From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [478]
Of the other two, whom Warden had spun back out of range, one sat down apathetically in the booth with Ira. The second one, who had come up against the bar, grabbed a beer bottle and smashed it on the rail and ran past Stark at Warden with it, like a dagger, cursing sobbingly under his breathing. The smashing of the bottle brought a reproving murmur from the audience, but none of them moved to stop him.
Warden, still grinning sanguinarily, waited for him, his hands out before him like a wrestler, ready to grab if he got the chance.
But as the man ran past Stark at the bar, Stark stuck his foot out delicately and blasély. The running knifer crashed to the floor, still trying to reach Warden with his bottle.
Warden stepped back and let him hit the floor and then stepped up again and kicked him carefully in the head.
It had lasted perhaps six minutes.
But already, from down the street, shrilled the urgent and ever-alert whistles of the MPs getting nearer.
Charlie Chan, who was still wringing his hands, began to cry. Tears streamed down his face. “Now blingee goddam MP. Was so fine day. Now luin blisniss. Closem up tight.”
“Here they come, Texan,” Warden said, laughing witlessly. “Come on. I know a place.”
He jerked loose the rest of the hanging pants leg and stepped out of it, and then they were shoving and elbowing out through the still-gathering crowd. They ran down the block toward River Street, Warden still laughing riotously, away from the approaching urgent whistles.
“That Rose,” Stark laughed breathlessly. “She really fell for you, buddy. Next time you go back there you better wear your groin cup or she wont even let you wait till she gets you home, before she rapes you.”
“Thats why I aint figuring on ever going back,” Warden laughed. “Come on, this way.”
He turned left into the alley in the middle of the block, still laughing brainlessly happily. It was the same alley where he had stood and talked to Prewitt that night before they went across the street for a drink, the last time he had seen him. He thought of it momentarily, running, and ran on.
“This’ll be the first place they’ll look for us,” Stark said.
“Never you mind. Come on. I know where I’m going.”
Halfway through the alley Warden called, “This way!” and turned left again up the middle of the block, back the way they had come. They passed the back door of the Blue Chancre. Then he ran left over the cinders to the back of the next building where there was a fire escape and began to mount. Stark followed him up and crouching, hearing the urgent whistles down below in the babble, they ran lightly over three or four roofs before Warden stopped.
“Lets see,” he said. “I think this is the one. Yes, its this one here.” He leaned across the three foot chasm of shadows and rapped sharply on a window of the next building. He waited impatiently, then rapped again.
From up here, on the third story roof, they could see the roofs of the whole town below Beretania down the hill, sloping away toward the harbor at the foot of Nuuanu. In the bright sunshine glinting on the deep blue of the water down there, out beyond the upright finger of the Aloha Tower and in the Sand Island channel, a ship was pulling out. One of the Matson liners; the Lurline, it looked like.
Involuntarily surprised, both of them stood and watched it. The big ship slid on, silently and pitilessly, as resistless and impossible to stop as a birthday or a moving clock. The bow was already out of sight behind one of the big bank buildings. They watched it until the whole ship, foot by foot silently, had slid behind it and on out of sight.
“Well,” Stark said raspingly, “are we goin in this goddam place, or aint we?”
Warden swung around and looked at him, his eyes wide and violent, as if he had not known he was there. As if Stark had slipped up on him and he had not known he was there. He looked at him that way a moment, widely, violently, silently. Then he turned to the window and rapped again.
“Who is it?” a woman’s voice said this time.
“Let us i