by Gus Lee
“Everyone got very careful with keys after the scandal,” said Mike. “It wrecked a lot more than football.”
“What happened in the ’51 Navy game?” asked Sonny.
“We crashed and burned, forty-two to seven,” I said.
Mike whistled. “Talk about demoralized.”
“How many were found in ’51?” asked Sonny. I told him.
“Ninety guys.” Again, he ran his hand through his hair. “Kai, you mentioned the BPs. Maybe they opened Bartlett for the ring. We got fifty BPs on Post, each with keys to barracks or buildings. The obvious guy is the one who cleans Bartlett. I’ll check him out, but I want you guys to take fifteen BPs each; I’ll take twenty. We need standard questions, so we don’t screw ourselves by pulling random data out of the sample.” He scribbled, we corrected, and agreed on a final product.
On the way back to barracks, we stopped in the sally port to check Sonny and my make-up grades on our special Juice WFR. My heart pounded as I tried not to think of the consequences of not getting my needed 43 tenths to pass the course.
A gross Plebe, barely holding a smart Academy brace, was looking at the print-out and writing in a notepad. He heard our shoes scrunching and quickly left the tunnel. I saw the results:
Rappa, Santino A 60.0
Ting, Kai NMN 44.0
Sonny and Mike hit me on my back. Then they dumped me in the snow and hit me with snowballs while we all laughed. I was flattered by their affection for me. Five times I had entered the sally port and learned that I was still a member of the Corps. There was only one tough semester left at West Point: the one that had just begun.
“I hate sweating these whufers with you!” shouted Sonny.
“Try it from my shide,” I said, snow in my mouth.
I met one by one with each of my lowerclass squad members on the frigid, icy roof of the Cadet Hilton. We had total privacy.
“I am part of an Honor investigation. I need your help. I want the names of Cows who cross the even-odd regiment line to study, i.e., Cows from First or Third who study with Second or Fourth. I want the names of Cows who seem cool on Honor. Talk it over with everyone you trust. But you are not to reveal the purpose of your inquiries with anyone. If you sense physical clanger, disengage immediately and retrograde back to me. What are your questions?”
“Good mornin’, Kai,” said Elmer Scoggin as he hauled trash.
“Top of the morning,” I said. “Elmer, can I talk to you?”
“Be with you in a sec. Need some window cleaner?”
“No,” I said. “Nothing like that.” I turned on the heating coil to offer Elmer some java.
It was a bright and freezing day, with grand piles of thick white snow collecting in the Area, perfect for a snow war between the Cows and the Yearlings that would evolve into an epic wrestling match. Then Deke and Bob could start throwing Yearlings from the pile like garments from a fire sale. The generators were chugging, and great clouds of steam rose from the tunnels and grates of West Point into the dark and overcast sky over the Hudson. There were ghosts in the steam tunnels, lost souls of former cadets, the Immortals who could never leave West Point, imprisoned below the iron grates, trying to complete the years they had never finished at the Academy. The steam defied the cold that had frozen Washington’s army at Valley Forge.
“Just sugar,” Elmer said. I pulled out a sugar packet from my pocket and poured it in, stirring with a straw which I dried and replaced in the raincoat pocket. Elmer sat in my chair, far more composed and relaxed than I when Major Maher had asked for my help.
Elmer was old, in his late forties. Years ago, something very hot had hit him on the side of his face, cooking the skin around his right temple. He was tall, with a small gut, big ears, big hands, and overlarge, gunboat feet offset by an aristocratic head of silver hair. He wore the BP uniform of greenish gray work clothes and clean, soft old boots. He wore a matching baseball cap, which now rested on his knee. He looked at me kindly, as he had on my first day at West Point. Elmer liked to stand on the steps of the gym on R-Day and watch the entry of the lambs.
“Elmer, if you wanted the key to Bartlett and a key to a prof’s office inside Bartlett, could you get them?”
He nodded. “Mm-hmm.”
“How?” I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. “See Sam Marse, Bartlett BP, ask for his keys.” His voice had gruff scratches in it.
“Would he ask why?”
“No, sir. Bartlett’s got old linoleum that take wax and buff-spinners. Now, Adam Haskitt, he does northeast Central and Grant. Grant has wood floors. Haskitt swaps towels for Marse’s brushes.
