by Gus Lee
“I’m as good as anyone in the program.” My voice was high.
“Tito put the big hurt on ya. Ya missed the finals. Wills made ya look bad. They ain’t blind like youse an’ they ain’t got no relations and no funny-lookin’ pencil-neck Chinese uncles draggin’ on their gloves, givin’ ’em the tsk-tsk shit fer the Duke’s rules! Tito, he’d knock out his gramma ta get another fight! Shit! You fight, ya gotta go bow ta yur uncle an’ mumble Chinese rosaries.” He snorted. “Ya got try. But yur family crap’s bigger ’n yur try.”
“But you taught me that trying’s bigger than winning!” I shouted. Others stared.
“Yeah, an’ ’at’s the flat truth. Lookit ya! Ya got a body! Ya got good arms and a man’s chest! Ya look like a fuckin’ piece a work! Ya got great try, great heart! But shit, ya started with nothin’.… Aw, shit, fergit it. I’m only makin’ it worse.” He looked down at his black gym shoes, moving his mouth silently. He was practicing a speech. He looked up, the smaller, left eye glinting, the larger one flat and lizardlike, the scar tissue livid in the dull light from the grated windows. Tony smelled of effort and garlic. A cabbie leaned on his horn, six floors down, making other cars honk back while pigeons took flight in a clatter of wings.
“Don’ know nothin’ ’bout West Point. Don’ even know where the hell it is. But it makes officers, which, ya ask me, are all turds.
“West Point’s prob’ly like the Corps. Marines, they like killers. Kid, you could do it. Lotsa kids can do it. But it’d be ugly fer ya. Lookit me. I came from bad youth, Hell’s Kitchen, fuckin’ bottom drawer, fulla sin, foul mouth, killed the Nips and screwed lots—aw, shit.” He shook his big, rocklike head. “None a that helped me with Clara or my boy.” He snorted, blew his nose on the old floor behind the bench. He had said too much. “Kid. Yur like yur Uncle Shingus.” He paused. “I’m hurtin’ yur feelin’s.”
“No,” I said, my voice barely audible.
“Kid, ya don’ wanna be an old, achin’, busted-down, soft-eared, bad-mouthed bum, livin’ in a hotel eatin’ goop from a can. Couldn’t even keep my goddamn dog alive. Ya wanna be a smart college man with a tie and a hat, a car and money in the bank, like yur Uncle Shingus, or yur dad. Meals. A roof. A future.”
That was not true. “I want to be like you,” I said.
“Oh, hell, like crap you do!” he bellowed. Men began to move away. “Ya gimme porca miseria, pig pain in my heart, talkin’ like that! Ya don’ like garlic sausage, ya spit out the best bagnacauda in North Beach, ya can’t play bocce ball ta save the Virgin Mary, an’ ya ain’t true Catholic even when ya show off my rosary an’ recite yur damn venal sins. Ya don’ cross yurself ’fore a bout or thank the goddammed Lord fer a stinkin’ meal, ya don’ give crap to yur patron saint, an’ ya don’ speak paisan excep’ fer the ‘Che fai.’ An’ ya got too many brains in yur headgear ta be a good fighter. So fergit it. Ya gonna stand there lookin’ pretty, or ya gonna work out?!”
“I—I just wanted to say goodbye. And hear your good word.”
He put out his huge, calloused mitt. His hand felt like an old piece of cold concrete with a leather cover. “Okay, great.”
I shook his hand with great emotion, making his big shoulder bounce. His fingers had lost feeling two decades ago. I did the gripping for both of us. I didn’t want to let go of him.
“Okay, kid. Here’s my goddamm good word. Put two more quarters on. Goin’ fer fifteen reps with four-fifteen—and fer Christ’s sake, don’ make no faces when I blow out my air.
“Goddammed peacemaker. Shit—can’t even tell you how pissed I’m gonna be if you get killed in some shitface war. Now, help me with this stinkin’ bar an’ don’ forget ta take my rosary with ya.”
8
RITUALS
Central Area, West Point, July 1, 1964
I rummaged for grub and there was none. Tony used to eat food out of the can in his hotel room, and I continued to envy him.
“Got more uniforms,” said big Pee Wee slowly. “Think they’re multiplying.” I expected him to chuckle “Uh-huuh,” like Goofy.
“At least someone’s having fun,” said Clint Bestier.
I didn’t get it. Then I did, and giggled. “ ‘Multiplying.’ ”
“Need a shower,” said Stew Mersey. “I’m, like, ripe.”
He was. “Anyone see any food?” I drank more water.
