“I think there’s some kind of connection between Hedges and Grimshaw, sir,” said Slaight. “Hedges told me last summer he was going to put Grimshaw away for that business with the area and my feet, and I get back today, and there he is, big as fuckin’ life.”
“I don’t care if Grimshaw has a direct pipeline to the President. The law is the law, and it’s about time that lesson was learned around here.”
“Yeah. I’ve thought about that once or twice myself. Mandatory chapel ought to go down the drain, too. But Jesus. You know what Hedges said last year? Some guy asked him about chapel one afternoon, when he was giving a talk to our regiment. He said—I think I can quote him almost exact—he said: ‘If mandatory chapel goes, then the next thing that’s going to happen is they’re going to let women in here. Then the next thing that’s going to happen is they’re going to allow cadets to marry. Then you know what we’ve got? We haven’t got West Point any more. All we’ve got is a goddamn college.’”
Bassett relit his pipe and chuckled.
“I never said Hedges was a dummy,” he said. “He’s right, you know. Tradition is like a high wire. The tighter you pull it, the harder it is to walk. West Point has been walking the high wire for a long time now. Things are getting tighter and tighter. Some day, Slaight. Some day, this place is going to change. It won’t happen while you and I are here, but we’ll see it in our lifetime. You can count on that.”
Basset stood, shoving papers, seemingly at random, into an old leather briefcase.
“Now I’ve got to be getting home. You talk about chewing out. My wife is going to be grinding her teeth by the time I get home. You keep in touch, Slaight. Let me know what happens with Grimshaw. And remember what I said. Keep your nose clean, and lay low. Don’t do anything stupid, like drink in the barracks, or miss a class or a formation. Don’t give them any excuse to nail you. Hedges has the ball now. Let’s see what he does with it.”
“Yessir.”
“And stop calling me sir. My name is Clifford. You can make plans now to come over for dinner, the first week in September. You and anybody else from your company whom you want to bring. Okay?”
“Yeah. Sure. That’d be great.”
“See you then.”
“Okay. Thanks, Captain. You really put me back on the track today. I was really flapping there for a while.”
They walked upstairs together, Bassett turning north, heading for the parking lot out past the baseball field, Slaight walking west, past the library, back to the barracks.
That night, Grimshaw visited Company D-3. At 10:15, he banged on the door of Room 226. Slaight and John Lugar snapped to attention. Grimshaw strode around the room, looking things over. When he reached the sink, he stopped. He pulled a pad of two-dash-ones from his uniform pocket, scribbled on the pad, tore off the slip of paper, and laid it on the counter next to the sink. He turned and looked at Slaight.
“Have the company commander send this up tomorrow morning with the company logbook, mister.” He walked out. Slaight walked over to the sink. He picked up the two-dash-one.
SLAIGHT, RYSAM PARKER III Co. D-3
Room in disarray, i.e.: dusty floor; improperly made beds; cluttered desktop; uniforms improperly aligned; dusty bookshelves; spots in sink.
Grimshaw, N.E.
Maj/Inf
Tac/D-3
Firstie year had begun.
29
It was that way. Bam. You were back. Back at West Point. Back in The Life. It never let up. Hit. React. Hit. React. You laughed it off, punching each other in the arm, joking, oof-goofing-and-half-stepping in the hallways, popping towels in the shower, acting like a bunch of high school football players on an “away” football trip, but it never let up. Never. West Point wouldn’t let you forget you had been a smack. A bean. A crot. A dullard. They were all around you. New smacks. New beans. New crots. New dullards. West Point never let you forget the past, because the past was you.
Slaight and Buck and Lugar and the rest of the guys in D3 shook it off. Coped. By firstie year, for some damn reason, the bullshit made sense. It never ended and it never let up, and you didn’t really want it to. If everything went smoothly, without a hitch, if everything were somehow easy, it would have invalidated everything that had gone before. And everything that had gone before was you.
The attitude was … I’ve sucked shit this long, why not another goddamn year? Why shouldn’t these new beans suck the same shit?
