Gray Girl (20 page)

I
hope you enjoy your Thanksgiving leave.

SKIP

SKIP,

Okay,
I assume you are a cadet.
 
And since
cadets cannot lie, cheat or steal, I will take your word that you are not
dangerous.
 

But
I still have no idea who you are.
 
I
assume you are male and given you are in the “general vicinity” that narrows it
down to about 1,000 guys.

I
don’t recall meeting anyone in the mailroom, and I have no idea when we met
under less than desirable conditions.

OH GOD, PLEASE TELL ME YOU’RE NOT DOGETY!

IF you are, this correspondence is over!

Jan

19

Friday,
May 7, 1982

1600
hours

Sam Dogety entered the room and walked behind Jan’s chair to the
witness table.
 
His six-foot frame
seemed smaller than usual as he raised his right hand and repeated the Honor
Board oath.
 
Jan felt her cheeks
redden when he sat down and glanced at her.
 
She took a deep breath trying to quell
the queasiness in her stomach.
 
Dogety could either make this whole thing go away or make sure
she
went away.
 
It all came down to
the this
man who had made her life mostly miserable all
year.
 

“Sam, you declined to submit a written statement which is your
prerogative.
 
However, we need to
hear what you witnessed last Sunday night.
 
So please, whenever you’re ready,” Conrad said waving his hand.
 
Dogety fidgeted in his chair.
 
He picked up his gray saucer
hat which
he had laid down on the table in front of
him.
 
He started twirling it in his
hands, staring intently down at the activity.
 
When he didn’t speak or look up for a
few more seconds, Conrad cleared his throat.
 
“Um, Sam, are you ready to start?”

“I…ah...I would…. rather answer questions, if that’s okay,” he said
finally.
 

Conrad seemed confused.
 
“Well, normally you would tell us what happened, then we would ask
questions if we have any.”

“But if it’s not against the rules, I’d rather just answer your
questions.”
 
He stopped twirling the
hat, but kept holding it between his knees.

“All right, then,” Conrad continued, “What happened on the night of May
second, with regard to Cadet Wishart, Cadet Jackson and yourself?”
 

Dogety leaned forward in his chair, “I mean, specific questions.
 
You have the basic statements from both
Wishart and Jackson, so just ask me specific questions about the gray areas.”
 

Dogety, what are you trying to do
here?

“The first major gray area,” Seymuor interjected, “seems to be what
happened in the CQ room.
 
Tell us
what you witnessed there on Sunday night.”
 

“Could you be more specific?”
 
Dogety asked.

Jesus, Dogety, just tell them what
you know!

“Well,” Seymour continued, “how did you question Cadet Wishart?”
 

“We asked her what she did with the original correspondence between
myself and Cadet Jackson,
”
 
Dogety
said.

“No, I mean,
how
did you question her?
 
Did you scream at her?
 
Was she in the Smack position?”

“I raised my voice but not sure if you’d call it screaming.
 
And yes, she was at attention against
the wall.”
 

Tourney jumped in, “Would you say Cadet Jackson screamed at her?”
 

“Yes.”
 

“Did he scream in her face?”
 
Tourney asked.

“Yes.”

“And did you try to stop him or get him to calm down?” Gaskins asked
this time.

“I asked him to lower his voice.
 
But he was pretty agitated.”
 

“Did you,” Tourney again, “at any time, try to restrain Cadet Jackson?”

“I did,” Dogety looked back down at his hat.

“Why?
 
Why did you try to
restrain Cadet Jackson?”
 
Leavitt
asked.

“I was a little worried Markus might…might make too much of the
incident.”
 
The room silenced.

“What do you mean?”
 
Leavitt
asked in almost a whisper.

“I mean I have seen Markus lose his temper before and I thought he
might… well, I didn’t want him to do anything he might regret,” Dogety said
without looking up.

Again the room became quiet.
 
“Did you think he might hurt Miss Wishart?”

