Dress Gray

by Lucian K. Truscott

  “You will get the report to me at 1300 tomorrow?” asked Rylander. The inflection in his voice was that of a question, but clearly it was a command.

  “Yessir, 1300 it is, sir,” replied Hedges, looking Rylander in the eye. Hedges felt blood moving inexorably into his face, and he knew that by now, he had reddened. The knowledge angered him, and sped the reddening of his face. Soon, he knew from past experience, he would be crimson.

  “Well,” Rylander paused again for a count. “Sit down. Let me know what you’ve got. I want it all. Every detail King gave you.” Hedges eased himself into the chair at the edge of Rylander’s desk, pulling on the bottom of his jacket, running his hands along its front seams, making sure they overlapped properly. Rylander watched Hedges with detached amusement, as he aligned and tugged, putting himself together. Hedges’ face was the color of a ripe tomato. That it has come down to this—a store mannequin soldier in custom-tailored greens, pulling and yanking on himself like one of those dolls his daughter used to have, with strings you pulled, and they talked, or made a squeaky noise that passed for talk. And now this … machine … Hedges … was pulling on himself, straightening his tie, running his fingers down his buttons, making sure they’re all buttoned and straight, nothing out of alignment … any minute the puppeteer was going to let loose and Hedges would collapse in a heap of cloth and papier-mâché … the soldier of the future. Rylander shuddered, deep in his gut, picked up his pencil, and sat ready to take note on Hedges’ report.

  “Sir, what we’ve got here …” Hedges’ eyes drifted to the right, out over the river, then focused quickly back on the superintendent. “Sir, what we’ve got here is a clear-cut case, a tragic case, an accidental drowning which apparently occurred, sir, when the individual, Hand, David, Company F-4, nineteen years of age, was skinny-dipping down at the end of Lake Popolopen by himself. Violated every regulation on the books. Swimming alone. Off limits, making use of Flirtation Walk and vicinity after dusk … swimming in the nude. I could go on. I’m sure you see the pattern, sir. The young man was a problem plebe, an accident looking for a place to happen. Looks like he found it. Or we found him. Depends on the point of view, sir. If you get what I mean.” Hedges smiled a strange, thin smile Rylander had seen before. The smile was completely out of place. There was nothing humorous about the death of a cadet, accidental or otherwise. Hedges’ smile seemed to mask something within him … something strange, and inhuman. Rylander was seized with the realization that Charles Sherrill Hedges did not know the smile was on his lips, The man has lost control of himself.

  “Go on,” he said. “Let’s hear the rest of it.”

  “That’s it, General,” said Hedges. “A tragic accident. I think we should notify the parents ASAP. They’re going to want to make funeral arrangements, and we can’t let this thing get in the way of June Week….”

  “You let me worry about what does and what does not get in the way of June Week, do you understand me, General Hedges?”

  “Yessir. Roger that.” The smile had become self-satisfied now. Rylander caught Hedges’ casual usage of radio talk—roger that—and it disgusted him.

  “You’re sure that’s it?” asked Rylander, drilling his eyes into Hedges’ thinly smiling face. “That’s all Terry King had for you?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Well. Get that report to me tomorrow by 1300. I want to take a look at it in writing before I notify the next of kin. You can go now. You are dismissed, General.” Rylander did not look up from his notes.

  Hedges rose sharply and executed a snappy salute.

  “Good evening, sir. And you and Mrs. Rylander have a nice time at the Bear Mountain Inn.” Hedges turned neatly on his heel and walked quickly out the door.

  Rylander swiveled his chair and looked out over the Hudson. The sun was low, and the river had a greenish-blue tint, picked up from the sky and the reflection of the wooded hills on the other side of the river. The river never changed. Looked the same way it did when he was a cadet. Hedges. They had a phrase describing men like Hedges, when he was a cadet. Guys like him thought they were “all over it.”

  I'll show him who’s all over it. He folded his notes and stuck them into an inside pocket in his uniform jacket. Picking up his gold-braided cap, he walked through the sliding doors, down the stone steps, through the courtyard, across Thayer Road, through Central Area, down Diagonal Walk, across the Plain. He enjoyed the walk. It took five minutes, and he was home.

