From Here to Eternity (16 page)

in?" he asked Prew gently. "I guess so," Prew said. "What're you?" Bloom sneered. "His man Friday? Do you ask him when its time to crap?" Sal hung his head and did not answer, blushing. "Sure he's my man Friday," Prew shot back, seeing Sal's face. "You dont like it?" Bloom shrugged indifferently. "Its no skin off my ass." Sal looked at Prewitt gratefully as he began to deal. But Bloom did not even see it. With Bloom's entrance the centrality of the game disintegrated and the close comradeship was gone. Everybody played silently. There were no more wisecracks. It might have been the big game in O'Hayer's shed. Maggio won several more hands and every time Bloom cursed loudly. "For Christ's sake, shut up!" Julius Sussman said finally. "You make me wish I'm not a Jew." "Yeah?" Bloom snarled elaborately. "What're you? ashamed of being Jewish? Maybe you aint a Jew, maybe you're a stinking greaser." "Maybe I am." "Sure, maybe he is," Maggio said. "He aint no frigging kike, thats sure. Deal me out," he said. "I got enough of this. I'm going over to O'Hayer's shed and run this pocketful of change into some real dough." "Hey, wait a minute," Bloom said, jumping to his feet. "You aint quittin winners, are you?" "Sure I'm quittin winners," Maggio said. "You think I'm' gonna quit losers? Where'd you learn to gamble? your mother's sewing circle?" "You cant quit winners," Bloom said. "And take the money over to the sheds out of the game." "Yeah?" Maggio said. "You watch me." Bloom turned to the seated circle. "You guys gonna let him get by with that? He's got your dough too." "What do you think we started this game for?" Prew said. "You think we're playin for recreation? and gonna give everybody's money back as soon as we quit? Who the hell wants this chickenfeed except to win some real dough in the sheds? For Christ's sake, act your age." "Yeah?" Bloom said, accusingly. "What're you doing? workin partners with the W6p? I lost two bucks in this goddam game. A right guy dont quit winners on his friends. I thought you was a straight joe, Prewitt; even when all the boys told me you wouldnt go out for fightin. I told em no, you was a straight joe when they all said you was yellow. Looks like I was wrong." Prew put the few dimes and nickels he had left in his pocket and stood up, his hands hanging loosely in readiness at his sides, his lips tightened into bloodlessness, his eyes flat as eyes painted on a board. "Listen, you son of a bitch," he said, feeling an icy calm that was a flaming rapture of abandon. "Keep your big yap away from me, or I'll sew it shut for you. And I wont get in any ring to do it. And I wont need no chair." "Yeah?"Bloom said, stepping back. "I'm right here. Any time you say." He began to unbutton his shirt and pull it out of his pants. "When I do," Prew grinned tautly, "you wont have no time to take your shirt off." "Talk is big," Bloom said, still pulling out his shirt. Prew started for him, would have hit him while his arms were still tangled in the shirtsleeves, but Maggio stepped in front of him. "Wait a minute. You'll only get yourself in trouble." He opened his arms in front of Prew. "This is over me, not you. Just take it easy now." He talked soothingly, doing for Prew now what Prew had done for him a while ago, still holding his arms outspread. Prew stood passively, his arms hanging straight against his sides now, relaxed. "All right," he said, feeling ashamed now for the cold murderousness that had been in him, for the wild ecstasy, wondering what it was in Bloom that made men want to smash him. "Take your arms down," he said to Maggio, "for Christ's sake. There aint nothing going to happen." "Thats what I figured," Bloom said, sticking his shirt back in and buttoning it, grinning triumphantly as if the stopping of the fight had been his personal victory. "Take off," Maggio said disgustedly. "Sure," Bloom grinned. "You dont think I'm goin to donate you guys any more dough, do you? I dint know you was a bunch of sharpers," he said, having the last word. He slammed the door back loudly, to show his contempt for cheaters. "Straight shooters always win," Maggio said. "Nobody ask you to play," he called after him. "Someday I'm goin to bust that guy wide open. Someday he's gonna make me mad." "I aint got anything against him," Prew said. "But for some reason or other he always gets my goat." "I'll get his goat," Maggio said. "He's a nogood son of a bitch. And I dont like him." "I