From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [419]
Lt Ross, when he came in, did not say anything. He ignored the bottle sitting in plain sight on the desk. He moved around the orderly room, shaking hands with his new 1st/Sgt, talking to get acquainted and taking no notice whatever of either the whiskey or the crummy $120 Brooks Bros. suit or the three days stubble of beard on his 1st/Sgts jaw.
The dirty kosher schmuck a mingia, Warden thought. He knows goddam good and well he cant run this fucking Compny without me. For two cents I’d offer the schlemiel a drink; then he’d have to notice it. Kotz, Warden said to himself throatily, letting it lie on the back of his tongue like butter. Kotz; kotz. The shithead.
“I’ve got something for you Sergeant,” Lt Ross said, apparently feeling he was sufficiently acquainted. He pulled a paper out of his pocket. “Instead of taking the full correspondence course for Reserve Officer’s Training, they are going to let you just take this examination. Because of your service, and experience, and rank; and because Col Delbert wrote a letter asking that in your case they waive it.” He paused, smiling expectantly.
Warden did not say anything. What did they expect him to do? scream with joy?
“Here is a copy of the examination you will take next Monday,” Lt Ross went on, laying the paper out on the desk. “Col Delbert sent it over for you to glance over and told me to give it to you with his compliments.”
“Thanks,” Warden said lazily, without looking at it. “But I wont need it. Hows about a drink, Lieutenant?”
“Why, thanks,” Lt Ross said. “I dont mind if I do. Col Delbert said you’d probably say that. He said you probably wouldnt want it or need it, but he thought it would be a good idea to bring it over anyway, just to let you know we’re all back of you.”
Furiously, indignantly, outraged, Warden watched him calmly take the bottle off the desk and uncork it.
“It tastes a little thin,” Lt Ross said.
“Some son of a bitch is been watering it while I was on furlough,” Warden said, staring hard at him.
“Thats too bad,” Lt Ross said.
Warden grinned at him. “You know,” he said lazily, “I’m surprised at the Great White Father Delbert. I thought old Jake would be doin everything he could to screw me out. Instead of tryin to help me. Especial what with this feud him and Holmes been having the past three or four months.”
“From what I can gather,” said Lt Ross, “the Colonel thinks very highly of you as a soldier. Much too highly to let a thing like a personal disagreement stop him from pushing your application, when he thinks you deserve it.”
“And,” Warden grinned, “when it’ll be a feather in his bonnet if I make it.”
“Yes,” Lt Ross grinned. “And in mine, too.”
Warden did not say anything. There was not anything else left to say. He stopped grinning and stared at Ross, but that didnt do any good either. Apparently it was going to be just like with Sgt Wellman back in A Co, who put in for the OEC last January; every officer in the battalion helped him with his correspondence lessons. Wellman who didnt know a squad column from a skirmish line; now he was a hotshot 2nd Lt down in the 19th.
“Thats too bad about your whiskey, Sergeant,” Lt Ross said, looking at his watch. “Well, I guess I better be getting on up to the Club for lunch. I’ll see you later on this afternoon. If you have any questions about that exam paper, you just ask me. I’ll try to answer them for you.”
Warden sat up after he was gone and picked up the copy of the exam. No wonder they had such stupid shitheads for officers, if they give them such childish examinations as this. He knew the answers to these questions before he even finished reading them. If you have any questions, he minced, you just ask me. Shit. He stuffed the exam in his pocket and turned to watch Lt Ross through the window, crossing the quad in his bent-kneed back-bobbing shambling walk, his uniform hanging from him dismally. Picture of a soljer. The son of a bitch walks like a goddam ragman. Or a plow jockey. Looks like a ragman, too.
A gentleman, he sneered, a gentleman.