“Thank you, sir. We will, sir,” said I, exhilarated that the General could recognize me on sight, that he chose to speak to me in front of my friends on the night I received the ring.
The General cleared his throat and adjusted the microphone at the head table. “Gentlemen,” General Bentley Durrell said, “tonight it is my pleasure to welcome you to the brotherhood of the ring. On this night you enter into a realm of grandeur and distinction. On this night, you enter into the fellowship of the Line.”
The auditorium was soundless. The fire-crowned candles flickered in white colonnades above the fresh linen, held in place by silver candelabra. The hall glowed like a cathedral nave at Eastertide.
“In the ancient days of empire,” he continued, “when the words of emperors and kings were translated into law the moment they spoke, the ring of the emperor was the seal of his word and carried the imprimatur of his authority. When his subjects saw the imprint of the ring in the sealing wax of documents, they were certain of the legitimacy of those documents, and they knew that they came directly from the hand of their ruler. If the emperor was a weak man, the sight of his mark would evoke laughter and contempt, but if he was a stern and powerful ruler, his mark would instill fear and trembling and obedience.
“When people see the Institute ring on your hand, they will know that it represents power and discipline and the legitimacy of your passage through the system. With this ring you will be accepted by the entire fellowship of the Institute alumni. You will be welcome in their ranks no matter where you may meet them in your travels. Institute men are not merely emotional about the ring, they are religious about it. It is the sacred symbol of the ideals represented by the Institute. This circle binds you to the brotherhood, to the inviolable ranks. This ring encircles the world. He who wears the ring, the Great Seal of the Institute, wears it more proudly than any mere emperor or king.”
He paused and with a voice almost undone by emotion and conviction said in a clear ringing pronouncement, “Gentlemen, at this moment, and according to the powers invested in me by the Board of Visitors, I command you now to wear the ring, the ring that you and you alone so gallantly and resolutely have earned.”
Each of the four hundred seniors opened the small box in front of him, lifted the ring from its slot of black velvet, and placed the ring on his finger. Each of us felt the weight of the ring for the first time.
Then we heard the General’s voice again as he intoned solemnly, “In the mystery of the circle, in the mystery of shape, of the shape without end, of the infinite form, the perfect form, I bind you to the brotherhood. I declare to the world that from this day forward you will walk as men of Carolina Military Institute. Gentlemen, by placing the ring on your fingers, you have vowed to be true to the Line. I accept that vow and I shall hold you responsible to it.”
An aide brought the General a glass of port.
We raised our glasses of port to the General.
He raised his glass to us.
“The ring,” he said.
“The ring!” we roared back in one immense, passionate roar. Then we drank to the ring and to our vow.
“The Line,” he said.
“The Line!” we roared, and we drank to the Line.
My hand felt different as I looked at my ring for the first time. I studied its adroit, inexorable images and translated the silent eloquence of its mythology and language so simply and unceasingly uttered in gold. Until this moment an essential part of me, some vital and unnamable center, had never felt that I was really part of the school. But now the cold gleam of the ring had enclosed me, bound me, and linked me to the Line, for as long as I lived. My hand had sprung suddenly alive as though I had taken its existence for granted. The ring on my finger made an articulate statement; it conveyed a piece of extraordinarily important information to me. It said—no, it shouted out—that Will McLean had added his weight and his story and his own bruised witness to the history of the ring, to the meaning of the ring, and its symbolism. I had encoded my own messages, scripts, and testimonies into the blazonry of the ring. I studied my new identity, my validation, and I felt changed, completely transfigured in the surprising grandeur of its gold. I was part of it. I had made it.
The General and the tactical officers and all the high-ranking members of the administration began moving through the hall congratulating each table of seniors. There was a forty-thousand-dollar investment on the hands of the four hundred seniors, and one element in the lore of the barracks was that the Institute ring contained more gold than any other college ring in the country. The room hummed with a euphoric, celebratory noise.
