From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [297]
Ike Galovitch, American, moved backward off the walk still holding out the knife, his feet going backward very fast across the grass. His heels hit the kitchen sidewalk on the other side and he skidded the last three feet on his rump and came up against the concrete garbage rack platform, his head lolling back in the drippings.
Prew stood on the walk and watched him, rubbing his hand. Ike did not move, and he walked over and put his ear to the old man’s mouth. Ike Galovitch, American, was sleeping peacefully and breathing regularly and stinkingly, an ugly, seamed-faced, beat-up and battered, tired old man who had come all the long way from Yugoslavia to Hawaii to find an idol he could worship. This was no common enemy, this was only a foul-breathed, rotting-toothed, repulsively ugly old Slav of a peasant whom nobody on this earth, not even Dynamite Holmes least of all his mother, had ever given a damn for if he lived or died. How would you like to look at that face in the mirror every morning and know yourself as so repulsive? Only just wait till he wakes up, he thought, and the mind begins to work again, what then? He might easily have killed you, he would have if he could. He stood looking down at the incredibly innocently sleeping patheticness, then he took the knife and snapped the well honed blade off in a deep crack in the concrete of the platform and put the bladeless handle back in the open palm and went upstairs to bed.
He did not see the two figures of Sergeant Henderson and Sergeant Wilson that weaved out from under the shadow of the porch to where Ike lay, after he was gone, and he would not have cared much then if he had.
It was a flashlight in his face that woke him. His watch said midnight. He was still a little drunk. All he could think of was it was another sabotage alert.
“Here he is,” a voice whispered, and an arm with corporal’s stripes reached inside the cone of light that he could not see beyond and shook him by the shoulder. “Come on, Prewitt, lets rise and shine. Drop your cocks and grab your socks,” the voice chanted automatically. “Get up out of there.”
“Whats the matter?” he said out loud. “How about gettin that goddam light out of my eyes.”
“Goddam it, be quiet,” the voice whispered. “You want to wake up the whole goddam Compny? Come on. Get up.” It was Cpl Miller’s, the CQ’s, voice.
He knew what it was. In the last month he had pictured the whole thing many times. Now, he wanted suddenly to laugh, at the cautious solicitude for the Compny’s rest. He had not pictured that.
“What is it?” he said.
“Get up,” the CQ whispered. “You’re under arrest.”
“What for?”
“I dont know. This is him, Sergeant,” the CQ said. “This is the man you want.”
“Okay, Corporal,” said the second voice. “You can go on back to bed. I can handle it from here.” The voice paused and changed its angle of direction. “This is the man, Sir,” it said. “Private Prewitt. I think the man’s still drunk.”
“Very well then,” the third voice said boredly. “Rout him out and get some clothes on him. I havent got all night. The OD must inspect the posts, you know. Lets rout him out.”
“Yes, Sir,” the guard sergeant said.
The same arm with the corporal’s stripes came inside the cone at him again. He’s surely working hard, he grinned to himself.
“Come on, lets go,” the CQ said. “Get up. Get some clothes on. You heard what the OD said.” The arm gripped his naked shoulder.
He moved his shoulder out from under it. “Keep your goddam hands off of me, Miller. I can get up by myself. Just take it easy.”
The leather of the sergeant’s billy thong squeaked.
“Lets have no trouble, Private,” the OD’s bored voice said. “The more trouble you make the harder it will go with you. We are quite able to take you in by force, if necessary.”
“I dont want no trouble, only just keep your hands off me. I wont