guess we didnt treat him very friendly," Prew said. "You dont treat a guy like that friendly," Maggio said. "Wait'll he makes that corporalcy, he'll treat you and me friendly. He'll make us sweat, buddy." "I guess," Prew said thoughtfully, wondering what it was, what trait, what quality, what difference of character that made one man likeable and another so dislikeable. He would take things off of Maggio he would never take from Bloom, even when he knew they were meant in joke. You couldnt talk to Bloom without him twisting it around to look like you had insulted him; he always seemed to need to put the other guy in the wrong. Thinking about it, he was suddenly angry again. He wished he had gone ahead and punched him, at least it would have broken the monotony. He wished he had gone on winning. He wished a lot of things. He hadnt had a woman now since before last payday, since the last time he was at Violet's. He wished he had a woman. "Well," Maggio said, looking at Prew's face, "I'm goin over to the sheds and win me a fortune with this change." "You better take what you got and go to town," Prew said, "while you got it." He turned and walked back by himself. Julius Sussman stood up, counting the little money he had left. "Well, it was fine while it lasted. Sure busted up a nice friendly little game, all right. I aint even got enough left for a tank of gas. You dont want to play some more, I guess?" he said to Maggio. "Not me," Maggio said. "I'm goin to the sheds." "Thats what I figured," Sussman said. He walked over to a window and stood looking out, his hands jammed in his pockets. "Son of a bitch," he said. "This creepjoint gets me. If this rain would let up a Utile, I could go for a ride and maybe find some ass, if I had a tank of gas." He stood back and sighed. "I guess I'll see can I scour up some dough for me for a tank of gas." "Want me to go with you, Angelo?" Sal Clark said, getting up from the game of solitaire he had started on the bench. "I'll sweat them out for you," he offered. "Naw," Maggio said, defensively. "Sweat them out myself. Get my money's worth." "I sweat them out for you, you'll win," Sal offered. "I cant never win myself, but I can sweat winners out for everybody else." Maggio turned to look at him and grinned. "You stay here and sweat them out, Friday. I win I'll bring you all back a five buck loan. Hey, Prew, he called. "Tell your man Friday to stay here and sweat them for me. He wont listen to me." Prew looked up but he did not grin, and he did not speak. "If you let me go with you and sweat them," Sal said, "I'll go for nothin. Save you money." "For Christ's sake, shut up," Andy said sullenly. "Cant you see he dont want you to go? You aint got no goddam pride a tall." "There wont be hardly nobody over there," Maggio said. "Thats why. This late in the month there'll only be the big winner's poker table goin, and maybe one blackjack game for small fry." "We're goin to the second show anyway," Andy said. He walked back to Prew. "Loan me twenty cents, Prew, will you? So we can go to the show? I got twenty left, but Sal needs twenty." "Here," Prew said bitterly, handing him the sixty cents he had. "Take it all. It wont do me no good." "Aw, I hate to do that," Andy said, but he did not draw back his hand. "Yeah, you hate it," Prew said. "I know you hate it." "I do," Andy said. "All I ask you for was twenty cents." He looked at Prew, his eyes going out of focus because he knew he was lying, and he did not want to lie, but still wanted the money. "Well you got it all, so shut up," Prew said. "And for god sake when you talk to a man look him in the goddam eyes, will you? You give me the goddam willies." "Okay, Prew," Andy said. "You want me to take it all?" "You got it, aint you? Go spend it and shut up." "Okay," Andy said. "Come on, Sal," he said, walking over to the bench. "Lets play couple hands of casino, till its show time." Prew looked at him disgustedly and went back to the sink, feeling the need of a woman writhing in his belly. "Hey, Prew," Maggio called cautiously, jerking his head back at the door. "Come on out on the porch a minute." "What for?" Prew said, knowing he was being bastardly, but unable to stop it. "You got the money, go blow it." "Come on out here a minute, goddam it," Maggio said. "Okay," he said, and left the sink. Andy did not look up as he passed, but Sal Clark looked up and grinned with his bashful fawn's eyes at him. "Take it easy, Friday," Prew said gently.

