From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [299]
“We dont lock the door,” the OD said from behind the desk, “on account of the members of the guard are back there. And you’d better not wake them up, by god. But there will be someone here all night awake and armed. Okay, thats all. You can go on back there and go to sleep.”
“Yes, Sir,” he said. “Thank you, Sir.” He took the blanket down through the double row of cots and huddled sleeping figures of the guard until he found an empty one. He sat down on it and took his shoes off.
(he was not new to this feeling of having crossed the line of bars into another heavier world of heavy air and heavy water he was not new to jails he knew that you would get used to breathing the heavy air eventually and then your lungs would no longer threaten to collapse on you because the heavy air did not want to go into them you just had to get acclimated that was all he knew all about jails jails were just as intimate to his life and heritage as being on the bum or soldiering he had learned to breathe the heavy air and drink the heavy water they were the same in every jail whether in Florida or Texas or Georgia or in Richmond Indiana he had learned jails even before he learned the Army in fact they kind of seemed to go together one way it just took a little time was all)
He lay down on the cot and pulled the blanket over him.
Under the panic, that was fading, he thought: It must be because of Galovitch, it had to be that.
If Wilson and Henderson, he thought, had not tried to help the police dog to mount Bloom’s dog Bloom would not have tried to thank me. If I, he thought, had not fought Bloom Old Ike would not have tried to knife me.
It was very complex and that tended to make it confusing, somewhat. But then, he knew the real thing did not lie in these circumstantial coincidences. The real thing lay underneath that. He knew that. It was hard to remember, though.
As he dropped off to sleep he could hear the OD and the Sgt still sitting at the lighted desk talking in low voices.
Chapter 35
LT CULPEPPER WAS APPOINTED his defense counsel. The second or third or was it the fourth day (they were all the same, they were identical, every day they took him out under guard three times and fed him under guard at the E Company Mess where the guard was rationed, every day they took him out under guard two times and worked him under guard for the P&P pulling weeds under guard from the flowerbeds of the Officers’ childrens’ playground back of the married officers’ quarters where he pulled the weeds on his knees in the fatigues under guard the guard standing over him guarding him and the children laughing yelling playing on the teetertotters swings and in the sandbox, it was not especially unpleasant) the second or third or was it the fourth day, Lt Culpepper came bustling in through the line of bars with the open door of bars from the other world like a whirlwind bringing the smell of the sea inland to the heavy drought-stricken prairies, and carrying the brand new briefcase with the zipper on three sides he had bought to carry the papers of the trial in, when he was appointed his defense counsel.
It was the first time Lt Culpepper had been appointed a defense counsel and he was enthusiastic over the case. The case had good prospects, if not of making a winning fight for an acquittal, at least a Pyrrhic victory he said, and they did not take him out under guard to pull weeds under guard in the afternoons any more, only in the mornings, after Lt Culpepper started coming in to talk about the case.
“Its a big responsibility,” Lt Culpepper said enthusiastically. “Its my first chance to put in practice the semester of law and courts martial procedure they gave us at the Point, and they will all be watching to see how well I handle it. Naturally I want to do the very level best with it I can. I want to see you get the squarest deal I can possibly wangle for you and I mean to see you get it too.”
Prew, unable to stop remembering the night at Hickam and the unfinishing of the Re-enlistment Blues, felt