Honor and Duty (2 page)

“
IRP!
—IMMEDIATE RESPONSE, PLEASE! ‘SEVENTEEN,
SIR
,’
RIGHT?!
NOT ‘Se-seventeen.’ ” The
“IRP!”
was the dark, sonorous belch of a thunder lizard;
“RIGHT?!”
was the sound of silk being slit by a sharp butcher knife. The cadence and emphasis of his speech were almost Negro, but there was no comfort in it.

“Yessir, seventeen, SIR, YESSIR!!”

“CROTHEAD,” he hissed, “I WANT
SEVENTEEN
WRINKLES! PICK UP THAT BAG!
BRACE! ROLL
YOUR SHOULDERS DOWN AND BACK!
LIFT
YOUR HEAD UP!
CRAM
YOUR NECK IN! BRACING IS THE MILITARY POSTURE FOR A MEMBER OF THE FOURTH CLASS! IF YOU SURVIVE BEAST, YOU WILL BRACE FOR ONE YEAR! DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME, DUMBJOHNWILLIE CROT!? SOUND-OFF!”

“YES, SIR!” I cried.

“
KEEP
YOUR BEADY LITTLE EYES STRAIGHT AHEAD! NEW CADETS ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO GAZE AROUND! REPORT TO THE MAN IN THE RED SASH AND SAY, ‘Sir, New Cadet X reports to the Man in the Red Sash as ordered.’ PRESENT ARMS—SALUTE HIM. DO YOU UNDERSTAND, CROTWASTE!”

“YES, SIR!” I screamed, catching only the inner threat of his incomprehensible speech. I struggled with the seventeen parts of bracing while recovering my luggage and trying to breathe the bad air and survive the truly awful lack of
ho
, harmony, in this place.

“NEW CADETS DOUBLE-TIME WHEN THEY ARE ABOUT THEIR DUTIES. ‘DOUBLE-TIME’ MEANS YOU
WILL RUN IN A MILITARY MANNER, FOREARMS PARALLEL TO THE GROUND, HEAD IN.
POST
, MISTER!” he bellowed, and I trembled isometrically in exaggerated rigidity, trying to simulate an American picket fence post, stiff, unbreathing, and white.

“
POST
, MISTER! DO NOT SPAZ ON ME! TAKE YOUR POST AND GET YOUR SORRY UNMILITARY WAYS OUT OF MY AREA!
MOVE IT!
”

I bolted and crashed into someone. “Oof,” he said. I bounced off, staggered sideways in the staccato minuet of a bracing wino confused by the rotation of the earth. I cleverly dropped my bag and tripped over it backward and crashed awkwardly. My victim smashed hard into the Area, nose down, hurling his bag into another candidate, who went down like a lone pin plucked by a speeding bowling ball. “OW!” said this one. The admission of pain drew cadre like shoppers to bargains and they descended on him with rabid enthusiasm. The man I had hit was Sonny Rappa, whom I had met yesterday at the Hotel Thayer. I helped him up while making seventeen wrinkles. I wanted to apologize but it wasn’t one of my three answers. I mouthed “Sorry,” my pantomime making his cheeks redden, his cheeks swelling. He guffawed. He covered his mouth.

A horde of upperclassmen shouted at us so intimately they seemed to be in our clothes. Sonny’s bellows and my shouts echoed within the gray rock fortress. We screamed with these dapper nightmare men until the world became a single, blinding roar. I was blamed for knocking down a classmate. Sonny was blamed for laughing without authorization and for looking like Sal Mineo. I began to feel personally responsible for the national debt, the tensions of the cold war, and the oppressiveness of a New York summer.

They shouted accusations; we shrieked “YES, SIR!” like stuck records. Any prohibitions about yelling at elders died in that hot, sweaty square. Here, a failure to yell at superiors could lead to whatever followed torture—the kind of punishment one deserves for doing something really wrong, like willfully burning down Paris.

One cadet, motivated by our stirring interpretation of Laurel and Hardy at West Point, began to psychically sandblast us with howling halitosis and flying spit. He yelled with an intent that would outlast the words, as if he wanted to reach my past and allow me to wear the marks of his voice forever, with an
imprinting I thought only parents possessed. “YOU ARE IN IT NOW,
CREEP!
YOU ARE IN THE
PAIN PALACE
, THE
HURT HOOCH
, THE
OUCH POUCH
, THE
BRUISE BAG—
THE LAST PLACE YOU EVER WANTED! YOU
NEVER
WIPE OUT A CLASSMATE, CROTHEAD SMACKCREEP! I WILL NOT FORGET
YOU
, SHITFACE! I AM MR. O’WARE! POST, MARS-MAN!” I trembled with my foul luck.

We braced in line with others who once had been promising young Americans, awaiting the pleasure of the Man in the Red Sash. I kept my beady little eyes straight ahead and puffed out my puny, birdlike chest. The din of five hundred boys screaming at the cadre resounded from the tall, dun battlements. The maelstrom of screams grew as the morning passed, disturbing the calm of the cloudless blue sky. Luggage fell in random harmonies across the concrete of the Area. This was more than freshman registration for classes; I knew we were being prepared for war. I missed the West Point of
The Long Gray Line
, with boxing and camaraderie. It had reminded me of a China and a Chinese academy I had never known, a place of honor and of belonging, a school in the mountains and the clouds.

