From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [295]
Prew grinned, his starched campaign hat pushed back to show his lank black hair that might have come from some forgotten Cherokee among his own Kentucky ancestors.
“Snow me,” he grinned. “Snow me some more. Bury me deep.”
Chief grinned. “I dont know,” he said mollified. “I dont know what he’s trying to teach you. And I dont think anybody’ll ever know, except maybe Warden, and maybe not him. Thats what I think. He’s just a wild son of a bitch. He ain’t got nothing against you personal, he’s the same way with everybody. Old Pete swears onct a week he’s gonna move out on him if he has to sleep in the squadroom even—but he never does.”
“But if I could only just understand why,” Prew persisted. He was beginning to feel disgusted with it now, foolish with it. He wished now he had kept his stupid mouth shut. For a minute he had thought he was going to learn something, something important. But it all sifted through your fingers like sand and left you holding nothing.
Chief Choate was looking vaguely out through the lattice toward the dim light of the PX lunchcounter lights across the street. “Warden’s one of them men who cant get killed,” he said with bearlike gentleness. “He was in the 15th when they seen their action in the Settlement in Shanghai. I heard about it down in PI even. He was just . . . He got himself a Purple Heart and a DSC out of it, but you never knew it, did you? Aint many does. He’s just a wild man, thats all, cant find nothin to pin onto. When this next war comes, Warden will be right in there, standin up on the skyline, trying to get himself killed, but nothin will ever touch him. He’ll come right through in spite a hell nor high water, maddern, wildern, craziern ever. Thats just the way he is. Thats all I know. All I know is he’s the best soljer I ever saw.”
Prew did not contradict him. He sat looking at him, feeling something, trying to feel something else.
“What do you say we drink some beer?” Chief said. “I like beer.”
“Thats the best idea yet,” Prew said, and hunched himself down over the beer cans Black Jimmy had insisted on setting him up to. It didnt make sense. He knew he would have to see Bloom tomorrow anyway, even if it wouldnt do any good. Something in what Chief Choate’d said, something unspoken in the garbled mess of the conversation, had made him know it. He had to try to explain it to Bloom. Maybe it wouldnt do any good, but he knew he had to try it.
The fights got over early. The crowds from the smoker began to swell in through the lattice gates of the Beer Garden before it was even ten o’clock. There had been an unusual number of knockouts. All three of the G Company men had won their bouts, but everybody talked excitedly about Bloom. Bloom had won his main go with a TKO in the first round. Everybody had great hopes of Bloom. He had climbed in the ring with a broken nose, black eye, and unable to talk and scored a knockdown in the first half minute. Doc Dahl, the Regimental surgeon, had not wanted him to go on at all.
“That boy knows which side his corporalcy is buttered on,” Chief Choate said without enthusiasm.
“I’m glad he got to go on, though,” Prew said. “And I’m even gladder he won.”
“He’s a horse,” the Chief said blandly. “A regular horse. Use to be one myself. He could do the same thing over again right now and not even feel it.”
“It took a lot of guts though.”
“Not for a horse,” the Chief said.
Prew sighed. The beer was spinning brightly in him. “I think I’ll take off and go home to bed. I’m sore as a boil, and I feel about as popular as a dildoe in a virgins’ convent right now.”
Chief grinned. “I guess it would make you feel a little self-conscious maybe.”
Prew managed to laugh, and threaded his way out through the crowd. At the gate he looked back. Chief Choate sat at table as before. The empty cans had grown visibly since Prew came. Chief’s eyes were getting a little swimmy