“Paisans,” Pig said, taking our wine glasses and pouring all the remnants into his glass.
He made a toast to us.
“This is to brotherhood,” he said. “The Brotherhood of the Room.”
He took a sip of the wine and passed it to Tradd.
“Drinking out of the same glass! There’s no telling what we’ll all catch,” Tradd said, wincing. But then he raised his ring to eye level and pointed the seal at all of us and said, “I propose a toast for all of us. To the four roommates who earned the ring together, who worked for the ring, who fought for the ring.”
He drank and passed the glass to me.
I toasted: “To the best roommates in the world.”
Mark did not or could not speak a word, he was so powerfully moved. He finished the wine and squeezed each of our shoulders with his hand. Tradd and I gave yelps of pain. Pig looked at Mark with an expression of naive placid sentimentality. Pig’s eyes had filled up with love of us, with the amazed, free-floating love of the world he always radiated when something touched his heart.
We came together, the four of us, with our arms locked around each other’s shoulders, rocking slowly from side to side, in a close intimate huddle. Wordlessly we communicated the depth and primacy of our feelings. Then we placed our newly ringed hands together in the center of the circle, and we stared downward at the cluster of rings, the ring repeated four times; and the numeral of our class, 67, winked in the candlelight as our hands moved.
Pig laid his hand straight out, palm downward. I laid my hand on top of his, Tradd’s on mine, Mark’s on Tradd’s. We looked at each other, but we could not hold each other’s gaze for long. There was too much history in our eyes. No words were spoken until Pig spoke for all of us. “Paisans,” he said simply, “for as long as we live. Paisans.”
I remembered a line from my class on the origins of the English language. My professor had said something one day in class that I wasn’t sure I heard correctly, but I never asked. Sometimes clarifications are undesirable, and this was such a time. I thought he said this: “The generic word for ‘brother’ is brother.” I hope this is true, but I don’t really care if it’s not. I thought about that line after Pig had called us “paisans.” No matter how brutal the Institute was in its rites of initiation and passage, there was always a heartbreaking romanticism in all the ceremonies and forms of the military. I shook hands with Mark and congratulated him. I shook hands with Pig and Tradd. We congratulated each other and honored each other with our eyes. The generic word for “brother” is brother.
As I looked around the hall at the rest of my classmates, as I shook hands and slapped the backs of the other R Company seniors, my mind flashed suddenly to plebe year, to a nightmarish vision of sweat parties under the stairwell, in the shower room, on the quadrangle. I remembered the screaming at every meal, at every formation, relentless and without end. The pressure of that year again inhabited my thoughts like a migraine. That year could still hurt me when I least expected it. But I knew this on the night I received the ring: The reason I felt so genuinely transformed was because I had survived it with these classmates. There had been seven hundred of us present on the four quadrangles when our Hell Night ended, but only four hundred were destined to wear the ring. I had attached my fate to their fate, and they had attached theirs to mine. Each of us had made an ind
ividual decision not to be broken by the system. We had earned this moment. The Institute, with its genius for ceremony, had made us lust for this moment from the first day we had entered the Gates of Legrand.
I felt a tap on my shoulder. When I turned around I almost burned my nose on the end of a cigar.
“They didn’t really give you a ring, did they, Bubba?” the Bear said plaintively in his rumbling basso profundo voice. “Let me buy it back from you and save the reputation of this school. How much will you take? A thousand dollars? Ten thousand? Just name the price, and I’ll make an appointment with my banker.”
“Can’t have it, Colonel,” I said, flashing it before him. “But it sure looks good, doesn’t it, Colonel?”
“No, Bubba, it looks bad. Very bad,” he said, as though he were sinking into some long-term spiritual malaise. “It’s nauseating. Pure nauseating, that’s what it is. When I see that ring on that grubby finger of yours, McLean, I feel like dynamiting the Gates of Legrand. I don’t know whether to laugh or commit suicide. You may not believe this, but this school used to have high standards. You’re living proof that we’re going downhill fast. Quit now, Bubba, and I’ll pay your way to Clemson. What’s going to happen to the image of this school if we allow you to graduate?”
