From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [378]
In the glow of his cigaret Prew saw him grin bitterly gently.
“Its a thing,” Malloy said, “that apparently happens to guys when they try to do what I’ve tried to do all my life and lack what it takes. Probably, after I bust out, they’ll misunderstand that too and start making a goddam hero out of me for escaping.”
“How do you figure to do it?”
“Thats the easy part,” Malloy said. “I could bring enough tools in from the motorpool to cut through these walls easy.”
“What about the searchlights?”
“They’d never even see me.”
“But what about the electric fence? And the alarm?”
“Rubber-handled Klein pliers from the motorpool,” Malloy said. “And a long piece of baling wire for each strand, back of where I cut it on both sides, to keep the circuit closed.
“But it’ll be easier just to go out from the motorpool; theres not a man there that would turn me in or want to stop me. A pair of grease-monkey coveralls to get me down into the Post to my outfit to borrow civilian clothes, and I’m gone.”
“What about money?”
“I dont need money. I’ve got half a dozen different friends in town who would hide me out long enough to get me out on a Matson liner for the States.”
“Theres a war coming up soon,” Prew said.
“I know it. Probably, I’ll enlist again Stateside under an assumed name, when it comes up. Thats what I’ve figured. But I’m finished here, and theres no point in staying. And until the war does come theres some things I want to do—without having it all taken the wrong way so that it hurts the guys that I like.”
“Take me with you,” Prew said.
In the glow of the cigarets Jack Malloy looked up, startled. Then he grinned what Prew always remembered afterwards as the saddest, gentlest, bitterest, warmest grin he had ever seen on a human face.
“You dont want to go with me, Prew.”
“Sure I do.”
“No you dont. What about Fatso?”
“Beside going with you, to hell with Fatso.”
“You dont know what you’d be getting in to. I’ve been on the run from the Law before.”
“So have I.”
“Yes, but not from town to town and sheriff to sheriff. And this time theres about a fifty-fifty chance I’ll never get off the Island and back to the States. Theres nothing romantic about it. And it isnt easy.”
“You said yourself it would be almost as easy to go out of here as it would be to go out through the motorpool,” Prew argued.
“It would. I dont mean that. I mean afterwards, after we were out. With two men it would be five hundred per cent harder. We’d have to head for the hills and go down that way in prison clothes, instead of back through the Post. And thats where they’d be looking for us. It would take a week to get down to town safely, we’d have to skirt every house and settlement, then go clear across Honolulu to my friends.”
“I’d like to go,” Prew said.
“I know how to travel,” Malloy said. “I’ve done all this before. I know how to go on shipboard like a rich man above suspicion. I know how to dress and act—like ordering dinners, the way to treat stewards and servants, and especially other passengers—a million little things it takes years to learn. You’d give it away the first day.”
“But I learn fast,” Prew said. “Listen, I know I’d be lots of trouble, at first. But I’d more than pay it back later on, in the things you plan to do.”
Malloy smiled. “You dont know what I’m planning to do.”
“I got a pretty good idea.”
“I dont even know myself, Prew.”
“Okay,” Prew said stiffly. “I wont force you. But I would’ve liked to of gone.”
“You dont belong with me,” Malloy said. “You belong in the Army. What do you want to go with me for?”
“I dont know. Because I want to help, I guess.”
“Help what?”
“I dont know. Just help.”
“Help change the world?”
“Maybe. Yeah, I guess thats it.”
“The little bit you and me might change the world,” Malloy smiled, “it wouldnt show up until a hundred years after we were dead. We’d never see it.”
“But it’d be there.”
“Maybe not,” Malloy said. “Thats why I say you dont belong with me. You got a romantic picture. It would mean years of living too close together, always on the jump. I’m not good at liv