Indeed. Why not? Tradition was a seductive trap, and everybody fell for it.
The attitude made about as much sense as anything else about West Point, not much sense at all. You dropped your bags, and you took the place at face value. West Point was gray, you were gray, by the time you graduated, your hair might as well be gray, too, and for more than a few guys, it would be. Gray faces and gray hair and gray uniforms and gray barracks, with the leaves falling off the trees, the wind howling up the Hudson, snaking along the river at water level, hitting the sides of the cliffs, clinging to the stone like gas coming off dry ice, following the contours of the academy, sweeping across the gray concrete area, down your gray wool overcoat collar, sneaking down there under your T-shirt, gray, too, after three years at the cadet laundry, as gray as your notebooks and your blanket and the tiles on the floor of your room in the barracks, and the tiles in the showers and the marble partitions between the Johns … gray wind, whistling through window jambs, turning the air you breathed gray, your teeth gray … it was a wonder, the guys in D-3 used to joke, that they didn’t find a way to issue gray toothpaste in gray tubes, so you could brush your gray teeth with a gray toothbrush out of a gray toothbrush case, all of which were displayed on the gray shelves of your gray medicine cabinet, mounted on your gray walls. It was a joke, but like everything else about The Life, it was real too. Real enough so you had to laugh at it to get by. John Lugar used to say that Lenny Bruce would have had met his match at West Point. Only the United States Military Academy could absorb his penetrating, razor-edge paranoia without showing a wound. Lenny Bruce, Lugar said, could successfully needle the Catholic Church, because the goddamn Catholic Church didn’t know what to do. West point did. They’d just put him in an auditorium full of cadets and let those stony gray faces eat him alive.
Guys got a lot of rack. Sleep. Rack was like women. You went at it with a vengeance, greed. You wanted to sleep the way you wanted to fuck. You could never get enough. In D-3 they coined code words for the sleep they coveted every day. Night was just plain rack. Then starting in the morning, there was ABR: after breakfast rack. MPR: mid-period rack, between classes. BDR: before dinner rack. ADR: after dinner rack. PMR: afternoon rack. BSR: before supper rack. ASR: after supper rack. Guys would stay up bullshitting and studying until 1 or 2 A.M., then spend the next day napping, sleeping every loose minute. Guys could lie down on their bunks and be asleep in two minutes, one minute. There were levels of rack. Deep rack. Ultra-deep rack. And deepest of all, something called self-destructive rack, sleep so deep, guys would wake up with a nosebleed. It happened all the time. Nobody could explain it. Nobody tried. They just grabbed a hand towel, soaked it in water, and stopped the bleeding. John Lugar used to say it was the body getting off.
“Hey, Leroy, your brain’s having an orgasm,” he’d say, when Buck would wake up with a nosebleed.
“Fuck you, Lugar,” Leroy would say, mopping up the mess.
Slaight would laugh. Everybody would laugh. Blood all over the goddamn place, blood on the pillow, blood on the floor, blood all over the sink and the counter, blood on your T-shirt … everybody would laugh. It was self-destructive rack. It was the way.
September went by. Guys settled in.
October came. Grimshaw kept out of the way. Some kind of general orders came down from Brigade that tacs were supposed to let the firsties run things. Grimshaw didn’t even inspect the company Saturday mornings. Slaight’s sick-call report just sat there, untouched. The five demerits he picked up that first night disap
peared in the muck of digging in. Booking it. Weekends, they went down to Snuffy’s and got drunk, or up to a place outside Newburgh called the Ideal Nite Club, a country and western bar where you could dance and drink beers for a quarter. Sometimes they took off for New York City, ran around, got drunk, stayed at some cheap hotel, shacked up with girls, got laid, and showed up in ranks on Sunday night smelling like beer and pussy. They were firsties. They were hot shit.
