From Here to Eternity (72 page)

CHAPTER 43

IT WAS during the month after Angelo had gone to the hosp and before Stonewall Jackson came back with news of him, that the young Indiana farmboy Prew had seen beaned in Number Three was transferred into Number Two. Of all the men that had been in Number Three with Prew he was the one Prew would have picked as least likely to succeed but he Came in with them after his three day jaunt in the Hole as mildly affable as ever. They had been expecting him since before Angelo had gone in the Hole. Apparently, after that first spell of lapse that resulted from the beaning itself and had lasted only one day, the Indiana farmboy had started having them more and more often and for longer and longer periods. When he was normal, he was the same old mild uncomplaining self; when he was in one of the lapses, he was the same docile dreamy idiot Prew had seen. But every time he came out of a period of lapse he went crazy fighting mad and attacked whatever happened to be closest to him. Twice he had attacked guards on the rockpile. Once in the messhall he had emptied his plate of catsup and beans over the head of the man eating next to him and started sawing on him with the dull edge of his table knife; the only thing that saved the man was the fact that the GI cutlery would hardly cut butter. He got three days in the Hole for that one, served them uncomplainingly affably, and the day after he got out tried to brain the man next to him on the rockpile with a medium-sized boulder. A number of times at night in the barracks some man in Number Three would wake to find a crazy-faced demon wildly choking his neck and grapple with him until three or four others, roused by the scuffle, would come to his aid and sit on the Indiana farmboy until he was all right again. The boys in Number Three loyally covered these up for him and finally set up a system of guard duty in which there was always one man awake at night to keep an eye on him. But finally he went after Fatso himself one day in the messhall. He was beaned with a grub hoe handle again for his trouble, and it was decided he was worthy Number Two Material. The truth was, he was not. He was as out of place in Number Two as a white chicken amongst a black flock. But he accepted this with the same equanimity that he accepted everything else. He remembered Prew and eagerly made friends with him, and he quickly arrived at a worship of Jack Malloy that surpassed even that of Blues Berry and" came very close to the point of embarrassment the way he followed Jack around like a puppy. When they came to playing games in the evenings he tried as hard with that as he tried with everything else, when he was normal, and suffered the knee-punctures and burned hands of Indian-wrassle and the sore ribs of The Game as uncomplainingly as he suffered everything else. Once, he even managed to stay up at The Game through the five smallest men and was cheered roundly. He achieved the distinction of being the first man in the history of Number Two who was ever offered exemption from playing games, but he refused to sit on the sidelines and not play, although he was never known to have won any game from anybody, up to the time they all started taking it easy on him. They took him under their wing and looked after him and adopted him as a sort of a mascot. His crazy spells when he was coming out of one of his lapses did not bother them and they did not need to set up a guard system because without exception they were all adepts at rough and tumble fighting and had been since childhood. If one of them woke up to find him choking on him he would wrassle loose from him, knock him out, and then put turn back to bed where he would wake up in the morning his old mild affable self again. None of them in Number Two, in fact nobody in the Stockade, considered him even remotely dangerous. Even a mind like Jack Malloy could not have seen danger in such an ineffectually murderous Indiana farmboy. That he would ever be the match that would touch off the fuse that would blow apart the tautly balanced status quo of the Stockade as a whole and Number Two in particular, and alter the whole lives of several of them, even unto the Outside, was frankly laughable. It happened without warning or expectation, out on the rockpile one afternoon. Since he had come into Number Two, the Indiana farmboy had gradually grown more and more bitter about life in an affable sort of a way. It was not like him, and nobody ever knew afterwards if it was because he was trying to emulate his new heroes, or if it was because his spells had cost him his time-off-for-good-behavior and, with his final removal to Number Two, lengthened his one-month sentence into a two-month one. That afternoon he was in one of his dreamy lapses. Prew was working between Blues Berry and Stonewall Jackson when he came out of it. They had been watching for the signs, and no sooner had the Indiana farmboy dropped his hammer and looked