From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [331]
To Prew, hearing Angelo tell it, it was like something that had happened in another country. He had a hard time making himself visualize it.
“You say he put the muzzle in his mouth and pulled the trigger with his big toe?”
“Thats right,” Angelo said indignantly.
“And it took off the whole top of his head and plastered it up on the ceiling.”
“Yep,” Angelo said complacently. “Made a hole three inches across. Ony I dont guess he figure on that probly.”
“And they going to bury him here you say.”
“Thats right. In the old sojer’s graveyard. Nobody can find out where his folks is.”
“Thats a hell of a place to be buried.”
“Man, you aint just kidding,” Angelo said fervidly.
“You ever been up there? Its up back of the Packtrain. I’ve played Taps there.”
“I never been there, and whats more I dont never mean to go there. Neither feetfirst nor even dickfirst,” Angelo said perfervidly.
“Theres some big pine trees. One row. Along the far side. I wonder who’ll play Bloom’s Taps?”
“Some punk, probly,” Angelo said. “I wonder what makes pine trees like that so lonesome?”
“Every dogface deserves to have at least one good Taps. At his funeral.”
“Well, maybe he’ll be lucky. Maybe he’ll draw a good one.”
Bloom was already buried, had been buried ever since two-thirty that afternoon; they both knew that. But it was as if they had agreed tacitly not to speak of it in the past tense.
“I’d play him a Taps,” Prew said, angrily because he had promised himself he would not mention that and it had slipped itself out anyway, “I’d play him a real Taps. Every dogsoljer deserves that,” he said lamely, trying to explain it away.
“Aww, hell,” Angelo said embarrassedly, with far too much understanding. “Hell, he’s dead, aint he? What difference does it make?”
“You dont understand,” Prew said furiously. What it was, he told himself, was he still could not visualize it. He felt he should be able to visualize it. But the last picture he had of Bloom was of a tremendous undammable vitality heading off across the quad for the gym to get ready to go into the ring while he himself stared after it incredulously and exhaustedly.
“I wonder what the hell made him do it?” he said wonderingly, conscious of so overpowering a will to live in himself.
“My personal opinion,” Angelo said sagaciously, “is that he was afraid he had gone queer.”
“Hell, Bloom was no queer.”
“I know it.”
“If I ever saw a not-queer, it was Bloom.”
“I know it,” Angelo said.
“Well then, what the hell?”
“Theres a difference,” Angelo said, “between being queer and thinking you’re queer.”
“I wanted to go over and see him after that fight,” Prew confessed. “Tell him I dint fight him because he was Jewish or anything like that personal. I was going to tell him the next day,” he said. “But they picked me up that night,” he said.
“Hell, he dint shoot hisself over you whippin him, if thats what you thinkin.”
“I didnt whip him.”
“All right. Over you fightin him then. A long time ago old Hal said Bloom would kill hisself someday, remember?”
“I just barely broke even with him. If anything, he whipped me.”
“Hal said he was ‘dropping down the ladder rung by rung.’ I guess ats a quotation from some poem. He was a pretty smart boy, old Hal,” Angelo said grudgingly. “The son of a bitch.”
“Not so smart,” Prew said, remembering the forty dollars he had finally spent on the seduction of Alma. “I’d hate to think I had anything to do with it.”
“Oh, balls,” Angelo said disgustedly.
“Well,” Prew said, “I would.”
They sat silent, looking at each other, neither one of them able to put their finger on just exactly what it was Bloom’s death made them feel.
“Its funny,” Angelo said, trying reluctantly. “How a guy dies and then he’s gone and isnt there any more. Even if you dont like him. All the things he’s done in his life, and been, all gone just like that.”