From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [371]
But before that, Capt Holmes had come in in the morning to find the signed application there on his desk and been so overjoyed that he offered his 1st/Sgt a three-day-pass on the spot, in spite of the state of the Company Administration, and when Warden refused it because (as he said) he did not feel he could take off at a time like this when the Company was in such a bad hole, was not only more overjoyed but could barely speak his appreciation and began for the first time in months to carry his topkicker around on a chip. Warden waited until the day after Pete was installed in the supplyroom to ask for his thirty day re-enlistment furlough.
Before such a request even Holmes’s ardent goodwill blanched visibly.
“But my god, Sergeant! Thirty days!” he said, without even clapping his hand to his head. “Its impossible! You know that. I’ll gladly give you a three-day-pass; I told you so; even two consecutive three-day’s. Then you would be able to save up your furlough time without having anything put on the books. But thirty days! my god!” he protested. “At a time like this?”
“Sir, I’ve had it coming to me for over a year,” Warden bored on implacably. “And I’ve kept on postponing it. If I dont take it now, I’ll never get it. With Sgt Karelsen in the supplyroom we’re as near as we’ll be to an even keel for at least another six months. And if I wait that long I’ll never get it.”
“By the books,” Holmes said flatly, his goodwill receding still further, “you’re not even entitled to it at all, now. You know that yourself, Sergeant. If you let a re-up furlough lapse for over three months its cancelled. You should have taken it then, at the time.”
“By the books, I should have let this outfit go on down the shutes,” Warden said. “The reason I didnt take it was to get this Compny back on its feet, and you know it, Sir.”
“Even so,” Holmes said waveringly. “Thirty days! At a time like this! Its just simply impossible.”
“I postponed it for the good of the Compny,” Warden said doggedly. He knew better than to make it anything as crude as an open threat, that would only have made Holmes refuse out of pride. But the implication was there; and the memory of Leva’s week-old transfer was still fresh. Capt Dynamite Holmes was no longer Jake Delbert’s fair-haired boy.
Dynamite pushed his hat back on his head and sat down at his desk.
“I’ll tell you something, Sergeant,” he said confidentially. “You’re going to be an Officer yourself soon, and it might help you a little about how to get on.
“Sit down,” Dynamite said, “sit down, Sergeant. Hells fire, you’ll be beating me at poker up at the Club within two or three months. Theres no need for us to go on maintaining the formality of Officer and EM.”
Warden sat down gingerly, feeling like a newly successful novelist from the sticks at a literary tea party.
“I dont expect to be in the Regiment very much longer,” Dynamite said expansively, but still confidentially. “Of course, you understand, this mustnt go any further. But I’m expecting to be reassigned to Brigade Headquarters as a Major at the personal order of General Slater, within the next month or two.”
“That’s fine,” Warden heard himself say.
“You may have thought, as so many others have, that I’ve been cutting my own throat around here by getting on the Great White Father’s shitlist,” Dynamite grinned. “Well, theres been a method in my madness. Thats what they dont know. I expect to be taken on as General Slater’s personal aide,” he said extravagantly, and paused.
“Well I’ll be damned!” Warden said, as if surprised.
“The first thing an Officer has to learn is to be able to switch horses often and in midstream