Honor and Duty (9 page)

Dad never looked directly at me. Now he did, and it seemed to be a matter of effort, of his will, to fix his eyes directly on mine, and I trembled for so many reasons, all unclear.

“Work hard,” he said in a strained voice, the muscles in his face taut, his lean face hard and flinty, death on his breath.

I began shaking.

“I, engineer. Your father’s father,
he
tell everyone—be
engineer!
Education, math!”

“Your father’s father,” my grandfather,
gung-gung
, Ah-Tiah. “You cannot say the name of your father, or of your father’s father,” Uncle Shim had said. “Do not ask me the name of your father’s father. He is his rank; he is
gung-gung
.”

“Work,” my father said, “to point of bitter pain,
k’u-li
—what American call ‘coolie’—understand? Be
very
good engineer, for family. Fear
nothing
in head or heart.
So much riding on your head!
This our dream! For
America!
You are only son!” He nodded his head.
“Ch’uan hsin ch’uan i!”

I didn’t understand.
Ch’uan
, I thought, might mean “everything.” I looked at him, unknowing, unbreathing, unsteady.

“With whole heart and whole mind.” He coughed. “Make us proud. Please, please,” he said, laying upon me a vast and ancient weight reaching back to my mysterious, unknown grandfather, wanting his issue to be engineers. Math. That’s why my father so valued it.

Fear nothing in head or heart, he had said. Yet I feared him in head, heart, stomach, liver, ear canal, and pancreas. And I feared my mother. Even on the airplane, it was this combined weight upon all my organs that seemed to aid gravity, delay forward movement, and invite a numbing detachment.

I knew what to do. I flexed my neck and arms, flared my lats, waved casually at the stewardess, and asked plaintively for a third dinner.

The cold beverage corporal served water. Mr. Stoner provided us two salt tablets, two glasses of water, and a “Bon appétit.” I took the water in small, regulated sips, my body singing in ecstasy.

But I feared I had seen my last meal. In my rush to be the first candidate through the gate, I had bypassed breakfast that morning. My last lunch and last supper had been yesterday, June 30, at the Thayer Hotel, at the threshold of the Academy reservation.

6

U.S. Hotel Thayer, West Point, June 30, 1964

“I hear they torture you,” a voice had said from the back.

Our letters of instruction directed candidates to report to the West Point Gymnasium in the morning. There were two groups at this government hotel at the edge of the post. One was brash about the next day’s challenges; the other was anxious
about them and scared of the unknown. I was anxious, scared, and hungry.

College should not begin in July. After what we had done to win appointments, it was unnerving to be called “candidates.” We were a multitude in the dining room, our hubbub transforming its dignified, dark-wooded colonial formality into the roar of a public school cafeteria. Hundreds of us, lumbars stiff and bottoms sore from bus and airplane travel, were pressed together by tens at round tables. The brash spoke of the past while the anxious ruminated about the future. All I saw were white. I ate.

This was lunch, but I read the dinner menu the way some read the ends of novels first, unable to resist the desserts of the last chapter. “Broiled Rock Lobster Tail with Drawn Butter, Snowflake Potatoes, Asparagus Hollandaise, and California Sunshine Salade,” preceded by “chicken liver pâté, V8 cocktail, melon in season, marinated herring, Crème Vichyssoise in Tasse or split green pea soup”: at three dollars and fifty cents, it was more than pricey. The lunch highlight was a club with soup and coleslaw for ninety-five cents, not including an automatic 10 percent gratuity. I had landed in the social upper crust.

Newcomers crowded the lobby. They were uniform in height, age, and build. Still no Negro, Hispanic, or Asiatic faces, reinforcing the familiar feeling of unfitness. Through no lack of effort, I had seldom passed for a Negro, however light skinned. I was going to blend in like Pancho Villa at a Texas Ranger convention.

Three years before, I had hated leaving the ’hood for the jangling anxiety of white streets. Lincoln High was not a nation of Ednas, but kids had achieved material paradise in possessions. No ringworm, tuberculosis, vomit, or blood; lots of dental braces, TVs, and new clothes. They ate well and had limited experience with violence. Fist City was not the governance theme. I had not been pitched a new fight card to set status. The school was clean and the teachers were not asked to be cops. Again I mimicked, switching adjectives, gestures, and attitudes, putting one more cultural mile between me and my Chinese youth and the fading borders of my recent past.

