Beach Music

by Pat Conroy

  “Sir, leave the transportation up to me.”

  On the Wednesday night before the Furman game, fifteen cadets from G Company dressed in fatigues gathered to hear last-minute instructions from Pinner Worrell. For the fifth time, he walked them through each step of their commando raid on the campus of Furman University. Each squad was required to paint at least three buildings before hustling to the rendezvous point for the rapid trip back to Charleston before reveille sounded. Timing was essential in this mission, he repeated over and over. The fifteen cadets synchronized their watches as Pinner went through their assignments once more. They had already loaded paint cans, brushes, wire cutters, and liquor into the three cars now parked and waiting in Hampton Park just off the Citadel campus. When the bugles echoed through the barracks at ten-thirty, the fifteen of them were standing at a side gate. They sprinted out the gate together and as they passed a junior sergeant they shouted “All in,” running past him into the darkness, and raced for the railroad tracks behind the military science building. The cadets had to be back at the Citadel for morning reveille at six-fifteen. The city of Greenville lay two hundred and ten miles away.

  With our three cars running, Capers, Mike, and I checked our watches, revved our engines, and waited for the cadets to charge through the azalea bushes that lined the railroad tracks. None of us had hesitated when Jordan had called and asked for help. For the sake of friendship, each of us loved the idea of racing our cars at full throttle from one end of the state to the other.

  I revved my engine as Jordan climbed into the car beside me and his company commander, Pinner Worrell, rode shotgun. Three seniors leapt into the backseat yelling, “Go, go, go.” Capers’ Pontiac GTO took off first, burning rubber, followed by Mike’s ’57 red Chevrolet, which Mike kept in perfect condition. My car was more pedestrian, a gray ’59 Chevrolet with odd tail fins that made it look grandmotherly. But it was my first car and I loved it precisely because of its homeliness and lack of style. It was not the swiftest of the three cars, but once it hit the highway it could cruise at high speeds with the best of them.

  We flew through the residential streets of Charleston at seventy-five miles per hour and shot up the ramp to I-26 with our radios blasting out rock music and the cadets pouring shots of liquor to give themselves courage for the task at hand. Because he was a freshman, Jordan could not utter a word and I listened to the nervous talk of upperclassmen as I followed Mike’s taillights and settled in for a hell-bent two-hour ride in which we planned to average one hundred five miles per hour.

  In less than one hour we passed Columbia, a good hundred miles from Charleston and saw the city lights in the distance to the right. As we came up upon Newberry, I saw the blue lights of a highway patrolman’s car in my rearview mirror and put my foot on the brake until Worrell told me that the patrolman was a Citadel alumnus who was privy to the plan. The patrol car raced by our three cars, and with his blue light leading the way we burst through the Carolina pinelands as the state began its slow climb into the mountains north of Greenville. I could feel the earth itself begin to rise and turn its energies toward the coming hills. Never had I traveled at such a speed or covered so much ground as we did rocketing through the state of South Carolina escorted by a highway patrolman wearing a Citadel ring.

  When we passed by the exit to Clinton, I caught a brief glimpse of a flashlight blinking on and off quickly above us on the overpass. Far ahead on the overpass in front of us, I saw a single flickering answering light that was so swift I was not even certain I saw it. It registered on me dimly that this was a signal of some sort, but I was concentrating so hard on my driving I did not even remember it until later the next day. As we neared Greenville, Pinner Worrell took the cadets through their paces again, step by step, making sure that each member of his team knew his role perfectly.

  “Wig, you’ve got the library. Just paint the words ‘Bulldog’ and ‘The Citadel’ on the front. Don’t bother about the back. The same goes for all of you. Everybody be back here at exactly 0300 hours. Do you read me, gentlemen? Dumbhead, do I make myself understood?”

  “Sir, yes sir,” Jordan said.

  “You get the girl’s dorm, waste wad,” Worrell said to Jordan. “No sniffing underwear hanging on the clothesline.”

  “I’ll try to control myself, sir,” Jordan said and the upperclassmen in the backseat laughed.

  “Gauldy knob,” Worrell said, but with brotherly affection as we turned off the interstate when we saw the road sign for Furman University.

