From Here to Eternity (76 page)

been able to quite catch up with: that this was only a newspaper article for the public in general. And newspapers had a notorious reputation, even amongst us illiterates in the Regular Army, he thought gigglingly, of writing only what was thought to be the best for the public at the moment without hampering or hamstringing their more important purpose too terribly much with the truth. It might not any of it be true at all since it was in a newspaper, and maybe they only wrote it in hopes that Prewitt the murderer would tip his hand and give himself up with the expectation of getting off with no more than a charge of AWOL. It might be, he thought laughingly craftily, they were only laying for him and waiting. And as for them ever catching up with Pvt John J Malloy - he had to laugh outright, even though it hurt his sore side. Nobody but a goddam stupid fool would ever believe a newspaper article anyway. "It don't look too awful bad," Georgette offered, finally. "Yeah," he grinned at them slyly, "but how I know this aint just a spiel to make me feel safe enough to show my hand?" "That's just it," Georgette said. "You don't." "Did anyone see you at all?" Alma asked. "He came out of the Log Cabin with two sailors. I know they saw me, but I dont know if they saw me well enough to recognize me because it was dark and they were 30 or 40 yards away." "Well anyway," Alma said hopefully, "they haven't shown up yet. It looks like they don't want to get mixed up in it either way." "Yeah," he said," - if you can believe this newspaper article. The cops may have them down to headquarters right now, for all I know." "Amen," Georgette said fervently. "Even if I was to go back after I was all healed up," he said, "they'd still get me for an AWOL. And with my record, that'd mean at least six months. I aint going to put no more time in no more Stockades, even for an AWOL." "After hearing you talk about Stockades," Georgette grinned. "I cant say I blame you a whole hell of a lot." "Well," Alma said, "we better get out of here and let him rest, whatever happens. How does it feel now?" "Okay," he said, "a little sore." He could feel himself grinning sillily like he always did when he was in pain and he had to choke back a hunger to laugh. "I'll give you another sedative, if you want," Alma said. "I dont much like them things," he grinned sillily. "They cant hurt you any." "I couldn't sleep anyway," he grinned sillily. "Whynt you save them for tonight." "That would be the best idea," Georgette said. "I hate to see you in such pain," Alma said nervously. "Hell, this aint nothin," he grinned sillily. "Lemme tell you about the time I broke my arm on the bum and dint have no dough to go to a doctor." "Come on," Georgette said. "Lets get out of here and leave him alone." He watched them go out and then lay back with it, wanting to laugh again. He moved his slitted eyelids a little and watched the kaleidoscope play of distorted light fragments against his eyeballs for a while, they were unending variations that were never quite the same twice and he could watch their shiftings for hours. Then after a while the pictures started coming up in his brain and he shut his eyes all the way and lay, letting the half-formed images rise, watching the stories they acted out, curious to see what would happen in the end, like with a mystery movie. It was the way it is just before sleep, and while you knew you could not sleep now, you could stay like this for hours at a time, if you knew how, watching the stories that were just as good - were even better than - movies, because these stories were not subjected to any Hays Office, and if you wanted a movie with naked women you could have it, all you had to do was think it. There was one he played with a long time that had as its jumping off place the last time they had fed him when Georgette held him up and he wondered, as he went on absorbedly watching the movie, why he had never noticed Georgette at the Ritz Rooms, he had been to the Ritz Rooms quite a few times before he got in the Company. Alma gave him three sedatives that night, but in the morning he knew it had made the top of the grade and was starting down hill finally. He could tell because he wanted to get out of bed. It took all his will power to get himself up stiffly onto his feet, and the sore stiffness in his side protested indignantly, but the thing was, not so much that he could, but that in spite of the hurt he still wanted to do it. He knew it was on the downgrade then. He navigated the three steps down to the living room shakily, and found that Alma had moved a sheet and pillow onto the divan and was sleeping there where she could hear