This was the Sunset district. People didn’t live on top of each other, sharing arguments, passions, and deep bass tones as the music pounded through common walls, everyone merging pleasures, disagreements, bad habits, scents, and garbage.

“Found a friend, Toos,” I said. “Name’s Jack.”

“That’s cool,” he said. “You in the same ’hood?”

“No ’hood here.”

“Say what?” he said. “No ’hood? You livin’ in a tent?”

“It’s a house with a little lawn and a backyard. Houses have
trees.
Little plants everywhere. No turf, no—no nothin’.”

“Damn,” he said, thinking on it. “They pickin’ on you?”

“No one picks on no one, Toos,” I said. “If I picked one, there’d be no action. Grown-ups don’t fight. No noise. No winos. Everyone’s polite. White kids talk like people at church.”

“Sounds good, China,” he said.

“Spooky,” I said. “Don’t know what they’re thinkin’.”

“Know what
Jack
thinks?” he asked.

I thought I did. I was sort of good at that.

“That’s all you need,” he said.

Through the jabber of the congregated future generals of America, came a pure, sharp-angled New York, Bowery Boys accent, rich with confidence and as thick as new concrete: “Let’s order.” I admired his priorities and liked him instantly. He looked like Sal Mineo, short with dark eyebrows, wearing a blue button-down shirt and dark slacks. He talked like a cab-driver and I wondered if he had enough smarts to get through the Academy.

“Why’dja come here,” he asked, without using a question mark.

“Free education,” I said, chewing. Better than, I’m running away from home ’cause I don’t like my mother. “You?”

A waitress served salads with bright orange Kraft French, and I was done before the others had found forks. She was in her forties and moved fast while speaking little, in a voice I found charming just because she served food. She wore a black dress with a white starched collar, a white lace apron, and a little white hat. Her small brown name tag said “Jean.” She had near-green eyes and almost-red hair with white roots in a tight bun. She ignored us, as if, in a defiance of reason, she were refusing to recognize our remarkable status as West Point new cadet candidates.

“Slow down, ma’am,” said one of the diners in a fascinating drawl reminiscent of Southern gentry in
Gone With the Wind.
“Number a us heah ah fixin’ ta be gen’rals. Stay a space an’
y’all be able ta recall mah face when they put it on the new dollah bill.”

Jean looked at the person next to him. “Look to your left and to your right. One of these boys won’t be here four years from now.” She looked back at the speaker. “General,” she added.

“Love math,” my neighbor was saying. The catalog’s description of freshman calculus had upset my stomach: “set theory, rigorous treatment of differential and integral calculus of single variable algebraic functions, calculus of transcendental functions, polar coordinates, ninety minutes a day, six days a week.”

Across from me was a man in his twenties. He ate vigorously and I was warmed by the hint of a kindred spirit. He was large and tan and wore expensive clothes. A widow’s peak, a pronounced triangular wedge of hair, pointed into his forehead. He had a prominent, lean, and noble nose that reminded me of Louis Calhern, the tall, patrician actor who had played Julius Caesar to Marlon Brando’s Mark Antony. His imperious beak pointed and flared, his aristocratic head haloed by the bright summer light that glared through red and blue painted glass windows and black wrought-iron borders. He had ice-cold eyes that gave me a start.
Ave, Imperator.

“Bet you’re good at that math shit,” he said to me. “NSF finalist, right?” He openly chewed lettuce flecked with carrots.

I shook my head. I liked Western literature and loved movies.

“What, don’t speak English?” He laughed. “Math’s not gonna be the drill
tomorrow.
Won’t be any stinkin’ trig problems buffin’ their shoes and jackin’ rounds for us tonight!” What did that mean? I ate saltines, Ritz crackers next. It was hot, and I drank like Sippy Suds at a free beer tap. Boxers took eight water tumblers a day, and now I drank for the comfort of the familiar. Jean left the water pitcher for me.

“What’s ‘buffin’ shoes’ mean?” asked the Southerner. Julius Caesar ignored him and bore down on his salad.

“What’s gonna be the problem tomorrow,” asked Sal Mineo, no longer eating. I wanted to ask for his salad, crispy, neglected, murmuring to me about its loneliness. I restrained myself.

