From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [241]
He still had Hal’s forty dollars left. He decided he would use Hal’s forty dollars to coldbloodedly seduce Lorene. It looked like that was the only way it could be done, and nobody knew he had it, and he did not have to pay Turp Thornhill till next Payday, and he did not believe Angelo would mind him using it. This time, it would be a planned economy. He laid out a plan for $60, to cover a period of five weeks. He figured he could just about swing it for that, with his plan, without having to count on next Payday which he already owed to Turp.
While waiting for the whorehouse Payday rush to die off he cautiously invested $10, and only $10, of the $40 with O’Hayer’s blackjack dealers for a dividend of a little over $20. Blackjack was much less fun than poker, that was why it was a better investment. Forty-five of the $60 would go for three all night jobs at $15 ea. The other $15 would go for three bottles at $3.50 ea. The change would go for cab fare. After he found out where she lived and got her to take him up, he could forget the money part. She had plenty money, and would not mind spending it on him if he played it right. It would be an interesting venture. It would be something to do, while Angelo was waiting trial. He planned it all out. It was absorbing, fascinating mental exercise. He lost himself in it entirely.
He followed the proceedings during the whole seven weeks it took the law to care for Maggio with the same absorption. An absorption that left The Treatment, that was still going on, running a poor second.
Once during the six weeks before the trial, he bought two cartons of tailormades and walked up to the Stockade to visit him. It was almost two miles, up past the tennis courts, then past the golf course, then past the bridle path sun dappled under the big tall trees and the lathery smell of the Packtrain. He sweated walking in the hot sun and he saw many officers, officers’ wives, and officers’ children. They all looked very tanned and very sportive. The Stockade was a wood building painted white with a green roof and sitting in a cool grove of oaks in the middle of a big flat field on the very edge of the reservation. It looked like a country school house. The tall chain mesh wire fence with the three in-leaning strands of barb wire made it look more like a country school house. The chain mesh wire grids over the windows looked like a country school house, too. At the country school house they would not let him in.
It was not a country school. It was a military establishment. They would not let him leave the tailormades for Angelo either. Each internee was issued one sack of Duke’s Mixture a day, and there would be no supplementary donations from outsiders. Each internee was a soldier, and would share the same as every other internee soldier. He took the tailormades back home with him. He did not see Angelo.
He felt thankful to them though. They could have easily let him leave the tailormades for Angelo and then the MP guards smoked them up themselves. Later on he smoked the cigarets himself. He felt guilty about smoking them. He could have thrown them away but they had cost two-fifty, and what good would it have done, it was an empty gesture. So he smoked them. But he felt guilty.
He felt guilty about Angelo too, that was one reason he had wanted to see him. He felt that what had happened Payday was somehow his fault. Angelo had been playing the queers for quite a while now, he had been coming down to Hal’s place often, and nothing like this had happened before. Only when Kid Prewitt appeared on the scene, like a catalyst poured into a tranquil beaker, did the mixture begin to boil and then explode. Angelo had not been tainted by the queers; it was only when Kid Galahad Prewitt had stepped in looking for the Holy Grail with his moralistic fears and questionings that Angelo had suddenly felt guilty enough, or tainted