From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [359]
“Sir, I’ve had it coming to me for over a year,” Warden bored on implacably. “And I’ve kept on postponing it. If I dont take it now, I’ll never get it. With Sgt Karelsen in the supplyroom we’re as near as we’ll be to an even keel for at least another six months. And if I wait that long I’ll never get it.”
“By the books,” Holmes said flatly, his goodwill receding still further, “you’re not even entitled to it at all, now. You know that yourself, Sergeant. If you let a re-up furlough lapse for over three months its cancelled. You should have taken it then, at the time.”
“By the books, I should have let this outfit go on down the shutes,” Warden said. “The reason I didnt take it was to get this Compny back on its feet, and you know it, Sir.”
“Even so,” Holmes said waveringly. “Thirty days! At a time like this! Its just simply impossible.”
“I postponed it for the good of the Compny,” Warden said doggedly. He knew better than to make it anything as crude as an open threat, that would only have made Holmes refuse out of pride. But the implication was there; and the memory of Leva’s week-old transfer was still fresh. Capt Dynamite Holmes was no longer Jake Delbert’s fair-haired boy.
Dynamite pushed his hat back on his head and sat down at his desk.
“I’ll tell you something, Sergeant,” he said confidentially. “You’re going to be an Officer yourself soon, and it might help you a little about how to get on.
“Sit down,” Dynamite said, “sit down, Sergeant. Hells fire, you’ll be beating me at poker up at the Club within two or three months. Theres no need for us to go on maintaining the formality of Officer and EM.”
Warden sat down gingerly, feeling like a newly successful novelist from the sticks at a literary tea party.
“I dont expect to be in the Regiment very much longer,” Dynamite said expansively, but still confidentially. “Of course, you understand, this mustnt go any further. But I’m expecting to be reassigned to Brigade Headquarters as a Major at the personal order of General Slater, within the next month or two.”
“That’s fine,” Warden heard himself say.
“You may have thought, as so many others have, that I’ve been cutting my own throat around here by getting on the Great White Father’s shitlist,” Dynamite grinned. “Well, theres been a method in my madness. Thats what they dont know. I expect to be taken on as General Slater’s personal aide,” he said extravagantly, and paused.
“Well I’ll be damned!” Warden said, as if surprised.
“The first thing an Officer has to learn is to be able to switch horses often and in midstream without getting his feet wet,” Dynamite smiled. “Of all the things an Officer has to know, that one’s the most important. Its different with Enlisted Men, they can get along without politics. It can help them of course, but its not the prime requisite; they can make good without it. But an Officer cant. Thats the first thing you’ll have to learn.”
“Yes, Sir,” Warden heard himself say. “Thanks.”
“Now it wont be for a couple of months,” Dynamite said. “But its as sure as God made little green apples. If you werent becoming an Officer yourself and I hadnt thought it might help you, I wouldnt have told you at all. But when I leave this outfit for Brigade, I’ll put you through for a fourteen day furlough. Hows that?”
“I’d rather have it now,” Warden said. “And I want the full thirty days. If I didnt have them coming, it’d be different.”
Dynamite shook his head. “I’m making you a fair proposition, Sergeant,” he said kindly. “More as a brother-in-arms than as a Commanding Officer. If you werent going to become what you’re going to become, I probably wouldnt even do that. Because of that, I’m treating you as an equal.
“But,” he said friendlily, “thats absolutely the best I can do. I dont give a damn what happens to this outfit any more than you do, but if I put you in for a full thirty-day furlough, with the Company in the state its in, and especially at a time like this, it would only be turned down anyway and be a black mark against both of us. Thats politics. Theres more going on at the present time than meets the eye, Sergeant,” he said slyly with the air of a man who was on the inside.
Warden watched him narrowly, still feeling uncomfortable to be formally sitting down.
“Well, what do you say?