CHAPTER 11

MAGGIO was standing on the porch, waiting for him, his bony shoulders in the undershirt hunched up against the chill, staring at the streams of water falling just outside the screen. The sound of water spattering on the walk below filled the whole porch, drowning the sounds of sleep from in the squadroom. "You want to go to town with me? if I win?" he asked, turning as Prew came out. Prew grunted irritably. "What're you doin? invitin me because you feel sorry for me?" "Ha," Maggio said. "Dont flatter yourself. I just dont like to go to town by myself. I dont know anybody in town." "Well neither do I," Prew said. "A guy's more lonesome in town by himself than he is right here," Maggio said. "Not if he's got money. You better take what you got and go by yourself, while you still got it," Prew said. "You go over to O'Hayer's, you wont have it long," he said bluntly. "Listen," Angelo said. "You dont want to let that Bloom character get your goat. Everybody knows he's a prize prick." "You listen. He dont bother me; he fucks with me I'll bust his goddam flat head for him. And that goes for all the rest of them. See?" "It wouldnt do you any good," Angelo said reasonably. "Maybe not, but it would make me feel a hell of a lot better." "He was needling you with all that crap about being yellow," Maggio said. "Nobody believes that." Prew had started back to the latrine, but now he stopped. "Listen, Angelo," he said, turning back. "Lets drop this. I dont care whether they, or anybody, believe it or not," he said seriously. 'They can all of them go screw themselves, and I'll be the first guy to walk across the street and watch it." "Okay," Maggio said briefly. "I'm sorry I mentioned it. Wait'll I get my shirt. I'm freezin to death. I thought them travel posters said they dint have no winter in Hawaii." He disappeared into the slowly, rhythmically breathing squadroom, tiptoeing grotesquely, and Prew had to grin. Angelo came back putting on his shirt and carrying his raincoat, wearing the stiffly blocked hat he was so proud of, that he had religiously had blocked once every week since he got out of recruit drill. "Where'll you be?" he asked, unbuttoning his pants and stuffing in his shirt, as they walked down to the stairs and down them to the ground floor porch where the endlessly falling water made an endless sound that was no longer heard because it had been going on so long. "I'll be in the Dayroom," Prew said, "or else up in the latrine." Maggio was putting on his raincoat, as if it was a suit of armor and he was going forth to joust. "Okay," he said. "You better be prepared to bring a footlocker to help bring home the ghelt." "You better win," Prew said, "goddam you. I aint had a piece of ass in almost a month." "No wonder you're pissed off," Angelo grinned. "I aint had one since last payday." He pulled his hat down on his forehead and peered up at Prew from under the knife edge of the brim. "Gimme a butt before I go. "Jesus Christ!" Prew said, pained, but he reached in his pocket and brought out one, a single tube, from the unseen pack. "Since when did I take you to raise?" "Whats a matter? You scared I'll steal your lousy tailor-mades? After I win I'll buy you a whole carton. Now match me and I'm gone." "Is your mouth dry?" Prew said. "You want me to spit for you?" "Not on the floor," Angelo said, raising his eyebrows in mock horror. "Not on the floor. Wheres your manners?" "Aint there something else I can do for you? Use my mouth as an ashtray? cut off my balls and have a game of marbles? You oughta be able think of somethin." "No," Maggio said. "But thanks. You're a good boy. You ever get to Brooklyn, look me up. I'll treat you right." He opened the book Prew handed him, tore off one, struck it, and handed back the book, the bronze glow lighting up his thin child's face. "I'll see you, kid," he said, puffing luxuriantly, like a rich man on a fifty cent cigar. He swaggered off out into the rain, ducked through the falling sheets of water, swaggered on, his bony shoulders hunched up belligerently, his thin arms swinging widely, his torso swaying from side to side, agitating the formless raincoat that enveloped him. Prew watched him go, half grinning ruefully, no longer feeling mean, hoping he would win some money. He stood for a while looking out across the rainswept quad to the lighted