“Beast detail. Upperclassmen,” said Caesar. “Going to hassle us
all
goddamned year. Gonna haze the holy shit outa us and screw us in the ear. Beast sucks. Only way to win is to
form our own team.” He studied us, one by one, as he pulled a pack of Winstons from his pale blue sport coat, tapped one out, and lit it with a sharp snap from a Zippo. He was an adult. He ate as smoke blew from his nostrils, cloaking his plate in haze as he studied and discarded each of us from his prospective, independent team.

“How you know so much?” asked a distressed kid, his mouth, eyes, and nose in nervous motion, ready to pose more questions before the first was answered. His high-pitched voice was absorbed by the general clamor from other tables, from the lobby, and from my still nearly empty stomach. Deep down, I recognized his fear.

Caesar laughed. “I didn’t watch
West Point Story.
I’m a ‘poop schooler.’ Already
in
the Army. Means I went to Yoos-Maps—West Point Prep, Fort Belvoir. I’ve been preppin’
all
goddamned year for this, gettin’ the straight poop, doin’ the math shit and pull-ups and the M-14 drill while you young studs were drinkin’ beer and gettin’ laid in high school.”

Getting laid in high school?

“Sonny Rappa,” said Sal Mineo. “I’m a good Catholic boy, and have definitely not been laid. I’ve confessed to a beer.” He offered his hand across the table. Caesar hesitated, put down his fork, dangling his smoke from his lower lip, and shook with the enthusiasm with which New York cabbies greet syphilitic fares.

“Luther Troth,” he said. “Duke to you, Squirt.”

Sonny’s grip was firm; Mike Benjamin’s was calloused. I also shook with five other guys—including the one who foresaw himself as the future adornment of the American dollar bill—none of whom were to survive Beast Barracks. “Kai Ting,” I said to Duke, gripping his big, nicotine-yellowed mitt, fearing what he would call me.

“Kai Ting?”
laughed Duke Troth. “Sounds like an accident in a fuckin’ Chinese kitchen.” A few laughed. Sonny and Mike, on either side of me, did not. An acidic message circuited my gut. Troth added nothing to soften the comment. He smiled through his smoke and food, and the weight of silence fell on me.

This was familiar country; bullies had smelled me, a Chinese kid in a black-and-white city, like frogs found flies. The slur was ugly spit on cold concrete—an invitation to later tests. Toussaint had taught me deterrence. Best to say from the jump
that I wouldn’t swallow words now so I could eat crap later. The risks were fishes, worsening over time.

I edged back, checking for knives, spans of reach, and Samaritans. Was he all mouth or was he going to pound me? Hot fear and cornered anger surged, and bile pumped in my hands. I cleared my throat; five seconds had passed. Look him inna eye. Talk slow. Give words a chance. Now. “Want to discuss family names with me?”

He put down his fork and cigarette, chewing a big mouthful. “Touchy, aren’t you?” he asked thickly through my glare.

Rude to talk with your mouth full, I thought, observant of manners. My mother was a monster for etiquette. I was her son. Our table fell silent within a sea of clattering diners. Duke was big, but he showed no Fist City response. I was glad.

“Hey, cool. Ting’s a
good
name,” said Sonny Rappa. “Let’s sweat these upperclassmen and not pick fights, know what I mean?”

Troth snorted. “Yeah. I want
no
part of that Oriental bullshit fighting, that karate hand-chop crap.
That
shit isn’t fair. Bet you’re good with that Oriental shit, right? Well,
screw you in the ear
.” He looked around the table, grinning falsely. Plates clacked as Jean brought my club sandwich with coleslaw and barley soup. The food gods did not want a fight, and forced a smile from me. My hands, heavy with purpose, relaxed. I picked up my soup spoon. “Right,” I said. Troth thought I was a math whiz and a karate expert. Pinoy Punsalong was as happy with the purity of my Western-polluted
wing chun gong fu
, Chinese boxing, as Uncle Shim was with my Chinese scholarship. I applauded the equivalency between Troth’s fighting spirit and his insight. I immediately typecast, classified, and pigeonholed him as a stereotyper; a big guy who bullied but did not enjoy fighting; a guy who enjoyed advantages over others; someone not to forget: Caesar.