From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [261]
“You aint leavin this heah tent tonight, Firs Sarnt,” Stark said solemnly, folding his arms to pronounce the sentence, “until you promise me on your word of honor as a soljer you wont have nothin more to do with that slut.”
“Haw!” Warden snorted. “My word of honor as a soljer, ’ey? Wont leave this tent, ’ey?”
“Aint you got no self respeck lef a tall?” Stark said. “Dont you respeck the organization yore servin in? Dont you respeck the un’form of yore country you wornd for so many yeahs? You ought to be ashamed. Yore a dis-grace to the chevrons on yore arm, Firs Sarnt.”
“Piss on that,” Warden snarled.
Stark shook his head. “Ats my last word. I got my mind made up. You aint leavin this tent till you promise. Ats my last word, Firs Sarnt.”
Warden snorted. “Last word, ’ey? Threatening me, ’ey?”
“Dont you know what she is?” Stark hollered violently. He waved his arms. “Cant you see what she’s doin to you? She’s terrible!” he hollered, “she’s awful. Oh, you dont know her like I do, Firs Sarnt. She’s a rotten goddam whoor, she’s worse than a whoor, she’s— She’s a goddam rich man’s daughter of a degenerate, thats what she is. Why, she would—” He clamped his mouth shut and folded his arms. “But I wont let her,” he said. “You’ll promise like I said, Firs Sarnt, or else.”
“Or else what?” Warden said.
“Take care,” Stark said. “Dont trifle with me, Firs Sarnt. I know you backwards and forwards. Preem warned me about you, Firs Sarnt, before he left. But I know how to handle you. Theres only one way to handle men like you. And I know how to do it.” He settled his folded arms into an even more final finality. “I’m waiting for you to promise,” he said.
Warden was still looking at him thoughtfully. Stark was drunk, and tomorrow he would forget all about it. And tomorrow Milt Warden would also still be seeing the same triumphant face he had seen hanging on the stairway wall the time he hurt his hand.
“Promise!” he roared suddenly. “I’ll give you promise, you son of a bitch. You cant talk about the woman I love like that!”
He stepped in happily, putting all of his weight behind it joyously, and hit Stark sitting with folded arms in the camp chair as hard as he could hit him.
The folded arms flailed out sideways as the chair went over backward, shooting Stark out onto the back of his neck on the ground between the meatblock and the utensil chest, already scrambling and kicking to get back up, almost before he hit the ground. He bounced back up like a rubber ball, hoisting himself with his hands on the meatblock and the chest and trying to disentangle his feet from the canvas of the chair, his mouth open roaring inarticulately.
He wrenched the cleaver out of the meatblock and advanced on Warden like a slow thunder storm, his mouth hanging wide open bellowing. Furious, senseless, outraged, his roars filled the tent like gas fills an airtight balloon.
Warden stepped back happily and threw the bottle still hanging from his left hand. Stark ducked without even batting his bulging eyes or closing his mouth, and came on. The bottle crashed and exploded into fragments against the side of the meatblock.
Warden skipped out through the flap and hit running, hearing the cleaver hit the tent wall behind him and tear through it with a sound like a zipper being yanked open. He ran on down the path, a full dead run in the darkness, until he hit a tree branch the height of his forehead and felt his legs go right on running out from under him. Then he was flat on his back on the ground, trying to pull air into the empty paralyzed lungs. He could hear Stark bellowing and cursing and fumbling on the dark ground for his cleaver.
Warden crawled, like a rifleman working in under fire, back in under the bushes behind him off the path. Now you’ve done it, he told himself as soon as he could breathe again, now you’ve cooked it, the only man in the fucking outfit who would even make a cook let alone a good mess sergeant. But he could