From Here to Eternity

by James Jones

  “Dynamite aint here now,” Warden grinned. “He may be back some time today, and he may not be back at all. But he wants to see you though.”

  Making the cigaret, the sack dangling from the string held in his teeth, Stark looked up at Warden levelly. “Dint he know I was comin in?”

  “Sure,” Warden grinned, picking up the biggest bag and the little canvas furlough satchel, “he knew it. But he had important business. At the Club.”

  “He aint changed much,” Stark said. He took the other two blue barracks bags and followed, bending under the double weight balanced delicately on his back, across the porch and through the deserted messhall, dim and ghostlike now with the lights off. Warden led him into the tiny cooks’ room that opened off at the back, across the corner from the doors into the Dayroom.

  “You can start stowing this. And I’ll call you if The Man comes in.”

  Stark let the bags fall heavily and straightened up and looked around the little room that, shared with all the other cooks, would be home.

  “Well,” he said, “I reckon I be here. I had to borrow money from the twenty percent men at Kam to git moved up here.” He hitched his pants up with one thumb, a dispassionate gesture. “It was rainin like a tall cow pissin on a flat rock, when I left there.”

  “It’ll be rainin here tomorrow,” Warden said, going to the door.

  “You ought to doubledeck these bunks in here, First,” Stark said. “Theyd be more room.”

  “This is Preem’s territory,” Warden said from the door. “I never touch it.”

  “Old Preem,” Stark said. “I aint seen him since Bliss. How is he?”

  “He’s fine,” Warden said. “Just fine. Thats why I never touch his territory.”

  “He aint changed much either,” Stark said, untying the drawropes of a bag and reaching in. “Heres my papers, First.”

  Back in the Orderly Room Warden looked them over closely. Maylon Stark was twenty-four, they told him, had served two hitches and was on his third, had never done any time in a Stockade. That was all, not much to go on.

  It was odd, he thought, leaning back and cocking his feet up on his desk, relaxing the big shoulders and thick arms smugly and with satisfaction in the chair, it was odd how there were no ages in the Army. Back in his hometown Stark, who was twenty-four, would have been of a different generation, a newer crop, than himself who was thirty-four; but here they both were contemporaries of Niccolo Leva, who was forty, and of Prewitt, who was only twenty-one. Here they were all the same, of a certain similarity, of a certain common knowledge, of a certain deep unshakeable very flexible something that was in the bony structure of their faces and in the shaded halftones of their voices. But they were not contemporaries of Maggio or Mazzioli or Sal Clark, who were still punk kids. And they were not, either, the contemporaries of guys like Wilson, Henderson, or Turp Thornhill, or O’Hayer. Lets not be romantic now, he thought. But still, with all the romance put aside, there really was this similarity, this difference, this contemporariness, that was not in the others. You could feel it. Chief Choate had it too. Sometimes even Pete Karelsen had it, but not very often. Usually he only had it when he got real mad. Or drunk. Pete had it drunk. It was a thing you felt, even though you could not name it and no word ever said it. He was still mulling this illumination over, trying vainly to find a name for it, when Capt Holmes came in.

  By the time the Customary interview and peptalk for new men was ended, that other part of Warden’s mind knew quite definitely what he meant to do about the kitchen situation.

  Maylon Stark stood in the Orderly Room during the whole of Capt Holmes’s lecture, after he and Holmes had shaken hands and Holmes had beamed his pleasure at him, with his hands easily behind his back, his campaign hat dangling from them, staring at Holmes reflectively. He expressed his gratitude perfunctorily and said nothing else. At the end of the lecture, still staring reflectively at his new commander, he saluted precisely and withdrew immediately.

  Maylon Stark was medium-built and husky. That was the only word to fit him, husky. He had a husky face, and the nose on it was badly bent and flattened huskily. His voice was husky. His head sat huskily on his neck, the way a fighter carries his chin pulled in from habit. It was the huskiness of a man who hunches up his shoulders and hangs on hard with both hands. And with it Maylon Stark had a peculiar perpetual expression, like that of a man who is hanging hard onto the earth to keep it from moving away, out from under him. The line from the right side of his flattened nose to the corner of his mouth was three times as deep as the same line on the left side; his mouth did not curl, but the deepness of this line made him look like he was about to smile sardonically, or cry wearily, or sneer belligerently. You never knew which. And you never found out which. Because Maylon Stark never did any of them.

