Honor and Duty (17 page)

“Mr. Bestier, your father is Major General Pierce Bestier. Is it true that he has prepared you since infancy for the Point?”

“Yes, sir,” Clint said.

“What’s the most important lesson he imparted to you?”

“To take care of my classmates, sir.”

Fideli turned to Pee Wee. “We all know and admire your father, General Ira Costain McCloud. What lesson did he give you?”

“Sir,” he said in that cartoonish voice, “the same thing.”

The buzzer rang, rattling my teeth. The minute caller called five minutes to formation.

“Are you gentlemen going to make it through Beast?”

Clint, Pee Wee, and I said yes. Mersey remained silent.

“You are now fretting about permanent regimental assignments after Beast. Do not. These are mere details. Worry instead about Honor and the Corps. ‘Let Duty be well performed, Honor be e’er untarned,’ ” he quoted from the school song. “Sound off,” he said.

“ ‘LET DUTY BE WELL PERFORMED, HONOR BE E’ER UNTARNED!’ ”

Mr. Fidel’s omnipresent smile was absent, which sent an electric chill down my spine. He looked into our eyes. I did not see a jocular, baritoned cadet, but the bright eyes of a true believer, a man who sang and joked, but took life most seriously.

We always worked in the dark, after taps, to complete duties. After an hour of preparing our gear, we were able to crawl into our bunks. We were worried about our regimental assignments.

“We don’t want First Regiment,” Clint said quietly after taps, referring to his notebook by the light from his Zippo. “It’s awful, hard-core, full of Grayhog butt-kickers like Spillaney and Stoner. Second Regiment’s Greenwich Village, beatniks, like Fideli.” Clint flipped pages. “Companies H, B, G, and A are Hell-One, Bitch-One, Guts-One, and Aches-One. In the Second Regiment, they’re Happy-Two, Beach-Two, Gomer-Two, and Aloha-Two. We’ll get our assignments tomorrow.”

“Hope we get Second Regiment,” I said fervently, closing my eyes and praying to Wen-ch’ang, the scholarship god.

Some minutes passed. Mersey was snoring and I couldn’t sleep, even though I didn’t have to report to Mr. O’Ware. “Clint,” I said softly, “you ever have the same nightmare, over and over again?”

“No,” he whispered. “You?”

“Used to. A guy I knew and his dad died when I was a kid. Used to dream about him every night. Clint—you afraid of anything?”

He thought. “No, but I worry about academics.” He fell silent as an upperclassman walked down the hall. “I’m not real good,” he whispered. “But I’ve never failed at anything. And my dad expects me to succeed. So I will, whatever it takes.”

Ji hui.
He shouldn’t have said that. I curled up, providing a smaller profile for both of us from watching gods. I kept seeing Leo Washington’s face. Here, where I had roommates, a rifle, a bayonet, and walls, the nightmare had evaporated. I wondered if I would dream of Leo if I were alone again. I realized how much Clint’s presence had meant to me during Beast. I put on my glasses.

“Clint,” I whispered.

“Hmm,” he said sleepily.

“Think we’ll always be friends?”

Clint turned in his cot. “Uh-huh,” he murmured.

I nodded. I thought of Toos. “I’ll always be yours,” I said.

“I’ll be your bud,” said Pee Wee slowly, “if you go to sleep.”

In the morning, before physical training, we braced in the south sally port and reviewed the lists of regimental assignments into regular West Point companies. Pee Wee was the only one to get Second Regiment. I was in First Regiment, Company H. These were my mates for the next four years.

It was great to see Clint on the list, but I worried what the subsequent cost of such good
foo chi
, fortune, would be.

I, Caruso, was about to live with guys named Tree, Zoo Keeper, Spoon, Moon, The Man, Curve Wrecker, Pensive, Moose, Big Bus, Meatball, and Rocket Scientist.

