From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [188]
“Fooled you,” Pete said. “I got money. Come on and go along?”
“Hell, no,” Warden said contemptuously. “When I have to buy it, I quit.”
“Well, I’m going,” said the K Co top.
“You want to go, Chief?” Pete said.
“Yeah I might as well,” Choate said. He heaved his great bulk up. “Come on and go, Milt.”
“No. I told you when I have to buy it, I quit.”
“Ah, come on,” Pete said.
“No!” Warden said. “God damn no!”
He took the full pitcher of beer between his hands and heaved it high into the air over a steel manhole cover in the grass. The beer slopped out in a spray as it fell, and the other three men scattered. Warden stood still, watching the pitcher fall straight like a plummet from star to star, the beer splattering on his uniform and upturned face in tiny drops.
“Whoops!” he yelled as the pitcher smashed on the manhole cover sending a big spray over him.
“You crazy bastard,” said the K Co top. “We could of took it in the cab with us.”
Warden rubbed his wet palms into his beerwet face. “Leave me alone,” he said muffledly from between the vigorously rubbing palms. “Why dont you leave me alone? Get the hell out and leave me alone.”
He turned and walked away from them toward the barracks to shower and get dressed in the dark, to go to town and meet Karen Holmes at the Moana.
Chapter 22
WARDEN WORE HIS comparatively new tan suit of Forstmann tropical worsted with the saddle-stitched lapels that had cost him $120 tourist prices, and that he saved for great occasions. But all the way into town he was furious with himself for coming. His hand hurt him and was swollen fatly and that also was her fault. He wished furiously he had stayed with Pete and the guys, forgetting how miserable he had been with them. He wished furiously he had left her and the rest of these middle-class society women to the gigolos who were neurotic enough themselves to be able to understand them. He wished furiously a lot of things. Once he even wished furiously he was dead and in hell. He knew then that he was in love.
When the cab stopped he went straight across to the Black Cat to buy a bottle in the package store and while he was there had several angry drinks at the bar, before he finally walked furiously over to King to catch furiously the Kalakaua Avenue bus that went furiously to Waikiki. Oh he was in love all right. Was in love for sure. And might as well admit it.
By the time he got off the bus in front of the Waikiki Tavern the whiskey on top of all that beer back at the Post had hit him like a hammer and he was not only in love but was also half drunk and spoiling for a fight. But he didnt find any fights. Everybody was too happy. Waikiki was Payday-crowded and even the civilian people’s faces showed they were under the spell of the bars-down festivity.
He walked furiously up past the crowded Tavern to where the beach came in almost to the street to form the little triangle of sand they labeled Kuhio Park where the green benches sat amongst the palm trees in the sand, and where he was meeting Karen Holmes. Kuhio Park was also crowded, and soldiers in civilians and sailors in uniform walked back and forth across it and sat on the benches, with or without women, mostly without. He did not expect her to be there.
She was there all right, though. In the midst of all this champing maleness she was sitting reluctantly on one of the most secluded benches trying hard not to see it, any of it. She sat with her ankles crossed primly and her hands folded primly in her lap and with her elbows and shoulders pulled in tensely primly to her sides. She was there all right all right. And she stared perpetually out over the darkling water with her upper lip between her teeth as if trying to be someplace else. He thought he saw the tensed prim shoulders heave up several times as if in heavy sighs. He walked over to her.
“Why hello,” she said lightly. “I didnt think you were coming.”
“Why not? I aint late.” He felt awkward and constrained and sullen and just a little bit tight