I nodded and said, “That would be terrible, Pig. But let me ask you this question. How does a person talk at all? How does one communicate in the barracks at all without using profanity? It’s the only language that anyone understands. It’s the natural language for this environment.”
“If you feel like expressing a disgusting thought around Theresa, Will, I suggest that you use the real word. The proper word that a gentleman would use. Like instead of saying ‘dick’ or ‘prick’ or ‘talleywhacker,’ I suggest you use the word penis.”
Mark slammed his chemistry book shut and buried his face in his hands.
I said, “Oh, penis. I get it. That does sound much better.”
“And the word fuck,” he said, whispering the forbidden word, “Theresa hates that word very much. So I’d like to respectfully ask that you not use it in her presence.”
“Has Theresa ever heard the word, uh, that particular vulgarity that we beasts use for sexual intercourse?”
“Of course not, Will,” he responded. “I’d be serving out a life sentence in Sing Sing if she had.”
“You can’t live in the barracks without using that word, Pig,” I explained. “No cadet can live without that word.”
“Use the real word instead,” Pig sighed. “The proper word.”
“You mean like ‘Dante Pignetti is really intercoursed up.’ Or ‘Please pass the intercoursing salt.’ What about fart, Pig? Can I use the word fart?”
“Don’t do it, Will,” he said sadly. “Don’t push me to the absolute limit. No, of course you can’t use that word. Common sense should have told you that. If you want to say that you have to rid yourself of a big smelly one then I suggest you say something like this: ‘Pig, I think that in a few moments I will expel much flatus.’ ”
“Expel much flatus?” I said.
“That wouldn’t offend Theresa,” he continued. “She would appreciate your concern for her sensitivity.”
“She wouldn’t even know what I meant,” I protested. “Heck, I wouldn’t even know what I meant.”
Mark growled again in exasperation. He had remained silently attentive to the dialogue, though all of us knew his silences often conveyed strong and unshakable opinions.
He walked over to Pig’s desk and looked directly into Theresa’s eyes and screamed at her: “I’m farting like a motherfucking bastard, Theresa, you flapping twat. So I’m fucking going out the fucking door to the fucking shit house to shit my fucking brains out. Do you hear me, Theresa? Do you hear me?”
“Crude, Mark. Very crude,” Tradd said at his desk.
Pig stiffened but made no move, and Mark walked out of the door without any visible haste or worry.
When Mark had gone, I said, “We’ve got a double standard in this room, Pig. You didn’t say a word when Mark was saying all that. You’d have fed me and Tradd to the crabs.”
“He’s trying to provoke me,” Pig answered.
“That’s very keen,” I agreed. “Do you always have a sixth sense about these things?”
“There will be a proper moment. When Mark and I start fighting each other, it will be a classic duel. Only one of us will walk away from that fight. It’s been coming for a long time.”
“You guys are too close ever to fight, so quit talking that nonsense,” I said. The mere thought of the two of them squaring off for combat filled me with a nameless dread. “And I haven’t finished talking to you, Pig. I want to get this resolved here and now. I can’t have my friends afraid to come up to this room. Reuben is going to tell everyone on the team that I’m rooming with a homicidal maniac. Half of R Company is already afraid to come into the room. Hell, I’m afraid to come into the room sometimes. So let’s just talk about you and Theresa. OK?”
His face colored suddenly, the thick bifurcated vein stood out on his forehead, and you could check his pulse by watching the silent drum beat delicately at his temple.
“It better be nice, McLean,” he warned.
“What if it isn’t, Pig? We’re adults now, and what if I’ve got something to say that isn’t nice?”
“Don’t you say nothin’ about my girl, man,” he said. “What’s the matter with her anyway? You think she’s ugly or something? I’ll break your ass if you think she’s ugly. You think she’s screwin’ around on me? You think she’s a whore? That’s it. You think she’s giving it away free to every guy in Brooklyn. What’ve you heard, Will? Who told you? I’ll break his ass. I’ll throw him off the fourth division.”
