Honor and Duty (14 page)

“TAPS IN THIRTY MINUTES, 2200 HOURS! SQUARE AWAY EQUIPMENT, READY FOR MORNING INSPECTION! REVEILLE IS 0500, UNIFORM IS BRAVO WITH DRESS SHOES,
SMACKHEADS!
DO YOU HEAR ME?!”

“YES, SIR!” we screamed as he left. We respected lockers at the Y. “Lockercide,” I said, looking at it, starting to breathe again. Stew Mersey was shaking. We ran our hands over our bald heads, creating a soft rasping. “He has a big voice,” I added.

We picked up Bestier’s locker and gear. The locker still had its rivets. Bestier began refolding the T-shirts, the boxer underwear, the socks, in the prescribed pattern, with the same speed and dexterity he had demonstrated before.

“Why us?” I asked as I began folding mine.

“Might be me,” Bestier said. “My dad’s a general. Or you, being Chinese. Or the room, cuz it’s the best place to speak to the floor. Here, he says it once instead of four times.”

“Man,” I said. “They’d do that? Because of me being Chinese?”

“Not good to stand out,” he said.

Mr. O’Ware had said he would remember me. So had Mr. Spillaney. I felt white ghosts moving across my heart.

“My dad’s General Ira Costain McCloud,” said Pee Wee, taking about five minutes to say it. “Your dad’s Pierce Bestier? We probably went to grade school together, in Fort Lewis, when they were majors.” Clint nodded.

“My shit luck!” cried Mersey. “Stuck with two guys they
hate cuz they know the score, and with a guy they hate cuz he’s Chinese. Goddammit, this is no way to start college.”

“Look,” said Bestier to me. “Center and fold to this width, so it reaches to here on the shelf. The drollies—boxer shorts—go next. Just like the chart. Dad showed me all of this.”

“Man,” I said, “don’t you feel … discouraged?”

“A little,” he sighed. “Remember, we’re in the Army.”

“Oh, God,” moaned Mersey. “I’m in the Army.”

He had reshelved everything. “Pick up the pace, but don’t tie up the alignment of the folds, or the display. It’s all geometric.”

We heard haunting, random cries, echoing distantly throughout Central Area while we struggled with the rules, the tasks, and the waiting, watching anger. It all seemed new but somehow familiar.

A bugle sounded taps. Bestier switched off the lights as we heard “LIGHTS OUT!” Thirty minutes had gone in an instant. Everything was stowed, none of it better than Bestier’s. Mersey’s was second best. Mine and Pee Wee’s looked like the work of inebriated chimps using spoons in an effort to make televisions.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

“Go to bed,” whispered Bestier. “That’s what taps means.”

“I know what it means,” I said. “I went to YMCA summer camp.”

“Oh,
wow
,” whispered Stew Mersey.

I lay down in a sea of aches. It was still hot. My neck was stiff from fourteen hours of compression, my back was sore from hitting walls, and my throat was raw from yelling, but my empty gut was most articulate in its complaints at the day’s events, or lack of events. It
had
been a day. Eruptions of overinformation, hunger, demands, criticism, and anger. The Honor lecture in air-conditioned Thayer Hall. Never again could I lie, about
anything.
I couldn’t even
accept
lying in another. I didn’t think that was fair. How could you turn in a buddy?
Pao-chia
, each responsible for all. I remembered each mistake in the day. West Point was the Hanlin, with model standards. It also seemed like Edna. West Point made California seem like a new invention. The Academy was bigger, older, and harder than I had imagined, like being belowdecks in a Roman galley. Bracing was like oaring under verbal whips. I remembered clippers running across my scalp like a
psycho lawn mower, the cascade of hair down my back, the barber asking “More off the top?” My favorite tune “Garry Owens,” so gay while we marched in tight ranks out of the sally ports, our left heels hitting the pavement with each strike of the deep drums, across the Plain to Battle Monument for the oath before a huge throng—proud of us, of America, and of the bright flag that whipped in the river wind in front of that grand vista of the Hudson. I was taking big steps into the heart of America, out of the slum of my prior life with poverty and Edna. Troops of kids had run alongside us past iron-backed MP sergeants in white hats and white gloves as we took the curve toward the Hudson. The drums beat, and I trembled in a crescendo of unknown emotions. Life was changing. We swore to support the Constitution of the United States, to bear true allegiance to the national government. Guan Yu had made a pledge like that in Peach Orchard by the Yangtze River. Later, he had died, protecting honor.

I had been singled out, asked what I was. I wasn’t an American, but a Chinese-American, a citizen with a hyphen. The hard cot creaked as I tried to find a comfortable position. The pillow smelled old. I tried to imagine my father doing this at Fort Benning. How had he dealt with being the only Chinese? Here, I felt alone. I squelched the feeling. Doesn’t mean anything, I said, flexing arms, crossing them against my chest, curling my body on its side, flaring my lats and shoulders in my conventional position of sleep, ready to take unseen blows. Reading
Ben-Hur
on the airliner was an age ago. His mother and sister in a secret, sealed cell for eight years.