“I…I don’t, no, I didn’t think he’d hurt her,” he paused, “but I didn’t
want to find out.”

Conrad interrupted, “Sam, we all know it’s acceptable practice for
upperclassmen to question plebes in the manner described by both Markus and
Miss Wishart.
 
We’ve all done it;
it’s not anything unusual.
 
So I am
perplexed as to why you might think this was troubling.”
 

“That’s true, Casey.
 
But we
had been drinking, as you know,
”
 
Dogety
admitted.

“Could that have also altered your perception of the events?” Conrad
asked.

“Maybe,” he said, “but I don’t think so.”

 
Conrad had heard enough,
“It’s seventeen hundred hours, so let’s stop here until after dinner.
 
I expect everyone to be back in this
room by nineteen-thirty.
 
Remember
everything said in this room stays in this room.”
 
He stood up and closed his folder.

Jan watched Dogety get up from his chair like an old man.
 
He looked at Jan but quickly dropped his
eyes when he saw her staring back.
 
She felt a strange sensation, something like sadness.
 
She never expected to feel sorry for
Dogety, but as he walked out the door, with his shoulders drooping, she
suddenly wanted to run over and hug him.

20

(Whistle)—BOOM!
–AHHH

U.S.M.A.
Rah! Rah!

U.S.M.A.
Rah! Rah!

Hoo—Rah!
 
Hoo—Rah!

AR—MAY!
 
Rah!

Team!
Team! Team!

Rocket Yell, Bugle Notes, 81, p.285

Plebes continued to mark time by
counting down the days until the next opportunity to leave West
Point—Thanksgiving, the Army/Navy game, Christmas, Spring Break, and the
ultimate opportunity to leave for good: graduation.
 
Each milestone was so highly
anticipated, because cadets lived for when they could leave, and no one ever
wanted to come back.
 
The common
joke went,
 

“Hey,
what's that loud noise you hear when returning to West Point?”
 

“Oh,
that's the giant sucking sound!”

Her parents drove the four plus hours
to pick her up for Thanksgiving leave.
 
When she slid in the backseat, she realized she had been holding her
breath.
 
As they drove away, she
turned to watch West Point’s massive stone buildings fade from view.
 
As a plebe, she didn’t have many
opportunities
to
 
look
around.
 
From the
safety of her parents’ car, she saw why cadets sometimes called West Point
their “Rockbound Highland Home.”
 
Yet, she thought it looked nothing like a home.
 
“Fortress” was the word that came to
mind.
 
The square, cold, gray, gothic
structures seemingly lined up “dress-right-dress.”
 
Even the Cadet Chapel, considered the
queen of all the buildings, appeared to Jan like a stone giant commanding the
Army of buildings from her mountaintop.

A few miles past the West Point
gates, Jan peeled off her Dress Gray uniform.
 
She put on “civvies:” jeans and a
t-shirt, and for the first time in five months, she felt almost normal.
 
Tears welled up in her eyes when she
walked through the door to her childhood home.

 
Mrs. Wishart prepared a big
Thanksgiving dinner with the usual fare—turkey, mashed potatoes,
stuffing, gravy, green bean casserole, squash casserole, cranberry sauce and
rolls.
 
Jan assumed the diet tables
would be in her near future.
 

The whole family sat at the dining
room table in their usual spots.
 
The
three brothers sat on one side, the three sisters on the other.
 
Mom and
Dad,
sat at each end of the table like bookends.
 
Jan always sat closest to her
father.
 
She had been sitting in
that spot for as long as she could remember.
 
Why
don’t I ever sit next to mom?
 
 

The noise level in the Wishart dining
room was proportional to the Mess Hall with plenty of talking, laughing, joking
and story telling.
 
If anyone fell
silent, it meant they had the flu or something.
 

“So Jan, tell us about West Point,”
Samuel, the middle brother asked.

“What do you want to know?”
 