He grabbed me suddenly by the collar and shoved me up against the wall by his desk.
“You stop that, Pig,” Tradd cried out, spinning around in his chair and running toward us. “You are so tacky sometimes. So violent and tacky.”
“Pig,” I said quietly as Tradd vainly tried to remove one of Pig’s hands from my collar. “This has been going on for four years now. You’ve got to quit worrying about Theresa. She’s one of the sweetest, kindest, most gentle people on this earth, and she’d be appalled to know that for four years you’ve been beating up people who just look at her picture and comment on how pretty she is.”
Pig grimaced as though he was experiencing unbearable physical pain. “I just don’t like guys looking at my girl friend, Will. I’ve never been able to stand that. It’s so dirty. When they say she’s pretty, what they’re really saying is that they’d like to fuck her. They’re looking at her picture thinking what she looks like without clothes and then they think about spreading her legs and jumping up and down on her.”
“That’s not what they think, Pig,” I said.
“No one in the world except animals like you would think of such a thing,” Tradd said.
“How do you know, Will?” Pig asked with childlike earnestness.
“Because I look at her picture a lot and that’s not what I think,” I explained.
“What do you think?” he asked suspiciously.
“I’ve never had a single lusty thought about Theresa,” I assured him quickly. “I like the little things in life like not having my kidneys kicked in.”
“You don’t think she’s good looking?” Pig said. “You think my girl’s a dog. You’re not attracted to her when you see her picture. I’ll break your ass.”
“This has got to stop, Pig,” I said, feeling his hands tighten on my collar. “It’s immature and you’re too sweet a guy to be paranoid about Theresa. She loves you and that’s it. You don’t have to worry about anything. You don’t have to stomp every poor squirrel who walks in here and says something about her picture.”
“I want them to have respect,” he muttered.
“They have respect, Pig,” I said. “You’re just afraid of something and I don’t understand what it is.”
“Will, I know you’re not calling me chicken. Tell me you’re not calling me chicken.”
Tradd began talking softly into Pig’s ear. “No, of course he’s not calling you a chicken. But you are deathly afraid of some things you have no reason to fear, Pig. You are fighting phantoms and shapes that do not exist. You invent them. Will’s right, and he’s right to talk to you about it. All of us should have talked to you about it a long time ago. But we were afraid it might hurt your feelings or that you wouldn’t understand it.”
“I thought we were brothers.” He spoke sadly, his eyes downcast. “I thought we shared everything.”
“I’m sure that there’s a lot we don’t tell each other,” Tradd said.
“You’re an adult now, Pig,” I said. “You’re going to be an Army officer next year. You won’t be able to pound everybody who makes some innocuous remark about your wife. There are going to be generals who’ll pat her sweet behind at parties and colonels who’ll snicker and make allusions about golden nights you spend in the sack with Theresa.”
“Dead generals. Deceased colonels,” Pig said curtly.
“It’s time to grow up, Pig. It’s no longer a cute, interesting form of human behavior. It’s starting to look sick,” I continued.
<
br /> Tradd added with a certain measure of finality, “And it’s always looked tacky.”
“It’s effective,” Pig protested stubbornly. “No one puts the bad mouth on my girl.”
“I grant you that, Pig,” I agreed with rising exasperation. “From a strategic point of view you have successfully eliminated free and open discussion of Theresa’s body. I would like you just to practice a little tolerance. Violence upsets me, Pig. I like to live in rooms where the screams of strangers being executed are not heard two or three times a day. Just try it for a while, Pig. For the sake of your beloved roommates.”
“You know I’d do anything for my beloved roommates,” Pig said.
“And we would do the same for you. You know that,” Tradd answered, ducking beneath Pig’s arm when Pig tried to embrace him.
“I couldn’t have made it through this school without you guys. You guys knew my family was poor as hell and you guys have gone down to the wire giving me money and things. I’ll never forget that. Never.”
“We’re not allowed to discuss money in this room,” Tradd said, moving back to his desk. “Now you are violating a rule.”
