From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [381]
“I’ve never laid a woman that I didnt love. Maybe she made me dislike her afterwards, for some other reason. But at the moment of screwing her, I was in love with her. I offer that as an observed fact, without attempts at explanation or justification. It is a thing that I have found true of most men, if you can get them to talk and admit it.”
Prew, mulling this one over and applying it to himself, was a little shocked to find he had to admit it was true of him too.
“I offer no plans by which to coordinate it into future social structures,” Malloy grinned, “but before Millennium comes somebody is going to have to take it into account some way or other—in spite of the economist-idealists like Sinclair and Chaplin. It is one of the reasons I’ve never got married.”
As a deepsea sailor Jack Malloy had had the clap six times—
“The syph never, knock on wood.”
—and it still did not cure him, yet there was still something in him, deep in the unabashed-dreamer’s eyes, that none of it had ever really touched. He had always kept on reading. And of it all, all the places, all the jobs, all the experiences, all the women, he still wanted the USA. That was where he belonged, that was where his faith lay, and that was where he needed to be.
It was in 1937 when Harry Bridges who was no longer a punk, but still was growing, finally reached the level of the trans-oceanic and trans-global sailors and pushed Jack Malloy clear off the sea for good.
“And he isnt through yet,” Malloy said. “Before this war is over three years, he’ll have all Hawaii in his pocket along with the rest.”
Jack Malloy, with eleven years experience as a deepsea man behind him, at the age of 32, came back home. He enlisted as a green hand into the Regular Army. He wanted to be there for the war. He still kept on reading.
“Of them all,” he said, “I think the Wobblies came the closest. Nobody ever really understood them. They had the courage, and whats more important, they had the soft heart to go with it. Their defeat was due to faulty technique of execution, rather than to concept. But also, I dont think the time was right for them yet. I’m a fatalist. If you believe in the logic of evolution you have no choice but to be a fatalist.
“I’ve thought about it a lot. Christ had to have his Isaiah; even Martin Luther had his Erasmus. I think the Wobblies were the prophets and forerunners of a new religion. Christ knows, we need one. And if you had ever studied the evolution of religions as natural facts instead of supernatural mysticisms, like I have, you wouldnt look so startled.
“You think religions are constant things? inflexible and solid and born full-grown? Religions evolve. They grow out of a need, just like any other natural phenomenon, and they follow the same natural laws. They are born, grown, have sons, and illegitimate sons, and die.
“Every true religion follows the same logical path. First come the prophets, growing new faith out of the deathrot of the old. Every Christ has to have his Isaiah and John the Baptist to prepare the way for him. Read up on religions sometime and see. You can see how they all follow the same logical principles:
“Every religion starts at the bottom level, with the whores, publicans, and sinners. Logically, it has to start there, with the dissatisfied. You cant get the satisfied to accept new ideas.
“And every religion brings martyrdom to its innovators. That part is a test of natural selection. If the new faith is strong enough, it conquers persecution and goes on to glory.
“And then—and only then—in every religion, the satisfied ones (who through fear did the persecuting) do an about-face and climb on the bandwagon,