The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [235]
Far in the distance, past the horizon, was something which did sound like surf, or perhaps like rolling muted thunder.
"Listen!" He touched Croft's arm.
The two of them lay rapt and attentive, their bodies prone at the crest of the hill. Again he could hear the thunder coming faintly, dully, through the falling night.
"That's artillery, Lootenant. It's coming from the other side of the mountain. I guess they's an attack goin' on."
"You're right." They were silent again, and Hearn handed Croft the field glasses. "You want to look again?" he asked.
"Don't mind if I do." Croft put up the glasses to his eyes again.
Hearn stared at him. There was an expression on Croft's face. He could not name it, but it sent a momentary shudder along his spine. The face was consecrated for that instant, the thin lips parted, the nostrils flared. For an instant he felt as if he had peered into Croft, looked down into an abyss. He turned away, gazed at his hands. You can't trust Croft. Somehow there was reassurance in stating it so banally. He looked out for a last time at the clouds and the mountain. This time it disturbed him more. The rocks were very great, and the darkening sky flowed over it in wave after wave of swirling mist. It was the kind of shore upon which huge ships would founder, smash apart, and sink in a few minutes.
Croft returned the glasses, and he put them back in the case. "Come on, we have to settle the guard before it's too dark," Hearn said.
Turning, they slid down the hill to the men in the hollow beneath them.
Chorus:
ROTATION
In the hollow that night, lying side by side.
BROWN : Listen, you know, before we left, I heard a rumor that the rotation quota is coming in next week, and headquarters company this time is gonna have ten men.
RED: (Snorting) Yeah, they'll clean out the orderlies.
MINETTA: How do you like that, though, here we are goin' out shorthanded, and they got a dozen orderlies back there for those lousy officers.
POLACK: You wouldn't take a job being orderly?
MINETTA: You're fuggin ay I wouldn't, I got my self-respect.
BROWN: But I'm not kidding, Red, maybe you and me'll be in it.
RED: How many did they have last month?
MARTINEZ: One man, month before two men.
RED: Yeah, one man out of a company. We got a hundred men in headquarters got eighteen months in. Listen, Brown, cheer up, all you got to do is wait a hundred months.
MINETTA: Aaah, it's a screwing.
BROWN: What do you care, Minetta? I swear, you ain't been overseas long enough to get a tan.
MINETTA: If you guys don't get out of here, I never will when my eighteen months come up. Just like a prison sentence, Jesus.
BROWN: .(Thoughtfully) You know, that's always when you get it. Remember Shaughnessy in P and D? Supposed to go home on rotation, got his orders and everything, and they send him out on a security patrol and he gets it.
RED: Sure, that's why they picked him. Listen, boy, forget about it, you ain't gonna get out of the Army, ain't any of us gonna get out.
POLACK: You wanta know something, if I had eighteen months, I could work that rotation. You just gotta start sucking Mantelli, or that fat fug first sergeant, and you win a little money in poker, slip them twenty-thirty pounds, and say, 'Here, for a cigar, for a rotation cigar, get it!' There's ways.
BROWN: By God, Red, Polack could be right, you remember when they picked Sanders, who the hell was he, not a goddam thing to recommend him except that he had his nose up Mantelli for the last year.
RED: I'll tell you what, don't try it, Brown. You start sucking Mantelli and he'll get to like you so much he couldn't bear to let you go.
MINETTA: I mean what kind of deal is this? Just like the goddam Army, give you something with one hand and take it away with the other, they just make you eat your heart out.
POLACK: You're getting wise to yourself.
BROWN: (Sighing) Aah, it makes you sick. (Turning over in his blankets) Good night.
RED: (Lying on his back, gazing at the pacific stars) That rotation ain't a plan to get men home, it's a plan how not to get them home.