The Naked and the Dead (103 page)

            They lay like this until evening, too weak to move, absorbing a faint pleasure from resting, feeling the sun upon them. They did not talk. Their resentment had turned toward each other and they felt the dull sour hatred of men who have shared a humiliating failure together. The hours passed and they drowsed, became conscious again, fell asleep once more, woke with the nausea that comes from slumbering in the sunlight.

            Goldstein sat up at last, and fumbled for his canteen. Very slowly, as though learning the motions for the first time, he unscrewed the cap and tilted it to his mouth. He had not realized how thirsty he was. The first taste of the water in his mouth was ecstatic. He made himself swallow slowly, setting the canteen down after each gulp. When it was half empty he noticed Ridges watching him. Somehow it was obvious that Ridges had no water left.

            Ridges could walk up to the stream, and fill his canteen but Goldstein knew what that meant. He was so weak. The thought of standing up, of walking even a hundred yards, was a torment he could not bear to face. And Ridges must feel the same way.

            Goldstein was annoyed. Why hadn't Ridges been more thoughtful, saved his water? He felt stubborn and tilted the canteen to his mouth again. But the drink tasted suddenly brackish. Goldstein was conscious of how warm it had become. He forced himself to take one more drink.

            Then, feeling an unutterable sense of shame, he handed it to Ridges.

            "Here, you want a drink?"

            "Yeah." Ridges drank thirstily. When he had almost emptied the canteen he looked at Goldstein.

            "No, finish it."

            "We're gonna have to rustle in the jungle for food tomorrow," Ridges said.

            "I know."

            Ridges smiled weakly. "We'll git along."

13

            When Roth missed the leap, the platoon was shattered. For ten minutes they huddled together on the shelf, too stricken, too terrified, to move on. An incommunicable horror affected them all. They stood upright, frozen to the wall, their fingers clenched into the fissures of the rock, their legs powerless. Once or twice Croft tried to rouse them, but they shied away from the commands, petrified by his voice as though they were dogs terrified by a master's boot. Wyman was sobbing in nervous exhaustion, quietly, thinly, a small steady wailing, and into it fitted their own voices, a grunt or a small moan or a hysterical curse, random things, disconnected, so that the men who uttered them were hardly aware that they had spoken.

            Their will recovered enough for them to continue, but they moved at a frantically slow pace, refusing to step forward for seconds at a time before some minor obstacle, clinging to the wall ferociously wherever the ledge became narrow again. After half an hour Croft finally brought them out, and the ledge widened and crossed the ridge. Beyond was nothing but another deep valley, another precipitous slope. He led them down to the bottom, and started up the next ascent, but they did not follow him. One by one they sprawled down on the ground, looked at him with blank staring eyes.

            It was almost dark, and he knew he could not drive them any more; they were too exhausted, too frightened, and another accident might occur. He called a halt, giving approval to what was already a fact, and sat down in their midst.

            On the next morning there would be the slope, a few gullies to traverse, and then the main ridge of the mountain to be crossed. They could do it in two or three hours if. . . if he could stir them again. At that moment he doubted himself seriously.

            The platoon slept poorly. It was very difficult to find level ground, and of course they were overtired, their limbs too tense. Most of them dreamed and muttered in their sleep. To cap it all, Croft gave them each an hour of guard, and some of them awoke too early and waited nervously for many minutes before going on, found it difficult afterward to fall asleep. Croft had been aware of this, knew they needed the extra rest and knew it was virtually impossible there would be any Japanese on the mountain, but he had felt it more important not to break routine. Roth's death had temporarily shattered his command, and it was vital to start repairing it.

            Gallagher had the last shift. It was very cold in the half hour before daylight and he woke up dazed, and sat shuddering in his blanket. For many minutes he was conscious of little, feeling the vast shapes of the mountain range about him as no more than a deeper border to the night. He only shivered and drowsed, waiting passively for the morning and the heat of the sun. A complete lethargy had settled over him, and Roth's death was remote. He drifted through a stupor, his mind almost inert, dreaming sluggishly of far-gone pleasant things as though deep within him he had to keep a small fire going against the cold of the night, the space of the hills, and the cumulative exhaustion, the mounting deaths of the platoon.

