The Lords of Discipline (6 page)

I had never used the key, but I always kept it with me and I always liked to think that I could enter the house whenever I pleased. I wondered what the builder of the house, the distinguished barrister, Rhett St. Croix, would say if he knew that Will McLean was walking the streets of Charleston with a key to his house.

Chapter Three

I
t took a brief moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness when I entered Henry’s Restaurant at noon the next day The August sun was dazzling at high noon in Charleston. I walked toward the smell of cigar smoke. The Bear was sitting in a corner booth with an unimpeded view of the door. He was eating a dozen raw oysters and had ordered a dozen for me. I saluted him before I took a seat across from him.

“I think I’ll have oysters, Colonel.”

“Don’t eat the shells, Bubba. Just spit. ’em out on the plate.”

“I’ve never eaten oysters that taste like cigars,” I said through a miasma of smoke.

“No joking around today, Bubba,” Colonel Berrineau said, extinguishing his cigar. “You and Poppa Bear are going to have a serious heart to heart.”

When I was a freshman, I had quickly learned the central underground law of the Corps. The law was unwritten and unpublicized and essential for survival in that militant, inflammatory zone entered through the Gates of Legrand. The law was this: If you are ever in trouble, no matter if it is related to the Institute or not, go see the Bear. You sought out the Bear when there was trouble or disaffection or grief. You looked for the Bear when the system turned mean. You found him when there was nowhere else to go. In my tenure at the Institute, I never saw a cadet in serious trouble who did not request an interview with the Bear as soon as possible. Often, he would yell at the cadet, berate him for negligence or stupidity, offer to pay his tuition to Clemson, burn him for unshined shoes, insult him in front of the secretaries in the commandant’s office; but always, always, he would help him in any way he could. That was the last, indispensable codicil to the law. No one outside the barracks was aware of the law’s secret unofficial existence, not even the Bear.

“Bubba, I know you’ve heard about Pearce coming to the Institute.”

“The Negro?”

“Yeh. That’s the one. We’re a little behind the times, Bubba. Every other school in South Carolina integrated a good while ago and God knows we held out as long as we could, but Mr. Pearce is coming through these gates next Monday and he isn’t coming to mow the lawn or fry chicken in the mess hall. He’s entering the Long Gray Line. Now some very powerful alumni have tried for years to keep this school as white as a flounder’s belly. We’re one of the last holdouts in the South, if not the last. Now, several members of the Board of Visitors know that it’s very important for this young lamb to make it through this school. Otherwise, there could be real trouble with Federal funds and every other damn thing. They also know that the General has hated everything black since a platoon of niggers he commanded in the Pacific broke and ran from the Japs. So they’re just sweet-talking the General and keeping him out of it. The Board doesn’t talk much to the General unless they want water changed into Burgundy or the Ashley River parted. He’s the school’s miracle man, Bubba, but he’s a little too old to have much to do with the nuts and bolts of running the place. I asked you here today because we’ve got to keep Pearce in school. That means we’ve got to keep these Carolina white boys off his tail as much as we can.”

“You’ll have to put him in a cage for that, Colonel. And if you show him any favoritism at all, the whole Corps will run him out, and you and I know they can get rid of any freshman they want to if they’re so inclined. They could run Samson and Hercules out of here the same night if they thought they didn’t belong here.”

“Bubba, thanks for the lecture about the Corps. But I’ve been watching it a lot longer than you have and I know what the Corps can and cannot do a lot better than you do. But you’re right. They can run him out with the morning trash. The thing is we selected Pearce over five other black applicants. We lucked out—or at least we think we did. He’s smart. Comes from a good family, wants to make a career out of the military, and is pretty good looking for a nigger. But most important, he’s tough. He could eat any five other freshmen for breakfast. But God knows he’s going to need to be tough. We want you to be his liaison, Bubba. You watch over him when you can. Work out a system where he can contact you if things get out of control. He got a bunch of threatening letters this summer, and word is out that there’s a group on campus that doesn’t want him to make it, that has sworn to run out every nigger that the Federal government jams down our throat. It’s up to you and me and the other authorities and good cadets to make sure they fail.”

“What group, Colonel?” I said, puzzled.

“If I knew who it was, Bubba, I wouldn’t be wasting my breath talking to you. They’d be walking so many tours on the second battalion quad that they’d have blood blisters where their toes used to be. All we know, Bubba—and this is just guessing—is that we think it’s a secret group. One of the Board of Visitors thinks it might be The Ten.”

“The Ten is a myth, Colonel. It’s supposed to be a secret organization, but no one can tell me it’s possible to keep a secret on this campus.”

