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By Root 14214 0

on the bed, at the woman drinking with him, at the Majors, at S/Sgt Jefferson handing around another tray of drinks, at Sam Slater grinningly picking out a woman, at the woman he had picked out himself. He did not know them, any of them, and he felt like a man looking out of the window of a skyscraper down the diminishing receding length of wall to where the beautifully miniature cars hum and crawl like beetles in the street, and he had to pull his head back in. Or jump.

Not that, Holmes. You’ve been on that road, that road leads nowhere, thats the road that brought you here. The thing is, to believe. You must believe. You must have faith. Thats the answer. The only answer.

So he looked at Sam Slater and he believed. He looked at the frolicking Sam Slater from Sheboygan, like the woman looks frightenedly but still hopefully at the man beside her whom she has let seduce her, whom she has given it to, and who has turned over and begun to snore. He knew there must be some logic in all of it someplace. It couldnt all be just so haphazard.

Tomorrow he would buy that new Mixmaster at the PX and have it sitting in the kitchen when she came home. When she walked in the first thing she’d see would be that. Then she’d know.

He stood up swaying only slightly and escorted the hefty Chinese girl back into the back.

Chapter 24

THE MAN WHOSE SALVATION everybody seemed to be concerned about was not worried at all himself, did not even for the moment realize he was a sinner, as he climbed the stairway to the New Congress Hotel.

Prew had that old on-pass feeling there again, telling him life was postponed until tomorrow morning, that he could think about being a sinner again tomorrow, but that right now he had better not let anything spoil this that was coming. Maybe he could not have the bugling. All right then, he could not have it. But he could have this and this would help to fill the hole and he had better be very careful to hang onto it because he might need it bad someday soon. Right now he much preferred to think about Lorene. There was a name for you. Lorene. That was no whore’s name, that was a really truly woman’s name, Lorene. It had a special private sound all its own for him, when he said it over, as if no other woman had ever had that name before. Hell, he could transfer out of this fucked up jockstrap company, what was to stop him? Get in a real soldiering outfit again and really work hard again. Get a sergeant’s rating back again because a rating would mean something again now.

Then he remembered he could not get a transfer out of this outfit.

All right, so he couldnt get a transfer. So what? What did that mean? Not a goddam. All this will have blown over in a year from now. She plans to go on working for another year anyway, dont she? By then you will be due to ship back home, back to the States, in a year from now, by this time next year, in 1942. He knocked on the steel door happily loudly, seeing it all in his mind suddenly, how it would be then, some sturdy little permanent post that drowsed along from day to day, like Jefferson Barracks or Fort Riley, with solid brick barracks and new-cut grass and well kept walks under the long afternoon shadows of big old oak trees that had been standing in the same place since before George Armstrong Custer had his hair cut by the Sioux, that would be the kind of place to re-enlist for, where the NCO quarters were brick too and not this jerry-built ship lath they have here, and where you can take her right into a community and a little society that the married noncoms made and maintained for themselves alone. Didnt all the old timers like Pete Karelsen always say whores made the best wives? Whores knew how to appreciate the little things, didnt they say, after they’ve been down and out. Lots of old timers married whores. Look at Baldy Dhom, his wife was a whore in Manila. No, lets not look at Dhom, his wife is a gook, she dont count, thats you if you had married Violet. But you dont want to marry Violet, you want to marry Lorene. And if comfort and security is what