In February, Tradd and I moved into the fourth division alcove room with Mark Santoro and Dante Pignetti. It was an arrangement I had considered for a long time. I had noticed that during sweat parties the upperclassmen treated Pig and Mark differently than they treated the rest of us. I wanted to align my destiny and that of Tradd with the two strongest boys in our class, the only two whom the cadre feared physically. In the company boxing competition, Pig and Mark had destroyed several members of the senior class before Captain Mudge issued a memorandum declaring freshmen ineligible for the competition. Still, the point had been made, and I heard the cadres voices change as they approached Pig and Mark on the galleries. If I could not frighten men physically myself, I wanted to establish solid allegiances with those who could. Pig and Mark were having trouble academically and I suggested that Tradd and I could help them in their course work. They could help us by keeping people like Fox and Newman out of our rooms during evening study period. We met at Big John’s bar down on East Bay Street and agreed to the arrangement. We sat at the bar and told each other about ourselves and drank a pitcher of cold beer. It was my first beer on tap and I always associate the taste of draught beer with the faces of my three roommates. We talked about the plebe system and about the cadre. I had not laughed so hard since I had come to the Institute. Nor had I felt so safe.
I began to feel easier in the tenor and pace of those winter days. I played on the best freshman basketball team in the history of the Institute. There were seven of us in September, but by March only two of us remained, Reuben Clapsaddle and I. The others were victims of the plebe system and had left to display their talents at other colleges. I had begun to enjoy my classes and the silence of the library, with its dusty stacks and the smiling, perfumed woman who checked out books. On weekends, I explored the superb handsome streets of Charleston and watched the great freighters unloading their fragrant cargoes along the wharves. I decided that even though I had chosen the wrong school I had chosen the right city. I had no doubts then, and none now, that I spent four years in the loveliest city on the continent and that some indelible mark of civilization, some passionate intimacy with form and beauty, would remain with me always if only I were vigilant enough, if only I were resolute in my intention to assimilate the resonances and intimations of that exquisite city. I hungered for culture, yet had no idea what culture was or how to go about obtaining it or how I would know it once I had it in my grasp. I joined the Ballet Society and the Dock Street Theater. I attended performances with Tradd and his mother, Abigail, and afterward would listen to them discuss the performances. I would memorize what they had said and write letters to my mother telling her exactly the same thing, knowing that she would be pleased that her son was not only becoming a man but a cultured man as well. During intermission at the Dock Street Theater, Abigail, Tradd, and I would sit on the jostling board in the moon-brindled courtyard and Abigail would tell us about plays she had acted in at the same theater before she had married Commerce. Afterward we would walk back to the St. Croix mansion, the city unbearably lovely in the moonlight, and sometimes we would drink coffee at her sister’s house on the curve of Church Street. Tradd and I would walk on each side of her, each of us holding one of Abigail’s hands, and she would tell us stories of her childhood, of her trips to Europe, and her voice was shy in the darkness. There would be the smell of crushed narcissus on the sidewalk and lights shining from the night tables of second-story windows. We would pass by Catfish Row and the shop of Elizabeth O’Neill Verner, with her soft watercolors of her native city framed in the windows. We would walk in the cold, the collars of our uniform overcoats pulled high against our necks, and pass Terrell’s dress shop and the house where Washington slept and the one where Dubose Hayward wrote and the one where Ed and Kitty Holt, Tradd’s cousins, lived. It was the way I wanted college to be and I knew that I was absorbing something valuable though I did not know quite how. The refinement and dignity of those nights sustained me through the long nights in the barracks. I thought this was the education I desired and that in Tradd’s mother I had found a woman who embodied every quality of grace and intelligence and virtue that I would look for in a wife. In Tradd, I thought I had found the gentleness and integrity that I always required in my best friends and seldom displayed myself. And by enlisting Pig and Mark, I was adding strength and virility to the composition of the room. And though I did not know it then, I was gaining two of the finest, most loyal friends I would ever have.
By March, I had learned to live with the plebe system. My attitude had become one of almost Zen-like acceptance and resignation. Though I was still afraid, I had adjusted myself to nine months of misery. And I felt I was leading a lucky life in the barracks. I was not a victim and the cadre had not selected me for the Taming. I got the same as any other ordinary cadet, no more, no less. They didn’t like me very much, but that bothered me little, since I liked them not at all.
