The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [86]
He walked back to the recreation tent and went inside. Rafferty had filled the lamps and lit them, and already the evening influx of officers had begun. Two card games had been started, and several of the officers were beginning to use the writing tables.
"Hey, Hearn, you want to come in on some poker?" It was Mantelli, one of Hearn's few friends in the headquarters.
"All right." Hearn pulled up a chair. Since the tent had been set up, Hearn had spent his evenings here in unstated defiance of the General. Actually he found it dull and uncomfortable, for it became tremendously hot inside and the air filled quickly with cigarette and cigar smoke, but this was a part of the continual sparring that went on between the General and himself. The General had wanted him to build the tent -- all right, he would use it. But, tonight, after his realization about Rafferty, the idea of seeing the General gave Hearn an intimation of dread. There had been very few people he ever feared, but he was beginning to think he was afraid of the General. The cards came around to him, and he shuffled them and dealt, playing mechanically without much interest. He could feel himself perspiring already, and he stripped his shirt and hung it on the back of his chair. It went this way every evening. By eleven o'clock virtually all the officers were in their undershirts, and the tent stank of sweat and smoke.
"Those cards are gonna be hot for me tonight." Mantelli grinned, his small mouth twisted around a cigar.
The babel of chatter was dense already, saturated in the smoke. Somewhere, far off in the jungle, some artillery fired once, the sound thudding in Hearn's head like a jaded angry nerve. Division's nightly smoker, he muttered to himself.
He had played only a few hands with moderate luck when there was an interruption. The General for the first time had come into the tent. "Attention!" somebody bawled.
"At ease, gentlemen," the General murmured. He stared about the tent, his nostrils wrinkling faintly at the odor. "Hearn," the General called.
"Sir?"
"I need you." He waved his hand slightly, his voice brisk and impersonal. While Hearn was still buttoning on his shirt, he left the tent.
"Go ahead, run to poppa," Mantelli grinned.
Hearn was angry. Normally, the fact that the General had come to him would have been pleasing, but the General's voice had humiliated him. For a moment he actually considered remaining in the tent. "I'll get back that money later," he said to Mantelli.
"Not tonight, huh?" one of the other officers at the table gibed.
"My master's voice," Hearn said.
He finished buttoning his shirt, kicked his chair back into place, and walked through the tent. In one corner a few officers were drinking up one of their ration bottles of whisky.
He heard them singing and then he was fumbling with the folds of the double curtain at the blackout exit. After the lights inside, he was blinded as he emerged into the dark cool air, so blinded that he almost collided with the General, who had been waiting for him.
"Sorry, I thought you'd gone on ahead," Hearn muttered.
"It's all right." The General strolled slowly toward his own tent, and Hearn constrained his pace to keep from walking too fast. Had the General heard him say "My master's voice"? Aaah, to hell with him.
"What do you need me for, General?"
"We'll discuss that when we get to the tent."
"Yes, sir." Between them for the moment there was some antagonism. They walked on in silence, their feet crunching into the gravel walk. Only one or two men passed by them in the darkness; with the night, almost all activity halted in the bivouac. About them in the rough ellipse of their area Hearn could feel almost tangibly the ring of enlisted men sitting in their foxholes on guard. "Quiet tonight," he muttered,
"Yes."
At the entrance to the General's