The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [82]
The long sliding of a belly against a belly.
I love ya better than any man ever could.
You do, baby, you do.
Ah'm jus' an old fuggin machine. (Crack. . . that. . . whip! Crack. . .that. . .WHIP!)
After they married, Croft rented a little house on the ranch from his father. He and Janey petered out for each other through a slow taciturn year, through a thousand incidents which they forgot while the effects still remained. At night they would sit by themselves in the parlor, listen to the radio and seldom talk. In a dumb instinctive way, Croft would search for an approach.
Want to go to bed?
It's early, Sam.
Yeah. And an anger would work in him. They had torn at each other once, had felt sick when they were close together and other people were with them. Now, in sleep their bodies intruded; there was always a heavy limb in the way. And the nights together working on them, this new change, this living together between them like a heavy dull weight, washing dishes and mouthing familiar kisses.
The buddy system.
But he wanted no buddy. In the quiet nights in the cheap parlor of this house set on the Texas plains, an undefined rage increased and increased. There were the things he did not know how to utter (the great space of the night), the fury between them balked almost completely now. There were the trips to town, the drinking bouts between them, the occasional kindling of their bodies in a facsimile of their earlier passion, only confusing and protracting the irreversible reaction.
It ended with him going to town alone, and taking a whore when he was drunk, beating her sometimes with a wordless choler. And for Janey it resulted in other men, ranch hands, once one of his brothers.
"It jus' don' pay to marry a woman with hot pants," Jesse Croft said later.
Croft found out in a quarrel.
And another thing, you go tomcattin' to town, and jus' hellin' around, well, don' be thinkin' Ah'm jus' sittin' around. They's things Ah can tell you too.
What things?
You want to know, don't ya? You got yore water hot. Jus' don't push me around.
What things?
She laughs. Jus' a way of talkin'.
Croft slaps her across the face, catches her wrists and shakes her.
WHAT THINGS?
You sonofabitch. (Her eyes glaring.) You know what kind of things.
He strikes her so heavily that she falls.
That's one thing you ain't best in, she screams.
Croft stands there trembling and then wrenches out of the room. (Goddam whore.) He feels nothing and then anger and shame and then nothing again. At this moment his initial love, his initial need of her is full-throated again. (Jus' an ole fuggin machine.)
"If Sam coulda found any of the boys who was scooting up her pants, he'da killed 'em," Jesse Croft said. "He tore around like he was gonna choke us all with his hands and then he took off for town and threw himself about as good a drunk as Ah've seen him indulge. And when he got back he'd enlisted himself in the Army."
After that there were always other men's wives.
You must think I'm a pretty cheap woman going out with you like this.
Wouldn't say that. Everybody likes to have a good time.
That's it. (Drinking her beer.) That's my philosophy. Need to have a good time. You don't think a bit cheap of me, do you, soldier?
Hell, you're too good-lookin' a woman for me to think cheap. (Have another beer.)
And later. Jack don't treat me right. You understand me.
That's right, honey, I understand you. They roll together in bed.
Ain't nothing wrong with that philosophy, she says.
Not a damn thing wrong. (And. . . crack. . . that. . . WHIP!)
You're all fuggin whores, he thinks.
His ancestors pushed and labored and strained, drove their oxen, sweated their women, and moved a thousand miles.
He pushed and labored inside himself and smoldered with an endless hatred.
(You're all a bunch of fuggin whores)
(You're all a bunch of dogs)
(You're all deer to track)
I HATE EVERYTHING WHICH IS NOT IN MYSELF
6
The battle that began on the night of the storm carried over well into the next afternoon. The attack recon had