“I’ll be one of the few demonstrably literate people ever to graduate from this school, Colonel.”
He threw his head back and laughed, his cigar ash cascading to the floor. “I just wanted to come over here and congratulate you, Bubba. It’s a great feeling to wear the ring, isn’t it?”
“One of the best feelings I’ve ever had,” I answered truthfully.
He glanced over my shoulder, his shrewd eyes appraising the activity in the hall. I looked behind me instinctively and saw Tradd studying us. The Bear always made Tradd nervous. The Bear began to talk to me in a slow controlled whisper.
“Have you heard from Oswald Spengler?” he asked.
“The West is still declining, Colonel.”
“Is Africa declining?” he responded cryptically.
“Pearce is holding his own, Colonel. You must have taken care of that overaggressive sophomore corporal who was giving him grief down in E Company.”
The Bear cackled and said, “He’s now a gentle-as-a-lamb sophomore private walking eighty tours for hazing a dumbhead.”
“You’re a harsh man, Colonel.”
“I’m a Girl Scout, Bubba,” he answered, his eyes continuing to scan the crowd. “I’ve got the heart of Bambi.”
“And if you’ll be so kind as to permit me an observation, sir: You’ve also got the looks of Rin-Tin-Tin.”
“Insulting a commissioned officer is good for forty tours, lamb,” he said, bringing his hot cigar ash to within an inch of my left eye. I could feel the heat of the ash deep in the retina and I backed away from him. But he anticipated the retreat, and matched my step, following me with the cigar. His smile was brown and toothy and ironic.
“I like the way Rin-Tin-Tin looks, Colonel,” I said, leaning out of the cigar’s range. “But you’re right. That statement might be misconstrued as an insult. I take it back, sir. You look a little better than Rin-Tin-Tin.”
“I’m gonna look like a matinee idol, Bubba, when you’re walking the quad with your M-1 rifle slung over your shoulder. By the way,” he said, suddenly growing serious again, “when’s the first road trip for you basketball bums?”
“The first week of December, Colonel. Why?”
“Because I’ll need to read Spengler for a week if you’re not on campus. Someone’s got to watch out for Pearce when you’re out proving that you’re one of the worst athletes in the history of the Institute.”
“Thanks, Colonel,” I said. “But I’ve already taken care of that. My roommates will check on Pearce for me during those weeks the team is on the road.”
“They know that you’re bird-dogging Pearce for me?” he said angrily. “I told you not to tell a living soul, Bubba.”
“They’ve known it from the beginning, Colonel Berrineau. I knew I’d be on the road a lot, and I tell them everything. There are no secrets in our room.”
“If I’d wanted them, I’d have picked them myself,” the Bear said, his eyes hot and blazing like his cigar ash. “St. Croix is steady and harmless. But I don’t know the other two very well. I’ve never trusted folks whose last names ended in an ‘i’ or an ‘o’ and I’ve never known a Yankee that can keep a secret.”
“These two can. I promise, Colonel,” I insisted.
“Do they like niggers?” the Bear asked.
“No, sir.”
“Good,” he said. “That makes me feel better. I trust people that hate niggers a lot more than I trust people like you. OK, Bubba. You made the new rules. Do they know to come see Papa Bear if there’s trouble?”
“Yes, sir. They know the whole procedure.”
“There’s something you might be interested in knowing, Bubba,” he said, catching Tradd in the act of watching us. He glowered back, forcing Tradd to drop his eyes as he resumed talking to Mark. “Did you ever hear of that knob Graubart, down in first battalion?”
“The kid from California,” I answered. “Everybody’s heard about the Western Waste, Colonel. I heard the cadre couldn’t even make him do pushups. He was a legend by the time he quit.”
