From Here to Eternity (15 page)

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 percent when he found out Prew had been a fighter in the 27th and refused to fight for Holmes. He could not understand it, but with his ingrained championing of the underdog, learned at Gimbel's and not lessened by the Army, he admired it. He had watched Prew's soldiering from a distance admiringly, but it was not until he found out about the other thing that he offered open friendship. "If you'd of decided to punch for Dynamite you would of got that rating. You can bet your balls you'd got it. And you want to spend thirty years of your life in a deal like this!" Prew grinned, and agreed, but he said nothing. There wasnt anything for him to say. "Come on," Maggio said disgustedly. "Lets get a game goin in the latrine. Maybe I can win enough to go to town." "Okay," Prew said, still grinning, following him. The rainy season had been good to him. The leisurely lectures in the Dayroom and the practical work of field- and detail-stripping and assembling the various pieces on the chilly porches with the sound of rain outside were things he liked, and since they were conducted by a single officer or noncom for the Company as a whole, they gave him respite from the vengeful eye of Old Ike Galovitch who seemed bent on protecting the honor of the Great God Holmes, ever since he first found out that Prew had refused to fight. Also, the ending of the boxing season had relieved the tension he had brought into the Company, temporarily at least. The three globed lights in the first floor latrine burned dimly. A GI blanket, Maggio's, was spread out on the concrete floor between the row of commodes in open stalls on one wall and the urinal trough and washbowls on the other, and the six men sat down around it. Maggio, shuffling the cards, looked over at the topless, seatless, commodes in their stalls where three men were sitting with their pants down, and held his nose. "Hey," he said, "is this a goddam cardroom? or a la-trine? Attensh-HUT! Da-ress Right, DHRESS!" The men looked up from their magazines, cursed, and went back to business. "Deal the cards, Angelo," Anderson, the company bugler, said. "Deal the cards." "Sure," said Salvatore Clark, the apprentice bugler, grinning shyly under his long Italian nose. "Deal them cards, Wop, or I'll put you down and shove them up you, see?" He laughed then, with rich shy humor, unable to keep to his self-appointed role as tough guy. "You wait," Maggio said. "I'll deal these cards. I'm stackin these cards." He held the deck in his open left hand, index finger crooked professionally around the top. "You couldnt stack shit with a shovel, Angelo," Prew said. "Listen," Maggio said. "I learn to deal these cards in Brooklyn, see? on Atlantic Avenue, where anything less than a royal flush never had a chanct." He riffled the cards from right hand to left, as near as he could come to the delicate card ladder of professional gamblers. He began to deal. The game was stud. And each of them was suddenly alone, engrossed. Prew laid the fifty cents in nickels he had borrowed from Pop Karelsen, Sgt of the Weapons Platoon and intellectual friend of Cpl Mazzioli, and who had taken a liking to him when he found out he knew machineguns, on the blanket and winked at Clark. "Boy," said Sal Clark fervently. "How I'd like to make a stake in this game and take it over to O'Hayer's and make a killing." It was the hope and dream of all of them. "I'd take that ol' Honolulu over, I mean. I'd rent me the whole friggin New Congress Hotel for one whole night, and the ones I couldnt lay I'd have to watch and give advice." He, who could never get up nerve enough to even go to a whorehouse unless someone was with him, chuckled and grinned shyly at his own, deception. "You aint never been to the New Congress, have you Prew? You aint never been to Mrs Kipfer's, have you?" "I aint had the money yet," Prew said. He looked at Sal, feeling a warmness of protection, and then across at his sidekick Andy who was engrossed sullenly in his cards, and then back at Sal, on whose account it was mainly that he had finally made friends with them. Sal Clark with his shy trusting eyes and half-embarrassed grin was like the village idiot boy who is utterly without malice, envy, distrust, or the desire to better himself and so incompetent to maintain himself in our society, and who the prosperous business men, joyously robbing each other