sallyport, listening to the snatches of song and shouts from Choy's as the door was opened, hearing the rattling of empty cases. He was back in the old familiar round again, hunting and twisting and pinching for the nickels that looked as big as dollars, trying to scour up enough for a few drinks and a piece of ass. Even if he wins, he thought, you wont find the thing you want, not in any whorehouse, you who talk about a piece of ass so glibly, as if it held the answer. You were a goddamned stupid fool to ever let Violet get away from you, he thought bitterly, wishing now he had not forced the issue, had had some sense, wondering what she was doing tonight, right now. Maybe you didnt have the thing you're always looking for, but at least you could have gone up there once a week; or once a month even. Way it is now you aint got even that. All you got now is the old round, the whorehouses where you never find it either, plus the absence of the money that it costs you to look there and that you have to scrounge for and then never get, except on Payday when they're all so crowded that if you dont get your gun off in three minutes you have to take a rain-check. At least with Violet you had a woman. Maybe you could go back and see her and explain it, but even as he thought it he knew it would be useless, that it was past, that she had already found another soldier, or maybe even one of her own race. That was what she really wanted. Maybe you should have married her. Sure, maybe you should have stayed in the Bugle Corps, too, I guess? Maybe you'll never find the thing it is you're looking for? he thought and turned to go back up. Andy and Sal Clark were still in the latrine, playing casino on the worn wood bench thats grain was raised and weathered by the shower water that was always getting splashed on it. "Bloom was back while you was gone," Andy said, looking up from his hand. "Yeah?" Prew said, feeling very indifferent now. "What'd he want?" "Lookin for somebody to borrow fifty cents from for taxi-fare to town," Andy said sullenly, looking back down. "Well? Did you loan it to him?" "Why would I loan it to him?" Andy said indignantly. "You think I'd run out on you?" Then he looked up and saw Prew was kidding him, and his voice dropped back down. "We ony got eighty cents between us," he muttered. "I loan him four bits, we wouldnt have enough to go to the show." "I thought maybe you loaned it to him," Prew teased. "You're the richest joe around here now, outside of Angelo." "Well I dint," Andy said. "If thats what you think. And anytime you want your money back, just ask for it and I'll give it to you." "Hell no," Prew said happily. "Wont do me any good." "I s'pose you're goin to town with Angelo," Andy asked him, sulkily. Prew turned to look at the hurt tone in his voice. "If he wins," he said. Andy looked at Sal significantly. "Thats what we figured." "You figured what?" Prew said, and walked down to them and stood in front of Andy. "If anybody did some figurin, it was you, I'll bet, not Sal. Anything wrong with me goin with Angelo?" "I guess not," Andy shrugged elaborately. "Except a guy dont usually take off on his pals who's broke." "You mean you think I ought to stay here and go to the show with you? because you cant go to town?" "I dint say that," Andy said defensively. "Bloom wanted me to go to town with him tonight." "Well go ahead," Prew said serenely. "If thats whats eatin you. That wont hurt my feelins any. I dont care who you go to town with. Whats Friday goin to do?" "He can go to the show by himself," Andy said. "I'm ony takin four bits taxifare." "Man," Prew said. "You're a hot one." "I aint goin to the show," Friday said happily. "I'm ona save at thirty cents and stay right here and teach myself how to deal these cards, by god." "Well," Andy said, "thats up to you. You got the money. You can go if you want to." "What're you guys goin to do in town?" Prew said. "If I may ask?" "Just fool around." "You wont fool very far, takin only four bits taxifare. What'll you do after you get there? How'll you get back?" "Well," Andy said. "Bloom's got a queer lined up out in Waikiki he thinks we can roll, a guy with quite a bit of dough." "I wouldnt go," Prew said, "if I was you." Andy looked up indignantly. "Why not? Its easy for you to say. You're goin down with Angelo." "Because Bloom's