From Here to Eternity by James Jones Page A

porch and he sat down in one of the backless chairs and leaned against the wall, prepared to wait, fingering the mouthpiece in his pocket that was his own and that he always carried with him. He had bought it back in Myer with a crapgame winnings and it was the mouthpiece he had used to play the Taps at Arlington. Pulling it out now and looking into the ruby bell as if it were a crystal ball brought that day back to him. The President himself had been there, with all his aides and guards, leaning on the arm of one of them. There had been a colored bugler who played the echo to his own Taps from the stand. The Negro was a better bugler, but because he was not white he had been stationed in the hills to play the echo. It should have been himself who played the echo. Thinking about it all, he put the beauty back in his pocket and folded his arms across his chest, still waiting. From the G Company supplyroom came the sound of a spasmodically clicking typewriter, and before the kitchen screen-door, sitting in the sun, was a KP peeling spuds, stopping now and then to slap at the flies buzzing around his head. Prew watched him, feeling all around him that sunny buzzing inarticulateness that is nine-thirty in the morning on a duty day. "Wonderful day, ain't it?" the KP, a tiny curly-headed Italian with narrow bony shoulders jutting from his undershirt, said to him. Scowling, he speared another spud ferociously and raised it, triumphantly, like a caught fish from the dirty water of the number 18 kettle. "Yeah," Prew said. "Fine way to pass the time," the KP said, motioning with the speared spud before he went to peeling it. "Good for the mind. You the new transfer?" "Thats whats the matter," Prew, who had never liked Italians, said. "Ha," the KP said. "You picked a helluva outfit to get into, friend, thats all." Peeling automatically, he scratched his hairless chin on one naked shoulder. "I didnt pick it." "Unless," the KP said, ignoring the answer, "you happen to be a jockstrap. Any kind of a jockstrap, just any kind, but preferably a punchie. If you're a punchie you picked the right place and I'll be salutin you for a corporal in six days." "I aint no jockstrap," Prew said. 'Then I pity you, friend," said the KP fervently. "Thats all. I pity you. My name's Maggio and as you can see I aint no jockstrap neither. But I'm a spudpeeler though. I'm one helluva hotshot spudpeeler. I'm the best spudpeeler in Schofield Barricks, T.H. I got a medal." "What part of Brooklyn you come from?" Prew grinned. The dark intent eyes under the hairy brows flared up as if Prew had lighted candles in a dim cathedral. "Atlantic Avenue. You know Brooklyn?" "No. I was never there. But I had a buddy at Myer was from Brooklyn." The candles were snuffed out. "Oh," Maggio said. Then with the air of a man who has nothing more to lose he asked cautiously, "Whats his name?" "Smith," Prew said. "Jimmy Smith." "Jesus Christ!" Maggio said and crossed himself with the patented potato scraper. "Smith, no less. I'll kiss your ass in Macy's window at high noon on Sataday if I ever heard of a Smith in Brooklyn." Prew laughed. "That was his name." "Yeah?" Maggio said, scowling at a new spud. "Thats Me. Now I knew a Jew named Hodenpyl onct. I thought you knew Brooklyn." He subsided into silence, muttering, "Jimmy Smith. From Brooklyn. My bleeding back." Prew, grinning, lit a cigaret, listening to the buzzing from the Orderly Room suddenly raise itself an octave. "Hear that?" Maggio said. He stabbed his scraper at the window. "Thats what you're lettin yourself into, friend. You better, if you're smart, turn right around and let yourself back out." "I cant," Prew said. "I was transferred by request." "Oh," Maggio said sagely. "Another fuckup. Like me. Well, friend, I feel for you," he said bitterly, "but from my position I cant quite reach you." "Whats going on in there?" "Oh, nothin unusual. Happens all a time. "The Warden' and 'Dynamite' is just givin Willard a ass eatin,