him if he called. He had assumed she was sleeping with Georgette in the other bedroom, and it hit him hard. So hard that tears came into his eyes and he remembered, again, suddenly, how much he loved her, and went over and sat down and kissed her and put his hand on her breast solid-soft under the silk pajamas. She woke immediately, and was as immediately angrily horrified to find him out of the bed. She not only insisted he go back to bed but insisted on helping him. "Come on," he grinned from the bed, "lie down here for a while. Its a lot more comfortable than out there." "No," she said irrefragably, more shocked than angry. "Absolutely not. You know what'll happen if I do, and you're in no condition for any parties." "What the hell," he said, "sure I am. Its my side thats sore," he grinned. "No," she said angrily, she was always angry at him afterwards, whether it reached the plane of action or not, as if he had deliberately degraded her. "You need to save your strength." He could have argued that one, but it was useless to argue once it was gone, argument only drove it further away, he knew from experience you could not arouse whatever it was by argument and the best he would get would only be the ice statue again all locked up inside, and the ice statue wasnt worth even the argument let alone the energy, so he did not argue; instead he lay in the bed while she went out to fix breakfast, feeling a hot fever all over that had absolutely nothing to do with the sore side and that greatly colored the mental movies until they had nothing to do with love at all, this fever that burned up all the meat (called Love) and left only the bare bones (called whatever it was the Hays Office called it, Rut maybe, Lust probably, raw hot bloody Lust) that were the skeleton under the meat of every man's love no matter how much they denied it, and that could be satisfied anywhere anyway anywho (although the women always stoutly refused to believe this and were therefore the Board Founders and Charter Designers of the whorehouse male and female that they decried), but that he could not get up and go satisfy now, so he just lay in the bed with the burning hot fever that had nothing to do with his sore side, and listened to her fix breakfast. That afternoon they finally changed the tight bandage and put on a looser. The compress was incorporated into the scab by the coagulation so they left it on. They took it off two days later, amid much cursing and sweating, and exposed the lumpy corrugated wet pink new scar tissue beginning to fill in at the edges and bottom, before they put on a new one. But that time the ice statue, because of his increasing insistence which he had sworn he would not voice but still had voiced anyway, had suffered him once. They kept him in the bed for a week. They even changed the sheets with him in it, pushing the slack of the clean sheet up against him on one side and having him roll over onto it while they pulled the slack out the other side and tucked it in in the accepted hospital nurse manner. And on the faces of both, the brilliant crystal-hard Georgette, and the opaque thoughtful absolute-realist Alma, was the some beaming lambency like on some painter's St. Anne and Madonna cuddling St John and Jesus, the same smile of the first day that he had never seen on either of them before then: maternal, solicitous, very happy, infinitely protective, such a bottomless flood of maternal tenderness that it threatened to engulf him forever and drown him in the soft bosoms of matriarchy. He was surprised at them, two such self-avowed realists, they were not even ashamed of it enough to try to hide it. Their motives were openly obvious. Two whores who finally found something to mother. A guy could write a book about it, he thought bitterly, call it From Hair to Maternity. It would probly be a very long book. Whores did not produce as fast as rabbits. At first he had abandoned himself to this joyous nursing gratefully, but now he forgot all about enjoying being sick and struggled against it, suddenly afraid it was so powerful they would end up making an invalid for life out of him. He did not, of course, stay in bed all afternoon and evening while they were both gone to work. As soon as they were out of the house he got up and dressed himself in the civic slacks they had washed the blood out of for him and put on one of the new T-shirts they had bought for him to take the place of the ruined shirt they had burned for him, and practiced walking up and down and around the house they had made into a hideout for him, so as to keep from making a goddam permanent cripple out of him. He knew enough to know that when it had reached this stage of mending