            The dawn came slowly on the mountain. At five o'clock he could see the top of the mountain range clearly as the sky became lighter, but for a long half hour there was little change. Actually he could see nothing, but his body contained a tranquil anticipation. Soon the sun would struggle over the eastern ramparts of the mountain and come down into their little valley. He searched the sky and found a few tentative washes of pink streaming over the higher peaks, coloring the tiny oblong clouds of the dawn a purple. The mountains looked very high. Gallagher wondered that the sun could get over them.

            All about him now it was getting lighter but it was a subtle process, for the sun still remained hidden and the light seemed to rise from the ground, a soft rose color. Already he could discern clearly the bodies of the men sleeping about him, and he felt a touch of superiority. They looked gaunt and bleak in the early dawn, oblivious to the approach of morning. He knew that in a short while he would be rousing them, and they would groan as they came out of their sleep.

            In the west he could still see the night, and he recalled a troop train speeding across the great plains of Nebraska. It had been twilight then, and the night chased the train out of the east, overtook it, and passed on across the Rockies, on to the Pacific. It had been beautiful and it made him wistful now. He longed suddenly for America, wished so passionately to see it again that he could smell the odor of wet cobblestones on a summer morning in South Boston.

            The sun was close to the eastern ridge-line now and the sky seemed vast, yet fresh and joyful. He thought of Mary and himself camping in a little pup tent in the mountains and he dreamt that he was waking with the velvet teasing touch of her breasts against his face. He heard her say, "Get up, sleepyhead, and look at the dawn." He grunted drowsily, nuzzled against her in his fantasy and then popped open one eye as a grudging concession. The sun
was
clearing the ridge, and while the light in the valley was still faint, there was nothing unreal about it. The morning was here.

            In that way Mary ushered in the dawn with him. The hills were shaking off the night mists and the dew was sparkling. For this brief moment the ridges about him appeared soft and feminine. All the men scattered around him looked damp and chilly, dark bundles from which mist rose. He was the only man awake for a distance of many miles, and he had the youth of the morning all to himself.

            Out of the dawn, far on the other side of the mountain, he could hear artillery booming. It shattered his reverie. Mary was dead.

            Gallagher swallowed, wondering with a dumb misery how long it would be before he would stop tricking himself. There was nothing now to anticipate, and he was conscious for the first time of how tired he was. His limbs ached and his sleep seemed to have done him no good. The character of the dawn changed, left him shuddering in his blanket, damp and cold from the night's dew.

            There was still his child, the boy he had never seen, but that did not cheer him. He believed he would never live to see him, and the knowledge was almost without pain, a dour certainty in his mind. Too many men had been killed. My number's coming. With a sick fascination, he envisioned a factory, watched his bullet being made, packed into a carton.

            If only I could see a picture of the kid. His eyes misted. It wasn't so much to ask. If only he could get back from this patrol and live long enough for some mail to come with a picture of his kid.

            But he was miserable again, certain he had tricked himself. He shivered from fright, looking about him uneasily at the mountains reared on every side.

            I killed Roth.

            He knew he was guilty. He remembered the momentary power and contempt he had felt as he bawled at Roth to jump, the quick sure pleasure of it. He twisted uncomfortably on the ground, recalling the bitter agony on Roth's face as he missed the step. Gallagher could see him falling and falling, and the image scraped along his spine like chalk squeaking on a blackboard. He had sinned and he was going to be punished. Mary was the first warning and he had disregarded it.

            The mountain peak before them seemed so high. Gone now were the gentle outlines of the dawn; Anaka mounted before him, turret above turret, ridge beyond ridge. Near the peak he could see a bluff which encircled the crest. It was almost vertical and they would never be able to ascend it. He shuddered once more. He had never seen country like this; it was so barren, forbidding. Even the slopes of jungle and brush above them were cruel. He would never be able to make it today; already his chest ached, and when he slung his pack and began the climb again he would be exhausted in a few minutes. There was no reason to keep going; how many men had to be killed?