Slaight spent most of his time with Irit Dov. He had the feeling he was hiding. It didn’t sit well with him, hiding, but it was better than walking the goddamn area. T. Clifford Bassett checked in with him every week. Anything happening? Nope. Okay. Keep your nose clean. Sure thing. There goes another week, gone like the wind up the Hudson, gone gray and cold like the winter, creeping up on the academy … visibly. West Point was the only place in the world where you could see temperature. You looked out your window at a little flag hanging from a flagpole at the end of the area, and there, for everyone to see, was the “uniform flag” for the day. It told you which one of your overcoats you should wear, which hat. The little flag even told you when to wear your goddamn raincoat. It could be pouring rain outside, you’d look out there, and if the little flag didn’t say “wear your raincoat,” you didn’t wear your raincoat. You wore what the little flag told you to wear, and you didn’t ask questions. Everybody knew what happened when you asked questions, when you didn’t follow the flag. Two-Dash Hedges made sure of that. He wrote a guy up for not obeying the flag early on, put the poor bastard on the area for two months, gross disrespect and heavy discredit or some such shit, but everybody knew. Rain or no rain, cold or no cold, you did what the little uniform flag told you to do, or you paid. It was the way.
One morning at 10:30 Slaight returned to his room from his first two classes and found a big note taped to his door. It was from the CQ and it said to report to Grimshaw, ASAP, as soon as possible. It was October 21, seven weeks into the year. Slaight put a gloss on his shoes, shined his belt buckle, straightened his tie, checked the uniform flag, donned the appropriate outer gear, checked himself one last time in the mirror, and headed up to Building 720. The note had come as a surprise. He was curious. What could Grimshaw have up his sleeve? Nothing was happening. Nothing. On an impulse, he stopped in the orderly room and called Bassett to tell him he was going to see Grimshaw. Bassett said to come over to his office when he was finished. Slaight said okay. Then he walked out of the barracks, under the stoops, and up the back stairs to building 720. He knocked on Grimshaw’s door. He heard the familiar voice. Enter. Grimshaw was on the phone when he walked in, talking to somebody. It was all radio talk, Grimshaw on the phone … roger this … roger that … over … six … roger that … six-out. “Six” was radio lingo for a commander. Grimshaw hung up the phone, took Slaight’s report, returned the salute, indicated a chair. Slaight sat down. Grimshaw was smiling.
“The little woman,” he said, pointing at the phone. “Finest little chunk-a-fanny this side of the Hudson. Wants me home for lunch.” Grimshaw, grinning, pointing at the phone …
Six … roger that … Jesus! Right then it stung him, deep in the spine, down the back of his neck heading south. This dimbo major’s sitting there talking radio baby talk to his old lady on the phone, expecting me to sit here listening … listening to that shit like it’s all … normal … logical … like every goddamn major sits in his office talking radio talk to his wife like that. He knew it. The shit’s coming down. Slaight just knew.
“Mr. Slaight, you know why I’ve called you up here today?”
“Nosir.”
“It’s my duty, mister, to inform you that Aptitude proceedings have begun against you.”
“Aptitude proceedings?”
“That’s right.” Grimshaw picked up a familiar file. Slaight’s Aptitude file.
“We’re in the process of … ah … preparing paper work to … ah … convene an Aptitude Board to … ah … hear your case.”
“When do I get to see this paper work, sir?”
“You don’t, mister.”
“Then when is the board, sir?”
“You’ll be informed in due time, mister. Any other questions?”
“Yessir. Do you have my standing … I mean my class Aptitude standing in my file?”
“I don’t know what your standing is, Slaight. All I know is, there’s going to be an Aptitude Board, and it’s going to hear your case.”
“I’ll tell you what my Aptitude standing is, sir, since you don’t seem to know. I stand in the middle fifth of the class. Now I’ve got a question. If you’re going to run an Aptitude Board on me, what about the firsties in the bottom two fifths of the class? What about them? You going to run some kind of an assembly-line Aptitude Board, sir?”
“Don’t get smart with me, mister. I’ll quill your ass in a minute.”
“I’m not getting smart, sir. I asked you a valid question.”
“And I don’t have to answer your questions, Slaight. Not a fucking one of them. You ask entirely too many questions around here, mister. Too many for your own fucking good. Got that?”
