From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [297]
Then they escorted him to the supplyroom. They still did not say anything to him. The supplyroom was down a long corridor past some doors and turn left past the bulletin board on the left and the barred doors of the three barracks wings on the right, to a cubbyhole on the left. The man in fatigues behind the countertop half door, obviously a trustee, grinned at him unpleasantly.
“Welcome to our city,” he said happily, as if it overjoyed him to see somebody at least as bad off as himself.
“Fix him up,” one of the giants snapped, as though it hurt him to expose his own talkativeness.
“Yes, sir,” beamed the man in fatigues, “yes, sir.” He rubbed his hands together in a passable imitation of a hotel manager welcoming a convention. “We have a nice corner room on the tenth floor overlooking the park with a tile bath and plenty of closet space, I’m sure youll be comfortable there,” he said.
“I said fix him up,” the first giant said. “Cut the comedy. You can bullshit later. Dont get me irritated.”
The grin on the face of the man in fatigues turned into a snarl that was three quarters whine. “Okay, Hanson, okay, just havin a little fun was all.”
“Well dont,” the first giant said.
The second giant did not say anything.
The two of them leaned against the wall with their grub hoe handles under their arms like overgrown swagger sticks and smoked silently while the trustee issued Prew toilet articles. The first giant, Hanson, stepped up and silently possessed himself of Prew’s wallet, counted the money in it and wrote it down on a slip of paper, put the paper in the wallet and the money in his pocket with a lewd grin at Prew. The second giant came and looked over his shoulder and silently moved his lips, counting the money. The trustee took Prew’s two fatigue jackets and exchanged them for two others which had large white capital Ps stencilled across the back.
“These heres so you can start right in to work today,” the trustee explained happily, “without havin to wait till we paint yours. Then we’ll issue yours out to somebody else later, see?” he explained.
Spitefully he grinned wider, as if it warmed the cockles of his heart, when Prew stripped off his suntans and turned them in and put on the fatigues. His own had fitted him, as well at least as the sacklike GI denim jackets ever fitted anybody; these, the shirt hit him almost to the knees, the sleeves dangled down over his fingertips, the shoulder seams hung almost to his elbows.
“Jeez, thats too bad,” the supply trustee grinned happily. “And thats the nearest thing to your size I got on hand. Maybe someday later on we can change them for you, hunh?”
“Thats all right,” Prew said.
“Well,” the trustee consoled, “aint no women going to see you anyways for a while, less they officers’ wives ride up past the rockpile. And you couldnt never get into them anyway. So dont let it worry you.”
“Thanks for the tip,” Prew said. “I wont.”
The two giants were grinning above their cigarets.
“May worry you for a little while,” the trustee advised. “You may have a little trouble at first. Specially if you’re use to gettin yours wet every night. You’ll get over it though,” he said confidently. “It wont kill you. You’ll just think it will.”
One of the giants snorted. Prew thought of Alma and felt a wave of sickness go down through his belly into his thighs, at the picture of her on the bed in the room three steps up from the tiled living room in the house on the edge of the hill over Palolo Valley. He had not seen her for over two weeks now. Three months was six times two weeks. Fourteen weeks, of not seeing her or knowing where she was or what she was doing with whom.
“Also,” said the trustee from the height of his superior experience, “you get to wondering what they’re doin all this time.”
“Yeah?” Prew said. The picture of the man lying beside Alma on the bed was a blank (he looked at it closely) a silhouette. It was not Warden. It was not Prewitt, either. As he watched, the blank of the man moved over her. No, he told himself, no, you know she doesnt like sex for sex sake she’s told you that herself hasnt she? Sex for sex sake bores her doesnt it? This is only your own mind tricking you