every chance they got, fed and clothed and protected tenderly, as if in some metaphysical way he with his undistracted mind might make a plea for them with God, or save them from their consciences. In the same way, Sal Clark was taken care of and respected as the talisman of the Company. Anderson had made overtures of friendship to Prew several times, and on Payday after Prew had blown in his pay, he even offered to loan him money, but every time he came around Prew had cut him off, because Andy's eyes never focused on his face but always on one side or the other, and Prew did not want for friends men who feared him. And it was not until Sal Clark with his wide, deep, uncomprehending doelike eyes had asked him trustingly to be friends that he suddenly saw he could not refuse. ... It happened on one of those warm February nights before the rainy season started when the stars seemed near enough to finger. He had come out of the smoky drunkenness of Choy's feeling the beer all through him lightly and stopped in the lighted tunnel of the sallyport that funneled the large sounds of the night. Across the quad the lights in the 2nd Battalion were still on and shadowy figures moved across the porches in front of them. The dark quadrangle was sprinkled with the lightning bugs of cigaret butts, clustered around pitchers of beer, glowing as some one dragged and then fading out again. From over in the far corner near the bugler's megaphone came the ringing chords of a guitar and voices raised in four-part harmony. It was rule of thumb harmony, but it was closely knit and it carried clear and sharp across the quad, sounding good. And in the slowly moving harmony he recognized Sal's twanging nasal, standing out, more hillbilly than any mountain man, although he was a long nosed Wop from Scranton. They were singing Truckdriver's Blues. "Feelin mighty weary, from my head down to my shoes ... Got to keep a rollin... truckdriver's blues... Never did have nothin, got nothin much to lose... Got a lowdown feelin... truckdriver's blues." And the utter simplicity of the plaintive lament in Sal Clark's voice reached out and touched him. He felt his anger and indignation at Warden and this setup dwindling away into a kind of deep perceptive melancholy for which there were no words. It was all in the words of the song, but the words actually said nothing at all; except that a truckdriver was weary and had the blues. The music came to him across the now bright, now dull, slowly burning cigaret of each man's life, telling him its ancient secret of all men, intangible, unfathomable, defying longwinded descriptions, belying intricate cataloguings, simple, complete, asking no more, giving no less, words that said nothing yet said all there was to say. The song of the one-eyed man who had driven the ox sled through the summer hills in the Kentucky mountains, the song of the Choctaw on his reservation, the song of the man who had laid the rollers for the stones heavy as death to build the glorious monument to the king. In the simple meaningless words he saw himself, and Chief Choate, and Pop Karelsen, and Clark, and Anderson, and Warden, each struggling with a different medium, each man's path running by its own secret route from the same source to the same inevitable end. And each man knowing as the long line moved as skirmishers through the night woodsey jungle down the hill that all the others were there with him, each hearing the faint rustlings and straining to communicate, each wanting to reach out and share, each wanting to be known, but each unable, as Clark's whining nasal was unable, to make it known that he was there, and so each forced to face alone whatever it was up ahead, in the unmapped alien enemy's land, in the darkness. Mazzioli and the other clerks who congregated mornings at Choy's to discuss Art and Life were blind. He knew them, so involved in intricate conversation, so secure in pointless argument, they could not see the thing they sought to grasp lay right before them, all around them, and could be touched only momentarily, but never grasped and held by any sharp dissection. It spoke now from the bottomless shallows of a hillbilly song that in its artless simplicity said everything their four-dollar words could never say, went back to a basic simplicity that gave a sudden flashing picture of all life that could never be explained and an understanding of it that could never be expressed. The clerks, the