From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [460]
“What do I want to go back for?” Prewitt said wonderingly. “I’m a soldier.”
“A soldier,” Alma said inarticulately. “A soldier!” Through the fast-drying tears on her face she began to laugh at hint wildly. “A soldier,” she said helplessly. “A Regular. From the Regular Army. A thirty-year-man.”
“Sure,” he said, grinning uncertainly like a man who does not get the joke, “a thirty-year-man.” Then he grinned genuinely. “With only twenty-four years to go.”
“Jesus!” Alma said. “Jesus! Jesus Christ!”
“Will you turn off the lights while I go out?” he said.
“I will,” Georgette said firmly, but gladly, from the steps to the kitchen. She came down then and went over to the switch by the blackout-curtained glass doors, and in the darkness he slipped the night lock and went out and closed the door after him.
Chapter 52
FROM OUTSIDE THE HOUSE looked full dark as if there was not a soul home. He stood a minute happily and looked back at it, still feeling a little drunk although he had not had a drink since around three o’clock, feeling free.
She would get over it in a couple days. He knew that. When he got a pass and came back up she would be as glad to see him as ever. He was not worried about her going back to the States.
One good thing about the Army. It kept you separated from your women so much they never had the chance to get sick of you. And vice versa.
After he had gone a block he stopped and took the pistol out of his belt and put it in his pants pocket. Then he went on. The pistol, and the shells in the other pocket, dragged at his thighs as he walked. The pistol especially was very bulky.
But if he put his hands in his pockets if they stopped him.
There was always the chance he could talk them out of it.
But no bunch of lousy MPs were going to take him in and keep him from getting back to the Company. He had made up his mind.
It would be best to follow Sierra down into Kaimuki. Wilhelmina was shorter. But most of the houses were close to the street on Sierra. So were their garages. And the yards were all terraced with brick or stone walls. There were more dark nooks and niches among the fairy tale houses of Sierra. He was not worried about after he got out of Kaimuki.
When he got out of Kaimuki he would cross Waialae Avenue and go over into the Waialae Golf Course.
The Waialae Golf Course was a strip of dull barren but slightly higher ground between the Highway and the beach, treeless and all sand hills and scrubgrass, which had never been good for anything else but a golf course. Where Waialae Avenue that ran through Kaimuki met Kealaolu Avenue it changed its name and became the Kalanianaole Highway to Makapuu Head, and the resulting triangle between the two avenues and the beach was the Waialae Golf Course. He knew the Waialae Golf Course like the back of his hand. They had used to meet a couple of gook maids on the 5th Tee every night, last year during maneuvers. Going through the golf course meant he would have to cross the Highway twice because at its eastern end the Highway narrowed in almost to the beach. But going through the golf course, which he knew, was worth the risk of crossing the Highway twice.
After that, the only hard thing was the causeway over the salt marsh clear out just this side of Koko Head. The causeway was about half a mile long and he would probly have to sprint it. But after that, it was made.
All the beach positions along here belonged to G Company and he could have turned in at any one of them. But he did not want to turn in to one of the beach positions. He wanted to turn in at the CP at Hanauma Bay. Under his own power.
The trip through the golf course was something like the wild loud nightmare of the long walk to Alma’s after Fatso had cut him. And it was something like the dreamy stillness of the stalk through Waikiki the night he had hunted Angelo Maggio drunkenly