  7

  Six-thirty P.M. A telephone call.

  “Colonel King speaking, sir.”

  “Terry? Hedges. I’m at the office. Get over here as soon as you can. Forget dinner. I’ve just seen the supe, and he’s hopping mad about this business with the dead plebe. He gave me explicit instructions that we’re to clean it up. ASAP.”

  “Anything I can bring with me, sir?” Silence on the line. King could hear Hedges flipping through some papers.

  “This report you gave me this afternoon … is this the only copy of the autopsy done on the kid?”

  “Yessir. You’ve got the whole thing. I made sure Fitzgerald turned over all his paper work to me. I personally collected the autopsy report and all copies from Consor, the doc. Destroyed the copies this morning, sir.”

  “Well, get yourself on down here, Terry. We’ve got some work to do. The supe went crazy, started throwing his arms around, says he wants this thing sanitized, squeaky-clean. Says he wants to be able to use it for a shaving mirror, it’s so shiny. And he wants it on his desk by 1300 tomorrow.”

  “Sir?”

  “Yeah, Terry, what is it?”

  “Sir, what exactly does the supe mean by ‘sanitized’?”

  “He means he wants Hand’s death reported as an accident, a regrettable, tragic accident. You know what he said when I told him the kid was probably a fag, and probably murdered by another cadet? He said—and these are his exact words, Terry, I swear to God—he said, ‘I don’t want to hear about it.’ You should have seen the look on his face. His skin was green.”

  “So we’ve got to rewrite the report, sir? The whole thing?”

  “That’s right. And we’re going to need a new autopsy. The supe isn’t going to want to see anything about murder or semen in there. So you’d better do some thinking about how we’re going to come up with a brand-new autopsy report.”

  “No problem, sir. Got it covered.”

  “What’s that?”

  “No problem, sir. When Consor handed me the autopsy this morning, I told him I wanted all his copies. I found some blank forms, along with his copies. Got ‘em up in my desk.”

  “Stop by your office on your way down, Terry. I want those forms. And what about this man, Consor? Can we trust him? Should we call him over and tell him our problem, give him the word straight from the supe?”

  “I don’t think so, sir. He’s a grad … but you know these doctors, sir. They’re not combat arms. I think we can handle the autopsy. We’ll just excise what we don’t want in Consor’s report, retype it and run it through the photocopier over his signature. Look good as new. That’s all anybody gets their hands on nowadays, anyway. Photocopies. The supe’ll never notice. No problem, sir. Got you covered.”

  “Damn fine, Terry. Damn fine. I’ll see you down here in … let’s say … half an hour, roger?”

  “Roger that, sir.”

  “Terry?”

  “Yessir?”

  “Don’t let the little woman know what’s up. Tell her you’ve got officer’s call or something. See you in three-zero.”

  “King out.”

  Brigadier General Hedges cradled the phone. He ran his right index finger down the front of his uniform jacket, touching each brass button, feeling instinctively for the wings of the little embossed eagles, straightening a button if its wings were not horizontal. He sharpened a pencil. The electric pencil sharpener whirred softly, sounding like a generator back in Nam, bunkered out behind the hootch, sandbagged in so you could barely hear it h
um. He thumped the eraser end of the pencil on his desktop, waiting.

  The whole thing was like a duck shoot back in Maryland on the Chesapeake, when he grew up. They’d sit out on the edge of the bay on little stools in a blind, waiting. Waiting for those damned ducks. Ducks would come by, they’d stand up and shoot them. First, the father. Then Harry, the oldest son, Hedges’ brother. Then little Charlie with his .410 gauge single-shot. He’d stand up and bang away, reloading as fast as his little fingers could fumble another shell into the breach of the shotgun. It always pissed him off that he was last, that the rest of them called him “Little Charlie,” because he was always the youngest, the littlest. Now he was the commandant, things were different.

