by John Jakes
While he was thinking, Benny frowned and looked toward the curtained door. They had all heard a noise in the kitchen. George’s face signaled trouble an instant before the curtain was swept aside. A cold red face loomed over a quivering mountain of cloth, a cadet overcoat.
“Well, sir, what have we here? A couple of malefactors, that’s evident,” said Elkanah Bent with a gloating smile.
Orry’s belly hurt. He was sure Bent’s arrival was no accident. He recalled the noise they had heard while walking here. How many nights had Bent spied on them, waiting for this kind of opportunity?
Suddenly, George flung his empty beer pot. Bent squealed and dodged to avoid being hit. “Run,” George shouted. He went out the door like a ball from a cannon.
Orry ran after him, his only thought a ridiculous one: they hadn’t paid their bill.
In one of the deepest patches of snow along the shore, George took a tumble. Orry stopped, ran back, and helped his friend to his feet. He saw Bent lumbering after them while Benny Haven stood in the tavern door, an amused spectator. He didn’t act worried about the bill.
“Come on, George,” Orry panted as his friend again slipped and floundered in the snow. “This time that son of a bitch will have our heads.”
“Not if we beat him back.”
“Even if we do, he’ll report us, and we can’t lie,” Orry gasped as they headed up the shore. The Academy’s honor code had already been thoroughly drummed into them.
“I guess we can’t,” George agreed.
Bent’s bulk worked against him; the other two cadets were able to run much faster. But the underbrush once again impeded them. Frozen branches slashed at their faces and broke with gunlike sounds when they struck them. Soon George called for a change of direction. He leaped a low thicket and landed on the ice. Orry saw its moon whitened surface crack and sag.
“Maybe we can bluff him into not putting us on report,” George said as he led the way. “He’s out after hours, too, don’t forget.”
Orry didn’t answer, just kept running. There was some flaw in George’s logic which he couldn’t locate.
Footing was treacherous. Every few steps Orry felt the ice give. He looked back, saw Bent stumbling and lurching in pursuit, a huge, shuddering blot of ink on the pale expanse of the river.
“Another twenty yards and we’ll be on the path,” George cried, pointing. At that moment a shout went up behind them. George skidded to a stop and squinted.
“Oh, God,” he groaned.
Orry lurched against him, turning. Only half of the ink blot was visible above the ice. Hands waved feebly. Frightened outcries drifted to them in the still air.
“He fell through!” Orry exclaimed.
“At his weight, are you surprised? Let’s go.”
“George, we can’t leave him. He might drown.”
Bent’s cries grew more strident. George grimaced. “I was afraid you’d say that.”
“Look here, I don’t believe you’ve suddenly lost your conscience—”
“Just shut up and come on,” George said, starting back. His eyes had a furious glint; he didn’t need to tell Orry their luck had turned bad.
Then Orry saw Bent sinking. He and George ran even harder than they’d run before.
A second later Bent’s head disappeared. His forage cap floated in the water, its stiff visor shining in the moonlight. Just as the two plebes reached the hole in the ice, the Ohioan bobbed into sight again. He groped toward them, splashing and shrieking.
George and Orry tugged and heaved. Rescue was difficult because of the slippery ice. Twice the plebes almost pitched headfirst into the water. But at last they dragged Bent out. He lay retching, a wet, whalelike figure. George knelt beside him.
“Bent? You have to get up and get back to barracks. If you don’t, you’ll freeze.”
“Yes—all right. Help me. Please.”
George and Orry stretched Bent’s arms over their shoulders so that they could support him. By then the corporal was no longer making coherent sounds, just moaning and gulping air. Because of the water on Bent’s clothes, his rescuers were soaked and chilled by the time they brought him to the riverbank. Still keeping silent, he labored up the hillside path. At the top he shook himself, caught his breath, and said:
“I appreciate what you did. It was—a brave act. I had better go this way. You return to your barracks as best you can.”
He lumbered into the dark, the squeak of his shoes and the sound of his heavy breathing lingering for a time after he disappeared.