  “What’s your job, Pinner?” one of the faceless cadets in the backseat asked.

  “The commander of the team always takes the toughest job for himself,” Worrell said. “I’m spray-painting on the church the words ‘Fuck Furman’s Dead Paladin. The Citadel’s Glad We Killed It.’ ”

  “You’re nuts, Worrell,” a voice said admiringly. “Pure psycho.”

  “Thanks,” Worrell said. “Thanks so much. That’s what’s gonna give me the edge in Nam. It’s guys like you who paint the dorms. But only Worrell would think to paint the church on a Southern Baptist campus.”

  “But you’re a Baptist, Worrell.”

  “I’m a pure fighting machine, Dobbins,” Worrell corrected. “And this is a fucking war.”

  As I pulled up behind Mike’s car beside the nine-foot chain-link fence that surrounded the Furman campus, Worrell said, “You’d’ve made a hell of a Citadel man, McCall. What a shame to lose a man like you to a pussy school like Carolina. Let’s go, men. Absolute precision now. Military precision. Our plan’s flawless. Only human error can fuck this up. And, gentlemen, in Worrell’s army, there’s no such thing as human error.”

  The cadet team in Capers’ car had already cut a large hole through the fence with wire cutters and the first of the camouflaged cadets carrying backpacks full of cans of spray paint were already sprinting toward the Furman buildings three quarters of a mile away. The cadets were in splendid shape, their bodies honed and conditioned by long hours of running obstacle courses and quick-timing with chanting platoons.

  When I threw the trunk open, I marveled at the speed and economy of the cadets as they slid into their backpacks, then sprinted toward the hole in the fence where they low-crawled through the opening. The moon, which had been behind a covering of clouds, sprang suddenly free and bathed the cadets in light as they raced across the low hills silent and swift as brook trout. I watched Pinner Worrell disappear over one of the hills and was surprised to find Jordan Elliott coming out of the shadows behind me, laughing.

  “You’re gonna get in big trouble, Jordan,” Capers said.

  “Not as much as they are,” Jordan said. “At least not yet.”

  Jordan pointed to his right and a flashlight clicked on twice, then was answered by a light to the left.

  “Who’s awake at this time of the morning?” Mike asked.

  “The whole Furman campus. You remember Fergis Swanger?”

  “Pulling guard for Hanahan High. Hell of a football player,” Mike said.

  Jordan pointed toward another flash of light off to the east. “Fergis plays for Furman now. I called him the other night.”

  “What for?” Capers said. “You don’t even know the poor son of a bitch.”

  “I told him every detail of the plan to paint the Furman campus.”

  “You rotten, lousy bastard,” Mike said. “That’s brilliant.”

  “But it’s so two-faced,” Capers said. “I really got to like those guys I drove up here.”

  “Then transfer,” Jordan said. “Now you get out of here fast. If they find out you drove us, there won’t be anything left of your cars except the aerials and the ashtrays.”

  “Why?” Capers asked. “Why’d you do this?”

  “I had a classmate who sat at the same mess with me. We were lucky enough to get to eat with Mr. Pinner Worrell. Except Mr. Worrell didn’t want to waste any of the Citadel’s good money by feeding a knob. So he starved us. But he had this game he
played. He found out what foods we hated. I hate brussels sprouts, so when he asked if I would like a serving of brussels sprouts, I said, ‘No Sir.’ He made me eat every brussels sprout on the table. This kid Gerald Minshew declined to drink tomato juice. So Worrell made him drink twelve glasses of tomato juice. What Minshew neglected to mention was that he was allergic to tomato juice. He almost died in the emergency room.”

  “What’s the real reason for all this, Jordan?” Mike asked. “I’m not buying this hatred for brussels sprouts and love for poor Minshew.”

  “I got to get out of this school. It’s not for me. I hate everything about the place except for going to sleep, then I dream about the place.”

  “Just leave,” I suggested.

  Jordan laughed bitterly. “I told you, Jack, I’ve begged my father to let me resign, but he won’t hear of it. Mom tells me I’ve got to find an honorable way out of the Citadel or I have to stay here for four years.”

