by Gus Lee
“Why’dja come here,” he asked, without using a question mark.
“Free education,” I said, chewing. Better than, I’m running away from home ’cause I don’t like my mother. “You?”
A waitress served salads with bright orange Kraft French, and I was done before the others had found forks. She was in her forties and moved fast while speaking little, in a voice I found charming just because she served food. She wore a black dress with a white starched collar, a white lace apron, and a little white hat. Her small brown name tag said “Jean.” She had near-green eyes and almost-red hair with white roots in a tight bun. She ignored us, as if, in a defiance of reason, she were refusing to recognize our remarkable status as West Point new cadet candidates.
“Slow down, ma’am,” said one of the diners in a fascinating drawl reminiscent of Southern gentry in Gone With the Wind. “Number a us heah ah fixin’ ta be gen’rals. Stay a space an’ y’all be able ta recall mah face when they put it on the new dollah bill.”
Jean looked at the person next to him. “Look to your left and to your right. One of these boys won’t be here four years from now.” She looked back at the speaker. “General,” she added.
“Love math,” my neighbor was saying. The catalog’s description of freshman calculus had upset my stomach: “set theory, rigorous treatment of differential and integral calculus of single variable algebraic functions, calculus of transcendental functions, polar coordinates, ninety minutes a day, six days a week.”
Across from me was a man in his twenties. He ate vigorously and I was warmed by the hint of a kindred spirit. He was large and tan and wore expensive clothes. A widow’s peak, a pronounced triangular wedge of hair, pointed into his forehead. He had a prominent, lean, and noble nose that reminded me of Louis Calhern, the tall, patrician actor who had played Julius Caesar to Marlon Brando’s Mark Antony. His imperious beak pointed and flared, his aristocratic head haloed by the bright summer light that glared through red and blue painted glass windows and black wrought-iron borders. He had ice-cold eyes that gave me a start. Ave, Imperator.
“Bet you’re good at that math shit,” he said to me. “NSF finalist, right?” He openly chewed lettuce flecked with carrots.
I shook my head. I liked Western literature and loved movies.
“What, don’t speak English?” He laughed. “Math’s not gonna be the drill tomorrow. Won’t be any stinkin’ trig problems buffin’ their shoes and jackin’ rounds for us tonight!” What did that mean? I ate saltines, Ritz crackers next. It was hot, and I drank like Sippy Suds at a free beer tap. Boxers took eight water tumblers a day, and now I drank for the comfort of the familiar. Jean left the water pitcher for me.
“What’s ‘buffin’ shoes’ mean?” asked the Southerner. Julius Caesar ignored him and bore down on his salad.
“What’s gonna be the problem tomorrow,” asked Sal Mineo, no longer eating. I wanted to ask for his salad, crispy, neglected, murmuring to me about its loneliness. I restrained myself.
“Beast detail. Upperclassmen,” said Caesar. “Going to hassle us all goddamned year. Gonna haze the holy shit outa us and screw us in the ear. Beast sucks. Only way to win is to form our own team.” He studied us, one by one, as he pulled a pack of Winstons from his pale blue sport coat, tapped one out, and lit it with a sharp snap from a Zippo. He was an adult. He ate as smoke blew from his nostrils, cloaking his plate in haze as he studied and discarded each of us from his prospective, independent team.
“How you know so much?” asked a distressed kid, his mouth, eyes, and nose in nervous motion, ready to pose more questions before the first was answered. His high-pitched voice was absorbed by the general clamor from other tables, from the lobby, and from my still nearly empty stomach. Deep down, I recognized his fear.
Caesar laughed. “I didn’t watch West Point Story. I’m a ‘poop schooler.’ Already in the Army. Means I went to Yoos-Maps—West Point Prep, Fort Belvoir. I’ve been preppin’ all goddamned year for this, gettin’ the straight poop, doin’ the math shit and pull-ups and the M-14 drill while you young studs were drinkin’ beer and gettin’ laid in high school.”
Getting laid in high school?
“Sonny Rappa,” said Sal Mineo. “I’m a good Catholic boy, and have definitely not been laid. I’ve confessed to a beer.” He offered his hand across the table. Caesar hesitated, put down his fork, dangling his smoke from his lower lip, and shook with the enthusiasm with which New York cabbies greet syphilitic fares.