Orry’s teeth started to chatter. His hands felt stiff, frozen. How strange Bent’s last remark had sounded, how—
He couldn’t think of the word he wanted.
George gave voice to his friend’s feelings. “He sounded about as sincere as a woman praising spinsterhood. I think we should have let him drown.”
Despite his chill, Orry laughed. “Now that it’s all over, you’ve got to admit we had a pretty rotten celebration.”
“I’ll say.” George pulled three broken cigars from under his overcoat. With a rueful grin, he threw them away. “The only consolation is, I never paid for them. Let’s get inside before we die of ague.”
The following morning, Bent was absent from breakfast. Orry and George presumed he had decided to Wheaton it—a term synonymous with malingering. Surgeon Wheaton, the post’s medical officer for nearly twenty years, had a kind, unsuspecting nature. He frequently admitted cadets to the hospital or excused them from duty for feigned illnesses.
George and Orry told only a few close friends about their escapade. Then, later in the day, Pickett brought them some disturbing news.
“I’m afraid that treacherous bag of blubber didn’t tell you the whole truth, boys. He had special permission to be off post after tattoo. He requested the permission from one of the tactical officers. Bent said he had information that two plebes were running it to Benny’s almost every night, and he meant to catch them.”
For dinner the mess hall served Albany beef—the nickname for river sturgeon caught in the Hudson before it froze. The fish didn’t set well on Orry’s stomach for some reason. Later he wondered if he’d had a premonition.
Before the evening was over, Corporal Bent had placed Cadets Main and Hazard on report.
The Academy honor code was founded on faith in the goodness of a cadet’s character. If any cadet stated that a charge was false, his word was accepted without question and the charge was withdrawn. Orry believed in the code. Despite George’s cynicism, he did too. Hence neither denied guilt, although the resulting demerit total brought George dangerously close to dismissal.
To work off some of the demerits, the two friends had to walk a good many extra guard tours. The weather turned stormy. George withstood the outdoor duty with no ill effects, but it was different with Orry. Ever since their river adventure, he had been sneezing and sniffling, and he was feeling weak and dizzy when he started an extra tour on a particularly dark Saturday afternoon.
A blizzard was roaring across the mountains from the northwest. A foot of drifted snow piled up in less than an hour. Then the temperature rose and the result was sleet. Orry was slogging back and forth near the sally port when he realized that despite the cold, he was burning up.
Sweat mingled with melting sleet on his cheeks. His musket seemed to weigh a hundred pounds. He staggered in the snow, then leaned against the barracks wall to rest.
Someone plucked his sleeve. Orry recognized a first classman named Sam Grant, an undistinguished fellow except for his horsemanship, which was outstanding.
“Who sent you out here in this weather?” Grant demanded. “You look green. About ready to faint. You should take yourself to the hospital.”
“I’m fine, sir,” Orry croaked, attempting to straighten up.
The short, dark-eyed cadet was skeptical. “You’re about as fine as my Aunt Bess five minutes before she expired. Shall I find a tactical officer and ask him to see that you’re relieve
d?”
“No, sir, that would be—dereliction of—my duty.”
Grant shook his head. “You’ll make a fine soldier, Mr. Main. If you don’t die of mulishness first.”
“You know who I am?”
“Every man in the corps knows about you, and your friend, and that scum from Ohio. It’s a pity Corporal Bent’s standings are so high. Some of us are trying to remedy that. He’s being deviled as furiously as he devils others. I sincerely hope you survive to enjoy that, sir.”
With a little smile, Grant tramped off into the storm.
It was about four o’clock, Orry guessed. Dark as midnight. He forced himself to move. He thought he was marching, but actually he was reeling from point to point. Fortunately, most of the officers were indoors, hence didn’t witness his awkward performance.
Another half hour passed. He began to fear he was desperately ill—mortally ill, maybe—and that his foolish wish to avoid a display of weakness would finish him.
“You’re not stepping smartly, sir. Not smartly at all.”
Stunned by the voice, Orry turned. He saw Bent’s tentlike overcoat looming just this side of the sally port. Bent seemed to float forward, a huge shape in the murk. His eyes shone with glee.
