From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [250]
“Okay, I’m awake,” huskily sleepily. “Let go my goddam foot I’m awake.”
“You sure you’re awake?” still shaking. “Come on get up.”
“Let go my foot. I’m awake, I tell you,” sitting up to prove it and bumping his head mellowly against the canted, drumhead of the puptent wall, trying to rub the novocaine of sleep out of his paralyzed face muscles. Then fighting his way out of the blankets and mosquito bar carrying the shoes rolled up in his pants that had been his pillow and crawling out bareassed so he could stand up to put them on, squeezing past the tent pole trying not to wake Friday who was on the third relief, but always unable to keep from half-waking him, as Friday was always unable to keep from half-waking him when he went on post. Then standing barefooted in the thick dust of the clearing, the mosquitoes shrilling triumphantly over this new bonanza of bare rump while he hurried struggling into the pants and socks and shoes to save himself as many stabbings as he could, and reaching back inside the clutter for the wool OD shirt that felt thick prickly warm in the chilliness of night, putting it on gratefully over the T shirt he would not take off but maybe once during the whole two weeks. Protected now, he could take more time with the hook-and-lace intricacies of the leggins in the darkness. Then the web rifle belt to coil turgid pythonlike around the waist, and working the rifle out under the mosquito bar from among the blankets where it was protected from the dust and dew, somewhat protected anyway, then the helmet lying on the ground outside and damp-rusty with the dew, and stumbling heavy-footed under full equipment, irritably half-sleepily across the rootwebbed moondappled clearing under the always faintly sighing branches toward the light of the Coleman lantern in the cook tent showing dimly dull brown through the canvas.
And in the cook tent, the relief huddling silently gratefully around the gasoline field stove that was always warm for them by Stark’s order, drinking the scalding coffee with its coconut flavor of canned milk as if gulping spiritual inspiration, and munching between gulps on the Stark Specials of hot fried Spam and toasted cheese that the accusing cook (who held them, not Stark, responsible for his loss of sleep) fixed grudgingly for them, and that were as different to the belly from the cold Spam and cheese on untoasted bread of normal mess sergeants, as hot coffee was from cold.
The can of milk with its top sliced open by a cleaver butt. The thick white, dripping out past the congealed yellow of past pourings that had almost sealed the gash, into his canteen cup. A dipper of the rainbow-oil-spotted coffee out of the kettle black-waterfalling in on top of it. And then cupping the whole steamheat of it in his hands like a private hearth, sucking the coffee out gratefully without touching his lips to the blistering cup edge, and then one of the good greasy hot fried meat-cheese toasted sandwiches and standing huddled dumbly like about-to-be-slaughtered sheep with the others around the stove, while The Chief looked at them blandly sympathetically.
“Lets hurry it up now. Them men on post is waitin to come in. Two hours from now you guys be waitin to come in, and bitchin like hell if you relief’s a minute late, so get a move on now and lets get it over with.”
And then filling the cup one more time to carry with him and an extra sandwich, wrapping it in the waxed paper Stark insisted the cooks leave out for them (which normal mess sergeants also never furnished), buttoning it down in the pocket of the OD shirt warm against the chest, to leave the disgusted sleepy cook who believed fervently that they were being coddled, The Chief staying sensibly in the kitchen with the coffee, to climb the steep path behind the cook tent to the top of the embankment.
Maybe a little of the Re-enlistment Blues also came out of that.
And he would stand, after the relief was made, and from the suspended animation that is guard duty in the field at night he would watch the headlights passing on the highway beyond the fence to turn in at the brightly lighted Main Gate to the north, slow for the Air Corps’ guards inspection, and then move off t