The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [36]
Hobart jumped in. "It's awright to go around screwing niggers and living with them." He laughed, seeking for approbation. "Perfectly all right, isn't it?"
"I don't see how you know so much about it, Colonel Conn," Hearn said again. The thing was taking the form he had dreaded. Another exchange or two and he would have his choice of crawfishing or taking his punishment.
His earlier question was answered. When Conn was caught, he only pushed it a little further. "You can shut your mouth, Hearn. If I'm saying something I know what I'm talking about."
And like an echo, Dalleson getting in: "We know you're pretty goddam smart, Hearn." An approving titter flickered through the tent. They all did dislike him then, Hearn realized. He had known it and yet there was the trace of a pang. The Lieutenant beside him was sitting stiff, tensed, his elbow removed a careful inch from Hearn's.
He had pushed himself into this position, and the only thing to do was to carry it off. Alloyed with the outraged beating of his heart was fear and a detached, almost mild concern with what would happen to him. A court-martial perhaps?
As he spoke he felt a pride in the precision of his voice. "I was thinking, Colonel, that since you do know so much about it, you must have found out peeking through keyholes."
A few startled laughs answered him and Conn's face expanded with rage. The red of his nose extended slowly out to his cheeks, his forehead, the blue veins startling now, a cluster of purple roots which held his choler. He was obviously searching for speech like a player who has dropped a ball and runs in frantic circles trying to locate it. When he spoke it would be terrible. Even Webber had stopped eating.
"Gentlemen, please!"
It was the General calling across the length of the tent. "I won't have any more of this."
It silenced them all, cast a hush through the tent in which even the clacking of the tableware was muted, and then the reaction set in with a chorus of whispers and small exclamations, an uncomfortable self-conscious return to the food before them. Hearn was furious with himself, disgusted by the relief he had felt when the General intervened.
Father dependence.
Beneath the surface of his thoughts he had known, he realized now, that the General would protect him, and an old confused emotion caught him again, resentment and yet something else, something not so genuine.
Conn, Dalleson and Hobart were glaring at him, a trio of ferocious marionettes. He brought his spoon up, champed at the remote sweet pulp of the canned peach which mingled so imperfectly with the nervous bile in his throat, the hot sour turmoil of his stomach. After a moment he clanked the spoon down, and sat staring at the table. Conn and Dalleson were talking self-consciously now like people who know they are being listened to by strangers on a bus or train. He heard a fragment or two, something about their work for the afternoon.
At least Conn would be having indigestion too.
The General stood up quietly, and walked out of the tent. It gave permission for the rest of them to leave. Conn's eyes met Hearn's for a moment and they both looked away in embarrassment. After a minute or so, Hearn slid off the bench, and strolled outside. His clothing was completely wet, the air caressing against it like cool water.
He lit a cigarette and strolled irritably through the bivouac, halting when he reached the barbed wire, and then pacing back underneath the coconut trees, staring morosely at the scattered clusters of dark-green pup tents. When he had completed the circuit, he clambered down the bluff that led to the beach, and walked along through the sand, kicking abstractedly at pieces of discarded equipment still left from invasion day. A few trucks motored by, and a detail of men shuffled in file through the sand carrying shovels against their shoulders. Out in the water a few freighters were anchored, yawing lazily in the midday heat. Over to his left a landing craft was approaching a supply dump.
Hearn finished the cigarette and