Periodically, I worried about the effect of the plebe system on Tradd. He had already picked up the nickname “The Honey Prince” from the cadre, and not a single day went by without their referring to his effeminate manner and his high-pitched, aristocratic accent. They had toughened him during the year, but there were nights when he would be close to tears as he studied. “Faggot, faggot,” they would scream at him. “You want to suck me off, faggot?” they would shout, unbuttoning their pants for him. When I voiced my concerns to Tradd about the cadre running him out, he calmed me by saying with extraordinary frankness, “Will, they know they’d be in trouble if they ran me out. They loathe me, I’m sure, but they also know I’m from an old Charleston family. That’s something you don’t understand, but it is true. If I told them I was going to leave, the cadre would beg me to stay. But I need to prove I can take everything. I need that for myself. It has nothing to do with them. I don’t consider them gentlemen and they are all beneath our contempt.”
Tradd was right. Though his passage through the system was brutal, the cadre only went so far with him, and then, as if they had signed a secret concordance, they would pull back from him in common recognition of their limits.
In the first week of March, however, it was not Tradd’s survival that was in question. It was mine. I had tried hard for anonymity in R Company and had achieved it. I had perfected a bland personality, a bland appearance, and a bland record. Most upperclassmen outside the cadre did not even know my name and did not recognize me if they passed me on their way to class. Soon, all of them would know both my name and face, and all of them would concur that I had no place in R Company or the Corps of Cadets. I had made my first egregious error of judgment as a plebe, and I would pay dearly for that error. I had published a poem in The Guidon, the school’s literary magazine.
The Guidon had more to do with the death of literature than its propagation. Cadets at the Institute mishandled the English language with a heroic facility. I had written several poems for The Guidon in the first semester and they had not attracted the attention of a single upperclassman. Among them was a rhapsodic ode to Thomas Wolfe commemorating a pilgrimage I had made to Asheville the previous summer. The poem did no harm to Wolfe, but it was not helpful to the language. The second poem was an evocation of spring, a highly original topic, rare among young poets, and the conclusion any fair-minded reader might draw from scanning those twelve meager lines was that if I had really appreciated springtime I would never have debased its memory with that poem. But the two poems gave me great pleasure and compared to the other poems in the first issue of The Guidon, I suppose they looked downright Miltonic. I saw myself in a wholly new light. The jock-poet, I would whisper reverentially, or the poet-jock when my mood changed.
But when the second issue was going to press, I decided to show off my heretofore carefully concealed gift of humor. I had written the new poem after a particularly harsh sweat party in January and shown it to Mark, Pig, and Tradd. They were unanimous in their praise, and Pig said I did not have a hair on my ass if I didn’
t publish it in The Guidon. I had very few hairs on my ass but wanted to disguise that fact for as long as possible. I thought the poem was funny and thought the upperclassmen would think so too.
I did not even know The Guidon had come out until noon formation on Wednesday in the first week of March. I was bracing, standing in my squad, and waiting for my sergeant to inspect me. He was screaming at Jim Massengale, who stood directly on my right. A senior private named Bill Toons walked up holding the magazine. He looked at my nametag. Then he looked at a page in the open magazine. He looked at my nametag again, then back to the magazine. “I ain’t believing you wrote this, McLean. I ain’t fucking believing you wrote this and you’re still alive.”
Quigley, my squad sergeant, moved over and started reading from the magazine. He read it as quickly as he could. I calculated about one word every ten seconds. He looked up at my nametag. Maccabee walked up behind me holding a rolled-up copy of the magazine. He hit me in the head with it, a stinging blow that knocked my cap into the next squad of plebes.
“We don’t let knobs run this kind of shit, McLean,” Maccabee said. “Are you trying to run some shit on Big R? Pop off, boy.”
“No, sir.”
Wentworth, the company exec, walking up with his copy of The Guidon, shook his head sadly and said, “Mr. McLean, my classmates from some other companies read this to me when I was in my accounting class. They don’t think the knobs in R Company have the proper respect for their superiors. Do you have respect for me, Mr. McLean? Pop off.”