  “He’s a good man, Sergeant Warden,” Holmes insisted, after Stark had left. There was a puzzled, not quite satisfied look on his face. “I can always tell a good man when I see one. Stark’ll make me one damn fine cook.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Warden said. “I think he will.”

  “You do?” Holmes said, surprised. “Well. Well, its like I say, real soldiers dont grow on trees, and you have to look hard before you find one.”

  Warden did not bother to answer this one. Dynamite had said the same thing about Ike Galovitch, when he made him sergeant, except that he had not looked puzzled.

  Capt Holmes cleared his throat and reset his face and began to dictate next week’s Drill Schedule to Mazzioli, who had come in while the lecture had been on. Mazzioli stopped his filing to type the Drill Schedule for the Captain. The Captain walked back and forth, his hands behind his back, his head thrown back thoughtfully, dictating slowly so Mazzioli could get it with the typewriter.

  Mazzioli typed disgustedly, knowing that later The Warden would haul out his FMs and change the schedule all around and then he would have to type it up again. And Dynamite would sign it without noticing the difference.

  As soon as Holmes was gone, Warden beat it out to the cooks’ room, almost unhinged by Dynamite’s eternal piddling rumination of the Schedule, feeling he had suddenly escaped from an airtight bottle, breathing joyously, and wondering what Holmes would do if he ever realized his own uselessness and the finicking he hid it with; dont worry, he thought, he never will; it would kill him; but mostly hoping Holmes’s dawdling had not given any of the cook force time to get back before he got to see Stark alone.

  “Come on upstairs,” he said, finding Stark was still alone, doubtfully holding up a pair of the old outmoded suntan breeches that he hated to throw away but had no use for any more. “To my room. I got talkin to do thats private. And I dont want none of them cooks around to see me with you.”

  “Okay, First,” Stark said, answering the urgency in his voice, and got up still holding out the breeches. “I had these breeches ever since the year my sis got married.”

  “Throw them out,” Warden decided for him. “When this war comes and we move out you wont have room for half of what you got thats useful.”

  “Thats right,” Stark said. He tossed them on the growing pile of refuse by the door implacably and looked around the tiny room, and at the three barracks bags that held seven years’ accumulation of a way of life.

  “Aint much, is it?” Warden said.

  “Enough, I guess.”

  “Footlockers aint got room for memories,” Warden said. “And barracks bags even less. Hell, I even use to keep a diary. Still dont know what happened to it.”

  Stark took a leather framed picture of a young woman and three boys from the satchel and set it open on his wall locker shelf. “Well,” he said, “I’m home.”

  “This is important,” Warden said. “Lets go.”

  “I’m with you, First,” Stark said, and picked up the pile of castoffs and the breeches. “Ony time I ever got around to clearin out is when I move,” he said apologetically.

  On the porch he dropped it all into a GI trash can withou
t breaking stride, following Warden up the stairs, but at the landing he looked back at it, once, at the breeches leg with its thin round GI laces whose metal tips had been lost long ago, dangling outside the can.

  “Sit down,” Warden said, indicating old Pete’s bunk. Stark sat down without speaking. Warden sat on his own bunk facing him, and lit a cigaret. Stark rolled one.

  “You want a tailormade?”

  “I like these better. I awys smoke Golden Grain,” Stark said, eyeing him reflectively, but waiting coolly, “if I can get it. If I cant get Golden Grain, I rather smoke Country Gentleman than tailormades.”

  “I read some stories about a private dick, named Sam Spade, who like Bull Durham over tailormades,” Warden said. “I never believed it.”

  “Me neither,” Stark said. “Nobody smokes Durham, if they can get something else. Even Dukes is bettern Durham.”

  Warden set the battered ashtray on the floor between them. “I play them straight, Stark. Five cards face up.”

  “Thats the way I like them.”

