From Here to Eternity (94 page)

said. "I'll go get them." "Come on," Warden said as she left. "Lets fry a steak. Right now, I'm hungry as hell. Come on, lets fry all four of us a steak." "We got to get into these uniforms first," Stark said. "I'll put the steaks on," Warden said. "You go ahead. I'll be right with you." "You know something?" Stark said excitedly. "Something's happened to me. I'm not drunk at all. I used to have to be drunk as hell. I'm changed." "You used to be an American male," Warden said. "Now you're a man of the world, like me. Its the same thing as going to Europe and seeing the uncensored movies before they cut them in this county. You're never the same again." "Its something" Stark said. "Would you like your steak rare, medium or well?" Warden said. "We serve them all ways." "Rare," Stark said. When the two gills came in and locked the big metal door against the hubbub behind them, the smell of the frying porterhouses was already floating through the place. "Oh!" the little dark girl Jeanette, the new one, squealed. "This is going to be a lovely party. I love lovely parties." "Thank the man there," Stark said. Warden, standing at the stove, laid down the spatula and bowed. "Come here, little thing," he said. He sat down and picked her up and set her on his knee like a doll. 'Tell me, are you French?" "Wheres the liquor?" Stark said. "My momma and pappa are," Jeanette said. "Oh, this is going to be a lovely party!" "I'll get some," Sandra said. "What did you show the old bitch? to make her loosen up like this?" "Then you and I have much in common," Warden said. "I got French ancestors myself." "Money," Stark said. "Get the liquor." "Tell me, little thing," Warden said. "Do you love me?" "Yes, I love you," Jeanette squealed happily. "I'd love anybody who'd get me out of there, on a day like today." "Well, I love you, too," Warden said. "Oh, honey," Sandra said, setting two bottles on the table. "Do I love you. I've been hungry for the past hour and a half. Do I love you." "I love you, too," Stark said. "Me and my dollbaby are going down the hall," Warden said, "and play some pattycake. You watch the steaks." Stark, sitting half on the chair beside Sandra with his arm around her, turned his head over his shoulder toward the door as Warden went out through it. "You hurry back," he said. "Dont you burn those steaks," Warden said.

CHAPTER 57

KAREN HOLMES, standing at the promenade deck railing of the ship and looking back, thought it was too beautiful a place to leave. She had stood there while the confetti had been thrown and the Navy band had played Aloha Oe and the bunting streamers had come down with the gangplank and the yoohooing passengers had crowded the rail to wave good-by. And now, while they slid out past Fort Armstrong through the channel past Sand Island and on out through the reef and the restlessly excited passengers began to thin out and go below, she still stood there. They said there was an old Hawaiian legend that if you threw your lei overboard as you passed Diamond Head it would tell you whether you would ever come back again. Don Blanding had squeezed a few poems and a great many tears out of it. Karen did not think she would ever be back but she decided to try the legend anyway, as they passed Diamond Head, and see. She was wearing, altogether, a total of seven leis. The bottom one was a red and black paper lei the Regiment gave to all its short-timers and there were, progressively more expensive, a carnation lei from the Officers' Club, another one from Major Thompson's wife, one from Holmes's old Battalion Commander's wife, a ginger lei from Col Delbert's wife, a pikaki lei from General Slater, and on top the pure white gardenia lei Holmes had bought her when he saw her off. The seven leis made a collar of flowers that came clear up above her ears, as she stood on at the rail. Dana Junior, freed from the necessity of standing at the rail to wave good-by to his father, was already back toward the rear of the ship in the middle of the deck at the shuffleboard courts with two other lovable small boys screaming at each other that they were shuffleboards and pushing each other up and down the slick wood courts to prove it. He was out of harm's way there, and she would let the stewards worry about the damage to their shuffleboard courts. That was one of the fine things about being on shipboard, and she might as well avail herself of it. Behind them, seeming to wheel as the big ship swung out of the channel east down along the reef, the city clustered around Fort Street and Nuuanu Avenue with that antheap look all downtown cities have. Behind it climbing the shoulders of the mountains sat the profuse multi-colored houses of the suburbs, their windows every now and then catching the sunshine gaily. And above it all the solid unchanging mountains stood in their tropic greenness that seemed to drip down in patches and threaten to engulf the carefully man-constructed streets and houses. And between them, ship and shore, nothing but air. Air reaching clear down to the water and clear up into the sky, with that expansive far-vista look that you got nowhere else except on the sea or the tops of high mountains. There was no more true a picture of Honolulu anywhere, than from out here. On shore straight in front of them she picked out Kewalo Basin the harbor for the fishing fleet. Next would come Moana Park, and then the Yacht Basin. Then pretty soon Fort De Russy, and then Waikiki. "Its very beautiful," isnt it?" a man's voice said beside her. She turned to find the young Air Corps Lt/Cpl, who had been standing beside her in the press when they left the pier, leaning on his elbows on the rail a few steps off and grinning ruefully. After they had lost sight of