“Luther Troth,” he said. “Duke to you, Squirt.”
Sonny’s grip was firm; Mike Benjamin’s was calloused. I also shook with five other guys—including the one who foresaw himself as the future adornment of the American dollar bill—none of whom were to survive Beast Barracks. “Kai Ting,” I said to Duke, gripping his big, nicotine-yellowed mitt, fearing what he would call me.
“Kai Ting?” laughed Duke Troth. “Sounds like an accident in a fuckin’ Chinese kitchen.” A few laughed. Sonny and Mike, on either side of me, did not. An acidic message circuited my gut. Troth added nothing to soften the comment. He smiled through his smoke and food, and the weight of silence fell on me.
This was familiar country; bullies had smelled me, a Chinese kid in a black-and-white city, like frogs found flies. The slur was ugly spit on cold concrete—an invitation to later tests. Toussaint had taught me deterrence. Best to say from the jump that I wouldn’t swallow words now so I could eat crap later. The risks were fishes, worsening over time.
I edged back, checking for knives, spans of reach, and Samaritans. Was he all mouth or was he going to pound me? Hot fear and cornered anger surged, and bile pumped in my hands. I cleared my throat; five seconds had passed. Look him inna eye. Talk slow. Give words a chance. Now. “Want to discuss family names with me?”
He put down his fork and cigarette, chewing a big mouthful. “Touchy, aren’t you?” he asked thickly through my glare.
Rude to talk with your mouth full, I thought, observant of manners. My mother was a monster for etiquette. I was her son. Our table fell silent within a sea of clattering diners. Duke was big, but he showed no Fist City response. I was glad.
“Hey, cool. Ting’s a good name,” said Sonny Rappa. “Let’s sweat these upperclassmen and not pick fights, know what I mean?”
Troth snorted. “Yeah. I want no part of that Oriental bullshit fighting, that karate hand-chop crap. That shit isn’t fair. Bet you’re good with that Oriental shit, right? Well, screw you in the ear.” He looked around the table, grinning falsely. Plates clacked as Jean brought my club sandwich with coleslaw and barley soup. The food gods did not want a fight, and forced a smile from me. My hands, heavy with purpose, relaxed. I picked up my soup spoon. “Right,” I said. Troth thought I was a math whiz and a karate expert. Pinoy Punsalong was as happy with the purity of my Western-polluted wing chun gong fu, Chinese boxing, as Uncle Shim was with my Chinese scholarship. I applauded the equivalency between Troth’s fighting spirit and his insight. I immediately typecast, classified, and pigeonholed him as a stereotyper; a big guy who bullied but did not enjoy fighting; a guy who enjoyed advantages over others; someone not to forget: Caesar.
I ate as always—as if the building were on fire and I would never see food again. I was done, pointedly ignoring Duke Troth, and nodding at Sonny and Mike as I left. I appreciated them; they had not laughed at me.
The hotel bustled with young men befriending each other. I walked across the vast area of Cavalry Field and thought about Christine, Jack Peeve, and Toussaint LaRue. It struck me that the people I was closest to had come from very different streets, and had never met each other. My father had never met Tony, Barney, or Pinoy. He had never seen a bout, a game, a swim match.
Later, alone, I ate the huge dinner I had previewed, my last civilian meal. I passed through the heavily flagged lobby now filled with boys who had become friends, and stepped into the late dusk of a warm New York summer night. I looked up at the building—five stories of
gray towered stone. From its promontory and high ramp I saw the Hudson and the quiet little winding road that had led to the future of thousands of young men and influenced the course of world history. To the north, up the banks of the Hudson, below the forested mountains that rustled softly like rippling velvet in the hot summer wind, lay the school that Washington had conceived, Jefferson had authorized, Benedict Arnold had betrayed, and Sylvanus Thayer had made in his own image. The catalog said that Thayer—West Point Class of 1808 and “Father of the Military Academy”—was founder of the Thayer Academic System, wherein every cadet is examined in every course, every day, six days a week. To honor this excess, the academic system, the biggest road, the only hotel, the main academic hall, and a major statue were named after him. It simplified navigation.
