The Lords of Discipline (65 page)

“Why not?” Pig asked. “Will you please tell me why the fuck not? I have a right to be tried.”

“Because I don’t want them defending someone who’s guilty, someone who doesn’t deserve to wear the ring.”

“You son of a bitch,” Pig said.

“You’re a guy who siphons gas for nickles and dimes, meatbrain. You’re a two-bit crook. You don’t take it like a man when you get caught. You want to drag Will through the slime with you. You don’t have the guts to go it alone.”

“It ain’t your ass, Mark. That’s the difference.” Pig was screaming now.

“Boy you really are a big-time thief, Pig,” Mark screamed back. “A real first-class operator with style written all over you. There’s something you don’t know, Will. Something that Pig isn’t telling you that I heard down in the guardroom.”

“Shut up, Mark,” Pig pleaded.

“When they caught Mr. Big Time, he was opening up the gas tank of a certain car with cadet number 16407 on the sticker. It’s all in Major Mudge’s report.”

“That’s my car,” I said, puzzled.

“That’s right,” Mark said, pointing an accusatory finger at Pig. “The ol’ paisan, the ol’ brother, the ol’ meatbrain was getting ready to steal from his fucking roommate who’d just lent him twenty bills.”

“I didn’t want to ask you for any more money, Will,” Pig explained in a desperately humiliated voice. “I’ve asked for too much already. I didn’t want to bother you. I knew you wouldn’t mind.”

The door opened, but none of us looked up as Tradd came into the room. He walked over to Pig in his graceful, diffident stride and embraced him. He held him tightly for several moments, both of them close to tears.

“I’m sorry, Pig. I’m sorry for everything,” Tradd said in a barely audible voice. “This is terrible.”

“If I don’t have you, paisans, I don’t have nothing,” Pig said.

“Have you seen the door?” Tradd said to me.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Open the door and see for yourself, Will,” he replied.

I went to the door and opened it. There was no one in the alcove and the alcoves were deserted. Then I saw it on the door, freshly painted: the number 10.

All of us gathered around that number and studied it as though it were one of those grotesque totems nailed to trees along perilous frontiers to warn visitors that they were entering a country where none of the natives were friendly. It was a sign that they were watching us, that they would come for us and did not mean to take prisoners. With the number they were claiming Pig as the first victim in their vendetta against us. They were stalking us and they wanted us to know it. We looked anxiously at each other, brothers again.

Finally, Pig spoke. “You’ve got to try to help me now. I deserve that much.”

“You do, Pig,” I said, transfixed by the crudely painted numeral on the door. “We better start preparing your case. The court will meet tomorrow night and we’re going to have to sling shit all over that courtroom. Mark, will you go tell Gauldin Grace that Pig will stand trial and that the three of us will defend him? Tradd, will you go with him? None of us should go out of this room alone from now on.”

“Tradd’s not a part of this,” Mark said. “Surely those pricks know that.”

“We don’t know what they think,” I said. “Will you go tell Gauldin?”

“Yeh, I’ll tell him.”

But it was Tradd who seemed most unnerved by the sign of The Ten on the door. He shrank away from it as though it were a manifestation of virulent prophecies scribbled like obscene graffiti on the walls of holy places. He smeared the number with his hand as though erasing it would eliminate the terror and threat in our lives.

“You OK, Tradd?” I asked.

“Sad, Will,” he answered. “Just very, very sad.”

C
onvocations of the honor court on the top floor of Durrell Hall were always conducted with an inflexible and saturnine efficiency. There was absolutely no sense of felicity or horseplay in the dark official room, with its formal leather chairs, its immaculately polished mahogany table, and its deeply grained walnut paneling. The room looked as if it had been built by a melancholy carpenter whose specialty was coffins. I had seen the mere gravity of this room unnerve an accused cadet. I would always associate honor with dark wood because of my experience in that room.

Most cadets never saw the honor court, but no one who did ever forgot its relentless solemnity. For some cadets it was their final interior glimpse of the Institute. For others, the room represented the first time in their young lives that they were required to function as agents of vengeance, as factotums and enforcers of a strict, intransigent code of ethics.

