The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [45]
Gallagher and Wilson were sprawled in their tent, smoking quietly without talking. "Whateya say, Red?" Wilson drawled at last.
Red wiped his forehead. "That kid Wyman! It used to be bad enough bunkin' with a Boy Scout like Toglio, but that kid Wyman. . ." He snorted. "They're gonna be sendin' 'em overseas soon with a sugar tit."
"Yeah, the platoon seems all topside-bottom since we got the replacements," Wilson complained. He sighed, and ran the sleeve of his fatigue shirt over his chin, which was moist with perspiration. "Weather's fixin' to act up," he said quietly.
"More fuggin rain," Gallagher snorted.
Dark slated clouds were washing the eastern sky and mounting thunderheads in the north and south. The air was leaden and moist, hanging limp without a murmur. Even the coconut trees seemed swollen and expectant, their leaves drooping languidly over and raw chopped earth of the bivouac.
"That corduroy we put in is gonna be washed out," Gallagher said. Red looked out across the area and scowled. The tents were sagging, and appeared gloomy and somber although the sun was still shining with a dull red glow in the west.
"Just so we don't get our tails wet," Red said.
He debated for a moment whether to go back to his tent and deepen the rain trench, which had almost overflowed in the previous night's downpour, and then he shrugged. It was about time Wyman learned how to do it. He crouched and dropped into the hole in which Gallagher and Wilson were resting now. It was a hole about two feet deep and about as wide and long as a double bed. Wilson and Gallagher slept side by side in it with two blankets between them and the earth. Overhead they had anchored a ridgepole of bamboo on two uprights, had draped their combined ponchos over it, and staked the ends to the ground on each side of the hole. It was possible to kneel inside the tent without bumping one's head against the ridgepole, but not even an eight-year-old child could have stood in it. From outside, the shelter appeared to be no more than two feet above the level of the ground. This tent was typical of almost all the pup tents in the bivouac.
Red lay down between them, and stared out at the obtuse triangle of sky and jungle visible from the head of the tent. They had dug the hole to fit their bodies, and Red's long legs dangled over the rain trench at the entrance. When the rain blew in the open end, it collected in the trench, which was lower than any other part of the hole. Now it was still muddy.
"Next time you men dig a tent right, so a guy can get in it," Red said. He guffawed.
"If you men don' like it, get the hell out," Gallagher grumbled.
"That's your Boston hospitality," Red said.
"Yeah, we got no place for fuggin bums," Gallagher kidded heavily. The purple lumps on his face looked swollen and putrefactive in the dull light.
Wilson giggled. "Ah say only thing worse'n a damyankee is a fella from Boston."
"They wouldn't let you in a town where you had to wear some fuggin shoes," Gallagher snorted. He lit a cigarette and turned over on his stomach. "Got to know how to read and write if you want to come north," he said.
Wilson was a little hurt. "Listen, boy," he told him, "Ah may not be able to read eve'thin' so good, but they ain't a thing Ah cain't do if Ah set mah mind to't." There had been that time, he was thinking, when Willy Perkins had bought the first washing machine in town, and when it had gone on the bum, he'd taken it all apart and then fixed it. "They ain't a thing Ah cain't fix if it's piece of machinery," he said. He took off his glasses and wiped the perspiration from them with a corner of his handkerchief. "Once Ah remember there was a fella in town who had an English bicycle. American one wa'n't good 'nough for him. He lost some of the ball bearin's out of it, and they wa'n' none Ah could get to fit, so Ah jus' took an American ball-bearin'