The Lords of Discipline (29 page)

The cadre was ready for the breakdown. It renewed their appetite and rewarded their forbearance. It signaled that the end was approaching.

“Cry, you pussy.”

“Cry, you fucking baby.”

“Aww, little baby wants his mama.”

“Poor little baby boy.”

“Cry, cry, cry, cry.”

I broke down completely. I fell apart in front of them, beyond grief, beyond humiliation.

Then they came at me again. The rifle held straight out and the pressure of wood behind my knees. I fainted again. The flood of water over my face. Rising. Falling again. The rifle and the confusion of the faces and the room and no asylum. The images of dogs and the fury of the pack as they shed the blood of the nineteen-year-old, as they assassinated the boy in me in one last savage feeding. I was sobbing uncontrollably now and begging them. I heard my voice and it was pleading with them. It was a voice asking for mercy.

“Please. Please don’t. Not any more. I can’t take any more.”

Fox threw me on the floor and demanded that I lick his shoes. I licked them. I grasped his ankles and licked his shoes and licked my tears that fell on his shoes and begged him to stop. I would leave school that minute. But please, stop. I can’t take any more. You’ve won. You’ve won.

I was kicked in the stomach and rolled over to Newman’s shoes. I licked his shoes and other shoes and every shoe that was put beneath my mouth.

Then I heard more shouts, but I had heard shouting all night. The shoe I was licking was withdrawn and I heard a violent argument break out. The shower room was filling up with other men from other companies. I could not recognize them through the tears. I could not see or focus. I could not breathe, and the sobs still racked my body. I looked up again into the bright lights as the argument grew fiercer.

The varsity basketball team was there. They looked large on the basketball court, but in the tight confines of that shower room, they were huge, mythical.

Lancey Hemphill had Fox by the throat. The team and the cadre were screaming at each other now. Lancey saw me on the floor. He turned back to Fox and backhanded him like he was hitting a doll. There was movement among the R Company cadre toward Hemphill but not much. Lancey came over and lifted me into his arms. I put my arms around his neck and hid my eyes against his chest. I could not bear to let my teammates see me like this. I could not bear the pain on their faces as they looked at me.

Lancey stopped at the door and said to the cadre, “Anybody says a fucking word to McLean from now until the end of the year, I’m going to the Bear and tell him what went on in here tonight. Fuck R Company and fuck the Taming. I’ll also beat the living shit out of every one of you duckbutts and my teammates will help me. You don’t ever fuck with a basketball jock. What a bunch of chicken shits. What fucking chickens.”

And Lancey Hemphill carried me like a child to my room.

I
did not feel my roommates undress me. I felt the cold cloths on my face. I felt Mark’s hands rubbing the tense muscles in my back and neck. I lay in my bed sweating and sobbing, but the sobs were tearless. I had no more to give that night. Tradd wrung out my uniform in the sink and Pig gave me a long, slow sponge bath, then rubbed me down with alcohol. I wanted to thank them. I remember that distinctly, but my lips could not form a single word. For three hours, I did not move but lay with my eyes open and unfocused on the ceiling. I was aware of people approaching me to look at me, to touch me, to whisper fervent words of support. My classmates came into the room one at a time to check in on me, to touch base, to tell me they understood: John Kinnell and Jim Massengale and Harvey Peak and Webb Stockton and John Alexander and all the rest. I heard them whispering to my roommates, and I heard Pig vowing revenge. All during evening study period I heard the hushed voices of angry boys, but they seemed to belong to another country that did not affect me.

Before taps, I began crying again, and the tears were real and flowing once more. I forced myself to stop, then began again. Each time I closed my eyes I saw them on me. I could not escape their voices, and my mouth tasted of the sweetish, nauseating oils of shoe polish. My tongue was discolored.

Pig came up and wiped my face with a washcloth. I fell asleep with him saying, “We’ll get them back, paisan. We’ll get them back.”

“All this for a fucking poem,” Mark said.

I did not hear the bugle play taps nor feel Mark cover me up with a blanket, nor Tradd remove my shirt and shoes. I did not see Pig set the clock for three in the morning. I did not hear the last conversation of my roommates before they went to sleep.

