From Here to Eternity Read Online Free

.45. Because six slugs from a .38 Special would not knock a juramentado down. And, in his condition, obviously, you had to knock him down to stop him. The .45 was guaranteed to knock any man off his feet, if it only hit the tip of his little finger, or your money back. And the Army, said Uncle John, had been using it effectively ever since. The boy Prewitt doubted that about the little finger, but he liked the story. It impressed him with a sense of seeing history made, as did the stories of young Hugh Drum and young John Pershing and the expedition on Mindanao and the trek around the edge of Lake Lanao. They proved the Moros were good men, worthy opponents of his Uncle John. Sometimes when his Uncle John had swilled enough white lightning he would sing the song about the "monkeys have no tails in Zamboanga" that had been his Regimental song. And he would alternate the Philippines with Mexico and stories of an older, much less informal Blackjack and of young Sandy Patch, not yet too great a man to be informal. But Uncle John always made it plain, especially to the boy, the reason why he had come home in 1916 and stayed in Harlan mining coal all during the World War. Uncle John wanted to be a farmer, and it was probably this that kept him from acquiring that Great, American, Retrospective Spirit of Romance. It would be nice to think of a grubby miner's son with a dirt-rimmed mouth possessed of so burning a dream to see the world and help make history, via The Profession, that he refused to have it thwarted. But Uncle John Turner was not the kind of man who'd let his nephew dream of a life of adventure, via The Profession, and have it on his conscience. It happened quite, quite differently. When the boy Prewitt was in the seventh grade his mother died of the consumption. There was a big strike on that winter and she died in the middle of it. If she had had her choice, she could have picked a better time. Her husband, who was a striker, was in the county jail with two stab wounds in his chest and a fractured skull. And her brother, Uncle John, was dead, having been shot by several deputies. Years later there was a lament written and sung about that day. They said blood actually ran like rainwater in the gutters of Harlan that day. They gave Uncle John Turner the top billing, a thing he doubtless would have decried with vigor. The boy Prewitt saw that battle, at least as near as any man can ever come to seeing any battle. The only thing he saw and could remember was his Uncle John. He and two other boys stood in a yard to watch until one of the other boys got hit with a stray bullet, then they ran home and did not watch the rest. Uncle John had had his .45 and he shot three deputies, two of them as he was going down. He only got to fire three times. The boy was interested in proving the guarantee of the .45, but since all the deputies were hit in the head they would have gone down anyway. Uncle John did not hit any of them on the tip of the little finger. So when his mother died there was nobody to stop him except his father in the jail, and since his father had beaten him again just two days before the battle he did not figure his father counted either. Having made up his mind, he took the two dollars that was in the grocery jar, telling himself his mother would not need it and it would be good enough for his father and would help to put them square, and he left. The neighbors took up a collection for his mother's funeral but he did not want to see it. The disintegration of a family, where the family still has meaning, emotes tragedy in every one. Its consolatory picture is of the surviving member freed to follow his lifelong ambition, a sort of Dick Whittington with a bandanna tied to a stick but no cat. But it was not this with him either, any more than it was the burning dream to see the world and help make history. He had never heard of a Lord Mayor and he had no ambition. The Profession, and the bugle, came much later. As