Jan wasn’t about to say any more than
was necessary.

“What’s it like?
 
What do you do everyday?”

“Well, we get up early.
 
Depending on our assigned duties that
week, we deliver newspapers or laundry to the upperclassmen rooms.
 
Then, we read the paper, memorize the
menus, go over any other stuff we need to know while cleaning our room, making
the beds and getting dressed for breakfast formation.”
 

“What time is that?” her mother
asked.

“Breakfast formation is at
six-twenty.
 
We get up by
five-thirty.”
 

“So you have all that done before
then?” brother Peter asked this time.

“Yes, and when we practice the indoor
obstacle course test, we get up at four-thirty.”
 

“But you get to sleep in on the weekends
right?”
 
This question came from her
older sister, Maryanne, who had already graduated from college.

“No, we have one or two Saturday
classes and then room inspections, and then we usually have to march for a
parade.
 
And if there’s a home
football game, then we have to go to that, too.”
 
Jan resented the football attendance
requirement.
 
No one is required to go to any other sport.

“Do you like it?”
 
Peter asked.
 
The room suddenly became quiet.

“No, not really,” Jan replied softly.

“Just quit then,” Peter said.
 

“I can’t…yet.”

“You can, right now if you want,” he
insisted again.

“That’s enough, Pete,” Mr. Wishart
intruded.
 
“Anything worth something
is going to take hard work.”

Jan didn’t share all the details of
her life at West Point.
 
When she did
talk about it, she made it seem humorous or silly, never mentioning the times
she cried herself to sleep under her Gray Girl.
 
It was one of those things, like
The Depression
, which could not be
adequately described, only something you endured.

Her friends couldn’t understand
either.
 
They lived in the normal
world, going to normal colleges.
 
They were having sex, smoking pot, drinking, and having sex.
 
But her best friend, Regan, had always
understood her.
 
Ever since Jan
called her a stuck up snob in the fifth grade, they had been best friends.
 
They played the same sports, shared most
of the same classes, and spent many nights partying in high school.
 
So it came as a bit of a shock when
Regan told Jan she had slept with Jan’s only boyfriend in high school,
Tim.
 

They met at their favorite hangout,
Mel’s, a local hole in the wall place.
 
God, it’s good to see her.
 
After ordering beers and burgers, the
two friends fell into their familiar conversation.
 
Each one shared the highlights of their
first semester at college.
 
Both had
a few funny stories.
 
Jan didn't
tell any of the bad ones.
 

After an hour or so, Regan said, “I
have to tell you something, Jan.”
 
She said it so seriously Jan could only imagine she was either pregnant
or had cancer.

“Is everything okay?”

“Yes...and no. I have a confession to
make.”

“You don't need to confess anything
to me, Regan.”

“Yes, I do.”
 
Jan could not imagine what she had done.

“Tim and I were together.”
 

A long pause followed as Jan absorbed
the meaning of “together.”

“Oh.”
 

“It was a one night thing.
 
You know how it can be in college.
 
A bunch of us got drunk, and he stayed
over in my room.”

“Oh.”

“Tim didn't want to tell you, but I
told him I could not keep secrets from you.”

“Oh.”
 
She started to sound like a seal.

“I don't blame you if you hate
me.
 
I hate myself for doing
it.
 
It was just that once, and it
won't ever happen again, I promise.”

“Okay.”
 

Just then, Tim showed up.
 
Regan turned to look up at him and said,
“Tim, we just finished talking about you.”
 

“Oh really,” he said.
 
“I hope it was good.”

“Well, I told Jan what happened,”
Regan
admitted.
 
Silence.
 
“I told her we
didn’t mean to hurt her and that we were both drunk.”
 
Tim wouldn't look at Jan.
 
Jan wouldn't look at Tim.
 
Regan just looked away.
 

It occurred to Jan that she had two
options.
 
I can fly off the handle bars, hit the glass ceiling, and never speak
to either of them again.
 