It was my turn, contorting as I threw a stupendously athletic and unmilitary salute based on a lifetime’s study of war movies.

“SIR! NEW CADET TING REPORTS TO THE SASH WITH THE RED MAN AS ORDERED!” Oh,
crap!
English! I grimaced and frowned, as if fierceness in expression could erase my words.

The Sash man was a stone-cold dude with a black shield on his sky-blue epaulet. Dark, visor-shaded eyes of murderous flint bore into me, augers into young wood. I trembled. The Man in the Red Sash fixed me with his frigid, cobralike gaze. I wasn’t a candidate or a new cadet. I wasn’t blood Chinese or inner Colored boy. I was a little, terrified bunny rabbit who had fallen through a crack and landed in Crocodile City, no longer competent in English, twitching with fear, wondering if they’d snap my neck before they ate me.

“SCREW IN THAT DUMBCROT NECK! TRY THAT AGAIN,
SMACKHEAD!
”

He delivered the last word with a ringing, baritone resonance that loosened the grip of my glasses on my head. I mastered the salute after he corrected my arms, shoulders, elbows, wrist, hand, fingers, thumb, eyeballs, chin, neck, and head.

“MISTER! GLASSES IMPLY WEAKNESS AND INVITE WEAK MARKSMANSHIP! THAT INVITES DEFEAT IN BATTLE! WHY ARE YOU WEARING
GLASSES?!
” he roared, the tassel on his red sash swaying.

“NO EXCUSE, SIR!” Wearing glasses—or being Chinese or Negro or in any way different—was always dangerous. But he treated me just as he had the others: with a crushing lack of human regard, with an authority that exceeded the inculcation of simple shock.

“ARE YOU SCARED, MISTER?!” he roared.

I was ready to die of fear. This was a question about heart. “NO, SIR!” I screamed.

“WHAT IS YOUR NAME, CROTHEAD?”

I only had three answers, so I thought it was a trick question. “SIR, MY NAME IS TING!” He looked at his clipboard.

“CROT! You are in Fourth New Cadet Company, tenth division of barracks. REPORT TO YOUR COMPANY FIRST SERGEANT. POST!”

I ran; skidded to a stop with both shoes; avoided another near crash with Sonny while he saluted; recovered my bag; and ran with the refined, continental suaveness of a myopic, spavined, bespectacled, perspiring, jet-lagged, bracing jackass with a suitcase, a military manner, and an enemy named Mr. O’Ware.

More new cadets entered the ancient gray stone tunnel, passing from the banal, gentrified urbanity of Thayer Road into the consuming, bone-crushing buzzsaw of the cadre.

Inside the stone quadrangle of Central Area, hundreds of us double-timed while bracing and searching for signs in a world laced tight with torment and abusive accusation. We were like casualties from a giant train wreck, in which all coincidentally had emerged with identical orthopedic injuries. We looked like science fiction zombies. I felt as if we were being used as stuffing for sausages, and the factory management had decided to allow us to scream in unison as we were being compressed into the skin.

I found a sign that said “4th New Cadet Company” hammered to a long stone barracks stoop atop a single flight of steps. I kept my chin in, my chest out, trying to breathe and hold my eyes and head locked to the front while double-timing. It was like juggling pachyderms while dogs chewed at your ankles, your mother screamed at you, and a gasoline fire began to spread in your pants.

“YOU MOVE LIKE A CHICKEN! CLUCK YOUR WAY UP THOSE STAIRS!”

I stopped, goggle-eyed. I did not know what “cluck” meant.

“CLUCK! MAKE LIKE A CHICKEN!” cried an upperclassman.

“Cluck, sir?” I said. I was not a
t’u
, a rabbit. I was not a sausage, not a
lopchong.
I was a chicken,
hsiaochi.

“POP OFF, MISTER! I CANT HEAR YOU! GIVE ME TWO CLUCKS! NOW CLUCK YOUR MISERABLE DUMBJOHN BODY UP THOSE STAIRS!”

“YES, SIR! CLUCK-CLUCK, SIR! CLUCK-CLUCK, SIR!”

The sky fell and I fluttered into a building resounding with the cries of final distress. I wanted to flee, but I surrendered to my
yeh
, my fate as a Chinese Chicken Little, marching to the sounds of carnivorous consumption, entering the room as would an undevout soul with foul karma. I was
da ru saba chun di yuh
, beaten into the eighteenth level of Buddhist hell for eighteen previous bad lives. Here, the cacophonous, volcanic bellowing in the sweltering room defeated any message that may have lain within it. A lava of fury and terror crawled over us like a live, serpentine evil. Everyone screamed in an accelerating tempo punctuated by the crash of bodies against walls and fists against metal. When was someone going to offer a hand and say, “Just kidding. Welcome to West Point. Sure is hot, isn’t it? Have a lemonade”? Please, God. Then I remembered that I made wishes only to Chinese deities. They had the power.

