The Boo (7 page)

As
The Boo
and Cadet Wudie walked out of fourth battalion, they were met by Cadet North in the sallyport. He once again asked the Colonel a question. “Could you please tell me why you were checking those books, Sir?” “Because I was told to check them, Bubba.” “Should I call my father, Colonel?” “Do you think you ought to call your father, Bubba?” “Yes, Sir. I know why you’re checking the books.” The cadet was a senior planning to get married in June and making the Air Force a career. Friends of his told
The Boo
the boy was so intense about saving money that on the long drive to his home in Virginia on Christmas furlough, North drank only a glass of water while the other cadets in his car loaded up on hamburgers and milkshakes. His Air Force career was sold for $47.50.

The appearance of the Clarey twins made them easy to underestimate. Both were squat and dumpy, red-headed and funny as hell. They worked as a team in anything they did on campus, and even though one was basically an extrovert and the other more reflective and an introvert, when they got together they clicked like blinking lights together. You could shut one of them up and the other one automatically started chattering like a sarcastic rodent. They stood beside each other in the same squad, lived in the same room, and ate together on the same mess. Everyone gave the Clarey twins a wide berth, and few people wanted to incur the wrath of either one since that entailed warfare with the other, too. They wisecracked and clowned their way through four years of The Citadel, but they saved their most memorable performance for graduation day.

Graduation is one of those serio-happy days when the Generals dress more ostentatiously than usual, when the Professors look more forbidding and learned than usual, and when the cadets fidget more often than usual. Boring speech would follow boring speech as some unknown orator would deliver the graduation address satiated with phrases about youth being the key to tomorrow’s world and other such profundities. After the speeches, Colonel Hoy would begin calling the names of the graduates. They would walk across the stage, individually, shake hands with General Clark with one hand, and receive their diplomas with the other. Graduation was nice. General Clark liked it. The Board of Visitors liked it. Moms and Dads like it. And the Cadets hated it, for without a doubt it ranked as the most boring event of the year. Thus it was in 1964 the Clarey twins pulled the graduation classic.

When Colonel Hoy called the name of the first twin, instead of walking directly to General Clark to receive his diploma, he headed for the line of visiting dignitaries, generals, and members of the Board of Visitors who sat in a solemn semi-circle around the stage. He shook hands with the first startled general, then proceeded to shake hands and exchange pleasantries with every one on the stage. He did this so quickly that it took several moments for the whole act to catch on. When it finally did, the Corps went wild. General Clark, looking like he just learned the Allies had surrendered to Germany, stood dumbfounded with Clarey number one’s diploma hanging loosely from his hand; then Clarey number two started down the line, repeating the virtuoso performance of Clarey number one, as the Corps whooped and shouted their approval. The first Clarey grabbed his diploma from Clark and pumped his hand furiously up and down. Meanwhile, his brother was breezing through the handshaking exercise. As both of them left the stage, they raised their diplomas above their heads and shook them like war tomahawks at the wildly applauding audience. No graduation is remembered so well.

The Regimental Executive Officer of an intentionally forgotten year came up to
The Boo
after military science class and asked
The Boo
for an “A.” “Why do you need it, Bubba? To graduate?” “No, Sir, I want to make gold stars.” “Hey, Bubba.” “Yes, Sir.” “Drop living dead.”

Many future pilots seem eager and gung-ho, but few wanted to fly as badly as Bill Talbert. He was doing extremely well during his eye examination at Charleston Air Force Base, until the doctor made the fairly relevant discovery that Bill was wearing contact lenses.

When Rick Lovefellow took off his shoes and socks and danced like a sugar plum fairy through field and grass reciting Keats and Coleridge to a group of cadets, no one seemed to think it strange or extraordinary because it was Rick Lovefellow doing it and everyone knew Rick Lovefellow was crazy as hell anyway.
Boo
shouted at crazy old Rick Lovefellow for four years and old Rick just grinned that huge grin which spread all over his face and then seemed to ripple through any crowd he might have assembled around him.
Boo
once caught him wearing a pair of shoes that looked like they might have been taken from a dead soldier’s feet after the battle of Tippecanoe. Terrible shoes with big gaping holes exposing toes and metatarsals to the world. Of course, Rick had put several Johnson’s bandaids over the holes and painted them black, but still the finished product did not deserve to grace Rick’s feet at a Saturday morning inspection when all the earth expected cadets to shine like grounded stars.
The Boo
found him that day and roared at Rick with his turbojet voice and crucified him without using nails, and humiliated him in front of an entire battalion, and Rick just grinned.

On another occasion Rick slouched his way across the parade ground during summer school, wearing bleached, torn blue jeans which Rick thought gave him a sexy, symbol-of-the-sixties look.
Boo’s
dress edict of the summer declared that no cadet will wear blue jeans on campus.
Boo’s
voice boomed across the parade ground and halted Mr. Lovefellow dead
on
the spot. “Mr. Lovefellow, don’t you realize you are wearing blue jeans on campus?” “So I am, Colonel. So I am.” “What are we going to do about it, Bubba?” “Let’s let it go by this time and play the game some other day, Colonel.” “Give me your pants, Bubba.” “Pardon me, Colonel.” “Give me your pants, Lovefellow. A cadet cannot be seen walking around campus wearing blue jeans.” Rick, a little more serious now, said, “Colonel, Sir, pardon me, but it would be a hell of a lot better than a cadet walking around in his underwear.” “Shed ’em, Bubba.” So several cadets saw Rick Lovefellow racing for first battalion, his bare legs exposed to the harsh Charleston sun and his buttocks covered by a pair of new fruit of the looms, but they just nodded and noted that Rick Lovefellow was still crazy as hell and didn’t think too much more about it.

