From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [165]
“You counted us off, Ike,” Angelo said.
“You think a fast one can over Old Ike pull?” Ike said, glaring at them suspiciously out of the little red eyes behind the hairy brows. “Over my face the wool you can not stretch. I ham separating you two men together. You Maggio go hupstairs the ones wit. Tell Sargint Lindsay to Treadwell send back down the twos wit. Dis a fatigue, not no hold ladies sewing circle or vacation. In charge am I of dis detail and I work want not loafing. See?”
“I’ll see you later,” Angelo said disgustedly.
“Okay,” Prew said, with the unruffled equanimity of the perfect soldier.
“Hokay,” Ike bawled. “Move. Not all day. You Prewitt go back the twos wit and dont sometime figur on getting by with from me, see? I be around all time keep eye on you, see? You aint so tough smart guy as maybe think.”
Ike was as good as his word. He made his headquarters in the corridor hallway where the twos had set up the one-by-eight on the two stepladders they used for scaffolding, and where Prew was working, first standing on the board, then sitting on it, then kneeling on the floor, washing down swath after swath of the pebbly plaster wall from floor to ceiling.
“Dis a fatigue, not vacation, Prewitt,” Ike informed him, grinning wolfishly with the long sallow ape’s jaw, from time to time. “I got my eye on you.”
And he had. When Prew climbed down to rinse his rag, when he went outside to change the water in his bucket, when he turned around to resoap his GI brush—Old Ike would be there in front of him, watching suspiciously hopefully with the little sharp eyes in the sanguine bullethead like red buttons reflecting firelight on a lumberjack’s plaid shirt.
—“Dis a fatigue, not vacation, Prewitt.”—
But Ike’s hopes were groundless. Prew had been having a lot worse than that all morning, and had weathered it by playing perfect soldier. Ike’s efforts were almost pathetic, compared to the imaginative variety that, say, Dhom could give to the riding of a man. This could not get under his skin, not the sharp smell of the dirty soapy water, nor his own white water-wrinkled fingers, nor the stale cracker smell of the wet wall plaster.
It was not, strangely, until Capt Dynamite Holmes came bouncing in from across the quad, freshly showered, shaved, shampooed, and shined, his big boots gleaming—it was not till then that all these things suddenly got under Prewitt’s skin.
“Hello there, Sergeant Galovitch,” Holmes grinned, stopping in the doorway.
“Atten HUT,” Ike bawled, making two distinct words of it, and bracing his bigfooted longarmed missinglink’s body into an arch-backed travesty of it proudly. The men went on working.
“Everything under control, Sergeant?” Holmes said fondly. “Are you getting this place slicked up for me tomorrow?”
“Yes, Serr,” Ike grunted, uncomfortably because still bracing solidly, his thumbs along the seams of his trousers, somewhere down around his knees. “Slickem up. Everyting I am doing just like the Gomny Gmandr saying.”
“Good,” Holmes grinned fondly. “Fine.” Still grinning fondly, he stepped over to inspect the wall, and nodded. “Looks fine, Sergeant Galovitch, A-1. Keep up the good work.”
“Yes, Serr,” Ike grunted worshipfully, still bracing. The narrow shouldered barrel ape’s chest expanded out until it looked about to burst and Ike saluted, stiffly, grotesquely, looking as if the hand would knock his eye clear out.
“Well,” Holmes grinned fondly. “Carry on then, Sergeant.” He went on into the orderly room grinning and Old Ike bawled “Atten HUT” again, making it two words again, and the men still went on working.
Prew went on rubbing his rag over the pebbly plaster he had just washed and that suddenly sickened him now, feeling his jaws tighten reasonlessly. He felt as if he had just witnessed the sodomitic seduction of a virgin brunser who had liked it.
“All right, you men there,” Ike hollered proudly, moving slabfooted up and down behind them. “You men I want on the ball to get, see? Just begause da Gomny Gmandr comes around is to stop working no escuse. Dis a fatigue, not