From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [116]
“But what for? Thats no way to fight. If you want to fight, ask a man out,” Bloom said, putting his hand up to his head and bringing away blood. When he saw the blood he understood it, finally and fully, and he went berserker with rage at the sight of his own shed blood.
“I’d stand a big chance with you on the green, wouldn’t I?” Maggio said.
“Why, goddam you,” Bloom screamed, not hearing him. “You dirty, yellow, sneaking, twofaced, lying, rotten,” having to stop because he could find no word to span this breach of sportsmanship, “Wop, you,” he said, “yellow little Wop. If thats the way you want to fight,” he said. “If thats the way you want to play.”
He charged across the squadroom to his own bunk through all the now standing watching men, keeping up a solid, smooth, unbroken stream of screaming cursing, tugging at his pack to pull his bayonet and fumbling with the catch, using every obscenity he could think of, using them again when he ran out of new ones. He charged back with the naked bayonet glinting oilily and evilly in his hand, still screaming cursing, clear across the room where no man tried to stop him, but Maggio moving with his club out into the aisle for clearance and going to meet him, and death suddenly slid into the big room dartingly like a boxer on silent resined feet moving pantherishly in to punch.
But before they could meet in the center stage and put on this show their still-stunned audience did not want to see First Sergeant Warden, with his apparently weird uncanniness of occult knowledge, was suddenly between them brandishing an iron lock bar from the rifle racks and cursing indignantly and vilely for them to come on, he would just as soon kill them both as not anyway. He had come out of his room to stop the racket that had disturbed his nap and then, realizing what was happening, stepped in. But to the dumbstruck audience he seemed like an avenging genii of all Discipline and all Authority risen mystically from the floor, and his mere presence was enough to stop both of them in their tracks.
“If theres any killing in my Compny, I’ll do it,” The Warden ridiculed, “not a couple unweaned punks who the sight of a dead man would make to crap their pants. Well? Come on. Why dont you come on?” he sneered, his mammoth contempt making them look so foolish in their own eyes that it was no longer a hurt to the pride to quit, but was instead the only means of saving it.
“Aint you coming?” The Warden scoffed, “then throw that bayonet down on the bed there if you aint going to use it, Bloom. Like a good little boy now. Thats it.”
Bloom did what he was told obediently, silent with the blood running down his forehead, but with an unmistakable look of relief under it.
“Almost scared there wasnt anybody going to stop you for a minute, werent you?” The Warden snorted. “Killers,” he said. “Tough guys. Out for blood. Real killers. Give that club to Prewitt, Maggio.”
Maggio gave it to him, looking hangdog, and the spell was broken.
“If you guys want to fight,” somebody yelled, “fight with fists, and take it outside on the green.”
“Shut up,” The Warden roared. “There’ll be no fight. And there’ll be no more goddamned suggestions from any stupid bastards who would stand around and let these two damfools kill each other.” He looked around belligerently but no one would meet his eyes.
“And you two men,” The Warden said, “neither one of you’s grown up enough to be allowed to fight. You have to be a man to fight. If you act like children, you can expect to be treated like children.”
Nobody said anything.
“You’ll get plenty of fighting,” The Warden said. “More fighting than any of you got the stomach for. And it wont be too goddamned long. Wait’ll you hear bullets from a sniper you cant even see hitting the tree right above your head, then come around and tell me how you’re killers. Then I’ll believe you’re killers. Killers,” he snorted, “real killers. Jee sus Christ!”
Nobody