The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [291]
Thank you, Casimir.
Sure, here's a little something for you too. G'wan take it. He presses it into her hand, skips out the door and down the stairs. Some kids are trying to jimmy the hub plate off his car and he scatters them. Thirty bucks left. It's not much to last for three days, and he's been losing lately in the poker games at Lefty's.
Polack shrugs. Win, lose, it's all in the cards.
He bounces the little brunette off his knee, saunters over to Lefty and the hood from Kabriskie's outfit. The four-piece band hired for the party is playing softly, and some drinks have been spilled already on the end tables.
What can I do for ya, Lefty?
I want ya to meet Wally Boletti. They nod, talk for a little while.
You're a good man, Polack, Lefty says.
One of the best.
Kabriskie's lookin' for somebody to run the girls over in the south end of his section.
That's it, huh?
Yeah.
He mulls it for a moment. (It's more money of course, a lot more, and he can use it, but. . .) It's a touchy setup, he mutters. (A little switch in the political end, a double-cross by some outfit, and he'll be the target.)
How old are ya, Polack?
Twenty-four, he lies.
Damn young, Wally says.
I want to t'ink the damn thing over, Polack says. It is the first time he has been unable to make a decision in his life.
No hurry, but no sayin' it's gonna be open next week.
I'll take the chance.
Only, the next day while he is still debating a letter comes from his draft board. He swears dully. There's a guy over on Madison Street who pricks eardrums, and he gives him a ring.
But on the way over, Polack changes his mind.
Aaaah, t' hell wit' it, the percentages are runnin' out. He turns around and drives back calmly. Beneath his mind a wonder is working.
It's a big thing, he mumbles.
Only, that's not it. Polack has never heard of a deus ex machina, and it's a new idea to him.
You figger all the angles and then somethin' new comes up. He grins to himself. There ain't anyplace I ain't gonna get along.
His wonder is smothered. Even when the new angles come, there's always a gimmick if ya go looking hard enough for it.
BEEEEEEEEEEEP. He bangs down his horn, whips past a truck.
9
A few hours later at noontime, miles away, the litter-bearers were struggling with Wilson. They had carried him all morning under the burnished metallic heat of a tropical sun, their strength and their will coursing out of their bodies with their perspiration. Already they moved stupidly, the sweat blinding their eyes, their tongues clapped against their dry and enraged palates, their legs quivering constantly. The heat rose from everything, shimmered over the grass, swirled about them with the languid resistance of water or oil. Their faces felt swathed in velvet, and the air they breathed was superheated, without refreshment, a combustible mixture which seemed to explode in their chests. They shambled along, their heads lolling, sobbing loudly with rending sounds which lacerated their throats. After hours of this they were men walking through flame.
They carted Wilson as if they were wrestling with a stone, struggling forward with agony for fifty yards or a hundred or even two hundred, with the hasty scrambling motions of laborers moving a piano, and then they would set him down, and remain swaying on their feet, their shoulders heaving for the air they could not find under the leaden arch of the sky. In a minute, afraid to rest, feeling anchored to him, they would pick up the litter and labor forward for another short increment over the endless green and yellow hills. On the upslopes they would bog down, remain holding him for seconds, their legs incapable of climbing any farther, and then they would strain upward again, advance a few more feet, and stand watching each other.
And in the places where they went downhill their thighs would quiver with the effort it took to brake themselves from dropping into a full run, and the muscles in their calves and around their shins would knot painfully, tempting them to stumble and lie motionless in the grass without moving for the rest of the day.