What am I doing here? Like I was one of these angular-faced white guys who looked like models for heroic statuary. I didn’t belong here; anyone could see that. I was going to be arrested for fraud. I had the wrong face. I was ugly, wrong in color and culture. I wasn’t smart enough. A school in the mountains and the clouds, to do the right thing. I, a boy who always did wrong, who was without honor, in a school commemorated to it. I felt alone. I wondered if I could do West Point all by myself.
Mike Benjamin joined me. “Dad’s a colonel. He brought me here when I was a kid.” He was my height, but his shoulders and chest pushed him over two hundred pounds. He reminded me of a famous actor, but in the dark, humid air and under the weight of history, I couldn’t remember which one. He spoke rapidly, constantly moving, cracking his knuckles, full of nervous, muscular energy.
“There,” he said. “Hundred years ago, when they heard about Fort Sumter, Southern cadets marched down the road, past this knoll, waving to the Northern cadets. A dry, dusty day. Knowing they’d kill each other later. The young, nameless lieutenants.”
“Why’d your father want you to come here?” I asked.
“Best school in the world.” He looked at the river. “Grampa was an immigrant. Can’t believe I’m here.” He looked at the road. “Like the Southern cadets couldn’t believe they were leaving.”
I knew what he meant; my father looked up to West Point as he would at the heavens. No, it was higher. That’s why I’m here.
“How hard do you think this is going to be?” I asked.
“Damn hard. One of Dad’s best friends came here and flunked Plebe math. And he was real smart.” He pulled out a pack of Marlboros. “Always wanted to try this.” He lit up, inhaled, and blew it out. “Jesus!” he said, clearing his throat. “Man, that’s bad! Want one? Why’d you really want to come here? We all had free education, scholarships. Lots of them.”
A school in the mountains and the clouds. Honor. I cleared my throat, as if I were choking on smoke. I hadn’t applied to any other college. It was here or the Army. “I wanted to leave home.”
He looked at me carefully. “Not sure this is going to be better. Going to be a career officer,” he said. “Used to a ration of crap a day. Dad got me ready. This’ll be more than homework.”
I wasn’t any good at homework. Edna revered it and I accordingly equated it with immorality. I defied her by reading novels instead of studying. If I couldn’t figure a lesson intuitively, I dropped it, before the insanity god showed up. Putting out in sports, for class projects, had to be what would count at West Point. That was the only way I was going to make it.
“Don’t you think if a guy learns fast, it’ll be enough?”
“Heck no,” he said. “Sure you don’t want a smoke? You oughta try it. It’s absolutely the pits.”
The members of the West Point Class of 1968 came from every state of the Union. We averaged six feet in height and 700 on the verbal and math portions of the Scholastic Aptitude Test. Three out of four members of the class had been student body presidents and varsity team captains, weighted toward football, the classic corporate American blood sport; half had been Eagle Scouts. I thought all the tall, broad-shouldered, straight-nosed blond guys with good grades in America had come. Most were Protestants from middle-class homes with good skin and smooth consciences who had been the pride of their high schools. We began as a thousand car-crazy, nonvoting, rock-and-rolling, high-achieving, clean-cut children of World War II veterans who still missed John F. Kennedy and Ritchie Valens, had not yet welcomed the Beatles and the British Invasion, wondering if we would make any West Point varsity teams, and ready to protect America against all comers.
I did not fit the profile. I believed in protecting the Republic and had scored 700s in English aptitude, but I had a high 500 in math—an ominously low figure for a rigorous engineering college. I had been a class officer. An inch below six feet, I was a steady playmaking junior varsity basketball guard and a boxer. I was superstitiously Taoist and remotely Christian, ethnically Chinese, culturally quasi-Negro, trained to the table etiquette of Main Line Philadelphia, and blessed with a linguistic bouillabaisse of Shanghainese, Mandarin, and Spanish, African, and European English. I was physically strong, socially inept, intellectually underdeveloped, spiritually muddled, and politically untested. My father had come from wealth, but we were now of the economic underclass. I possessed a troubled conscience, hoped I was growing in height, and was clueless about girls. Actually, I knew a lot about girls; I had read Jane Austen and Jade Snow Wong and seen the Sears ads. I just didn’t know what to do about them.