“In the ole days, used ta trade, but it took two of us ta come on after hours for the swaps. Now we got us an Honor System. Haskitt, or Gene Reddy, who has them old floors in the Lost Fifties, they get Marse’s keys and stack solvent or paper towels in Bartlett an’ take floor wax and buff brushes. Sometimes they leave a six-pack for consideration.” He quietly studied me.
“If I asked for the Bartlett keys, would you give them to me?”
He frowned and put the coffee down, the large, work-stained fingers of his right hand fretting against each other, drumming a tattoo on his leg. He rubbed his scar and leaned in. “Why?”
“What if I left my slide rule in the lab and my notebooks in my P’s office, and I needed them?”
Elmer Scoggins squinted, his tongue running around inside his mouth. “I’d give you the keys. You askin’ for the keys, Kai?”
“Negative,” I said. “Would other BPs give keys to cadets?”
“Don’t know,” he said. “Not bad,” he said. “Used to drink java from a helmet like this working for Gen’ral Patton.
“Years back, after we come up from Bliss ta be the cleaners for West Point, some cadets tried gettin’ Bartlett keys by askin’ the youngest punk in the cleanin’ detail.” He shook his head. “He wanted ta give them cadets the keys. It stank. I said no.”
“When did this happen?”
He thought for a moment. “Nineteen fifty.”
He canted his head to one side and studied me. He coughed drily. “I figure we got a problem. We got a problem?”
“Yes, sir, we do. I’m going to ask a real big favor. Could you ask the other senior BPs if they’ve lent keys to cadets? Particularly, keys to Bartlett. One of my classmates is going to be talking to Mr. Marse, but I wanted to talk to you, too. I want the names of the cadets who got the keys, Elmer. More than I want to know the names of the BPs.”
“That’s askin’ a lot,” he said. “It’s a queer question.”
“I’m not asking for me. It’s for West Point.”
He narrowed his eyes. “It’s cheatin’ again, ain’t it?”
I nodded. “Bad cheating, with stealing and organization. They’ve gotten into Bartlett, a faculty office, and a prof’s safe.” My brows ached; I had been frowning for a long time. “Whatever you do, please do not talk about this,” I said.
He clucked his tongue, scolding me. “Boy, I bin here longer than you bin in pants! I bin takin’ care a West Point ’fore you was outa diapers an’ pins. You’re a squirt, bouncin’ to get grown. You say we got some burglars at the Point, stealin’ stuff from the professors an’ doin’ cheatin’—hey, Elmer Scoggin knows what to do!
“Still in the Army, mister. Mustered me in ’46—but I’ll always be a tanker. So let me ask you—you in the chain a command, or you makin’ like a comic-book hero with a red cape?”
“I’m in the chain. What rank were you?” I asked.
“I was a firs’ loo-tenant. Battlefield commission, Falaise Gap, summer, 1944. And this make me feel like I’m back in ranks.”
“Well, sir, for the first time, I feel like we’re going to get out of the woods. I surely appreciate it.”
“Not at all, Corporal,” he said.
“Lieutenant, you remember a football player in the Class of ’52 named Franz Smits?”
He shook his head. “Nah. I’m an old ma
n with an old man’s memory,” he said. “You know how it is. Cadets jus’ see an ole black janitor. You’re mighty different, but, I’m sorry ta say—when you come back here as an old grad, on your twenty-fifth class reunion, in—,” and he counted on his fingers, mumbling—“1993, and I’m still alive—and if you make it through the wars an’ all, I won’t ’member yo’ name.”
“I’ll remember you, Elmer Scoggin,” I said.
He smiled. “If I save West Point, you might at that. Nice havin’ your coffee. Forgive me if I don’t finish it.”
I put my hand out and we shook. Paragraph l.b., Friendly Forces, had just been augmented.
The gym, hoops, and hockey teams were away, and the Saturday-night flick was a West German western. Please, Farren, I hoped: go to the library and consult with Big Dick. Show yourselves.
I followed Farren back to barracks after supper. I watched the Area from my room while Para-Rat chewed gently on my fingers. There was Farren, walking alone in the snow, and I threw on scarf, short overcoat, and gloves and caught up with him in Central Area. He was headed for the gym without gear, so it was the flick. I sat behind him, hidden in a pack of First Regiment Plebes, nervous with my presence.