  He was going duck shooting again. The feeling was the same. Sitting there in his office, waiting. Always waiting. But this time he was going to get off the first round. And there was only one duck: the superintendent of the United States Military Academy. Hedges thumped the eraser faster, dropped the pencil, straightened the bottom of his uniform jacket, touched the knot of his tie, felt the sterling-silver clasp he used to pinch together the points of his collar, custom-tailored Dacron and cotton khaki he’d ordered from some outfit over in Nam. He ran his fingers through his hair, back to the collar of his shirt, starched stiff against his rough, tanned neck.

  Never in the recent history of the Military Academy had a commandant of cadets superseded a superintendent. Traditionally, each position was considered an important step in a general’s career. Commandants usually left West Point with a promotion to major general and a division command. Superintendents usually received a promotion to lieutenant general and moved into a key slot in the Pentagon, or took a deputy command slot over in NATO Headquarters. Commandants and superintendents moved up and away from West Point.

  Hedges considered the situation. No matter who won the election in November, the war was going to start winding down. Addison Thompson said it was coming. Sentiment in the Congress was turning. It wouldn’t be long before a coalition of antiwar senators could bottle up a defense appropriations bill and demand White House concessions on the war to let it out—concessions like troop force reductions, cutbacks in air strikes against the North, reduced military aid to the South Vietnamese regime. As he had done many times in the past, the head of West Point’s Social Science Department was watching over the careers of his protégés. Hedges knew he was at the top of Thompson’s list, and that Thompson was right: No matter what happened in November, Vietnam combat command was no longer the thing for army generals with an eyeball on their futures.

  Hedges made up his mind. He’d use the murder of Cadet David Hand to knock off the supe. That prissy SOB with his society wife, sitting over there in his office, playing around with his telephones and his secretaries and his social plans for June Week … what the hell did he know about what was going on at West Point? Nothing. Rylander was so obsessed with his formalities, with the pomp and circumstance of power, he had no idea of the essence of real power, the control of the life of one man by another. He’d never suspect a thing.

  That bunch of half-assed flunkies over in Headquarters would keep him insulated … that gaggle of desk jockies, always running around wheezing and flapping and all for what? For the greater glory of Axel W. Rylander, that’s what. He figured he could get away with rapping his knuckles on the head of Charles Sherrill Hedges, he had another think coming.

  Hedges turned the notion over in his mind, flipping it from side to side, examining the plan for rough spots, nicks, scratches in the metal … it really was like shooting ducks! The idea of knocking off Rylander, moving from com right up to supe, taking that walk across the street for the last time … Hedges felt like he was holding a rifle, rubbing linseed oil into the stock, tightening the sights, working the rifle’s action, the bolt sliding over and back and forward and over and locking and over and back and forward and locking again … the notion felt warm and sticky and smooth … elegant. It wouldn’t be an easy shot, but it was the thing he’d been training for all his life. Hang Rylander with a phony report on the murdered cadet, then sit back and watch him cook when the heat was turned up … watch the son of a bitch buckle and twitch and fry when the scent of scandal began wafting along the Hudson … Rylander sitting there in his office with his telephones ringing, not knowing what to do…. Hedges thumped the eraser on his desk, making mental notes, plans … time compressing again … that familiar, comfortable sensation of floating, slow-motion, above the ground, like he was in his C & C ship, strapped in, left hand on the mike, right hand gripping his web gear, floating up there above the action, yelling above the roar of the rotor blades into the mike, calling in fire, shooting ducks….

  8

  At 6:30 P.M. Slaight was sitting neck deep in 105° water in one of the Jacuzzi whirlpools in the physical therapy room of the West Point Hospital. He had decided to skip supper, a privilege enjoyable only on Saturday nights. The nurses’ aides in the PT room had left one of the whirlpools full for Slaight when they went off-duty. He had arranged the deal on Monday and had spent an hour soaking in the whirlpool every day after walking the area. It was privilege. It was cow.

