From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [499]
She turned to find the young Air Corps Lt/Col, who had been standing beside her in the press when they left the pier, leaning on his elbows on the rail a few steps off and grinning ruefully. After they had lost sight of the pier and the crowd had begun to thin he had moved away up the rail, and then he had gone off somewhere, probably to take a turn around the deck, and she had forgotten all about him.
“Yes it is,” she smiled. “Very beautiful.”
“I think its the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen in my life,” the young Lt/Col said. “Let alone had a chance to live in.” He flipped his cigaret overboard and crossed his ankles, and the effect was the same as if he had made a fatalistic shrug.
“I feel the same way about it,” Karen smiled. She could not get over a feeling of astonishment at how young he was, for a Lt/Col, but then they were all like that in the Air Corps.
“And now they’re shipping me back home to Washington,” he said.
“How come they are sending a pilot like you back on a ship?” Karen smiled. “I should think you’d fly.”
He touched his left breast, where there were some ribbons but no wings, deprecatingly.
“I’m no pilot,” he said guiltily. “I’m in the administrative corps.”
Karen felt a twinge but hid it. “Still, I’d think they’d fly you back?”
“Priority. Priority, my dear lady. Nobody knows what it is. Nobody understands it. But its priority. Anyway, I’d just as soon go by boat. I get air sick, but I dont get sea sick. Aint that a riot?”
They both laughed.
“Thats the God’s truth,” he said earnestly. “Thats what washed me out. They say its something in my ears.” He sounded as if it was the greatest tragedy of his life.
“Thats too bad,” Karen said.
“C’est la guerre,” the young Lt/Col said. “So, now I am going back to Washington where I know absolutely no one. To help the War Effort. After I’ve been here two and a half years and know every place and damn near every body.”
“I know quite a few people in Washington,” Karen offered. “Maybe I can give you some addresses before we leave ship.”
“Would you really?”
“Surely. Of course, they’re not any of them Senators or presidents of anything, and none of them know Evelyn Walsh McLean.”
“Never look a gift horse in the mouth,” the young Lt/Col said.
They both laughed again.
“But I can promise they’re all nice people,” Karen smiled. “You see, my home is in Baltimore.”
“Not really!” the young Lt/Col said. “Is that where you’re going?”
“Yes,” Karen said. “My son and I are. For the duration.”
“—and six months,” the young Lt/Col said. “Your son?”
“Thats him over there. The biggest one.”
“He looks like a lot of boy.”
“He is. And all of it already betrothed to the Point.”
The young Lt/Col looked at her then, and Karen wondered if she had not sounded bitter.
“I’m originally an ROTC man, myself,” he said.
He looked at her again, carefully, out of the boyish eyes and face, and then he stood up. Karen felt subtly complimented. “Well, I’ll be seein you. Dont forget about those addresses. And dont wear your eyes out on that shoreline.”
Then he put his hands on the rail. “Theres the Royal Hawaiian,” he said ruefully. “They’ve got the most beautiful cocktail lounge in that place I ever saw. I wish I had a dime for every dollar I’ve spent in there. I wouldnt be rich but I’d have a lot of poker money.”
Karen turned to look and saw the familiar pink gleam from among the green, way off there on shore in the distance. It was the first thing everybody pointed out to her, when they had first come in. That was almost two years ago. And right next to the Royal was the dead white gleam of the Moana. As she remembered, she did not think anyone had pointed out the Moana to her, coming in.
When she looked back the young Air Corps Lt/Col was gone. She was alone at the rail except for a small slight girl dressed all in black.
Karen Holmes, for whom love was over, felt a little relieved. She also felt even more complimented. Still looking up forward toward the bow, she watched Diamond Head slowly coming towards them.
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