From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [396]
“I thought sure you knew him,” Baldy said.
“Well I dont.”
“Then I guess thats my mistake,” Baldy said.
“It sure is.”
“Then I guess thats everything. I tole you Galovitch was busted, dint I?”
“You told me.”
“Then thats all,” Baldy said. “Do you care if I take the rest of the morning off?” he said. “I got to fix a bad faucet over to the house.”
“Listen Dhom,” Warden said in his official voice, taking a deep breath. He was conscious of the new clerk Rosenberry still sitting quietly at the filing table in the closet. “I dont know what kind of screwy ideas you got in your goddam head, but I know you’re old enough and got enough service to know you cant get by with carrying a goddam man present for duty when he’s over the goddam hill. Even in the goddam Air Corps they cant do that. It always comes out. I’ve had a lot of orderly rooms in my time, and I’ve seen some bad ones. But I never seen an orderly room get so completely 100% fuckedup in such a short goddam time. You may be worth a four stripe rating as a straight duty man. But as an acting first sergeant you stink. You wouldn’t make a good Pfc. You’re miserble. It’ll take me two months to straighten out my goddam orderly room and get it over your two weeks as first sergeant.”
He paused, for breath, and looked up at Baldy who was still standing impassively in the doorway. Warden tried to think up something else to say, something that would make it sound a little bit better, a little more stronger.
“I just want you to know I never seen such a lousy acting top kicker since I been in the goddam Army,” he said in summation. It still sounded thin.
Dhom did not say anything.
“Okay,” Warden said, “go ahead, take off. And you might as well take the rest of the morning off since you wouldn’t do no goddam work anyway.”
“Thanks, First,” Baldy said.
“Go to hell,” Warden said. Angrily he watched the big man go out, the massive shoulders brushing the door jamb on both sides, the huge head almost touching the top of the frame. Baldy Dhom, husband to a fat Filipino lardmama sow of a shrew, father to innumerable runny-nosed half-nigger brats, trainer to one of the worst boxing squads in the history of the Regiment, duty sergeant to one of the miserblest Companies. An old soldier with 18 yrs serv under his belt in his paunch along with 18 yrs beer, and condemned by his nigger family to foreign service for the rest of his natural life. The man who had loyally and sanguinarily led the pack in executing The Treatment that Dynamite had prescribed for Prewitt; and who now, just as loyally, led the attempt to cover up for him when he went over the hill and killed a man because of it. Probly he explained it to himself by some sentimental crap about us old-timers got to stick together, with so many draftees about to take over the Compny. And as he watched him go out, he watched with him, beyond and around him, the whole tacit network of the whole tacit conspiracy, nothing open, nothing said or admitted, just a sudden common movement toward a blindness of not seeing, a sudden tacit ignorance, all over the whole Company, and that you could no more fight than you could fight a solid mountain.
If you wanted to, he told himself. Which you do not. You dont like the Stockade any better than they do. Nobody likes the Stockade—unless they work for it.
Well, he thought, he finally did it. He finally went and did it. Just like you have always known he would do it.
“Rosenberry!” he bellowed.
“Yes, Sir?” Rosenberry said quietly. He was still sitting quietly at the closet table, still quietly filing things.
A quiet boy, Rosenberry, altogether a quiet boy. That was one of the reasons he’d picked him to replace Mazzioli. He had spent the whole last week before his furlough, after Mazzioli had been shifted to Regiment, in picking him.
“Rosenberry, I want you to get the hell over to Regiment and pick up today’s batch of useless memorandums and worthless circulars, while I straighten this goddam mess out, and come back and worthlessly file them.”
“I already have, Sergeant,” Rosenberry said quietly. “I’m filing them now.”
“Then