From Here to Eternity (34 page)

said, turning away from the mirror. He picked his shirt back up and put it on again and started buttoning it. "Lets go. What the hellar you waitin on?" "You mean to Choy's? Really?" "Sure. Why not? Like you say, why go to town?" "I thought you were snowing me," Pete said. He got up grinning toothlessly and picked the teeth up from the table and leered at them. "Hunh," he said and put them back. "To hell with you. Come on, Milt." They went out through the deserted squadroom, Warden unbuttoning his pants and stuffing the shirt tail down into them and buttoning them back up again and tying the tie, Pete walking and talking newly animatedly. We'll get a case of cans," he said. "Maybe we'll sit out in the kitchen this time. I dont like to sit out front on Payday, with all them young punks yelling around. Or maybe we'll get four or five pitchers instead, take them outside on the green. Maybe that would be better? "After we get teed up," Pete said as they reached the stairs. "After we're properly soused, maybe we'll go over to Big Sue's in Wahiawa and take one, hey? And come right back. For the hell of it. Wait a minute," he said. "I better go back and get my teeth." Warden stopped silently. He lit a cigaret and leaned back against the porch banister and crossed his feet and folded his arms, and was suddenly a statue frozen into a perpetual granite immobility, the top half of him a cut black paper silhouette fixed against the deepening dusk outside the screens. He stood so in suspended animation, divorced from life. When Pete came back he spoke, without moving, the cigaret a bobbling red point that was the only breathing live thing about him. "The trouble with you, Pete," the voice that did not seem to come from him but from the cigaret said savagely, "is you cant see any further than that douchebag nose of yours. You concern yourself with the petty details of life in order not to think, like whether or not to wear them goddam teeth of yours if you think a pussy's gunna see you - just like the goddam housewives in my brother's parish with their makeup when they're going to confession. While the whole damn world is rocketing to hell you got to go back and get your fucking teeth. Whynt you go get in the goddam church and hold hands with the padre and pray for peace, you're at about that age now, and you're suffering from the same disease that afflicts the rest of the human race." Pete stood stricken motionless in the act of putting in his teeth, transfixed by the sudden sanguinariness of the attack, his mouth open and his thumbs still inside with the teeth, staring at this two dimensional statue cut from tin. "Its because of you theres Nazis in Germany," the voice that was not Warden sermonized him. "Its because of you there'll be Fascism in this country someday. After we have got in and I pulled the chestnuts out again for the rest of the world and won this war for England. And you sit around with Mazzioli and the rest of the commendable clerks and discuss. Any subject, just discuss. Whynt you get up a regular Tuesday Literary Club like the Irish ladies in me brother's parish. Intellectuals!" The statue moved out of frozen mobility into a dead run for the stairs, his feet flickering down them like a boxer's feet skipping rope. "Come on, you stupid boob," Warden bawled. "What the hellar you waitin for?" Pete finished the interrupted teeth insertion and champed his jaws to settle them in and followed silently, shaking his head confoundedly. "And what the hell do you do?" Pete said indignantly, half running to keep up with the long loping strides as they moved across the quad. His voice was so choked with hurt, after the warm comradely time he had envisioned, that he seemed almost to be crying. "I suppose you dont concern yourself with the petty details of life?" "Sure," Warden said. "Why not? Dont bawl, for Christ sake." "Then why read me off? I'm not bawling. And what do you mean we got to get in and win this war? We're all ready in, except for sending troops." "Sure," Warden agreed. "Thats it." "And maybe the Ruskies and the Jerries will get in it with each other and kill each other off and save us the trouble. Anyway, it looks like they will. In spite of this treaty." "Fine," Warden said. "Fine. The more thats dead the less to feed the more beer for me. What are you arguing about?" "Why dont you talk sense? I'm not arguing. You're arguing. You started this argument." "Did I? Well then I'm ending it. As of right now." He opened the screendoor between the garbage racks and stacks of empty cases on the porch and went into the kitchen of Choy's restaurant irritably, with Pete following cursing chokingly and impotently angrily. They were among the scant dozen noncoms in the Regiment who had the privilege of sitting and drinking in Choy's kitchen and now they sat down and prepared themselves, unbuttoning their shirts under their loosened ties and rolling up their sleeves two turns and propping their feet up on Choy's freshly scrubbed meatblock, and then called for Old Choy who had been sitting on a high stool in the corner to bring them beer. They were going to make a party. "Hey, Old Choy, you heathen Chinee," Warden bellowed. "You blingee beer, eh? Blingee two four six beer. Chop-chop!" He held