Or, I can
let them off the hanger and hope we can all just be friends.
 
She only knew she didn’t want her
best friend to keep apologizing while her now ex-boyfriend acted deaf.
 

“Guys,” she said, “look,
it's
college.
 
Things happen.
 
I wish it
hadn’t happened, but I understand.
 
It's been a crazy semester for me as well.
 
Things got out of control a couple of
times for me, too.
 
I get it.”
 
Jan wasn’t lying.
  
Everything she said was technically
true.
 
They could interpret it
however they wanted.

Tim pulled out a chair and sat
down.
 
He turned to Jan and said,
“I'm sorry.”
 

“No worries, Tim.
 
Besides, I thought we had broken up when
we left for college.”
 
Okay, not exactly true, but given the
situation, I can assume this should have happened.

 
Tim looked like a dagger pierced his
stomach.
 
“Oh,” he said.

 
It was a double betrayal.
 
Not only because her best friend had sex
with her boyfriend,
but
the added insult was that
she
hadn’t even had sex with her
boyfriend.
 
Hell, we didn’t even get to third base!
  
As she lay in bed that night, she felt
a heaviness
in her chest, as if someone had dropped a
large stone on her lungs.
 

She thought about what Dogety would
say to her.
 
“Suck it up,
Wishart!
 
What are you whining about
now?
 
Did you think they were just
going to play checkers while you were away?
 
No one is going to wait on you.
 
So get your head out of your ass and
move on.”
 

Having been under Dogety's tutelage
for so long did have its advantages.
 
Dogety, sometimes I really do like
you.
 
Jan couldn’t believe that
thought just crossed her mind.
 
When
she awoke the next morning, she decided to take Dogety’s advice.
 
It’s
no big deal.
 
No worries, move on,
it's over, no problemo.
 
And
even though she didn’t feel that way, she would, by God, act that way.
 

Upon her return to West Point, she
swore she heard that giant sucking sound.
 
But she could also hear the echo of sucking, and fucking, back
home.
 
It was as though she could
never go back, and yet, she dreaded going forward.

The most anticipated non-leave event,
other than graduation, was the Army/Navy game.
 
One week after returning from
Thanksgiving leave the Academy bused all four thousand cadets to Veterans
Memorial Stadium in Philadelphia.
 
The cadets marched onto the field for the pre-game ceremony.
 
All went as practiced many times before.
 
Then it was game time.
 
If Army beat Navy, plebes would be allowed
to come off the walls upon their return to West Point.
 
They would still be required to ping,
but without squaring corners, they could literally cut their travel time across
Post in half.
 
Therefore, the
Army/Navy game meant more to plebes than the Super Bowl, The World Series and
the Stanley Cup Playoffs combined.

Prior to 1981, there had been seven
tied games in its almost one hundred year history, the last one in 1965.
 
This time, the old rivals tied again,
3-3.
  
And although it was
better than losing, a tie was still not a win.
 

Jan had been getting used to
disappointment.
 
Close but no cigarette.
 
Oh well, what’s another six months of wall hugging?

Once back at the hotel, Jan changed
into her new jeans, bought at the Cadet Store just for this occasion, paired
them with her favorite
Jethro Tull
t-shirt and her old
LL Bean
rubber
shoes.
 
She hoped to meet a few nice young
men.
 
Okay, even just one will do.

Drew came to their room looking like
a GQ model.
 
Jan marveled at his
attire.
 
Most cadets wore Levi’s or
Wranglers with t-shirts, cowboy boots and/or cowboy hats.
 
But Drew wore an expensive brand of
black jeans, with an untucked, button-down, white shirt, the sleeves rolled up
to mid forearm.
 
He wore dark,
cordovan loafers without socks.
 
His
hair, short like all cadets, had been slightly gelled, giving him the look of a
professional model.
 
No other cadets
dressed like him.
 
His taste is impeccable,
Jan thought,
in clothing and friends.