From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [267]
“You think so?” Prew said. “It aint so bad, is it?
“I wonder what The Warden come over for,” he said.
Chapter 31
MILT WARDEN DID NOT exactly know just what he was doing over here himself. He had left the CP on drunken impulse with the first outgoing vehicle, because he did not like the CP and because he was tired of looking at Capt Holmes’s increasingly less aristocratic and more moon-like face. And he had found himself in this godforsaken mosquito infested hole with young Lt Culpepper. Looking at Lt Culpepper, Milt Warden could not make up his mind which was worse.
Back at the CP he had felt for some time that Capt Holmes had been secretly laughing at him, as if Holmes knew some terribly amusing private joke on him. Milt Warden had not wanted to fall in love with Capt Holmes’s wife, all he had meant to do was to get even with Capt Holmes for being a goddamned officer. The other part had slipped up on him, and recently he had acquired a ridiculous but increasingly insistent tendency to hold Capt Holmes personally responsible. If the son of a bitch had only taken care of his own wife like any decent man ought to, none of this would ever happened. And Milt Warden, instead of being deeply in love, would still be able to enjoy life.
Milt Warden had seen Karen Holmes twice more since Payday. The first time they spent the night in the Moana again. The second time they had spent the night in the Alexander Young downtown, on the theory that it was best to keep moving around. Both times had ended in a big argument over what they were going to decide to do about it. Both of them agreed they could not go on like this. Both of them agreed they could not stop being in love. Finally, Karen advanced the solution that Milt should take one of the extension courses that had come into prominence with the peacetime draft and become an officer.
If he was an officer, she said, he would automatically be shipped back to the States to a new command where none of the EM knew him, and she could follow. If he was an officer, she could divorce Holmes and marry him and let Holmes have his heir. But it was a cinch she could not do that as long as he was an EM, especially an EM in her husband’s company. Milt would, Karen thought, make a truly fine and remarkable officer.
Milt Warden was not only deeply shocked, he was humiliated. It was not that he was not willing to do anything within reason, but he felt that this was asking too much. And so, for the seventh time, he had made up his mind not to see her any more. That was one of the reasons he was drunk.
“Lets eat,” Lt Culpepper commanded, as Pfc Russell turned off the ignition, and switched on his flash. This was the signal for the others to switch on their flashes. “What a miserable fucking place to have to inspect posts in,” Lt Culpepper said bitterly. “You’d think it was about time we got in some junior officers, what with this expansion.”
Warden climbed out, grinning at him savagely. Lt Culpepper looked the other way and started toward the kitchen tent. He did not know what the hell the 1st/Sgt wanted to come over here for anyway. He did not like to be around 1st/Sgt Warden, it made him uncomfortable. Sometimes he had an awkward suspicion that Milton Anthony Warden was mad. He did not seem to give a damn for anything.
Warden waited until Lt Culpepper and Anderson had gone on, and grabbed Pfc Weary Russell by the arm and pulled him back.
“Listen, you son of a bitch,” he whispered fiercely. “If I dont show up to go back on the truck with you bastards, you are to come back here and pick me up at two o’clock, see?”
“But Jesus Christ, Top!” protested Weary Russell, picturing a night of wakefulness sitting in his tent with his watch.
“No back talk,” Warden said. “You heard me.”
“What the hell’re you going to do over here?” Weary Russell said.
Warden grinned at him slyly with his eyebrows.
“Theres no women nor nothing,” Weary said.
Warden merely grinned at him.
“Well, at least gimme a drink then,” Weary conceded.
Warden got the bottle out from under the seat where he had hidden