The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [93]
The conversation wavered back again, passed through a minor discussion, flitted about the campaign. After a decent interval, Hearn left him and went back to his fly tent. But in the darkness, listening to the stiff starched rustle of the leaves on the coconut trees, Hearn found it difficult to sleep. Out around him spread the miles of jungle, the endless spaces of the southern heavens with their unfamiliar stars.
Something had happened tonight, but already it seemed exaggerated, out of proportion. He did not quite believe what he had heard. The scene was involuted now, something warped by a dream. Only he found himself laughing quietly on his cot.
The shoddy motive.
If you searched something long enough, it always turned to dirt. But even in his laughter Hearn had a picture of himself, saw his big body writhing slightly in mirth on his cot, saw his own shock of black hair, his features contorting in this curious convulsive mirth.
Once a woman who had been his mistress for a time had brought him a mirror in the morning, and said, "Look at yourself, you're just like an ape when you're in bed."
The mirth was a little exasperated now, his limbs almost feverish. Jesus, what a situation.
But when morning came, Hearn was no longer sure that anything had happened at all.
Chorus:
WOMEN
The second squad is digging a new latrine. It is midafternoon and the sun is lancing through a gap in the coconut trees and refracting brightly from the rough stubbled ground. Minetta and Polack are down in the trench, working slowly. Their shirts are removed and there is a wide band of moisture on their pants under their belts. Every ten or fifteen seconds a spadeful of earth lofts out of the hole and drops with a light pattering sound on the mound of soil beside the latrine.
MINETTA: (sighing) That lucky wop, Toglio. (He leans his foot against the shovel.) You think we're lucky being back here? Up there you can get wounded and go home. (He snorts.) All right, so he can't move his elbow so good.
POLACK: Who needs an elbow to screw with?
BROWN: (He is sitting on a stump beside the hole.) Yeah, let me tell you guys something. Toglio's going to go back and find his wife fooling around with anything that wears pants. There ain't a woman you can trust.
STANLEY: (He is sprawled beside Brown.) Oh, I don't know, I trust my wife. There's all kinds of women.
BROWN: (bitterly) They're all the same.
MINETTA: Yeah, well, I trust my girl friend.
POLACK: I wouldn't trust those bitches with a nickel.
BROWN: (picking eagerly at his snub nose) That's what I believe. (He talks to Minetta, who has stopped digging.) You trust your girl friend, huh?
MINETTA: Sure, I do. She knows when she's got something good.
BROWN: You think you can give her a better piece of ass than anybody else?
MINETTA: I ain't been beat yet.
BROWN: I'll tell you something, you're a kid. You don't know what a good piece means. . . Tell me something, Minetta, you ever been laid with your shoes off? (Stanley and Polack roar with laughter.)
MINETTA: Haw, haw.
BROWN: I'll tell you what, Minetta. You just ask yourself a couple of questions. Do you think there's anything special about you?
MINETTA: That ain't for me to say.
BROWN: Well, I'll tell you, there ain't. You're just an ordinary guy. There's not a damn thing special about any of us, not about Polack or you or Stanley or me. We're just a bunch of GIs. (Brown is enjoying himself.) Okay. While we're home, and slipping a little meat to them every night, they're all lovey-dovey. Oh, they can't do enough for ya. But the minute you go away they start thinking.
MINETTA: Yeah, my Rosie thinks of me.
BROWN: You bet she does. She starts thinking of how good it was to have it steady. Listen, she's a young girl, and if she's as beautiful as my wife is, she's missing her good time. There's lots of guys around, lots of four-Fs and USO commandos, and pretty soon she lets herself be talked into going out on a date. And then she dances and starts rubbing up against a guy. . .
MINETTA: Rosie wrote