From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [99]
“Come on upstairs,” he said, finding Stark was still alone, doubtfully holding up a pair of the old outmoded suntan breeches that he hated to throw away but had no use for any more. “To my room. I got talkin to do thats private. And I dont want none of them cooks around to see me with you.”
“Okay, First,” Stark said, answering the urgency in his voice, and got up still holding out the breeches. “I had these breeches ever since the year my sis got married.”
“Throw them out,” Warden decided for him. “When this war comes and we move out you wont have room for half of what you got thats useful.”
“Thats right,” Stark said. He tossed them on the growing pile of refuse by the door implacably and looked around the tiny room, and at the three barracks bags that held seven years’ accumulation of a way of life.
“Aint much, is it?” Warden said.
“Enough, I guess.”
“Footlockers aint got room for memories,” Warden said. “And barracks bags even less. Hell, I even use to keep a diary. Still dont know what happened to it.”
Stark took a leather framed picture of a young woman and three boys from the satchel and set it open on his wall locker shelf. “Well,” he said, “I’m home.”
“This is important,” Warden said. “Lets go.”
“I’m with you, First,” Stark said, and picked up the pile of castoffs and the breeches. “Ony time I ever got around to clearin out is when I move,” he said apologetically.
On the porch he dropped it all into a GI trash can without breaking stride, following Warden up the stairs, but at the landing he looked back at it, once, at the breeches leg with its thin round GI laces whose metal tips had been lost long ago, dangling outside the can.
“Sit down,” Warden said, indicating old Pete’s bunk. Stark sat down without speaking. Warden sat on his own bunk facing him, and lit a cigaret. Stark rolled one.
“You want a tailormade?”
“I like these better. I awys smoke Golden Grain,” Stark said, eyeing him reflectively, but waiting coolly, “if I can get it. If I cant get Golden Grain, I rather smoke Country Gentleman than tailormades.”
“I read some stories about a private dick, named Sam Spade, who like Bull Durham over tailormades,” Warden said. “I never believed it.”
“Me neither,” Stark said. “Nobody smokes Durham, if they can get something else. Even Dukes is bettern Durham.”
Warden set the battered ashtray on the floor between them. “I play them straight, Stark. Five cards face up.”
“Thats the way I like them.”
“You had two strikes on you when you got here, as far as I’m concerned. Because you served with Holmes at Bliss.”
“I figured that,” Stark said.
“You from Texas, aint you?”
“Thats right. Borned in Sweetwater.”
“How come you to leave Fort Kam?”
“Didnt like it.”
“Didnt like it,” Warden said, almost caressingly. He went to his wall locker and fished around down behind his diddy box till he brought up a fifth of Lord Calvert. “They never inspect my room on Saturday,” he said. “Drink?”
“Sure,” Stark said. “A breath.” He took the bottle and looked at the label, inspecting the longhaired dandy the way a man sweats out his hole card in a big game too rich for his blood, then upended it and drank.
“You ever handled a Mess, Stark?”
Stark’s adam’s apple paused. “Sure,” he said around the bottle and went on with his drink. “I was runnin one in Kam.”
“I mean really run one.”
“Sure. Thats what I mean. I was acting bellyrobber on one stripe. Ony I was never acting.”
“How about menus and marketing?”
“Sure,” Stark said. “All that.” He handed the bottle back reluctantly. “Good,” he said.
“What kind of rating did you say?” Warden said, not bothering to drink now.
“Pfc. I was up