The Boo (2 page)

“How’s life in the commandant’s department, Colonel?”

“You didn’t hear, bubba,” he answered. “They fired me. Canned me. Said I was bad for discipline. They shipped me down to the warehouse. Told me I couldn’t talk to any of the cadets. I’m in charge of the cadets’ luggage now. I order toilet paper for the whole campus. Supply and Property Officer.”

“You … bad for discipline?” I asked. To suggest that The Boo was bad for discipline was like proposing that a belief in God was inimical to prayer. The Boo was synonymous with discipline to the cadets of my generation. “Colonel,” I went on, “if you ever want to write your story and tell your side, please let me know. I’m living in Beaufort and want to be a writer.”

One month later I received a summons from The Boo. I drove up Highway 17 to Charleston and agreed to write the book. We sealed the agreement with a handshake, and that is the only contract we have ever had between us. I did not know how to write a book but I knew how to keep a promise. I wrote the book on bright Saturday mornings in Charleston when I could smell The Boo’s cigar in the next room and hear the voice of Mrs. Courvoisie in the kitchen. Six months went by without my producing a single chapter. Then I caught fire and in a single all-night session in The Boo’s guest room, I wrote fifty pages. I wrote so quickly, so artlessly; I wrote so slowly, so artlessly. I wrote without guile or craft, but from a simple consuming urgency to tell a story and to right a wrong. I wanted to get The Boo’s job back. I wanted The Citadel to understand the egregious nature of its mistake. In researching this book, I learned that if I could tell the whole truth about The Citadel, then I could write an accurate and withering description of the entire human race. The Citadel had its icons and kings, its psalmists and fools. This insight would be of incalculable value when I became a novelist and especially when I began
The Lords of Discipline.
I learned far more about The Citadel while writing
The Boo
than I did during my four years as a cadet.

The Citadel, also known as The Military College of South Carolina, was founded in 1842. The Citadel was very comfortable with the nineteenth century but has had some trouble adjusting to the twentieth. The Citadel sits on the edge of a salt marsh by the Ashley River in the city of Charleston. To the alumni, The Citadel is a religious, not a secular, enterprise and they speak of the school in hushed, ecclesiastical tones that tonsured monks usually reserve for Vatican City. The Citadel inspires more fanatacism per cubic inch than any college I know of, and there are always small-craft warnings around Charleston waters each year during homecoming. The Citadel prides itself on being one of the last protectorates of right-wing conservatism in the country. Its proudest moment occurred when two cadets from the school fired a cannon at the Star of the West, a Union ship trying to relieve the Northern garrison in Fort Sumter. This was the opening shot of the War Between the States and The Citadel’s transcendent moment of historical definition. The Citadel was occupied by Union troops after the War and not allowed to reopen until 1882. It is still one of the last places in America where a Brooklyn boy can learn to become a southerner and where a southerner can learn to become a Confederate.

By reading
The Boo
you will become acquainted with the most primitive archeological fragments of a writer’s beginnings. But I will say this about
The Boo:
it represents the best instincts of the boy I once was. It was my tribute, my heart-felt valentine to the one man who demonstrated a shining, innate sense of mercy and laughter in the dark land of the barracks. He was both dutiful and humane, stern and merciful, fierce and infinitely kind. The heart of a lion and the spirit of a lamb wrestled for primacy in his high-rulings over our destiny. He was the father of the Corps, the father who replaced the ones all of us had forsaken, and still needed, when we left our homes for college. Like all fathers, he was both prince and tyrant; like all fathers, there were times when he failed and betrayed us. But the mystique of Colonel Courvoisie lingers on indelibly at The Citadel, because all of us knew that he could never quite stop loving us. That love flowed through the campus, an invisible tributary of his advocacy and blind devotion, and there were times when we had to drink from those waters. The Citadel cut the flow when they fired Colonel Courvoisie, when they humiliated him, when they cut down one of their own sons in his prime. When they banished him from life with his cadets it was not merely an administrative decision: it had all the sad elements of the death of unsung kings.