I watched the entrance of the twelve members of the honor court who would hear the case against Dante Pignetti. I knew all of them well, had learned about their personalities, their flaws and weaknesses, their strengths and virtues, during the thirteen cases I had sat on through the year. We had weighed evidence together, argued frequently and sometimes bitterly, agreed and passionately disagreed, but eventually, we had passed judgment on the lives of our peers. I had come out of the experience respecting the integrity and honesty of all of them. There was a sense both of power and of suffering in rendering such irrevocably final decisions. I had seen some of them cry unashamedly after casting guilty verdicts. They had seen me do the same. The system was imperfect and it was brutal. But I had learned something during my tenure on the court: None of these boys received pleasure from hearing the drummers begin their slow dirge in front of second battalion. We did it because we believed in the system and its concept of honor. But belief alone did not prevent the court from making you older. That was the court’s ineffable gift to you. They looked like twelve octogenarian children as they filed into their seats. They looked terribly old and distraught as they heard Gauldin Grace call the court to order and listened to the prosecuting counsel read the charges. This was the trial of a classmate and at the Institute that was the most serious thing of all.

After the charges were read, Gauldin addressed Dante Pignetti. “The accused will rise and face the honor court.”

Pig lifted off his chair beside me and walked stiffly and unnaturally to the center of the room, equidistant from the prosecuting table, the defense table, and the highly polished table of the honor court. His shoes sparkled and his uniform was freshly pressed. Pig was impressive and handsome in his uniform, though this was the single room on campus where military bearing and proficiency meant nothing at all.

“How do you plead, Mr. Pignetti?” Gauldin asked officiously.

“Not guilty, your honor,” he answered in a firm controlled voice.

“Would the prosecutor please present his opening statement.”

The prosecutor was Jim Rowland from third battalion, an extraordinarily bright and conscientious cadet who had been accepted at Harvard Law School. I knew he would not have undertaken the case unless he thought Pig was guilty beyond a doubt. It was not a propitious sign to see Jim in the desk opposite us. He had one of those refined discriminating intellects whose powers of logic were more than equal to my powers of obfuscation. He adjusted his glasses as he rose from his desk and ran a distracted hand through his short-cropped bristly hair. He studied his notes, which were written in a meticulously neat script on a yellow legal pad. I had never seen Jim Rowland smile once while performing his duty. The honor court had selected its sternest, most competent prosecutor to try Pig’s case.

When Jim Rowland presented the facts it seemed to be the most open-and-shut case I had ever heard appear before the honor court. He simply recited the events and circumstances leading up to the moment when Mudge and the OG caught Pig unscrewing the gas cap of a car, with a siphoning hose draped around his neck and a gas can in one hand.

“So you see, gentlemen,” Rowland concluded, “there is no case to try There is nothing to be considered. No deliberation is necessary. Cadet Pignetti was caught in the very act of stealing. I will present the two witnesses who apprehended Cadet Pignetti. They will testify that this cadet,” he said loudly, gesturing at Pig, whose neck stiffened, “is guilty, as charged, of the honor violation of stealing. There has never been such an open-and-shut case of stealing since I have been at the Institute,” he concluded, echoing our own thoughts exactly.

“Your opening statement, Mr. McLean,” Gauldin said.

Stepping to the center of the room, I saw out of the corner of my eye the figure of Mark massaging Pig’s tense, formidable shoulders. Pig’s whole body had tightened since we arrived in this room, and he was flushed with the effort to control his panic.

“I would like a ruling from the court, your honor,” I said to Gauldin. “I do not understand the exact nature of those charges even after the opening statement by the prosecution.”

Jim Rowland jumped to his feet and said, “I will be glad to clarify those charges, your honor. I will make them as simple as possible for Mr. McLean. He must have a serious problem if he does not understand the charges as presented.”

Several members of the court snickered at this but were silenced by an icy glance from Gauldin, who allowed no levity in his court.

“Cadet Pignetti is accused of stealing, Mr. McLean,” Rowland continued. “Those are the charges. Do you understand them now?”

“What ruling do you wish the court to make, Mr. McLean?” Gauldin asked.

“What did Mr. Pignetti steal, sir?” I asked Gauldin. “I’m still rather confused.”

A buzz of perturbation swept along the table of the honor court, but the rap of Gauldin’s gavel silenced them.

“Why is Mr. McLean stalling?” Rowland asked the court. “Is he wasting our time because his case is so weak?”

“I don’t understand your point, Will,” Gauldin said. “Would you explain yourself to the court?”

