From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [85]
“Now look what I did,” he said sorrowfully and went over to the wall to pick it up. “Well,” he said, “whynt you ask me why I didnt quit after I won the forty? Go ahead. Ask me.”
“I dont need to ask you,” Prew said. “I already know why.”
“I thought I could win some more,” Angelo said, insisting on castigating himself since Prew wouldnt do it. “I thought I could win enough for a real trip to town. Maybe two real trips to town. Balls,” he said. “Tes-tickles.” He slammed the muddy, dusty, dented hat back on his head cockeyed and put his knuckles on his hips and looked at Prew. “Oh, balls, balls, balls,” he said.
“Well,” Prew said. “Thats that.” He looked down at the deck in his hands and ripped it suddenly across the middle, tearing the first few top and bottom cards clear in two, bending and ripping the next ones only a little bit, then tossed the scrambled mess up in the air and watched them drift, sideslipping, like autumn leaves, down to the floor. “No ass. Let the goddam latrine detail clean them up in the morning. To hell with it.”
“Andy and your boy Friday go to the show?” Angelo asked hopefully.
“Yeah.”
“He dint give the money to you back?”
“Nope.”
“Damn,” Angelo said. “I save out four bits. If I had a buck I know a game in C Compny I could get in where the takeout’s a buck only.”
“I aint got a cent,” Prew said. “Not a red cent. To hell with it. It’d take you all goddam night to win enough to have a stake to hit the sheds.”
“Thats right,” Angelo said. “You’re right.” He stripped off his raincoat and began taking off his shirt. “To hell with it. I’ll take me fifty cents and go to town and pick me up a queer. At least I’ll get a few drinks and get my gun off. I aint never picked me up a goddam queer, but I guess I can do it if other people can. It hadnt ought to be too goddam hard. I’m sick of it,” he said, “sick of all of it. Sometimes I get so sick of it I want to puke my goddam guts right out on the floor and lay down in it and die.”
Prew was looking at his hands, dangling between his knees. “Sometimes I cant honestly say I blame you a whole hell of a lot,” he said.
“Come on and go with me,” Maggio said. “You can borrow four bits someplace. If we dont make a strike, we’ll hitchhike back.”
“No thanks,” Prew said. “It beats me. I aint in no mood to go to town and whatever fun there was I’d kill it. And anyway, I dont like queers.”
“I got to change my clothes,” Angelo said. “So long. I’ll see you in the goddam morning, if I get back. If I dont, come around to the Stockade and visit me.”
Prew laughed, but it was not a laugh that very many men would recognize. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll bring you up a carton of butts.”
“I’ll take one now,” Maggio said, “on account?” He looked at Prew apologetically. “I forgot all about buying any, Prew, when I had the dough.”
“Sure,” Prew said. “Sure. Here.” He pulled out the crumpled pack and gave him one, took the last one himself, and threw the crumpled pack in a commode.
“Not if these is your last ones,” Maggio said.
“Fuck it,” Prew said. “I got plenty rollings.”
Maggio nodded, and Prew watched him go; the dwarfed, narrow shouldered, warp-boned heir to a race of city dwellers whose destiny it was to never place their feet upon their earth except for the bottled-in-bond, canned grass of Central Park, whose very lives came out of cans, even to the movies that they tried to pattern their lives after and the beer they drank to forget them; go out toward the squadroom to fumble around in the breathing dark to find his undress uniform for town, the gook shirt and cheap slacks and two-buck shoes.
Prew pushed the twisted cards with his foot and listened to the neverending rain outside and decided he would go down to the Dayroom for a while, since he did not feel like sleeping.
The Dayroom was almost deserted. A couple of men lolled on the cigaret burns and ruptured excelsior of the imitation leather chairs that lined both walls of the narrow room that had been built below the outside porches. The Dayroom was screened-in from about