“I heard you were out here, sir. I came to inspect—”
The Ohioan’s voice faltered as Orry wrenched the old smoothbore flintlock off his shoulder. Orry was out of his head, beyond fear.
“Why are you pointing that piece at me, sir?”
“Because I’m going to shoot you, Bent. If you don’t leave me alone, and my friend too, I’m going to shoot you.”
Bent tried to sneer. “That musket is unloaded, sir.”
“Is it?” Orry blinked and weaved on his feet. “Then I’ll beat you to death with it. They can court-martial me, or even shove me in front of a firing squad, but if you’re still here at the end of the next five seconds, you ungrateful bastard, I’m going to kill you.”
“By God, we’ve a madman at West Point.”
“Yes, sir. An Ohio madman, who treats plebes like animals. Well, Mr. Bent, sir, this is one plebe who won’t be treated that way any longer. Five seconds. One, sir, two, sir …”
Bent huffed, but said nothing. He was intimidated by the wild white specter in front of him. Sleet clung to Orry’s cap and eyebrows. His expression almost maniacal, he turned the musket so that he gripped it by the barrel, like a club.
Humiliation and hate flickered on Bent’s face. Suddenly, he spun on one heel. He seemed to melt into the storm.
Orry swallowed and shouted, “And you’d better leave us alone from now on.”
“What did you say, sir?”
The sharp voice turned him the other way. Bundled to the ears, one of the tactical officers came striding toward him. The howl of the wind forced the officer to yell. “Cadet Grant requested that I come out here, sir. He said you were too ill for this duty. Is that true?”
By now Orry had practiced the position of a soldier a thousand times or more. He tried to assume it, not even realizing he had just committed the one unforgivable sin. He had dropped his musket in the snow.
The tactical officer seemed to be tilting back and forth. Orry attempted to stop the motion by blinking his eyes.
“Is that true, sir?”
“No, sir!” Orry cried, and fell forward against the officer, unconscious.
George came running to the hospital an hour later. Surgeon Wheaton met him in the waiting room.
“Your friend is in extremely serious condition. His fever is dangerously high. We are trying to reduce it, but if it doesn’t break within twenty-four hours, his life could be in jeopardy.”
George thought of Bent, and the storm outside, and of Orry. “The poor damn fool wants to be a soldier too badly,” he said in a bitter voice.
“This place has a way of inspiring that ambition.” Wheaton’s tone mingled regret and pride. “You look none too well yourself, young man. I prescribe a tot of rum. Come into my office and”—he smiled—“Wheaton it for a few minutes, as the saying goes.”
With the surgeon’s permission, George kept a vigil at Orry’s bedside all night. Pickett joined him for a while. So did Jackson. A first classman named Grant looked in briefly. How Orry knew him, George couldn’t imagine.
By morning the hospital was cold and silent. George wriggled on his chair. The others were gone. Orry’s face was still as pale as the undyed wool coverlet drawn up beneath his chin. He looked fragile in the flickering glow of the fish-oil lamps. Fragile and very sick.
George gazed at his friend and, to his astonishment, found tears welling in his own eyes. The last time he had cried he was five years old. He had been thrashed by this older brother for daring to play with Stanley’s pet frog.
George wasn’t surprised that Orry Main’s fate could mean so much to him. The two of them had gone through a lot together, in a very short period. Common hopes and hardships had forged a strong bond of affection. West Point apparently had a way of doing that, too.
He stayed in the chair, neither sleeping nor eating, until noon, when Orry’s fever broke.
The next afternoon, with February sunshine pouring through the window, Orry looked much better. George visited him before supper call with some good news.
“Bent seems to have gotten tired of deviling us. I passed him when I was coming over here. He looked the other way.”
“I’d still like to kill him. God forgive me for saying such a thing, but it’s the way I feel.”
Orry’s quiet savagery disturbed George, but he smiled and tried not to show it. “See here, my friend. You were the one counseling meekness and mercy when he was going down ’neath the icy waves. And I listened to you.”
Orry folded his arms. “Almost wish you hadn’t.”
