Honor and Duty

by Gus Lee

  “Sir,” I said. “There’s conviction, and passion, and—uh—emotion. I think, sir, under all that is belief.”

  “Good, Mr. Ting. Thank you. Let me pose another question. Why, in weapons train-fire, are you not provided competition ear covers to block out sound to permit better aiming? Mr. Ziegler.”

  “Sir,” said Rocket Scientist, “we have to aim during combat. You want us to feel our emotions, and operate on our beliefs—our values—not just our intellects.”

  “Splendid and three-oh, Mr. Ziegler. Thank you. Who here knows something of his classmates in this section?”

  All hands went up.

  “And who knows something of my background?”

  I was surprised to be the only one with my hand up. I liked to research my teachers. I thought everyone did.

  “Gentlemen, herein begins the lecture.

  “You may find me in the Register of Graduates and Former Cadets of the U.S. Military Academy and Howitzer. You can study my ribbons, wonder about the sources of all those wrinkles in my old, beat-up face, and surmise at the forces of nature that forced my ears from my head in flaps-up, air-brakes-out fashion.” We laughed.

  “But that is a small part of the story. Let me tell you about who I am.” He sat on his desk.

  “I am the son of a crowned regent, taught the ways of war by Sir James, a man of iron. I am a millionaire’s son who fell into the sea, where I was rescued by a Portuguese fisherman with a great heart. I know of the time that men must spend with boys,” he said, nodding, “if boys are to be men. I rode the Mississippi with Big Jim and sailed the Mediterranean as a Jewish prince condemned to the galleys. I ventured into the heart of darkness to define courage, wielded a musketeer’s rapier in countless duels of shallow honor for my vain queen, fled in blind fear from a screaming Rebel charge, and watched Achilles the Achaean indecently drag the slain body of Hector around the walls of Priam’s Troy.

  “As Cordelia, I yearned for my father’s lost love. I was a fifth Chinese daughter; I was Portia, honorable in restraint and sympathetic to the suffering; I was Desdemona, slain by my husband’s blindness. I tramped the sewers of Paris with the police hot on my trail. I was Boo Radley’s faithful neighbor, but left Maycomb County to travel to Colonus to see the god-blessed monster. In 1984, I resided in room 101, and I was the Savage in a brave new world. I cry for the innocents, shout for the merciful. I experience the pleasures and aches of love, and separation, and loyalty refused, of life given, and patriotism expressed.

  “That’s who Captain MacPellsin is. I am a reader of books, a fool for libraries, and a sorry, sniveling patsy for Book-of-the-Month Club salesmen. I absorb the instruction in books and retain them for my own use. Someday, on some battlefield, in some crisis, in the stewardship of my children or in my marriage, I will need the lessons of some of their lives to solve the problems in mine.”

  He stood and circled the U, peering at us. “Gentlemen! This is not merely English 101B. This is life. Do not view this as the weak and vague side of your West Point education. All of you in the top sections are excellent students, superior cadet engineers, enamored of numbers and approved solutions.” I squirmed in my seat.

  “Feel, gentlemen! Let passion beat within you! Do you truly think the great captains of West Point were just engineers? Negative, gentlemen. Any fool with a sword can risk his life for his regent, for his commander-in-chief. No, these were men who sweated, stank, dug maggots out of hardtack, cursed, and struggled—to protect their men. Well, perhaps Robert E. Lee did not curse.

  “They were great leaders,” he said crisply, “because they loved their men by acting in their interests. They were morally committed not only to Country but to the honor of dutiful service and to the survival of their people. Cicero said: ‘In the observance of duty lies all that is honorable, and in the neglect of it is all that is dishonorable.’

  “A leader who does not know the passions of history, or the morality of literature, or the emotions of his soldiers, marches away from the observance of duty and compromises his nation.

  “Gentlemen, without Homer, the Trojan War was a domestic spat with boats and some discordant dialogue in Asia Minor. But an old, blind poet, a storyteller of moral tales, has given us a fable for the ages. As soldiers, we can identify with the wise Nestor, the vain and gifted prima donna Achilles, the steady Ajax, the intrepid Diomedes, the loyal Hector, the handsome, frivolous Paris.

