From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [294]
Chief emptied off a can with a long swallow and set it back on the table carefully with sausage fingers among the forest. “Well, they kicked him out of the Olympic Game,” he said slowly. “After he’d won damn near every medal they had. They kicked him out on a technicality. They wouldnt even let him keep his medals. Then I seen him playin them wild Indians in them western movies. You see what I mean?”
Prew nodded, watching the big calm face look off across the yard.
“I got bigger,” Chief said, “I wanted to go to college and jockstrap. But I dint even have no highschool. And besides, my old man dint have enough dough to keep the fambly in levis. And I couldnt get no scholarship. How could I get a scholarship?
“And there was Jim Thorpe, playing Indians in western movies for a livin.” He shrugged his great shoulders and it was like a small earthquake in the forest on the table. “He was probly the greatest jockstrap this country ever had,” he hazarded shyly. “Well, thats just the way it is. Thats the way things go, see? Thats life. Well, could you see me wearin buckskin pants and warpaint and a big old feather bonnet? runnin around yelling with a tommyhawk? Well, neither could I. I’d feel like a goddam ass. The only gadgets like that I ever even seen was all shipped down from a factory in Wisconsin to the Trading Post to sell to tourists. I’d feel like it was a . . . I’d feel ashamed.
“So I shipped into the army, where jockstrappin would do me some good and live easy. It dont bother me none. You see what I mean?”
“Yeah,” Prew said, his grin bitter as the edge of a razor.
“Well, with me, thats okay. I got no complaints.” Chief looked good-humoredly around the smokedrifting talkhumming lawn. The group of recruits in shiny uniforms were singing now that they would drink your goddam Saki and would fuck your black Kanaky but that they would not come back to Wahoo any more, the EM8s version of the Regimental song. Chief grinned, and looked around over the time hallowed, twenty year old Beer Garden.
“You know where the words Dogface and Dog Soldier come from?” he said suddenly. “They come from the old Cheyenne War Society in the Plains Wars, they called themselves Dog Soldiers. The Cavalry took it from them.”
“No,” Prew said. “I didn’t know that.”
“Well,” Chief said, “thats where we got them.” He looked around the place again. “And I bet not ten men ever know where they came from.
“I like to take things pretty much like they come,” he said. “Thats the way it is, then thats the way I am, see? I do what I can, and what I cant, I dont worry about. I live easy and I figure I got nothin much to bitch about.
“But Warden’s differnt. They’s something eatin him up inside. Its like he’s got a fire in him that bums him up, and ever now and then it’ll pop up into his eyes. If you ever watched him, you see it. Warden dont belong in the Army.”
“Well, why the hell dont he get out then?” Prew said. “Nobody’s ast him to get in the Army and stay in it. If he dont like it, whynt he get out and get where he does belong.”
Chief Choate looked at him levelly. “You know where he belongs?”
Prew dropped his eyes. “Okay,” he said.
“A man knows where he belongs is lucky, way I see it,” Chief Choate said. “Warden’s a good man, but he just dont belong in the Army. Pete Karelsen’s a good man, too, but he dont belong in the Army neither. I dont neither. Dynamite belongs in the Army.”
“Okay,” Prew said again, “okay. But why does he want to ride me so much for. If he was mean, and really had it in for me, I could figure it. But somehow I always feel like he dont have nothing against me really.”
“Maybe he’s trying to teach you somethin,” Chief said.
“What?” Prew said.
“What!” Chief said. “I dont know. How would I know what Warden’s tryin to teach you?” he said angrily embarrassedly. His perpetually placid face was still good-natured, but behind his eyes suddenly was the cold flat look of the Reservation