kings, the thinkers; they talked, and with their talking ran the world. The truckdrivers, the pyramid builders, the straight duty men; the ones who could not talk, they built the world out of their very tonguelessness - so the talkers could talk about how to run it, and the ones who built it. And when they had destroyed it with their talking the truckdriver and the straight duty man would build it up again, simply because they were hunting for some way to speak. He could feel it all there in the song, and in Sal Clark's howling painful nasal noice. "Feelin mighty weary... never did have nothin ... got a lowdown feelin... truckdriver's blues." He had walked a zigzag trail through the parties of beer drinkers over to the corner and stood on the outskirts of the little crowd that always congregates around a guitar player. There was a small group of five actors who were the center. The others, lumped deferentially as onlookers, stood around and sang or listened, beneath the superiority of the creative circle. Andy and Clark had swung into San Antonio Rose, and Prew circled around the outer edge, listening but making no attempt to enter, and Andy had caught sight of him. "Hey, Prew!" he called, a fawning in his voice. "We need a guitarman. Come on over and sit in." "No, thanks," he said shortly, as ashamed of the flattery in Andy as if it had been in himself, and turned to go. "Aw, come on," Andy urged, looking at him through the opening that the crowd had made, his eyes moving all around his face but never resting on it. "Sure, Prew, come on," Sal seconded eagerly his wide eyes shining blackly with enthusiasm. "Boy, we're havin a lot of fun. We even got beer tonight. Say," he added, rushing the new thought out, "I'm gettin pooped out. How about you takin this one for a while?" It was the greatest offering he could make, but it was the obviousness of it that hit Prew. "Okay," he said curtly. He walked over and took the proffered guitar and sat down in the middle of the group. "What'll we play?" "How about Red River Valley?" Sal said artlessly, knowing it was Prew's favorite. Prew nodded and hit a tentative chord, and they swung into it. As they played Clark pressed the beer pitcher upon him. "It aint as good as Andy's new one," Sal said, nodding at his guitar. "He sold it to me cheap when he bought the new one. Its beat up, but its good enough for me, to learn on." "Sure," Prew said. Sal squatted in front of them holding the beer pitcher. He was grinning with great joy and he sang the song in that whining nasal, his eyes half shut, his head back and on one side, almost drowning out the rest. When it ended, he took Prew's empty beercan that had its top cut off to serve as a glass and filled it. "Here, Prew," he said anxiously. "You gonna play, you'll want to wet your whistle. Singin makes a guy get dry." "Thanks," Prew said. He drained the can and wiped his
mouth with the back of his hand and looked at Andy. "How about my Talkin Blues?" Andy offered. It was his specialty, that he never liked to do when there was a crowd, but now he was offering it to Prew. "Okay," Prew said, and hit a chord to start it off. "I been lookin for you to come around," Sal Clark said, above the music. "I been hopin you'd come around, Prew boy." "I been busy," Prew said, not looking up. Sal nodded quickly. "Yeah," he said, with grotesque sympathy. "I know you have. Say, any time you want to play this old box, you just get it out a my locker. Dont bother to ever ask me, I never lock it." Prew had looked up then, at the candid happiness that was on the long thin olive face because he'd lost an enemy and made a friend. "Okay," he'd said, "and thanks, Sal, thanks a lot." He had bent his face back to the strings, feeling warm himself, because he too had made two friends today.... "Two whores," Maggio said, flipping over with its mate the queen he had for hole card. "Two bullets," Prew grinned, turning up his own. He reached out and scooped in the small handful of change from the blanket. There was a chorus of groans and curses as he added it to the four dollars he had won in the past two hours. "A little more of this," he said, "and I'll have enough to hit O'Hayer's shed for a big lick." While they had played the guard bugler had sounded a watery Tattoo from the corner of the rainy muddy quad, and there had been a sudden influx of last minute pissers before they went to bed, and the CQ had come around and thrown the light