From Here to Eternity (45 page)

CHAPTER 28

SOMETHING changed in Prewitt after Angelo's one man revolution. It was something that The Treatment with all its refinements had not been able to touch. Something went out of him. The Treatment could never have taken it out of him. It was as if somewhere deep inside himself he could feel bone rubbing somberly against bone, changing gears. It sounded like a round-edged file on stone. On April the first, the day after the disastrous payday, Pvt 1cl Bloom the potential middleweight, Pvt 1cl Malleaux the new man and potential featherweight, and several other Pfcs who were potential went on Detached Service with the new class at the Regimental NCO School. The NCO School was encamped in squad tents on one of the old concrete permanent camp sites up near the rifle range where the Regiments lived during their range seasons. It was an eight-weeks course. Prewitt the potential welterweight watched them pack and go, irrelevantly remembering how he had once believed the great American folklore that all Wops were either dead yellow or else killers for the racketeers. He also remembered how it was up there, where they were going. He had been up there last year with the 27th during range season. He remembered the tents pitched over the concrete foundations, the standing in line for chow with mess kits in the mud, he remembered the waiting on the ready line in the fleece padded shooting jackets made from old CKC blouses, the smell of burnt cordite and the ringing ears and the carbon sight blackeners that smudged up everything and the two or three privately owned BC scopes of the top notch shooters, he remembered all of it, the heavy clinking dull glittering unexpended cartridges in the hand, the long deadly streamline disappearing of a cartridge slipped into the chamber with the thumb when you were firing singles, the swinging white spot marking off the bulls and the big red flag rising from the pits three hundred yards away. He had made high expert with the '03 last year, and he liked living in the field. Even now, he still liked living in the field. He still had Hal's forty dollars left. He decided he would use Hal's forty dollars to coldbloodedly seduce Lorene. It looked like that was the only way it could be done, and nobody knew he had it, and he did not have to pay Turp Thornhill till next Payday, and he did not believe Angelo would mind him using it. This time, it would be a planned economy. He laid out a plan for $60, to cover a period of five weeks. He figured he could just about swing it for that, with his plan, without having to count on next Payday which he already owed to Turp. While waiting for the whorehouse Payday rush to die off he cautiously invested $10, and only $10, of the $40 with O'Hayer's blackjack dealers for a dividend of a little over $20. Blackjack was much less fun than poker, that was why it was a better investment. Forty-five of the $60 would go for three all night jobs at $15 ea. The other $15 would go for three bottles at $3.50 ea. The change would go for cab fare. After he found. out where she lived and got her to take him up, he could forget the money part. She had plenty money, and would not mind spending it on him if he played it right. It would be an interesting venture. It would be something to do, while Angelo was waiting trial. He planned it all out. It was absorbing, fascinating mental exercise. He lost himself in it entirely. He followed the proceedings during the whole seven weeks it took the law to care for Maggio with the same absorption. An absorption that left The Treatment, that was still going on, running a poor second. Once during the six weeks before the trial, he bought two cartons of tailormades and walked up to the Stockade to visit him. It was almost two miles, up past the tennis courts, then past the golf course, then past the bridle path sun dappled under the big tall trees and the lathery smell of the Packtrain. He sweated walking in the hot sun and he saw many officers, officers' wives, and officers' children. They all looked very tanned and very sportive. The Stockade was a wood building painted white with a green roof and sitting in a cool grove of oaks in the middle of a big flat field on the very edge of the reservation. It looked like a country school house. The tall chain mesh wire fence with the three in-leaning strands of barb wire made it look more like a country school house. The chain mesh wire grids over the windows looked like a country school house, too. At the country school house they would not let him in. It was not a country school. It was a military establishment. They would not let him leave the tailormades for Angelo either. Each internee was issued one sack of Duke's Mixture a day, and there would be no supplementary donations from outsiders. Each internee was a soldier, and would share the same as every other internee soldier. He took the tailormades back home with him. He did not see Angelo. He felt thankful