From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [72]
“Come here,” he said, hoarsely, gently. “Come here, little baby. Come here to me.”
The great gentleness that was in him, that he was always wanting to bring forward but never could, rose up in him now like a flood, blindingly.
“Oh,” Karen said. “I never knew it could be like this.”
Outside the rain thrummed ceaselessly and cascaded ceaselessly from the roof, and in the street the sound of the stiff brooms of afternoon Fatigue grated soothingly, above the rain.
Chapter 10
THE APPOINTMENT OF Pvt Bloom to Pfc did not come as a surprise to G Company. It had been expected since late December that the first vacant rating would go to Bloom, who, until he suddenly went out for Company Smokers last year and then followed it up with Regimental and four wins in the Bowl, had only been one of the many other doughy faces peering with forlorn grins out of the Company’s yearly photograph. From a less than mediocre soldier Bloom had vaulted, using the sturdy pole of boxing politics, into the position of being the only private, Pfc or otherwise, whom Old Ike ever called out of the ranks to give Close Order and who was being groomed for Corporal. And the non-jockstrap faction in the perpetual feud was very bitter in its denouncement of the obvious favoritism. Capt Holmes would have been shocked, then hurt, then probably indignant, if he could have known the reaction Bloom’s Pfc had on the majority of the privates in his Company, but only a little of their muttered comments ever reached him, and that only after it had been watered down until it was considered suitable for his ears by those of his men who told him.
The jockstraps, although none of them had particularly been Bloom’s friends, welcomed him into their fold with much brotherliness and defended him violently. They had to do this in order to perpetuate their doctrine that jockstraps made better leaders, and which had always been their justification against the bitter mutterings of the straight duty privates who could not make a rating.
Little Maggio, the gambler and ex-shipping clerk for Gimbel’s Basement, was particularly bitter and incensed.
“If I had knew,” he said to Prewitt, whose bunk was two beds from his own in Chief Choate’s squad, “if I had only knew what this man’s Army had been like. Of all the people in this outfit, they give that vacant Pfc to Bloom. Because he is a punchie.”
“What did you expect, Angelo?” Prew grinned.
“He aint even a good soljer, mind you,” Maggio said bitterly. “He’s ony just a punchie. I’m only out of ree-croot drill a month and I’m a better soljer than Bloom is.”
“Soljerin aint what does it.”
“But it ought a be. You wait, man. If I ever get out of this Army, you just wait. Draft or no draft, they’ll never get me back.”
“Balls,” Prew grinned. “You got all the makins of a thirty year man. I can see it on you a block away.”
“Dont say that,” Maggio said, violently. “I mean it. I like you, but I dont like even you that much. Thirty year man! Not me, buddy. If I’m goin to be a valet, yard man, and general handyman for some fuckin officer, I’m goin to get paid for it, see?”
“You’ll re-enlist,” Prew said.
“I’ll re-enlist,” Maggio said chanting the old bugle call parody, “in a pig’s ass hole. If anybody should of had that rating, man, you should of had it. You’re the best soljer in this outfit for my dough. By a hunert million miles.”
The rainy season’s course of indoor lectures had given Maggio an admiration for Prew as a soldier. His feverish quick-moving eyes had not missed Prew’s competence with the rifle, pistol, BAR and MG and with all their nomenclatures, all old stuff from his previous enlistment. But his admiration for Prew as a soldier had jumped a hundred