From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [372]
“Will you do it for me, Stonewall?” the Indiana farmboy said.
“What the hell do you want to go to the hospital for?” Jackson evaded. “It aint no better than here. I’ve been there, and I’m telling you true. It aint a dam bit bettern here.”
“Well, at least there wont be no Fatso there, and you wont have to work in this goddam sun breaking rocks with a hammer.”
“No,” Jackson said, “but you’ll sit around on your dead ass looking out through them goddam chainmesh grids till you’ll wish to hell you was breaking rocks with a hammer.”
“At least the food will be better.”
“Its better,” Jackson admitted. “But you’ll get just as sick of it anyway.”
“Then you wont do it for me? Even as a favor?” the Indiana farmboy said reproachfully.
“Oh, I guess I’d do it for you,” Jackson said reluctantly squeamishly, “but I’d a hell of a lot rather not, Francis.”
“I’ll do it,” Blues Berry grinned. “Any old time you want it done, Francis. If you really want to do it, that is.”
“I want to do it,” the Indiana farmboy said affably firmly.
“Well, wheres some rocks?” Berry said.
“Theres a couple over here where I’m working that’ll do just fine.”
“Okay,” Berry said. “Lets go.” Then he paused and turned back to the others. “You guys dont care if I do it for him, do you? I mean, what the hell? If he’s that sick of it. I can see how I might want somebody to do it for me sometime maybe.”
“No,” Prew said reluctantly. “I dont care. Its none of my affair. I just dont want to do it, thats all.”
“Thats the way I feel,” Jackson said queasily.
“Okay, I’ll be right back,” Berry said. “Keep an eye out for them guards.”
The guard down in the pit was clear out of sight, but the two guards up on the cliff were both in position to see them.
“You better watch them up there,” Prew said.
“Hell, if I waited till they got out of sight, I’d wait till the earth looked level.”
“They probly move off a piece in a little bit,” Prew suggested.
“Ahh, fuck them,” Berry said disgustedly. “The no good cocksuckers. They too blind to see anything anyway.”
He took his hammer and followed the Indiana farmboy off about five yards where Francis pointed out two rocks he had selected, two smooth flat-topped ones about six or eight inches apart and three or four inches off the ground. The Indiana farmboy knelt down and laid his left arm out across the rocks with his elbow and upper forearm on one and his wrist out onto the other.
“This way, you see, it wont break any joints,” he explained affably. “I figured my left arm because I’m righthanded. It’ll be easier to eat with and I can still write letters home to the famly. Okay,” he said. “Hit it.”
“All right, here goes,” Berry said. He stepped up and measured the swing with the head of his hammer and then swung, back over his head, a full double-armed swing, and hit the arm between the two rocks with all the force and accuracy of an expert axman notching a tree.
Francis the Indiana farmboy screamed with just as much surprise as if he had not been expecting it, like a man who had been shot by a sniper he didnt see. If there was any sound of bone breaking, the scream smothered it. He stayed on his knees a few seconds, looking whitefaced and faint, then he got up and came over to show it to them. In the middle of his forearm where the line should have run straight there was a kind of square-cornered offset. In the few seconds it took him to cross the five yards it had already started to swell. As they watched it, it swelled until the recessed part of the offset was filled out level again and there was only a big bulge on the bottom.
“I think its broke in two places,” Francis said happily. “Hell, that ought to get me at least three whole weeks. Maybe more.” He broke off strangledly and got down on his knees, holding his left arm gingerly with his right, and vomited.
“Boy, it sure hurts,” he said proudly, getting back up. “I sure didnt think it would hurt that much,” he said, with the same astounded surprise that had been in his scream. “Thanks a hell of a lot, Berry.”
“Think nothing of it,” Berry