Gray Girl (32 page)

36

“Encourage
us in our endeavors to live above the common level of life.
 
Make us to choose the harder right
instead of the easier wrong, and never to be content with a
half
truth
when the whole can be won.
 
Endow us with courage that is borne of loyalty to all that is noble and
worthy, that scorns to compromise with vice and injustice and knows no fear
when truth and right are in jeopardy.”

From The Cadet Prayer

She awoke at 0500 exactly.
 
Shit,
shit, shit.
 
Already
late.
 
She flew into
class uniform, brushed her teeth, and bolted out the door without even stopping
to pee.
 

She had been up late last night.
 
Both Dogety and Jackson, drunk from
their weekend pass, tasked her with couriering an envelope back and forth
between H-3 and B-1.
 
Then they
accused her of tampering with their routing envelope
with their little love notes to each other.
 
She could not give a damn what they
were writing back and forth.
 
She
just wanted to be left alone.
  

Jan thought she had made some headway
with Dogety.
 
He had treated her
better in the past few weeks and he seemed to actually value her opinion at
times.
 
She couldn’t say she liked
him, yet she no longer hated him either.
 
Although he had made her life miserable most of the year, it’s possible
that he was not a bad guy if one was inclined to get to know him.
 
She was not, however, so inclined.

Jackson, on the other hand, was a very
bad guy.
 
Dogety may have been a
hard-ass, but Jackson had been a monster.
 
Women cadets knew to steer clear of Jackson.
 
They knew he was not someone you
trusted.
 
He wasn’t someone to be
alone with either, if you were a female cadet.
  

Jan had not always been afraid of
him, like the time during Beast, when he found her alone on the Land Navigation
Course.
 
Her anger overrode any fear
she probably should have felt.
 
But
as the year dragged on, after a few close encounters with the creep, and being
ninety-nine percent sure he was the one who raped Debra, she developed a
healthy fear of the man whom she despised more than any other cadet at West
Point.

Now she had to report to his room at
o’dark thirty.
 
She hoped he would
be sleeping off his drunkenness and would tell her to go away.
 
But either way, this would be the last
time she would have to deal with him.
 
She would shine his shoes, if that’s what he wanted, and she would say,
“yes, Sir” about ten times, then she would be done with him for good.
 
He would graduate in about two weeks and
she would be free of him forever.
 
Amen.

She softly knocked twice on his
door.
 
When there wasn’t an answer,
she knocked again.
 
Finally she
heard a groggy, “Come in.”
 

She entered the room.
 
It was semi-dark, but she could make out
the form of someone lying in the left bed.
 
The bed on the right side was not made up, no one in it.
 
Damn.

“Who is it?”
 
Jackson groaned.

“Sir, Cadet Wishart reporting as
ordered.”
 
She stood just inside his
door.

“Dammit Wishart, you just woke me up
from a great dream.”
 

“Sir, you told….”

“Goddammit.”
 
He rolled onto his side, facing the
middle of the room.
 
“Go get my
shoes from under my desk.”

Damn.
 
She left the door open and walked
behind his desk.
 
She bent down to
get his shoes, somewhere on the floor she presumed.
 
When she couldn’t see them readily, she
felt around under his desk and chair for them.

Jackson sat up on the side of his bed
and then walked to his door and closed it.
 

Jan hit her head on his desk as she
came back up with the shoes.
 
“Shit!”
 
She stood by his
desk at the back of the room with one black cadet shoe in each hand.
 
Jackson stood by the door wearing only
his underwear and a t-shirt with a hawk, wings spread in flight, on the
front.
 
Jan stared at his chest with
the giant bird and “Hilldale Hawks” written above it.
  
Jackson started walking toward
her.
 

She threw the shoe in her right hand
at him, hitting him squarely in his hawk chest.
 
He lunged at her, but she lurched
forward explosively, just like pushing off the pool floor in the Bob and
Travel.
 
He grabbed her by the
wrist.
 
She twisted away from him
and hit him on the head with the other shoe.
 
He wrangled the shoe from her left hand
and it whacked her across the face, hitting her in the mouth.

“You fucking asshole!”
 
she
shouted,
while turning toward the door.
  

He pushed her forward, knocking her
into the sink counter.
 
“Get the
hell out of my room.
 
I don’t ever
want to see you again in B-1!”
 

She flung the door open and gave him
the finger before bolting out.

She kept running.
 
She ran down the hall and down the
stairwell.
  
She ran out of Old
South and away from First Regiment.
 
She ran and ran and ran and ran.

She ran all the way up to the Cadet
Chapel, where she realized her lip was bleeding.
 
She tasted saltiness in her mouth and
spit.
 
Even in the dark, she could
see the blood mixed with saliva.
 
She walked back down to the Mess Hall and found an ice machine.
 
Wrapping some in a cloth napkin, she
held it to her lip while sitting alone at one of the five hundred or so
tables.
 
The sun had not yet come
up.

“Sir, I need to talk to you.”
 
She stood at Dogety’s door.
  
It was her first free period after
breakfast.

“What is it, Miss Wishart?” he asked.

She walked into his room without
permission.
 
“Jackson raped Cadet
Plowden over Army/Navy weekend.
 
