From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [342]
The reaction in the Stockade had been pretty much the same as it had in the Company. There were several other men from the Regiment in the Stockade besides Prew and Angelo, and all of them knew Bloom. The rest, if they did not know him personally, had all seen him fight last year in the Bowl. They went around with the same indignant look on their faces and the same outraged tone in their voices; if anything, this open slap in the face to everything that good soldiers stood for was even more of an affront to them than it was to G Company. Just because they were in the Stockade, their faces and voices implied, did not mean they had turned up their nose with contempt and sneered at all Bloom’s advantages; if they had had Bloom’s advantages, their faces and voices implied, they would not have been in the Stockade in the first place and they certainly would not be dead by their own gun in the second place. They had all been very angry about it, in the Stockade.
To Prew, hearing Angelo tell it, it was like something that had happened in another country. He had a hard time making himself visualize it.
“You say he put the muzzle in his mouth and pulled the trigger with his big toe?”
“Thats right,” Angelo said indignantly.
“And it took off the whole top of his head and plastered it up on the ceiling.”
“Yep,” Angelo said complacently. “Made a hole three inches across. Ony I dont guess he figure on that probly.”
“And they going to bury him here you say.”
“Thats right. In the old sojer’s graveyard. Nobody can find out where his folks is.”
“Thats a hell of a place to be buried.”
“Man, you aint just kidding,” Angelo said fervidly.
“You ever been up there? Its up back of the Packtrain. I’ve played Taps there.”
“I never been there, and whats more I dont never mean to go there. Neither feetfirst nor even dickfirst,” Angelo said perfervidly.
“Theres some big pine trees. One row. Along the far side. I wonder who’ll play Bloom’s Taps?”
“Some punk, probly,” Angelo said. “I wonder what makes pine trees like that so lonesome?”
“Every dogface deserves to have at least one good Taps. At his funeral.”
“Well, maybe he’ll be lucky. Maybe he’ll draw a good one.”
Bloom was already buried, had been buried ever since two-thirty that afternoon; they both knew that. But it was as if they had agreed tacitly not to speak of it in the past tense.
“I’d play him a Taps,” Prew said, angrily because he had promised himself he would not mention that and it had slipped itself out anyway, “I’d play him a real Taps. Every dogsoljer deserves that,” he said lamely, trying to explain it away.
“Aww, hell,” Angelo said embarrassedly, with far too much understanding. “Hell, he’s dead, aint he? What difference does it make?”
“You dont understand,” Prew said furiously. What it was, he told himself, was he still could not visualize it. He felt he should be able to visualize it. But the last picture he had of Bloom was of a tremendous undammable vitality heading off across the quad for the gym to get ready to go into the ring while he himself stared after it incredulously and exhaustedly.
“I wonder what the hell made him do it?” he said wonderingly, conscious of so overpowering a will to live in himself.
“My personal opinion,” Angelo said sagaciously, “is that he was afraid he had gone queer.”
“Hell, Bloom was no queer.”
“I know it.”
“If I ever saw a not-queer, it was Bloom.”
“I know it,” Angelo said.
“Well then, what the hell?”
“Theres a difference,” Angelo said, “between being queer and thinking you’re queer.”
“I wanted to go over and see him after that fight,” Prew confessed.