The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [42]
Red lay down between them, and stared out at the obtuse triangle of sky and jungle visible from the head of the tent. They had dug the hole to fit their bodies, and Red's long legs dangled over the rain trench at the entrance. When the rain blew in the open end, it collected in the trench, which was lower than any other part of the hole. Now it was still muddy.
"Next time you men dig a tent right, so a guy can get in it," Red said. He guffawed.
"If you men don' like it, get the hell out," Gallagher grumbled.
"That's your Boston hospitality," Red said.
"Yeah, we got no place for fuggin bums," Gallagher kidded heavily. The purple lumps on his face looked swollen and putrefactive in the dull light.
Wilson giggled. "Ah say only thing worse'n a damyankee is a fella from Boston."
"They wouldn't let you in a town where you had to wear some fuggin shoes," Gallagher snorted. He lit a cigarette and turned over on his stomach. "Got to know how to read and write if you want to come north," he said.
Wilson was a little hurt. "Listen, boy," he told him, "Ah may not be able to read eve'thin' so good, but they ain't a thing Ah cain't do if Ah set mah mind to't." There had been that time, he was thinking, when Willy Perkins had bought the first washing machine in town, and when it had gone on the bum, he'd taken it all apart and then fixed it. "They ain't a thing Ah cain't fix if it's piece of machinery," he said. He took off his glasses and wiped the perspiration from them with a corner of his handkerchief. "Once Ah remember there was a fella in town who had an English bicycle. American one wa'n't good 'nough for him. He lost some of the ball bearin's out of it, and they wa'n' none Ah could get to fit, so Ah jus' took an American ball-bearin' ring, and fit it to't." He pointed one of his thick fingers at Gallagher and added, "Rode as good after Ah fixed it as it ever did."
"Pretty clever," Gallagher sneered. "In Boston you could get any kind of ball bearing you wanted."
"A man's better if he can do without at times," Wilson muttered.
Red snickered. "I don't see where you're such a damn sight better doing without your pussy." They all laughed. "That's somep'n a man should never do without," Wilson admitted. He rubbed his hand reflectively against one of the earthen walls of the hole. "In Boston," Gallagher said, "if one of your buddies gets a piece, he lets you know about it." Immediately afterward he felt ashamed. He made a mental note to remember what he had just said when he went to Chaplain Hogan for confession. The resolution made him feel better. He was always forgetting the bad things he had done when he did go to confession. Sometimes when he would be trying to collect his bad thoughts before he saw Father Hogan, he could not remember any of them, and he would have to go in and say only, "Father, I have blasphemed."
Mary knew so little about him, Gallagher thought. She didn't even know the way he swore. But that was just a bad habit he had picked up in the Army, Gallagher told himself. He had used bad language before when he was with the gang, but that didn't count. He was just a kid then. He had never sworn when a woman was around.
Gallagher began to think of the gang. What a good bunch of guys they were, he told himself with pride. There had been the time they passed out pamphlets to get McCarthy elected in Roxbury. He had even made a speech afterward, saying that his victory was due to his loyal cohorts. And there was the time they had made that raid into Dorchester, and had taught the Yids a lesson. They had picked one kid about eleven who was coming home from school and they had surrounded him, and Whitey Lydon had asked, "What the hell are ya?" The kid had trembled and said, "I don't know." "You're a mockey," Whitey had told him, "that's what you are, a fuggin mockey." He had held the kid by his shirt, and said, "Now, what areya?"
"I'm a mockey," the kid had said. He was about to cry.
"All right," Lydon had told him, "spell it. Spell 'mockey.' "
The kid had stammered, "M-o-c-c-i."
What a roar that had been, Gallagher thought. M-o-c-c-i. The dumb kid had been so afraid he must have crapped his pants. The goddam Yids. Gallagher remembered how Lydon had got on the police force. What a break that had been for him; with a little luck he could have got a job like that too. But of all the work he had done in his spare time for the Democratic Club, he hadn't got anything for it. What was wrong? He wanted to do big things. He would even have got a job in the post office if it hadn't been for that Alderman Shapiro and his fuggin nephew Abie or Jakie. Gallagher felt a deep resentment. There was always something to beat him. He felt his mute anger growing, and because it gave him a rich satisfaction to say it, he burst out suddenly, "I see we got a couple of fuggin Yids in the platoon."