lyin to you, thats why. How long you been in Wahoo? You oughta know by now that Honolulu queers dont get rolled. They never carry money with them. Its too small a place, and theres too many soljers. They'd get rolled every night." Andy would not look at him. "Bloom said if it didnt work out to roll him, we could get drinks off him anyway, and carfare home. Whats the difference?" "He lied to you. Thats the difference. Why would he lie to you? He knows nobody can roll a Honolulu queer. Whynt he tell you the truth? I wouldnt trust no guy that lied to me. Maybe he's pimpin for this queer. You're liable to end up gettin made. Theres somethin about Bloom I dont like." "So I should leave him alone, I guess?" Andy said, angrily, not meeting Prew's eyes. 'There aint no queer goin to make me. Who the hell are you to tell me how to run my life? You're goin to town with Maggio, aint you?" "Okay," Prew said. "Suit yourself, buddy." "He ast me to go," Andy said. "I dint ask him. And I'm goin. A guy can rot sittin around this goddam barracks. Cant even play the git-tars with the rain on. Be mad at me if you want to, I'm goin anyway." "Hell," Prew said. "I aint mad at you. I just think you're dumb, thats all. If you want to pick up a queer, go by yourself." He sat down on the end of the bench and picked up the deck that Andy had collected up and stacked, and began practicing the old one-handed cut, remembering the time he'd learned it, in a boxcar, on the bum. It was also on the bum, at the tender age of twelve, that he'd had his first experience with queers, when a fifty-year-old jocker had seduced him in a rolling boxcar. It was more a rape than a seduction, since another man had had to hold him. He looked up at Andy, his lips drawn back very tight in a grin that was more a snarl, his eyes very flat and far away and glinty. It was also on the bum, at the not so tender age of fifteen, that he'd knocked another jocker off a steep downgrade in Georgia and later read about them finding the dead body and the resulting roundup of free labor for the State that he had escaped. "You do whatever you want," he said to Andy thinly. "If the guy turns out to be a jocker and you get pogued, go see the Chaplain. I'll loan you my card; it aint punched out yet." "You tryin to scare me?" Andy scoffed. "Are you goin now?" he said to Friday. "I got to put my civvies on. I'm meetin Bloom in the Dayroom in fifteen minutes." "You better listen to him," Sal Clark said. "You better not go with Bloom." "For Chris' sakes, lay off of me," Andy said. "A man cant sit on his can in these barracks all his life. Are you goin to the show or aint you?" "I guess I will go to the show," Sal Clark said. "I can practice dealin them cards tomorrow. Whynt you borrow a dime, Prew, and come on with me? You only need a dime. I got thirty cents." "No thanks, Friday," Prew said, looking at the seriousness of the long thin olive face and feeling the sense of warmth again. "I promised Angelo I'd wait." "Whatever you say," Sal Clark said. "You have a good time in town." "Okay," Prew said. "Listen, dont you let Bloom talk you into goin queer huntin with him, hear me?" "Not me," Sal Clark said solemnly. "I dont like queers. They make me feel funny, they make me scared." "If you want to go queer huntin, go by yourself," Prew said. He watched them leave, then laid out a hand of Sal's and began to wait. He didnt have to wait long. The other two had not been gone ten minutes before little Angelo came bursting into the latrine, slamming back the doors so hard they banged. "Well," Prew said, looking up. "How much did you win?" "Win?" Maggio said violently. "Win! I won about forty bucks, in one hand. You think that'll be enough to go to goddam town?" "Fair," Prew said dryly. "How much did you lose?" "Lose? Oh," Maggio said vehemently. "Lose. I lost forty-seven dollars. Also in one hand, the second hand. God," he said looking around for something he could throw and finding nothing, took his new-blocked hat and slammed it down on the floor. He kicked it viciously, putting a big muddy dent in the papier-mach^-stiff crown, scooting it across the mucky floor. "Now look what I did," he said sorrowfully and went over to the wall to pick it up. "Well," he said, "whynt you ask me why I didnt quit after I won the forty? Go ahead. Ask me." "I dont need to ask you," Prew said. "I