  “You call this honorable?” Capers said. “Those guys are going to get the shit kicked out of them.”

  “So am I,” Jordan said, slipping down and crawling through the hole in the fence, only he headed west around the fence instead of following the path of the other cadets.

  “Just come back with us,” I said. “These Furman people’ll kill you.”

  “If they don’t, then everyone’ll know I made the call,” Jordan said. “Hey, thanks, guys. I’ll never forget what you did for me tonight. Now take off before they catch you.”

  As Jordan disappeared over a hill a huge roar went up a hundred yards in front of us as five hundred Furman boys executed a perfect double envelopment movement that cut the Citadel cadets off from their escape route. Some signal had been given and the campus bloomed suddenly with light, and what seemed like thousands of Furman men hidden in strategic points around the campus closed in and overwhelmed the surprised and desperately outnumbered cadets.

  I found myself so mesmerized by the fierce virility of this howling mob that I nearly did not make it back to my car as a contingent of Furman baseball players armed with bats ran toward the parked cars. We leapt behind the driver’s wheels and gunned the cars down the dirt road as Louisville sluggers flew over the fence in a deadly volley, caving in my hood and breaking Mike’s rear window.

  At an all-night gas station on I-26, we stopped for gas and to regroup.

  “What was all that shit about?” I asked.

  “We should be ashamed of ourselves for leaving those cadets behind,” Capers said.

  “You’re right, Capers,” I said. “Go back and pick yours up, as scheduled.”

  “You don’t know what brotherhood is,” Capers said. “You’re not joining a fraternity.”

  “Teach me all about brotherhood, fraternity boy,” I said. “Go back for those cadets.”

  “Jordan used us,” Capers said.

  I shook my head and said, “Jordan’s our friend and we stand by him.”

  “My God,” Mike said, “he does things no one would ever think of.”

  “He’s dangerous,” Capers said.

  “So far,” Mike said, laughing, “only to Citadel cadets.”

  And dangerous he was to those valiant, rough-and-ready cadets who made the journey to Furman that autumn night. Sixteen cadets slipped onto the Furman campus that night and none walked off campus on his own power. One cadet was lassoed out of an oak tree and pulled down to the ground, where he was stomped half to death by a Furman mob. Pinner Worrell’s jaw was broken and three ribs cracked as he tried to spray-paint the line of attackers who felled him. His was one of three broken jaws recorded by the emergency room at the Greenville County Hospital. Seven of the cadets came to that hospital unconscious, including Jordan Elliott.

  Jordan was also the only cadet to reach a single Furman building to desecrate it with the words “The Citadel.” He was spray-painting those words on the gymnasium when he was sighted by a roving patrol of paladins who gave the alarm. Soon Jordan was in a footrace with Furman boys that he was destined to lose. He ran toward the tranquil lake that he had noticed on the map that Worrell had marked when they planned the mission. Feeling the mob almost upon him, he did a speed dive into the cold November waters and began stroking the Australian crawl as hard as he could toward the distant shore. Behind him, he heard five or six of the Furman boys enter the water and howl with displeasure as the cold bit into them. Since he could swim like an otter, Jordan had several fleeting moments of hope when he thought he might elude his pursuers.

  Then he heard the sound of four canoes launched simultaneously in the water and looked back to see the canoes loaded with four beefy paddlers each, stroking in unison toward him. Laughing, Jordan turned to face them in the water. When the first canoe closed on him, he dove underwater and managed to tip it over, but an oar struck him in the back of the head, drawing blood. Before he felt himself sinking beneath the black water, he saw the shadows of the paddles coming from everywhere, in slow motion, again and again and again.

  Jordan’s concussion was severe and he was the last cadet to be released from the Greenville County Hospital and returned, under guard, to the Citadel. Like the others before him he was expelled for Conduct Unbecoming a Cadet, and while he was escorted to his room to pack his belongings, the cadets of Padgett-Thomas barracks gathered along the railings and cheered so loudly and for so long at Jordan’s departure that even the fury of General Elliott was appeased by the final triumphant hurrah the corps extended to his son.

