The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [207]
Croft laughed quietly and coldly. "Goddam, I don't know, he's been dicking-off lately."
"I wonder if he's really sick," Stanley said doubtfully.
Croft shook his head. "You cain't trust Wilson any further'n you can throw him."
"That's the way I had him tabbed." Stanley felt good. Brown was always saying that nobody could get along with Croft, but he didn't know how to work it. Croft was okay, you just had to approach him on the right tack. It was all right when you could buddy with the noncoms over you.
Yet Stanley had been very tense all the while he had been talking to Croft. In his first weeks in the platoon he had acted similarly toward Brown, but now that tension was switched to Croft. Stanley never said anything to him without some purpose. It was an automatic process, however. He never thought consciously, It's a good idea to agree with Croft. At the moment he believed what he was saying; his mind worked more quickly, more effectively than his speech, so that sometimes Stanley was almost surprised at his own words. "Yeah, Wilson's an odd guy," he muttered.
"Uh-huh."
Yet for a moment Stanley was depressed. Perhaps he had started to buddy with Croft too late. What good was it to him now that the Lieutenant had come into the platoon? One of the reasons he resented Hearn was that he had hoped Croft would be commissioned, and there might have been a chance for him to fill the vacancy. He could not visualize either Martinez or Brown as platoon sergeant. Actually, this ambition was vague precisely because he did not want to halt there. Stanley had no single goal; his dreams were always vague.
Indeed, as they talked, Croft and Stanley were sensing a similarity between themselves, and it drew them together. Croft felt a mild affection for him. This Stanley kid ain't too bad, he told himself.
The deck under their feet shuddered as the boat slapped against a few waves. The sun was almost down, and the sky overhead was clouding over. It was the least bit chill, and they drew closer to light cigarettes.
Gallagher had worked his way up to the bow. He stood quiet beside them, his thin knotted body shivering a little. They listened to the water sloshing about the bottom of the boat. "One minute you're hot, and then you're cold," Gallagher muttered.
Stanley smiled at him. He felt it necessary to be tactful with Gallagher since his wife had died and it irked him. Basically, he had only contempt for Gallagher and annoyance, for Gallagher made him uncomfortable. "How're you feeling, boy?" Stanley said, however.
"All right." But Gallagher was depressed. The grayness of the sky made him mournful; he had been exceptionally sensitive to the moods of the weather since Mary's death, and often now he languished in a gentle melancholy close to easy tears. He felt little volition, and surprisingly little bitterness; the façade of anger remained, even erupted occasionally in a spate of profanity, but Red and Wilson and one or two of the others had recognized the change. "Yeah, I'm all right," he muttered again. Stanley's sympathy irritated him, for he sensed it to be false; Gallagher was more perceptive now.
He wondered why he had come up beside them, and thought of moving back to his cot, but it was warmer here. The bow lurched and bumped under his feet and he grunted. "How long are they gonna keep us here like goddam sardines?" he growled.
Croft and Stanley, after a pause, were talking about the patrol again, and Gallagher listened with resentment. "You know what the mother-fugger'll be like?" he blurted. "We'll be lucky to get out of there with our goddam heads on." He felt a quick remorse which was mixed with fear. I got to cut out that swearing, he told himself. In the past week and a half since the last letter had come, Gallagher had been making attempts to reform. His profanity was sinful, he believed, and he was afraid of more retribution.
The talk about the patrol frightened him, and his remorse at swearing added to this. Once again Gallagher saw himself lying dead in a field, and it loosed a nervous flush along his back which prickled painfully. He could see the dead Japanese soldier whom Croft had killed, still lying in the green draw.