I awoke at half-past two and walked over to the sink for a glass of water. My whole body ached. I washed my face and examined the bruises on my body. I put an ointment on the two cigarette burns. I drank two more glasses of water.

I saw my face in the mirror, and it surprised me. I examined that grim, melancholy look. What has happened to me and will I ever be the same? I thought. They had transfigured my face in a single night. I had survived a day that would make me into a person I was never meant to be, because of what they had done to me, what they had said to me, what they had made me do. A new human was born in those two violent hours in the shower room. They had debased me, lessened me, and I had left something of irreplaceable value out there with the pack. I had lost something of inestimable worth, but I had finally learned all there was to know about the plebe system and my role in it. I had learned much of what I would need to know when I left the Gates of Legrand.

They had taught me about power and the abuse of power. Evil would always come to me disguised in systems and dignified by law. There would always be cadres and shower rooms, and they would always have dominion over me. They had taught me to hate them, but more significantly, they taught me that I was probably just like them, that I would abuse power whenever I had it, that I was the enemy of anyone who found himself beneath my boot.

They had promised to make a man out of me and they were doing it. They were making a mean and angry man. They had taken an eighteen-year-old boy. They had shaved his head, humiliated him, exhausted him. They had screamed at him for six months, starved him, made him afraid, obedient, humble, made him cry, made him sorry he was born. They castigated him, spat on him, beat him with their fists, waited for him in packs, sweated the youth out of him, ran him until he dropped, made him hate them and was hated in return, made him weep in front of them, lick their shoes, and beg them to let him leave.

Through all this they had left me a poisonous gift. They had made me want to belong to the brotherhood. They made me want to be one of them. And at the end of nine months, I would shake their hands during the recognition ceremony. They would call me by my first name and I would call them by their first names. And at that moment, even Fox, the worst of them all, the most cowardly and the most damaged by the system, would approach me and, with the benediction of history and tradition, call me his brother, his friend and comrade. He would call me himself. He would pass the fire and the dark eyes on to me, as I would pass it ruthlessly on to others. That was the way it worked.

I began crying again by the sink and the alarm went off. It was three o’clock in the morning. Pig and Mark were up at the sound of the alarm. They woke Tradd and began to dress silently. Pig told me to get dressed. I washed my face in the sink and got control of myself again. I put on a clean pair of pants and a T-shirt. Mark came up to me and squeezed my shoulder.

“We’ll get him now,” he said to me, but I didn’t know what he meant.

They left the room and stepped onto a dark and noiseless gallery. I followed the three of them. The barracks slept. Mark carried a blanket under his arm. We padded softly in our bare feet down to the third division. We moved like commandoes, listening and watching for movement along the galleries.

We stopped at Fox’s room.

Mark put his fingers to his lips when he saw the look of fear and astonishment cross my face. Pig carefully opened the door. Fox’s roommate had mononucleosis and had been in the hospital since February. Fox slept soundly and alone in the bottom bunk. Pig signaled for us to follow him.

Fox slept on his back. His mouth was open and his head was tilted to his left. His breathing was deep and regular. We surrounded him and Pig gave the signal.

Mark threw the blanket over Fox’s head and Pig began savagely punching the figure beneath the blanket. His fists battered Fox’s face, and Mark’s hand was clasped firmly against his mouth. Tradd and I began to beat against Fox’s body with our fists, and Mark was flailing at him with his free hand. Fox struggled fiercely, but there were too many blows coming at once. Pig’s arms were moving in short brutal punches as if he was working out on a speed bag. The blanket wrapping Fox’s face became covered with blood. All of us kept striking and beating until the movement stopped almost completely. I moved up higher and began punching the face, going wild, hoping I was breaking bones.

Mark touched my shoulder, motioned toward the door, and the four of us broke out of that room and ran undetected and unobserved to our alcove on fourth division. We were laughing as we crawled back into our beds. Pig washed the blood off his hands before he climbed into his upper bunk.

Fox did not make it to morning formation the next day and was marked absent. When they found him after breakfast, his face was completely torn up. His face was swollen beyond recognition. The Corps blamed it on Lancey Hemphill and the basketball team, and the word went out to all the cadres to ease up on the jocks.

