From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [296]
Warden was grinning at him impishly.
“Oh by the way,” Prew said stolidly, “last time I was down there your dear friend Mrs Kipfer ask to be remember to you and said why aint you been in to see her. I forgot to tell you before.”
Warden’s face exploded suddenly into laughter. “Old Gert?” he said. “Well what do you know. Old Dirty Gerty,” he said. “Gert missed her calling in life. Gert should of been a fraternity mother.”
“Well,” Prew said again, “will you call Lorene for me then?”
“Okay,” said The Warden shortly. “I’ll call her. But I ain’t makin no promises not to go out if she asks me.”
“I aint askin you any, am I?” Prew said.
“All right, on them grounds I’ll chance it. See you later,” he said over his shoulder. “Oh,” he said, and stopped and turned around again, “I almost forgot. I got some other news for you. Pfc Bloom is makin corporal. We got two short time corporals goin home next boat, Bloom gets one of them. I made the Company Order out today. As soon as the boat leaves Saturday it’ll be posted on the board. I thought you’d be happy to know.”
“Bloom ought to feel good now,” Prew said.
“Oh no,” The Warden said. “Not yet. We got two sergeants leavin on the boat next month,” he said. “Well,” he said. “Only four more shopping days till Monday, kid. Then you can start in marking them off.”
Prew watched the big-shouldered narrow-hipped-swinging out through the door of bars in the line of bars into the other world. He picked up the cards.
During the next four days he played a lot of solitaire. During the next four days he also suddenly began to have other visitors besides Culpepper in the afternoons. Warden did not come back any more, just that one time, but Andy and Friday came, and Readall Treadwell, and Bull Nair, and Dusty The Scholar Rhodes, and the rest of them. They came and talked a little. The Scholar did not even try to sell him a diamond ring, or a genuine gold watch chain. And Chief Choate came. Most all of the non-jockstrap faction came over at least once. Even a few of the jockstraps came over. He did not know he had so many friends. He found that like Angelo he had suddenly become a Company celebrity.
Chapter 36
HE WAS NOT a celebrity in the Stockade. Of course, in the Stockade, they could not know about the sensational trial. He fervently hoped they never did know about it. The trial went off all right with all the precision of a well drilled cast doing a well rehearsed play, the trial looked fine, up to the very last minute. The three witnesses told their stories clearly and simply, as if quoting their typescript statements from memory; their stories all jibed. The prosecutor explained with incontestable lucidity the infractions of the AWs that had been committed and the penalty required by the AWs for such infractions. The accused, who had remained silent, was offered his chance to testify and refused. Everything looked rosy, everything was according to Hoyle. Then, at the last moment, with a sort of abortive outrage against destiny, Lt Culpepper suddenly entered a furious plea of guilty and appeal for clemency on the grounds that all good soldiers were drunkards. There was a startled hush in the court room. The accused could gladly have shot him. But the court rose to the occasion nobly. With all due decorum they had the unorthodox plea written into the record just as if it were proper, then they went right on into the usual 30-second huddle and pronounced the sentence of Three-months-at-hard-labor-plus-Two-thirds-forfeiture-of-pay-for-like-period as if nothing had happened. The accused could have kissed them.
He was greatly relieved when he was conducted back to the guardhouse where he did not have to look at Lt Culpepper, to wait for transportation to the Stockade.
They came for him Monday afternoon after the trial that morning and signed for him and his two suits of clean fatigues at the desk of the guardhouse and deposited him carefully in the front seat of the recon which one of them drove while the other one sat in the back behind him. He felt life a tackily dressed midget between the well-bucked gleaming six-foot-four-inch splendor of the two of them. They delivered him inside the chainmesh fence of the greenroofed, chainmesh windowed country school house and he listened to the riot-gunned guard at the chainmesh gates close and lock them. The sound had a certain finality, but nobody seemed to think it was anything very unusual or exceptional. The two gleaming giants escorted him inside the country school house as if they did things like this every day. He was still wearing the suntans with tie he had worn at the trial.
The first thing the two giants did, inside the door, was to exchange their billies and