From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [348]
“You cant get a job,” Prew said.
“Who the hell wants a job? They all the same goddam thing. Gimbel’s Basement. You work for some big outfit that takes all the money and gives you just barely enough to live on and punch a timeclock all your life and kiss the boss’s ass for a job you never liked. Who wants that? Not Maggio. I’ll go to Mexico,” he said. “I’ll go to Mexico and be a cowboy or something,” he said wildly.
“I dont know why I’m arguing with you,” Prew said. “Its your deal, and if you’ve figured all that into it, what the hell? I’m for you, Angelo.”
“You think I’m crazy, dont you?” Angelo grinned at him.
“Hell no. Its just that I hate to think of losing my citizenship. I guess I just like this country.”
“I like it too,” Angelo said. “I love this country. Much as you or anybody, and you know it.”
“I know it,” Prew said.
“But I still hate this country. You love the Army. But I dont love the Army. This country’s Army is why I hate this country. What did this country ever do for me? Gimme a right to vote for men I cant elect? You can have it. Gimme a right to work at a job I hate? You can have that too. Then tell me I’m a Citizen of the greatest richest country on earth, if I dont believe it look at Park Avenue. Carnival prizes. All carnival prizes. Pay fifty cents a throw and get a plasterparis bust of Washington—if you win. A man can just stand so much from anything, no matter how much he loves the thing.”
“I’ll buy that,” Prew said.
“Well, I’ve stood all I can stand—if I can get myself out of standing any more of it. They aint going to drive this soldier to any goddam suicide. And they aint going to drive this soldier into growing a brown nose. They shouldnt teach their immigrants’ kids all about democracy unless they mean to let them have a little of it, it ony makes for trouble. Me and the United States is disassociating our alliance as of right now, until the United States can find time to read its own textbooks a little.”
Prew thought, a little sickly, of the little book The Man Without a Country that his mother used to read to him so often, and how the stern patriotic judge condemned the man to live on a warship where no one could ever mention home to him the rest of his whole life, and how he had always felt that pinpoint of pleased righteous anger at seeing the traitor get what he deserved.
“And thats the story,” Angelo said, “and thats the way she is.”
“I’m for it then,” Prew said.
“Are you?” Angelo asked him anxiously. “You really are? Thats one reason I wanted to tell you, because I knew if you heard me out and you were still for it, then I know it was all right, it wasnt wrong.”
“I’m for it,” Prew said.
“Okay,” Angelo said. “Then thats all. Lets go on back.”
Prew watched him go. Thin, narrowshouldered, bowlegged, the toothpick arms moving with the swagger, one of the newer race of cliff dwellers he thought again, who had no use for muscles: for legs to walk take the subway; for arms to climb use the elevator; for back to lift hire a stiffleg derrick. A minor casualty of his 20th Century culture and civilization. Go to Mexico and be a cowboy! Even his country’s history screwed him.
Maybe if his father had been a watchmaker, or an auto mechanic, or a pipefitter, so that he might have inherited a trade he could love, then he would not have had to love democracy so much. If he had only found some undangerous channel that would have let him utilize the talent for honesty and belief in democracy that the unwise foolish virgins who taught Social Science in the public schools had fostered in him.
If he had only been born a millionaire’s son. Then he would have been all right.
The trouble with Angelo Maggio, the serious trouble, the dangerous trouble, the inconsiderate