From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [482]
Dana Junior, freed from the necessity of standing at the rail to wave good-by to his father, was already back toward the rear of the ship in the middle of the deck at the shuffle-board courts with two other lovable small boys screaming at each other that they were shuffleboards and pushing each other up and down the slick wood courts to prove it. He was out of harm’s way there, and she would let the stewards worry about the damage to their shuffleboard courts. That was one of the fine things about being on shipboard, and she might as well avail herself of it.
Behind them, seeming to wheel as the big ship swung out of the channel east down along the reef, the city clustered around Fort Street and Nuuanu Avenue with that antheap look all downtown cities have. Behind it climbing the shoulders of the mountains sat the profuse multi-colored houses of the suburbs, their windows every now and then catching the sunshine gaily. And above it all the solid unchanging mountains stood in their tropic greenness that seemed to drip down in patches and threaten to engulf the carefully man-constructed streets and houses. And between them, ship and shore, nothing but air. Air reaching clear down to the water and clear up into the sky, with that expansive far-vista look that you got nowhere else except on the sea or the tops of high mountains. There was no more true a picture of Honolulu anywhere, than from out here.
On shore straight in front of them she picked out Kewalo Basin the harbor for the fishing fleet. Next would come Moana Park, and then the Yacht Basin. Then pretty soon Fort De Russy, and then Waikiki.
“Its very beautiful, isnt it?” a man’s voice said beside her.
She turned to find the young Air Corps Lt/Col, who had been standing beside her in the press when they left the pier, leaning on his elbows on the rail a few steps off and grinning ruefully. After they had lost sight of the pier and the crowd had begun to thin he had moved away up the rail, and then he had gone off somewhere, probably to take a turn around the deck, and she had forgotten all about him.
“Yes it is,” she smiled. “Very beautiful.”
“I think its the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen in my life,” the young Lt/Col said. “Let alone had a chance to live in.” He flipped his cigaret overboard and crossed his ankles, and the effect was the same as if he had made a fatalistic shrug.
“I feel the same way about it,” Karen smiled. She could not get over a feeling of astonishment at how young he was, for a Lt/Col, but then they were all like that in the Air Corps.
“And now they’re shipping me back home to Washington,” he said.
“How come they are sending a pilot like you back on a ship?” Karen smiled. “I should think you’d fly.”
He touched his left breast, where there were some ribbons but no wings, deprecatingly.
“I’m no pilot,” he said guiltily. “I’m in the administrative corps.”
Karen felt a twinge but hid it. “Still, I’d think they’d fly you back?”
“Priority. Priority, my dear lady. Nobody knows what it is. Nobody understands it. But its priority. Anyway, I’d just as soon go by boat. I get air sick, but I dont get sea sick. Aint that a riot?”
They both laughed.
“Thats the God’s truth,” he said earnestly. “Thats what washed me out. They say its something in my ears.” He sounded as if it was the greatest tragedy of his life.
“Thats too bad,” Karen said.
“C’est la guerre,” the young Lt/Col said. “So, now I am going back to Washington where I know absolutely no one. To help the War Effort. After I’ve been here two and a half years and know every place and damn near every body.”
“I know quite a few people in Washington,” Karen offered. “Maybe I can give you some addresses before we leave ship.”
“Would you really?”
“Surely. Of course, they’re not any of them Senators or presidents of anything, and none of them know Evelyn Walsh McLean.”
“Never look a gift horse in the mouth,” the young Lt/Col said.
They both laughed again.
“But I can promise th