From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [96]
There was a legend about old Pete in the Company, one Pete worked hard to foster with his intellectualisms, about how he came of a rich family in Minnesota, and had enlisted to Save the World in the last war, caught the clap from an army nurse in France, and stayed in to get free treatment, so rare and expensive then, and because his family kicked him out. Pete loved the story, so it probably wasnt true. There were so many who prided themselves on being misfits, rebellion for rebellion’s sake, a sort of inverse sentimentality, romance in reverse. You do it some yourself. But on the other hand, what? The officers. How to choose between a false success and a fake failure? between a fake God and a false Devil? If the story had been true, it wouldnt have been romantic, to Pete or anybody else. But part of it was true anyway, he thought, the part about the clap was true, whether he got it from an army nurse in France, or from a Paris whore, or from a pickup in Chicago. You could prove that much was true, with the arthritis; on some men it went down into the bones and stayed there.
And yet there remained, when the choppers filled out the watery indistinctness of the crumbled face, a firm intelligent line along the jaw, an echo of forgotten promise; and when the toothless pucker did not obscure the eyes, you could see the clearness in them of a man who knew machineguns and knew he knew them, the only satisfaction left an old man whose hobby now was collecting pornography in pictures.
“Where you going, Little Sir Echo?” Milt asked him as he clumped past to the door in the Japanese style wooden clogs.
“To take my goddam shower, if the First Sergeant’s got no objections. Where’d you think? to the movies in this towel?”
Warden sat up and rubbed his face, as if he was trying to rub all of it, Karen, the transfer, Prewitt, Pete, himself, away.
“Thats too bad,” he said. “I was just thinkin about goin over to Choy’s and lappin up some brew. And I was goin to invite you along.”
“I’m broke,” Pete said. “I aint got no money.”
“I’m buying. Its my party.”
“No thanks. You think you can buy me off with beer? Come up here and needle me all afternoon and then buy me a couple of brews and make it all all right. No thanks. I wouldnt drink your beer if it was the last beer in the world.”
Warden slapped him on the butt and grinned. “You mean if it was the very last beer? and you wouldn’t touch it?”
Pete was trying hard to keep his craving off his face. “Well,” he said. “If it was the very last beer. But I hope to God it never gets that low.”
Milt Warden smiled, charmingly, all the deep warmth rising from his eyes, striking from the record all the rest of it, in spite of Pete’s severity.
“Lets you and me go over to Choy’s and get drunkern hell and tear up all the chairs and tables.”
Pete had to grin, a little, but he would not renege all the way. “It’ll have to be on you,” he said.
“Its on me,” Warden said. “Everything’s on me. The whole fucking world’s on me. Go take your bath. I’ll wait. Couple days we’ll see what this new man Stark is like.”
They did not have to wait that long, because the new man Stark arrived the next day, barracks bag and baggage.
It was one of those first clear days that prophesied the ending of the rainy season. It had rained all morning and then suddenly cleared at noon, and the air, freshly washed today, was soft and free of dust, like dark crystal in the sharp clarity and sombre focus it gave to every image. Everything looked clean, smelled clean, and there was that holiday sense that always comes with an impending weather change. To work, on such a day, was sacrilege, but Warden had to be on hand for the arrival, to look him over.
It was, Warden felt, very appropriate that