  “You had two strikes on you when you got here, as far as I’m concerned. Because you served with Holmes at Bliss.”

  “I figured that,” Stark said.

  “You from Texas, aint you?”

  “Thats right. Borned in Sweetwater.”

  “How come you to leave Fort Kam?”

  “Didnt like it.”

  “Didnt like it,” Warden said, almost caressingly. He went to his wall locker and fished around down behind his diddy box till he brought up a fifth of Lord Calvert. “They never inspect my room on Saturday,” he said. “Drink?”

  “Sure,” Stark said. “A breath.” He took the bottle and looked at the label, inspecting the longhaired dandy the way a man sweats out his hole card in a big game too rich for his blood, then upended it and drank.

  “You ever handled a Mess, Stark?”

  Stark’s adam’s apple paused. “Sure,” he said around the bottle and went on with his drink. “I was runnin one in Kam.”

  “I mean really run one.”

  “Sure. Thats what I mean. I was acting bellyrobber on one stripe. Ony I was never acting.”

  “How about menus and marketing?”

  “Sure,” Stark said. “All that.” He handed the bottle back reluctantly. “Good,” he said.

  “What kind of rating did you say?” Warden said, not bothering to drink now.

  “Pfc. I was up for a Sixth Class, ony I never got it. I was Second Cook on the TO, but without the money. I ran the mess without even being acting. I did everything but wear the stripes and draw the money.”

  “And you didnt like it,” Warden grinned, repeating back, saying it almost chortlingly.

  Stark stared at him reflectively, that peculiar about to laugh, about to cry, about to sneer expression on his face. “The setup? no,” he said. “The work? yes. Thats my job,” he said.

  “Good,” Warden said happily and took a drink now. “I need a good man in my Mess, one I can depend on, one with the rating. How about First and Fourth, to start with?”

  Stark looked at him reflectively. “Sounds reasonable,” he said. “If I get it. What then?”

  “The Rating,” Warden said. “Preem’s Rating.”

  Stark talked it over with his cigaret. “I dont know you,” he said, “but I’ll call you, First.”

  “Heres the deal. Theres four men from your old outfit at Bliss in this Compny. They’re all four sergeants. You got no trouble there.”

  Stark nodded. “I can see that far.”

  “The rest is simple. All you got to do is keep your nose clean and show you’re a better man than Preem. You’re a First Cook with a First and Fourth, as of today. All you got to do is step in and take over whenever Preem dont show, which is just about every day.”

  “I’m a new man here. Kitchen crews is clannish people. And Preem’s got The Rating.”

  “Dont worry about The Rating. You dont need The Rating. I’ll take care of that end. When you have trouble in the kitchen, come to me. The cooks’ll give you lip for a while, especially this fat guy Willard. He’s a First Cook and he’s bucking for Preem’s job. But Dynamite dont like Willard.

  “You’ll get lots of lip, but dont argue. Be chickenshit. Bring it to me. It’ll be all your way.”

  “Its goin to sure be tough on poor old Preem,” Stark said, accepting the bottle Warden was offering him again.

  “Have you seen him yet?”

  “Not since Bliss.” Stark handed the bottle back reluctantly. “Good,” he said.

  “I like it some myself,” Warden said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Preem likes it too. Preem married it. Preem looks like a man who either seen a miracle, or was hit at the base of the skull with a rubber hammer.”

  “He was an awful quiet guy when I knew him. Kind of guy to go off and get drunk all by himself.”

  “He’s still that way. Except now he has to go off and get sober by himself.”

  “Quiet guys like that are bad. The ones that get drunk by theirselves. They awys flip their lid.”

  “You think so?” Warden said, suddenly narrowly, that other part of his mind tuning in and clocking up the platitude, and reminding him that where theres smoke theres fire and where theres platitude theres liar. “Some of them dont.”

  Stark shrugged. “Theres just one thing, First. If I take your kitchen, I run it my way. Nobody sings and nobody squares. There’ll be no backseat drivin from the Orderly Room if I take your kitchen. Otherwise no soap.”

  “Forget it,” Warden said. “You run it right and its your baby.”

