From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [393]
“Dont leave it,” he said. “Dont ever leave it. When a man has found something he really loves, he must always hang onto it, no matter what happens, whether it loves him or not. And,” he said with an almost religious fervor, “if it finally kills him, he should be grateful to it, for having just had the chance. Because thats the whole secret.”
Prew did not say anything. He still did not believe him. But how could he argue against a brain like Malloy.
“‘Because a man loves God,’” Jack Malloy said, his voice coming back up to normal again, “‘he must not expect God to love him in return.’ At least not according to his limited definition of love.”
Prew still did not say anything. He did not know what there was for him to say.
“I wont say good-by to you,” Malloy said, his voice entirely normal now, “because I wont know just when I’m going out. I’ll have to wait till the time comes up right. Then I’ll recognize it. Thats the only way to work a thing like that. So just forget all about it, and expect to see me till you dont.”
“It seems like,” Prew said contortedly, “it seems like life is made up of saying hello to people we dont like and good-by to people we do.”
“Thats horse shit,” Jack Malloy said. “Sentimental horse shit. Dont ever let me hear you say a thing like that again. You just happen to be going through a period of the good-bys. Every man has them to go through at different times. Now shut up with that crap. And lets hit the sack.”
“Okay,” Prew said contritely. He squashed out his cigaret in the can and slipped under the blankets. He lay in the bunk in the silence, feeling suddenly a vague presentiment that somehow Jack Malloy with his slick brain had tricked him but he could not put his finger on just how.
It was a week before Malloy’s opportunity presented itself. Prew saw him every day when they came in from work, and every day he expected not to see him. In spite of all Malloy had told him about forgetting it, every evening he expected not to see him. Then the evening came when he did not see him, and Hanson when he locked up for them told the story of how Jack Malloy had just walked out of the motorpool in a pair of stolen greasemonkey overalls and nobody in the motorpool knew a damn thing about it. Pfc Hanson, whose worship of The Malloy was perhaps exceeded only by that of the late Pvt Blues Berry, was tickled to death. MP patrols were sent out through the pineapple fields and along the Honouliuli Trail; the gate guards down in the Post were alerted; the Wahiawa Patrol and the Shafter MPs downtown were furnished with full particulars and instructions. It was the first time anybody had ever escaped from the Schofield Barracks Post Stockade, except for three men ten years ago who had been brought back in less than twelve hours. But no trace of Jack Malloy was found anywhere. In Number Two, as Malloy had prophesied, they were as proud as party members whose candidate had just been elected as President.
Prew sat by himself and wondered wildly if he had not already met the new Messiah of the new faith Malloy had also prophesied. A Messiah who refused a following and preferred to work alone. Met him, and lived alongside of him, and failed to recognize him.
After two weeks of a fruitless search, accompanied by as intense an interest inside the Stockade as the outcome of the World Series, Jack Malloy’s escape tapered off into old stuff and, like everything else, before the constant pressure of the work like a stone against a steel blade, eroded away into boredom and nothingness.
In the Stockade, whatever else happened, you worked. You swung your 16 lb hammer to crush this rock, or you swooped a scoopshovel to load this rock you had already crushed, into the trucks that came. Work without purpose, work without end, work without pride. Your hands blistered, broke, bled, calloused. They corned up like a mailman’s feet. By their