodyguard for the General."
"MacArthur is gonna have us build him another house at Hollandia."
"We're gonna be Red Cross girls," Polack