From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [364]
“I think I’d agree with you on that one too,” Malloy said.
“You goddam right,” Hanson said. “You cant tell me. This is Fatso’s first one, too, you know. Fatso wasnt here when them last ones blew.”
“Thats right,” Malloy said through the doors. “We had an old Master/Sgt then. Fatso didnt come in till after he was retired.”
“Fatso thinks he can beat it,” Hanson said. “He claims he can bring him out of it. He says he’s never seen a man yet, crazy or not, that he couldnt make walk the chalkline if they give him a free hand.”
“Maybe he’ll do it,” Malloy suggested.
“I dont think so,” Hanson said. “Somebody else maybe, but not The Wop. You guys aint seen it like I have. Its out of this world, thats all.”
“He was a good man, all right,” Malloy said.
“He still is,” Hanson said. “Crazy or not.”
“Whats Father Thompson got to say about it?”
“Nothing,” Hanson said. “He’s letting Fatso handle it; except for killing. He’s laid it out flat to Fatso there cant be no killing, or he’ll have Fatso on the inside lookin out. He’s dead set there cant be no killings. But outside of that its up to Fatso. But Fatso’ll never make it. Take it from me.”
They would always have to ply him for the latest details. He wanted to go on telling his amazement and his admiration, and it would take two or three of them interrupting constantly before they could bring him back to the facts of the latest news. Gradually, it evolved itself into a recognizable plan.
When they had brought him in that first day Fatso had revived him personally. He had taken the phonecall from Turniphead and already had the story, and he was eager to get to work to prove his theory. He had taken three guards led by Brownie, Hanson among them, and taken Maggio down to the “gym.” They had given him what Hanson had described as the worst working over he had ever seen a prisoner get. It was the first time since he had been there that they had ever carried a man to the Hole unconscious. Fatso had tried to make The Wop admit he was only acting; Maggio had laughed and babbled and gone right on talking gibberish. The fourth time he went out, after they had already brought him to three times, Fatso gave it up and let them carry him on down.
“He’s crazy, all right,” Hanson told them. “If he wasnt crazy, even The Wop couldnt take it.”
Fatso’s whole plan was based on making him admit he had been acting. He developed a schedule where he came for him at regular intervals to work him over, first every eight hours, then every four, on the theory that the anticipation would break him down. When that failed, he took to coming for him at odd unspecified intervals both day and night, with the idea that that way the anticipation instead of having regular periods of rise and fall would be constant all the time. He was liable to appear for him at midnight, and then come right back fifteen minutes later, or let him go a full twenty-four hours sweating it out. Fatso was a diligent and conscientious workman. He offered him everything from a trusteeship to the reinstatement of his time-off-for-good-behavior that Maggio had lost the first week he was there to an even possible commutation of his sentence, if he would only admit he had been acting. Maggio only laughed or babbled or made faces or talked gibberish. Once he pissed on the floor at Fatso’s feet. Fatso rubbed his face in it. Fatso was convinced The Wop was acting, that all the Section 8s discharged from the Stockade were just good actors. He stopped at nothing short of the application of actual torture devices, to make Maggio admit that he was acting. Every night Hanson came to lock up and tell them that The Wop had not broken. It had developed into a tougher situation than even The Malloy had anticipated, and it was then that Prew first began to develop the hatred for S/Sgt Judson that occupied all his leisure time with plans for murder. If to think murder was as great a crime as committing it, Prewitt would have to have been electrocuted fifty times to make him pay.
Then one night Hanson finally brought them the news that Maggio had been taken out that noon and clean