From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [341]
Prew giggled weakly. “You cant snow me, Sergeant. What do you mean three more days. You think I dont know I’ve only pulled one day yet? Yes, I think I’d like three more days of it, I was having a wonderful dream. Lets make it six more days,” he giggled: “then we add up the whole nine days to make the full 72 hours. Hows that?”
“Hard sister,” Fatso said without any change of expressionlessness, and slapped him again. “Rough monkey. Come on, wake up, rough monkey.”
Then they were hoisting him up and taking him out and he realized the three days truly were over after all. On the way out his foot kicked itself against the nine slices of bread on the floor that proved it. Man, was that a good one on him.
“Yuh,” Fatso said unheatedly, “I seen em, rough monkey. But if you think you can get yourself out of the Hole any quicker by goin out on a hunger strike, we know that one too. We let you go hungry. You notice you done your full three days you notice,” Fatso said proudly. “Plus four hours because I was too busy at the moment to get to you—and you’ll do the same every time. I had my way, you’d go right back in now for three more. Hunger strikes dont scare nobody here, rough monkey.”
From Fatso, a speech that long amounted to an oration. Must of impressed him, Prew thought happily as they propped him up against the wall and threw his clothes at him.
“You dont need to pull at stuff neither,” Fatso said. “You can stand up.”
He leaned against the wall grinning sillily while he put his clothes on, noticing for the first time that it was Pfc Hanson again with Fatso this time, Pfc Hanson alone, and realizing dimly that it must therefore have been Pfc Hanson who had gasped. I made Pfc Hanson gasp, he thought proudly. Hanson was grinning at him proudly, fully as proudly as Angelo Maggio grinned at him a few minutes later when they shoved him in through the door of Number Two Barrack. They both grinned at him as though he had at last fulfilled all the promise they had seen in him.
His stuff had already been moved into Number Two for him and the men in Number Two had gotten together and fixed it all up for him. Even his bunk was made up for him. They were proud men in Number Two. They were the toughest of the tough. They were the cream. They wore their barracks number like a medal of honor and guarded its bestowal as jealously as any Masonic Lodge or midwestern Country Club ever guarded theirs. They could not fight back and win, so they were very strict with their great pride in losing, and they were so meticulous that when they did take a man in it was an occasion and they went all the way. All Prew had to do tomorrow to be ready for inspection was to remake his bunk in the morning.
Angelo sat on the side of the bunk and proudly did all the honors. Blues Berry came over a while, and then the others came over too, one or two at a time, to listen to Prew tell the story. The last man to come over, after the others had settled back down and gone back to sitting around on the chairless floor smoking and talking, was the big man with the soft, penetrating, unabashed-dreamer’s eyes, who had been sitting three bunks away taking all of it in.
Prew lay on top his new bunk, deliciously wrapped in a blanket, and acknowledged all the introductions and compliments, deliciously savoring his great sense of accomplishment. There was a satisfaction that came from having borne pain that nothing else could ever quite equal, even though the pain was philosophically pointless and never affected anything but the nervous system. Physical pain made its own justification. That must be your Indian forebearers talking, he thought. Except, he thought, that Angelo Maggio from Atlantic Avenue Brooklyn sure dont have no Indian blood, thats for sure. But he felt he could understand Angelo much better now.
In between all the introductions and coming and goings Angelo told him about Bloom, complete with all the gory details. Angelo had the whole entire story.