already know why." "I thought I could win some more," Angelo said, insisting on castigating himself since Prew wouldnt do it. "I thought I could win enough for a real trip to town. Maybe two real trips to town. Balls," he said. "Tes-tickles." He slammed the muddy, dusty, dented hat back on his head cockeyed and put his knuckles 6n his hips and looked at Prew. "Oh, balls, balls, balls," he said. "Well," Prew said. "Thats that." He looked down at the deck in his hands and ripped it suddenly across the middle, tearing the first few top and bottom cards clear in two, bending and ripping the next ones only a little bit, then tossed the scrambled mess up in the air and watched them drift, sideslipping, like autumn leaves, down to the floor. "No ass. Let the goddam latrine detail clean them up in the morning. To hell with it." "Andy and your boy Friday go to the show?" Angelo asked hopefully. "Yeah." "He dint give the money to you back?" "Nope." "Damn," Angelo said. "I save out four bits. If I had a buck I know a game in C Compny I could get in where the takeout's a buck only." "I aint got a cent," Prew said. "Not a red cent. To hell with it. It'd take you all goddam night to win enough to have a stake to hit the sheds." "Thats right," Angelo said. "You're right." He stripped off his raincoat and began taking off his shirt. "To hell with it. I'll take me fifty cents and go to town and pick me up a queer. I aint never picked me up a goddam queer, but I guess I can do it if other people can. It hadnt ought to be too goddam hard. I'm sick of it," he said, "sick of all of it. Sometimes I get so sick of it I want to puke my goddam guts right out on the floor and lay down in it and die." Prew was looking at his hands, dangling between his knees. "Sometimes I cant honestly say I blame you a whole hell of a lot," he said. "Come on and go with me," Maggio said. "You can
borrow four bits someplace. If we dont make a strike, we'll hitchhike back." "No thanks," Prew said. "It beats me. I aint in no mood to go to town and whatever fun there was I'd kill it. And anyway, I dont like queers." "I got to change my clothes," Angelo said. "So long. I'll see you in the goddam morning, if I get back. If I dont, come around to the Stockade and visit me." Prew laughed, but it was not a laugh that very many men would recognize. "Okay," he said. "I'll bring you up a carton of butts." "I'll take one now," Maggio said, "on account?" He looked at Prew apologetically. "I forgot all about buying any, Prew, when I had the dough." "Sure," Prew said. "Sure. Here." He pulled out the crumpled pack and gave him one, took the last one himself, and threw the crumpled pack in a commode. "Not if these is your last ones," Maggio said. "To hell with it," Prew said. "I got plenty rollings." Maggio nodded, and Prew watched him go; the dwarfed, narrow shouldered, warp-boned heir to a race of city dwellers whose destiny it was to never place their feet upon their earth except for the bottled-in-bond, canned grass of Central Park, whose very lives came out of cans, even to the movies that they tried to pattern their lives after and the beer they drank to forget them; go out toward the squadroom to fumble around in the breathing dark to find his undress uniform for town, the gook shirt and cheap slacks and two-buck shoes. Prew pushed the twisted cards with his foot and listened to the neverending rain outside and decided he would go down to the Dayroom for a while, since he did not feel like sleeping. The Dayroom was almost deserted. A couple of men lolled on the cigaret burns and ruptured excelsior of the imitation leather chairs that lined both walls of the narrow room that had been built below the outside porches. The Dayroom was screened-in from about waist high to the ceiling, and the Dayroom orderly had pulled the chairs along the outside wall out to the middle of the floor to keep the rain from wetting them, narrowing the already narrow space between. The men did not look up at him. They went on flipping the pages of the battered comic books they had been scanning. He stood in the doorway of the pool alcove that was also deserted now at ten o'clock, an hour before Taps, wondering why in hell he had come down here, looking at the deserted pingpong table at the far end which as far as he knew had never had a net and would not be bothered