to them though. They could have easily let him leave the tailormades for Angelo and then the MP guards smoked them up themselves. Later on he smoked the cigarettes himself. He felt guilty about smoking them. He could have thrown them away but they had cost two-fifty, and what good would it have done, it was an empty gesture. So he smoked them. But he felt guilty. He felt guilty about Angelo too, that was one reason he had wanted to see him. He felt that what had happened Payday was somehow his fault. Angelo had been playing the queers for quite a while now, he had been coming down to Hal's place often, and nothing like this had happened before. Only when Kid Prewitt appeared on the scene, like a catalyst poured into a tranquil beaker, did the mixture begin to boil and then explode. Angelo had not been tainted by the queers; it was only when Kid Galahad Prewitt had stepped in looking for the Holy Grail with his moralistic fears and questionings that Angelo had suddenly felt guilty enough, or tainted enough, to do something drastic. There were times when Prewitt felt a special quality in himself, a strange unpleasant quality that seemed to force everyone he touched into making drastic decisions about their own lives, no wonder people did not like to be around him. The idea frightened him deeply, at such times, because he could not understand what it was and because he did not want to do it. Certainly, he did not try to do it. People went along, living their lives as best they could, not gaining much maybe, but not losing greatly either, and all the time, deeply hidden, the one great personal conflict of fear lay dormant and unhidden. Enter Kid Galahad Prewitt. The action precipitates. The conflict of fear rises flapping from the depths like a giant manta ray, looming big and bigger, looming huge, up out of the deep green depths that you can look down into through a water glass and see the anchor cable dwindling in a long arc down into invisibility, up from far below that even, flapping the two wing fins of choice and the ego caught square in the middle. And they had to choose, had to face it, and whichever way they chose they still got hurt. And all the time he did not want to do it, did not know he did it, until afterwards. It always frightened him, thinking this way, it was one of the things he could most of the time keep down,/\ out of his mind, but sometimes it was too hard to keep the mind going in smooth even waves and he had to let it in and the mind started jumping around yawingly as if there were no bottom under the feet and it always frightened him. Maybe there were things in themselves men should not look at, just as there were things in the very deep bottom of the sea that it was better that men did not know about. He felt that was true, sometimes. Life frightened him, sometimes. But there was nothing to do, anyway. Because this special quality was a thing he could not control in himself, that he could not stop. But then when he was going good he knew it was better to face it, that it was always better to face things no matter what it cost anybody. He knew that. He believed it. Only in the bad spells did life frighten him with its unbelievable cruelty, its inconceivable injustice, its incredible pointlessness. He was going through one of the bad spells now, with Angelo in the Stockade waiting trial. He felt he should have been able to stop the little guy from going off the deep end that night, even though it was himself, he felt, who caused it. He should have foreseen it. He should have not left him alone to step to the water to jettison the trunks. He should have pitched into the fight, in spite of what the little guy had yelled. The two of them could have whipped the MPs, clubs and all, and gotten away, back to the Company and safety. He saw a thousand things he should have done, but had not done. He held himself responsible for what happened to Angelo. That was why he wanted to see Angelo so badly, maybe he could explain it to him. But he did not get to see Angelo. In fact, he might never have gotten to see Angelo again at all, if it had not been for the queer investigation the city police started downtown. They came for them in trucks, two of them, the big 2Yi ton jobs, from the MP Company at Shafter driven by an armed MP with another armed MP beside him in the cab, and led by a high-bellied recon driven by another armed MP. A big half-white, half-Hawaiian police lieutenant in the mustard worsted poplin of the city force, and with a build like a beachboy, was in charge of the expedition. He rode in the recon with the First Lieutenant from the Shafter MP Company who carried the blanket warrant signed by the Department Provost Marshal. Riding with them were the two young FBI men, looking like bright-faced rich men's sons in their very conservative but expensive business suits, who were the liaison between the civilian police and the military. The convoy descended upon the quadrangle and parked in front of G