From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [182]
As he rounded the corner O’Hayer was still looking at him, still unemotionally, all the tumblers still apparently still working.
Well, so what if it didnt work. Maybe Dynamite really would have done it for him, Big Jim meant a lot to Dynamite and not just as a punchie, maybe Dynamite really would have carried him as surplus, who knows? You never knew. Dynamite could hardly bust him.
But then Dynamite might also have transferred him. To HQ Company maybe where he would have to work. Or maybe Dynamite would only have clamped down on him in supply and made him work some here, although Christ knows what he could do without going to a supply school first. Well, maybe Dynamite might have sent him to supply school. Dynamite could have done any of these, if O’Hayer asked him to be relieved, like you hoped he would. So maybe old tumblers-in-the-head really did figure it out right. Maybe he wasnt scared.
But it was entirely possible Dynamite would have carried him as surplus though, he reminded himself. Entirely possible. And he preferred to believe Dynamite would have, and that old tumblers hadnt figured it out but was only scared to take a chance on losing his soft deal, just like us common mortals. Maybe Dynamite wouldnt have carried him as surplus, but Warden preferred to believe it the other way. It made him happy to believe it the other way.
He went on over to the barracks happily, believing it, to shower and change his clothes and go to town and have some drinks someplace or maybe just wander around happily downtown, not out at Waikiki but downtown, among the bars and shooting galleries and whorehouses, while he waited for time to meet Karen Holmes at the Moana in Waikiki. His T shirt and shirt both were sweated clear through from the gambling and he stopped on the stairs and raised his arm and put his nose to his armpit happily and inhaled the mineral-salts male smell of himself, feeling his chest expanding infinitely with maleness, feeling from inside himself the hard columnar beauty of his thighs and the slim thickly muscled beauty of his waist and loins; he was Milt Warden and he was meeting Karen Holmes in town tonight. But then suddenly, the eyes inside his mind that were not his eyes focused themselves, as his eyes had done, on the husky battered face of Maylon Stark and he straightened up with his nostrils sickened and smashed his fist against the wall, punching stiff-wristed, solid-forearmed as a fighter punches, at the place where Maylon Stark’s husky battered face was amorphously hanging and let the numbed hand fall contemptuously at his side and went on upstairs, to shower and change his clothes and go to town to meet Karen Holmes at the Moana.
Pete Karelsen was in their room, sitting on his bunk staring crumple-mouthed at the full set of grinning teeth in his open palm. He laid them down on the table quickly.
“What the hell happen to your hand?” he wanted to know eagerly. “You been in a fight again?”
“What the hell happen to your goddam teeth?” Warden said contemptuously. “You been in a goddam messhall again?”
“Okay,” Pete said offendedly. “Be wise. I was only intrested in your hand.”
“Okay,” Warden said. “Be hurt. I was only intrested in your goddam teeth,” and went on looking at his own hated face in the mirror, unbuttoning the thick chenille of his shirt, pulling it up savagely out of his pants.
“All the time making cracks,” Pete said. “All the time needling somebody. I merely ask you a simple friendly question. You dont have to go casting aspersions. You dont have to go being snotty.”
Warden went on looking in the mirror without answering and finished unbuttoning his shirt and took it off and dropped it on the bed. He unbuckled his belt in silence.
“What are you doing?” Pete said conversationally. “Getting ready to go to town?”
“No. I’m getting ready to go over to Choy’s, thats why I’m changing into civilians.”
“Okay. Go to hell.”
“I’m going over to Choy’s and get drunkern hell.”
“I been