From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [388]
“What time is it?” he said.
“About five-thirty,” Georgette had said, and got up.
Alma jerked upright wide awake, her closed eyes coming wide open staring at nothing without sleepiness, and then followed Georgette over to him on the divan.
“How do you feel?” Georgette said.
“Pretty sore. This bandage pretty tight.”
“We made it extra tight on purpose,” Alma said. “You lost quite a bit of blood. Tomorrow we’ll take it off and put on one not so tight.”
“How does it look?”
“Not so bad,” Georgette said. “It could have been a lot worse. The muscles isnt severed. You owe a great debt of thanks to your ribs though, my boy.”
“You’ll have a nice scar,” Alma said. “But it’ll heal up all right in a month or so.”
“You gals should have been nurses.”
“Every good whore should have a course in practical nursing,” Georgette grinned. “It comes in handy.”
He noticed there was a new look on both their faces that he had never seen there before.
“What did the other guy look like?” Alma had smiled.
“He’s dead,” Prew said. Then he added, rather unnecessarily he thought later, “I killed him.”
Both their smiles had gradually faded off. They had not said anything.
“Who was he?” Georgette said.
“Just a dogface,” he said, and paused. “He was the Chief Guard in the Post Stockade.”
“Well,” Georgette said. “Well, I’ll go make you a cup of hot beef bouillon. You need to build up your strength.”
Alma watched her until she had gone up the three little steps into the kitchen.
“Did you kill him on purpose?”
Prew nodded. “Yes.”
“Thats what I thought. That was why you came here, wasnt it?”
“I meant to go back to the Post so they wouldnt suspect me. Then I was going to come down later, after this’d blown over.”
“And how long have you been out of the Stockade?”
“Nine days,” he said. He said it automatically, without having to count.
“Over a week,” she said, “and you didnt even call me up. You might at least have called me up.”
“I didnt want to take any chances of fouling up.” Then he grinned. “And I didnt want to risk getting you into trouble. Course, I forgot all about the possibility of getting cut up so bad I couldnt go back.”
Alma didnt seem to think it was humorous.
“Didnt Warden get in touch with you?” he said. “I ask him to.”
“Yes,” Alma said, “he got in touch with me. He came down to the New Congress. That was how I found out you were in jail. Otherwise, I wouldnt even have known. I think you might at least have written a letter.”
“I cant write letters,” Prew said. He paused and looked at her.
“Well,” Alma said, “of course if you cant write them . . .”
“Did Warden—” he said, and stopped.
She looked at him, waiting for him to finish it, a look of almost contempt coming onto her face. When he didnt go on, she said, “Did Warden what? He was a perfect gentleman, if thats what you mean.”
Prew moved his head vaguely, looking up at her.
“He was kind,” she said, enumerating them, “and considerate, and thoughtful, and gentle, and a perfect gentleman.”
Prew tried to imagine Warden being like that.
“Much more so than a lot of other men I have met,” Alma told him.
“He’s a good joe, all right.”
“He certainly is. He’s a fine man.”
Prew clamped his jaws shut on what he wanted to say.
“You dont know what its like up there,” he said, instead. “Its not a big help to a guy’s imagination. Four months and eighteen days, and every night there is all that time you lay in your bunk with the lights out, before you finally go to sleep.”
The contempt faded off of her face and she smiled at him brimmingly apologetically. It was the same smile of a while ago that he had never seen on her face before—maternal, solicitous, tender, almost happy, and infinitely more gentle than he had ever seen her look.
“You’ve had a hard time,” she smiled self-castigatingly. “And here I am being mean and nasty, when you’re s