I learned that Mike Benjamin and Sonny Rappa were also in First Regiment. I had taken great risks to remain in contact with them throughout Beast; I would do the same during Plebe year, whatever it took.

10

Mess Hall, September 11, 1964

“Rensler, how’s the cow?” asked Mr. Grabzchek.

“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 fourth degree!” That is, we had four milks left.

We were no longer Beasts and new cadets; we were Plebes, which was like a Sing Sing inmate bragging about having graduated to Devil’s Island. We had despaired on the first day of the fall term, when two thousand boomingly well-fed upperclassmen returned to West Point and descended on us like Goths on Rome. They outnumbered us, three to one. We now had academics, athletics, parades, reviews, tactical officers, quill and demerits, and games of risk.

“Who wants to go Big Dick?” asked Mr. Kunselman. As a Yearling who had been a Plebe two months ago, he was predictably reckless. In Big Dick, all ten cadets spun knives; those
landing with their cutting edges toward the plates were “in” and would divide the entire dessert between them. The “outs” received none. It was a game of risk designed to advance greed.

“Nah,” said Mr. Grabzchek, a Cow squad leader, “it’s just stinkin’ sheet cake.”

A bigger risk was requesting a Fall-out with Big Bites. If one of the Plebes had won a bout or could tell a winning joke, the table com might grant a Fall-out and Big Bites—releasing us from bracing so we could eat like pigs. But if the offering was deemed “puny” or inadequately amusing, wrath, catcalls, punishment, and endless recitations would replace nutrition.

Yesterday, Joey Rensler had told the “Thayer” joke. “Sir, permission ta tell a joke for a Fall-out with Big Bites!” he had cried in his wildly rampant Bronx accent.

“Better be good, Rensler,” warned Mr. Kirchhoff.

“Sir! Two officers in de Amazon get captured by dese seriously giant tribesmen, who tie ’em up an’ take ’em to de chief. Chief’s surrounded by hundreds a giant warriahs. De chief points a big spear in de first guy’s face an’ screams:
Thayer or death?

“Now dis officer, he’s OCS an’ he ain’t educated an’ he says, ‘Crap, given dis choice, I’ll take Thayer, whoever de hell it is.’

“Tribesmen, dey pull de guy’s pants down, spreadeagle ’im on de ground, an’ the whole tribe takes turns, sodomizin’ ’im.”

Groans rose from the upperclassmen. All of us Plebes for tables around crammed our chins deeper into our necks, fearing something more than losing our lunches from this joke.

“So de chief,” continued Joey, “he turns to de second guy. Second guy, he’s a West Pointer.
’Thayer or death?’
demands de chief. West Pointer, he puffs out his manly chest, an’ pops off inna military manner, ‘SCREW ALL A YA. GIMME DEATH!’

“De warriahs, dey beat dere spears ona ground goin’ ‘Ooohh!’ in deep respec’, admirin’ the West Pointer’s big guts.

“ ‘All right!’ de chief says, pattin’ de guy on de shoulder. ‘Death! Good! Hey—yur brave! But first,
Thayer!
’ ”

Silence.

“Rensler,” said Mr. Kirchhoff. “You may have a Fall-out with Big Bites. If you never tell that joke again.”

Now, I was gunner, as correctly in my place as Judas at the Last Supper. I had no joke that could alter the course of the
meal. One of our upperclassmen was in the hospital, and I had cut the Martha Washington sheet cake into nine stunningly equal, proudly Euclidean, rectilinear pieces. I opened my mouth to announce it.

“Gentlemen, remain seated. Mr. K., may I join you for lunch?” It was Major Robert “Yoiks” Yerks, our company tactical officer. He was spare, unassuming, caring, and hungry, and he sat in the empty chair. In three years, he would win twenty-two combat decorations in Vietnam. He would retire as a four-star general who still remembered the first names of his cadets from the 1960s.

I heard Mr. Kirchhoff say, “Mr. Ting, cut ten pieces.”

