From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [318]
“Take it easy, buddy,” Angelo said. “Jack Malloy knows the ropes a hell of a lot bettern me. You aint in no hurry. You got three whole months yet.”
Prew felt a murderous rage crack and burst in him like an orgasm. Three months! Ninety days!! Fourteen weeks, it would be! Oh, Alma, he thought. Oh, Jesus! Alma. He wanted to beat Maggio over the head with his hammer and beat him down into a bloody bonejagged mess on the ground, for reminding him.
“Jack Malloy knows the little things that help make pulling a job like this easy on you,” Angelo said, “things I either forgotten or dint even ever know. And in this place, that’s important.”
“Okay,” Prew said. “Okay, okay. You’re the boss. You run it. If you want to make it next week, make it next week.”
“We’ll do it tomorrow,” Angelo said. “A day or two dont make no difference to you, and theres a right way to do things like this and thats plan everything out that you can figure.” He took off his wrinkled denim hat and wiped his face with it. It came away gray black but there was no noticeable difference in the color of his face. “These hats,” he said. “These goddam hats. Nobody knows how I hate these goddam hats. I wouldn’t wipe my ass on these goddam hats,” he said, wiping his face, and put it back on and grinned.
The grin, Prew thought, there was something about the grin. Then he remembered. It was like the grin that was in Hanson’s face and Turnipseed’s. He could even feel it some now on his own face already, as he looked at Angelo Maggio, the grin, the same special grin, that was in Maggio’s and Hanson’s and now in his face, a stiffness that pulled the lips up stiffly, tightly, you started out to smile and it turned itself into this grin, stiff, wolfish, feverish, wild. Probably after a while you did not even notice it?
“Old Angelo,” he grinned. “The Gimbel’s Basement Terror. Take up thy sledge and work.”
“You men!” the guard yelled from the road. “You Maggio! and you that new man! You’re suppose to break them rock. If we was afraid you’d hurt them we’d of give you rubber hammers. You’ve had time to say hello, now cut out that goddam talk and get your ass back to work!”
“See what I mean?” Prew grinned at him.
“Up him,” Angelo said. “Up em all.”
Chapter 37
THEY TALKED OVER the plan the rest of the afternoon, working on the rockpile. It made a good thing to talk about, working on the rockpile. It was exciting and since the excitement was intrinsic it could not go bad and leave them working on the rockpile.
Bad things, Prew thought, were never quite so bad, if you could force somebody you knew and liked to suffer them with you. Usually you couldnt; they were too busy suffering something themselves and trying to force you to suffer it with them. But if you could, it helped thin that sense of seeing the whole damned world move past you on the corner without knowing you were standing there. Of course, it was hard on the friends. You hated to see them suffer.
One thing about the Stockade, it made the bad things general so that your sufferings were equivalent. You did not have to get into a fight and accuse each other of your lack of sympathy.
Angelo Maggio’s face had changed during the past two months. There was no longer any trace of the naively-cynical, city-bred, lovable young Italian boy. This face had discarded cynicism as being as useless a pose as optimism, and it was a face without nationality, now that the long wop nose was broken. Then there were the scars, all new and still red yet with youth, not faded brown yet by memory, a gradual accumulation the beginnings of which Prew had only noticed vaguely at the queer investigation down town that time, but which had grown considerably since then. His left ear was cauliflowered now, not badly, but enough to give him that wild lopsided ribald look of a punchie. He had lost three upper teeth on one side that satirized his grin and his lips were thicker, like an old prizefighter’s. There was one scar that ran up over