From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [431]
He got off the bus a couple blocks up and sauntered down past the alleyway that ran back to the Log Cabin Bar & Grill. It looked just the same as it always had.
There was nobody in the Blue Chancre when he went in. A few sailors drinking beer and trying to make time with Rose who was strictly an Army girl. But nobody from the Company. He sat at the bar and drank whiskey-sodas, so he would not get drunk enough to get noticed and get picked up, and talked to Charlie.
G Company was all out at Makapuu Head building pillboxes, Charlie told him, that was why there was nobody there. Hadnt been nobody here since before the maneuvers started. Place velly dead.
Rose came over and sat down by him after a while and asked grinningly how he liked being a civilian now? It scared him at first, or rather startled him, but he told himself he should of known they would know it, and they both laughed and seemed to think it was big joke and wanted to know how long he planned stay vacation? Nobody mentioned Fatso Judson. He sat and talked to them about the free life of a civilian quite a while.
He did not know just exactly what he had expected. He had expected to find some of the Company there, for one thing. He did not know about the beach positions. He knew it was reckless to show up down there, but he did not expect anyone from the Company would turn him in, unless it would be Ike Galovitch. And Old Ike never went to the Blue Chancre.
He found out from Rose that Old Ike had been busted. It must have happened the day after he left, he figured. And Rose told him about how Warden was up for a commission which, if he had heard it during the nine days he waited for Fatso, had failed to register. The new Company Commander, Rose said, maybe turning out not be such bad joe after all, look like.
The more they talked the more homesick he got. He had to watch himself carefully not to get drunk. He bet they were having a rough time out at Makapuu, building pillboxes in that rock. But the roughness, strangely, instead of making him glad he was out of it, excited him and made him want to get in on it.
He stayed until 9:30 or 10:00 o’clock, eating Charlie’s hamburgers cooked out back that were at least one-third cereal, with plenty of onion and mustard, to keep the liquor from getting into him, and telling himself it was the best food he had had in weeks.
There were plenty sailors at the six booths and four tables, but almost no soldiers. Hardly any soldier coming town now any more, Charlie said. Rose’s latest shackjob, a S/Sgt of Field Artillery, came in; and Rose, with her Chinese eyes and Portagoose nose and mouth and the startling eye-arrestingly beautiful waggling waggling take-a-hold-of-me bottom that seemed to be distinctively peculiar to Portagoose-Chinese girls also, left Prew at the counter and spent her time between beer calls in a booth with the S/Sgt.
Charlie could not talking about anything but how this pillbox job luin the blisness, not like old maneuvels use to be, be plenty glad when him oveh.
It was just before he left that Rose happened to remember how The Warden had been in asking for him, just before maneuvers, the very night before, in fact. She thought it was big joke.
What he want them tell The Warden? if he come back? They both wanted to know.
“Tell him I been here,” he said immediately. “Tell him I miss him, I cant hardly stay away from his beautiful face. Tell him I’m lookin for him, too,” he added, “and if he wants to see me, this is the best place to look.”
They both nodded. They did not look surprised. They were used to screwball soldiers. Him Army. Awys think screwy, Army guys.
He got home around twelve. He had ridden the streetcar again,