The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [46]
"Pretty clever," Gallagher sneered. "In Boston you could get any kind of ball bearing you wanted."
"A man's better if he can do without at times," Wilson muttered.
Red snickered. "I don't see where you're such a damn sight better doing without your pussy." They all laughed. "That's somep'n a man should never do without," Wilson admitted. He rubbed his hand reflectively against one of the earthen walls of the hole. "In Boston," Gallagher said, "if one of your buddies gets a piece, he lets you know about it." Immediately afterward he felt ashamed. He made a mental note to remember what he had just said when he went to Chaplain Hogan for confession. The resolution made him feel better. He was always forgetting the bad things he had done when he did go to confession. Sometimes when he would be trying to collect his bad thoughts before he saw Father Hogan, he could not remember any of them, and he would have to go in and say only, "Father, I have blasphemed."
Mary knew so little about him, Gallagher thought. She didn't even know the way he swore. But that was just a bad habit he had picked up in the Army, Gallagher told himself. He had used bad language before when he was with the gang, but that didn't count. He was just a kid then. He had never sworn when a woman was around.
Gallagher began to think of the gang. What a good bunch of guys they were, he told himself with pride. There had been the time they passed out pamphlets to get McCarthy elected in Roxbury. He had even made a speech afterward, saying that his victory was due to his loyal cohorts. And there was the time they had made that raid into Dorchester, and had taught the Yids a lesson. They had picked one kid about eleven who was coming home from school and they had surrounded him, and Whitey Lydon had asked, "What the hell are ya?" The kid had trembled and said, "I don't know." "You're a mockey," Whitey had told him, "that's what you are, a fuggin mockey." He had held the kid by his shirt, and said, "Now, what areya?"
"I'm a mockey," the kid had said. He was about to cry.
"All right," Lydon had told him, "spell it. Spell 'mockey.' "
The kid had stammered, "M-o-c-c-i."
What a roar that had been, Gallagher thought. M-o-c-c-i. The dumb kid had been so afraid he must have crapped his pants. The goddam Yids. Gallagher remembered how Lydon had got on the police force. What a break that had been for him; with a little luck he could have got a job like that too. But of all the work he had done in his spare time for the Democratic Club, he hadn't got anything for it. What was wrong? He wanted to do big things. He would even have got a job in the post office if it hadn't been for that Alderman Shapiro and his fuggin nephew Abie or Jakie. Gallagher felt a deep resentment. There was always something to beat him. He felt his mute anger growing, and because it gave him a rich satisfaction to say it, he burst out suddenly, "I see we got a couple of fuggin Yids in the platoon."
"Yeah," Red said. He knew one of Gallagher's tirades was beginning and it bored him. "Yeah," he sighed, "they're sonsofbitches just like the rest of us."
Gallagher turned on him. "They only been in one week and already they're lousin' up the platoon."
"Ah don't know," Wilson murmured; "that Roth ain't much good, but the other fellow, that Goldstein or Goldberg or whatever the hell his name is, he ain't a bad boy. Ah was workin' with him today, and we got to talkin' about the best way to lay down a corduroy."
"I wouldn't trust a fuggin one of them," Gallagher said fiercely.
Red yawned and drew his feet up. "It's beginning to rain," he said.
A few drops were pattering on the tent. The sky was a unique color; it had the leaden-greenish surface of stained glass, but there was a sheen, too, as though an intense light were shining on the other side of the pane. "It's gonna rain like a sonofabitch," he said. He lay back again. "You guys got your tent anchored okay?"