it was better to use it than to lie there in/\ the bed and let it atrophy like they wanted him to. He did not intend to let himself be turned into an invalid for life just because their frustrated maternal instincts needed something to baby. It was nice there in the house by himself. At first he had trouble getting into the clothes, but every day he made himself do it and it made it noticeably that much easier the next day, and by the second week (when they allowed him to get out of bed - after being openly surprised at how well he managed - and helped him into the dressing gown they had bought him after much discussion of styles and colors) he could get out of the dressing gown and into the clothes almost as easily as if he had never been cut at all, after they left for work. He would mix himself a good stiff drink (they did not let him have any liquor, when they were home) and go out and sit on the porch in the afternoon sun (they did not allow him outside on account of catching a cold, when they were home) and maybe read a little in one of their books (Georgette belonged to the Book of the: Month Club, "just for the hell of it," she grinned, "after all, I do live on Maunalani Heights, and the books look good in the living room even if I dont read them") and get himself pleasantly three-fourths tight and watch the sunset. He was always in bed asleep when they got home from work, so they did not find out about it until the end of the second week when Alma came home half-tight from work one night and came in and fell on his bed maulingly, forgetting all about his sore side, and smelled the liquor on his breath and came to herself and gave him all kinds of hell for drinking. That let the secret out of the bag, so he got up and showed them both how well he got around and how easily he dressed himself. They did not like it, but they both accepted the inevitable, Alma a little more reluctantly than Georgette. They watched him go through his act with a kind of hurt look on their faces, like a mother whose son has come home so drunk and with such an easily readable address of the local whorehouse sticking out of his pocket that she finally has to admit, even to herself, that he is, at last, grown up. They did not say much; and congratulated him, half-heartedly; and after that the restrictions were off and it was all right. But even then he still liked it better when he was there by himself. He would look around at everything and think how there was all the time in the world, no Reveille to be back for tomorrow, no weekend pass that would have to end again Monday morning, no place to go and no specified time to go there in. He lived perpetually in the old on-pass feeling of life did not begin again till Monday morning except now there was no Monday morning to worry about. He would play through the records, and run through all the books, and go around feeling the furnishings, and feel the tile floor and the Jap mats on the porch with his bare feet, and in the evening he would make his own evening meal himself in the shining white kitchen where he knew just exactly where everything was. All the books with their brightly colored jackets (Georgette had been in the Book of the Month Club three years and she always took every book, plus all the dividends) were very pretty in the recessed bookcase over the divan. The record albums were fine clean parallel lines of gold print on black in the mahogany cabinet. And there was all the time in the world. And there was the bar, the lovely big well-stocked bar, where you can make yourself a drink whenever you want, he would think happily, mixing himself a scotch-and-soda that he was finally beginning to like the taste of now. And all the time in the world. It was, all of it, as near to being a full-fleged 24-carat civilian as any thirty-year-man ever could get. Then he would remember he was not a thirty-year-man any more.

CHAPTER 46

PREWITT had been gone two days when the ist/Sgt of G Company came back from furlough. It is an aged proverb in the Regular Army that guys come back from furlough in order to rest up, or otherwise they would have gone right on over the hill. And Milt Warden was no exception. He came in shakily after two days of earnest drunkenness, his prize $120 Brooks Bros. powder-blue tropical suit crumpled and dirty. Acting 1st/Sgt Baldy Dhom met him in the orderly room with the hoary joke that he was four hours late and already marked AWOL on the Morning Report. Warden did not even bother to laugh. He had been falling-down slobbering drunk for two days, but it was not enough, and he would have preferred more. The two days' drunk had come out of the admission that his ten-day idyll with his future wife