I was behind the American social curve. I had never dated, driven a car, been to a dance, a sock hop, a party, or played a record player. I was a Chinese colored boy with a Pennsylvanian Puritan upbringing who was fan toong, an overeater of Kwangtung food, who always wanted to be accepted, and would always have trouble finding people who were similarly situated. I was one of thirty members of the Class of 1968 who were something other than Western European Caucasoid. We were a small subgroup of Negroes, Hispanics, Orientals, and foreign cadets from the governments of the Philippines and Argentina.
“How do you feel about being here?” Mike asked.
His question snapped me out of my thoughts. What a weird question, especially out loud. What do feelings have to do with it. Ji hui, inauspicious talk. I didn’t know. It was an honor to be accepted at one of the world’s most famous schools. My parents wanted me to be a West Pointer more than anything, causing me to doubt my own wishes. I had to honor my parents but had resisted them in my secret heart. I defied my mother by not being studious, and had committed capital crimes. I angered my father and was not a good son. Uncle Shim was in misery because I was here. I loved a girl who would never miss me. I hadn’t said goodbye to Toussaint. In view of this, my feelings mattered not at all.
“Duke makes me think I should’ve taken Yale or Stanford.”
“How come?” I asked.
“He’s a bigot who knows the score. I thought being an Army brat meant I knew the Army. But a guy who’s actually been in the Army, getting ready to be a cadet for a year, has a big jump.”
“You can take him; he won’t pick on you. He’s not a fighter.”
“Sure I can take him, but the hell he won’t. He won’t do it alone—he’s forming a mob. And I’m a Jew.” He smiled. “So’s everyone in my family. You’re not exactly small, and he went after you without even thinking. So he’s crazy, and has a plan. You see him, trying to pick a team in there at lunch? He looked at us—a Jew, a Chinese, and an Italian—and said ‘Drop dead.’ Bad omen.”
Yu chao. “You superstitious?” I fingered Tony’s rosary.
“Mom is. Thinks God saved Dad in the war, but will take me if there’s another one. Wants me to be a Yale doctor. Says there’ll be an omen soon about West Point. I have a very bad feeling about that guy Troth.” He studied the cigarette, squinting at the smoke. Command Decision, It Happened One Night, Gone With the Wind.
“Anyone ever say you look like Clark Gable?”
“Girls do. You’re part Chinese, aren’t you?”
“Hundred percent.”
“No kidding? You don’t
look it. Why think of actors?”
Edna’s crusade to drive me from the house had led me to the YMCA, many of the churches, and most of the movie houses in San Francisco. Armed with free Y movie passes and glasses, I entered a world where good guys carried guns and won every ninety minutes. I emulated Burt Lancaster, who smiled and walked and shot guns the way I wanted to. I adored Grace Kelly, whom Christine Carlson so closely resembled, and it was simple to love them both. In David Copperfield, The Bad Seed, and the Dead End Kids, I recognized life.
“Movies are like truth,” I said solemnly.
Mike laughed. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Anyway, the trick here isn’t going to be drama. The key is not standing out.”
“Oh,” I said, gulping. “Hey, what kind of omen do you expect?”
“Communists are going to make a move,” he said.
“Berlin or Prague!” I cried. “This time we’ll fight, not like Budapest—Ike’s big mistake. Won’t be Indochina; we’re too smart to get sucked up like the French.” I said that in three seconds. What I didn’t say was: Please, no more wars with Asians.
“It’ll be Laos and Vietnam,” he said. “But Eisenhower’s screwup was opposing Israel at the Suez.” He studied his smoke. “So how come you don’t know how you feel about being here? Proud? Bad? Here ’cause of your dad? Scared shitless? Or dream come true?”
“Yes,” I said.
I thought that making the right decisions on the battlefield might be my special skill. I made good basketball decisions, finding the open man and filling the lanes, so I was hopeful. My possession of this knowledge was a secret. I hoped someday it would be forced from me, resulting in the salvation of the Free World. I would be successful, famous. But if I said that now, or even thought it with any clarity, ji hui would bleed me.