Chapter Twenty

B
y the first of May the plebe system was winding down. We were one month away from being sophomores. The days were long again, and we sweated in our cotton uniforms as we sat in classes with all the windows open and the sweet fragrance of the Charleston spring hanging like an invisible canopy over the city. There were pigeons nesting in the eaves of the fourth division and regattas in the harbor on the weekends.

In the barracks, the grand forgetfulness had begun among the freshmen as we recognized the imminence of our apotheosis from plebes to upperclassmen. We began to stir with the arrogance of survivors and felt, at last, that we were legitimate citizens of that gray stone realm. The plebe system had relaxed to such a degree that we were beginning to leave the gutters and walk across the parade ground after dark when we were certain there were no upperclassmen around to intercept us. The barracks had lost its aura of terror and had begun to feel like a place where we belonged, a place that we had earned the right to call our own. Certainly, Fox and Newman and a few others had not relaxed at all, but most of their classmates had eased up to the point that they sometimes walked into our rooms during evening study period just to talk. They were not yet friendly, but they were preparing the ground for future alliances. During formation, you could begin selecting the sophomores and juniors who would be your friends the next year.

Yet there were still the occasional sweat parties, the room inspections, and the de rigueur harassment at mess. There was still the residue of the system and the halfhearted compliance to the system, which was in effect until the last week of school and the recognition ceremony But the plebes stirred with impatience, and slowly in our own way, we began to act like cadets instead of knobs.

On Pigs birthday, his girl friend, Theresa, sent him a large package, which he unwrapped in the post office on Friday afternoon after parade. The package was filled to overflowing with Italian sausages, thick, aromatic cheeses, and a red-checkered tablecloth. There was also a large chocolate cake with fat pecans buttoned into the icing.

“A feast, paisans,” Pig crowed with delight, “an Italian feast like we have on the feast of St. Joseph.”

“St. Joseph wasn’t Italian,” Tradd said.

“He doesn’t know what he was missing,” Pig said, biting into a piece of provolone. “We’ll eat like Nero tonight. We’ll pretend we’re watching hons eating a couple of fat Christians while we’re doing some serious scoff on a couple of pounds of sausage and cheese.”

“Let’s pretend we’re watching the Hons eat a couple of fat upperclassmen.”

“Oh gross,” Tradd said. “Y’all are spoiling my appetite. It’s bad enough thinking about eating all this greasy meat. Did they cook it thoroughly? What’s in that sausage?”

“Meat,” Pig said simply.

“The finest meat available, geek,” Mark said.

“Italians make their sausage out of pig embryos and Vitalis, Tradd,” I said seriously. “It’s considered a delicacy by flies and maggots.”

“Don’t say anything about the food Theresa sent. You know how I feel about anything connected to Theresa.”

“Theresa could send canned shit and Pig would eat it like caviar,” Mark said.

“I’ll eat the cake,” Tradd said,

“Let’s get back to the barracks,” Pig said, putting the package under his arm. “Let’s be real quiet though. I don’t want the upperclassmen taking this stuff away and feeding their own ugly mugs.”

W
e made the right-angle turn into the barracks and ran along the galleries toward the R Company area without much concern for interception. Most cadets were out in Charleston on general leave, and the barracks had the appearance of an abandoned fort. We were mounting the steps leading to second division when we heard a voice cry out from third division, “Halt, dumbheads.”

Blasingame and Maccabee, dressed in salt-and-pepper, were coming down the stairs from third division on the way out to the parking lot beside the barracks.

“What have we here, Mr. Pignetti?” Blasingame said. “It looks like a care package from home. Am I correct?”

“Sir?” Pig said, clutching the package tighter under his arm.

“Surely, you understood me, Mr. Pignetti,” Blasingame said, rubbing his hands together. “I think it is my duty to check this out thoroughly. We have a responsibility to the Institute to make sure our knobs don’t get fat eating the goodies from their mothers’ kitchens. Fat knobs make sloppy knobs, I’ve always said. And sloppy knobs are bad for Big R.”