The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [357]
"They're puttin' the division on permanent KP."
Everything mixed in them. The boat, which had been almost silent, quivered from the men's laughter. Their voices, hoarse, trembling with mirth and anger, carried for a long distance over the water. Each time one of them said anything, it provoked new spasms of laughter. Even Croft was brought into it.
"Hey, Sergeant, I'm gonna be a cook, I hate to leave ya."
"Aaah, get the hell out, you're a bunch of goddam women," Croft drawled.
And this seemed funniest of all. They held weakly onto the stanchions of their bunks. "Do I have to leave now, Sergeant? There's a lot of water," Polack bawled. It rushed through them in a succession of confused waves like water ripples spreading out from a stone only to be balked by other wavelets formed by another stone. Every time someone opened his mouth they roared again, wild hysterical laughter, close to tears. The boat shook from it.
It died down slowly, erupted again several times like fire licking out from under a blanket, and finally wore itself out. There was nothing left but their spent bodies and the mild pleasure they found in releasing the tension upon their cheek muscles, soothing the ache of laughter in their chests, wiping their freshened eyes. And it was replaced by the flat extensive depression which overlay everything.
Polack tried to revive it again by singing but only a few of them joined him.
"Roll me over
In the clover.
Roll me over,
Lay me down
And do it again.
Ha' past three
I had her on my knee.
Lay me down,
Roll me over,
Do it again.
Roll me over in the clover. . ."
Their voices piped out feebly, lost in the flat placid washes of the blue sea. Their boat chugged along, the motors almost smothering the sound.
"Ha' past four
I had her on the floor.
Lay me down,
Roll me over,
Do it again."
Croft got out of his bunk and peered over the side, staring moodily at the water. He had not been told the date on which the campaign had been won, and he made the error of assuming it was the day they had failed on the mountain. If they had been able to climb it, the campaign would have depended upon them. He did not even question this. It was a bitter certainty in his mind. His jaw muscles quivered as he spat over the side.
"Ha' past five
We began to jive. . ."
They sang as if they were playing chimes, Polack and Red and Minetta, gathered together at the stern. At every pause Polack would blow out his cheeks and go "Waah-waaaah," like a trumpet when it is fanned with a mute. Gradually it was catching the others. "Where's Wilson?" one of them shouted, and they all stopped for a moment. They had heard the news of his death but it hadn't registered. And suddenly he was dead. They understood it. The knowledge shocked them, loosed the familiar unreality of war and death, and the song wavered over a syllable or two. "I'm gonna miss that old sonofabitch," Polack said.
"C'mon, let's keep going," Red muttered. Guys came and guys went, and after a while you didn't even remember their names.
"Roll me over in the clover."
They passed a bend in the island and saw Mount Anaka in the distance. It looked immense. "Boy, did we climb that?" Wyman asked.
Some of them scrambled up the side, pointing out slopes of the mountain to each other, arguing whether they had climbed each particular ridge. They had a startled pride in themselves. "It's a big sonofabitch."
"We did okay to go as far as we did."
That was the main sentiment. Already they were thinking how they would tell it to their buddies in other platoons.
"We just got lost in the shuffle. Everybody's gonna have a story to tell."
"Yeah."
And that pleased them too. The final sustaining ironies.
The song was still going on.
"Ha' past six
I had her doin' tricks.
Lay me down,
Roll me over,
Do it again."
Croft stared at the mountain. The inviolate elephant brooding over the jungle and the paltry hills.
It was pure and remote. In the late afternoon sunlight it was velvet green and rock blue and the brown of light earth, made of another material than the