From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [332]
Bloom jumped up from his bunk and assumed the necessary indignant rage and charged across the room, remembering to thrust his head forward savagely, and his chin ahead of that, and grabbed the guitar out of Friday’s hands.
“I told you to cut the racket, Wop,” he raged in his close order voice. “That was an order. From a noncom. It applies to Wops, just like other people. If I have to bust this noisebox over your head to back it up, I’m the guy can do it.”
“What?” Friday said, looking up startled from his suddenly empty hands he had been staring at, the sweat of concentration still shining on his forehead. “Whats the matter?”
“I’ll show you whats the matter,” Bloom read him off, remembering to wave the guitar behind him at the room. “These men are trying to rest. They gettin ready to go out to work and they’ll work all afternoon while you and me layin here on our ass. They want rest, I mean to see they get it, see? When a noncom tells you to stop a thing, you’re suppose to stop it, even if you are a Wop.”
“I dint hear you, Bloom,” Friday said. “Dont hurt my git-tar, Bloom. Please be careful of my git-tar.”
“You heard me all right,” Bloom, the defender, roared. “Dont try to tell me you dint hear me, Wop. Everybody heard me.
“No, I dint, Bloom,” Friday pleaded. “Honest, Bloom. Oh, please dont hurt my git-tar, Bloom.”
“I’ll hurt your git-tarbloom,” Bloom, the crusader, bellowed, joyously feeling the just cause that was beginning to carry him away. “I’ll wrap it around your goddam neck. As long as I’m a noncom its my job to see my men get their sacktime they got coming to them, and I mean to do it, see?” He was warming up good. There was still no room for Nazis and Wop Fascisti in this country with their roughshod overriding of the wishes of the majority, at least not yet.
He was just coming to that when a third voice cut in on him from behind, crackling with command.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Bloom,” it said disgustedly. “Shut up. You makin more racket than the kid was with the git-tar.”
Still holding Friday by his shirtfront for further emphasis, Bloom swung around to find himself looking down deep into the flat black Indian eyes of Cpl Choate, old, wise, indifferent, bored. He felt his righteous indignation run down out of him and evaporate into a puny feeble protest that he could not articulate.
The Chief had reared his bulk up to a half sitting position despite the protest of the springs. “Leave go of him and go on back to your fartsack and relax,” he drawled in that tone old noncoms acquire after being bored for years by giving orders that are not argued with.
“Okay, Chief,” Bloom said. He released Friday’s shirtfront and at the same time gave a little push to sit him back down on the bunk. He dropped the guitar down beside him.
“I’m going to let you off this time, Clark,” he said. “But watch your step. You just happen to be lucky I was feeling especially good today, see?”
He turned and went back to his bunk, hearing Chief Choate’s bulk squeak back down sighingly appreciatively. He lay down himself, and put his arms over his eyes and pretended to go to sleep, and the squadroom settled back into its interrupted noontime drowse while Bloom’s arms and legs twitched wild signals to him to let them get up and carry him away.
He could not quiet them or ignore them, but he could refuse their request. He lay, arguing with them but not convincing them, while he listened to Friday Clark steal off quietly out the door past him and downstairs. He belched sourly again.
He heard Fatigue Call gratefully, and half an hour after that, his arm still across his eyes as if in sleep, he listened to the baseball and boxing jockstraps dwindle away in twos and threes to training periods, and then finally at last he was alone. Alone in the squadroom, Bloom lay on his bunk and faced it.
He was Isaac Nathan Bloom. And Isaac Nathan Bloom was a Jew. It did not make