“Pearce got a letter from The Ten this summer,” the Bear said, looking toward the door.

“He did?” I said. “What did it say?”

“It mainly warned him to keep his black ass out of the Corps of Cadets if he knew what was good for him. It also said that niggers were living proof that Indians did fuck buffalo.”

“He’d better get used to that kind of stuff, Colonel. But how do you know the letter came from The Ten?”

“I’m a detective, Bubba. It was signed ‘The Ten.’ ”

“It could have been anyone, Colonel. It could’ve been me. That’s been a joke on campus since I was a knob.”

“I know, Bubba, I know,” he said, rolling his eyes at me and daintily picking the cigar stub out of the ashtray. He began to chew on it as he resumed speaking. “I’ve never seen one ounce of proof that it exists since I’ve been here. But there’s a rumor in the Corps that someone’s out to get Pearce and the Bear listens to rumors. Do you know why the Commandant’s Department wants you as Pearce’s liaison?”

“The editorial?” I ventured.

“Yeh, Bubba, you flaming Bolshevik, the editorial,” he said, leaning across the table, his brown eyes twinkling. “I was against letting the school paper print your editorial. If we’re going to have censorship, I think we ought to have real censorship, not the namby-pamby kind. But it did help spot the one bona fide nigger-lover in the Corps.”

“Not everyone in the Corps is a racist, Colonel. There are a few holier-than-thou deviants among us.”

“How about if I say that ninety-nine percent of the Corps is racist, Bubba?” he said, grinning.

“You’re being too cautious, sir. It’s a much higher percentage than that.”

“Did you write that editorial because you wanted to piss off the authorities, or do you really get a hard-on when you think about niggers? Tell me the truth, bum.”

“I knew you wouldn’t sleep for a week, Colonel.”

“Well, Pearce is going to make it, lamb. Pearce has got to make it. His time in history has come.”

“And your time’s over, eh, Colonel?”

“It may be, Bubba. But bums like you never had a time and, God willing, you never will.”

“Colonel,” I asked, finishing the last oyster on my platter, “are you a racist? Do you want Pearce in the school?”

“Yeh, I’m a racist. I liked the school when it was lily-white. Pearce is going to stand out like a raisin on a coconut cake during parade.”

“Then why are you trying to protect him?”

“It’s my duty, Bubba, my job. And when Pearce comes in on Monday, he becomes one of my lambs, and I like to make sure that all my lambs get an even break.”

“I’ll be glad to watch over Pearce, Colonel, but I had best be seen with him only once during the first week.”

“Word will leak out that you’re assigned to him. In fact, I’ve already leaked it. I want the Corps to know that the Bear is watching Mr. Pearce closely.”

“Colonel, when did you graduate from the Institute?”

“Nineteen thirty-eight, Bubba.”

“How do I know that you’re not one of The Ten?” I said, teasing him.

“I was in the bottom five of my class academically,” he answered before he swallowed an oyster.

“Does that mean anything?”

“It means I was stupid, Bubba. The Ten wouldn’t touch someone stupid. That’s stupid with books, Bubba. But I’m Beethoven when it comes to catching my lambs breaking the rules of the Institute. You keep in touch. If you need me, give a yell. Come to me. No one else. No one in the Corps. None of your friends. Me. Spelled B-E-A-R.”

Chapter Four

T
hat evening as I awaited the arrival of my other two roommates, I meditated on the nature of friendship as I practiced the craft. My friends had always come from outside the mainstream. I had always been popular with the fifth column of my peers, those individuals who were princely in their solitude, lords of their own unpraised melancholy. Distrusting the approval of the chosen, I would take the applause of exiles anytime. My friends were all foreigners, and they wore their unbelongingness in their eyes. I hunted for that look; I saw it often, disarrayed and fragmentary and furious, and I approached every boy who invited me in.

I was sitting at my desk in the rear of the alcove shining my inspection shoes when I heard the door open and Mark Santoro come into the room. He did not see me at first, but I smiled as I saw his old fierce scowl when he heard me say, “Hey, Wop.”

It was an old game between us and we could play it for hours without missing a beat. He put his luggage on the floor near his rack and walked toward me.

“You must be new in town, sir,” Mark said respectfully. “It hurts my feelings when a very ugly human being like yourself casts aspersions on my heritage.”

“Wop,” I repeated. “Wop, Wop, Wop, Wop, Wop.”

