From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [438]
“This is it,” somebody said quite simply.
Warden found that his eyes and Stark’s eyes were looking into each other. There was nothing on Stark’s face, except the slack relaxed peaceful look of drunkenness, and Warden felt there must not be anything on his either. He pulled his mouth up and showed his teeth in a grin, and Stark’s face pulled up his mouth in an identical grin. Their eyes were still looking into each other.
Warden grabbed his coffee cup in one hand and his halfpint of milk in the other and ran out through the messhall screen-door onto the porch. The far door, into the dayroom, was already so crowded he could not have pushed through. He ran down the porch and turned into the corridor that ran through to the street and beat them all outside but for one or two. When he stopped and looked back he saw Pete Karelsen and Chief Choate and Stark were all right behind him. Chief Choate had his plate of hotcakes-and-eggs in his left hand and his fork in the other. He took a big bite. Warden turned back and swallowed some coffee.
Down the street over the trees a big column of black smoke was mushrooming up into the sky. The men behind were crowding out the door and pushing those in front out into the street. Almost everybody had brought his bottle of milk to keep from getting it stolen, and a few had brought their coffee too. From the middle of the street Warden could not see any more than he had seen from the edge, just the same big column of black smoke mushrooming up into the sky from down around Wheeler Field. He took a drink of his coffee and pulled the cap off his milk bottle.
“Gimme some of that coffee,” Stark said in a dead voice behind him, and held up his own cup. “Mine was empty.”
He turned around to hand him the cup and when he turned back a big tall thin red-headed boy who had not been there before was running down the street toward them, his red hair flapping in his self-induced breeze, and his knees coming up to his chin with every step. He looked like he was about to fall over backwards.
“Whats up, Red?” Warden hollered at him. “Whats happening? Wait a minute! Whats going on?”
The red-headed boy went on running down the street concentratedly, his eyes glaring whitely wildly at them.
“The Japs is bombing Wheeler Field!” he hollered over his shoulder. “The Japs is bombing Wheeler Field! I seen the red circles on the wings!”
He went on running down the middle of the street, and quite suddenly right behind him came a big roaring, getting bigger and bigger; behind the roaring came an airplane, leaping out suddenly over the trees.
Warden, along with the rest of them, watched it coming with his milk bottle still at his lips and the twin red flashes winking out from the nose. It came over and down and up and away and was gone, and the stones in the asphalt pavement at his feet popped up in a long curving line that led up the curb and puffs of dust came up from the grass and a line of cement popped out of the wall to the roof, then back down the wall to the grass and off out across the street again in a big S-shaped curve.
With a belated reflex, the crowd of men swept back in a wave toward the door, after the plane was already gone, and then swept right back out again pushing the ones in front into the street again.
Above the street between the trees Warden could see other planes down near the smoke column. They flashed silver like mirrors. Some of them began suddenly to grow larger. His shin hurt from where a stone out of the pavement had popped him.
“All right, you stupid fucks!” he bellowed. “Get back inside! You want to get your ass shot off?”
Down the street the red-haired boy lay sprawled out floppy-haired, wild-eyed, and silent, in the middle of the pavement The etched line on the asphalt ran up to him and continued on on the other side of him and then stopped.
“See that?” Warden bawled.