  “Gentlemen, heed this: passion in the defense of a moral position is consistent with the moral man. It is also linked to your grade in this course. It is no accident that passion contributed to the formation of this country, and of this school, and of well-thought solutions for all human endeavor.

  “Lads, you will not learn the ethics of leadership from psychology. Nor can you grasp the wisdom of military leaders who preceded you by studying their movements on bloodless maps and tactics sand tables. You cannot learn about the leading of men without grasping the tapestry of the entire human experience.

  “You get that here, in the study of English. English embodies the human condition. You will need this, because outside these walls, you will lead people, not equations.” He stood, straightened his tunic, and grinned at us.

  “End of lecture. Questions?… Very good. Stagger desks. For a three-point writ, explain ‘The Pros and Cons of Emotion in the Military Leader.’ Begin work.”

  “Captain Mac teaches us to think,” I said to Clint Bestier.

  “This is West Point,” he said. “If they wanted you to think, they wouldn’t have given you a slide rule.”

  “He’s that old guy, right?” asked Joey Rensler.

  “Watch who you call old,” said Bob Lorbus, age twenty-two.

  “He must be forty. Why’s he only a captain?” asked Clint.

  “Flew P-5Is in World War Two,” I said. “Three DFCs, Air Medals, Purple Heart, and now is Infantry. Must’ve been hurt bad to lose flight status. He was in the same unit my father was.”

  That ended it. It was funny how my roommates gibed each other about everything—girlfriends, buddies, brothers, sisters, sex, politics, private organs, religion, and even mothers. But there was no ribaldry, sarcasm, or ribbing about dads. It was as if everyone were a Chinese son. It had been exactly the opposite in the ’hood, where it was open season on badmouthing fathers, and cursing someone’s mother was an invitation to a fight to the finish.

  The next essay addressed West Point’s academic policy of expelling a cadet for failure in a single course. Joey, Clint, and I were holding on to the Academy with our teeth. They were at risk in English, and I in math, for legend had it that math, the great cadet slayer, would flush all of the lower math sections, where I resided. Major Yerks, our Tac, informed us that another two hundred classmates would be “found”—separated—this year. Plebe athletics, first semester math, and English already had flunked scores of us. We felt the cold breath of failure, seeking victims.

  “I miss Stew,” I said as I began typing. Stew Mersey and his cursing, his bad moods, his quick mind, his abiding sense of unfair treatment. He showed the feelings I tried to control.

  “Anyone could tell Stew was going to quit,” said Clint.

  “He was always so quick on his feet. He would’ve done well.”

  “Nope,” said Clint. He licked his lips and coughed. “Stew was only here for his dad. Can’t make it here on that alone.”

  “Who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961?” asked Captain Mac. “Mr. Rodgers.”

  “Sir, it was Miss Harper Lee,” said Matthew McBall “Meatball” Rodgers in his distinguished Southern accent.

  “Who is Boo Radley?” asked Captain Mac.

  “Sir,” said Curve Wrecker Davey Glick, “Mr. Radley’s your next-door neighbor in Maycomb County, before you left for Colonus.”

  “Good memory, Mr. Glick. It is my pleasure to inform you that the next assignment is To Kill a Mockingbird. You will answer the question, ‘Who Is Boo Radley?’

  “We
will have the rare pleasure of the author’s presence next week. She will address us, and may answer the question herself. This is an honor for West Point. Miss Lee is an exceptional author who has categorically declined all college speaking invitations.

  “Gentlemen, this is a coup. A female Pulitzer Prize winner in fiction is coming to West Point. Enjoy this experience to the hilt.” He beamed at us, his dark eyes afire. I twitched in my chair under his bright gaze. I had no interest in white Southern authors.

  “Mr. Mankoff.”

  “Sir,” said Ravine Mankoff, “what if my answer differs from hers? She has to be the undisputed master of the correct solution. Can I max the writ if I write something different?”

  “Mr. Mankoff. You can cold max the writ, so long as—”and Captain Mac raised both arms to the section—

  “WE PUSH THE OUTER EDGE OF THE ENVELOPE OF OUR BEINGS!” we chorused, somewhat raggedly.

  I read To Kill a Mockingbird in one night. I waited until the last possible evening to pick it up. It did not transform my life with the power of religious vision or atomic war, but it was close. I was exhausted when the cannon went off, the buzzer rang, the building shook, and the band’s Hellcats broke into the fury of that marvelously stirring hit and perennial favorite, reveille.