now until next Payday for a blackjack game, looking at the deserted radio at the near end that had been on the blink now since a week before last Payday, looking out through the screens at the rainy street and the railroad beyond and at the tin roofed sheds beyond the railroad, the places where all the money was and that had been going full blast since Payday and now were tapering off in the middle of the month to one game among the few who had been the heavy winners. Life on the Inside was not measured by hours but by Paydays: Last Payday, Next Payday, and then there was the in between that lasted very long but never was remembered. The plywood magazine rack had been pulled in from the outside wall too, and he went over to it and scanned the heavy cardboard covers made to look like leather but which never did, reading the Company's and Regiment's designation embossed on the blank rectangle in the center. He took out a stack of them and sat down with them in a chair as far from the dripping water as he could get, and started thumbing through them. They were all there: Life, with its cross-section pictures of the world and "The March of Time Marches On" air about it; Look, that was so obviously a second-rate imitation that had got on the gravytrain; Argosy and Bluebook, with their adventure stories about lovely ladies lost in jungles with aviators; Field&Stream, with its comfortable hunters in sharp looking coats and breeches carrying fine shotguns and smoking pipes; Colliers, Redbook, Cosmopolitan, American, The Ladies' Home Journal, and The Saturday Evening Post, and all their starving young actresses and producers, all of them bound together with a running theme of High-, Middle-, and Low-Class Americana on their cover pictures and that overflowed occasionally into a number of the advertisements. They were all there, subscribed to by the Company, paid for by the Company Fund, provided for the recreation of the men. And he thumbed through them all, not bothering to read the stories, but looking at the pictures, and the ads. "There's a Ford in your future," they told him. "'What this country needs ...'... is a good money-saving motor oil for 25c." "Let me tell you why Jimmy is doing better in school - he eats Kellogg's Corn Flakes." "I like my sleep, says Al Smith - go Pullman." "Rubber does it better." (He got a G rin from that one.) "NOW! You can own a Cadillac. Only $1345.00." "Give her the American kitchen of her dreams." There was an old issue of the Post, battered and rolled and curled and torn and dated back to November 30, 1940, that was a gold mine, a fine opium, with much food for thought. Its Cover, one of those Norman Rockwell paintings of Americana, Prew studied for a long, long time. It showed a young man lying on his topcoat on the ground, strumming on a uke and smoking on a pipe, with his shoeless feet propped on a suitcase that had a thumbing fist and MIAMI painted on it, and the shoes beside it on the ground. It was obvious he was bumming. Maybe, he decided finally, maybe he was a college boy. That must be what it was. There was a Pall Mall ad in it that he liked. It was painted in bright color and showed some happy soldiers on the range. (There were lots of things about the Army now, in all the magazines, since the peace-time draft.) Three of these were in the prone position firing, and the other two were back on the ready line sitting on green grass, and one of these was holding up two cigarets, a Pall Mall and a short one. He was a very happy looking soldier. He studied this one quite a while, too, professionally admiring the artist's observation. The board stiff campaign hats that were definitely Regular Army, pre-draft, were there. The Infantry's robin's-egg-blue cord and acorns were on the hats. The old style chrome bayonet and white web sheath with its brown leather tip, the shooting jackets made out of the obsolete CKC blouses and ripped up the back for shoulder room, the sheepskin elbow and shoulder pads with the fleece turned in, the new M1 rifle that had not got to Wahoo yet and that he had only seen in diagrams - they all were there; and the range season with the deep smell of burnt powder and the clinking brassy tubes of cartridges heavy in the hand came back to him as he looked at it. The only thing he could professionally find wrong with it was that none of