up ten fingers and the eighty-year-old statue in the corner came to life and shuffled perilously across the kitchen to the ice chest grinning hugely under the thin straggly white beard. Old Choy always grinned at Warden, because since Young Choy, his eldest son, had taken over the business from him the ancient one was not allowed to go out front where the customers were and where Young Choy was now in the shouting Payday hubbub, and the old man, who sat in the kitchen all day every day in his black silk skull cap and long embroidered robe that Young Choy who had given up ancestor worship for American business ethics called bad for blisness, worshipped Warden because Warden liked to come sit in the kitchen and drink beer and kid the old man, whenever he had the blues. "Huba-huba," Warden bellowed after him with a wink at Pete, "wiki-wiki, chop-chop. You feet, stickee floor, old goat. Me in hully, old man, you bletta snappem shit." Old Choy tottered to the meatblock with an armload of cans. "You goat, Old Choy," Warden grinned. "Goat, see? You mother goat. Mama-San she goat, see? She blingee you goat. Goat, see? Goat. Baa-a-a." He put his fingers under his chin and waggled them at the Chinese. Old Choy set the beer on the block, his almond eyes closed to bright slits, and chuckled with great glee at being called an old goat. "No goat," he chuckled. "You goat, Walden." Warden grabbed an empty can off the block, his bright eyes dancing in the broad big face, the energy pouring out of him in dazzling radiations, the lets-make-this-a-party energy. "See, old goat," he bellowed ferociously, and bent the can double with one movement using his thumbs for fulcrum on the seam. "You do that? You makee can double? You call me goat, I make you double. Like this, see?" He took another can and bent it. Then he worked his way with a sudden savagery through all the empties standing on the block, bending them viciously easily and tossing them over his shoulder into the trash box. "See? like this. See? like this. You bletta no mess with me, old man goat," The Chinese stood before him, grinning all over his eroded face, his shoulders shaking with his chuckling, his head doddering with age. "Blingee beer," Old Choy said. He held out his hand with a delighted grin. "Me blingee beer. Now you play." "Ha-ha," Warden laughed, "ho-ho. Me no can play. Not got cash." He held up his hand in the old, Army gesture, middle finger extended, other fingers closed, thumb and middle finger pinching together repeatedly in the air. "You blingee woman, me play." He made the old, Army sign for woman again, under Old Choy's nose. "You woman, old man goat, me show you how play. My play you then." "You play," Old Choy said, giggling. "You play, Walden." Warden got his wallet out and gave him a bill. "You smart like fox, old man goat. You catchee much money, much cash. You son him makee million dollar." The old Chinese laughed delighted, patting Warden on his big thick shoulder with the thin fine-boned almost transparent hand, and shuffled with the bill to the door out front and called softly in Chinese to his son to come take the money. Then he came back with the change, still grinning, and perched up on his stool to watch the show, his bright old eyes constantly moving. "Ah," Pete sighed. He wiped the foam from his lip with the back of his hand. Then he pinched off the speck of foam the small hole in the can had left on the end of his nose with his thumb and forefinger and flung it on the cement floor. "Ah," he said. "Ah, man." Pete had watched the party-ritual sadly, gazing down from the summit of his 22 years service. Now he began his party-ritual. "You remember the old Bijou Theater in Coconut Grove, Milt?" he said sadly. "I wonder if its still there these many years." "Sure," Warden grinned, teetering in his chair. "The Red Dog Theater on Balboa Street. They probly closed it up by now since the Zone is gone respectable. If they aint they will, soon as these young virgin draftees start comin in and the Future Gold Star Mothers of America make the whole Army go respectable for the duration. Remember what they done to Storyville in the last war." "Ah, yes," Pete said sadly. "Nawrlans aint never been the same. They even have tore down the old market and built a new one thats sanitary. Did you know that, Milt?" "Sure," Warden said indifferently, the party energy beginning to wear thin before this old rehashing. He got himself another can to bolster it. "Yes, sir," Pete said. He looked off at the ceiling corner with great emotion. "Colon. Balboa. Panama City. Walking post along the locks. Coconut Grove. The old Bijou Theater with nothing but shunt pictures. Newsreel, cartoon, and a feature. I got some of the best and most artistic pictures in my collection down in The Grove. Things aint like they was, Milt. Remember? the MPs had no authority above the ground floor? and if a whore ever got you up on the second floor you might as well kiss the boys goodby? It was a fifty-fifty chance they find you in the river. They were men in those days." "If you ever get caught with that collection of yours," Warden taunted, "you can kiss the boys goodby. Possessing pornography is five years and a DD, Pete. This that he had heard so often was killing the partiness and the other, the