From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [391]
“I dont know if I can explain it,” Jack Malloy said. “You see, theres something wrong with me.”
“You mean you’re sick?”
“No, I’m not sick. This is something else. Something that has to do with what I told you about being born in the wrong time. Theres something lacking in me that keeps me from doing what I want to do. You see, I’m responsible for what happened to both Angelo and Berry, just as surely as if I had signed the Discharge and swung the club. Just as surely as I’m responsible for you killing Fatso.”
“Aw now, thats a lot of stuff, Jack.”
“No it isnt, its the truth.”
“I dont see why the hell you should feel that.”
“Because they were trying to follow what I had been trying to teach them,” Malloy said. “Whether you see it or not or believe it or not. The same thing has happened to me all my life. I’ve tried to teach people things I saw but they always take them wrong and use them wrong. Its because theres something lacking in me. I preach passive resistance and a new kind of God with a new kind of love that understands, but I dont practice it. At least not enough. Sometimes, I dont think I’ve ever loved anything in my life.
“If it hadnt been for me and my talk, neither Angelo nor Berry would have done what they did. Or got what they got. And if I stay here (I’ve got seven more months to do, this stretch) the same thing is going to happen to other guys. Its already happened to you. I say resist passively, but you all fight, because I feel fight, even if I say dont fight. I dont want it to happen to anybody else.”
“I dont think thats true at all,” Prew said helplessly, inadequate before the mental task of arguing back.
“Well, its true,” Malloy said. “And thats why I’m busting out.”
In the glow of his cigaret Prew saw him grin bitterly gently.
“Its a thing,” Malloy said, “that apparently happens to guys when they try to do what I’ve tried to do all my life and lack what it takes. Probably, after I bust out, they’ll misunderstand that too and start making a goddam hero out of me for escaping.”
“How do you figure to do it?”
“Thats the easy part,” Malloy said. “I could bring enough tools in from the motorpool to cut through these walls easy.”
“What about the searchlights?”
“They’d never even see me.”
“But what about the electric fence? And the alarm?”
“Rubber-handled Klein pliers from the motorpool,” Malloy said. “And a long piece of baling wire for each strand, back of where I cut it on both sides, to keep the circuit closed.
“But it’ll be easier just to go out from the motorpool; theres not a man there that would turn me in or want to stop me. A pair of grease-monkey coveralls to get me down into the Post to my outfit to borrow civilian clothes, and I’m gone.”
“What about money?”
“I dont need money. I’ve got half a dozen different friends in town who would hide me out long enough to get me out on a Matson liner for the States.”
“Theres a war coming up soon,” Prew said.
“I know it. Probably, I’ll enlist again Stateside under an assumed name, when it comes up. Thats what I’ve figured. But I’m finished here, and theres no point in staying. And until the war does come theres some things I want to do—without having it all taken the wrong way so that it hurts the guys that I like.”
“Take me with you,” Prew said.
In the glow of the cigarets Jack Malloy looked up, startled. Then he grinned what Prew always remembered afterwards as the saddest, gentlest, bitterest, warmest grin he had ever seen on a human face.
“You dont want to go with me, Prew.”
“Sure I do.”
“No you dont. What about Fatso?”
“Beside going with you, to hell with Fatso.”
“You dont know what you’d be getting in to. I’ve been on the run from the Law before.”
“So have I.”
“Yes, but not from town to town and sheriff to sheriff. And this time theres about a fifty-fifty chance I’ll never get off the Island and back to the States. Theres nothing romantic about it. And it isnt easy.”
“You said yourself it would be almost as easy to go out of here as it would be to go out through the motorpool,” Prew argued.