switches in the squadrooms, and now in the darkened squadroom beyond the swinging saloon-doors of the latrine there were the heavy silences and soft stirrings of a great deal of sleep. But the game had gone on concentratedly through it all with that passionate singularity generally attributed to love, but which few men ever feel, for women. "I might of knew it," Maggio said dejectedly. He pulled down the strap of his undershirt and scratched his bony shoulder tragically. "Old-ace-in-the-hole-Prewitt. Any man catches an ace paired on the last card should have to throw in his hand or be outlawed from our club, thats all." "You're as cold as a well digger's ass in the Klondike, Angelo," Prew grinned. "Yeah?" Maggio glowered. "You believe it: its so. Gimme them goddam cards, men. Its my deal." He turned to Clark. "Hear that, Nose? Prewitt says it: Its so." Maggio fingered his own big nose as he slapped the deck down for Prew to cut. "Was my father ever in Scranton, Pa? If I dint know my father was never out of Brooklyn in his life, I'd lay you money you was my kid brother. If I had money, that is." Sal Clark grinned shyly. "My nose aint big enough to be your brother." Maggio rubbed his hands together briskly and then ran each finger and his thumbs across his nose. "Now," he said, "now. Here we go. I've changed my luck. Better'n a nigger any time," he said, patting his big nose. He began to deal. "Who ever pinned you with the monicker of Clark, Ciolli? You're a traitor to the Italian people, Ciolli. You snob." "Hell," Sal grinned, unable to keep his face straight like Maggio's. "I can help it? if the immigration people couldnt spell Ciolli?" "Comeon, Angelo," Prew said. "Deal the cards. You cant make money you dont deal the cards." "I cant win for losin, thats what I cant win for," Maggio said briskly. "You're a Wop, Ciolli. A greasy, hooknosed Wop. I dont know you. First jack bets." "Bet five." Andy threw in a nickel. Clark glowered comically, trying to narrow his fawn's eyes. "I'm a hard man, Angelo. Dont mess with me. I'll pull you apart. Ask Prewitt will I pull you apart." "You'll never get rich on five," Maggio said to Andy. "Lets make it ten." He threw in a dime. "Is that right, Prew? Is this Ciolli boy really tough?" "I call," Prew said. "Sure he's tough. He's hard. I'm teachin him the manly art of self-defense." He looked at his hole card. Sal grinned delightedly under his huge nose. "Then he's hard," Maggio said. "I quit," he said to Clark. "All right, all right," he said, "its up to you, Jew-boy. Ten to you, you character." "I call," said Pvt Julius Sussman, who had been losing steadily, "but I dont know why. Where'd you learn to deal such stinking hands?" "I learn to deal these cards in Brooklyn, as you would know if you had of ever got out of The Bronx for air. I'm a Card Dealer. Queen is high." "Bets five," Sussman said disgustedly. "You're nutward material, Angelo, thats what you are. The original Ward Eleven Kid. You better re-enlist." "I'll re-enlist," Maggio said. "Right in your eye, with all six inches of it." He looked at his hole card. "Two more weeks till payday. I'm ona hit Honolulu like a fifty caliber. Look out, Service Rooms!" He picked up the deck. "Last time around," he said. "Hal" Sussman said. "A good piece of ass and a ride on my motor would kill you, Angelo." "Listen to him," Maggio said, looking around. "The Waikiki Beach Kid. Him and his motorcycle and his one string gittar. Last time around," he said. "Last time around. Any cuts, burns, or bruises." "Dealem," Prew said. "The man says dealem." Angelo passed the cards, his thin hand flickering nervously, pouring out the energy, as he deftly made the round. "I aim to win this, friends. Oh, oh. Two Jacks to Andy. Jesus Christ! I closed my eyes. Two Jacks bets." "Its a ukulele," Sussman explained. "Originally Hawaiian instermint. And besides, it gets the wahines. Thats all I care. My motor gets more pussy than all the dough in this compny." "Then why dont you put the other three strings on it?" Maggio said. "You cant even play it anyway." "I dont have to play it," Sussman said. "Its ony atmosphere." Maggio peeked tentatively at his holecard. "When I have to start playin a one string fiddle and buy me a motorcycle on time to get wahines, I'll start payin my three bucks at the window." "You pay your three bucks at the window now, Angelo," Sussman, whose motor was the dearest thing in his life, said testily. "Thats what I