From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [89]
You dont want to do it, Prewitt, he told himself. Its kid stuff; its all right for kids, who have never had a taste of what the real is like, who have never had anything else but that. To them its satisfying. You know it wont satisfy you, that it will only make the hunger greater, will only make the other needed more.
But at least it will relieve you. And you’re going to have a stone ache if you dont. And it had its point, he thought, it has its points. I wonder if Maggio really meant that what he said about his fist? or if he was only kidding? I wonder how many of them really do it? like now, in the middle of the month? There’s no way you can ever really know.
Where would you go? There’s not even any place to go for that. Except to bed with a handkerchief. Did you ever go to bed with a handkerchief, friend? Try it, friend, at least you’ll save three dollars. If you had three dollars.
He got his raincoat and his hat off his bed and came back down, feeling the distended ropy tubes inside it that would begin to be painful pretty soon if he didnt do it, but knowing that he could not climb in his bunk with a handkerchief and lie there holding back his breath and being very careful that the springs would not squeak in the breathing stillness of the squadroom; not knowing where to go, but knowing that that was degradation, was shameful, was unbecoming to a man, and suddenly, for no reason, remembering the time in A Company when Red had been taking a siesta, lying naked on his bunk asleep with nothing but a towel across him that had fallen off in the turning of his sleep, and now someone had seen it and had called the others and they had all watched, laughing, as in his sleep, dreaming, the erection had come slowly and inexorably, rising to taunt distention and then spewing forth the fluid meant for woman and that turned rotten in the air. And Red woke seeing them all laughing there, and the shame that was on his face had made Prew turn quickly and walk away, the laughter gone, replaced by hollowness that had made him never mention it again.
It always leaves a hollowness, he told himself, there never is the fullness of satisfaction, the sleepiness. And after you’ve done it, you know you’ll be ashamed.
But at least you’re not crawling secretively into your bunk and looking furtively all around to see if the men around you are asleep first.
He went out through the truck entrance, over past the Chapel, up behind the Boxing Bowl, where he had fought last year, to a place where it was dark and the patrolling MP hardly ever came. It was there, unbuttoning his raincoat, standing in the neverending rain, feeling it on his face like tears, that he did it.
Chapter 12
IT WAS BARELY the middle of March, hardly ten days since Holmes had first brought him the papers, that the transfer of the Fort Kamehameha cook came back, approved, to Warden. For a transfer like that one was, from one branch of service to another, it was an unbelievably short time.
That afternoon that Mazzioli brought the transfer letter over from Regiment, Milt Warden had been sitting at his desk, puzzling over a snapshot Karen Holmes had given him of herself that was before him lying on the papers he had been working on, his cheek sunk on the knuckles of one big fist like a small boy watching a grownup’s movie he could