had developed into a profound and absolute bust, and for an admission like that a man needed at least a week of it. Two days was not nearly enough. But then neither was it a pleasant thought to know your Company Administration was being strangled by the sausage fingers of a stupid ox like Baldy Dhom for fourteen days. He had hardly collapsed himself into his swivel chair, still in his prize $120 Brooks Bros. powder-blue tropical suit, before Baldy was briefing him on the peculiarities of the new Company Commander. Baldy had not wanted the Company Administration any more than Warden had wanted him to have it. Warden listened in bitter silence. Dynamite had put through the furlough the day before he left for Brigade, just like he promised, so that Warden had not even met 1st/Lt William L. Ross. He had not, in fact, known anything about him except that he was coming. Neither his rank nor his name nor that he was going to be Jewish. Typical, he told himself sourly, typical. The well known Warden luck. No sooner do I get rid of one screwball Jewboy who at least was decent enough to commit suicide than I get another one. Only this time its an officer. Company Commander, no less. And now I'll have my tempermental Jewish race complexes right with me in my own orderly room, instead of in the rear rank. Jesus Christ. Then, while he was still trying to digest that one, Baldy informed him of the next new development. Prewitt had been absent for two days. "What!" "Thats right," Baldy said guiltily. "Why, the son of a bit:ch wasnt even out of the Stockade yet when I left!" "I know it. He come out three days after you took off. Acted meek as a lamb. He was ony back nine days, all told." "Well, Jesus Christ." Warden felt something stronger than the Jewish Problem come over him and displace the contemplation of Lt William L Ross. It was somewhat the same feeling you get watching a line squall moving across the. sky and covering the face of the sun on a hot day with a wind-chill sense of rain. "A hell of a fine mess you made of my orderly room, Baldy. Its pretty goddam bad when a man cant even go on a goddam furlough without having it all fall down on his head." "It wasnt my fault," Baldy said lamely. "No," Warden said. Why in the name of Christ wasnt he informed Prewitt was coming out of the Stockade in three days? Did he have to do everything by himself in this outfit? "Well, have you dropped him for rations and picked it up on the Morning Report?" "Well, no," Baldy said uncomfortably, "not yet. You see -" "What!" "Well, you see -" "What do you mean, not yet? My god how long do you need? He's been gone two whole days, aint he?" "Well now wait a minute," Baldy said. "I'm tryin to explain. You see, Ross dont know a single soul in the Company by name yet, except for a few noncoms." "What the hell has that got to do with this?" "Well," Baldy said, "you see Chief Choate turn him in present for duty at Reveille the first morning. I dint know nothing about it till the next day." "All right, so what? Jesus Christ, Dhom," he said painfully, "this is an Infantry Compny, not a goddam YMCA." "Well," Baldy said uncomfortably, but stubbornly, "you was due in the next day. So I figure one day already whats one day more? The harms already done to the Morning Report." "Well of all the goddam ways to run an outfit." "Well," Baldy said impassibly, "what the hell? This is your orderly room. I ony ride shotgun on it. And," he said, "I figure he might even come back in of him own self before you got back." "Oh," Warden said. "You figured he'd just come back." "Thats right." "Say, what the hells eating you?" "Nothing, why?" "Since when is Prewitt such a goddam good friend of yours?" "He aint." "Then why the hell try to cover up for him?" "I didnt. I just figured he'd probly come back." "But he didnt though, did he?" "Nope," Baldy admitted. "Not yet." "And you're left holding the sack." Baldy shrugged massively and looked at him with the open innocence of a guilty man who knows he is safe just the same. "Hell, First. I thought you'd be glad I waited for you to handle it." "Horse shit!" Warden hollered. "Now I'll have to pick him up retroactive to the 16th - what month is this? October - retroactive to the 16th of October. How the hell you think thats going to look on the Morning Report?" "I was ony trying to do you a favor," Baldy said. "Do me a favor hell!" Warden bellowed. "Okay," Warden said, he ran his fingers tearingly through his hair, "all right. Just tell me one thing. How'd you manage to keep it a secret from the Test of the Compny?" "What do you mean the rest of the Compny?" Baldy asked blandly. "Now dont tell me they didn't even notice he was gone now?" "I never thought