  I hated the tune. It was cheery and energetic, befitting lambs prancing down a wooded country lane in late spring, eating ivy, looking forward to a day of gentle grazing.

  “Piss me off … hate dat damn gun … too early … get up ta dis crap … buzzer an’ dat bullcrap-eatin’ tune … miserable, lousy, assbite Army musicians … play too loud … where the hell are my frickin’ socks?” Joey’s Bronx cheer never appeared at dawn.

  “Hiya, buddy!” said Bob Lorbus, grinning as he thumped Joey on his chest. I had slept less than an hour, but churning thickly through my tired blood and math-beaten brain were the spirits of Scout, Jem, Atticus, Tom Robinson, Calpurnia, and Boo. I had been touched by an author who saw evil in familiarity, and hope within an old culture predicated in so many ways on despair. I realized that I had known nothing about the South, despite having read Gone with the Wind.

  An old tune ran through my sluggish mind, and I smiled. It was an old ’hood song, chanted by kids and mommas alike. Its structure was like storytelling, allowing anyone to throw in his own stanza, so long as it rhymed. I used to call it the “Papa Ditty,” but it was more commonly known as the mockingbird song.

  Well, I’ll tell you what I learned

  Papa gonna buy me a mockinbird.

  If that mockinbird don’ sing,

  Papa’s gonna buy me a diamond ring.

  If that diamond ring don’ shine,

  Papa’s gonna buy me a bottle a wine.

  If that bottle a wine don’t pour…

  To Kill a Mockingbird indicted a way of life in San Francisco. My old neighborhood had been an urban version of the shantytown where the Robinsons lived, shunted off and away from white people. And folks in the ’hood had been hard on Sippy Suds just like the folks in Maycomb had been bad to Boo Radley.

  I felt as if I had a read a book with fire in its pages, scourging prejudice in any form.

  Atticus, the lawyer, had liked his children. Lawyers defended the poor, the weak, the victims of prejudice and unfairness and abuses of power. There were lawyers in the Army.

  Mockingbird became my standard for judging books. I wrote more energetically in my journal, and was no longer inclined to judge a book before I read it.

  I asked “Pensive” Hamblin what he thought of it. Pensive was from Meridian, Mississippi. “Segregation was sin, but integration’s killin’ us. Story like that, it coulda happened. Prob’ly did.” He shook his head sadly. “If so, things gotta change. But I surely hate a damn Yankee captain ta tell me about it.”

  “Stagger desks, gentlemen,” said Captain Mac. “Answer the question: ‘Who Is Boo Radley?’ ” Desks were shifted to disarm inadvertent glances.

  I was too tired to remember the ecstasy of the story. Soporifically, I remembered “critical analysis.” I was transformed. I could write English and change lives. I was going to be analytical. Boo Radley, I wrote, was a symbol for the wretched of the earth, whose goodness could only be perceived by a child still in a state of innocence. Frightened by an abusive world, Boo Radley was reduced to being able to relate, at a distance, only to children. “The Harper Leeaic Voice,” I opined, “utilizes Boo Radley as the perigee of social hierarchy. The apogee is Atticus Finch, Father, Attorney, Arbiter of Justice and Advocate for the Weak. Scout is the mechanism of realization.”

  Thirty minutes passed. “Cease work!” ordered Captain Mac. A cascade of pens fell onto desktops, since continuing to write after the cease-work order constituted an Honor violation.

  I received a 2.4—a miserable grade, similar to a C-plus. Captain Mac had not been impressed:

  Why try for academic criticism or mastery of the obtuse? You write as if you are firing Roget’s machine gun, belt-fed from a NASA thesaurus. Boo Radley is many things to many people, based on their unique feelings and individual experiences. He is a loner. We are a band of individuals being formed into a community. He is the outsider, within. Have you ever felt the outsider? Who is Boo Radley to Kai Ting the person? I care little about Kai Ting, Critical Essayist. The author wrote about social injustice. Where’s the passion? Where’s the outer edge of your envelope? Push the throttle, Mr. Ting.

  CPT Mac

  I was deflated. I thought I had found some truths and had used some exceptionally fancy English to express them. Harper Lee, I thought, was not as fantastic as I’d originally imagined.

