From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [405]
And as for them ever catching up with Pvt John J Malloy—he had to laugh outright, even though it hurt his sore side. Nobody but a goddam stupid fool would ever believe a newspaper article anyway.
“It don’t look too awful bad,” Georgette offered, finally.
“Yeah,” he grinned at them slyly, “but how I know this aint just a spiel to make me feel safe enough to show my hand?”
“That’s just it,” Georgette said. “You don’t.”
“Did anyone see you at all?” Alma asked.
“He came out of the Log Cabin with two sailors. I know they saw me, but I dont know if they saw me well enough to recognize me because it was dark and they were 30 or 40 yards away.”
“Well anyway,” Alma said hopefully, “they haven’t shown up yet. It looks like they don’t want to get mixed up in it either way.”
“Yeah,” he said, “—if you can believe this newspaper article. The cops may have them down to headquarters right now, for all I know.”
“Amen,” Georgette said fervently.
“Even if I was to go back after I was all healed up,” he said, “they’d still get me for an AWOL. And with my record, that’d mean at least six months. I aint going to put no more time in no more Stockades, even for an AWOL.”
“After hearing you talk about Stockades,” Georgette grinned. “I cant say I blame you a whole hell of a lot.”
“Well,” Alma said, “we better get out of here and let him rest, whatever happens. How does it feel now?”
“Okay,” he said, “a little sore.” He could feel himself grinning sillily like he always did when he was in pain and he had to choke back a hunger to laugh.
“I’ll give you another sedative, if you want,” Alma said.
“I dont much like them things,” he grinned sillily.
“They cant hurt you any.”
“I couldn’t sleep anyway,” he grinned sillily. “Whynt you save them for tonight.”
“That would be the best idea,” Georgette said.
“I hate to see you in such pain,” Alma said nervously.
“Hell, this aint nothin,” he grinned sillily. “Lemme tell you about the time I broke my arm on the bum and dint have no dough to go to a doctor.”
“Come on,” Georgette said. “Lets get out of here and leave him alone.”
He watched them go out and then lay back with it, wanting to laugh again. He moved his slitted eyelids a little and watched the kaleidoscope play of distorted light fragments against his eyeballs for a while, they were unending variations that were never quite the same twice and he could watch their shiftings for hours. Then after a while the pictures started coming up in his brain and he shut his eyes all the way and lay, letting the half-formed images rise, watching the stories they acted out, curious to see what would happen in the end, like with a mystery movie. It was the way it is just before sleep, and while you knew you could not sleep now, you could stay like this for hours at a time, if you knew how, watching the stories that were just as good—were even better than—movies, because these stories were not subjected to any Hays Office, and if you wanted a movie with naked women you could have it, all you had to do was think it. There was one he played with a long time that had as its jumping off place the last time they had fed him when Georgette held him up and he wondered, as he went on absorbedly watching the movie, why he had never noticed Georgette at the Ritz Rooms, he had been to the Ritz Rooms quite a few times before he got in the Company.
Alma gave him three sedatives that night, but in the morning