From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [395]
But they did not any of them really seem to matter much anyway, any more. The Stockade was still real. They were not real. Gradually, an intense pinpoint focus of will-effort, like a magnifying glass bending the sun’s rays to the burning of a paper, had built up in him concentratedly. They could not break through the only reality, which was the Stockade, and that he had nine days to wait.
The only time anything came near to breaking through was when Andy and Friday came in from somewhere and saw him and came right over, very glad to see him, and highly conscious of the new faces still watching with frightened awe. They got out the guitars and came back to his bunk familiarly and the new faces began to watch them with frightened awe, too.
Then they brought out their surprise. They had bought an electric guitar on time two months ago, complete with a jackplug attachment and the speaker to plug it in to. It had cost $260, of which there was still $200 yet to pay. They enjoyed showing him the new guitar, and the awed attention they were getting from the frightened draftee faces. He was a celebrity and they were his buddies.
He made himself wait the full nine days. He did not go anywhere. He sat home on his bunk in the squadroom and made no trouble and was silent. He did not even go down to Maunalani Heights to see Miss Alma Schmidt. He did not want anything to disturb the crystal clarity of concentration that kept getting steadily stronger.
The new Company Commander, a 1st/Lt instead of a Captain, arrived and took over. That was on the fifth day. He made them a speech. He was a Jewish lawyer from Chicago with a Reserve Commission earned by four years of ROTC in college. His name was Ross and he had only recently been called to duty. Lt Culpepper, whose father and grandfather had both started out in G Co —th Infantry as shavetails and risen to command the Company and then the Battalion and then the Regiment, was not happy. He had expected a Captain, which would not have been so bad. Lt Culpepper did not think much of Lt Ross as a soldier, but Pvt Robert E Lee Prewitt could not see that it made much difference.
He did not intend to suffer martyrdom if he could help it. He wanted to do more than stay alive, he wanted to spend that life in the Army. He had checked up before he left and six other men would be discharged from the Stockade in the first nine days after he got out. That would, he felt, at least spread the suspicion out a little, even if they neglected to count the hundreds of men who had passed through the Stockade before him. Nine days was a nice round uneven figure that would not appear to be a predetermined period, like say ten days, or one week. And Fatso Judson went down town to the Log Cabin Bar and Grill every night that there was not something special on, such as the midnight training of Blues Berry. So there was no need for hurry on that score.
He bought the knife in an Army-Navy Service Store, the night he went to town. He had figured that out ahead of time deliberately. It was one of those dingy little Jew stores on Hotel Street, exactly like a thousand other dingy little Jew stores that always spring up wherever soldiers live, except that in Hawaii all the Jew stores were run by Chinamen. It sold the same CKCs and did the same tailoring of pants and cutting down of shirts. And it offered the same fare of chevrons, shooter’s medals, garrison caps with patent leather bills and solid brass insignia, brilliantly colored shoulder patches, solid brass whistles, campaign ribbons, solid brass waistbelt buckles, souvenir scarves and pillows, and knives. Even the enforced anonymity of the Army had its compensations.
The knife he picked was one of a row of an identical dozen, lying in the glass case in a jumbled mass of whistles, insignia rings and shoulder patches, brass bound clasp knives with five-inch snap-button blades and walnut handles that terminated in little handguards