From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [44]
Even the insensitive stomachs of the most patriotic and most common soldiers, at that time uneducated in the stronger odors of the war, were inclined to rebel. And the most rebellious of those stomachs, since Warden ran the details for G Company, was invariably Prewitt’s.
It became increasingly clear, from day to day, that whenever Prew happened to be at the head of the double line of the Fatigue formation, Warden would happen to call out one of the more patriotic details.
One of these was the butcher shop detail. The butcher shop in addition to its market for the wives supplied the meat for all the individual companies. The butchers, enlisted men on Special Duty, did not mind the more delicate work of cutting steaks and chops, but they applied for Fatigue details to do the heavier slimier work of unloading and moving the sides around. Prew’s neat tailormade blue fatigues would be stiff with blood and muck after an afternoon of this. It would be on his face and in his ears and in his hair, and the rancid smell of the butcher shop would waft about him as he walked. Warden would be standing in the corridor doorway as he came in, his sleeves rolled up two turns, smoothly cool and clean after a refreshing shower, and grinning fondly.
“Better hurry up and wash,” he’d say. “Chow’s almost over. The Compny’s been in for fifteen minutes. Or maybe,” he would grin, “you’d rather go in like you are and wash up later.”
“No,” Prew would tell him seriously. “I think I’ll wash first.”
“Still the dude, ’ey?” Warden would grin at him. “Suit yourself.”
One day Warden asked him if he shouldnt maybe go out for fighting, or maybe baseball. “You look awful tard, kid,” he grinned. “If you was a jockstrap you wouldnt have to pull Fatigue.”
“What makes you think I mind it?”
“I didnt say you didnt like it, kid.” Warden said complacently. “All I said was you looked tard. Drawn to a fine edge.”
“If you think you can push me into fightin, Warden,” Prew told him grimly, “you are wrong. I can take everything you hand out. You and Dynamite together. I’m twice the man you are. If you didnt have them stripes, I’d take your big bulk out on the green and beat it to a pulp. And if I couldnt do it with my fists, I’d git me a knife and look you up downtown some night in River Street.”
“Dont let the stripes worry you, kid,” Warden grinned. “I can always take my shirt off. Take it off right now.”
“You’d like that, wouldnt you?” Prew grinned back. “You could get me a year in the Stockade for that one, couldnt you?” He turned to go upstairs.
“What makes you think Holmes has got anything to do with this, kid?” Warden called after him.
And there were other minor inconveniences. He had meant to use his first weekend in G Company to go to Haleiwa for the showdown with his shackjob, but all the first week he had been a victim of The Warden’s Duty Roster, as a new man, his name heading every list for extra details. And The Warden utilized his advantage relentlessly.
As the week went by and he did not see his name on any KP list, his soldier’s intuition began to whisper warnings. On Friday when the details for the weekend were posted on the bulletin board the suspicion became fact. Warden had saved his KP back to give him on the weekend. But Warden was even cleverer than he had suspected. Prew was on KP Sunday, and on Saturday he was Room Orderly. There would not even be one day off to go to Haleiwa.
There was a diabolical finesse in this arrangement, too. A Saturday KP got out of standing Saturday Insp