From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [456]
“Ha,” Lt Ross cried angrily. “For you its easy. You’ll be shipping out of here in a month or so. Ah, piss on it!” he said violently. “Goddam you, Sergeant. You sure talk a great war, anyway.”
He went to the door and hollered, a look of outrage against fate dark on his swart Jewish face. “Rosenberry! What the fuck are you doing! Why arent you in here? Go find Sgt Karelsen and tell him I want to see him. And get the lead out of your ass!”
“He’s out at Makapuu, Sir,” Rosenberry, who had been quietly waiting outside, said quietly.
“Then get a jeep and go the hell after him!” Lt Ross cried. “Dont you think I know where he is? What the hells the matter with you today, Rosenberry?”
“Yes, Sir,” Rosenberry’s fading voice said quietly.
“God damn that boy,” Lt Ross said, coming back. He sat down at his desk and scratched his head. “I think I’ll drive the jeep up by myself and leave Russell here. That way there’ll just be the two of us, and I can break it to him gently, on the way up. Dont you think that would be best?”
“Yes.”
Lt Ross got out his notebook and began making notes on what to say to the Colonel. After he made a few, he muttered “Shit!” and began crossing them out.
“You and your goddam bright ideas,” he said angrily. “I dont know why the hell I let you talk me into these things.”
“Because you want to do the right thing,” Warden said.
“Hunh,” Lt Ross said. “Sometimes I wonder who the hell is in command of this outfit. You or me.”
He was still making notes concentratedly and, between nervous chewings on his pencil, concentratedly crossing them out, when Rosenberry brought Pete in from Makapuu.
“Come on, Sergeant,” Lt Ross said blackly, putting his notebook away. “You and I got to make a business trip to Schofield.”
“Yes, Sir,” Pete said formally, and saluted. He was too old a hand not to know an ax was about to fall someplace. He had put his teeth in, the first time he’d had them in since Pearl Harbor, except for meals.
The two of them, Ross gloomily, Pete inscrutably formal, took off in silence, complete with gas masks, rifle belts, helmets, and their carbines, and Warden went back to work and settled down to wait for the outcome. He was still waiting for them to come back when the call had come in about Prewitt.
And when he and Weary got back from the identification of Prewitt’s body, the other jeep still was not in the motor pool. Which meant that Ross and Pete still were not back yet.
Weary delivered him to the popcorn wagon and then hurried off to bed down the jeep so he could start circulating with the story. Inside the blacked out wagon Rosenberry was sitting in a fog of cigaret smoke at the single panel switchboard working methodically at his latest crossword book.
“Any calls, kid?”
“Not a thing, Sir.”
“Good,” Warden said. “And God damn you, Rosenberry, you son of a bitch, quit calling me sir!” he said murderously. “I am not a goddam Officer! I am a goddam enlisted 1st/Sgt!”
“Yes, Sir!” Rosenberry said pop-eyedly. “I mean, okay, Sarge! I’m sorry, Sarge!”
“If you dont quit calling me sir, Rosenberry, I’ll tear your fucking heart out by the roots with my bare hands and feed it to you,” Warden said in a low vibrant voice that sounded as if he actually hungered to do just exactly that.
“Okay, Sarge,” Rosenberry said soothingly. “I’m sorry, Sarge. I dont mean nothing. Its just a habit. Was it really Prewitt, Sarge?”
“Yas, it was Prewitt. Deadern a goddam mackerel. In a sandtrap. And his chest scattered all over the goddam fairway. By a Thompson gun. Now get the fuck out and lee me a lone.”
When the kid was gone, he spread the stuff out on his desk. It was a hell of a lot to show for one man’s life.
He got the ten-cent notebook and the folded paper out of the other pocket and added them to the pile.
Then he picked up the paper and opened it again and smoothed it out on the desk. He read the printed title at the top. THE RE-ENLISTMENT BLUES, and then he read the nine hand-written verses. Then he looked at the whole thing again, and then he smoothed the paper out on the desk again, and then he read the whole thing through again.
It was another hour, almost eleven, before they got back from Schofield. When he heard the jeep grind up outside, he refolded the paper, carefully