From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [453]
They did not contest this either. So the three of them sat that way, in silence, listening to the reports come in over the radio, until hunger for the breakfast nobody had had drove them out to the kitchen, and Prew finished off the bottle he was working on and started another. He would not leave the radio to eat. When they brought him food he refused it. He stayed in front of the radio on the footstool, drinking cocktail glasses of whiskey and weeping and nothing could budge him.
“Our young men have paid dearly,” the radio said, “for the lesson the nation has learned this day. But they have paid fairly, and squarely, without fear and without complaint and without bitterness at the high cost. Hired to be ready to fight and die for us, our Regular Army and Regular Navy have this day upheld the faith and confidence we have always placed in them, have proved their right to the esteem we have always had for them.”
“I was asleep,” Prew said dully, “sound asleep. I dint even wake up.”
They had hoped he would drink himself into a stupor and pass out, so they could put him to bed. The wildness in him made them uneasy to even be in the same room with him. But he did not pass out, and he did not drink himself into a stupor. He was apparently in one of those moods when a man can just go on drinking indefinitely, after he reaches a certain point, without ever getting any drunker but only getting wilder and wilder. He stayed there in front of the radio on the footstool, first weeping and then glaring blackly.
Early in the afternoon the radio gave a repeat call of Dr. Pinkerton’s request for volunteer blood donors to report immediately to Queen’s Hospital. More to get out of the heavy-bellying atmosphere of the house than anything else, away from the ominous electricity with which the wild dynamo in front of the radio was charging the air, both Georgette and Alma decided to go down and give blood.
“I’m going too!” the dynamo hollered, and lurched up from the footstool.
“You cant go, Prew,” Alma said uneasily. “Be sensible. You’re so drunk right now you cant even stand up. Besides, everyone’ll probably have to show some kind of identification. And you know what that would mean for you.”
“Cant even give any blood,” he said dismally, and lurched back down onto the footstool.
“You stay here and listen to the radio,” Alma said soothingly. “We’ll be back in a little bit. Then you can tell us all thats happened.”
Prew did not say anything. He did not even look up again from the radio as they went to get dressed.
“I’ve got to get out of here!” Alma said. “I can’t breathe.”
“Do you think he’ll be all right?” Georgette whispered. “I didnt realize!”
“Of course he’ll be all right,” Alma said firmly. “He just feels guilty and he’s upset and a little drunk. He’ll get over it by tomorrow.”
“Maybe he ought to go back anyway?” Georgette suggested.
“If he went back, they’d only put him in the Stockade again, wouldnt they?” Alma said.
“Thats true,” Georgette said.
“Well, dont talk silly,” Alma said.
He was still sitting there when they came back out. The radio was droning on with staccato tenseness. Something else about Wheeler Field. He did not look up or say anything, and Alma shook her head warningly at Georgette and they went on out and left him sitting there.
He was still sitting there two hours later when they came home, looking as if he hadnt moved a muscle since they had left, except that the bottle in his left hand was well down toward being empty. The radio was still going.
If anything, he seemed soberer, with that intent crystal sobriety that comes to a heavy drinker after a long, intense, concentrated consumption of liquor. But the heavy crackling tension in the air of the house, like low-hanging clouds roiling and rubbing together before an electrical storm, seemed—after the excitement of all the traffic and the bright indifferent Sunday sunlight outdoors—to be even more oppressive than when they had left.
“Well, we had quite a foray,” Alma said brightly into the bleakness.
“We sure did,” Georgette said.