We were mesmerized by the foulness of the film. Two hundred head-dressed, face-painted Cherokee chiefs shot plastic arrows at a hundred Aryan, gum-chewing, German-drawling, dual-pistoled, white-hatted pilgrims in Roy Rogers shirts. The eventual massacre of the Cherokees to a Wagnerian soundtrack stopped even my appetite.
West Point was peacefully still and preindustrially dark when Farren left the gym and headed for the river. I had to stay well back as the cadet crowds thinned. Few cadets were genuine loners; tonight, Farren and I qualified, and it made us stand out. He looked at his watch; it was 2250 hours.
He turned west off Upton onto Tower Road, going below the rim of the Plain toward the riverbank. Building 665 seemed dark and the Field House was empty. I looked across the black river at the shadow of Constitution Island, where the lights at Warner House twinkled distantly. George Washington had stood here with Thaddeus Kosciuszko, planning Forts Arnold and Putnam. After Benedict’s treachery, Arnold would be renamed Clinton. The river whispered like an ancient slumbering giant, breathing in ripples, its old shoulders slowly brushing granite banks.
Nothing was going on down here, except for a rendezvous.
Farren entered 665, the old Quartermaster building, a dark, massive, brooding shadow in the night. I waited one minute and silently entered the foyer through twin, rasping, vacuum airlock doors. I smelled sawdust. With poor night vision, I was happy for the faint flickering of a single fluorescent bulb in the tall ceiling. The dim lobby was filled with stacks of building materials. The tile floor was cold as ice and littered with nails and building debris, but I removed my shoes for silence. I avoided the bulk of construction to the left, and moved to the right around sawhorses, workbenches, radial saws, and piled lumber.
I turned into a hallway, entering darkness. I walked blind and stepped onto a stiff plastic floor-covering that crinkled. I froze. Sergeant Smith at Buckner always said, “Stay frozen.” This was easy; 665 was like the inside of an ice box. I regulated breathing, becoming a part of the cold floor in a building that was as still as a mausoleum. Where was McWhiff?
In a few minutes, I was shivering and in possession of as much night vision as I could muster; shadows became things. I used my training and looked off-center, seeing unmounted signs that said “Indoor Ranges” and “Rifle & Pistol”—I realized that 665 was going to be the new consolidated range. I saw stacks of crates. One was open, and I put my hand inside: it was a gun box for .45 automatics. Two were missing from the suspension rack.
In the darkness I saw OD ammo boxes but no clips. I knew I would need a weapon. I stripped my gloves, drew a .45 from the open gun box and locked its slide open. I opened an ammo box, its hinges sharply complaining. I removed a single round from a box of fifty, slid it into the breech, and softly released the slide, automatically safetying it. The action was old, but I had one shot. I put a handful of .45 rounds into my overcoat pocket.
I heard sounds in the foyer.
I moved slowly toward the noise, the plastic covering softly crackling under my socks, the gun behind my right leg.
A steady parade of dark, parka-and-overcoated figures with red-lens flashlights quickly passed from the construction area through the rasping airlock doors, the flashlights switching off just before exiting. My heart tripped; there had to be twenty of them. Thirty feet from me, the last two figures stopped in the semilit foyer, sitting on lumber. I heard McWhiff say, “Listen, we don’t need guns.”
“Yeah, we do. We got mousechasers after us. Guns’ll scare ’em off. And it tells everyone we’re serious.” I recognized the voice. “Galen gives me the sweats. Asshole thinks he’s being followed. He’s getting hinky.”
“What ya gonna do, shoot Galen?” asked McWhiff.
“Nah. Just make ’im pucker.” The voice laughed. “This is the Army, Farren. Don’t turn soft on me.”
“I won’t.”
They stood and moved for the doors.
“Stop,” I said.
A brilliant flashlight exploded in my field of vision. I closed my eyes and jinked, too late, blinded. I unsafetied the gun.
“Shit, it’s Ting,” said Duke Troth. “You asshole! What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Chasing rats,” I said, my left hand shielding my eyes while pretending that I could see, pointing my face at his voice. “Farren, bad times are coming. Get out, now.”