the pier and the crowd had begun to thin he had moved away up the rail, and then he had gone off somewhere, probably to take a turn around the deck, and she had forgotten all about him. "Yes it is," she smiled. "Very beautiful." "I think its the most beautiful place I've ever seen in my life," the young Lt/Col said. "Let alone had a chance to live in." He flipped his cigarette overboard and crossed his ankles, and the effect was the same as if he had made a fatalistic shrug. "I feel the same way about it," Karen smiled. She could not get over a feeling of astonishment at how young he was, for a Lt/Col, but then they were all like that in the Air Corps. "And now they're shipping me back home to Washington," he said. "How come they are sending a pilot like you back on a ship?" Karen smiled. "I should think you'd fly." He touched his left breast, where there were some ribbons but no wings, deprecatingly. "I'm no pilot," he said guiltily. "I'm in the administrative corps." Karen felt a twinge but hid it. "Still, I'd think they'd fly you back?" "Priority. Priority, my dear lady. Nobody knows what it is. Nobody understands it. But its priority. Anyway, I'd just as soon go by boat. I get air sick, but I dont get sea sick. Aint that a riot?" They both laughed. "Thats the God's truth," he said earnestly. "Thats what washed me out. They say its something in my ears." He sounded as if it was the greatest tragedy of his life. "Thats too bad," Karen said. "C'est la guerre," the young Lt/Col said. "So, now I am going back to Washington where I know absolutely no one. To help the War Effort. After I've been here two and a half years and know every place and damn near every body." "I know quite a few people in Washington," Karen offered. "Maybe I can give you some addresses before we leave ship." "Would you really?" "Surely. Of course, they're not any of them Senators or presidents of anything, and none of them know Evelyn Walsh McLean." "Never look a gift horse in the mouth," the young Lt/Col said. They both laughed again. "But I can promise they're all nice people," Karen smiled. "You see, my home is in Baltimore." "Not really!" the young Lt/Col said. "Is that where you're going?" "Yes," Karen said. "My son and I are. For the duration." " - and six months," the young Lt/Col said. "Your son?" 'Thats him over there. The biggest one." "He looks like a lot of boy." "He is. And all of it already betrothed to the Point." The young Lt/Col looked at her then, and Karen wondered if she had not sounded bitter. "I'm originally an ROTC man, myself," he said. He looked at her again, carefully, out of the boyish eyes and face, and then he stood up. Karen felt subtly complimented. "Well, I'll be seein you. Dont forget about those addresses. And dont wear your eyes out on that shoreline." Then he put his hands on the rail. "Theres the Royal Hawaiian," he said ruefully. "They've got the most beautiful cocktail lounge in that place I ever saw. I wish I had a dime for every dollar I've spent in there. I wouldnt be rich but I'd have a lot of poker money." Karen turned to look and saw the familiar pink gleam from among the green, way off there on shore in the distance. It was the first thing everybody pointed out to her, when they had first come in. That was almost two years ago. And right next to the Royal was the dead white gleam of the Moana. As she remembered, she did not think anyone had pointed out the Moana to her, coming in. When she looked back the young Air Corps Lt/Col was gone. She was alone at the rail except for a small slight girl dressed all in black. Karen Holmes, for whom love was over, felt a little relieved. She also felt even more complimented. Still looking up forward toward the bow, she watched Diamond Head slowly coming towards them. If the lei floated in toward shore, you would come back. If it floated out to sea, you wouldn't. She would throw them all over, all seven of them; it would be better than keeping them and seeing them dry up sourly and wither. Then she amended it. She would keep the red and black paper lei from the Regiment. That would do for a souvenir. Probably every Enlisted Man who had ever served in the Regiment and gone back Stateside had one in his footlocker. Karen had acquired a new understanding, and a very powerful affinity, for the ways of Enlisted Men in the past ten months. "Its all very lovely, isnt it?" the girl in black said from down the rail. "Yes. It is," Karen smiled. "Very." The girl took a couple of polite steps nearer her along the rail, and then stopped. She was not wearing any leis. "One rather hates to leave it," she said softly. "Yes," Karen smiled, her communion broken. She had noticed the girl before. She wondered momentarily, now, from her poise and carriage, if the girl was not perhaps a movie star caught over here on vacation by the blitz and unable to get home any sooner. Dressed all in such simple, almost severe, but quite expensive black like that. She looked remarkably like Hedy Lamarr. "No one would know there was a war, from out here," the girl said. "It looks very peaceful," Karen smiled; out of the corner of her eye she looked at her jewels, the single ring on her right hand and the necklace, both pearls, that unobtrusively carried out the exquisite perfection of the simplicity. The pearls did not look like cultured pearls, either. And such flawless simplicity as that did not come simply. Karen had spent that time once herself, but not anymore. It required either the services of a couple of maids, or else painstaking hours of hard work. Before the evidence of it now, enviously, she felt almost frowsy. A woman with a small child could not compete in the league this girl played in. "I can almost see where I worked from here," the girl said. "Where is