From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [337]
“All right,” The Warden said finally in a kind of frustrated choke. “Outside, you men. Theres nothing you can do here. Get back to work.”
When nobody moved or answered, he swung on them blazing, almost gratefully. “Hear what I goddam said?” he roared. “Outside! You’ve all seen it now. Everybody’s had a good look now. Now get the goddam hell outside! And dont anybody touch anything till we’ve got the OD over here from the guardhouse.”
The crowd responded with a reluctant milling movement that took nobody noplace. There was a look of indignant protest and impotent outrage on all their faces. Not at The Warden, but at Bloom. They looked as if they had just offered their last glass of cold beer to a man on a hot day, only to have it turned down and thrown in their face.
“He dint have no goddam right to do a goddam thing like that,” somebody said inarticulately vaguely.
“Not in the goddam squadroom,” somebody else said.
They all looked like if The Warden had not been there holding them at bay they would have swarmed on Bloom, dead or not, and beaten him with their fists for having reminded them of this thing they spent the best years of their lives trying to forget.
“But it took a lot of guts though,” Friday Clark said, feeling vaguely that he must tell them something. “It took a lot of guts though, to do it. I wouldnt—”
The Warden cut in on him. “Okay,” he said, his voice crackling with suppression, “you men want to hang around you might as well make yourselves useful. Couple of you get some buckets and mops and a stepladder from the supplyroom. Somebody else go up on the roof and see if the bullet went on through, and if it did get some paper and tar from Leva and patch the goddam thing.”
There was a chorus of indignant protests from the crowd and it began to break up suddenly and move toward the stairs.
“I aint goin to clean up after no son of a bitch that shoots hisself,” somebody said.
“Yeah, let him clean it up himself, the son of a bitch, he done it,” somebody else said.
There was a general half-wild laugh.
“Come back here,” The Warden ordered briskly. “Lets go. The holiday is over.”
The crowd evaporated swiftly and was gone, just as Niccolo Leva came back in from the latrine, looking pale. “Christ, what a mess. I got to sleep in here tonight.” He looked at the ceiling. “Just a couple hours ago I was issuin him a brand new pair of field shoes,” he said helplessly.
“What do you suppose he wanted to do it for?” Friday asked, feeling vaguely ashamed like he used to feel when the littler kids at home messed their pants.
“Christ, how the hell do I know?” The Warden bellowed. “Sometimes I feel like doin it myself, in this fucking outfit. Niccolo,” he said, “after the OD’s been here, you get some men and have them clean this up.”
“I’ll do it,” Friday Clark said. “I dont mind doin it.”
“It’ll need more than one man,” The Warden said grimly. “You go with Leva.”
“Okay, Top,” Friday said admiringly.
“I wonder what he wanted to do it for,” he said wonderingly, on the stairs. “He had everything to live for. He was middleweight champion and a corporal and due to make sergeant, he had everything. I wonder what would make a guy like that want to do a thing like that.”
“For Christ’s sake, shut up!” said Niccolo Leva savagely.
“It took a lot of guts,” Friday Clark said, feeling he had to explain it to him, sensing vaguely there was something about Bloom he ought to say. “I wouldnt have that much guts.”
Wait’ll old Prew hears about this, he thought.
Chapter 39
PREW DID NOT HEAR about it until he came out of the Black Hole three days later. That was the day they were burying Bloom. It is very hard to communicate with anyone in the Black Hole, which is called Solitary Confinement officially. “Black Hole” is only a descriptive slang term created by prisoners. College