“I want to know what Mr. Pignetti stole,” I repeated.

“He stole gasoline from a car in the fourth battalion parking lot,” Gauldin explained. “Is that not correct, Mr. Rowland?”

“That is correct, your honor.”

“How much gasoline?” I asked.

“He was apprehended in the very act of stealing,” Rowland said. “He had not completed the act.”

“Then he stole no gasoline,” I said.

“Technically, he stole no gasoline, but only because he was caught before he could complete the theft,” Jim said, looking at me with complete exasperation.

“Then, Mr. Rowland, you are saying that Major Mudge caught Mr. Pignetti
before
he was able to commit an honor violation.”

“That is not what I am saying at all, Mr. McLean,” Rowland said, understanding the nature of my strategy at last. “I am saying that he caught Mr. Pignetti in the very act of committing an honor violation.”

“But if he stole nothing, Mr. Rowland,” I insisted, “then there is no honor violation. There is no stolen property in this case.”

“Will, I see absolutely no merit in your line of reasoning,” Gauldin said, rapping the table again even though he made no ruling.

“Mr. Grace,” I said, turning away from Jim Rowland, “may I remind you and the other members of the court that the code says that a cadet will not he, steal, cheat, or tolerate any cadet who does. The code says nothing about a cadet thinking of lying, contemplating cheating, or planning to steal. The code punishes those who do, not those who think about doing. Mr. Pignetti stole nothing. There was no gas in the can when he was apprehended. If there was no gas, then I suggest there was no theft. You are punishing Mr. Pignetti for what he might have done, not what he did. The honor code does not cover such cases.”

“The court rules that you are playing with words, Mr. McLean,” Gauldin said, looking to his right and left to catch glances of approval from other members of the court. Eleven such glances were forthcoming.

“I’m discussing proof, Mr. Chairman,” I argued. “There was nothing stolen. There is no evidence to present to this court. There was no property taken.”

“It’s obvious that Mr. Pignetti was planning to steal. The only reason there is no evidence is that Major Mudge interrupted the theft,” Gauldin countered.

“Then we should be grateful that Major Mudge prevented Mr. Pignetti from committing an honor violation. It is irrelevant to discuss what Mr. Pignetti might have stolen. Unless he actually stole some gasoline, there is no theft. None. He has been accused of stealing. The code unequivocally states that stealing will not be tolerated. Show me what Mr. Pignetti stole. How much did he steal? This court has no right to kick a man out of school for something he might have done.”

“The court has already ruled that you are just playing with words, Mr. McLean.” Gauldin spoke sharply. “We do not have time to play with words. We need to resolve this case expeditiously.”

“Let me remind you, Mr. Chairman,” I responded, “that the honor code is made up only of words, that every time the court convenes it is only to ‘play with words,’ that you open and close every session with words, and that you condemn and expel cadets from the Institute with words. We would like the court to alter the charges. We would like you to say that Mr. Pignetti was apprehended in the parking lot the moment before it looked like he was going to steal. That is not playing with language. That is being precise with language.”

“I am not at all convinced by your line of reasoning, Mr. McLean,” Gauldin said impatiently.

“I am not trying to convince only you, Gauldin,” I said, my eyes moving to the other members of the court. “I am trying to convince a single member of this court that since there was no theft, there was no honor violation. If I can convince just one of my friends on the court that my roommate does not deserve to be kicked out of school for something he was about to do, then my roommate will graduate with us in June.”

“Objection, your honor,” Jim Rowland said, rising. “I object to Mr. McLean’s involving his friendship with members of the honor court. This is irrelevant to the case.”

“Sustained,” Gauldin agreed, nodding his head.

“I do not mean to belabor this point of language, your honor,” I continued, “but I would like to cite a precedent case for the benefit of the court. In 1928, when the Institute was still located at its old site in downtown Charleston, there was a vegetable stand frequented by cadets directly across the street from the school. The owner of the store complained to Institute authorities that cadets were stealing quantities of vegetables from his store. The Commandant of Cadets at that time amended the honor code and made it a specific violation to steal vegetables from this particular shop. A Cadet Kersey from Roanoke, Virginia, was brought to trial for stealing an onion. He was brought before the honor court and accused of stealing vegetables. Does anyone on the court wish to make a conjecture on how this case was resolved?”