Cryptonomicon

The chastened Shaftoe sets about his work. Meanwhile, Lieutenants Ethridge and Root are making themselves useful. They carry the crudely sawed remains of Frosty the Pig into the butcher shop and throw them on a gigantic scale. They add up to some thirty kilograms, whatever the fuck thatmeans. Enoch Root, showing an appetite for physical labor that is duly and silently noted by the men, hauls in another pig carcass, stiff as a Radio Flyer, and dumps it onto the scale, bringing the total up to seventy. Ethridge does the breaststroke through clouds of flies to gather up all the cuts of meat that were on the chopping blocks when the place was evacuated. He throws them on the scale and the needle swings up to near the one-hundred mark. From that point they are able to bring it up to one-thirty by ferrying hams and roasts in from the freezer one at a time. Enoch Root--who seems to be conversant with exotic systems of measurement--has made a calculation, and checked it twice, establishing that the weight of Gerald Hott, converted into kilograms, is one hundred and thirty.

All the meat goes into the coffin. Ethridge slams the lid shut, trapping some flies who have no idea what they are in for. Root goes around with a clawhammer, driving in sixteen-penny nails with sure, powerful, Carpenter-of-Nazareth-like strokes. Meanwhile, Ethridge has taken a GI manual out of his briefcase. Shaftoe is close enough to read the title, printed in block letters on its olive drab cover:

COFFIN SEALING PROCEDURES

PART III: TROPICAL ENVIRONMENTS

VOL. II: HIGH DISEASE RISK SITUATIONS (BUBONIC PLAGUE, ETC.)

The two lieutenants devote a good hour to following the instructions in that manual. The instructions are not that complicated, but Enoch Root keeps noticing syntactical ambiguities and wants to explore their ramifications. First this rattles Ethridge, then his emotions tend towards impatience and, finally, extreme pragmatism. To make the chaplain shut up, Ethridge confiscates the manual and starts Root on stenciling Hott's name on the coffin and pasting it up with red stickers printed with medical warnings so appalling that the topic headings alone induce faint nausea. By the time Root is finished, the only person who can legally open this coffin is General George C. Marshall himself, and even he would have to first get special permission from the Surgeon General and evacuate all living things within a hundred-mile radius.

"Chaplain talks kind of funny," says Private Nathan at one point, listening, slackjawed, to one of these Root/Ethridge debates.

"Yeah!" exclaims Private Branph, as if the accent took a really keen listener to notice. "What kind of an accent is that anyway?"

All eyes turn to Bobby Shaftoe, who pretends to listen for a bit and then says, "Well, fellas, I would guess that this Enoch Root is the offspring of a long line of Dutch and possibly German missionaries in the South Sea Islands, interbred with Aussies. And furthermore, I would guess that--being as how he grew up in territories controlled by the British--that he carries a British passport and was drafted into their military when the war started and is now part of ANZAC."

"Haw!" roars Private Daniels, "if you got all of that right, I'll give you five bucks."

"Deal," Shaftoe says.

Ethridge and Root finish sealing the coffin at about the same time Shaftoe and his Marines are wrestling the last bits of the wetsuit into place. It takes a shitload of talcum powder, but they get it done. Ethridge supplies them with the talcum powder, which is not GI talc; it is from somewhere in Europe. Some of the letters on the label have pairs of dots over them, which Shaftoe knows to be a characteristic of the German language.

A truck backs up to the loading dock, smelling the fresh paint (it is a Detachment 2702 truck). In go the sealed coffin and the now-vulcanized dead butcher.

"I'm going to stay behind and check the wastebaskets," Lieutenant Ethridge tells Shaftoe. "I'll meet you at the airfield in one hour."

Shaftoe imagines one hour in the back of a hot truck with this cargo. "You want me to keep him on ice, sir?" he asks.

Ethridge has to think about this one for a while. He sucks his teeth, checks his watch, hems and haws. But when he finally answers, he sounds definite. "Negative. It is imperative, for purposes of this mission, that we now get him into a thawed mode."

PFC General Hott and his meat-laden coffin occupy the center of the truck's bed. The Marines sit to the sides, arranged like pallbearers. Shaftoe finds himself staring across the carnage into the face of Enoch Root, which is wearing an expression of forced nonchalance.

Shaftoe knows he ought to wait, but he just can't stand it. "What are you doinghere?" he finally says.

"The detachment is relocating," the Rev says. "Closer to the front."

"We just got off the fucking boat," Shaftoe says. "Of course we're going closer to the goddamn front--we can't go any fartherunless we swim."