The Thin Red Line (12 page)

Not to be outdone another man standing by the ex-undertaker stepped forward and took hold of the greenishcolored half-clenched hand. This was Pfc Hoff, an Indiana countryboy from the second platoon. Clasping the hand as if in a handshake, as though he were wishing its former owner a bon voyage on his journey, Hoff took the wrist with his other hand and pulled too, grinning stupidly. In his case too nothing happened.

As though taking these two actions as their key, the rest began to spread out around the grave edge. They seemed seized by a strange arrogance. They pushed or poked at this or that exposed member, knocked with riflebutts this or that Japanese knee or elbow. They swaggered impudently. A curious Rabelaisian mood swept over them leaving them immoderately ribald and laughing extravagantly. They boisterously desecrated the Japanese parts, laughing loudly, each trying to outbravado the other.

It was just then that the first souvenir, a rusting Japanese bayonet and scabbard, was found. It was found by Pfc Doll. Feeling something hard under his foot, he reached down to see what it was. Doll had taken a quiet backseat at the finding of the bloodstained shirt, and had not said a word. He did not know exactly what it made him feel, but whatever it was was not good. He had been left feeling so depressed that he had not even bothered to hunt for souvenirs among the mounds with the rest. The trenchful of dead Japanese made him feel even worse but he felt he must not show this so he had joined in with the others; but his heart wasn’t in it, and neither was his stomach. Finding the bayonet by sheer luck like that restored his spirits somewhat. Cleaned up and shortened it would make him a better belt knife than the cheap one he had. Feeling considerably better Doll held it up to be seen and called out his find.

Further up the ditch on the other side Queen was still staring fixedly at his Japanese leg. He really had had no intention of disinterring the leg or the body at the other end of it. He was only showing off. He only wanted to show them, and himself, that dead bodies—even Japanese ones afflicted with God knew what horribly dirty Oriental diseases—held no terror for him. But with Hoff getting into the act, and trying to top him like that—And now that punk Doll had to go and find a Jap bayonet—

Tightening his mind and his grip on the foot, clamping his jaws even tighter in their piano-keyboard grin, Queen jiggled his leg around tentatively once more, issuing to it as it were the final definitive personal challenge. Then, grinding his exposed and grinning teeth together, he began to pull on it with every ounce of his great strength.

Standing back on the perimeter of all of this, taking no part, Bell was nevertheless watching it all with a horrified fascination. Bell still could not free himself from that earlier illusion that he was in the midst of a nightmare dream, that he would soon wake up home in bed with Marty and push his face between the softnesses of her breasts to forget it. He would slide his face down her to inhale the lifecreating, lifescented womanperfume of her which always reassured and soothed him. At the same time Bell knew he was not going to wake up; and once again his mind tricked him with that weird transcendental image of Marty’s presence somewhere nearby watching this. But this time instead of seeing him as the leg in the grave, as before she had seen him wearing the shirt, she now stood somewhere up behind him watching the scene with him.
Brutes! Brutes! Animal brutes!
he could hear her cry.
Why don’t you do something? Brutes! Don’t just stand there! Stop them! Is there no human dignity? Bru-u-u-tes!
It rang in his head, fading away eerily in the high gloom of the trees, as he continued to stand, watching.

Big Queen was now in the midst of making his main effort. His face was beet-red. Great veins stood out on his neck under his helmet. His big teeth, totally exposed now, dazzled whitely in his face. A high, semi-audible keening sound resembling one of those silent dog whistles came from his throat as he strained his strength beyond even his capacity.

It was clear enough to Bell that the leg was not going to pull off its body. Therefore, only two possibilities remained. Bell understood, not without sympathy, that Queen had publicly committed himself. He must now either pull the corpse out of the grave bodily, or admit he wasn’t strong enough to do it. Fascinated by a great deal more than just simply what he was seeing, Bell watched quiescently while Queen fought to win his selfimposed test.

What could I have done, Marty? Anyway, you’re a woman. You want to make life. You don’t understand men.
Even in himself there were elements of pride and hope involved; he didn’t want to see Queen lose. Numb and sick as he was. Come on, Queen! Bell suddenly wanted to yell wildly. Come on, boy!
I’m
for you!

Across the ditch Doll was having an entirely different reaction. With all his heart and soul, furiously, jealously, vindictively, he was hoping Queen would
not
win. His new bayonet dangled from his hand forgotten and he held his breath, his belly muscles tensed with the effort of helping the corpse resist Queen’s strength. Damn him, Doll thought with clenched teeth, damn him. Okay, so he’s stronger than us; so what?

Queen couldn’t have cared less about either reaction. He stared down with bulging eyes, teeth bared, his breath whistling through his nose as he strained. He was furiously convinced that the leg was stretching. Heavily muscled in the calf, wrapped in its wool leggin, bandylegged and cocky even in death, it seemed as self-confident of its supreme Japanese superiority as its former owner must have been in life. Queen was dimly aware that the others had stopped what they were doing and were watching. But he had already used all his strength. In desperation he called upon a reserve beyond his capacity. He couldn’t quit now, not with them all watching. Once on a fatigue detail he had lifted a whole tree down off its freshly cut stump on his back. He concentrated on remembering that. And miraculously, the leg began to move.

Slowly, dreamily, mercifully mudcovered, the body drifted up out of the grave. It was like some mad, comically impure travesty of the Resurrection. First came the rest of the leg; then the second leg, flung out at a grotesque angle; then the torso; finally the shoulders and stiff, spreadeagled arms which looked as though the man were trying to hold on to the dirt and keep himself from being dragged out; and lastly the mudcovered head. Queen released his grip on the foot with a great gasp and stepped back—and almost fell over. Then he simply stood, looking down at his handiwork. The helmeted head was so covered with mud it was impossible to distinguish its facial features as such. Indeed, the whole body was so mudsmeared that it was impossible to tell whether it wore any equipment in addition to its uniform or not. And Queen had no inclination to get closer. He continued to look at it, breathing heavily.