“ ‘A woman of Israel, entombed here with her daughter. Help us quickly, or we die.’

“ ‘Thou shalt have relief, woman,’ said the new guard. ‘I will send thee food and drink.’ ” Someone was shouting. I smiled for the food and drink. The lights were on. I was on my feet with my glasses on. Our door was open, bright light on the old floor.

Mr. Fideli, the tall, aesthetic, aristocratic singing cadet from the tunnel of summer songs, was in our room. “MOVE YOUR KNOBBY BUTTS!” he roared with a voice that boomed like the new speakers in the Fox Theater, louder than Spillaney, filling the room, as loud as God. “UNIFORM BRAVO! TWO MINUTES AND YOU’RE LATE!”

I stared at him, uncomprehending. What did he say? The door slammed, the force slapping air in my face. Dress! We
moved like boys with hot coals under our feet, Mersey whimpering when he fell on the floor from performing the complex task of putting on pants.

“Remember dress-offs,” cried Bestier, as we folded the excess shirt fabric across our backs to create formfitting contours. I had trained for this, changing into Jack’s cast-offs. I was the first dressed. “Oh, crap,” Pee Wee grunted deeply. Outside, the sounds of purgatory or a pork slaughterhouse filled Central Area.

The entire barracks thumped with a thousand half-dressed boys fighting unfamiliar clothing while the cadre screamed advice and threw wastebaskets down hallways to encourage co-operation and a positive attitude.

For all his slow speech, Pee Wee was also ready. Bestier was next. “Garrison cap!” he shouted, holding the one that looked like a taco. “Wait for Mersey,” he said. We put on our hats.

“It’s one-thirty—I thought it was morning!” said Mersey.

“It
is
morning,” hissed Clint. “Now
move it!
” We pounded down the staircase, forearms parallel to the ground, necks in. Central Area was alive with verbal violence. Mr. Alsop and Mr. Spillaney, white-gloved in khakis and combat boots, waited for us, screaming us into a squad line by height.

“LOOK DOWN! REMEMBER YOUR SPOT ON THE AREA!” screamed Mr. Spillaney. Between my shoes was an intersection between a concrete line and a small pockmark, my nose aligned with the fourth window from the door. I imagined Grant and Stilwell using these marks to find their places. A good omen. One fellow was last into the formation, and five cadremen converged, screaming at him, calling him a “shit magnet” until he seemed to disappear, his screams seeming more real than his physical presence. The entire class was bracing at attention in company formations. A huge cadet who resembled a Greek god stood on the stoops in the center of the barracks. There were thirteen hundred people assembled. West Point was unearthily silent in the moonlight and in the cool river breeze.

“GENTLEMEN, I AM MR. ARVIN, KING OF BEASTS,” shouted the big man. “YOU ARE DISREPUTABLE. YOU LACK ALIGNMENT, DRESS-OFFS, AND KNOWLEDGE. CHANGE YOUR WAYS AND YOUR UNIFORMS.”

A cadet with a rack of black bars on his collar stood in front
of our company. Seven other cadets spoke in front of their companies, arrayed across the width of the Area.

“I AM CADET CAPTAIN COSWELL, COMMANDER, FOURTH NEW CADET COMPANY. I HAVE NEVER LOST AT
ANYTHING
IN MY LIFE! I WILL NOT
TOLERATE
LESS THAN FIRST PLACE IN THIS CLOTHING FORMATION!

“THE NEXT UNIFORM IS SWEATSHIRTS OVER FATIGUES WITH SHOWER CLOGS WITH GARRISON CAPS, UNDER ARMS. YOU WILL HAVE THREE MINUTES. YOU WILL BE DISMISSED BY FLOORS. WHAT’S YOUR COMPANY MOTTO, MEN?”

“ ‘STUDS GO FOURTH,’ SIR!” A sign with those curious words sat on the first sergeant’s desk in the orderly room. I could hear “First in the Corps!” and “Second to none!” in the echo of our shout. I tried to decode the uniform prescription. Shower clogs under arms?

Mr. Coswell hesitated, looking to Mr. Arvin, who raised his right arm and dropped it with the precision of a Chinese executioner swinging a headsman’s axe. “FIFTH FLOOR, POST!!”

The penthouse dwellers jerked, then ran, as did their mates from other companies. This was my sport. Triple A recruited me for clothing competition! I’m fast! I smiled, and no one caught me.