“Excuse me, sir, you must not have heard me. I asked you kindly to treat me with dignity and respect. So I would suggest that you look for another way to address me before I’m forced to perform radical surgery on that fat nose of yours that your mother stole from an Irish pig.”

“Speaking of noses, yours grew a little bit over the summer, Mark. You could land a DC-8 on that schnozzola of yours.”

“You couldn’t land a fruit fly on that little sniffer of yours.”

“Why don’t you have a nose job, Mark?” I said. “No kidding. It would take a team of twenty-thirty surgeons chopping away like beavers, but they could have it down to normal size after a day or two.”

He put a large finger on my nose. “I’m real sensitive about my nose.
Real
sensitive.”

“How does it feel, Santoro, to come from a race of men who once ruled the earth, who brought order to the entire Mediterranean world, who redefined the meaning of empire, and who humbled countless warriors and civilizations? How does it really feel to be Italian, Mark, past masters of the universe who now spend all their time rolling dough and making pepperoni pizza?”

“Do you know, McLean, that I didn’t have to take your shit all summer? No one had the balls to tease me this summer. And do you know what,” he said, ominously looming above me, “I missed the hell out of your Irish ass.”

He scooped me out of my chair, the left shoe and the can of polish flying off the table in opposite directions. He squeezed me until I gasped for oxygen. He kissed me on both cheeks. He picked me up again and threw me on my bunk. When finally I could speak, I was looking up at his strong, dark face, his white teeth flashing in a broad smile. After long separations, Mark’s greetings were a form of martial art.

“Mark, it’s so good to see you,” I said.

“How’d you live without me,” Will? And you start being nicer to us sweet Italian boys.”

“Nice!” I yelped. “If it even looks Italian, I’m nice to it, man. I’m not stupid. I’m nice to grease bubbles, oil slicks, and lube jobs. They all remind me of two of my roommates. How’s your mother and father?”

“Begged me to change roommates and sent their love. They want you and Tradd to crack down on my ass and make me study. By the way, where’s Pig and Tradd?”

“Pig hasn’t shown,” I said, glancing at my watch.

“If I know muscle beach, he’ll be rolling in two minutes after muster, wearing a track suit and a hard-on.”

“You go on over to Tradd’s house, Mark. Abigail’s fixing dinner for all of us tonight. I’ll wait for Pig and bring him over later. I think Commerce would like someone to watch the baseball game with him. He’s been riding Tradd pretty hard again. But put your uniform on, son. You’re a senior now.”

Mark picked me up again and crushed me against his powerful, hirsute chest. He kissed me again on both cheeks and with no self-consciousness at all looked into my eyes with benign tenderness and said, “I love you, Will.”

My answer was a lesson in history and sociology and you could derive some of the major differences between Ireland and Italy by the emotional diffidence of my response. Both of us were unassailable proof that each of the tribes of Europe had imported their own separate fevers, predilections, and reveries into the capricious, turbulent consciousness of America. Our Europes were different; our Americas were different. Mark was emotional and sentimental beneath his scowling, brooding visage. I feared emotion, dreaded any commitment of spirit, and was helpless to translate the murmurings of the inarticulate lover I felt screaming from within. In a laugh-it-off, pretend-it-isn’t-serious, tight-assed parody of the Irish American, preserved like a scorpion in my emotional amber, I answered, “I think you’re a gaping asshole.” We had said the same thing and Mark left for dinner at the St. Croixs’ as I continued to wait for Pig.

Pig. Dante Pignetti. I had heard upperclassmen say that there had never been a freshman like him in recent memory. He was the only member of my class who was not affected or scarred by the plebe system at all. In fact, throughout that first year, he gave intimations that he loved both its regularities and its aberrations. It was an act of orgasmic pleasure for him to do a pushup, a devotional of unutterable joy to do fifty. Once I had watched three juniors work on him for an hour, trying to break down his indefatigable stamina with a grueling, synchronized combination of running stairs, holding out an M-1 rifle, and pushups, but they never even began to crack Pig and eventually surrendered out of sheer boredom and a begrudging awe. But awe was not the right word. It was fear. If they had broken Dante Pignetti, I am sure that none of them would have slept soundly for the rest of the year, for he carried with him a legendary unpredictability and an awesome capacity for rage. His body was a work of art forged through arduous repetitive hours with weights. It was not the type of body I admired—the long fluid muscles of swimmers hold more esthetic appeal for me—but it had a magnetic, almost nuclear, tension. His upper torso was breathtaking, his chest muscles, his shoulders, all were simply extraordinary. He did not play football; his love affairs were with the weights, with boxing and wrestling, with karate, with all sports that hurt seriously.