From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [14]
“Hell, no,” Leva said. “I dont need no help.” He thumbed a pile of forms four fingers deep. “I hardly get enough work to keep me busy. Thats why my morale is low. You know: like the Personnel boys say: No work for idle hands hurts the morale.”
“Gimme half them,” Warden said, with mock weariness. “Along with everything else I got to suffer, I got to be supply clerk.” He took the forms that Leva handed him and grinned and winked down at the cadaverous Italian. “Two good men like us can get this done today,” he said, noting Leva was not swallowing the flattery. “I don’t know where the hell I’d be if I didnt have you in this outfit, Niccolo.”
He didn’t believe that about the angle, either, Warden thought, any more than you did. You cant snow an old bull like him with promises, you have to put it on the personal basis, you have to work on his friendship, on his pride.
“We get this done,” he said, “and you’ll have a rest for a month or two. You’re as bad as the kitchen force, Niccolo. Always threatening to quit because Preem is the mess sergeant. But they never do. A rifle scares them to death.” He laid the pile of forms out on the counter, separating them into neat piles he could work from. From the corner he pulled a high stool and sat down at the counter and pulled out his old pen.
“I wouldnt blame them none,” Leva said, “if they did quit.”
“Well, they wont. I wish to hell they would. And you wont either, but not for the same reason. You couldnt quit me, Niccolo, and leave me in the lurch. You’re as big a fool as I am.”
“Yeah? You watch me, Milt. You just watch me,” but the timbre of his voice had changed; it was no longer serious but taunting.
Warden snorted at him. “Lets work. Or I’ll make you re-enlist.”
“In a pig’s asshole,” Leva said, completing the chant.
Oh, Milton, Warden thought, what a son of a bitch you are, what a fine lyin son of a bitch. You’d sell your own mother to Lucky Luciano if it would secure the hatches on this outfit. You’ll lie and cajole poor old Niccolo into staying, just to make your supply efficient. You’ve lied so much now, he told himself, you dont know whats true and what aint. And all because you want to make your company Superior. You mean Holmes’s company, he thought. “Dynamite” Holmes, boxing coach, horseman, and number one brownnoser with our Great White Father Colonel Delbert. Its his company, not yours. Why dont you let him do it? Why dont you let him sacrifice his soul upon the altar of efficiency? Yes, he thought, why dont you? Why dont you get out of it? When are you going to get out of it and save your self-respect? Never, he told himself. Because its been so long now you’re afraid to find out if you’ve still got the self-respect to save. Have you got it? he asked himself. No, Milton, no, I dont think you have. Thats why you dont get out of it. You’re hooked through the bag, like Leva said.
He turned to the forms before him and went to work with that wild swift energy that is one hundred percent efficient, that makes no errors, and gets the work done so fast and sure that you are not even there, you are some place else and when you come back you see the work is done but you did not do it; the same energy with which Niccolo Leva behind him was working.
They were still working an hour later when O’Hayer came in. He stood momentarily in the bright doorway, a wide shouldered shadow adjusting his eyes, and an aura of chill seemed to come in with him that killed the warm gush of energy for work that had been in the others.
O’Hayer looked at the paper and equipment scattered around distastefully. “This place looks like hell,” he said. “We’ve got to clean this place up, Leva.”
He moved to come in through the counter and Warden had to move all his papers and get up so O’Hayer could pass through. He watched the tall dapper Irishman step with the lithe delicacy of a fighter over the piles of equipment and lean down to peer over Leva’s shoulder. O’Hayer was wearing one of his hand-tailored uniforms that were made for him in Honolulu and upon which the three strip