The Boo had risen too high, too fast in the estimation of the Corps. He was more popular than Presidents, generals, members of of the Board of Visitors, and full colonels. He was the prince of our long season, a lowly lieutenant colonel elevated to royalty by the edicts of the Corps’ instinct and imagination. He was emblematic of what was best, the very finest, The Citadel could produce. He was fired because of human envy, because his superiors could not bear the devotional esteem in which he was held by his boys. He was fired, and the authorities put out the word among the alumni that The Boo was “bad for discipline.” I still hear that dispiriting phrase repeated by alumni I meet in my travels, men who spend their lives memorizing the cold, brittle fiats of the party line. There are some Citadel graduates who would innocently believe anything The Citadel espouses, who would repeat that the sun was bad for the growth of corn if the Board of Visitors endorsed the sentiment. In the high tribunals of The Citadel, the voice of Galileo recanting can be heard again and again and again. When this book came out, the long war of attrition between myself and The Citadel began.
The Boo
was banned on the Citadel campus for six years even though every penny of the book’s profits went to The Citadel. The ban was lifted when they heard I was writing a novel called
The Lords of Discipline,
and it occurred to them that a far harsher book was in the making.

Though The Boo was discredited, he was not forgotten. He kept his mouth shut, did his job at the warehouse, and brought a supererogatory grace to exile. After the book came out, a group of alumni met, started a scholarship committee and raised ten thousand dollars in The Boo’s name. The total has risen to over fifty thousand dollars since The Boo’s demotion. On what other college campus in America can they raise fifty thousand dollars to honor the man who handles the students’ luggage and who supplies the entire campus with paper clips and toilet paper? On October 19 of each year, the regimental band assembles in front of The Boo’s house to play music and deliver him a birthday cake. Each year, his legend grows, because The Citadel does not yet understand the special nature of myth and how it works. In silence, in duty, in dignity, The Boo has proved himself their superior. Mess captains require each freshmen to read this book and acquaint themselves with the history of Colonel Courvoisie’s tenure as assistant commandant. By suppressing the history of The Boo, The Citadel has only served as the reluctant minister of its survival. The Boo has grown mystical, supernatural in the minds of the present generation of cadets. In myth, he is a far more formidable and capable figure than he was in reality.

I was going to rewrite this whole book for the paperback edition. I was going to try to dazzle you with some fancy hijinks and handstands of language, use some of the new tricks and haughty pyrotechnics of the craft I have learned along the way. But I decided against it. I owe the boy who wrote this book the kindness of not condescending to the best he could do at that time. And it would take too long, and there are other things I want to write about now. There is no urgency to this project now; I know how the story ends. The Boo never got his job back, was never relieved from his job in the warehouse, never had a triumphant return into the full embrace of the Corps. He will retire in a year, there will be a parade in his honor for his many years of service to The Citadel, and he will disappear from the campus. But not completely. The writing of this book taught The Boo and me some things about the power of language. Because this book lives, he lives deeply. Because of words, he was not defeated. Because of the innate ability of human beings to be moved by injustice, his fate and reputation are immemorial.

I will leave the book as I wrote it. The changes will be cosmetic or explanatory. I am sorry I was not a better writer when I wrote
The Boo.
But I will tell you this: when I wrote the chapter at the end of the book entitled “Me and The Boo,” I heard the resonant, unmistakable sound of my voice as a writer for the first time. I felt the full authority of the writer’s scream forming in my chest, felt the birth of the artist in the wild country of the spirit, and knew it was somewhere in me and was deciding it was high time to begin moving out. I have tried to explain why this is not a better book. I hope that in the explanation, you fully understand why I love this book with all my heart.

