The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [145]
"All you're good for is charging a chow line."
"Ain't it the truth. I got a desk job, flat feet, Hollandia, Stateside, Pentagon, I wear eyeglasses, I cough. . . listen."
Hearn shoved him playfully. "Do you want a word with the General?"
"Sure, get me in USO." They walked in together to chow.
After breakfast Hearn reported to the General's tent. Cummings was sitting at his desk studying an Air Corps engineer report. "They won't have the airfield ready for two months. They switched a priority on me."
"That's too bad, sir."
"Naturally I'm expected to win the damn campaign without it." The General griped abstractedly as if unaware of the identity of the man before him. "This is the only division in action at the moment which doesn't have any dependable air support." The General wiped his mouth carefully, looked at Hearn. "I thought the tent was pretty good this morning."
"Thank you, sir." Hearn was annoyed with the pleasure this gave him.
Cummings extracted a pair of eyeglasses from a drawer in the desk, wiped them slowly, and put them on. This was one of the few times Hearn had seen him wearing eyeglasses, and they made him look older somehow. After a moment Cummings took them off and held them in his hand.
"You junior officers getting all your liquor supplies?"
"Why, yes, I believe we are."
"Mm." Cummings clasped his hands.
Now, what was this all about? Hearn wondered. "Why do you ask?" he said at last.
But the General didn't answer. "I'm taking a trip up to Second Battalion this morning. Will you tell Richman to have the jeep ready for me in about ten minutes?"
"Am I coming along, sir?"
"Eh, no. You see Horton. I want you to go out to the beach, and pick up some extra supplies for officers' mess."
"Yes, sir." A little puzzled, Hearn went down to the motor pool, gave the order to Richman, the General's driver, and then saw Major Horton, who gave him a list of supplies to be purchased from a Liberty ship out in the harbor.
Hearn collected a detail of three men from the first sergeant of headquarters company, requisitioned a weapons carrier, and drove down to the beach. Already the morning had become hot, and the sun, obscured by overcast, refracted from the jungle and heated the moist dank air. Occasionally on the trip along the road, the sound of some artillery would eddy back to them, heavy and depressed like a heat storm on a summer night. Hearn was sweating by the time they reached the end of the peninsula.
After a few minutes' wait, he was able to requisition a landing craft, and they rode out over the water to where the freighters were anchored. A mile or two away over the sullen torpid water, Anopopei was almost obscured by haze, and the sun, a smudged yellow, burned a fierce gap through the sluggish vault of the clouds. Even on the water it was extremely hot.
The landing craft cut off its motors, and drifted in against the side of the freighter. When it bumped against the side, Hearn caught the ladder and climbed up to the deck. Above him on the rail were a number of seamen staring at him, and the blank look on their faces, critical and slightly disdainful, irritated him. He stared down through the rungs of the ship ladder at the landing craft, which had backed off toward the loading crane at the bow of the ship. Hearn found himself sweating again from the minor exertion of climbing the ladder.
"Who's in charge of ship's stores?" he asked one of the seamen at the rail.
The sailor looked at him, and then without speaking jerked a thumb in the direction of a hatch. Hearn walked past him, pushed open the heavy hatch door, and started down a ladder. The heat smote him with an unexpected shock; he had forgotten how unbearable a ship's hold could become.
And of course it stank. He felt like an insect crawling through the entrails of a horse. "Damn," he muttered in disgust. As usual the ship smelled of stale cooking -- fat mixed with something as nauseous as the curds from a grease trap. Abstractedly, he rubbed his finger against a bulkhead and drew it away wet. All over the ship the bulkheads sweated a film of oil and water.