“Wouldn’t do that,” said Bestier. “You’re going to have to use the latrine. Latrine’s in the sinks.”
I looked at our sink, puzzled. I wouldn’t go in there.
“Sinks. Five floors down. Latrines are in the basement, where we stowed gym gear about four hours ago.” It seemed like last year.
There was a mass of insanely deranged, screaming upperclassmen between my bladder and the sinks. I could wait, maybe a year.
“Not going to be any food until Christmas,” said Bestier.
I made a deep, squealing noise. “Hey—someone said we wouldn’t eat for the summer.” I was whining.
“Beast’s the worst,” he said. “We’ll get a little food in the fall.” I closed my mouth; no nutrition was going to enter it. Dinner had been an encore of lunch: moving food into milk cartons while testing the bouquet of water and savoring salt tablets.
“I could eat the tail off a hobbyhorse,” said Pee Wee. I saw Mersey look at Bestier, secretly laughing at Pee Wee’s funny voice. I didn’t like him doing that.
“Won’t we get rickets or scurvy?” I asked, hoping that a medical justification might spontaneously create grits. I thought of Angle’s burgers and cold vanilla shakes with ice in the bottom.
“Where you guys from?” Bestier asked.
“Escanaba, Upper Peninsula, Michigan,” said Mersey.
“San Francisco,” I said.
“Washington, D.C.,” said McCloud methodically. “You?”
“Fort Huachuca, Arizona,” said Bestier. “I’m an Army brat. Dad’s been prepping me for Beast and Plebe year since I was five.” He smiled, dimples deepening. “I knew what would happen today.”
The door exploded in a colossal crash as someone struck, opened, and bashed it into the wall. We hopped like the Four Stooges being goosed by cattle prods. The heavy door vibrated from its battering as Bestier shouted, “ROOM, ATTEN-HUT!” and braced, quivering at attention, eyes straight ahead. We followed suit.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOOWILLIES TALKING ABOUT?!” screamed Mr. Spillaney. My mind fumbled as I tried to form an answer. I couldn’t remember. He looked angry. I wondered if he had been born that way.
He turned his back to us, facing our open door. “LOOK AT THIS LOCKER! EQUIPMENT’S IMPROPERLY DISPLAYED!” he bellowed. He turned into the room, took three giant steps like a fearsome hulk in a torture chamber, his eyes glaring like headlights in a big truck, and seized Bestier’s locker. He jerked it, shotgunning its carefully folded contents and throwing the locker down face first. It crashed horribly, like a living thing, in a great metallic boom. He turned to the door. Mersey closed his eyes, the horror too great. My eyes bulged with fear. That locker could have been us.
“TAPS IN THIRTY MINUTES, 2200 HOURS! SQUARE AWAY EQUIPMENT, READY FOR MORNING INSPECTION! REVEILLE IS 0500, UNIFORM IS BRAVO WITH DRESS SHOES, SMACKHEADS! DO YOU HEAR ME?!”
“YES, SIR!” we screamed as he left. We respected lockers at the Y. “Lockercide,” I said, looking at it, starting to breathe again. Stew Mersey was shaking. We ran our hands over our bald heads, creating a soft rasping. “He has a big voice,” I added.
We picked up Bestier’s locker and gear. The locker still had its rivets. Bestier began refolding the T-shirts, the boxer underwear, the socks, in the prescribed pattern, with the same speed and dexterity he had demonstrated before.
“Why us?” I asked as I began folding mine.
“Might be me,” Bestier said. “My dad’s a general. Or you, being Chinese. Or the room, cuz it’s the best place to speak to the floor. Here, he says it once instead of four times.”
“Man,” I said
. “They’d do that? Because of me being Chinese?”
“Not good to stand out,” he said.
Mr. O’Ware had said he would remember me. So had Mr. Spillaney. I felt white ghosts moving across my heart.
“My dad’s General Ira Costain McCloud,” said Pee Wee, taking about five minutes to say it. “Your dad’s Pierce Bestier? We probably went to grade school together, in Fort Lewis, when they were majors.” Clint nodded.
“My shit luck!” cried Mersey. “Stuck with two guys they hate cuz they know the score, and with a guy they hate cuz he’s Chinese. Goddammit, this is no way to start college.”
“Look,” said Bestier to me. “Center and fold to this width, so it reaches to here on the shelf. The drollies—boxer shorts—go next. Just like the chart. Dad showed me all of this.”
“Man,” I said, “don’t you feel … discouraged?”
“A little,” he sighed. “Remember, we’re in the Army.”
“Oh, God,” moaned Mersey. “I’m in the Army.”
He had reshelved everything. “Pick up the pace, but don’t tie up the alignment of the folds, or the display. It’s all geometric.”