about it," Baldy said. "But I reckon they did. But you see, like I said, Ross dont know none of them. They dont owe Ross nothing, either. And you know featherhead Culpepper, he never pays no tension to nothing. I mean -" "I see what you mean," Warden cut in. "Just one other thing. How did Choate manage to get it past Ike Galovitch? Dont tell me Ike's in on it too?" "Well, thats another thing," Baldy said. "I hant got to that yet. You see, Galovitch aint the platoon guide of the 2nd Platoon any more. Galovitch is been busted." "Busted," Warden said. Baldy nodded. "Who busted him?" "Ross." "What for?" "Inefficiency." "Whatd he do?" "Didnt do nothing." "You mean Ross just up and busted him? For nothing? Under a blanket charge of inefficiency?" "Thats right," Baldy said. It was like pulling teeth out of an elephant, if an elephant had teeth. "But he must of done something, Baldy." Baldy shrugged. "Ross seen him give close order one day." "Well I'm a dirty bastard," Warden said happily. "All right, who'd he make in his place?" "Chief Choate." "Well now I am a dirty bastard," Warden said happily. Baldy seized the opening. "So you can see how I wunt know nothing about it. Who'd ever of thought Choate would turn him in Present? Would you, First?" "Oh, no," Warden said. "Oh, no. Of course not." "And you know how Champ Wilson is with his platoon. He never pays any mind to whats going on. Especially during training season. You can see how it wasnt my fault." "Oh, sure," Warden said. "All right," he said, "what else has happened." "Thats all, I guess," Baldy said blandly and got up from his chair. He always looked uncomfortable when he had to sit in a chair. "You care if I take the rest of the morning off?" "Take the rest of the morning off," Warden bawled. "What the hell for? What the hell did you do to rate a morning off?" "Well," Baldy said immovably, "its practicly noon already. Time I change uniforms and get out to the drillfield they be practicly ready to come in." He paused in the doorway and looked back at Warden with a closed face. "Oh," he said, as if just remembering. "Theres one other thing. You see the papers this morning?" "You know I never read the goddam newspapers, Dhom." "Well," Baldy said, looking at him, "Fatso Judson - you know? the Chief Guard of the Stock-ade? - he was killed the night before last down to the Log Cabin Bar and Grill. Somebody knife him in the alley." "Is that right," Warden said. "And so what?" "I thought you knew him," Baldy said. "I wouldnt know Fatso Judson from Buster Keaton. If I saw him in the middle of the street." "I thought sure you knew him," Baldy said. "Well I dont." "Then I guess thats my mistake," Baldy said. "It sure is." "Then I guess thats everything. I tole you Galovitch was busted, dint I?" "You told me." 'Then thats all," Baldy said. "Do you care if I take the rest of the morning off?" he said. "I got to fix a bad faucet over to the house." "Listen Dhom," Warden said in his official voice, taking a deep breath. He was conscious of the new clerk Rosenberry still sitting quietly at the filing table in the closet. "I dont know what kind of screwy ideas you got in your goddam head, but I know you're old enough and got enough service to know you cant get by with carrying a goddam man present for duty when he's over the goddam bill. Even in the goddam Air Corps they cant do that. It always comes out. I've had a lot of orderly rooms in my time, and I've seen some bad ones. But I never seen an orderly room get so completely 100% fucked up in such a short goddam time. You may be worth a four stripe rating as a straight duty man. But as an acting first sergeant you stink. You wouldn't make a good Pfc. You're miserble. It'll take me two months to straighten out my goddam orderly room and get it over your two weeks as first sergeant." He paused, for breath, and looked up at Baldy who was still standing impassively in the doorway. Warden tried to think up something else to say, something that would make it sound a little bit better, a little more stronger, "I just want you to know I never seen such a lousy acting top kicker since I been in the goddam Army," he said in summation. It still sounded thin. Dhom did not say anything. "Okay," Warden said, "go ahead, take off. And you might as well take the rest of the morning off since you wouldn't do no goddam work anyway." 