up wildly than the three of them fell on him and held him down until he was all right again. Then they all four went on back to work without thinking anything much about it since they were all used to the procedure by now. But a little while later the Indiana farmboy stepped over to them with an unusually affably resolute look and asked if one of them would break his sum for him. "What the hell for, Francis?" Prew wanted to know. "Because I want to go to the hospital," the Indiana farmboy explained. "What do you want to go to the hospital for?" "Because I'm sick and tired of this goddam hole," the Indiana farmboy said affably. "I've pulled my whole month's sentence and I've still got twenty-six days to do. Twenty-six more days." "How would you like to have six months to do, like me?" Jackson said. "I wouldnt like it," the Indiana farmboy said. "Breaking your arm wont help you to get out any quicker," Prew said reasonably. "It'll get me two or three weeks in the hospital though." "Anyway, how the hell could we break your arm? Take it over our knee like a stick and break it?" Prew said. "An arm's hard to break, Francis." "I've already thought of that," the Indiana farmboy said triumphantly. "I can lay my arm down between two rocks and one of you can hit it with a sledgehammer. That would break it quick and easy and give me at least two weeks vacation in the hospital." "I don't want to do it, Francis," Prew said, suddenly feeling a little bit queasy. "Will you do it for me, Stonewall?" the Indiana farmboy said. "What the hell do you want to go to the hospital for?" Jackson evaded. "It aint no better than here. I've been there, and I'm telling you true. It aint a dam bit bettern here." "Well, at least there wont be no Fatso there, and you wont have to work in this goddam sun breaking rocks with a hammer." "No," Jackson said, "but you'll sit around on your dead ass looking out through them goddam chainmesh grids till you'll wish to hell you was breaking rocks with a hammer." "At least the food will be better." "Its better," Jackson admitted. "But you'll get just as sick of it anyway." "Then you wont do it for me? Even as a favor?" the Indiana farmboy said reproachfully. "Oh, I guess I'd do it for you," Jackson said reluctantly squeamishly, "but I'd a hell of a lot rather not, Francis." "I'll do it," Blues Berry grinned. "Any old time you want it done, Francis. If you really want to do it, that is." "I want to do it," the Indiana farmboy said affably firmly. "Well, wheres some rocks?" Berry said. "Theres a couple over here where I'm working that'll do just fine." "Okay," Berry said. "Lets go." Then he paused and turned back to the others. "You guys dont care if I do it for him, do you? I mean, what the hell? If he's that sick of it. I can see how I might want somebody to do it for me sometime maybe." "No," Prew said reluctantly. "I dont care. Its none of my affair. I just dont want to do it, thats all." "Thats the way I feel," Jackson said queasily. "Okay, I'll be right back," Berry said. "Keep an eye out for them guards." The guard down in the pit was clear out of sight, but the two guards up on the cliff were both in position to see them. "You better watch them up there," Prew said. "Hell, if I waited till they got out of sight, I'd wait till the earth looked level." "They probly move off a piece in a little bit," Prew suggested. "Ahh, hell with them," Berry said disgustedly. "They too blind to see anything anyway." He took his hammer and followed the Indiana farmboy off about five yards where Francis pointed out two rocks he had selected, two smooth flat-topped ones about six or eight inches apart and three or four inches off the ground. The Indiana farmboy knelt down and laid his left arm out across the rocks with his elbow and upper forearm on one and his wrist out onto the other. "This way, you see, it wont break any joints," he explained affably. "I figured my left arm because I'm righthanded. It'll be easier to eat with and I can still write letters home to the famly. Okay," he said. "Hit it." "All right, here goes," Berry said. He stepped up and measured the swing with the head of his hammer and then swung, back over his head, a full double-armed swing, and hit the arm between the two rocks with all the force and accuracy of an expert axman notching a tree. Francis the Indiana farmboy screamed with just as much surprise as if he had not been expecting it, like a man who had been shot by a sniper he didnt see. If there was any sound of bone breaking, the scream smothered it. He stayed on his knees a few seconds, looking whitefaced and faint, then he got up and came over to show it to them. In the middle of his forearm where the line should have run straight there was a kind of square-cornered offset. In the few seconds it took him to cross the five yards it had already started to swell. As they watched it, it swelled until the recessed part of the offset was filled out level again and there was only a big bulge on the