“Why don’t we practice, Will?” Pig said brightly after Tradd had gone back to his studies. “Why don’t you pretend that you’re coming into the room for the first time and you say something dirty about Theresa. I won’t do anything. I’ll be tolerant. I won’t even be tacky like Tradd says I am.”
“I said you’re tacky only when you act like a beast,” Tradd amended from his corner. “It’s impossible to explain to a Yankee what ‘tacky’ is. They simply have no word for it up north, but my God, do they ever need one.”
“You won’t go out of your Italian head and mop the floor with me?” I asked.
“I promise,” Pig said. “And you know when I give my word I’d rather die than break it.”
“OK,” I said, staring with licentious abandon at Theresa’s photograph. I licked my lips and began panting. Then I licked the breasts in the photograph, sliding my tongue along the glass and moaning orgasmically. Standing back, I said, “Hey Pig, ol’ buddy. Some honey. Wooooo—Eeeee. She’s got a set on her that could feed the city of Tokyo. Stacked like a brick shit house.”
I studied his face closely, looking for some outward signs of his coming apart.
“You’re doing okay, Pig?” I asked.
“Yeh,” he said.
“You sure, Pig?”
“Yeh.”
“Should I go on?”
“Yeh.” He spoke through grimly tightened lips.
“I’d love to stick a big, hot, hairy banana in that sweet piece of Italian poon-tang. Yes sir. I’d love to play hide the sausage with that hot madonna. Should I go on?” I said, looking down at Pig.
“I’m going to have to hurt you for that, Will,” he explained calmly. “You went too far. There has to be punishment. I wanted to practice tolerance, but you forced me to take action. Theresa wouldn’t respect me if she knew what you said.”
“I was pretending to be someone else,” I screamed, backing away from Pig’s desk. “It was a goddam game.”
“I’ll pretend I’m hitting someone else. I couldn’t hit you because you’re like my brother. So I’ll pretend you’re someone slimy I hate.”
But before Pig could rise out of his desk, Mark entered the room swiftly and whispered a single word that made all of us dive for our desks and open our books.
“Bear,” he said.
The door crashed open and Bear strode into the center of the room, his cigar blazing, his keen brown eyes surveying the room in one rapid sweep. His entries were always dramatic, and he always conducted his inspections with the flair and panache of a benevolent conquistador.
“Room, attention,” Pig ordered.
“Why the big surprise, lambs?” He grinned through his cigar smoke. “All of you knew I was coming.”
“Good evening, Colonel,” Tradd said. “What an unexpected pleasure.”
“What are you bums hiding from the Bear tonight?” he growled. “Is there liquor in Lamb Pignetti’s press?” he said, flinging open Pig’s steel locker, and lifting up the stacks of folded laundry, he searched for contraband material. “Does Lamb Santoro have pep pills he’s selling to innocent dumbhead lambs hidden in a false drawer?” he said, running his hand beneath Mark’s desk. “And is Mr. McLean writing seditious poetry telling the world that the Commandant in Charge of Discipline has no hair on his nuts? Is Lamb St. Croix making illegal plans to buy up the rest of South Carolina now that he and his family own Charleston?”
“Sir, my family is not as wealthy as you seem to think,” Tradd protested.
“Yeh, Bubba, and my piss don’t stink after I eat asparagus. Bolshevik,” the Bear said, turning to me and examining the brass on my belt, “the only time we allow cadets to grow penicillin mold on their brass is when they have a certified case of the clap.”
“Haven’t I told you about the girl I’ve been dating, Colonel?” I said, still standing at rigid attention. “I thought she was a nice girl even though she came from a low-class disreputable family. Her father was a brute with a single-digit IQ. But she had a nice personality even though she weighed three hundred pounds and had a handlebar moustache. I was very surprised, indeed, Colonel, when I contracted a social disease from this girl. And that is the reason for the mold on my brass.”
“Who was this girl, Bubba? This poor woman so hard up she had to take you on as a boy friend?”
“It was your daughter, sir.”