them had leggins on. Well, maybe they didnt issue leggins now, back in the States. He tore it out, thinking it would look good tacked to the inside of his footlocker top. The gleaming white tubes of the tailormade cigarets in the picture made him thirsty for a smoke, and he had his hand in his shirt pocket before he remembered he and Angelo had smoked his last two tailormades in the latrine. He folded the picture up and put it in the empty pocket and took the sack of Duke's Mixture out of the other pocket and rolled one, before he went on reading. He went through several magazines from front to back, not bothering with the idiotic stories, looking for the ads. Most of them had women in them and these were what he looked for. The colored photographs were the best for reality in picturing the women, but on the other hand they usually put a few more clothes on these than they did the drawings. The small drawn ads in the back, down the outsides of the pages, the ones with the slightly oversized breasts and the collection of fanning wrinkles around the crotch, with the moulded, deep, fleshly look; these were the best. Then there was a Treeburn's Facial Soap ad, of a long-lined blonde lying on a beach robe being kissed by a handsome head and shoulder of a man, a painting with a kind of unreal fuzzy outline, she lying there full length, stretched out, turned on one hip, her arms above her head, wearing a bathing suit that looked like a leopard skin. There was the heavy-lidded, full-pouting-lipped look on her face that women get when they really want it bad. This one was a fine one, better than the others, in fact, the best one yet. And last, of the three best, there was this small one, a shaded drawing of a dame in a sort of T-shirt and soft shorts. Duchessa Lazidays, Sleep in 'em Play in 'em Laze in 'em, Duchessa Underwear Corp. and the T-shirt fell lightly, swelling under the pressure of the perfect breasis. Shaded half circles and points of light hinted at the rubbery red nipples underneath. The clothes really made no difference; if the artist had left out two dozen lines it would have been a nude. Yet Prew found himself staring and staring, trying vainly to penetrate beneath the plane of the attire to the plane of the figure under it, as if it were three-dimensional. Funny how just a few pencil lines adroitly arranged could suggest the swelling, deep-blooded, pulsating life of a lovely woman. He could feel his hands beginning to sweat and the muscles along the insides of his thighs begin to tremble. You better lay off, he told himself, this is no time to be inspecting shunt pictures, not in the middle of the month, and you broke. When it's too late to even borrow three bucks from the twenty percent men to make a flying trip to Big Sue's in Wahiawa. You better go back to The Saturday Evening Post, buddy. But the first thing in the Post he saw was another ad, a full page Greyhound Bus Lines spread telling about the Glory of Southern Sun, and in the middle a full length figure of a woman, the round lean lines of her hips staring at you from behind the tiny loosely skirted pants of the two piece bathing suit. All right, he thought, okay; if thats the way it is; a savagery of anger in him now at the pictures. They call them "pin-up girls" and think its cute how "our boys," now that they're drafted, love to hang them in their wall lockers. And then close up all the whorehouses, every place they can, so our young men will not be contaminated. He ripped the page out of the Post and wadded it up, crumpling it in his hands until it was only pulpy paper, and threw it across the narrow room into one of the puddles on the floor. He got up and stepped on it hard, grinding it into a sodden mess under his shoe and then stepped back and looked down at it, ashamed because he had destroyed beauty, had taken a living volute woman's hip and turned it into spitballs. Climbing the darkened stairs, feeling the maleness in him, the maleness that was denied, hushed, denounced, hedged in, scourged, damned, condemned, and used, feeling the excess that overflowed rancidly, burning acidly all through his blood and settling finally in his throat, a thick acidulous phlegm, feeling all that, he did not wonder that so many men woke up suddenly to find that they were married. But if you weren't, there was only one thing left to do.