We heard haunting, random cries, echoing distantly throughout Central Area while we struggled with the rules, the tasks, and the waiting, watching anger. It all seemed new but somehow familiar.
A bugle sounded taps. Bestier switched off the lights as we heard “LIGHTS OUT!” Thirty minutes had gone in an instant. Everything was stowed, none of it better than Bestier’s. Mersey’s was second best. Mine and Pee Wee’s looked like the work of inebriated chimps using spoons in an effort to make televisions.
“What do we do now?” I asked.
“Go to bed,” whispered Bestier. “That’s what taps means.”
“I know what it means,” I said. “I went to YMCA summer camp.”
“Oh, wow,” whispered Stew Mersey.
I lay down in a sea of aches. It was still hot. My neck was stiff from fourteen hours of compression, my back was sore from hitting walls, and my throat was raw from yelling, but my empty gut was most articulate in its complaints at the day’s events, or lack of events. It had been a day. Eruptions of overinformation, hunger, demands, criticism, and anger. The Honor lecture in air-conditioned Thayer Hall. Never again could I lie, about anything. I couldn’t even accept lying in another. I didn’t think that was fair. How could you turn in a buddy? Pao-chia, each responsible for all. I remembered each mistake in the day. West Point was the Hanlin, with model standards. It also seemed like Edna. West Point made California seem like a new invention. The Academy was bigger, older, and harder than I had imagined, like being belowdecks in a Roman galley. Bracing was like oaring under verbal whips. I remembered clippers running across my scalp like a psycho lawn mower, the cascade of hair down my back, the barber asking “More off the top?” My favorite tune “Garry Owens,” so gay while we marched in tight ranks out of the sally ports, our left heels hitting the pavement with each strike of the deep drums, across the Plain to Battle Monument for the oath before a huge throng—proud of us, of America, and of the bright flag that whipped in the river wind in front of that grand vista of the Hudson. I was taking big steps into the heart of America, out of the slum of my prior life with poverty and Edna. Troops of kids had run alongside us past iron-backed MP sergeants in white hats and white gloves as we took the curve toward the Hudson. The drums beat, and I trembled in a crescendo of unknown emotions. Life was changing. We swore to support the Constitution of the United States, to bear true allegiance to the national government. Guan Yu had made a pledge like that in Peach Orchard by the Yangtze River. Later, he had died, protecting honor.
I had been singled out, asked what I was. I wasn’t an American, but a Chinese-American, a citizen with a hyphen. The hard cot creaked as I tried to find a comfortable position. The pillow smelled old. I tried to imagine my father doing this at Fort Benning. How had he dealt with being the only Chinese? Here, I felt alone. I squelched the feeling. Doesn’t mean anything, I said, flexing arms, crossing them against my chest, curling my body on its side, flaring my lats and shoulders in my conventional position of sleep, ready to take unseen blows. Reading Ben-Hur on the airliner was an age ago. His mother and sister in a secret, sealed cell for eight years.
“ ‘A woman of Israel, entombed here with her daughter. Help us quickly, or we die.’
“ ‘Thou shalt have relief, woman,’ said the new guard. ‘I will send thee food and drink.’ ” Someone was shouting. I smiled for the food and drink. The lights were on. I was on my feet with my glasses on. Our door was open, bright light on the old floor.
Mr. Fideli, the tall, aesthetic, aristocratic singing cadet from the tunnel of summer songs, was in our room. “MOVE YOUR KNOBBY BUTTS!” he roared with a voice that boomed like the new speakers in the Fox Theater, louder than Spillaney, filling the room, as loud as God. “UNIFORM BRAVO! TWO MINUTES AND YOU’RE LATE!”
I stared at him, uncomprehending. What did he say? The door slammed, the force slapping air in my face. Dress! We moved like boys with hot coals under our feet, Mersey whimpering when he fell on the floor from performing the complex task of putting on pants.
“Remember dress-offs,” cried Bestier, as we folded the excess shirt fabric across our backs to create formfitting contours. I had trained for this, changing into Jack’s cast-offs. I was the first dressed. “Oh, crap,” Pee Wee grunted deeply. Outside, the sounds of purgatory or a pork slaughterhouse filled Central Area.
The entire barracks thumped with a thousand half-dressed boys fighting unfamiliar clothing while the cadre screamed advice and threw wastebaskets down hallways to encourage co-operation and a positive attitude.
For all his slow speech, Pee Wee was also ready. Bestier was next. “Garrison cap!” he shouted, holding the one that looked like a taco. “Wait for Mersey,” he said. We put on our hats.