“FOURTH FLOOR, POST!” I sprinted in that spastic, upright form while bracing. Up the stoop stairs, past Mr. Fideli in his stiffly starched khakis, through the door. I was about to leap up the stairs when all the new cadets from the fifth floor came flying down them, to the sinks. Our sweatshirts were with the gym gear, in the sinks. Down the stairs, to the gym lockers; then up the stairs four flights, the pounding of military shoes taking the authorized single steps, no skipping, creating an imbecilic single-beat drumming; into the room.

Our lockers were on the floor, gear intermixed in heaps, as if King Kong had souffléed the room with an eggbeater the size of the Eiffel Tower. The alcove wall hangers were contorted in angles of mayhem, resembling the stripped and pitiful bones of animals that had been caught by an omnivorous predator. Godzilla had dropped by for a visit, with a technique I knew from living with my mother.

“Crap!” cried Bestier. He stripped and sorted through the debris. The rest of us were immobile, overwhelmed, defeated.

“Goddammit! Why the
hell
are they
doing
this?!” cried Mersey.

“Pee Wee, Kai—here are larges. Put ’em on! Clock’s running!”

“ROOM, ATTEN-HUT!” cried McCloud, as fast as he could.

Mr. Fideli stepped into the room. He was in fatigues over a sweatshirt, garrison cap, with his saber, Sam Browne belt, and not our simple clogs—but with fully laced combat boots.

“You are slow,” he said in a low tone, making our hearts pound faster. Speaking softly? Big sticks were next. “Why has your militarily disreputable room become Grand Central Station?”

I’m Chinese, I thought. It’s cuz he’s Chinese, Mersey thought. McCloud thought: Oh, crap, it’s because Ting’s Chinese!

“You were to report before taps the condition of your knob bodies. As a result, you will memorize not only
Bugle Notes
but also individual Fourth Class knowledge, assigned by me.

“Let us say, crotheads, I am your acting squad leader.”

What to do? Time was running out. We had to be changing.

“SIR!” cried Stew Mersey. “Uh, NEW CADET MERSEY REPORTS HE HAS NOT BRUSHED HIS TEETH, HAS NOT—UH—MOVED HIS BOWELS, AND THAT HE HAS NOT SHOWERED, IN THE LAST—oh, maybe I did—”

“BANG THAT HEAD IN, MERSEY! THAT WAS GROSS! I DON’T WANT
PUNY
REPORTS FROM
THIS
DISREPUTABLE ROOM! REPORT YOUR SHOWER, TEETH, AND BOWELS IN THAT ORDER, WITHOUT THE BABBLE!
GOT THAT, SMACKBEAN?!
”

“YESSIR!” cried Stew.

“Your Care Factor as a room is low. Buck it up. Otherwise, Beast could become
unpleasant.
Do not let me catch you behind me on the next uniform. WORK!” he shouted. The door banged shut.

“God, he changed fast,” murmured Bestier.

Stew Mersey wandered, fingering his shirt, studying the carnage.

“Hurry, guys,” said Bestier. “We’re dead if we don’t try.”

After much stumbling and excavating, we fell in ranks in the curious attire. We grimaced as we heard a few new cadets fall down the stairs with their rifles in a terrible clashing of bodies, wood, and steel. One of us was carried out by a cadre member.

“GENTLEMEN. THE NEXT UNIFORM IS UNIFORM INDIA WITH PONCHO, COMBAT BOOTS, PROPERLY LACED AND UNBLOUSED, AND HELMET LINERS. YOU HAVE FOUR MINUTES. FIFTH FLOOR, POST!”

We had just entered the room when Mr. Fideli appeared in the new uniform, looking like a million bucks in coattails.

“ROOM, ATTEN-HUT!” I screamed.

“Too slow, knobs,” he said. “How can you succeed without clothes?” He exited, making us jump when he slammed the door.

This went on all night. Each time we ran like crazed men up the stairs and began to strip the former uniforms, Mr. Fideli would enter, impeccably in the next uniform, without a hint of effort.

“Asshole must be made outa zippers,” muttered Mersey.

After three hours we had become beaten galley slaves, gasping, sweating, wheezing, and coughing in ranks. Dizzy with effort, dazed from hazing, starving, we were near the end of our ability to function. I was done in from our attempt to imitate
Vogue
models on West Point’s fashion runway. We were like them: thin, underfed, exploited, overscrutinized, and clothed in outrageous taste.

“THIS WAS A SORRY EXPERIENCE,” called Mr. Arvin. “IF I AM TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOU AS MEMBERS OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY, YOU MUST GET THIS EXERCISE RIGHT. WE WILL HAVE TO DO THIS AGAIN.”

A soft moan ran through ranks. Mr. Fideli, like the other upperclassmen, looked calm, as if Mr. Arvin had said tomorrow would bring sunlight, milk and cookies, iced tea with mint for the adults, and plenty for everyone.

“I WILL INFORM YOU WHEN. COMPANY COMMANDERS, TAKE COMMAND OF YOUR COMPANIES!”