From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [112]
“I think he’s dead now,” Prew said.
“I guess so,” Maggio said.
“Tim McCoy was a good one,” Readall Treadwell said.
“I think he’s dead too,” Maggio said. “At least you never see him any more.”
“Remember Hopalong Cassidy?” Prew said. “He’s still playin. He’s the one for hair, his is pure white. Must be all of sixty-five.”
“And still a one-punch man,” Maggio said.
“Who’s the guy awys played with him?” Readall Treadwell said. “The one with a stubble beard.”
“Gabby Hayes,” Maggio said. “I hadnt thought of him in years. George (Gabby) Hayes. They always put it like that on the bill. In parenthesis.”
“He’s the one,” Prew said, “who was always tryin to roll a cigaret with one hand. Then when he dies in the end, just before he dies he rolls it.”
“That’s it,” Maggio said excitedly. “And then it falls out of his hand and old Hopalong just looks at it.” After a pause he said, “I wonder what old Hopalong’s real name is.”
“Bill Boyd,” Readall Treadwell said. “But nobody ever calls him that.”
“Jesus,” Maggio said. “I wish I had some popcorn.”
“Me too,” Prew said. “I been wantin some the last ten minutes.”
“They got a machine over to the Main PX,” Readall Treadwell said hopefully.
“We’re broke,” Maggio said.
“So’m I,” Treadwell said. “If thats what you mean.”
“I use to go regular,” Maggio said, “every Sataday afternoon and eat popcorn. Remember Johnny Mack Brown?”
“Had a southern accent?” Prew said. “And a rawhide hatcord? Let his hat hang down his back half the time?”
“Thats the one,” Maggio said. “I always liked that hatcord. I even cut holes in my hat to make one like it but it ruint the hat.”
“He played halfback in the Rose Bowl onct,” Readall Treadwell said. “For U S C. I read it.”
“I wonder what ever happened to him?” Maggio said. “You never see him any more either.”
“You said it a while ago,” Prew said, laying down his hand. “They die. Or graduate. Or retire. What do you say we talk about something else?”
“We gettin old, men,” said Angelo Maggio, aged nineteen and a half. “I never realized it.”
“Tom Tyler,” Readall Treadwell said. “He was another one.”
“I never liked him,” Maggio said. “Too handsome. But I remember him. He plays villains now, in the Technicolor ones. The western epics.”
“Sagas,” Prew said. “They call them sagas.
“The ones that star Tyrone Power and Errol Flynn,” Maggio said. “Those.”
“All the regular cowboys got to be musicians now,” Prew said. “Musicians first and cowboys second. Because they’re not Westerns anymore, they’re Musicals,” he said, suddenly surprisedly realizing sadly that he had watched and been a part of a phase of America that was dying just as surely as the Plains Indians Wars that gave it birth had died, had watched and been a part of it all this time, without ever knowing it for what it was, or that it was dying.
“You mean Gene Autry,” Maggio said. “Roy Rogers and his horse Trigger.
“I read Gene Autry was a Eagle Scout when he was a kid,” Readall Treadwell said.
“I believe that,” Maggio said. “My hometown, the ony ones ever got to be Eagle Scouts was the preachers’ sons and the schoolteachers’ sons. I was a Second Class onct myself, till they kicked me out of the Troop for gettin in a fight with the Assistant Scout Master.”
“Gene Autry cant play Come to Jesus in whole notes,” Prew said, argumentatively. “Neither one of them can. You cant commercialize that kind of music without killing it.”
“Dont look at me,” Maggio said. “I dont like them either. You cant commercialize anything without killing it. Look at the radio.”
“But those guys,” Prew said irritably, because this was a thing of great importance to him, and because he was trying hard to explain it, to find the word for this that always made him angry, “those guys. They’re imitation,” he said, finally, lamely.
“That Roy Rogers,” Maggio grinned. “I was makin a Jewgirl lived on West 84th Street when I work at Gimbel’s. Use to go up there and take her to the Schuyler Theater on 84th and Amsterdam.”
He stopped dealing and b