From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [49]
“Lets go up to the place on the hill,” he said. “To our place,” he added intimately, and was ashamed because he felt now that he was pleading. Being without any for so long could eat into a man, and the blood was pumping through him richer now, and thicker.
“All right,” she said. The door to the cupboard had no glass in it, but she opened it anyway, to reach for the bottle inside, the absence of the glass embarrassing her. While her arms were up Prew cupped his hands over her breasts from behind her. Violet jerked her arms down irritably and then he spun her, pinning her arms to her sides, and kissed her, she holding the bottle in one hand. In her bare feet she was not quite as tall as he was.
They climbed up through the matted dry grass, Prew carrying the bottle, the sun pleasantly hot on their bare backs. At the top in the little clump of trees they lay down in the matted green and brown of the dead and living grass. They looked almost straight down at the house.
“Its pretty, isnt it,” Prew said.
“No,” disagreed Violet. “Its ugly. Horrible ugly.”
The cluster of shacks lay spread out below them, a nameless community not on the tourists’ maps, looking as if the first strong wind would blow them over. They were, on top of the hill, at the top of a great U where they could look down at the houses curved across the bottom or look straight across at the field of green cane on the other side.
“I lived in a place like this when I was a kid,” Prew said. “Except it was lots bigger. But it was the same,” thinking of all the lost forgotten memories that came back now, carrying so much life and emotion, crowding in your mind, and that you never could express to anyone, because they never were connected. A sadness at the loss of them, and at their lack of meaning, came over him.
“Did you like it?” Violet asked.
“No,” he said. “I dint. But I’ve lived in a hell of a lot worse places since.” He rolled over on his back and watched the sun flickering down through the leaves of the trees. He felt the Saturday afternoon on-pass feeling come down and sweep over him, like leaves do in the fall, back home. Life does not begin again till Monday morning, it whispered. If only all of life could be like this, he whispered. If only all of life could be a three-day pass.
That was a pipedream, Prewitt. He took a drink from the bottle and handed it to Violet. She drank, propped on her elbows, staring down at the houses. She drank the straight whiskey the same way he did, as if it were only water.
“Its terrible,” she said, still staring down. “No one should ever have to live in place like this. My Poppa and Momma come here from Hokkaido. Not even this house is theirs.” She handed back the bottle to him and he caught her arm and pulled her over. He kissed her, and for the first time she returned it, putting her hand on his cheek.
“Bobbie,” she said. “Bobbie.”
“Come on,” he said, turning. “Come here.”
But Violet held back, looking at her cheap wrist watch. “Momma and Poppa will be home any time.”
Prew sat up in the grass. “What difference does it make?” he said irritably. “They wont come up here.”
“Its not that, Bobbie. Wait till tonight. At night is the time for that.”
“No,” he said. “Any times the time for that. If you feel like it.”
“Thats just it,” she said. “I dont feel like it. They’ll be coming home.”
“But they know we sleep in the same bed at night.”
“You know how I feel about Momma and Poppa,” Violet said.
“Yes, but they know it,” he said. Then he wondered suddenly if they did. “They must know it?”
“Its different in the afternoon. They’re not home from work yet. And you’re a soldier.” She stopped and reached for the bottle on the grass. “I graduated from Leilehua High School,” she stated.
You never completed the seventh grade, he told himself. He had seen Leilehua High School in Wahiawa. It was only another high school.
“So what if I am a soljer?” he said. “Whats wrong with a goddam soljer? Theres nothin wrong with a soljer, that isnt wrong with anybody else.”
“I know it,