From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [396]
The Log Cabin Bar and Grill was one of those downtown serviceman hangouts with indirect fluorescent lighting where it was safe for tourists to go slumming to see the Army in its natural habitat, very clean and very modern and a shade lower class than Wu Fat’s Chinese Bar and Restaurant. It was set back off Beretania Street, in a business block of stinking grocery markets and sweet-smelling whorehouses, on a small paved alley. A hundred feet inside the Log Cabin the alley, instead of running straight on through the block, made a right angle turn and came out on the side street to the east. Prew, stone cold sober after a dozen drinks, was waiting at the corner of the alley when the Log Cabin closed at one o’clock.
There was no mistaking Fatso when he came out, even in the dimness of the alley. He came out walking with two sailors. Bar acquaintances. No complications there. One of the sailors was telling a joke and Fatso and the other sailor laughed. It was the first time Prew had ever heard S/Sgt Judson laugh.
They were walking away from him toward Beretania, and he stepped out from the corner feeling a crystal clarity of focused attention such as he had known only a few times in his life when he was bugling.
“Hello, Fatso,” he said. The old Stockade nickname would catch him as surely as a rope.
S/Sgt Judson stopped and turned, the sailors stopping with him. He peered back into the dim uneven light that seeped through the closed Venetian blinds of the Log Cabin and lighted the immobile figure of Prewitt dimly.
“Well, look who’s here,” Fatso grinned. “You guys go on,” he told the sailors. “I’ll see you next week. Old buddy a mine back here I use to soljer with.”
“Okay, Jud,” one of the sailors said unevenly. “See you.”
“Thanks,” Prew said, as Fatso came up unhesitantly, unreluctantly, and the sailors moved on down the brick toward Beretania.
“For what?” Fatso grinned. “I dont need no sailors. Now,” he said. “You want to see me about something, Prewitt?”
“Yes,” Prew said. “Lets step around the corner here where we can talk.”
“Okay,” Fatso grinned. “Anything you say.”
He followed around the corner, carrying his arms out a little and just barely bent the way an old fighter moves when he’s expecting anything.
“How’s it feel to be on the Outside again?” he grinned.
“Bout like I figured it would,” Prew said. Behind them around the corner of the alley he heard the Log Cabin door open and close again and some more late drinkers moved talking down the brick toward Beretania.
“Well?” Fatso grinned. “What was it you wanted to see me about? I aint got all night.”
“This,” Prew said. He pulled the knife out of his pocket and snapped it open, the snick of the sprung blade sounding loudly in the alley. “I cant whip you with my fists, Fatso. I wouldnt want to if I could. I hear you carry a knife. Use it.”
“Maybe I aint got one,” Fatso grinned.
“I hear you awys carry one.”
“Okay. But supposin I dont want to use it?”
“You better use it.”
“Supposin I run?” Fatso grinned.
“I’ll catch you.”
“People might see you. Or, supposin I holler po-lice?”
“They might catch me. But they wount get here quick enough to do you any good.”
“You got it figured all out, aint you?” Fatso grinned.
“I tried to.”
“Well, if thats the way you want it,” Fatso grinned. “Okay.” He put his hand in his pocket, drew the knife and snapped it open, and began to move forward, all in one movement, incredibly fast for a fat man. Behind him the Log Cabin door opened again admitting more late drinkers to the alley. Their voices faded off toward Beretania.
“But I hate to take candy away from babies,” Fatso grinned.
His knife, that was almost identical to Prew’s, was waving back and forth slowly like a snake head, as he came on in in the classic stance