From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [113]
“‘You like Roy Rogers?’ I ask him.
“‘Sure, man,’ he says. ‘Don’t you?’
“‘Yes, man,’ I told him. ‘Roy Rogers and his horsetrigger. Ony I aint never found out whats a horsetrigger yet.’
“‘A what?’ he says.
“‘A horsetrigger,’ I told him. ‘I know whats a hairtrigger, but what is a horsetrigger?’
“‘Trigger’s the name of his horse, you jerk,’ he says, disgusted as hell. ‘You know what horses are. They’re them animals they ride in the pitcher. Horsetrigger,’ he says. ‘Where the hell you learn about cowboys? I bet you aint even a ’Muricun, but a goddam Wop or immigrunt or sothin.’
“Then he turnt around and stalked off a little ways so nobody would think he was with me,” Maggio said, laughing, looking at the others brightly, wanting to be sure they got it. “I never cracked a smile,” he explained, “or said a word.”
“I bet he still thinks you’re a Gestapo spy,” Prew, who liked the kind of humor himself, laughed.
“John Wayne was another good one,” Readall Treadwell said, almost a hunger in his voice, when they stopped laughing.
“Not any more,” Maggio said. “He’s graduated into Adventure. Give him five more years he’ll move up into Drama.”
“Thats the same way Gary Cooper started,” Readall Treadwell said. “He really use to be a real cowboy once.”
“You cant compare Gary Cooper to John Wayne,” Maggio protested.
“I aint comparing them. All I said was they both started out in Westerns. You cant compare none of them to Gary Cooper.”
“I guess not,” Maggio said. “I hope not. Gary Cooper goes deeper than just plain adventure. If theys anybody shows all the things this country stands for its Gary Cooper.”
“Thats what Hedda Hopper says,” Readall Treadwell nodded.
“Hedda Hopper, my ass,” Maggio said heatedly. “If I like Gary Cooper its my business. And its in spite of Hedda Hopper, not because of Hedda Hopper. Even my old daddy likes Gary Cooper. He go to see him every time he’s on, even if its raining, and he cant speak ten words a English.”
“All right,” Readall Treadwell said, good naturedly with the strong fat man’s unrufflability, and with none of the weak fat man’s malice that is the worst malice there is except a woman’s malice, Prew thought, a world of difference between fat Reedy and fat Willard, “all right. I jist mention it.”
“Well dont mention it,” Maggio said. “In the first place she couldnt never act anyways. And in the second place all this ‘the Cary Grants visited the Herbert Marshalls for Sunday badminton,’” he minced. “Whats that got to do with acting? She makes me sick, her with her new hat every day to please her adoring public while the world is blowing itself to hell.”
“All right,” Readall Treadwell grinned. “You dont care if I read her column, do you, Angelo? You wont beat me up if I read it will you?”
Maggio grinned, then laughed, the fiery Italian anger gone as quick as it had come. “Sure,” he said, “I’ll beat you up. You think you’d stand a chance with me? I keep a sawed off pool cue in my wall locker just for guys like you.”
“All right,” Prew said, “beat him up later. Right now, deal the cards.”
“I dont feel much like playin any more,” Maggio said. “I guess my arm’s tired. Theres no fun in gambling without money. I quit. Lets look at my old photograph alabum instead, and I show you a picture of that Jewgirl I was tellin about.”
“Okay by me,” Prew said. He was bored with the cards too, now that the sudden, memorable conversation had petered out, but the thinking of Willard still making him feel he should utilize this running luxury of time that had been so momentous and now was being spent insignificantly.
He watched Angelo get out the album, a big and nearly completely filled one that he had seen a thousand times before and knew as well as he would have known his own if he had ever had one, but he never had because he did not believe in collecting photographs that were always posed and therefore never truthful, but that now he wished sometimes he had because, even if they were not truthful, they would have shown him himself and all the places he had been and people he had known as they were then, bringing back truthful memories out of their untruthfulness, like this one of Angelo’s obviously did for him. The first third of it, that he always showed them first, devoted to a younger Angelo from Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn and who had a family, believe it or not its true, look and see for