From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [173]
Payday. It is truly an occasion, even the feud between you and the jockstraps is in eclipse when its Payday. In the long, low ceilinged shadiness of the squadroom with the sun very bright outside men are stripping off the suntans feverishly and pulling on the civilians and you know there will not be very many for chow this noon, practically none tonight except for losing gamblers.
Out of his $30.00, after the debts were paid, Prew had exactly $12.00 and two dimes. This, which would not even buy Lorene for one all night session, he blessed and genuflected over and took over to O’Hayer’s.
The sheds, across the street from the dayroom and jerry-built on the strip of worn near-bald earth between the street and the narrow gauge Post railroad, were already going full blast. The quarter-ton maintenance trucks had been moved to the regimental motor park, the big spools of phone wire were neatly stacked outside, the 37mm anti-tank guns (some the old short-barrelled steel-wheeled that were familiar, some the new long-barrelled rubber-tired looking strange and foreign like the pictures of the German arms in Life Magazine) had been rolled out and covered up with tarps, and the spielers hired for a buck an hour called unceasingly like circus barkers from before each shed to “Come inside, boys. Poker, blackjack, craps, chuckaluck, all inside. Test that luck, boys.”
In O’Hayer’s all five lima-bean-shaped blackjack tables were working full capacity. Under the green shaded lights green visored dealers called the cards in monotonous low voices against the hum. Both dice tables were crowded three deep with players, and the three poker tables that were dealing only stud today to take care of more players had no seats open.
Standing in the door he thought how by the middle of the month all this money would have sifted down into the hands of a few heavy winners who would be at this table where O’Hayer sat playing now, one of his hired help dealing. They would be winners from all over, from as far away as Hickam and Fort Kam and Shatter and Fort Ruger. They would make this the biggest game on the Inland Post, if not on the whole Rock. The thought made his belly flutter, how he might with luck be one of them. He had done it once before, but only once, at Myer. And the resolution to win just enough for town and quit grew dim and wavered and, but for his stiff determination bolstered by the picture of Lorene, would have fled entirely.
He worked methodically with small bets for two hours at a blackjack table (deliberately monotonously, deliberately uninspired) to run his twelve bucks up to the twenty which was the take-out at the poker tables. Then he moved over to the one where O’Hayer was to wait for an open seat, winch would never be long on Payday when most of the players were just small fry like himself with a table stake wanting to bite into the big boys’ capital. They were constantly going broke and dropping out. He waited without excitement, promising himself faithfully that if he won two hands he’d quit, because two wins in this game would give him plenty for tonight with enough left over for a good weekend (today was Thursday) or Saturday night and Sunday night (and maybe Sunday day, if she said okay, maybe at the beach with her) with Lorene. Just two wins. He had it all figured out.
The round green felt with a bite cut out for the dealer’s seat was strewn with piles of halfdollars and cartwheels and the red plastic two-bit chips for ante-ing. They caught and threw back sardonically the greenglass-shaded light, vividly red and silver against the soft light-absorbing felt. He could see The Warden and Stark among the players. Jim O’Hayer sat relaxed with a rakish, expensive green visor cocked over the coldly rigidly mathematical eyes, constantly rolling two cartwheels one over the other with a click that ate into the nerves.
It was Stark, his hat tipped low over his eyes, who finally pushed back his four legged mess stool and gave himself the coup de grace: “Seat open.