bottom. "I think its broke in two places," Francis said happily. "Hell, that ought to get me at least three whole weeks. Maybe more." He broke off strangledly and got down on his knees, holding his left arm gingerly with his right, and vomited. "Boy, it sure hurts," he said proudly, getting back up. "I sure didnt think it would hurt that much," he said, with the same astounded surprise that had been in his scream. "Thanks a hell of a lot, Berry." "Think nothing of it," Berry grinned. "Glad to help out." "Well, I think I'll go on down and show this to the guard," Francis said happily. "See you guys later." He went off down the hill still holding his left arm gingerly with his right "Jesus!" Prew said, feeling an unusually cool trickle of sweat down his back. "Man, he can have it," Jackson said. "I dont want any of that. Not even if it would get me clear out of the Stockade." "What the hell?" Berry grinned. "You hear about criminals operatin on themself all a time to get bullets out. Thats lots worse than this." "I never heard about it anywheres outside of the movies," Prew said. "Me neither," Jackson said. "I never seen it." "Hell, it was easy," Berry grinned at them. "There wasnt nothing to it" Between hammerswings they watched the guard on the road make a call in from the box while the Indiana farmboy stood beside him happily, holding his left arm gingerly in his right. Then pretty soon the truck came up for him and he climbed in the back, still holding his left arm gingerly in his right. "See?" Berry said. "Easy as pie. Hell, I got a goddam good notion to do it myself." "If two guys showed up with broken arms, they'd sure as hell suspect something then," Prew said. "I know it," Berry grinned wolfishly. "Thats why I aint. But thats about the only goddam reason." That evening when they came in from work they learned that Francis Murdock the Indiana farmboy was already in the prison ward with a certified broken arm from a fall on the rockpile. It was, however, only broken in one place, instead of two as he had hoped. Nothing was said about it and no questions were asked and it appeared as if it had all gone off like clockwork. Evening chow went off just as usual. But after chow, shortly before lights out, Fatso and Major Thompson himself came into Number Two with the grub hoe handles and looking madder than hell. It was almost like an inspection. They lined them up at attention by their bunks and the two riot-gunned guards stood just inside with the third guard standing outside holding the key to the locked door. Major Thompson looked as if he had just caught his wife in bed with a private. "Young Murdock broke his arm out on the rockpile this afternoon," the Major said crisply. "He claimed it was broke by a fall. He went to the hospital with that disposition because we like to keep our fights in the family here. But just between us, somebody broke that arm for him. Murdock and the man who broke it for him are both guilty of malingering. We do not tolerate malingering in this Stockade. Murdock's sentence is going to be lengthened, and when he comes back from the hospital he's going to find it pretty tough around here. Now I want the man who broke Murdock's arm to step forward." Nobody moved. Nobody answered. "All right," the Major said crisply. "We can play hard too. You men are in Number Two because you are recalcitrants. I dont have no sympathy for any of you. You've been getting away with murder lately and its about time all of you learned who runs this Stockade. I'll give the man one last chance to step forward." Nobody moved. "All right, Sergeant," the Major said crisply and nodded at Fatso. S/Sgt Judson stepped up to the first man and said, "Who broke Murdock's arm?" The man was a skinny little old-timer from the 8th Field with a craggy lined face that portrayed absolute cynicism and eyes that stared straight ahead as immovably as two stones. He had been clear over on the other side of the quarry but he already knew the whole story. He said, "I dont know, Sergeant" and Fatso rapped him across the shins with the grub hoe handle and asked him again. The craggy face never moved and the solid stone eyes neither wavered nor flickered. He said, "I dont know, Sergeant" again and Fatso slammed him with the head in the belly and asked him again. He got exactly the same results. It was the same way all up and down the line. Fatso started methodically at one end and worked his way diligently down and back up to the other. He asked each man the same question "Who broke Murdock's arm?" five times. Not a figure moved and not an eye flickered or wavered and nothing but infinite contempt for Fatso's hard methods and Fatso himself showed on any face. This was not Number Three; this was Number Two. And Number Two was as solidly together as a morticed stone wall. Neither the contempt or the unbreakability bothered Fatso. His business was to ask each man the question and hit him if he gave the wrong answer, not to worry about the results,