  Slaight just stripped, eased himself down into the stainless-steel tub and sat on the wooden bench on the bottom, dialed 105 on the thermostat, flipped the Jacuzzi switch, leaned his head back on a rolled towel, and blew out a long breath of hot, stinky air, area air, air full of sweat and gritty concrete dust and the rank stench of his sweaty fuckin’ gray wool dress coat, barracks air, West Point air. The hot swirling water pounded him like a soggy jackhammer, going to work on his legs first, down there at the spot where the jet nozzle stuck into the tank. Then he felt the water at the base of his back, rooting around in his muscles, tugging on the knots of tension he brought over with him from the area, pulling that goddamn M-14 off his shoulder, floating those eight pounds of steel and wood and leather up over the edge of the tank and away. Then he felt his neck let go. It was a slobbery, lazy feeling, like somebody had landed a good one on him in plebe boxing, and he had brushed the edges of consciousness, swimming around out there in that gray area where your legs are rubbery and your balance lurches in and out of contact like a New York subway pulling away from a station platform—wham! clank!—the cars banging together as the train picks up speed … balance slipping and swaying and rushing away….

  He felt good. He’d stay in the whirlpool until his toes felt like they were growing together, they were so waterlogged; then he’d wrap a towel around himself and pad down the hall to the duty doctor’s office for his nightly foot-doctoring.

  The hospital at West Point was like another world, completely separate from the academy. Inside its walls, the rules changed: It was doctors and patients, not officers and cadets. Of course, the academy did what it could to limit the breakdown in discipline perceived inside the hospital. The presence of the hospital commander on the Academic Board, the academy board of governors, saw to that.

  Cadets who were hospitalized, for example, were required to mop the areas around their bunks and make their own beds every morning, except when their temperatures exceeded 100°. It seemed like a little thing, mopping your area, making your bed. But when Slaight had pneumonia as a plebe, had spent twenty-eight days up in Ward Two, staggering around his bed every morning, slopping the mop, soaking his cotton slippers with ammonia suds, yanking on the sheets to square his bed corners for ward inspection at 7:30 A.M., it was just like being back in the barracks. The significance of his duties in the hospital ward had not been lost upon him. He was sicker than he’d ever been in his life, but he knew that back in the barracks, the Tactical Department had targeted the hospital—the doctors, the nurses, the aides—all of them were the goddamn enemy.

  The enemy! Jesus! The fuckin’ VC were supposed to be the enemy! Every day they screamed and yelled about the fuckin’ VC, little commie dinks, fuckin’ yellow slopes, all they heard about from the tacs and the rest of the fuckers who’d been to Nam was VC—
VC-V-fuckin’-C. But they weren’t the only enemy, the VC. There were enemies all over the goddamn place. You listened to the tacs, every dude in the Academic Department was the enemy. You listened to the gorillas over in OPE, anybody who couldn’t do more than ten pull-ups was the goddamn enemy. You listened to the Juice P’s, the Fluids P’s, the Solids P’s—the professors in all the applied sciences—anybody downstairs in English or Social Science was the fuckin’ enemy. And you listened to any grad any goddamn place in any goddamn department doing any goddamn thing from teaching nuclear physics to picking his teeth … listen to a grad, and anybody who wasn’t a grad was the goddamn enemy. Listen to Infantry dudes, and the Artillery was the enemy. Listen to Armor, and Signal was the enemy. Listen to the ribbon-wearing combat arms officers, and anybody pushing pencils in any of the noncombat arms was the chickenshit enemy.

  Christ! If you really listened-up at West Point, if you believed all the bullshit they shoved at you every day, really believed it, you’d flip out paranoid-schitz for sure! Slaight shifted position on the wood bench so the jet nozzle shot a stream of bubbles right up his backbone. It was a damn good thing guys didn’t get to do time in the whirlpool every day like this. If they did, inside of a month there’d be nobody left at West Point. Whole goddamn corps would up and resign. Old Woo Poo had it all figured out. They take your life for four goddamn years and they cam every day full of formations and classes and parades and inspections and reports and studies and problems and they leave you with zero time to think. Too much thinking softens the brain. That was the West Point attitude. Tac was always saying: Nobody’s payin’ you to think mister they’re payin’ you to act you got that straight? Funny thing was, the dumb bastard was right.