From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [178]
The statue moved out of frozen mobility into a dead run for the stairs, his feet flickering down them like a boxer’s feet skipping rope.
“Come on, you stupid boob,” Warden bawled. “What the hellar you waitin for?”
Pete finished the interrupted teeth insertion and champed his jaws to settle them in and followed silently, shaking his head confoundedly.
“And what the hell do you do?” Pete said indignantly, half running to keep up with the long loping strides as they moved across the quad. His voice was so choked with hurt, after the warm comradely time he had envisioned, that he seemed almost to be crying. “I suppose you dont concern yourself with the petty details of life?”
“Sure,” Warden said. “Why not? Dont bawl, for Christ sake.”
“Then why read me off? I’m not bawling. And what do you mean we got to get in and win this war? We’re all ready in, except for sending troops.”
“Sure,” Warden agreed. “Thats it.”
“And maybe the Ruskies and the Jerries will get in it with each other and kill each other off and save us the trouble. Anyway, it looks like they will. In spite of this treaty.”
“Fine,” Warden said. “Fine. The more thats dead the less to feed the more beer for me. What are you arguing about?”
“Why dont you talk sense? I’m not arguing. You’re arguing. You started this argument.”
“Did I? Well then I’m ending it. As of right now.”
He opened the screendoor between the garbage racks and stacks of empty cases on the porch and went into the kitchen of Choy’s restaurant irritably, with Pete following cursing chokingly and impotently angrily.
They were among the scant dozen noncoms in the Regiment who had the privilege of sitting and drinking in Choy’s kitchen and now they sat down and prepared themselves, unbuttoning their shirts under their loosened ties and rolling up their sleeves two turns and propping their feet up on Choy’s freshly scrubbed meatblock, and then called for Old Choy who had been sitting on a high stool in the corner to bring them beer. They were going to make a party.
“Hey, Old Choy, you heathen Chinee,” Warden bellowed. “You blingee beer, eh? Blingee two four six beer. Chop-chop!”
He held up ten fingers and the eighty-year-old statue in the corner came to life and shuffled perilously across the kitchen to the ice chest grinning hugely under the thin straggly white beard. Old Choy always grinned at Warden, because since Young Choy, his eldest son, had taken over the business from him the ancient one was not allowed to go out front where the customers were and where Young Choy was now in the shouting Payday hubbub, and the old man, who sat in the kitchen all day every day in his black silk skull cap and long embroidered robe that Young Choy who had given up ancestor worship for American business ethics called bad for blisness, worshipped Warden because Warden liked to come sit in the kitchen and drink beer and kid the old man, whenever he had the blues.
“Huba-huba,” Warden bellowed after him with a wink at Pete, “wiki-wiki, chop-chop. You feet, stickee floor, old goat. Me in hully, old man, you bletta snappem shit.”
Old Choy tottered to the meatblock with an armload of cans.
“You goat, Old Choy,” Warden grinned. “Goat, see? You mother goat. Mama-San she goat, see? She blingee you goat. Goat, see? Goat. Baa-a-a.” He put his fingers under his chin and waggled them at the Chinese.
Old Choy set the beer on the block, his almond eyes closed to bright slits, and chuckled with great glee at being called an old goat.
“No goat,” he chuckled. “You goat, Walden.”
Warden grabbed an empty can off the block, his bright eyes dancing in the broad big face, the energy pouring out of him in dazzling radiations, the lets-make-this-a-party energy.
“See, old goat,” he bellowed ferociously, and bent the can double with one movement using his thumbs for ful