The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [320]
They pushed him back. Goldstein picked up Wilson's wrist and searched for a pulse, but his fingers felt too weak to support the arm. He dropped it, and then prodded with his forefinger along the flesh of Wilson's wrist. But his fingertips were too blunted. He could not feel the skin. After a while he just looked at him. "I think he's dead."
"Yeah," Ridges mumbled. He sighed, thought vaguely of praying.
"Why, he was just. . . talking." Goldstein reeled through the shock, balanced for a moment in his mind all the unutterables.
"We might as well be goin'," Ridges mumbled. He stood up heavily, and began to fit the litter straps over his shoulders. Goldstein hesitated, and then followed him. When they were ready, they staggered out onto the flat shallow falls of the river and began moving downstream.
They did not think there was anything odd about moving this way with a dead man. They were too accustomed to picking him up at the end of each halt; the only thing they understood was that they must carry him. Even more, neither of them really believed he was dead. They knew it but they did not believe it. If he had shouted for water they would not have been surprised.
They even talked about what they would do with him. In one of the breaks Ridges said, "When we git him back, we'll give him a Christian burial 'cause he repented."
"Uh-huh." And even so they talked without feeling the words. Goldstein did not want to realize Wilson was dead; he held his mind away from the knowledge rigidly, thinking of nothing, merely sloshing forward through the shallow water upstream, his shoes sliding on the flat smooth rocks. There was something he could not face once he understood.
And Ridges was bewildered too. He was not convinced Wilson had begged for forgiveness; it was all jumbled in his mind, and he fastened on the thought that if he could get Wilson back, get him buried decently, the conversion would take. And more, both of them felt a natural frustration with having carried him this far only to die. They wanted to complete their odyssey with success.
Very slowly now, more slowly than they had moved at any time, they shambled through the water, the litter swaying between them. Overhead the trees and foliage met; as before, the river wound a tunnel through the jungle. Their heads drooped, their legs moved stiffly as if afraid of collapsing if they were hinged at the knee. Now when they rested they would flop in the shallow water, leaving Wilson half submerged while they sprawled beside the litter.
They were almost unconscious. Their feet blundered along the floor of the stream, crunching on the river pebbles. The water flowing past their heels was chill, but they hardly felt it. In the dim light of the jungle aisle they stumbled onward, following the current dumbly. The animals chattered at their approach, the monkeys screaming and scratching at their haunches, the birds calling to one another. And then as they would pass the animals would be silent, and remain quiet for many minutes after they had gone. Ridges and Goldstein reeled forward like blind men, their bodies expressing a mute eloquence. Behind them the animals were silent, passing a warning through the congested channels of the jungle. It might have been a funeral march.
They descended a waterfall from one flat waist-high rock to another, Ridges dropping down first, and standing in the foam while Goldstein slid the litter over, and flopped down to join him. They struggled through the deeper water, which lashed at their thighs, floating the litter between them. They worked along the riverbanks, splashed through shallow water again. They stumbled and staggered and fell many times, Wilson's body almost washing away. They could not go more than a few feet without halting, and their sobbing fitted into the murmurs of the jungle, was lost in the washing of the water.
They were bound to the stretcher and the corpse. Whenever they fell they would lunge first at Wilson's body, and become conscious only when they had secured him of the water pouring into their own mouths. It went deeper than any instinct they had ever had. They did not think of what they would do with him when they reached the end, they did not even remember any longer that he was dead. His burden had been the vital thing. Dead, he was as much alive to them as he had ever been.