The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [75]
Hey, drillers, they called out the Boy Scouts.
Let's rush 'em. They're jus' company scabs too.
Croft stands in line with his mouth tightening.
They're gonna rush us, the soldier next to him says.
The Guard lieutenant is a haberdashery salesman. If there're rocks being thrown you better lie down, men. If it should git real bad, fire a couple of rounds over their heads.
A stone lofts through the air. The crowd is sullen outside the gate, and every now and then one of them shouts some curses at the soldiers.
No sonofabitch'll talk to me that way, Croft says.
A rock strikes one of the soldiers, and they lie down on the ground and point their rifles above the heads of the advancing crowd.
Let's rip the place apart.
About ten men start to walk toward the gate. Some stones fly over their heads and scatter among the soldiers.
All right, men, the lieutenant pipes, fire over them.
Croft sights down his barrel. He has pointed his gun at the chest of the nearest man, and he feels a curious temptation.
I'll just squeeze the trigger a little bit.
BAA-WOWWW! The shot is lost in the volley, but the striker drops.
Croft feels a hollow excitement.
The lieutenant is cursing. Goddam, who shot him, men?
Guess they's no way to find out, Lieutenant, Croft says. He watches the mob retreating in a panic. Bunch o' dogs, he tells himself. His heart is beating, and his hands feel very dry.
" 'Member that gal, Janey, he married. Ah'll say one thing for her, she was a reg'lar ole tomcat," Jesse Croft said. (He spewed an oyster of phlegm, and ground it reflectively with his boot.) "Jus' the meanest little ole girl, Ah'll tell ya she was a mate for him till they busted up. They ain't one of the gals my boys've married that I woulda taken up against her. Ah'm an old man, but Ah'll tell ya, mah balls would git to itchin' when Ah'd look at her and jus' think of lovin' up to her." (Scratching his pants vigorously.) "Trouble with Sam he shouldn'ta married her. When a man can knock off a piece with a woman without slippin' her a weddin' ring, it don' pay to git any ideas about settlin' down with her. A woman that likes her nookie ain't gonna be satisfied with one man after she gits used to him." (Pointing his finger at the man he is talking to.) "Reckon that's a law of life."
Oh, give it to me, you sonofabitch, give it to me, I'LL KILL YOU IF YOU STOP.
Who's your man?
You're my man, you give it to me, give it to me, give it to me.
They ain't nobody can make love to you like me.
They ain't anybody, anybody, oh, you're just a goddam fuggin machine.
The long sliding of a belly against a belly.
I love ya better than any man ever could.
You do, baby, you do.
Ah'm jus' an old fuggin machine. (Crack. . . that. . . whip! Crack. . .that. . .WHIP!)
After they married, Croft rented a little house on the ranch from his father. He and Janey petered out for each other through a slow taciturn year, through a thousand incidents which they forgot while the effects still remained. At night they would sit by themselves in the parlor, listen to the radio and seldom talk. In a dumb instinctive way, Croft would search for an approach.
Want to go to bed?
It's early, Sam.
Yeah. And an anger would work in him. They had torn at each other once, had felt sick when they were close together and other people were with them. Now, in sleep their bodies intruded; there was always a heavy limb in the way. And the nights together working on them, this new change, this living together between them like a heavy dull weight, washing dishes and mouthing familiar kisses.
The buddy system.
But he wanted no buddy. In the quiet nights in the cheap parlor of this house set on the Texas plains, an undefined rage increased and increased. There were the things he did not know how to utter (the great space of the night), the fury between them balked almost completely now. There were the trips to town, the drinking bouts between them, the occasional kindling of their bodies in a facsimile of their earlier passion, only confusing and protracting the irreversible reaction.