“Goddammit, he followed you! Shit, you sneaky yellow bastard.” The flashlight moved off my face. “He’s got a gun.” The flashlight came back to my head. Troth’s .45 glinted in the light, aiming for the beam splash in the middle of my face.
“Yo, Kai,” said Farren. “I don’t know why you’re following Galen an’ me, but jes’ drop it. Butt out, man.”
“Come with me, Farren,” I said earnestly.
“Hey,” he said, “this involves a helluva lot more’n you know. It’s for the good. It’s for our classmates. You should be helpin’ us. Otherwise, you’re gonna screw things up royal. You’re gonna hurt people you don’t wanta hurt. Just forget whatever the hell it is you think you know. Kai, jes’ walk away.”
“Can’t,” I said.
“Why not?” asked Troth. He was on the left, his flashlight quivering. My heart slugged like an old locomotive laboring up a high hill. If he shoots, I thought, I’m shooting back. Aim left, for the chest; don’t hit Farren, roll and reload in the hallway. My left hand covered my eyes and I tightened my gun grip, the trigger finger ready, trying to visualize the shot through the psychedelic splotches of illumination trauma left by the flashlight. You’ll be blind from his shot. No aiming—raise the gun, point, and shoot.
I licked my dry lips. My mouth was dust. “Walked away before. I let people get hammered. Knew bad times were coming and I didn’t tell. Two people died. And, I let a person in my family get hurt.” A person to whom I bore lun. I blew out a lot of tired air. “Been keeping secrets for free. Took a pledge on the river to do the right thing. So did you. C’mon, Farren. Come back to the Corps. Don’t do this to yourself.” I watched Troth, hoping he was as good a shot as he was honest.
I blinked as I saw Lucky Washington, his eye a slab of red meat, asking for my father’s gun. He was fourteen years old and was going to be stabbed to death that night.
Farren pleaded, “Hey, man, think about what you’re doing.”
“I am,” I said. “Thought about it all my life.”
Lucky wouldn’t leave 665. I knew why he was with me, and I cursed him because now I couldn’t shoot Troth. Troth was rat scum, but I couldn’t shoot him. I safetied the automatic. “I’m going to drop the .45, Duke. Watch your trigger finger.”
“Shit, don’t drop it, Kai!” cried Farren. “It’s the only thing savin’ ya.” He looked at Duke. Duke steadied his aim.
The sound of the
gun landing on the old tile floor was like a baseball going through a plate glass window.
We faced each other for a few moments. They whispered intently. Then the flashlight went out and I heard the airlock doors open and close, and I was alone in the building, the gun at my feet.
Captain Martin was a broad-shouldered lawyer from Chicago with a big, deep voice and a sharply analytic mind. Like many of the Judge Advocates, or JAGCs, he was not a West Pointer. He had taught me the basics of issue analysis. He advised the Honor Committee.
After my final tour in his section, I thanked him for the clarity of his instruction, and told him I had appreciated his presence because he wasn’t white.
He smiled. “I’ve been black a long time now,” he said.
“I grew up in a black neighborhood. It’s been kind of lonely here,” I said. “This place is so—white-bread.”
“Aw, c’mon, man. There you go, jumping to a conclusion, just because I’m the single black officer on this faculty. Some, like your friend Alonzo Smits, think my being here makes this Harlem.”
“My friend?” I asked.
“Hey, I hear you play poker with him in his Q.”
“Captain Martin speaking, sir.”
“Sir, this is Cadet Kai Ting. Sorry for calling you in quarters. I have a confidential question.” I was whispering into the outside pay phone at the Admin Building, where I had a clear view of Thayer Road. My feet were frozen and I was actively shivering.
“Consider the attorney-client relationship formed,” he said. I could hear a pen scratching on a pad.
I took an icy breath. “Sir, I’m part of an Honor investigation into a cheating ring. I’m tasked with finding the ringleader. I got a suspect. I want to tape him in his room, talking to other suspects, without their knowledge or consent.”
“Okay,” he said, as if I had said, “the weather outside is frightful.” “State your probable cause and your emergency.”
I told him about the canned writ answers, the break-in of Maher’s safe, and the entire episode in Building 665.
“Good enough. What’s the issue, Kai?”