From Here to Eternity Read Online Free Page B

driving him he worked hard for a year and a half and earned himself another, totally different reputation. At the end of that year and a half he had earned himself a rating of First and Third and he was good, good enough to play the Armistice Day Taps at Arlington, the Mecca of all Army buglers. He really had a call. Arlington was the high point and it was a great experience. He had finally found his place and he was satisfied to settle into it. His enlistment was almost up by then and he planned to re-enlist at Myer. He planned to stay there in that Bugle Corps for his full thirty years. He could see ahead down the line, obviously, and quite clearly, how smoothly it would go and the fullness it would be. That was before the other people began to come into it. Up until then it had only been himself. Up to then it had been a private wrestle between him and himself. Nobody else much entered into it. After the people came into it he was, of course, a different man. Everything changed then and he was no longer the virgin, with the virgin's right to insist upon platonic love. Life, in time, takes every maidenhead, even if it has to dry it up; it does not matter how the owner wants to keep it. Up to then he had been the young idealist. But he could not stay there. Not after the other people entered into it. At Myer all the boys hung out in Washington on their passes and he hung out there too. That was where he met the society girl. He picked her up at a bar, or she picked him up. It was his first introduction into the haut monde, outside of the movies, and she was good looking and definitely high class, was going to college there, to be a journalist. It was not a great love or anything like that; half of it, for him, for both of them, was that the miner's son was dining at the Ritz, just like the movies said. She was a nice kid but very bitter and they had a satisfying affair. They had no poor little rich girl trouble because he did not mind spending her money and they did not worry and stew about an unladylike marriage. They had good fun for six months, up until she gave him the clap. When he got out of the GU Clinic his job was gone and his rating with it. The army did not have sulfa then, it could not make up its mind to adopt the doubtful stuff until the war, and it was a long and painful process, getting cured, with lots of long-handled barbs and cutters. One boy he met there was on his fourth trip through the Clinic. Unofficially, nobody really minded the clap. It was a joke to those who had never had it and to those who had been over it for a little while. No worse than a bad cold, they said. Apparently the only time it was not a joke was when you had it. And instead of hurting your unofficial reputation it boosted you a notch, it was like getting a wound stripe. They said that in Nicaragua they used to give out Purple Hearts. But officially it hurt your Service Record, and it automatically lost you your rating. On your papers it put a stigma on you. When he put in to get back in the Bugle Corps, he found that while he was away they had suddenly gone overstrength. He went back on straight duty for the rest of his enlistment. Already the other people were beginning to come into it. It seemed that any man could drive a car, but the only man who never had a wreck was the guy who drove not only for himself but for the other driver too. When his time was up they tried to re-enlist him for the same outfit, there at Myer. He wanted that hundred and fifty dollar bonus, but he wanted to get as far away from there as he could go. That was why he picked Hawaii. He went up once, to see his society girl before he left. He had heard guys say they would kill any woman who gave them the clap; or they would go out and give it to every woman they could lay; or they would beat her up until she wished she had of died. But having the clap did not make him bitter against all women or anything like that. It was a chance you took with every woman,