From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [386]
It was over a quarter of a mile up Makiki before he hit Wilder Ave east. He followed Wilder half a mile before he found Alexander Street that cut clear down to Beretania, but when he got down there he found Alexander did not cross it. It was beginning to get into him by then, and he was having to keep a very tight hold on his mind. He scouted up and down above Beretania half an hour, looking for a street that went clear through. But by then it had become all nightmare and wasnt so bad. From Alexander Street on he was laughing all the time.
He crossed Beretania and King on McCully Street that ran clear down to Kalakaua. There was Fern Street and Lime Street and Citron Street and Date Street and he remembered from somewhere that Date Street crossed Kapiolani Boulevard and the Territorial Golf Course clear into Kaimuki. It was over a mile across the golf course to Kaimuki and after that he did not remember the streets he used to angle up through Kaimuki to Waialae where he hit Wilhelmina. All he remembered was that after he got to Alma’s he would be all right.
When he crossed the drainage canal in the middle of the golf course on Date Street, he dropped the package containing the knife into the water and watched the string of bubbles come up.
He was going to have a nice scar there, he thought with a giggle. The scars on a man’s body were like a written history of his life. Each one had its own story and memory, like a chapter in a book. And when a man died they buried them all with him and then nobody could ever read his histories and his stories and his memories that had been written down on the book of his body. Poor man, he thought whose written history is buried with him. Poor Fatso. He bet Fatso had lots of scar-histories. He had guts too, Fatso did. And Prewitt killed him. Poor Prewitt.
You’re getting silly, he warned himself, you better straighten up and fly right. You aint even to Kaimuki yet. You got a good piece to go yet, lets you and me go over our scars and see can we remember the stories. We’ve got a good many histories, too.
There was the one on the index finger of his left hand he had got that time in Richmond Indiana on the bum when the nigger saved him from the guy with the knife. But that was only a little one, he’d been a kid then. Wonder where the nigger is now? Wonder where the guy is?
Then there was the one on his left wrist. That was a bigger one. He had fell off the roof of the house in Harlan and gashed it on a nail and cut the artery. His mother run and got Uncle John and Uncle John stopped the bleeding or he would of died probly. When his father came home he laughed about it. His father was dead now. Uncle John was dead too. His mother was dead too. And it had all seem so important to all of them at the time, except his father, who wasnt there. And where was it now? It was on his left wrist, thats where.
And when you die?
Then its gone.
He come awful close to dyin lots of times. He had the scars to prove it. And he wasnt dead yet.
But you’ll have to die sometime.
Thats right. Thats true. And then they’re all gone. If they cremate you, it’ll be a regular book burning, wont it?
There was the scar under his left eyebrow on his eyelid, just a thin pencil line now, that he got at Myer in the ring. They wanted to stop the fight but he talked them out of it and won by a knockout. The doc was going to sew it up, but the trainer raised such hell and insisted so loud for an adhesive bridge that that was what they finally did and hardly left any scar at all. It would have been a hell of a scar if they’d sewed it or clamped it. Wonder where the doc is now? Wonder where the trainer is? Both still at Myer? At the time he’d wish they would of sewed it because he wanted a good scar then.
What a kid, Prewitt. What a wise punk. Well, you’ve got it now. You’ve got a lot of them now.
There was the scars he got in the Stockade, still new and red. And there was all the scars he’d got in all the barrac