There would be this campaign and then another and...
There would be this campaign and then another and another, and there would never be an end to itHe massaged his neck, looking dourly at the water, his long thin body sagging at every jointIt was about one o'clock nowIn three hours the guns would start and the men would bolt a hot nauseating breakfast There was nothing to do but to go from one day into the nextThe platoon was lucky, for tomorrow anywayThey'd have recon working on the beach detail for a week probably, and the first patrols where all the trails were strange would be made already, and the campaign would have dropped into a familiar and bearable rutHe spat again, kneading with his blunt scarred fingers the knurled swollen knuckles of his other hand In silhouette against the rail, his profile consisted almost entirely of a large blob of a nose and a long low-slung jaw, but in the moonlight this was misleading for it did not show the redness of his skin and vintage chanel jewelry hairHis face always seemed boiled and angry except for his eyes, which were quiet, a pale blue, marooned by themselves in a web of wrinkles and frecklesWhen he laughed his teeth showed, big and yellow and crooked, his rough voice braying out with a contemptuous inviolate mirthEverything about him was bony and knobbed, and although he was more than six feet tall, it was unlikely that he weighed one hundred and fifty pounds His hand scratched his stomach, explored about for a moment or two and then haltedHe had forgotten his life beltAutomatically he thought of going back to the hold for it, and was angered at himself"Goddam Army gets you so you're afraid to turn around"You waste half your time trying to remember what they told you to do Still he debated for a moment whether he should fetch it, and then grinned"Aaah, you can only get killed once He had told that to Hennessey, a kid who had joined recon only a few weeks prada china before the division's task force had loaded ship for this invasion"A life belt, that's something for Hennessey to worry about, a life belt," he said to himself now They had been up on deck together one night when an air raid sounded, and they had squatted under a life raft, watching the ships in convoy lashing through the black water, the crew at the nearest gun standing tensely by the breechA Zero had attacked and a dozen searchlights had tried to focus on itHundreds of tracer arcs had lined red patterns through the airIt had all been very different from the combat he had previously seen, without heat, without fatigue, beautiful and unreal like a technicolor movie or a calendar pictureHe had watched in absorption, not even ducking when a bomb had exploded in a livid yellow fan over a ship a few hundred yards away Then Hennessey had destroyed his mood"Jesus, I just remembered," he had said "What?" "I ain't got any air vintage gucci handbags cartridges in my life beltWhen the ship goes down, you just ride a nice fat rat to shore "No, this is seriousJeez, I better blow it up And in the darkness he had fumbled for the tube, found it, and inflated the beltRed had watched him with amusementThe way they turned them out now, all the kids wanted to obey the rulesRed had felt almost sad"You're all set for everything now, huh, Hennessey?" "Listen," Hennessey had boasted, "I ain't taking any chancesWhat if this boat should get hit? I ain't going into the water unprepared Now, in the distance, the shore of Anopopei slid by slowly, almost like a huge ship itselfNaw, Red thought, Hennessey wouldn't go into the water unpreparedHe was the kind of kid who would put away money for marriage before he even had a girlIt was what you got for following the rule book He drooped his body over the rail, and looked down at the waterDespite the lethargy of the ship, the wake gucci bag black burbled rapidlyThe moon had passed behind a cloud, and the water looked dark and malevolent, terribly deepThere seemed an aureole about the ship which extended fifty yards from the side, but beyond that was only blackness, so vast, so dense, that he could no longer determine the ridge line of AnopopeiThe water churned past in a thick gray foam, swirling and shuddering along the waves the ship formed in its passageAfter a time Red had that feeling of sad compassion in which one seems to understand everything, all that men want and fail to getFor the first time in many years he thought of coming back from the mines in the winter twilight with his flesh a dirty wan color against the snow, entering his house, eating his food in silence while his mother waited on him sullenlyIt had been an acrid empty home with everyone growing alien to one another, and in all the years that had passed, he had never remembered it except in dolce and gabbana handbag bitternNo comments:
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