Sweat appeared on my forehead. Without a twitch, my brain went through a floor exercise that was the internal equivalent of rubbing my scalp, contemplating the skull of Yorick, screaming for a cab in a Manhattan downpour, and dropping my trousers in Times Square while doing a hat dance around my freshly dug grave. I quickly smoothed over the cuts, pushing the icing around in hard sworls to cover the marks, hoping against all of Newton’s laws that stitching the surface would reunify the divided cake beneath.

Joey Rensler uttered semiaudible squeaks of sympathy in a miniaturized version of a Three Stooges whine. It was all I had going for me. I announced the cake and passed it up.

“Let me serve you some cake, sir,” said Mr. K. “What the … TING! THIS IS AN
ATROCITY!
WHAT’D YOU DO—CUT IT WITH A
HAMMER?
”

“NO, SIR!” I cried. Joey Rensler said, “Meep, meep.”

“LOOK UP HERE!” Mr. Kirchhoff was looking at me with the heaviest, blackest eyebrows in the Corps and one of those classic expressions cherished by Bela Lugosi fans everywhere. He filled me with the deep willies. That darkly underworld gaze, his large, menacing, suspended eyeballs floating in the bright white sclera under a dark roof of hairy brow, induced wienie-shortening fear.

“REPORT HERE AND BRING YOUR HAT! Take this to Washington’s statue and ask the Father of Your Country for forgiveness for having
butchered
his wife’s cake! NOW POST!”

In those days, Washington was northeast of the Plain, where he had a panoramic view of the wide, sparkling Hudson as it took a hard left around the dark green forests on Constitution Island. Today, he’s in front of the Mess Hall, making it far
easier for Plebes impaired in the cutlery arts to report their failures.

Chinese want burial where the geomantic forces of wind and water,
fengshui
, are kind, permitting a view of the neighboring real estate. General Washington had good
fengshui.
This was the general who had willed that America would have a military academy to defend against foreign invasion, who had head-quartered here to keep the British from dividing the Colonies. He had led frozen, chilblained farmers and boys in rags to face Europe’s best army. He was the father of the entire nation. It was an overpowering mixture of icons, and I trembled superstitiously.

“Sir, Mr. Ting reports to the President as ordered.” I offered the cake. “Sir, I apologize for butchering Mrs. Washington’s sheet cake.” It had taken seventeen cuts, the last nine the unkindest.

He looked the same as the face on the dollar bill—quiet, reliable, steady, and green. I didn’t compare him to any actor because he looked like George Washington. Silence. Wind brushing through the trees at the edge of the Plain, the water deep and still in its blueness, the air fresh from the river. In his face I saw my father’s Gaze, as he would look into the distance at China. This was similar to my conversations with him, experiencing a monolithic silence while anticipating a burst of anger.

How often had the Father of Our Country seen Plebes offering ruptured cakes? If I hadn’t taken the Confucian position to his side, it would look as if he were reaching for the cake. I wondered if Washington had ever seen an Oriental in the span of his rich life. I wondered how he felt about a Chinese West Point cadet. Would true acceptance here mean that I would look at Washington and think only American thoughts, and not think of old Chinese ways?

The late-summer day embraced me. The emerging oranges and yellows of the valley soothed the memory of the abusive din of the mess hall. The wind whipped the flags and flag cords. The pleasure of being alone and so near the river overcame the awkwardness of conversing with a cold and unresponsive mass of melted metals forged into the shape of an unreachable father.

Through tremendous good fortune, Clint Bestier and I had not only been assigned to Company H-I, but also had ended up in
the same room. Our two new roomies were Joey Rensler, a sharp-featured, sun-sensitive, Danny Kaye look-alike from the Bronx, and Bob Lorbus, a big, cheerful, country music-loving, broad-shouldered Kansan who began every sentence with the words, “Hiya, buddy!” I missed Pee Wee, Sonny, and Mike, but they were great friends to have while facing Plebe year.