  I returned to Shakespeare with relief. Following Harper Lee’s upcoming lecture, we were going to be examined on three of the Bard’s tragedies. Joey and Clint were trying to avoid becoming two more of them. Captain Mac informed us that one of the exam points would be the use of irony.

  “How’d Shakespeare use irony?” I asked. Blank faces. “What’s ironic about Romeo and Juliet?”

  “Girl an’ boy,” said Joey in his rich Bronx tones, which were beginning to affect my highly absorbent speech patterns. “Here, dat’s irony.”

  “Girl, boy, and no sex,” said Clint. “Here, that’s not irony.”

  “Try again,” I said.

  “All dem fancy clothes, an’ no ironin’ at all,” said Joey.

  “How about love instigating hate?” I asked, looking at him.

  He clapped his hand to his forehead. “Got it,” he said.

  I smiled. “Okay, Othello?”

  “Black and white,” said Joey.

  “Good,” I said. “Now, one level deeper.”

  Two blank faces, four shrugging shoulders.

  “Othello’s a Muslim general,” I said, “defending Venetian Christians against fellow Muslims. Weird, right? Okay, think about Julius Caesar. Think about Mark Antony.”

  Nothing. “Clint?” I said. He shook his head.

  “Antony,” I said, “in front of his Romans and countrymen, compliments Brutus for killing Caesar. But what really happens?”

  “He tells the Thayer joke and dey get a Fall-out with Big Bites,” said Joey.

  “Doesn’t the mob get pissed at Brutus?” asked Clint.

  “Right! Antony uses irony to nail Brutus!” I said.

  “I need an equation for dis crap,” said Joey. “Who gives a shit ’bout irony, copper, brass, or any of that stuff?”

  “Kai—enough,” said Clint. “Shakespeare, Byron, Keats—what a bunch of rot. Hey—we’re gonna be late. I woulda thought you’d be first there. You like this junk.”

  “Aw,” I said, “she’s just an author.”

  The irony of their having a Chinese-American roommate who enjoyed the class that could flunk them out of West Point was something over which Joey, Clint, and I often kidded.

  “Too bad we don’t have to take Chinese,” Clint said. “I’d probably do better’n you.”

  South Aud—or Odd—South Auditorium in Thayer H
all—was a new, twelve-hundred-seat theater wired for sound and light. Here, during Beast, had come instruction on the Honor Code, on the Code of Conduct for POWs, and on the objectives of tactics instruction. Here, next month, the Firsties, the seniors, would learn which branch—Infantry, Armor, Artillery, Signal Corps, or Engineers—was to be theirs to serve as second lieutenants. Beyond the walls waited MACV, Military Assistance Command, Vietnam—which needed Infantry platoon leaders.

  When the aud seated upperclassmen, it boomed with the deep, bright bass of high-hormoned males. With us, it hummed with the whispers and low tones of muted voices. Tonight, under subdued lighting fit for a state funeral, we were even quieter. I sat with Clint, Joey, Bob, Arch Torres, tall Hawk Latimer, and Pee Wee McCloud. There were ample seats due to class attrition. We used to fill the aud. I remembered the absent ones, how they had looked in soaked fatigues during the scorching days of Beast, trying to hold on, trying to meet expectations, trying not to be the boys who left West Point in a summer that was too hot. The lights dimmed.

  Colonel Sutherland, the mustached head of the Department of English, approached the podium on the high stage below us. He was a lean patrician with high, angular shoulders, walking with a stateliness born to royalty or induced by bad knees. He had been an Infantry officer in Europe and had become a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania. He looked like Don Quijote.

  Colonel Sutherland welcomed us to “a signal event.” Limited, he said, by the modesty of our guest, he was merely going to introduce her. He then described the unprecedented honors that had been paid Harper Lee for her work. He did not complain that the Superintendent had failed to direct the entire Corps to appear for the lecture. Appropriate applause was delivered, and Clint, Joey, and other English goats settled deeper into the comfortable padding of their seats, preparing to catch some badly needed rest. Plebe year operated on the axiom that an hour in the rack was an hour away from West Point. There was a gentle snort as classmates awoke someone who had already collapsed into the arms of Morpheus, even before the arrival of the Harper Leeaic voice.