The Lords of Discipline (64 page)

The room grew quiet after the departure of Tradd and Pig. Mark flicked on the radio to an FM station. The music was uninspired, but it did not intrude on my thoughts and had a calming effect on me. I went to my desk, put on the lamp, and tried to start a paper on
The Portrait of a Lady.
I had never liked Henry James before I read that novel, had never expected to, and had considered him one of those irritatingly voluble novelists who used the language as if he hated English-speaking people. But he had moved me deeply with the story of Isabel Archer.

I heard Mark turning the pages of his chemistry text. He cleared his throat and shifted irascibly in his chair. He turned the radio down, then turned it up again. All the windows in the room were open and there was a breeze off the Ashley River.

I began my paper but began it badly. I never began things well. The first sentence had too many adjectives. So did the second. Remembering that my professor in the modern novel, Colonel Masters, a shy and excellent teacher, had chided me gently about my irrepressible love of adjectives, I started again with clear simple sentences. Nouns and verbs, nouns and verbs, and occasionally, to satisfy my own simple lust, I would throw in a delicious, overwrought adjective or two. I wrote six sentences, six strong sentences, then I thought about Annie Kate. I was doing that less often now. When she first left me, I could think of nothing else. Her tyranny over my dreams and my daydreams was unshakable and complete. The memory of her filled me with sadness. Isabel Archer had reminded me of Annie Kate and that had made the book cut deeply. And still I could not tell anyone of Annie Kate. She was still my secret, my shame, my love. I had thought of a thousand reasons to hate Annie Kate, but I was not capable of hating her. I had been hurt my first time out, the first time I had ever given my love completely, without holding back and without reservation. I had been hurt and I would survive it. I had given her the whole banquet, the whole shy feast of boyhood, and Annie Kate, as was her right, had decided that she did not want it. I wrote some more about Isabel Archer, and I wrote simply again and in a way that would please Colonel Masters.

As I wrote, the radio played on the edge of my consciousness and I heard Mark stir again. I liked it when I could feel myself study, when I was serious about it, when I was thinking about subjects that had nothing at all to do with life in the barracks. I loved the ritual of my room during evening study period. I cherished the silence in the barracks. Ritual was safety. I would study for the rest of the year and only leave my room for classes and formation. An hour passed quickly. Then there was a disturbance in the barracks. It sounded far off, remote as an explosion on a star observed by an astronomer. But the noise grew louder, and Mark clicked off the radio and strained to hear it.

In a few moments we heard feet running on the gallery. Mark left the room to investigate. I walked over to his desk and cut the radio back on and turned it up loud. I would investigate nothing for the rest of the year. My curiosity had burned out on the General’s island. I was a theme writer again, I thought, as I began to hear the old familiar sound of cadets whispering outside the alcove, of messages being passed, and rumors being borne along the arches of the galleries. Rumor moved with astonishing swiftness in the barracks, a system of communication developed out of a prisoner’s instinct for survival behind stone walls. Voices grew louder outside my door. I heard shouting. I walked to Mark’s desk again and turned the radio even louder. On the quadrangle, far below me, I heard the OC and OG ordering cadets back to their rooms. The entire barracks was alive, and all the cadets were pressing along the railings, staring through the arches, listening for innuendo, making judgments in the darkness, passing time and whispering. The loudspeaker crackled into life, and a voice commanded, “All cadets in fourth battalion will return to their rooms immediately. I say again. All cadets in fourth battalion will return to their rooms immediately.” I refused to hear the voice, the voices. I was panic-stricken for no reason. I wanted Mark to return. I wanted Pig and Tradd around me. Desperately, I began writing again, flipping through the pages of
The Portrait of a Lady,
copying passages I had marked in ink.

The barracks became quiet again, but still I could feel the cold undercurrents, the whispers of discord loose among the arches again. I could hear the demons astir in the sally port, and I could see them fixing their baleful, inexhaustibly evil stares up on fourth division. It was not a premonition; it was an unconscious form of knowledge. The eye of the beast was on my room again. I felt it; I knew it; I had summoned it. I turned the radio up louder and switched it to a rock station. I tried to write about Henry James again but instead kept writing Annie Kate’s name over and over again and wished that she still loved me, would do anything if she still loved me.

