From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [236]
“Did he really?”
“No.”
“See, Prew? I aint drunk. I sure had you guys fooled.” He stood up and immediately fell back against the lamppost. He grabbed it with both arms to keep from falling. “See?” he said.
“No. You aint drunk.”
“I aint. I just stumbled on that crack there.” He pushed himself up straight and let go the lamppost cautiously.
“Whoops!” he yelled, throwing his head back and letting it out from the bottom of his lungs.
“Fuck it! I’M GUNNA RE-ENLIST!”
“Shut up, goddam it,” Prew said. He stepped in quick and grabbed him by the waistband as he started to fall back flat, clear off balance from the throwing back of his head.
“You want the goddam MPs on us?” Prew said.
“MPs! MPs! MPs!” Angelo yelled. “COME AND GET US. HERE WE IS!”
“You jerk.” Prew let go of the trunks suddenly and Angelo fell full length on the sidewalk, without moving a hand to catch himself.
“Look at me, Prew. I’m shot. I’m dead. A poor dead soljer, not a friend in the fuckinworld. Just send the medal home to mother, boys, maybe she can hock it.”
“Get up,” Prew grinned. “Come on. Lets get out of this.”
“Okay.” Angelo scrambled to his feet, using the bench to hoist himself up with. “How long you think before we get in the war, Prew?”
“Maybe we wont get in it.”
“Oh, yes we will.”
“I know it.”
“You dont have to protect me,” Angelo said, mimicking Tommy’s deep bass feminine voice. He started laughing. “I wish I had a decent drink, this slop is filthy,’” he mimicked Hal’s precise speech. “Hell with it. Come on,” he said. “Lets go to town.”
“We’ll have to call a cab, but first we got to get you in your clothes.”
“Okay, Prew. Whatever you say, Prew.” Angelo grabbed the trunks and jerked them down to his knees and started to step out of them. His foot hung and he fell again.
“Who hit me?” he said. “Who done it? Let me at the bastard.”
“God damn,” Prew said. He grabbed the little guy by the armpits and hauled him off out of the light into the bushes.
“Hell,” Angelo protested. “Take it easy, Prew. You’re scrapin my ass on the sandy sidewalk.”
“You’ll have worse than that scraped, if you dont get into these clothes and get out of here. . . . Listen,” he said.
They both held their breath and listened, and Angelo was suddenly very sober. From down the street they heard the heavy footfalls of the GI shoes. They were not running, but they were not walking. There were voices floating with them, and then they heard a single rattle of a billy against a post.
“Goddam it,” one voice said. “For Chrisake, be quiet.”
“All right, all right,” the other voice said. “I want an arrest as bad as you. You and that corporal’s rating.”
“Shut up, then. Come on.”
They came in pairs, at night, dogtrotting heavyfooted, leggins scrapping softly, clubs swinging silently, wherever soldiers ever lived. And the air of fear they carried with them went before them always, the Law, holding them inside it, and then they were mean to see the others turn away. They came in pairs, wherever soldiers ever drank to forget or yelled to forget or fought to forget or put their hands in their pockets to remember. Soldiers must not forget, they said, soldiers must not remember; all that is treason.
“Now you did it,” Prew said. “Come on, back this way. Lets take off.”
“I’m sorry, Prew.”
Angelo followed docilely, sober now and ashamed for causing trouble, and they skirted the big wide drive to the movie stars’ place of rest, working west through the Royal grounds and passing the Willard Inn that was for officers, and running through the bushes breathlessly till they came to Kalia Road, down near the beach and the rambling swank Halekulani Hotel that was so swank most tourists never heard of it and that was on the beach here where the surf was breathing gently against the sand.
“Now,” Prew said. “Take them trunks off and get in these clothes.”
“Okay. Gimme the sack. What’ll I do with these, old buddy boy?”
“Hell, I dont know. Here, give em to me. Listen, Angelo, are you sure you’re sober now? Those guys are going to be waiting back