From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [26]
“Yes, Sir,” Warden raged. “Ten-nsh-HUT!” he bawled, bellowing it at the top of his lungs in the smallness of the room.
“Carry on,” Holmes said. He touched his crop to hat brim and disappeared. A moment later his voice came in the open window.
“Sergeant Warden!”
“Yes, Sir!” Warden bellowed, jumping to the window.
“Whats the matter with this outfit? This place needs policing. Look there. And there. And over by the garbage rack. Is this a barracks or a pigpen? I want it policed up! Immediately!”
“Yes, Sir!” bellowed Warden, “Maggio!”
Maggio’s gnomelike body bobbed up in its undershirt before the window. “Yesser.”
“Maggio,” said Capt Holmes. “Wheres your goddam fatigue blouse? Get your blouse and put it on. This is no goddamned bathing beach.”
“Yessir,” Maggio said. “I’ll get it, Sir.”
“Maggio,” Warden bellowed. “Get the other KPs and police the goddam area. Dint you hear what the Compny Commander said? It’s disgraceful. Disgraceful.”
“Okay, Sarge,” said Maggio resignedly.
Warden leaned his elbows on the sill and watched Holmes’s broad back move through the midst of Dog Company, called to attention by their duty sergeant. “Carry on,” Holmes thundered. After Holmes had passed, the blue-dressed figures sat back down to go on with their stoppage drill.
“The hell for leather Cavalryman,” Warden muttered. “Errol Flynn with fifty extra pounds.” He walked deliberately over to his desk and smashed his fist into his own rigidly blocked, flat-peaked issue hat hanging on the wall. “The son of a bitch’d try to ship me down if I bent up my hat like his.”
Back at the window, he watched Holmes climbing the outside stair to Regimental Hq, going up to Col Delbert’s office. Two aging men confabing with each other, leaders of men, patting each other on the back and looking frantically about to find someone to lead.
Warden had a theory about officers: Being an officer would make a sinner out of Christ himself. No man could swallow so much gaseous privilege and authority without having his guts inflated. The eager dewy-eyed young shavetails who left the Point prepared to become cavalier Jeb Stuarts, politician U.S. Grants, tragic R.E. Lees, fatherly Stonewall Jacksons, or Ramrod John J Pershings, heroes, each in his right, to the adoring populace who bought his plaster bust in all the 10¢ stores, had a choice of two developments. In every war there were two wars, the war for officers and the war of the enlisted man. And all the beardless shavetails grew up to be either the Stern Disciplinarian, or else the One Beloved of All His Men Who Loved Them Like a Brother. More recently there were the Holmeses who like a schizoid case tried to play both roles, and ended up a cuckold.
Beyond the Hq stairs the bedroom window of Holmes’s house peered at him coyly through the truck entrance. And maybe right now, behind that unrevealing window, she was languorously undressing the long flowing milk of that blonde body, garment by garment like a stripper in a honkytonk, to take a bath or something. Maybe she had a man in there with her now.
Warden felt his chest swelling potently with maleness, as if a great balloon were being blown up inside him. Feeling as though his belly was revolving, smoking and emitting sparks, he turned from the window and sat back down.
Prew was waiting for him, standing quietly before the desk, feeling worn out now and very tired, feeling the sweat still dripping slowly from his armpits with the strain of subduing his own fear and disagreeing with authority. The collar of the shirt that had been fresh at eight o’clock was wilted and the sweat had soaked clear through the back. Only a little more of this and you are through, he told himself. Then you can relax.
Warden picked up a paper from his desk and began to read it, as if he were alone. When he finally looked up there was hurt surprise and indignation on his face, as if wondering how this man had got into his