There were voices outside my door. I recognized one of them. I loved one of them. The beast, lathered and exhausted, had climbed the long circling stairs to the fourth division. His hooves clattered in my brain, nervously, impatiently. I thought he would attack me as he had before, frontally, the assault from the sea. But not this time. The beast had watched me for too long and knew my weakest points. He had killed Annie Kate’s child as a sign of his powers, a monstrous proof of his existence. He had caused Annie Kate not to love me because he knew that would hurt even more than the death of the child. I had created the beast out of my doubts and neuroses, had fattened him on my nightmare, had made him hideous with my self-loathing, had taught him my secrets of deception and manipulation, and had nurtured him on my loneliness. He came to me only when I was limping and damaged and vulnerable, when all defenses were down. He never arrived when I was healthy, glowing, and eager for the fray. No, he made his black overtures only when I gave off a scent of frailty and weakness. He would see me trembling and I would hear his loathsome, volatile approaches cutting off my exits. The galleries were silent again.

The door opened.

Pig was led into the room by Major Mudge and the Officer of the Guard.

“This man is under room arrest, Mr. McLean,” Major Mudge said without looking at me. “He is not to leave this room except under guard. Mr. Pignetti, report to my office at 0800 tomorrow to inform me of your decision.”

They left the room. Pig and I stared at each other.

“Will,” he said, and his voice broke me.

“Will,” Pig said again, as though my name were a cry of help.

“What happened, Pig?” I asked. “Tell me everything that happened. Is it bad?”

Outside the door I could hear the murmuring voices again as the high-velocity winds of rumor began their roaring along the gallery.

“You’ve got to help me, Will,” he begged, and it was begging, not asking.

“I can’t help you until I know what happened,” I answered. “Please sit down and tell me what happened.”

“You can get me out of it,” he said desperately, clutching at my collar and ripping off my R Company insignia. “You know them. They’re your friends. You can talk to them and make a deal with them. Tell them we’ll do anything.”

“What are you talking about? What happened, for godsakes? Talk to me, Pig.”

“You sit on the honor court,” he said. “You can convince them that I’m innocent.”

“Honor court!” I shouted at him. “What the fuck did you do, Pig? Did they get you for a goddam honor violation?”

“It was a setup, Will,” Pig said despairingly. “I’ve always been careful. I’m too good to be surprised. But they knew I was there. They were watching me. They were hidden. I didn’t see them until it was too late.”

“Tell me what you did, Pig,” I said, trying to remain rational.

“Don’t you see, Will? They knew I was going to be out there. I was followed. I was followed out of this room and they waited until they saw me do something wrong, then they caught me. You were right, Will, they’re going to try to get all of us. One by one.”

The door opened suddenly. Mark walked into the room, his face dark and surly, and without speaking to either Pig or me flung open Pig’s locker and began throwing his uniforms onto the floor.

“Start packing, asshole-breath,” Mark said fiercely to Pig. “Start packing and don’t talk.”

Pig went over to Mark with his hands held in the air in a supplicatory, defeated gesture and said, “Please, Mark, don’t do this to me. I need you guys now more than I ever have. I need the help of the paisans. I have to have it. I’m dead without your help.”

“Pig,” Mark exploded. “You poor dumb bastard. You’re dead anyway. You’re dead, boy, and there’s nothing anybody can do about it. Will, Mudge and the OG caught Pig out in the parking lot with a gas can and a siphoning hose, unscrewing the gas cap from a car that wasn’t his. Pretty, huh? Isn’t that a pretty little crime? It makes a lot of fucking sense after we just laid over fifty bananas on him right before he went down to steal gas in the parking lot.”

“Oh, Jesus,” I said. “Oh, Jesus, Pig. It’s over. They caught you doing that?”

“I can’t resign, Will,” he said pleadingly. “I’ve got to beat the rap. You’ve got to help me beat the rap.”

“There’s no rap to beat, Pig,” I said, my voice putting distance between us. “There’s nothing to do. There’s no case to fucking try. You got caught red-handed when you knew they were after you, after all of us. It was stealing, period. The only thing left for you to do is resign and move to some other college. You’re out of this school, Pig. I can promise you that. You might as well take off your ring and throw it into the Ashley River. You’re gone, Pig. You’re out.”