“Yes, sir.”
“How much, dumbhead? Pop off.”
“Oh, a tremendous amount, sir.”
“I ain’t believing he wrote this,” Toons repeated. “He wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in the old corps. Our first sergeant would have eaten this gauldy knob for breakfast, Maccabee.”
“What’s the meaning of this, McLean? Pop off,” Maccabee said.
“Sir, it was a little joke, sir.”
“You think this is funny, wad-waste? Pop off.”
“Yes, sir. No, sir. I don’t know, sir,” I answered.
“Would you read it for the benefit of all of R Company, Mr. McLean?” Maccabee said. “I’d like you to go up to the front of the company and read this loud and clear.”
He took me by the arm and led me to the front of the company, where I stood braced beside Blasingame, facing the three platoons of R Company. He handed me a copy of the magazine and made an announcement to R Company. “Gentlemen, we just discovered that we have a cadet recruit Shakespeare in Romeo Company and I’ve invited him to give a poetry reading before we march to mess.”
My voice broke three times during the recitation. But Maccabee made me begin again until I recited the poem without a flaw. The entire barracks was silent, and the cadets of the other three companies listened intently as I read.
“Dedicated to the Cadre of Romeo Company
“The dreams of youth are pleasant dreams
of women, whiskey, and the sea.
Last night I dreamt I was a dog
who found an upperclassman tree.
“The dreams of youth are silly dreams
of toads and other lowly species.
My cadre is a special breed
of strutting, screaming, human feces.”
I do not think the reaction of the cadre against me would have been so severe except for a couple of factors. First, the other three companies cracked up. The barracks filled with laughter as the upperclassmen in the other companies shouted derisively at R Company. Then Lancey Hemphill, the center on the basketball team, loped up behind me, put his arm around my shoulders, and shouted, “That’s my man, Will. Piss all over these tight-assed dicks. Fuck Big R.”
He shot the finger at R Company as he stood there with his arm around my shoulder.
But worst of all, the R Company plebes fell apart laughing. Pig was laughing uncontrollably, and cadre members were racking his ass to no avail. Pig’s laughter infected Mark, who exploded with laughter in the first squad of the last platoon. One whole squad of freshmen lost control in the second platoon, and they passed it along to their entire platoon. The entire population of fourth battalion was laughing and mocking the R Company cadre. The cadre, in turn, was looking at me as if I were a reincarnation of Bobby Bentley. I could not imagine a more untenable situation. All this, I thought, to prove that my ass was not hairless.
Fox and Newman pushed me off the quadrangle and shoved me along the gallery until we reached the stairwell. About twelve curious upperclassmen from R Company followed. Fox, aware of his audience, jerked me by the collar and slammed my head against the stone pillar. He then punched me in the sternum and slapped me twice across the face. My anger flared and he caught it in my eyes.
“Come on, motherfucker. Throw a punch. You’re gone anyway and I’d like to see it happen now as later. Throw a punch. Hit me, you fucking pussy,” he said.
“A fucking jock,” Newman said. “A fucking waste of a jock. Shits on his classmates by going to practice when we go to parade.”
“Jocks shouldn’t be allowed in this school,” a voice added.
“I bet McLean doesn’t even know his plebe knowledge,” a voice said.
“He better know it,” Fox said, punching my chest again. “Rack that fucking chin in, waste-product. And tell me. How’s the cow?”
“Sir, she walks, she talks, she’s full of chalk, the lacteal fluid extracted from the female of the bovine species is highly prolific to the nth degree, sir,” I answered by rote one of the formulae that passes for scholarship at military colleges.
“What is vomit, douchebag?” Fox whispered. “You better know it, fuckstick. You better know every piece of plebe knowledge or I’m going to beat the shit out of you right now.”
“Sir, vomit is a putrescent liquid of a greenish yellow color often projected from the noble stomachs of dauntless upperclassmen when they discern the nauseous, repulsive, and monstrously assembled faces of plebes such as Will McLean, sir. Vomit is composed of three parts gross slime, four parts rotted meat, one part curdled acid, and ten parts from the diarrhea cans of West Point, sir.”
“Would a plebe eat vomit, dumbhead? Pop off,” Newman sneered.