jaw-tightening, the scrotum-sickening, was coming back. "Wouldnt that be a shame," he nagged, "you with only seven years to go for rocking chair money?" "Once I took a girl down there to the Bijou," Pete reminisced emotionally. "Can you imagine that? But I was a young buck then. I was a fireball." "How many beers you had, Pete?" "Only four. As yet. Why? This girl was a planter's daughter, see? Her old man worked about five hundred gooks and she had led a very sheltered life. A very moral young lady, Milt. I took her out to a high class dinner and then to the Bijou. It was a great shock to her to learn about life. But she took it well. She got to like me very much, after that." He took up another can, a fresh one. "Well," Warden said, "go on. Tell the rest of it." "Thats all there is," Pete said. "The last time I heard it you told it different." "Well," Pete said, his great emotion still secure. "What do you expect? I was in a different mood then." "Oh," Warden said. "Is that it? Hey, Old Choy. Pappa-San blingee more beer to soljer boys, or Pappa-San gettem beard pulled offem face, eh?" Old Choy got up and tottered grinning obediently to the ice chest. "What do you want to make over the old duffer so much for?" Pete asked, still speaking with great emotion. "Whynt you let him die in peace? since he's old and useless?" "I dont make over him. Him and me got an understanding, aint we, Choy?" "You play now," Old Choy grinned, setting down the cans. "You play, Walden." "See?" Warden said. "Nobody has any use for him any more," Warden said, getting out another bill. "He owns the business but his eldest son runs it and collects the money and gives him his allowance and tells him what to do. Well, I'm the First Sergeant and everybody tells me how they want my compny run. I wear the stripes and draw the money and they tell me who to make and who to bust and how they want it run. Me and Old Choy understands each other." "Yas," Pete said, "you sure take a beating, dont you?" "Sure. Even Mazzioli tells me how to run my orderly room. Come on, lets get out of this. What time is it?" "Eight o'clock. But what for? I'm just beginning to enjoy myself," Pete protested. "Sure. And we hang around here any more you'll be crying in your goddam beer." "But you dont understand," Pete said, his great emotion coming back. "The things I've seen, the things I've done. All of them gone. All of them not any more." "Sure," Warden said, "sure, I know. Come on, for Christ sake. Come on. I cant stand it. You're killing me." "But you dont understand," Pete said. "Where'll we go?" "Go out front," Warden said. He led the way out of the kitchen and around to the front of the restaurant so no one would see them coming out because it was against regulations. It was not the same now any more, you could do it all, the same as you use to do it, but it was not the same. Chief Choate was at his corner table and they sat down with him, ordering more beer. Pretty soon they were joined by the K Company topkick who had just quit a little bit ahead of O'Hayer's game, making the four of them a tight little group of old timers in the smoky room that was crowded with the yelling singing horseplay of the youngsters, amongst whom they sat quietly upon their dignity and talked about the Old Army. Chief retold his story of the time he was on guard duty in PI and caught a black gook with the colonel's wife in a calash parked along the road on his post, in a much-more-than-embarrassing position. "Did you see it?" Warden said. "Did you see it? or did you just suspect it?" "I seen it," the Chief insisted with his ponderous calm. "You think I'd make it up? A thing like that?" "Hell, I dont know," Warden said, twisting the big shoulders irritably, looking around the room. "How the hell do I know? What do you say we get some pitchers and adjourn to the green? This goddam place gives me the willies." All of them looked at The Chief for agreement, since this was his table and he rarely left it. "Its okay by me," The Chief said. "I dont like it much in here myself on Payday." "I dont believe it," Warden said, as they went out in the sallyport. "You probably heard that story someplace, from some bastard's perverted imagination and just picked it up, thats all." "I dont give a damn what you believe," The Chief said. "I know what I seen. Whats eating you?" "Nothings eating me. What
makes you think somethings eating me?" The Chief shrugged. "This is better out here," he said. "A lot nicer." And it was nicer, as they sat down cross legged on the sparse grass around the pitchers they had brought out. The air was very clear to breathe and good to see through after the deafening confusion and tobacco smoke of Choy's. The quad was dotted with parties of beer drinkers but their conversation made a pleasant insect-like hum out here that was no longer deafening. Now and then a laugh would ring up sharp and clear out of the hum and the stars seemed to be winking at all of them over each other's shoulder. The fights that kept breaking out out here on the green were removed from them and remote, instead of being in their laps. The large warm semi-tropic moon was just coming out, dimming the stars around it, making the clear air golden with a tangible pulsating life, painting new stark shadows on