Company and assaulted Capt Holmes's orderly room, the two shining, scrubbed, young graduate lawyers of the FBI in the lead, looking bright and mild and innocent almost to the point of adolescence, low voiced and tactful and flowing over with discretion, but underneath this erroneous impression immitigable with that calm implacability a man gets when he knows his word is revered as law and is to be feared. The CQ was dispatched out to the drillfield with a list of names immediately. He came back marching a detail that appeared to be at least two-thirds of G Company, and drill for G Company the rest of that day was a skeletal sophism. The detail lined up before the barracks were counted off and answered another check roll call, looking sheepish and shuffling and very badly scared (the CQ had mentioned the presence of the FBI), yet wearing underneath the fear that unmistakable festive air that any holiday from the monotony of drill will bring, even if the holiday is an investigation by the FBI. They all knew the FBI, that it had jurisdiction over civil crimes committed by the Army, and they had all read the gang-buster comic books. The CQ had no idea why they were wanted, but there was only one civil crime that could have called in so many participants. It could only be a queer investigation. Nearly all the Waikiki Tavern gang were there. Corp Knapp was there, so was Sgt Harris, so was Martuscelli. Polack Dyzbinski was there, so was Bull Nair, so was Dusty Rhodes, The Scholar, so was fat Readall Treadwell. Champ Wilson and Liddell Henderson were both there, so was Corp Miller, so was Sgt Lindsay, so were Anderson and Friday Clark, and Prewitt. They were allowed to go upstairs to wash and change to CKCs since they were being taken to town. Neither the CQ nor the armed MP guards were sent up with them. Nobody was worried about anybody trying to escape. The names were on the roll call. They came downstairs to catch one fleeting glimpse of the departing recon with the city police mustard, the Shafter suntan and black brassard, and the dark conservative business suits that were more of a uniform than either of the others, and were fallen in and counted off and given another check roll call, and then were herded into the open trucks to find Pvt 1cl Bloom and one other Pvt 1cl from the NCO School sitting disconsolately waiting for them. The MP guards rode in the cabs with the drivers boredly. There was no fear of anybody trying to jump out and escape a roster of the FBI. Having the entire backs of the trucks to themselves, conferences of strategy were called in the backs of both trucks simultaneously, as if by the same natural instinct that makes southbound geese and schools of fish rendezvous at certain predetermined places, both conferences following instinctively the same identical pattern, each truckload instinctively knowing and trusting that the other truckload was doing the same thing, so that in effect it was really one big conference of strategy, instead of two. By checking back and utilizing each man's memory, each truckload was able to determine just who was in the other truckload, and from that to deduce just who was missing. It was discovered, then, that there were at least six queer-chasers from G Company as persevering and proficient as any queer-chaser present, who had not been called at all. In both trucks, almost simultaneously, there were indignant cries of "What the hell" and "Those lucky bastards" and "How the hell do they get off so easy" and "They aint no goddam bettern we are." In both trucks, almost simultaneously immediately, there were answering cries, by the same men who had voiced the other cries, of "Shut up, for god sake" or "Hell yes. We got enough worrying to do about us without worrying about them" or "Yeah, drop that. Lets decide what we going to do." When quiet was restored, it was also discovered there were two men from F Company and one from E in the truck Prew was in. There was one man from F in the other truck, they said, but none from E. It was decided by the board of strategy that whoever it was that had informed was pretty well acquainted with G Company, although that did not greatly narrow down the choice. Apparently there were no men from the 1st or 3rd Battalions being called in at all, although all of them had run into plenty of men from both the 1st and 3rd Battalions working the circuit at Waikiki. It was decided that this was only a little local flurry, and not a general roundup. The best thing to do was to clam up and know nothing and recognize nobody. They didnt have any proof or they would have made a general roundup, all they were doing was to try and scare some proof out of somebody, that was all, just putting on the heat to scare somebody. In both trucks when this deduction had been reached there was, almost simultaneously, a chorus of sighs of relief. This did not lessen either the nervousness or the worried anxiety of fear. Neither did it lessen the happy holiday air of Payday