Pig grabbed me and shook me violently. I thought he was going to begin hitting me with his fist. He raised his fist but did not strike.

“You shut up, Will,” he threatened. “You shut up now or I’ll hurt you bad. I’ll break bones and hurt you. There’s got to be a way. You know all the members of the court. You could talk to them. You could get to one of them. You’re one of them.”

“You touch him and I’ll kill you, Pig,” Mark said, moving toward us.

“Do you want me to pay them off, Pig?” I said to him. “It isn’t the fucking Mafia over there. I go around talking to guys on the court and they’ll ship me out of here along with you. What do you want me to tell them, Pig? What do I say to them? Help me out, man? Do I say that my good friend, Dante Pignetti, was out for an evening stroll in the parking lot with a gas can and a siphoning hose? Pig, you’ve got to resign. I’ve been on the court. I know the game. You go before the court and the drums will roll for you, boy. All of us will be on the parade ground after dark with those drums beating and you walking the line between us. You just don’t have the right to put us through that. We don’t deserve that from you.”

“I thought you were my friend,” he said.

“I am your friend, Pig,” I said softly, laying his head on my shoulder. “This is your friend talking. Your friend is telling you to resign.”

“What about the Army?” he asked.

“That’s over for now,” I answered.

“What do I tell my father? My mother? How can I tell Theresa? We’re getting married on Saturday. I can’t call off the wedding. How can I tell my family and my fiancee that I’m getting kicked out of the Institute for an honor violation? I’ll be disgraced.”

“You are disgraced, meatbrain,” Mark snarled, moving in between Pig and me. “Get it through your fat Italian head. It’s finished.”

Pig looked at me and said, “The honor court’s my only chance, Will. Will you defend me before the court?”

“You’ll lose, Pig,” I said, dropping my eyes from his. “You’ll lose and it’ll be much worse for all of us.”

“Will you defend me, paisan?” he insisted. “I’m begging you, paisan. I’ll get on my fucking knees and beg you. I need you, paisan.”

“You’ll lose, Pig,” I said again. “Do you hear me? There’s nothing to defend. There’s nothing to say. There’s only the mercy of the court, and I’ve been on that court. There’s not that much mercy there. I’m not merciful when I’m on that court. You just sit in judgment and if a cadet lies, steals, or cheats, you kick him out. It’s much better for you to resign with an honor violation pending against you, Pig, than to walk to the drums. You’ve seen people get drummed out of here, Pig. We must have seen twenty or thirty guys leave that way. There’s nothing worse than can happen on this campus. Man, it’s hard walking between those lines, walking the length of the regiment, with your friends turning their backs on you and swearing never to speak your name again.”

In horror, Pig said, “Will you speak my name again, Will?”

I looked directly into his eyes and said, “Not if you leave on an honor violation, Pig.”

“You won’t even speak my
name,
paisan?” he asked disbelievingly, as though the reality, the untenability, of his position was reaching his consciousness at last. “You won’t even say my name or be my friend or come to visit me and Theresa?”

“No,” I answered.

“And you, Mark?” said Pig.

“You know the system, Pig,” Mark said, turning away from him. “You’ve been a part of it. You leave on an honor violation and it’s like you’ve died. No, it’s like you never even existed.”

“But we’ve been through too much,” he protested vainly. “We beat the plebe system together and we made it all the way to the end of our senior year together. We fought them all the way, the four of us, together, as brothers, as close as any guys in the world can be, and now you’re telling me that I’m not even going to be a name to you. I’m not even going to be a
name
to you? I’m not even going to be alive to you.”

“Shut up, Pig,” Mark said. “Be a man.”

“You be a man, Santoro. It’s my ass we’re talking about. It’s my life that’s going to be ruined. It’s my parents I’m going to have to tell. It’s my fiancee who’s going to be hurt. How can I look Theresa in the eyes and tell her I was dishonorable? She wouldn’t believe it. She knows me too well.”

“You
were
dishonorable,” Mark said. “Now accept the consequences. There’s nothing more to be said. I don’t want Will to defend you before the court. I won’t let Tradd do it either.”