The roar of the Bear was difficult to describe adequately. Cadets often compared it to howitzers at parade, to Phantom jets exceeding the sound barrier, to the lion in the park. Some insisted that it matched all three simultaneously. But the howl he let loose in that room exceeded anything that I had ever heard issue from a human throat. I left my feet when he screamed.
“Bum! I got the best-looking daughter you’ve ever seen in your life and if you want to get crucified without nails or burn in hell before the Creator calls you or if you want me to set your eyeballs on fire with this cigar, then let me hear you say another single word about my daughter.”
“I’ve been trying to teach Mr. McLean respect for women all evening, sir,” Pig said triumphantly.
“Colonel,” I whispered, “I didn’t know you had a daughter. I would never have said that.”
“She wouldn’t be caught living or dead with a miserable excuse for a man like you, bum. But let me give you a couple of demerits to remind you of my daughter’s honor the next time I come into this room.”
“That won’t be necessary, sir,” I said. “Demerits only tend to make me forgetful.”
“I’ve found that demerits have the opposite effect, Mr. McLean. I’ve found that they stimulate the memories of my lambs,” he said, handing me a white slip.
“Colonel, don’t you think the little epigram on these white slips is the silliest misuse of the English language you’ve ever heard? ‘Discipline is training which makes punishment unnecessary’ That symbolizes the whole logic of the Institute to me.”
“Then transfer to Clemson, lamb. I’ll pack your bags, drive you to the bus station, and kiss you on the lips good-bye. I happen to agree with that motto. Your parents pay good money to have me watch out for you and to remind you when you displease the Bear. Demerits are part of your education, lamb, like textbooks or grades or slide rules. The more demerits I give you, the more benefits you derive from an Institute education, the more returns your parents have on their original investment. Demerits are probably the only thing that reminds you this is a military school, Mr. McLean.”
“Amen,” Tradd said.
When I had completed filling out the white slip, I surreptitiously removed Pearce’s note from my pocket, folded it twice, and handed it with the white slip to the Bear. He placed them beneath his clipboard and as a farewell gesture blew a giant plume of cigar smoke in my face. The smoke could have eliminated a colony of termites. The Bear could have
gotten a job with Orkin.
“Colonel, I like talking to you except when I have to breathe.”
The Bear grinned his brown-toothed grin and said, “Thanks for the white slip, Bubba. Ninety-eight more demerits and I get to ship you to Clemson before you’re allowed to disgrace the ring.”
“Major Mudge gave me five demerits at the first Saturday morning inspection, sir,” I said. “But I know you’re too good-hearted to run a senior out for excess demerits.”
“I’d do it with pleasure,” he said. “I ran three out in May last year. Good lambs, too. But slobs, like you. I told them that I had no hard feelings toward them. I was just performing my duty and they were caught not performing theirs.”
“Colonel, before you go. I want to apologize again for your daughter. But I would like to know one thing. Does your daughter take after you or your wife?”
“My wife, Bubba. Why?” he asked, glowering.
“The Lord is good after all,” I said.
He laughed, looked around the room, and before he departed, said, “Two Italians, an Old Charlestonian, and a sloppy shanty Irishman from Georgia. You ought to set up a branch of the United Nations in this room. As you were, gentlemen, and good night.”
Ten minutes before taps, Tradd and I walked down the gallery to take a shower. We were alone in the shower room. The battalion was slowing up and the cadets shuffled along the galleries like tired cells in an artery. There was always a slight tension in the neurotic anticipation of taps.
Tradd spoke through water as he washed shampoo from his short-cropped hair.
“Mother would like you to come over for dinner after the football game on Saturday. You can spend the night if you can get the Bear to give you a weekend leave.”
“I can’t this Saturday, Tradd,” I answered. “I’ve got something else I have to do.” I let the hot stinging spray flow over my eyes and face. For three years I had gone to Tradd’s house every single weekend simply because I had no other place to go. Suddenly I found myself invited to Annie Kate’s house almost every weekend, and there was the growing, exhilarating, and unmentionable involvement with her.