  “That aint what I said,” Stark said doggedly. “I said its all my baby. Right or wrong. And the Office keeps its nose out. Or else I dont want any part of it.”

  Warden grinned at him slyly, the pixy’s eyebrows quivering, thinking that he couldnt be too dumb. “Fine,” he said. Why cant you just be honest once? he thought, just make one promise without keeping your fingers crossed, you bastard.

  “Okay,” Stark said, with finality. “How about a nuther drink?”

  Warden handed him the bottle. The hand was over now, the cards were being collected by the dealer. The spontaneous conversation of relaxed tension broke out bubbling.

  “What I dont see,” Stark said conversationally, “is what you make on this deal.”

  “I make nothing,” Warden grinned. “You ever hear of the man with the whip? Well, I’m the guy. Holmes only thinks this is his Compny.”

  The bottle worked back and forth now like a shuttle, weaving brilliant colors, over and under, around the strings of words.

  “How many guys from Bliss in the Compny now?”

  “Five, counting you. ‘Champ’ Wilson has the First Platoon,” Warden said, skewering the word. “Preem the Mess. Two platoon guides, Henderson and Old Ike Galovitch.”

  “Ike Galovitch! Jesus Christ! He was our boiler orderly at Bliss, couldnt even speak plain English.”

  “Thats the boy. He still cant speak it. And he’s Dynamite’s Close Order expert.”

  “My God!” Stark said. He was sincerely shocked.

  “You see what I’m up against?” Warden grinned happily, watching the lovely beautiful brilliant shuttling of the bottle as it wove and wound and spun the web of unreality, of talk about them both, relaxing into it.

  “. . . But you’re all right. You were at Bliss and that puts you on the inside track.” . . .

  “These cooks wont like it though.” . . .

  “To hell with them. Long as I like it, you got no worry.” . . .

  “Okay, First. You lead the band.” . . .

  “You goddam right I do. . . .

  “. . . the setup in the Regiment. Holmes and Colonel Delbert are just like that, see? They . . .”

  “. . . what I got to work with.” . . .

  “They’s two men you can depend on. . . .

  “. . . and heres the setup in the Compny. Strickly a jockstrap outfit, see? Dhom is the Staff becaus
e he’s trainer for Dynamite’s squad, but he’s as far as he will ever get and . . .”

  The soldier’s greatest hobby, he thought as he listened to his own voice talking, the bull session, add a bottle and you have his greatest joy, also his greatest escape, he thought. The unofficial institution that is the first-string substitute for women and the age-old conversation where the man explains his ideals and his hopes for his life and the woman listens and agrees and tells him how wonderful he is. But soldiers are men without women, he thought, and they cannot hold each other’s heads upon their breasts and pat each other’s hair. But they escape just as well, the other part reminded him.

  Ah, if you could only lose this other part of your mind too, like Stark is doing, not lose but forget it for a little while, without thinking about the women, or the men, or all the other angles.

  “Gimme a drink,” Stark said. “Is that tall blonde wife of his still around?”

  “Who?” Warden said.

  “His wife,” Stark said. “Whats her name. Karen. Is he still married to her?”

  “Oh her,” Warden said.

  Maybe its better for you you cant deliberately distract that other part, he thought. More painful, surely. But maybe in the long run better. Provided, of course, that you can stand it. There is courage, he thought, and then theres courage.

  “Yeah,” he said, “he’s still married to her. She comes over here ever once in a while. Why?”

  “I just wondered,” Stark said, mellow now and feeling philosophical. “I dunno, I awys figure Holmes would of left her before now. She was a regular bitch in heat at Bliss, when I knew her, but mean like, as if she really hated it and all the ones she gave it to. They said she laid half the EM on the Post at Bliss.”

  “They did?” Warden said.

  “Hell yes. I heard she even got the clap down there. Ony thing kept her from bein out and out a whore was she was married.”

  “You mean she kept her amateur standing,” Warden said.

  Stark threw back his head and laughed. “Thats it.”

  “I dont put much stock in stories like that though,” Warden said, carefully casual. “You hear them about every woman that lives on a Army Post. Mostly wishful thinking, you ask me.”