the ground in the perspectiveless planes and angles of a cubist. Pete and The Chief launched into an argument over the respective merits of PI and the Panama Department, enumerating advantages and disadvantages and weighing them against each other. "And I served in both of them," The Chief summed up stolidly. "So I ought to know." Pete was definitely hampered because he had not been in PI. "China," the K Co top said. "China's the place thats got them all beat. Aint that right, Milt? Your money's worth ten, twelve times as much. In their rate of exchange. A private lives like a general, in China. I'm gunna ship over for China as soon as my time's up in this rotten Pineapple Army. Aint that right, Milt? You served in China, you tell them." Warden was lying leaning on his elbow watching the moon ascend and looking at the lighted screens along the faces of the barracks', there were few shadows moving along the porches this night. He stirred. "Ah, whats the difference? They all the ferkin same. Five cents of one, a nickel of the other." He sat up and locked his elbows around his knees. "You bums make me sick. Always wishin you was someplace else then where you are. Always re-enlisting for a new place you aint been in, always changing, always disgusted with it after the first year. "Anyway," he said, "there wont be no China next year when your time is up. You'll have to re-enlist for Japan." He lay back down and crossed his arms behind his head. "I knew a White Russian girl in Shanghai, though. Thats the only thing about China. Theres lots of them there. She was some kind of a duchess or princess. A countess, I think she was. Had blonde hair down to her crotch. Boy, she was beautiful. By god. The most beautiful woman I ever seen. And hot. The hottest woman I ever seen too. I should of married the bitch, I guess." "Oh-oh," Pete winked at the others. "Here we go again." Warden sat up. "All right, goddam you. I dont give a damn whether you believe it or not. Her old man was a Rusky, got killed with the stinking 27th in Siberia, fighting the Reds. The 27th U.S. Infantry Russian Wolfhounds. Ever hear of them, you smug bastard? Your next-door neighbors, is all they are. You dont believe me, I'll take you over there and prove it by Master Sergeant Fisel. He knew her old man." "I know," Pete grinned. "I know. Have another drink and tell us all about it. Again." "Go to hell, you son of a bitch." "Theres the bugler," The Chief said, and they all stopped talking then and turned to look at the corner of the quad where the guard bugler was raising his horn to the big megaphone to sound Tattoo. Sharply, insistently, he blew the complex notes of Lights Out. The four men lay quiet and absorbed until he had finished, blowing the traditional first and repeat, once to one side, then swinging the megaphone and pouring it out to the north against the 3rd Battalion. One by one the lights in the squadrooms around the quad went out. "Well, thats it," the K Co top said, completely inexpressively, unable to put this solid foundation stone in words. "That boy sure cant touch that Prewitt kid though," he said. "Was you out here the other night he played the Taps? I swear sure as hell I thought I was gonna bawl. Its a shame that boy cant be playin one all the time." "Yeah, I heard him," The Chief said. "He's had a raw deal, that kid. All the way around." "He's gettin a worse one now," Pete said. "He's gettin a real beating now." They all of them watched the guard bugler depart, watching him inexpressively, looking at him inarticulately, seeing in him this fatality of which they were aware but powerless to influence, this that was more than men, an irresistible cosmic force of some kind that defied isolation. "Well," the K Co top said, getting up, "I think I'll take a quick run over to Big Sue's and back. I got work to do tomorrow." "I'll go with you," Pete said. "Loan me five, Milt." "Sure," Warden said. "At twenty percent." All of them laughed. Warden got up holding a full pitcher of beer. "Fooled you," Pete said. "I got money. Come on and go along?" "Hell, no," Warden said contemptuously. "When I have to buy it, I quit." "Well, I'm going," said the K Co top. "You want to go, Chief?" Pete said. "Yeah I might as well," Choate said. He heaved his great bulk up. "Come on and go, Milt." "No. I told you when I have to buy it, I quit." "Ah, come on," Pete said. "No!" Warden said. "God damn no!" He took the full pitcher of beer between his hands and heaved it high into the air over a steel manhole cover in the grass. The beer slopped out in a spray as it fell, and the other three men scattered. Warden stood still, watching the pitcher fall straight like a plummet from star to star, the beer splattering on his uniform and upturned face in tiny drops. "Whoops!" he yelled as the pitcher smashed on the manhole cover sending a big spray over him. "You crazy bastard," said the K Co top. "We could of took it in the cab with us." Warden rubbed his wet palms into his beerwet face. "Leave me alone," he said muffledly from between the vigorously rubbing palms. "Why dont you leave me alone? Get the hell out and leave me alone." He turned and walked away from them toward the barracks to shower and get dressed in the dark, to go to town and meet Karen Holmes at the Moana.