Outside, upperclassmen wore white hats and yelled precisely. As one ventured deeper into the cauldron, conditions worsened. Hats came off, bodies fell, apostrophes appeared, dangling modifiers would follow, and soon all hope would be lost. Flames would lick higher, flesh and bone would congeal; sausages, rabbits, and chickens would be flambéed as smoking sacrifices to military gods.

“WHAT’RE YOU DOING, CROTHEAD?!
FUNCTION
, MISTER, DON’T
SPAZ
ON ME!” screamed a dark, unhatted cadet seated behind a desk, the veins in his exceptionally thick neck competing with flexing tendons and muscles for space. He was very agitated. Agitated at me.

I saluted and screamed, “SIR, NEW CADET TING REPORTS TO THE FIRST SERGEANT OF FOURTH NEW
CADET COMPANY!” I had no idea what words would pop from my mouth.

“MISTER, YOU LEFT OUT ‘AS ORDERED’! TRY AGAIN,
CROT!
” The first sergeant stood and leaned into me, his face so close that my eyeballs bulged from the gravitational pull of his corneas. He was like the others: angry, clean-cut, and white, his features the products of sharp chiseling. Compared to his cropped hair, my crew cut looked like malicious error. Now he was so close he had to know I was Chinese. So now it begins. Remember, you’re American,
ch’uan hsin ch’uan i
—with whole heart and mind. No going back.

“SIR, NEW CADET TING REPORTS TO THE FIRST SERGEANT OF FOURTH NEW CADET COMPANY, AS ORDERED, SIR!”

“ONLY
ONE
‘SIR’ IN A STATEMENT!” he screamed. “CRAM THAT NECK
IN!
GIMME MORE WRINKLES, YOU SORRY STINKING GROSSED-OUT KNOB!”

I pressed my chin through my jaw, my throat, my neck, trying to merge it with my spine. Maybe, if I braced hard enough, I might pass into another room; perhaps, into another dimension. My eyes began to roll around in my head like lost and unrelated marbles.

The first sergeant looked at a roster. “You’re in Third Squad, First Platoon,” he snarled. “Room ten-forty-one. Squad leader’s Mr. Alsop.” He suddenly lunged at me and screamed, “WHAT SQUAD, BEANHEAD?!” I recoiled and instinctively formed fists.

“YOU
FLINCHED
, YOU SORRY GROSS CROT! WHAT SQUAD’RE YOU IN?!”

“SIR, I AM IN FIRST SQUAD!” I shouted, trying to control my compressed throat, which was pulsating without my wishing it to.

“
THAT’S
WRONG,
CRAPHEAD!
” he screamed in that unique, Negro-like, military meter, rocketing the first word, banging his fist onto the hollow metal desk and making the roster—and half the world and most of the chambers of my heart—jump. “YOU’RE IN
THIRD
SQUAD,
FIRST
PLATOON!” He lifted his chin, making an announcement to the world: “THE BEASTS IN THIS, THE FINEST FRIGGING COMPANY IN FIRST DETAIL, AREN’T GONNA EAT, SLEEP, OR BE VERY
DAMNED MERRY
THIS FINE SUMMER, YOU GOT THAT,
CROTHEAD?!
”

“YES, SIR!” I cried, as someone new began to roar at me.
He had Henry Fonda’s flat midwestern twang, with the volume turned up.

“THAT’S THE GROSSEST PIECE OF DOGCRAP SPECK
EVER
DISPLAYED IN BEAST! YOU PROBABLY CAN’T REMEMBER YOUR OWN
NAME!
YOU’RE GOING TO BE LUCKY TO
SEE
FOOD THIS SUMMER, YOU GOT THAT,
CROT
BEAN!!?”

“YES, SIR!” I screamed.

“
I CAN’T HEAR YOU! POP OFF
, MISTER!” cried the first sergeant.

I screamed again in an escalating fury, using all my lung air to speak. It was as if everyone were yelling to each other from distant mountaintops, trying to explain that their hair was aflame. All these white guys screaming at me. And had he really said no food this summer?

I lived for food and cared little for perspiration. Tony Barraza, my boxing coach, had marveled at my ability to work hard and to sweat little. Now I was bracing at West Point, sweat pouring from me like rats from a holed freighter. The human body was 80 percent water, and my brain was shrinking. At this rate I could be in very big trouble, very quickly.

Kai Ting, you funny-lookin’ China-boy crapforbrains, you
are
in major-league,
very big
trouble. No food for the summer. Mr. Alsop. Room ten-something. Third Squad, First Platoon. Glasses are not welcome here. My name is Ting. My name used to be Ting.

The first sergeant was pasting angry shouts all over the next victim in the Fourth New Cadet Company lineup, teaching him how to throw his rigid body against a wall to allow an upperclassman to pass. “
HIT
THAT WALL, MISTER!
KISS
IT WITH YOUR BACKSIDE, YOU SORRY CROT! WHEN I WALK, I WANNA HEAR YOUR BODY
SLAM
THAT WALL! I DON’T WANT YOUR SORRY DISREPUTABLE UNMILITARY BEANHEAD CORPSE NEAR ME!”