“Not without salt and pepper and full bottle of catsup, sir,” I responded.
“What would a plebe not eat, McLean?” a voice I did not recognize asked.
“Sir, a plebe would not eat a hemorrhoid out of the asshole of a naval admiral, a wart off the pecker of an army general, the first sergeant’s mother, or any food prepared at the Institute mess hall.”
The last bugle blew and I heard the battalion commander issue the order to commence to the mess hall.
Fox hit me again in the chest and raised his hand to slap my face again.
Newman interfered with the blow and said, “Not now, Gardiner. Wait.”
“Wait for what? I want this fucker now.”
“Wait for tonight,” Newman said with a sneer, “for the Taming.”
Chapter Nineteen
They broke me that night and they broke me quickly. It did not take them long to find my point of vulnerability. I did not fear heights or insects or open spaces. I feared them; I feared the cadre. My terror was in facing them alone, without my friends and classmates around me. I could not bear the isolation and their rabid, singular attention. When the system was impersonal and inclusive, I could bear it; but as soon as they specified me, I came apart at the seams. I would rather be called knob or dumbhead or shitface than McLean. I do not want my enemies ever to know my name again. That knowledge is in itself a violation of your sovereignty. When they call for you by name, then the system has changed and the vendetta has begun.
They called me out of the line of plebes when I returned from mess that night. All during the day I concentrated on being brave before them. I broke much quicker than any of my classmates before me. I broke, and I carry that night with me.
There were fourteen of them in the shower ro
om when I entered. Fox pushed me to the center of the room. They rushed at me suddenly. It was as though a piece of meat had been thrown into a kennel of underfed dogs. I thought of dogs all evening. The cruel insensate faces of dogs near mine, the stench of their breath, the movement of their tongues, the quickness of their lean, precipitate movements against me. I had entered a country of dogs, with all their hunger and training and instinct turned murderously on me alone.
Fox and Newman were smoking cigarettes and put them out on my arms. I stifled a cry and felt the first implacable surge of the cadre as they surrounded me, each man screaming as he came, each man with his own obscenity and his own demands, with his own questions, his own needs and appeasements. The sound overwhelmed me. Two of them were screaming in my ears, four of them in front of my face, four or five of them behind me, all screaming.
“Right face,” someone would scream.
“Left face,” another would scream simultaneously.
“About face,” also simultaneously.
“Give me fifty pushups.”
“Recite the guard orders.”
Hands were ripping my shirt. Punches were coming in from all sides. I was hurled down in the pushup position. The lights were too bright and I was disoriented. I was having trouble thinking. I did a hundred pushups. I did another hundred. Four of them lay down beside me, screaming in my ears even as I counted out the pushups. Their faces lay on the floor beside mine, and I could see their mouths and tongues and feel their saliva on my skin. Newman knelt on my back with his knees, leaned over and screamed for me to do another hundred pushups with him on top of me. I tried to rise, feeling his knees dig into my spine, listening to the amazing noise that centered around my head, angry at the lights, groaning now, trying to rise, the lights, the shouts, the unyielding pressures, the derangement, the unraveling. They jerked me up. I was put against the wall bracing, all fourteen of them still with me, all fourteen of their mouths pressing in upon me, all of them within inches of my eyes. I was handed a rifle, which I held out stiff-armed in front of me. They forced me into a deep knee bend and one of them slid a broomstick behind my knees as I went down. I held the broomstick between my thighs and calves at the joint behind the knees. It cut off the flow of blood to the legs, and in thirty seconds I fainted for the first time in my life. They threw water on me, revived me, stood me up with the rifle again, forced me to squat again, the pressure of the stick, blackness again. The second time I fainted, my face hit the shower room floor and I rose with blood in my mouth. Again the rifle and the broomstick and the shouts. Again I fainted. Five times I fainted. The screams again. The blood in my mouth. The light-killing swell of noise and I thought someone had turned off the lights, but then the lights came again in a blaze, a terrible migraine of light. And then I thought there was silence but the cadre was still around me, still screaming. I could not breathe and thought I was being strangled slowly, as though someone had covered my face with some deadly silk. I gasped for air and with the gasp came the first sob. And with the first sob came an absolute shattering, the death of my own small inconsequential civilization on that shower room floor.