From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [283]
It was great news to the grimy Company, just back from the wilds of field duty. The non-jockstrap faction lost no time in being very pleased to point out this result of Dynamite’s policy of promoting punchdrunk fighters. The jockstrap faction countered by pointing to Candidate Malleaux, the new featherweight, who was not only still in NCO School but was leading his half of the class. Bloom, they said, was not the whole story, and anyway a man did not need to graduate from NCO School in order to become a good noncom.
Bloom himself insisted to everyone who would listen that the queer investigation downtown had been the real reason. Very few would listen. The allusion to the queer investigation puzzled all of them, and the other story made much better telling. The non-jockstrap faction had never liked him anyway, and now the jockstraps felt he had compromised their reputation and were not sympathetic either.
All the first afternoon while they were unloading, and most of the next morning during the fatigues, Bloom wandered around from one detail to another belligerently explaining his position. Bloom had not been out in the field, so he was not on any of the details. He did not have to train that day either because tonight they were running off the first card of the Company Smoker season and he was on the card and today was his day off to rest. So he had all of his time free all day to work on this other and protest his innocence.
It was Bloom’s first bout as a middleweight. He was only eligible for Company Smokers again this year because he had fought as a lightheavy in the Bowl. He had had to dry out for three days to make the weight and eat nothing but Horlick’s Malted Milk Tablets and do his roadwork in a sweatsuit, two sweaters, and a GI slicker. He was drawn very fine. It was bad for him to be so upset.
But he worked hard to prove his innocence, just the same. It did not do much good. He might as well have rested. Wherever he went the other story had already preceded him, moving on the swift wings of gossip that were faster than the legs of any man. He offered all of them to rest his case with Capt Holmes. Dynamite was too big a man to be influenced by malicious gossip. Bloom had faith in Capt Holmes. He offered them to bet anybody even money Capt Holmes would still give him his corporalcy. Nevertheless, any time his big bulk would heave up on the horizon someone would look up from work and holler: “Yaaaaa, Hips on shoulders, PLACE!”
Finally, early in the afternoon, he had to give it up. He went off to the matinee at Theater # 1. He was terribly upset and very nervous, and they were showing Clark Gable in The Prizefighter and the Lady, and he needed badly to rest up and relax, for tonight.
Prew was on the detail that was scrubbing out the kitchen trailer. When Bloom had come around to them he had kept out of it. He would not be sorry if Bloom lost the rating, but he did not care much any more one way or the other. All he wanted was to get down to Alma’s. It had been two weeks now. He did not want to see the fights and it would be more tactful for him not to be there anyway. His guts writhed like a snake at the thought of Alma, marriage or no marriage.
The kitchen trailer was sitting in the company street and they had the floorboards out of the refrigerator part and leaning against the side while they scrubbed down the bilge. One of them was hosing down the floorboards. All they had left to do after that was scrub out the bread box in the other end and then hose it all down and wipe it off outside and they were done. That was where they were with it when Bloom left for the show. They watched Bloom leave amid hoots of “Yaaaaa, Hips on shoulders, PLACE!” They knew where he was going. If you were in fifty yards of Bloom, you always knew where Bloom was going. They went on working.
They were still working when Champ Wilson and Liddell Henderson came back from the Regimental gym with a bunch of other fighters who had all been working