The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [219]
"If I ever get out of the Army," Brown said, "I'm headin' for the bucks. I'm tired of kickin' around."
"They ain't found anyt'ing better than that yet."
Brown looked at Polack, shuffling through the water beside him. Polack wasn't a bad kid, he thought. Just a little skinny guy who never had any education. The chances were he'd never get anywhere. "What do you figure on doin', Polack?" Brown asked.
Polack recognized the condescension. "I'll get along," he said shortly. Like the flick of a lash, he remembered his family and grimaced. What a dumb Polack his old man had been. Poor all his life. Aaah, it makes you tough, he decided. A guy like Brown could shoot his mouth off, but when you knew the way to make a pile you kept quiet. In Chicago you could do it; that was a town. Women and lots of noise, lots of big operators. "They can keep this goddam jungle," he said. The water was a little deeper and he felt it tickling against the back of his knees. If he hadn't got in the Army he'd probably be workin' right under Kabriskie now. "A-a-ah," Polack said.
And Brown was dejected. He did not know why, but the oppression of the air, the resistance of the current, had exhausted him already. He felt an unreasonable catch of fear. "Boy, I hate these goddam packs," he said.
The river was mounting a series of minor cascades. Coming around a turn the men were almost spilled by the force of the current over a rapids. The water was shockingly cold, and the men scrambled for the bank and held onto the wall of foliage that grew to the river's edge. "C'mon, let's keep goin'," Croft shouted. The bank was almost five feet high, which made it difficult to advance. The men moved along with their bodies parallel to the wet clay walls of the bank, their eyes on a level with the jungle floor. They extended their arms, caught a root, and pulled themselves toward it, their chests scraping against the bank, their feet drudging through the water. Their hands and faces became scratched, their fatigue uniforms covered with mud. For perhaps ten minutes they progressed in this way.
The river leveled again, and they advanced in file a few feet from the bank, toiling slowly through the river mud. At times aware of the intricate liquid rustlings of the brush, the screams of the birds and animals, the murmuring of the river, they were usually conscious only of their own parched sobs. They were becoming very tired. The weaker men in the platoon had lost the first sensitive control of their limbs and wavered in the current or floundered in one place for many seconds at a time, buckling to their knees from the weight of their packs.
They came to another rapids which was too rocky, too swift, to be crossed on foot. Croft and Hearn discussed it for a minute, and then Croft clambered up the bank with Brown, hacked his way a few feet into the brush, and cut some thick vines which he tied together with large square knots. He started to tie one end about his waist. "I'm gonna take it across, Lootenant," he said.
Hearn shook his head. Croft, effectively had been leading the patrol until now, but this was something he could do himself. "I'll take a whack at it, Sergeant."
Croft shrugged.
Hearn fastened the vine about his belt, and stepped out into the rapids. He was planning to carry the vine upstream, across to the other bank, where it could provide a life rope for the platoon. But it was much more difficult than he had expected. Hearn had left his pack and carbine with Croft, yet even unfettered the crossing was exceptionally demanding. He waded through the rapids, stumbling from rock to rock, slipping to his knees many times. Once he went under completely, rammed his shoulder against one of the stones, and came up gasping for air, faint from the pain. It took him almost three minutes to move fifty yards and when he reached the other bank he was exhausted. For thirty seconds he remained motionless, panting and coughing from the water he had swallowed. Then he stood up, 466
lashed the vine about a tree, while Brown tied the other end to the roots of a sturdy bush.