            What the fug is it to Croft? he wondered.

            It would be easy to kill him. Croft would be at the point and all he would have to do would be to raise his rifle, take aim, and the patrol would be over. They could turn back. He rubbed his thigh slowly, absorbed and uneasy from the force with which it appealed to him. Sonofabitch.

            It was no way to think. His superstitious dread came back; each time he thought like this he was preparing his own punishment. And yet. . . It was Croft's fault that Roth had been killed. He really couldn't be blamed.

            Gallagher heard a sound behind him and started. It was Martinez rubbing his head nervously. "Sonbitch, no sleep," Martinez said softly.

            "Yeah."

            Martinez sat down beside him: "Bad dreams." He lit a cigarette moodily. "Fall asleep. . . eeeeh. . . Hear Roth yell."

            "Yeah, it hits ya," Gallagher muttered. He tried to reduce it to a more normal frame. "I never liked the guy particularly, but I never wanted him to get it like that. I never wanted nobody to get hit."

            "Nobody," Martinez repeated. He massaged his forehead tenderly as if he had a headache. Gallagher was surprised how bad Martinez looked. His thin face had become hollow, and his eyes had a blank lusterless stare. He needed a shave badly, and dark streaks of grime had filleted all the lines in his face, making him appear much older.

            "This is a rough deal," Gallagher muttered.

            "Yah." Martinez exhaled some smoke carefully and they watched it glide away in the early morning air. "Cold," he muttered.

            "It was a sonofabitch on guard," Gallagher said hoarsely.

            Martinez nodded once more. His watch had come at midnight and he had been unable to sleep since then. His blankets had chilled; he had shuddered, twisted nervously for the rest of the night. Even now in the dawn, there was little release. His body still held the tension that had kept him awake, and he was bothered by the same diffused dread he had suffered all night. It had lain heavily on his body as though he were in fever. For over an hour he had been unable to rid himself of the expression on the face of the Japanese soldier he had killed. It was extremely vivid to him, and it reproduced the paralysis he had felt as he waited in the bushes with the knife in his hand. The empty scabbard clanked against his thigh, and he trembled delicately, a little shamefully. He fingered it with a twitching hand.

            "Why the fug don't you throw the scabbard away?" Gallagher asked.

            "Yah," Martinez said quickly. He felt embarrassed, meek. His fingers shook as he worked the hooks of the scabbard out of the eyelets in his cartridge belt. He tossed it away and winced at the empty clattering sound it made. Both of them started, and Martinez had a sudden gout of anxiety.

            Gallagher could hear Hennessey's helmet spinning in the sand. "I'm gone to pot," he murmured.

            Martinez felt automatically for the scabbard, realized it was gone, and with a sudden congealing of his flesh saw Croft telling him to be silent about his reconnaissance. Hearn had gone out believing. . . Martinez shook his head, choked by relief and horror. It wasn't his fault that they were on the mountain.

            Abruptly the pores of his body opened, discharged their perspiration. He shivered in the cold mountain air, wrestling against the same anxiety he had suffered on the troopship the hours before they had invaded Anopopei. Against his will he stared up at the tessellated stones and jungle of the upper ridges, closed his eyes and saw the ramp of the landing boat going down. His body tensed, waiting for the machine-gun fire. Nothing happened and he opened his eyes, racked by an acute frustration. Something had to happen.

            If only he could see a snapshot of his kid, Gallagher thought. "It's a goddam trap goin' up this mountain," he muttered.

            Martinez nodded.

            Gallagher extended his arm, touched Martinez's elbow for a moment. "Why don't we go back?" he asked.

            "I don't know."

            "It's fuggin suicide. What are we, a bunch of goddam mountain goats?" He rubbed the coarse itching hairs of his beard. "Listen, we'll all get knocked off."