said, dint I?" Maggio said disgustedly. "I call that two bits, Andy, and hump it two. Four bits to Reedy." "Horse frocky," said Pvt Readall Treadwell, the sixth man, who had not won a single hand and who came from southern Pennsylvania. He heaved the fat-lined barrel that was his chest and belly in a lazy sigh and turned over his cards and tossed them in. His round face grinned lazily, belying the tremendous strength that was underneath the fat. Beside the nervous swiftness of little Maggio he was like a fat crosslegged Buddha. "You guys done broke me. I aint got no business playin cards with sharpers no ways." "Hell," Maggio said. "You still got twenty cents. Stick around. I'm just beginning to win." "Gotohell," Treadwell said, getting up. "I got enough for two beers left is all. An I aim to drink em, not you. Ah cant play poker no ways." "Hell no," Maggio agreed. "All you're good for is a BAR man, to lug that 27 pounds around so some noncom can take it away from you when its time to shoot it." "Man, you know it," Reedy Treadwell said. But having stood up, he was no longer a part of the circle. He stood behind them looking down a minute, then ambled out, no unhappier than if he had won ten dollars. "What a character!" Maggio said, shaking his head. "I almost hated to take his money. But I convinced myself. Everybody in this compny is characters except me and Prewitt. And sometimes I'm gettin so I wonder about Prewitt. All right, all right," he said to Andy, "what you gonna do?" "What you got there?" Andy stalled, sullenly studying Maggio's cards. "You can see em," Maggio said. "Four clubs up, one club in the hole. That makes a flush." "Maybe you aint got it," Andy said. "Call and find out," Maggio said. "Thats my advice to you." "You checked the bet on the last card," Andy said sullenly. "You checked a cinch into me." "I dint have that last club on the last card," Maggio said. "Quit stallin. You gonna call?" Andy looked sulkily at his pair of Jacks, then at the third Jack he had for holecard. "I got to call," he said. "There aint no choice. But you screwed me on that last card, Angelo," he accused. "Balls!" Maggio said. "You seen them four clubs up before you bet. Put the blame on Mame." "I call," Andy said. "Money talks," Maggio said. Andy threw in a quarter, reluctantly. "How about you, Prewitt?" Maggio grinned. "I got to call," Prew said, studying Andy's face. "I'm low man on this totem pole, but if he's ony got a pair I got him beat." He threw in his money. "Read em and weep," Angelo chortled, triumphantly turning up the fifth club. He reached out and scooped in the money, letting it trickle through his ringers and making a high chuckle like a miser. "You better quit now," he said to Prew, "if you want to keep them winnings. Cause I rubbed the old nose, see? and I'm as hot as Big Virginia's double shunt." "It wont last," Prew said, taking a last drag on his tailormade and flipping it at one of the commodes. "Hey," Maggio said. "The butt. The butt. Dont throw it away, you capitalist." He scrambled up and picked it up from under the commode, inhaling the smoke luxuriantly. "Lets go," he said, "lets go. Reedy's out: its your deal, Andy. "Sick a Bull Durham," he said, coming back. "I worked in Gimbel's Basement, I least had tailormade cigarets. You niggerlip them, Prewitt. You're sloppy. You aint a soljer." "A drag," Clark said. "Gimme a drag." "My god!" Maggio said. "At the end of the month and two weeks till payday? I just got it. Leave me have a drag myself." He handed over the tiny end, while Andy dealt the second round, face up. Clark took it gingerly and sucked, burning his fingers, and then flipped it into a commode. "So," Maggio said. "You dont believe it, Prewitt. You dont think I'll take your money. My ace is high, bet two bits." "Jesus Christ!" Prew said. "Its your own fault," Maggio said. "I warned you." Andy dealt the next round and Maggio's ace was still high. It stayed high through the whole hand and won it for him. He won the next hand, and the next one, and the one after that. The sparking energy radiating from his knobby bony frame seemed almost to call to him the cards he wanted and repel the good cards from the others. "Man," Maggio said, "I'm hot. I can feel it in my belly. A nail, Prewitt," he said bitterly, "a stinking nail. I'm thirsty for a nail." Grinning, Prew reluctantly pulled out his almost empty pack. "First you take my money, then you want me to provide you with