'Thanks, First," Baldy said. "Go to hell," Warden said. Angrily he watched the big man go out, the massive shoulders brushing the door jamb on both sides, the huge head almost touching the top of the frame. Baldy Dhom, husband to a fat Filipino lardmama sow of a shrew, father to innumerable runny-nosed half-nigger brats, trainer to one of the worst boxing squads in the history of the Regiment, duty sergeant to one of the miserblest Companies. An old soldier with 18 yrs serv under his belt in his paunch along with 18 yrs beer, and condemned by his nigger family to foreign service for the rest of his natural life. The man who had loyally and sanguinarily led the pack in executing The Treatment that Dynamite had prescribed for Prewitt; and who now, just as loyally, led the attempt to cover up for him when he went over the hill and killed a man because of it. Probly he explained it to himself by some sentimental crap about us old-timers got to stick together, with so many draftees about to take over the Compny. And as he watched him go out, he watched with him, beyond and around him, the whole tacit network of the whole tacit conspiracy, nothing open, nothing said or admitted, just a sudden common movement toward a blindness of not seeing, a sudden tacit ignorance, all over the whole Company, and that you could no more fight than you could fight a solid mountain. If you wanted to, he told himself. Which you do not. You dont like the Stockade any better than they do. Nobody likes the Stockade - unless they work for it. Well, he thought, he finally did it. He finally went and did it. Just like you have always known he would do it. "Rosenberry!" he bellowed. "Yes, Sir?" Rosenberry said quietly. He was still sitting quietly at the closet table, still quietly filing things. A quiet boy, Rosenberry, altogether a quiet boy. That was one of the reasons he'd picked him to replace Mazzioli. He had spent the whole last week before his furlough, after Mazzioli had been shifted to Regiment, in picking him. "Rosenberry, I want you to get the hell over to Regiment and pick up today's batch of useless memorandums and worthless circulars, while I straighten this goddam mess out, and come back and worthlessly file them." "I already have, Sergeant," Rosenberry said quietly. "I'm filing them now." "Then get your ass over to personnel and tell Mazzioli I want Ike Galovitch's Service Record. I cant stand to look at your goddam face." "Yes, Sir," Rosenberry said quietly. "And while you're there, get the Service Record of every other man who's changed status while I been gone." "Do you want Prewitt's Service Record, too, Sergeant?" Rosenberry asked quietly. "No-goddam-it-I-dont - want - Prewitt's - Service - Record - too - Sergeant," Warden bawled. "If I wan.t Prewitt's-Service-Record-too-Sergeant, I'd of told you, you stupid son of a bitch. Remember? you're a soljer now, Rosenberry; not a goddam civilian." "Yes, Sir," Rosenberry said quietly. "A draftee maybe," Warden temporized craftily. "Yes, Sir," Rosenberry said quietly. "But nevertheless still a soljer," Warden roared triumphantly. "Just a plain goddam stinking mucky out-at-the-ass soljer. Who's suppose to do what he's told, when he's told, without askin goddam civilian foolish questions. Get me?" he roared. "Yes, Sir," Rosenberry said quietly. "All right then, move it. And dont call me Sir; only officers is called Sir. I'll get Prewitt's Service Record later on. When I need it. And when I'm goddamned good and ready." "Yes, Sir," Rosenberry said quietly. "I got to get the rest of this crap straightened out first, before I can even use Prewitt's Service Record," he explained in a somewhere near almost normal voice. "Yes, Sir," Rosenberry said quietly, already on his way out the door. Warden watched him cross the quad, still moving quietly. You didnt fool him a goddam bit either. He was a quiet boy all right. A Jewish secret, quietly contained, and open to members only. Maybe not even open to members, he amended. He probly dont miss much, but you wont have to worry about him talking too much. If only, he exploded suddenly, the goddamned ass wouldnt look at a man like he thought he was the Prophet Isaiah returned to earth from someplace. Rosenberry looked at him like he thought he was a frigging four-star General. You couldnt blame him for that. That was the goddam draftee influence, that and the Officer's Extension Course. Rosenberry must have heard about the Officer's Extension Course. He must have. The whole Compny had heard about it. Only, with Rosenberry, instead of needling him about it to relieve their own baffled surprised disappointment, like the rest of the Company, Rosenberry kept it inside that quietly contained Jewish secret along with everything else he heard saw or felt. Hell, he thought, maybe he even admires you for it. He's a draftee, aint he? He would never find out, though, not from that sealed vacuum of quietly contained Jewish secret. It was a secret he would like to unravel someday, just for the exercise, just to see what was inside. You never