  For the rest of the semester, Jordan lived with his parents at Camp Lejeune. In January, he matriculated at the University of South Carolina, where I had spray-painted the words “Go Furman” on the doorway leading into our dormitory.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  On the first day of June, Lucy telephoned and asked if I would come over and visit with her alone. Her voice alarmed me and I had a sudden premonition of bad news. When I arrived she told me that the night before, she had awakened in darkness and felt a slight, an almost imperceptible change in her body, like the tiny rustle of cylinders shifting in a combination lock. She had always been able to read the signals her body gave off and had known each time she was pregnant long before her doctors confirmed her intuition. Last night, lying drenched in her own sweat, she knew that the cells that would kill her had returned. The leukemia was on the move again, she said, and this time it had come to stay.

  Though I had seen my mother weep before, I had never seen her cry over her own mortality. She had done everything the doctor said for her to do, yet a death sentence had been passed on her. I do not think that her tears were out of self-pity, although that was my first thought as I sat there in my role of dumbstruck witness. As she cried, I began to understand. You weep at the loss of so beautiful a world and all those parts you will never be able to play again. The dark takes on different meaning. Your body has begun to prepare you for the last completion, for the peace and generosity of silence itself. I watched closely as my mother tried to imagine a world without Lucy Pitts. At first, it was beyond imagination, but her tears helped water the path. The idea of it tempted her at the center of where she lived. By weeping in front of me, Lucy was taking the first step toward dying well.

  A better son would have embraced his mother and comforted her. But my body was shy when it came to all the common intimacies of touch. I put my hand out toward her shoulder, then withdrew it as soon as I came in range of her body. Her grief seemed to make her dangerous, electric. But behind it, an ancient code sounded its own venture of resignation. Again, I reached out toward my mother, but my hand did not travel the distances that had suddenly grown up between us. In the heat of this morning, I felt a film of ice form over my own heart. Wordless, I tried to find the words that would bring peace to my mother. Knowing that I should take her up into my arms, I sat there paralyzed, thinking far too much about everything. Thus, I lost that most precious and life-defining of all moments forever. I could not think of touch without conjuring up visions of
strangulation, the breathlessness that led to the deepest realms of terror. Where other men took comfort in the arms of their women, I brought visions of the pythoness, all the swiftness and airless panic of constriction.

  As we sat out on her deck and listened to the waves come in, one by one, Lucy reiterated to me that she was living out the last months of her life. She said it was time to get her affairs straight, to tell the truths that needed to be told, to explain to her children that she had not abandoned us in the reeds on the day we were born, although she knew we thought she had. We had judged her unfairly and had declared her on the secret ballots we had counted behind her back to be our tenderest executioner. Because she had protected us from the horrors of her own childhood, she had not prepared us for the more commonplace suffering of our own. She had lied about who she was and where she came from because she wanted us to have a fresh start in a world that had manhandled her from the very beginning. She thought that love was the fiercest, most authentic part of her, yet feared she had never allowed it to air out properly, had kept it too tightly clenched and close to her chest. As she felt herself dying, she wanted me to know that she had loved her sons so much that it had frightened her. To contain that fear, Lucy had loved us in secret, had turned that love into an eccentric form of counterintelligence that had its own passwords and codes of silence. She had covered her feeling for us with thorns and barbed wire and had placed land mines in all the rose gardens leading to it. With outstretched arms her children had crossed those blown-out fields again and again to reach out for her. If she had known that love had to be earned and fought for, she would have imparted that lesson to us.

  Only when the cancer had begun to eat away at her life did she remember the little girl she once had been. It was that same girl who brought trouble and misery to the art of loving. Love had to cross the threshold of a burning house where her father died in a fire set by her mother. Love had to tiptoe beneath the corpse of her inconsolable mother, who had hanged herself from a railroad trestle. What did love feel like when its hands were bloodstained in the strands of time? I could feel my mother try to explain all this and she struggled to find the proper words. But the language failed her and I heard just the waves again. She was breathing hard. It was time to put her house in order and she would try to repair the damage before she died. That was her pledge to me on the morning she told me that the leukemia had come back to take up residence in her body again, this time as a permanent guest.