“It’s better to leave him alive and squirming. The upperclassmen are skinning him right and left. That’s sweet revenge.”
“But he’ll blame us. Even if he lets up on us for a while, he won’t forget. There’s something twisted about him.”
“Well, don’t fret over it,” George said with a shrug. “We have enough to do keeping our demerit total under two hundred. It’s a long way until June.”
Orry sighed. “I reckon you’re right.”
But neither believed that merely forgetting about Bent would do away with the threat he posed.
Late in the spring, all the Hazards except Virgilia paid a visit to West Point. George wheedled the necessary permission to join them for Saturday dinner at the hotel. He took his friend along.
William Hazard invited Orry to visit them in Lehigh Station at some time in the future. Orry said he’d enjoy that. He found the family as likable as he remembered—save for Stanley, who talked, or rather bragged, incessantly. Stanley was preening over the fact that he and his father were to dine that night with a family named Kemble, who lived across the river in Cold Spring.
Between bites of a delicious lamb chop, Orry asked, “Are the Kembles relatives of yours?”
Stanley snickered. “No, my boy. They are the proprietors of the West Point Foundry. Who do you think casts most of the ordnance purchased by the Army?”
Stanley’s pompous manner made his little brother Billy grimace and silently imitate him. Billy was seated next to Stanley, who didn’t see the imitation and thus didn’t understand why George guffawed. Billy’s antics earned him a thwack on the ear from his father. Mrs. Hazard looked chagrined.
Stiffly, Orry said, “I’m sorry, I never heard of the Kembles.”
“Their Saturday-night fetes are famous.” Stanley’s tone suggested that Orry and his home state somehow existed outside the mainstream of national life.
To Mr. Hazard, Orry said, “They’re ironmakers, are they?”
The older man nodded. “With candor and envy, I must admit there are none better in the nation.”
“Maybe they could help my brother.”
Bored, Stanley forked up a potato. But William Hazard listened po
litely as Orry explained that in recent letters Cooper had complained about excessive breakage of wrought-iron walking beams and flywheels in the rice mill at Mont Royal.
“That’s the name of our plantation. The mill used to be powered by the river tides, but my brother talked my father into trying a steam engine. Father was against the idea. Now he thinks he was right.”
“Casting iron is a tricky business,” Mr. Hazard said. “Perhaps the Kembles could help your brother. Better still, why not let us try? Have him write me.”
“I’ll do that, sir. Thank you!”
Orry was always eager to make his older brother think well of him. He wrote Cooper the next day. Cooper’s reply began with words of appreciation to Orry. He then said he suspected that the man in Columbia who made the mill parts understood the process even less than he did. Hence he would be grateful for advice and assistance from experts. He was dispatching a letter to Hazard Iron immediately.
June approached. To Orry’s surprise, he realized he stood a good chance of surviving his plebe year, although he seemed destined to remain an immortal forever. George continued to stand high in the academic ranking, and without visible effort. Orry envied his friend, but never to the point that jealousy impaired their relationship.
Both friends had managed to keep their demerit total just under two hundred, and when the new group of prospective cadets began to arrive, pressure on the plebes lessened. Orry and George did their share of deviling the newcomers, but there was little meanness in it. Bent had provided too good an object lesson.
It was impossible to avoid the Ohioan completely, of course. But whenever they encountered him, he affected an opaque stare, as if they didn’t exist. The friends continued to feel that although Bent had left them alone during their final months as plebes, he certainly hadn’t forgotten about them. Nor was it likely that he had forgiven them, either.
About ten days before the start of the summer encampment, Cooper arrived unexpectedly. He had just come from Pennsylvania, where William and Stanley Hazard had examined some of the shattered parts from the Mont Royal mill.
“Your father and brother solved the problem in short order,” Cooper reported to George. “As I suspected, that clod in Columbia doesn’t know what he’s doing. Apparently he doesn’t remelt his pig iron at the right temperature. If I can convince him of that, we may have fewer breakdowns. Of course convincing him won’t be easy. As far as he’s concerned, admitting you can learn something from a Yankee is almost as bad as saying Johnny Calhoun was wrong on nullification.”