P
AT
C
ONROY

August, 1981

SCENE ON THE BEACH ROAD

I heard him before I saw him. Call it a Boo-roar. Very loud and powerful. Its effect was immediate. No one moved. Like antelopes frozen on the grassy veldt, paralyzed by the sudden growl of the lioness walking downwind behind the herd; so we stood, too afraid to look around, and very uncertain about the next step we should take. When I finally did summon up the courage to turn toward the direction from whence the shout had come, I caught my first glimpse of
The Boo,
striding toward some terrified freshman who was trying to keep a forbidden rendezvous with his parents on the beach road. Cigar clenched between his teeth, eyes ablaze with wrath, he was loping in giant steps toward the quivering lad near the road.

The year is 1963 and I speak from memory. My freshman year at The Citadel had begun a week before. Plebe week with all of its irrational terrors had clouded my vision of the world and numbed my concept of self. I was standing in the sand at The Citadel beach house. Only freshmen were allowed this particular day. All about me milled the bleating herd of freshmen who had survived the initial immersion into the system. This day at the beach was our respite. On this day we rested. Even God rested on the seventh day. But my thoughts that day plotted escape: by plane, railroad, passing ship, or oxcart, I was going to get the hell out of the madhouse I had chosen for college. During plebe week I had a senior put a cigarette out on my arm, fainted in exhaustion during a sweat party, and hung suspended from a wall pipe while some daring young sergeant held a sword beneath me. This, I reasoned, was evidence enough that I had made a serious error in my choice of colleges. Unless you have attended a military school and unless you went through the plebe system, you will not fully appreciate my feelings at this time.

Memory differs from experience. Memory softens the features of upperclassmen’s faces that once seemed to emanate a sinister and all-corrosive evil. I forget much of the cruelty of that year, but remember most of those deliriously happy moments when the freshmen would gain small and insignificant victories over their tormentors. Memory is a kinder mistress than experience. On this day at the beach, I remember only one face and one sound. I know I complained to a hundred freshmen that day, but I remember none of them. The one indelible image I carry from that day is of a gray-haired, cigar-smoking, Lieutenant Colonel in the Army with a voice like a noon whistle. In a single moment of time, he imprinted his face and voice in the minds of every freshman on the beach. This was
The Boo.

The Boo.
Because of that initial introduction, I did not speak to him for over a year. The power and volume of his voice were unlike anything I had ever heard. I learned that day
The Boo
was an institution around The Citadel, that he was extremely well-liked by cadets, and that he was their most trusted friend on campus. Good guy or not, his voice could freeze souls traveling to purgatory, and I was not going to cross his path if I could help it.

Six full years have passed since that day. These years have brought remarkable changes in my perspective toward life and people. This book will reflect some of the changes. I have always thought that anyone who writes a book about The Citadel is treading on dangerous ground. She is a world apart. She is so different and so unique in a thousand ways. The Citadel has her quirks and eccentricities like all colleges, but hers seem to be odder than most and much more difficult to justify or explain. And what is humorous at The Citadel is often mere immaturity in civilian institutions. Incidents which find cadets slapping their knees and helplessly convulsed in laughter would not merit a courteous chuckle anywhere else. Even a language barrier separates The Citadel from the outside world.
Knob, plebe,
and
dumbhead
are terms which might be familiar to some civilians, but
shako, press, ERW,
and
pop-off
might as well be written in Sanskrit. Yet I want to write this book. The story of
The Boo
is one that should be told. It should be told now before the legend crumbles and disappears from the earth.

The Boo
is a special person. This book will prove that. Like the sterotype of the grizzled sergeant whose bark was worse than his proverbial bite,
The Boo
spent much of his life barking. He ranted and hollered at a generation of cadets, but could never quite conceal the vast and compassionate human spirit that pulsed beneath the surface. He was not perfect. In the performance of his duties as an Assistant Commandant, he could be a roaring bastard. In his performance of duty, he sometimes seemed too eager to pin the cadet to the wall. He had his warts and flaws. No doubt, some cadets hated his guts and will carry this hatred to their graves. But I do not give a damn about these cadets, just as I don’t give a damn about
The Boo’s
flaws. Neither do the cadets he helped, nor the cadets who looked to him as a father-figure away from home. And all cadets looked to him for bright moments in a sometimes gray and meaningless existence.