“He resigned last week,” the Bear explained. “Except he didn’t resign in my office, not that he was a stickler for procedure. He resigned by telegram from San Francisco. When I went to inspect his room, I found something very interesting.”
“What, Colonel?”
“Don’t even tell this to your roommates, Bubba, and I mean that. I still don’t know what it means, but I’m sure going to find out. I found a number painted on his door.”
“So what, Colonel?”
“The number was a ten, Bubba.”
“You think it was The Ten who ran him out?”
“I don’t know who it was, Bubba. I just found the number on the door. It might just be a joke one of my lambs pulled off, but it sure did arouse my curiosity. If there is a Ten on this campus they’re gonna wish they were a thousand when the Bear catches them farting downwind. This may be their first mistake or it may be nothing at all.”
“How can we find out about The Ten?” I asked. “Where can we look?”
“Just keep your eyes and ears open, Bubba,” he replied. “And keep your mouth shut.”
“I’ll start with Edward the Great,” I said. “He knows everything that’s ever happened on this campus.”
“Colonel Reynolds will treat you differently the next time you talk to him,” the Bear said, starting to move away from me.
“Why, Colonel?” I asked, puzzled.
“It’s simple, Bubba,” he said, moving out into the jubilant crowd again. “Now you wear the ring.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
I chose my professors at the Institute with discrimination and care, on the basis of their legend in the Corps or the passion and neurosis they brought to the lectern, not on the subject they taught. Early on, I had discovered that I would rather take “Principles of Business Management” taught by an excellent teacher than suffer through “Shakespeare’s Tragedies,” a subject I normally would have enjoyed, with a mediocre one. Nothing bored me more than flaccid, humorless academicians punishing their students with limpid melancholy lectures while they polished up their deadly little monographs on vital subjects like “The Nose Hair of Grendel.”
I developed The Great Teacher Theory late in my freshman year. It was a cornerstone of the theory that great teachers had great personalities and that the greatest teachers had outrageous personalities. I did not like decorum or rectitude in a classroom; I preferred a highly oxygenated atmosphere, a climate of intemperance, rhetoric, and feverish melodrama. And I wanted my teachers to make me smart.
A great teacher is my adversary, my conqueror, commissioned to chastise me. He leaves me tame and grateful for the new language he has purloined from
other kings whose granaries are filled and whose libraries are famous. He tells me that teaching is the art of theft: of knowing what to steal and from whom.
Bad teachers do not touch me; the great ones never leave me. They ride with me during all my days, and I pass on to others what they have imparted to me. I exchange their handy gifts with strangers on trains, and I pretend the gifts are mine. I steal from the great teachers. And the truly wonderful thing about them is they would applaud my theft, laugh at the thought of it, realizing they had taught me their larcenous skills well.
I developed this theory in the classrooms of Colonel Edward T. Reynolds, whom the cadets called Edward the Great. Among the teachers in my life, and I had many good men and women, he belonged to the royal family.
But he was a difficult and temperamental man, and both Mark and I were nervous when we approached his class five minutes late the Monday afternoon after the Ring Ceremony. It took an act of courage to walk into Edward the Great’s room after he had begun a lecture, but it was better to face his wrath than to incur a month’s restriction to campus and twenty tours on the quadrangle.
“You do the talking, Will,” Mark said, an agitated tremor in his voice. “It’s your fault we’re late.”
“It’s always my fault we’re late,” I agreed. “No problem, Mark. You just walk quickly to your seat and I’ll take the grief from the Great.”
Colonel Reynolds was deep into his lecture when we entered the room. He stopped in midsentence, colored furiously, and gave us a stare that could have frozen Montego Bay.
I smiled broadly and saluted him in a friendly, brotherly manner as Mark slipped to the rear of the classroom.
Because of his obesity, it was easy to forget that Reynolds was a remarkably handsome man. He was immaculately groomed; his black hair was always combed with obsessive neatness, and his nails were always manicured precisely. He was fine-featured, with expressive green eyes that could register violence or merriment with equal eloquence.