that?" Karen smiled. "I could point it out to you, but you couldnt see it unless you already knew the building." "Where did you work?" Karen smiled encouragingly. "American Factors," the girl said. "I was a private secretary." She turned and smiled at Karen slowly out of the lovely childlike face, pale white, hardly touched by the sun, and framed starkly by the shoulder-length raven-black hair parted in the middle. She has a face like a Madonna, Karen thought exquisitely. Watching her was like being in an art gallery. "I should think that would have been a position to have hung onto," she said. "I -" the girl said and stopped and the Madonnaface clouded somberly. "It was," she said simply. "But I couldn't stay." "I'm sorry," Karen said. "I didnt mean to intrude myself." "It isnt that," the exquisite girl smiled at her. "You see; my fiance was killed on December 7th." "Oh, I am sorry," Karen said, shocked. The girl smiled at her. "Thats why I couldnt stay any more. We were planning to be married next month." She turned and looked back out across the water to shore, the lovely Madonnaface sad and pensive. "I love the Islands, but you can see why I couldnt stay." "Yes,". Karen said, not knowing what to say. Talking helped, sometimes. Especially if it was with another woman. The best thing was to just let her talk. "He was shipped over here a year ago," the girl said. "I came over afterwards and took a job, so I could be near him. We were both saving our money. We were going to buy a little place up above Kaimuki. We wanted to buy the place before we married. He was going to ship over for another tour of duty, maybe several. You can see why I wouldnt want to stay, cant you?" "Oh, my dear," Karen said, helplessly. "Excuse me," the girl smiled brightly. "I didnt mean to use you as a wailing wall." "If you feel like talking," Karen smiled, "you talk." It was these young people, like this couple, and their courage and their levelheadedness, unsung unknown unheroized, that were making this country the great thing it was, that made the winning of the war a foregone conclusion. Before this bravery Karen felt worthless and a slacker. "You go right on and talk," she said. The girl smiled at her gratefully and looked back at the shore. They had passed Diamond Head now, and the bluntness of Koko Head was looming up in the distance. "He was a bomber pilot," the girl said out across the water, "stationed at Hickam Field. He tried to taxi his plane off the apron and down to the revetments. They made a direct hit on it. Maybe you read about it in the papers." "No," Karen said, impotently. "I didnt." "They awarded him a Silver Star," the girl said out across the water. "They sent it to his mother. She wrote me she wanted me to have it." "I think thats very fine of her," Karen said. "They're very fine people," the girl smiled tremulously. "He comes from an old Virginia family, The Prewitts. They've lived there since before the Revolution. His great-grandfather was a General under Lee in the Civil War. Thats who he was named after: Robert E. Lee Prewitt." "Who?" Karen said numbly. "Robert E Lee Prewitt," the girl said tremulously on the verge of tears. "Isnt that a silly old name?" "No," Karen said. "I think its a fine name." "Oh, Bob," the girl said quiveringly out across the water. "Bob, Bob, Bob." "Now: now," Karen said, feeling all the grief that had been in her boiling over into a wild desire to laugh out loud. She put her arm around the girl. 'Try to get hold of yourself." "I'm all right," the girl said, drawing a quivering breath. "Truly I am." She touched her handkerchief to her eyes. "I'll walk down with you to your stateroom," Karen offered. "No," the girl said. "Thank you. I'm perfectly all right now. I owe you a tremendous apology. And I do thank you. Excuse me, please." She walked away, the poise and the carriage both exquisitely perfect, in the exquisitely simple expensive black outfit, with the real-looking pearl ring and necklace, all looking as if she had walked right out of a page in Vogue. Karen watched her go, thinking so this was Lorene of the New Congress, and that this was the first time she had ever really met a professional whore, at least to know who she was. "Who's your friend?" the young Air Corps Lt/Col said from the other side of her. He had just come up. "She certainly is a beauty." "Isnt she lovely?" Karen said, still wanting to laugh wildly. "I dont know her name, but perhaps I can arrange an introduction for you." "No; thanks," the young Lt/Col said, looking after her. "She's so beautiful she makes me feel uncomfortable. What is she, a movie star?" "No, but I think she's connected with show business. I dont honestly think an introduction would do you much good anyway. Her fiance was killed December 7th. He was a bomber pilot at Hickam." "Oh," the young Lt/Col said subduedly. "Thats rough." "She's taking it pretty hard," Karen said. "I was at Hickam on The Seventh," the young Lt/Col said in the same funereal voice. "What was his name. Maybe I knew him." "Prewitt," Karen said. "Robert E Lee Prewitt. She said he came from an old Virginia family." "No," the young Lt/Col said thoughtfully funereally. "I dont guess I knew him. There were an awful lot of bomber pilots at Hickam," he apologized. "And an awful lot of them got it." "He was awarded a Silver Star," Karen said, some bitterness in her making her unable to resist saying it. "Then I ought to know him," the young Lt/Col said funereally. "But, truthfully, just between you and me, they handed out such a lot of Silver Stars, both posthumously and otherwise, at Hickam, that it alone isnt much to go on," he apologized. "I suppose thats true," Karen said. "I got one myself," he said. Karen looked at his shirt then and saw it there right next