“It’s one-thirty—I thought it was morning!” said Mersey.
“It is morning,” hissed Clint. “Now move it!” We pounded down the staircase, forearms parallel to the ground, necks in. Central Area was alive with verbal violence. Mr. Alsop and Mr. Spillaney, white-gloved in khakis and combat boots, waited for us, screaming us into a squad line by height.
“LOOK DOWN! REMEMBER YOUR SPOT ON THE AREA!” screamed Mr. Spillaney. Between my shoes was an intersection between a concrete line and a small pockmark, my nose aligned with the fourth window from the door. I imagined Grant and Stilwell using these marks to find their places. A good omen. One fellow was last into the formation, and five cadremen converged, screaming at him, calling him a “shit magnet” until he seemed to disappear, his screams seeming more real than his physical presence. The entire class was bracing at attention in company formations. A huge cadet who resembled a Greek god stood on the stoops in the center of the barracks. There were thirteen hundred people assembled. West Point was unearthily silent in the moonlight and in the cool river breeze.
“GENTLEMEN, I AM MR. ARVIN, KING OF BEASTS,” shouted the big man. “YOU ARE DISREPUTABLE. YOU LACK ALIGNMENT, DRESS-OFFS, AND KNOWLEDGE. CHANGE YOUR WAYS AND YOUR UNIFORMS.”
A cadet with a rack of black bars on his collar stood in front of our company. Seven other cadets spoke in front of their companies, arrayed across the width of the Area.
“I AM CADET CAPTAIN COSWELL, COMMANDER, FOURTH NEW CADET COMPANY. I HAVE NEVER LOST AT ANYTHING IN MY LIFE! I WILL NOT TOLERATE LESS THAN FIRST PLACE IN THIS CLOTHING FORMATION!
“THE NEXT UNIFORM IS SWEATSHIRTS OVER FATIGUES WITH SHOWER CLOGS WITH GARRISON CAPS, UNDER ARMS. YOU WILL HAVE THREE MINUTES. YOU WILL BE DISMISSED BY FLOORS. WHAT’S YOUR COMPANY MOTTO, MEN?”
“ ‘STUDS GO FOURTH,’ SIR!” A sign with those curious words sat on the first sergeant’s desk in the orderly room. I could hear “First in the Corps!” and “Second to none!” in the echo of our shout. I tried to decode the uniform prescription. Shower clogs under arms?
Mr. Coswell hesitated, looking to Mr. Arvin, who rai
sed his right arm and dropped it with the precision of a Chinese executioner swinging a headsman’s axe. “FIFTH FLOOR, POST!!”
The penthouse dwellers jerked, then ran, as did their mates from other companies. This was my sport. Triple A recruited me for clothing competition! I’m fast! I smiled, and no one caught me.
“FOURTH FLOOR, POST!” I sprinted in that spastic, upright form while bracing. Up the stoop stairs, past Mr. Fideli in his stiffly starched khakis, through the door. I was about to leap up the stairs when all the new cadets from the fifth floor came flying down them, to the sinks. Our sweatshirts were with the gym gear, in the sinks. Down the stairs, to the gym lockers; then up the stairs four flights, the pounding of military shoes taking the authorized single steps, no skipping, creating an imbecilic single-beat drumming; into the room.
Our lockers were on the floor, gear intermixed in heaps, as if King Kong had souffléed the room with an eggbeater the size of the Eiffel Tower. The alcove wall hangers were contorted in angles of mayhem, resembling the stripped and pitiful bones of animals that had been caught by an omnivorous predator. Godzilla had dropped by for a visit, with a technique I knew from living with my mother.
“Crap!” cried Bestier. He stripped and sorted through the debris. The rest of us were immobile, overwhelmed, defeated.
“Goddammit! Why the hell are they doing this?!” cried Mersey.
“Pee Wee, Kai—here are larges. Put ’em on! Clock’s running!”
“ROOM, ATTEN-HUT!” cried McCloud, as fast as he could.
Mr. Fideli stepped into the room. He was in fatigues over a sweatshirt, garrison cap, with his saber, Sam Browne belt, and not our simple clogs—but with fully laced combat boots.
“You are slow,” he said in a low tone, making our hearts pound faster. Speaking softly? Big sticks were next. “Why has your militarily disreputable room become Grand Central Station?”
I’m Chinese, I thought. It’s cuz he’s Chinese, Mersey thought. McCloud thought: Oh, crap, it’s because Ting’s Chinese!
“You were to report before taps the condition of your knob bodies. As a result, you will memorize not only Bugle Notes but also individual Fourth Class knowledge, assigned by me.