At the graduation review of 1968,
The Boo
was shaking hands with the band seniors as he was accustomed to do. Something caught his eye about thirty yards down the line of seniors. Something odd. He walked down the line and found a grinning Rick Lovefellow sporting a huge gold medallion about the size of a volley ball suspended from his neck by a gaudy red ribbon a foot wide.
Boo
slowly untied the medallion and whispered soft thunder into Lovefellow’s ear, saying, “You Bum, if you want to sit in your room until 0900 hours Saturday morning, you just look like you’re going to pull one more stunt like this.”
The Boo
turned away from Rick and spotted Colonel and Mrs. Lovefellow standing about twenty feet behind their son.
The Boo
walked up to Mrs. Lovefellow and growled, “Does this belong to your son, Madame?” She swore she didn’t know the lad.

Basil Rathbone, English actor who won his major fame by playing Sherlock Holmes in the movies, came to The Citadel to deliver Shakespearean readings as a tribute to the 400th anniversary of the Bard. The salute guns awakened him at three in the morning and he thought it strange, the customs and traditions adhered to by these military colleges. Basil was not the only person awakened. A senior private in first battalion woke up and looked out in time to see cadets going in the vents on the north side of second battalion. The next day he told
The Boo
what he had seen. Colonel Courvoisie went down to second battalion and checked the vents which led under the barracks. On one vent he found a false, wooden bar, painted to match the other bars, which was removable.
The Boo
entered the vent, saw some footprints and followed them to a band company room. He took the room number, then left the barracks. He called the cadets who occupied the room later that day. “Bums, I found some footprints leading to your room from an outside vent. Now, unless you come up with some other names, you are going to get 3/60 for firing the salute guns at three in the morning.” “But, Colonel, we didn’t do it.” “I know, Bubba, but you know who did.” Several hours later, the two cadets who had interrupted Basil’s sleep, Neck Selzner and Frank Rabon, turned themselves in and asked for mercy.

While checking summer school barracks,
Boo
walked into an empty room and found two three-foot alligators with their mouths taped shut, wandering around the floor. With a roar that awoke newborn infants in Roper Hospital,
The Boo
stood from the top gallery and said, “Get these damn alligators out of here before I throw them off the top division.” The message carried all the way to Chris Carraway who was attending class at the time, but who hurried to the barracks to retrieve his ’gators before they became airborne.

Wayne Wolski, a Cadet who never graduated from The Citadel, called Colonel Courvoisie one Wednesday night after he left school and said, “Colonel, I want you to be godfather for my child. I don’t want anyone else, understand me?” “O. K. Bubba, don’t get riled, nothing’s wrong with your kid, even if his father is a Bum.”

THE STORY OF MR. BISON

In 1965 Eddie Teague recruited a boy from Mobile, Alabama, who had the potential to become an outstanding interior lineman for The Citadel’s football team. Because of a nineteen inch neck which seemed to blend imperceptibly into his massive shoulders, he was dubbed “Mr. Bison” by other members of the squad. Some of them had met this neck head-on in a fierce scramble on the practice field. Mr. Bison handled himself well. In the violent world of football, where success was measured by the number of bodies strewn in your path, the boy from Mobile with the stove pipe neck would easily match the best of them. The Corps became accustomed to cheering the quick, sharp tackles made by the Bison in his relentless pursuit of enemy ball carriers. He lettered in his sophomore year. Things looked good and Mr. Bison wrote his mother that he had picked a fine school.

Things had not always been good. His childhood had been a hard one. His father’s connection with the Mafia caused a great deal of dissension between his parents. He spent his early years watching a procession of surly hoods parade through his house. They seemed oblivious to the arguments that inevitably punctuated their visits. The arguments eventually caused a rift which led to separation and divorce. Mr. Bison’s father, freed from family ties, became a drifter and faded out of his son’s life forever. The mother assumed responsibility for raising the family. The hard times came. Poverty entered Mr. Bison’s life. He watched his mother come home from work, fix dinner and fall into bed exhausted. This was a daily ritual. Yet no matter how hard she worked or how exhausted she became, there still was not enough food, nor clothes, nor anything. Some of the kids at school made fun of Mr. Bison’s clothes, but not for long. His quick temper would flash and the growing bison would silence his antagonist or get the hell beat out of him trying. He started hanging around the tough kids at school. They were kids like him who didn’t have enough money. They came from the poor section of town and their bond was the hard affection of alienated children painfully aware of their poverty.

In Junior High School, Mr. Bison discovered football. On the field he learned that some of the hate inside him could be released by driving his shoulder into the gut of an opponent or by racing downfield and splitting a defensive halfback in two with a well-executed body block. And people praised you for it. Teachers didn’t yell at you and the principal didn’t suspend you. Everyone cheered. The harder you hit someone or the more savagely you tackled someone, the louder the applause became. In a world of contradictions, Mr. Bison found the niche that would carry him from high school in Mobile, Alabama, to the more spacious arena of Johnson Hagood Stadium in Charleston, South Carolina.