From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [309]
Under the steadily heavier morning sun the rockpile was like some dim, dust haunted, fear crazed fantasy out of a madman’s imagination. The half moon quarry caught all the available sun and reflected it back on them blazingly. Prew worked on doggedly, wondering crazily after a while if he had only conjured a vision of Angelo yesterday maybe. The heat threatened to sizzle his brains in their pan. That anyone could actually take a man of his talents and sensibilities and unconcernedly hold his nose against this grindstone nine hours a day seven days a week for three months was not only inconceivable, it was patently impossible. He refused to believe it. There had been a mistake somewhere. He knew there had been a mistake somewhere, in a minute an MP giant would come up and touch him on the arm and inform him obsequiously that there had been a mistake, that he was not like these other craven wild-glaring wolfish-grinning animals and had no business here, please to come with me, back into civilization, where men are men, he thought bitterly, and women hate them for it, and they hate the women for not loving it.
My God! he thought horrifiedly, I’m getting to talk just like The Warden!
He hated to think Angelo would actually ditch him deliberately. If he wasnt back in the Black Hole or something like that, then it must have been this Jack Malloy character. This latter day Robin Hood who ruled Major Thompson’s Stockade with an iron hand. This 20th Century Jesse James who was iron enemy to the railroads, symbol of hated authority, and protected widows and orphans. We have become a nation of cop haters, he thought sadly, we have taken for our hero a Robin Hood myth that never existed except in the history books, and only then 500 years after, when it was safe to print it. It must be hard on a man, being a cop. I’m glad I’m not a cop. I’d rather be a Robin Hood iron man, like Jack Malloy. The iron man has probably turned thumbs down on Prewitt, cold, he thought, hating both of them wildly, as if all this were their fault. Angelo had to choose, and it was easy to see which way he had.
He went on swinging his hammer wildly, in a kind of rhythmical frenzy, feeling the new blisters squash wetly and burst on the already grittily sweatslick handle, and relishing it—until finally, a long, thin, ferret-headed, gimlet-eyed old man of twenty named Berry who said he was from Number Two barrack managed to convey to him guardedly, with the secrecy of a conspirator helping to lay a vast Global Plot, that Maggio was back in the Hole.
“I figured that,” Prew whispered back, wanting to yell with relief. “I knew something like that had happened. What’d he do?”
The guard on the road had turned him in last night for talking yesterday. They had come and got him after bedcheck, their favorite time, and worked him over and given him 48 hours. The Wop, Berry whispered lovingly grinning wolfishily, sent Prewitt his love and his deepest regrets that their business arrangement would have to be postponed temporarily, but that he had every assurance of its early success, as soon as this other little matter that had come up had been attended to.
“That’s the message,” Berry chuckled. “Word for word. He’s a hot one, The Wop is. Aint he a hot one?” Scrupulously, Berry did not inquire of Prew into the nature of the business arrangement.
“He sure is,” Prew whispered. “Thanks.” He was beginning to feel conspiratorial, too. He was careful to keep on swinging his hammer and not look around, as Berry was doing beside him. Poor old Angelo, he thought feeling better than he had felt for some time. “I mean that:” he said, “thanks a lot.”
“Dont thank me,” Berry whispered. “Thank The Malloy.”
“For what?”
“It was him give me the message.”
“All right, I’ll thank him,” Prew conceded. “When I see him.”
“He’ll appreciate it,” Berry whispered. “He’s the roughest drill in this factory—but he’s got a heart just like a great big baby,” Berry said with great sentiment.
The W