“Well, I guess I was mistaken,” he said finally. “I guess there’s nothin worth keepin on this one after all.”

As if released from their rapt state by his words a sudden spontaneous, if feeble, cheer-for-Queen broke out from among the watchers. Overhead, birds fluttered, squawked in panic and fled. Attacked by modesty, Queen smiled back shyly, sweating heavily. But the cheer, as well as any subsequent action, was suddenly choked off by a new development. From the grave a new smell, as distinct from the former greenishcolored one as if they derived from different sources, rolled up like an oily fog from around the muddy body and began to spread. With dismayed curses and astonished, pained exclamations of consternation the men began to back off, then finally just simply turned and fled, jettisoning their dignity and everything else. Anything with a nose must retreat in rout from that odor.

Bell, escaping with the others and laughing as senselessly as they, ran breathlessly. He felt curiously surrealistic, and found a new popular-song title was running through his head over and over.

“Don’t Monkey Around With Death”

It ran over and over in his mind to the tune of some real song whose title he could not remember, as he made up words for it.

“Don’t monkey around with death,

It will only get you dirty;

Don’t futz around with the Reaper,

He will only make you smell.

Have you got B O?

Then do not go

Fiddling with that Scythe-man;

(optional break:)

Because…
(upbeat; pause)

Your best friend will not tell you;

Don’t monkey around with death;

You will only wind up soiled.”

Bell reached the top of the mounds with the others, whistling his little melody between his teeth soundlessly and staring off blankly, then turned around to look back. The mudcovered Japanese man still sprawled stiffly and all spraddled out atop the ditch beside the pit his enforced disinterment had opened down into the depths of the grave there in the jungle gloom. Nearby Bell saw Doll still holding his souvenir bayonet and looking back also, with an odd faraway look on his face.

Doll was trying very hard not to throw up. That was the reason for the faraway look; it was one of intense concentration. There was a strong urge in his throat to swallow repeatedly, and Doll was trying to control it. It was not enough to refrain from vomiting; if he kept swallowing, someone would be sure to notice it whether he threw up or not. And that was unthinkable. He couldn’t allow it. Especially with Queen standing not far from him.

When Queen first had stepped back from his labor, his heel had struck something metallic behind him. Wild hopes had risen in him that he might find a Japanese .31 caliber heavy machinegun or some such item, buried in the mud. He discovered instead that it was a mud-daubed helmet. He had seized it and retreated to the top of the mounds with the others.

But he got no chance to inspect his find there. It became apparent quite quickly that the top of the fortifications was not going to be far enough. By the time the last fleeing man reached the mounds, the smell like some invisible cloud had arrived too, right on his heels. There was no choice but to retreat again.

There was no fighting that smell. It was as different in kind and texture and taste from the earlier one as two smells could be. The earlier had been mild, was greenishbronze in color, acrid, dry, only slightly unpleasant. The second smell was wet and yellowwhite. It was not mild. No man who was sane and at liberty to leave was going to stay around to smell it.

They did not go back to the place of the shirt, but headed out toward the edge. Everybody had had enough exploring. At the tight skin of leaves they paused, still laughing senselessly, and looking back like Hallowe’en pranksters who have just upset the outdoor toilet of a farm. It was there that Queen finally got time to inspect the helmet.

It made a pretty poor souvenir. They all had heard that Japanese officers had stars of gold or silver on their helmets. Real gold, or real silver. If that was so, this was the helmet of a junior private. Its star was iron—and very thin iron at that, and badly bent. The outside of the helmet was covered with mud, but inside though badly sweatstained it was curiously clean.

Looking at it, this gave Queen a sudden inspiration. He had had a curious sense of oppression after dragging that poor damned muddy Jap corpse out of its final resting place—as though he knew he had done something bad and would be found out and punished for it. The oppression had abated somewhat during the stumbling, laughing, breathless trek back out to the jungle edge. And, instinctively in a way he could not have formulated, Big Queen sensed he had at hand the means of vanquishing it completely. By making himself laughable and ridiculous he could both atone and at the same time avoid admitting he needed to. Removing his own GI helmet Queen put the Japanese one on his head and struck a pose, throwing out his great chest with a silly grin.

There was a burst of uproarious laughter from the others. Queen’s head was too big even for an American helmet, which rode high up on his head like a hat. The Japanese one, made to be worn by small men, did not come down over his head at all; it sat up flat on top of it. The chinstrap did not even come down to his nose, but hung in front of his eyes. From behind it Queen peered out at them. He began to caper.

Even Doll laughed. Bell was the only one who didn’t. He grinned, and gave a short bark, but then his face sobered and he eyed Queen shrewdly. For a second they looked into each other’s eyes. But Queen would not meet his gaze and looked away and unwilling to meet Bell’s eyes after that, went on with his farce for the others.

It had stopped raining while they were in the jungle. But they had not known it. The falling moisture, trapped high above and retarded in its descent, had continued to drip down—and would continue to long after—just as if it still rained outside. With surprise they stepped out to find the sky was blue again, and the washed air clear. Almost instantaneously, as though Storm had been watching with binoculars for them to reappear through the green wall, the chow whistle sounded clear and shrill across the open ground from within the grove. It was an intensely familiar, curiously heartwringing sound to hear here, studded with memories of secure evenings. It rose and then fell away to silence in the late clear island air which carried a feel of the sea. And it shocked the explorers. They stared at each other, realizing that those dead Japanese men were really dead Japanese men. From the hills the mortarfire and small-arms fire of some struggle came down to them clearly, faintly, reinforcing the opinion.