tobacco. I had to borrow money to buy this pack." "Buy another pack," Maggio said. "You got money now, you hebe." "Buy your own pack. If I furnish butts to the players, then I cut the game. I'll split it," he grinned, "but thats all I'll do, see?" He handed out two of his small stock, one to Maggio and Sussman, the other to Andy and Sal, and took one for himself. The others passed their paired cigarets back and forth between them as they played, and as Angelo went on winning. Andy was dealing when the saloon doors opened and Pfc Bloom came in, pushing the door back so hard it banged against the wall and then swung back and forth squeaking loudly. Pfc Bloom advanced on the men around the blanket with a heavy, meaty confidence grinning and shaking his flat kinky head, so big the tremendous shoulders seemed to fill the door. "Quiet, jerk," Maggio said. "You want the CQ up here and break up the game?" "To hell with the CQ," Bloom said, in his customary loud voice. "And you too, you little Wop." A transformation went over Maggio. He stood up and walked around the blanket, up to the huge Bloom who towered over him. "Listen," he said in a contorted voice. "I'm particular who calls me Wop. I aint big and tough, and I aint one of Dynamite's third rate punchies. But I'm still Maggio to you. I worn mess with you. I work you over, I'll do it with a chair or a knife." He stared up at Bloom, his thin face twisted, his eyes blaring. "Oh yeah?" Bloom said. "Yeah, yeah," Maggio said sarcastically. Bloom took a step toward him and he leaned his head forward pugnaciously on the thin bony shoulders, and there was the sudden attentive silence that always precedes a fight. "Lay off, Bloom," Prew said, surprised at the clear loudness of his voice in the silence. "Come on and sit down, Angelo. Five up to you." "I call," Maggio said without looking around. "Take off, you bum," he said over his shoulder as he walked away. Bloom laughed after him self-confidently and nastily. "Deal me in," Bloom said, elbowing in between Sussman and Sal Clark. "We got five players," Maggio said. "Yeah?" Bloom said. "So what? You can take seven players in draw poker." 'This is stud," Maggio said. "You can take ten then," Bloom said, missing the point. "Maybe we dont want no more," Prew said, squinting at his holecard through the smoke of his cigaret. "Yeah?" Bloom said. "What'sa matter? Aint my money no good?" "Not if its in your pocket," Maggio said. "Its probly counterfeit." Bloom laughed loudly. "You're a character, Angelo." "To you I'm Maggio. Private Maggio." "Cheer up," Bloom laughed. "You may make Pfc yourself someday, kid." He looked down and brushed the new stripes on his shirt caressingly. "I hope not," Maggio said. "I sincerely, truly hope not. I might turn out to be a son of a bitch, too." "Hey," Bloom said. "You mean me? Are you callin me a son of a bitch?" "If the shoe fits, friend, you wear it," Maggio said. Bloom looked at him a minute, puzzled, not sure if he had been insulted or not, not able to understand why the antagonism, then he decided to laugh. "You're a character, Angelo. For a minute I thought you was serious. Who's got all the cigarets?" he asked. Nobody answered. Bloom looked around, and spotted the bulge in Prew's shirt pocket. "Gimme a butt, Prewitt." "I aint got any," Prew said. "Yeah? What's that in your pocket? Come on, give us a butt." Prew raised his face impassively. "An empty pack," he lied, staring in Bloom's eyes without embarrassment. "I just killed it." "Yeah?" Bloom laughed sarcastically. "All believes that stand on their head. Give us the butt on that one then." "Sure, friend." Prew flipped the butt of his cigaret contemptuously. It lit on the floor near Bloom, under a commode. "Hey!" Bloom protested. "You think I'll smoke that? after its rolled in all that piss? Thats a hell of a way for a guy to act, for Christ's sake." "I smoked one just a while ago," Maggio said. "Tasted good to me." "Yeah?" Bloom said. "Well maybe I aint sunk that low yet. When I do, I'll pick me up some horseturds and roll my own." "Suit yourself," Maggio said. He crawled over and picked up the butt in question and smoked it himself. "Just watch out," he said, crawling back, "you dont pick the wrong one up and smoke yourself." Sal Clark had been collecting the cards for the new hand, keeping his face averted embarrassedly from all the antagonism that had come in with Bloom, as if he did not want to see it. "Shall I deal him