From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [407]
He did not, of course, stay in bed all afternoon and evening while they were both gone to work. As soon as they were out of the house he got up and dressed himself in the civie slacks they had washed the blood out of for him and put on one of the new T-shirts they had bought for him to take the place of the ruined shirt they had burned for him, and practiced walking up and down and around the house they had made into a hideout for him, so as to keep from making a goddam permanent cripple out of him. He knew enough to know that when it had reached this stage of mending it was better to use it than to lie there in the bed and let it atrophy like they wanted him to. He did not intend to let himself be turned into an invalid for life just because their frustrated maternal instincts needed something to baby.
It was nice there in the house by himself. At first he had trouble getting into the clothes, but every day he made himself do it and it made it noticeably that much easier the next day, and by the second week (when they allowed him to get out of bed—after being openly surprised at how well he managed—and helped him into the dressing gown they had bought him after much discussion of styles and colors) he could get out of the dressing gown and into the clothes almost as easily as if he had never been cut at all, after they left for work.
He would mix himself a good stiff drink (they did not let him have any liquor, when they were home) and go out and sit on the porch in the afternoon sun (they did not allow him outside on account of catching a cold, when they were home) and maybe read a little in one of their books (Georgette belonged to the Book of the Month Club, “just for the hell of it,” she grinned, “after all, I do live on Maunalani Heights, and the books look good in the livingroom even if I dont read them”) and get himself pleasantly three-fourths tight and watch the sunset. He was always in bed asleep when they got home from work, so they did not find out about it until the end of the second week when Alma came home half-tight from work one night and came in and fell on his bed maulingly, forgetting all about his sore side, and smelled the liquor on his breath and came to herself and gave him all kinds of hell for drinking.
That let the secret out of the bag, so he got up and showed them both how well he got around and how easily he dressed himself. They did not like it, but they both accepted the inevitable, Alma a little more reluctantly than Georgette. They watched him go through his act with a kind of hurt look on their faces, like a mother whose son has come home so drunk and with such an easily readable address of the local whorehouse sticking out of his pocket that she finally has to admit, even to herself, that he is, at last, grown up. They did not say much; and congratulated him, half-heartedly; and after that the restrictions were off and it was all right.
But even then he still liked it better when he was there by himself. He would look around at everything and think how there was all the time in the world, no Reveille to be back for tomorrow, no weekend pass that would have to end again Monday morning, no place to go and no specified time to go there in. He lived perpetually in the old on-pass feeling of life did not begin again till Monday morning except now there was no Monday morning to worry