And
this morning, he tried to accost me.
 
Fortunately, I fought him off.”

Dogety had been standing by his desk
with an open book in his hand.
 
He
closed the book and placed it on his desk.
 
Then he sat down in his chair.
 
“Could you say that again?
 
I’m not sure what I just heard.”

“Sir, you heard me.
 
And it’s true.
 
He’s a threat to every woman in the
Corps.
 
And he will be a threat to
every woman under his command.”
 
Jan
remained standing in the middle of his room.

Sam Dogety let out a long
breath.
 
“Do you have any proof?”

Jan was afraid he’d ask that.
 
“I cannot prove what happened at
Army/Navy, but Hambin, Trane and McCarron can attest to some of it.
 
You thought Plowden
was stupid drunk
,
remember
?
 
Well, I’m almost positive she was
drugged.
 
She didn’t have
that
much to drink.”
 
She waited for him to say
something.
 
When he didn’t, she
continued,
 
“She didn’t want to
report it.
 
She didn’t want to
relive the whole thing, so she made us promise to keep quiet.”
 

Dogety stared at her.
 
She couldn’t tell whether he believed
her or not.
 
“And you know Jackson
ordered me to report to his room this morning at 0500, right?”

“And I told you to ignore that,”
Dogety said angrily.
 

“Well, he closed his door while I was
getting his shoes from under his desk.”
 
She saw Dogety grimace.
 
“I
want to have him arrested,” she said.
 
“I want his ass thrown in jail.”
 

Dogety stood up and walked to his
door, closing it.
 
Then he walked
back to Jan, facing her.
 
“Do you
realize what you’re saying?”

“Yes, Sir.”
 
She stared straight at him, eye to
eye.
 
“He’s got to go.”
  

“But what proof do you have?
 
What can you show that he did any of
this?”
 

“I only have my word.
 
But I’m sure there are other
women.”
 
She kept her eyes with his,
but she began to sense his doubt.
 
“When I tried to escape his room, he hit me in the face with his
shoe.
 
My lip is cut.”

He moved his eyes to her mouth.
 
“Your lip looks fine.
 
I don’t see a cut.”

“It’s on the bottom inside of my
lip.
 
It was bleeding and I put ice
on it before breakfast.”
 
She
instinctively rolled her tongue over the lump inside her bottom lip.

Dogety lifted his hand.
 
“May I touch you?”
 
he
asked.
 

She nodded, yes.
 
He placed the forefinger of his right
hand under her chin and gently pulled down her bottom lip with his thumb.
 
His fingers felt soft and soothing.
 
She tilted her head slightly back.
  

Dogety stared at the cut, now a red
swelling just inside the lower lip.
 
He held her lip open longer than necessary, almost mesmerized by the
tender, red, moist skin of her mouth.
 
She closed her eyes and swallowed a small lump that had risen in her
throat.

It shouldn’t have happened.
 
He knew it was wrong.
 
She had just been through a traumatic
experience, and some might say he was taking advantage of her
vulnerability.
 
But he did it
anyway.
 
Softly, while his thumb
still held her lip, while her eyes were still closed, he leaned in and gently
kissed her.
 

She didn’t back away.
 
She welcomed the warm kiss to her
lips.
 
Somehow, it seemed right,
although she knew they were breaking more rules.
 
Somehow, he made her feel safe.
 
And now that she thought about it, she
always felt safe with Dogety despite how belittled he made her feel at
times.
 

They kissed gently once, then again,
then once more.
 
She opened her
eyes.
 
“Does this mean you believe
me?”
 
she
asked quietly.

“Yes, I believe you,
”
 
he
said as he
dropped his hand and straightened up.
 
He walked to his desk chair and sat down.
 
“But I know Markus.
 
He might lose his temper sometimes, but
I just don’t see him as a rapist.
 
He’s against women at West Point, but he’s not a woman hater in
general.”

“How do you know?
 
I mean most rapists don’t exactly play
the part, do they?
 
He wouldn’t act
like one to his friends, of course.”

Dogety leaned forward over his desk
and shook his head.
 
“He’s my best
friend.
 
I’ll go talk to him today.”

“No!
 
That’s not good enough!”
 
Jan protested.
 
“I know what I’m going to do.
 
I’m going to the TAC as soon as he gets
in today,” Jan said matter of factly.
 
“I’m going to make a formal complaint, and I’m skipping the chain of
command.”

Dogety sighed deeply.
 
“That’s one way to handle it.
 
But without any witnesses and without
any other proof, I’m afraid it won’t go anywhere.”
 
He picked up a pencil and began tapping
it on the desk.
 
“Of course, you can
do what you think is best.
 
But I
would like to talk to him first. If I tell him I saw the cut on your lip, he
may even admit to it.
 
Then I can,
at least, verify your story.”
 
He
stopped tapping the pencil.
 
“Of
course, this means I will lose a lot of friends, you understand.
 
No one is going to like me for turning
on my classmate, especially for a
female
plebe.”

“Even if he’s a threat to women
everywhere?
 
Even
if he deserves every bit of his punishment?
 
I think most people would be happy about
getting a rapist off the streets, so to speak.”