From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [15]
“How you coming, Leva?” O’Hayer said.
Leva looked up wryly. “So-so, Sergeant. So-so.”
“Thats good. We’re late, you know.” O’Hayer’s smile was easy, his dark eyes unchanged before the irony. Leva looked at him a moment and went back to work.
O’Hayer took a turn around the small space, looking at the piles of equipment, turning some things over, straightening a pile or two. “These things are going to have to be separated for size,” he said.
“They already been separated,” Warden said, without looking up. “Where were you when the shit hit the fan?”
“They have?” O’Hayer said easily. “Well, we’ll have to find a place for them. Cant leave them lying here. They’ll be getting in everybody’s way.”
“They may get in your way,” Warden said, pleasantly. “They dont get in mine.” This was a delicate situation, and he felt he had to restrain himself. Every time he talked to Jim O’Hayer it was a delicate situation, he thought. Delicate situations always irritated him. If they insisted on him being a supply sergeant, why didnt they send him to a goddamned school?
“I want you to get this stuff up off the floor,” O’Hayer said to Leva. “The Old Man wont like it, messy like this. This place is crummy.”
Leva leaned back from his desk and sighed. “Okay, Sergeant,” he said. “You want me to do it now?”
“Sometime today,” O’Hayer said. He turned back to the room and began to look in all the big square pigeonholes.
Warden put his mind back on the work with difficulty, feeling he should have spoken up just now, irritated because he didn’t. A moment later he rose swiftly to check a size number and bumped into O’Hayer. He dropped his arms disgustedly and bent his head over to one side.
“For Christ’s sake!” he bellowed. “Get the hell out and go some place. Go any place. Go take a ride in your Duesenberg. Go over to the sheds and count last night’s take. We’re doin your work. Just go away and dont worry about it.” It was a long bellow for one breath and the last of it tapered off.
O’Hayer smiled at him slowly, his arms hanging half-loosely with readiness at his sides, and staring back out of his cool gambler’s eyes that the smile did not ever reach.
“Okay, Top,” he said. “You know I never argue with the First Sergeant.”
“First Sergeant, hell,” Warden said. He stared back into the flat eyes, curious as to just how far you had to push this smiling gambler to make him show some emotion. There must be some feeling some place among the tumblers of this adding machine. Dispassionately, he considered knocking him down, just to see what he would do. From the desk Leva was watching them. “I wasnt talking as the goddamned First Sergeant. I was talking as Milt Warden. And I still say get the fuck out and go away.”
O’Hayer smiled again. “Okay, Top. No matter who you’re speaking as, you’re still the top. I’ll see you later,” he said offhandedly to Leva and stepped around the other, deliberately offering his back, and left without a word.
“Some day he’s gonna make me mad,” Warden said, staring at the door. “Some day I’d like to make him mad. I wonder if he can get mad.”
“You ever see him fight?” Leva asked, casually.
“Yes-I-seen-him-fight. I seen him win that decision over Taylor. I figured I might as well get something out of all this work of his I’m doin.”
“He fouled Taylor six times,” Leva said. “I counted them. Each time a different foul, so the referee could only warn him. It made Taylor mad. But when Taylor fouled him back he didnt get mad. He’s a smart boy.”
“I wonder just how smart he is,” Warden said speculatively.
“He makes a lot of money,” Leva said. “I wish I was smart enough to make that much money. He made enough money from his shed to bring his whole family over from the States, buy his dad a restaurant on the Wahiawa Midway, buy his sister a millinery shop downtown where all the ritzies go, and also build them a ten room house in Wahiawa. Thats fairly smart. . . .
“I hear he’s running around with the society downtown now. Got him a society dame.”
“For when his Chinese shackjob’s got the monthly, ’ey?” Warden said. “Christ!