“Yessir.”
“Now, I’ve been keeping track of the ‘Slaight Sick-Call Report.’ We’re in the seventh week of the academic year, correct?”
“Yessir.”
“And there are no sick slips in the folder you’ve been displaying on your bunk every Saturday morning, correct?”
“That’s right, sir.”
“Then you disobeyed my orders, didn’t you, Slaight?”
“Nosir.”
“Then how do you explain the empty folder, mister?”
“I didn’t go on sick call, sir. I wasn’t sick.”
“I gave you specific instructions, mister. I told you to go on sick call every week and display your sick slips in that folder.”
“You told me to do what I thought was best for me, sir. I didn’t get sick. I didn’t go on sick call. I figured what was best for me. I followed your instructions to the letter. I did what I thought best.”
“You’re verging on insubordination, mister.”
“Sir, I am discussing with you a situation which obviously has bearing on this Aptitude Board you’ve told me about, which obviously has bearing on whether or not I’m going to remain a cadet here at West Point, since Aptitude Boards are not empaneled to reward cadets for their exemplary behavior. I’m not being insubordinate, sir. I just want to get the facts straight.”
“The facts are straight, mister, and they’re all right here in this folder.”
“When do I get to see them, sir?”
“You don’t. You’ll hear them. From the board.”
“Yessir.”
“Now, drive your ass back down in the barracks. And if I were you, mister, I’d go on sick call first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Sir?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m not going on sick call. Good morning, sir.” Slaight saluted and left.
At the end of the hall, he stopped at a secretary’s desk and asked to use the phone. He dialed Bassett’s number. Bassett picked up.
“It’s Slaight. It’s happening. Right now.”
“What? Slow down, man. What’s happening right now?”
“You gonna be at your office for a while?”
“Yes. Until lunch.”
“I’ll be over before lunch. We’d better talk.”
“Good. I’ll take you to lunch at the Officers’ Club.”
“I’m not sure you’ll want to, when you hear what I’ve got to say.”
“Come now, Mr. Slaight, it’ll be fun.”
“Sure. See you.”
Slaight ran down to the barracks, into Leroy Buck’s room to give the news.
“Slaight. You seen this?” He held up a sheet of paper. Slaight took it. The paper listed the names of cadets excused from class for three days the following week to take part in SCUSA, the Student Conference on United States Affairs, held annually at the academy
, attended by students from two hundred colleges around the country. Slaight had spent the last three years working on the committee which was in charge of setting up SCUSA—all the administrative and technical garbage necessary to put together four hundred civilian students and about one hundred cadets, break them down in discussion groups, where they would spend three days on “world affairs.” This year, 1968, with campus SDS chapters expected to pack quite a few of the college delegations, SCUSA promised to be interesting for a change. The Times was due to cover the melee. Slaight checked the list. He looked for the committee he now controlled, Committee Chairman Slaight. His name wasn’t on the list.
“What the fuck?”
“You believe that shit?” asked Buck.
“Where in hell is my name?”
“Ten to one it’s Hedges. Ten to one, Slaight. You better get over to the Social Science Department and see the officer in charge of your committee. Ask him what the fuck is up.”
“Yeah.” Slaight spun out of the room, down the stairs, double-timing across Thayer Road, heading for his OIC’s office. He didn’t bother knocking. Walked past the secretary, stood by the major’s desk. In his left hand he held the excused-from-class list.
“Have you seen … this … Major?” He was still panting.
“Yes, I’ve seen it, Slaight.”
“You gonna do anything about it, sir? I mean, how am I supposed to run my committee … how am I supposed to put together SCUSA for you, if I’m not free from classes?”
The major looked up from his desk.
“Close the door, will you?” Slaight reached around and closed it.
“Have a seat. I know about the list, Slaight. All I can say is, I’m sorry. But please. Please don’t ask me to do anything about it. Please.”
Slaight looked at the major.
“It’s that heavy, huh, sir?”
“Please don’t ask me to do anything, Slaight. That’s all I can say.”
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