by Pat Conroy
“What group, Colonel?” I said, puzzled.
“If I knew who it was, Bubba, I wouldn’t be wasting my breath talking to you. They’d be walking so many tours on the second battalion quad that they’d have blood blisters where their toes used to be. All we know, Bubba—and this is just guessing—is that we think it’s a secret group. One of the Board of Visitors thinks it might be The Ten.”
“The Ten is a myth, Colonel. It’s supposed to be a secret organization, but no one can tell me it’s possible to keep a secret on this campus.”
“Pearce got a letter from The Ten this summer,” the Bear said, looking toward the door.
“He did?” I said. “What did it say?”
“It mainly warned him to keep his black ass out of the Corps of Cadets if he knew what was good for him. It also said that niggers were living proof that Indians did fuck buffalo.”
“He’d better get used to that kind of stuff, Colonel. But how do you know the letter came from The Ten?”
“I’m a detective, Bubba. It was signed ‘The Ten.’ ”
“It could have been anyone, Colonel. It could’ve been me. That’s been a joke on campus since I was a knob.”
“I know, Bubba, I know,” he said, rolling his eyes at me and daintily picking the cigar stub out of the ashtray. He began to chew on it as he resumed speaking. “I’ve never seen one ounce of proof that it exists since I’ve been here. But there’s a rumor in the Corps that someone’s out to get Pearce and the Bear listens to rumors. Do you know why the Commandant’s Department wants you as Pearce’s liaison?”
“The editorial?” I ventured.
“Yeh, Bubba, you flaming Bolshevik, the editorial,” he said, leaning across the table, his brown eyes twinkling. “I was against letting the school paper print your editorial. If we’re going to have censorship, I think we ought to have real censorship, not the namby-pamby kind. But it did help spot the one bona fide nigger-lover in the Corps.”
“Not everyone in the Corps is a racist, Colonel. There are a few holier-than-thou deviants among us.”
“How about if I say that ninety-nine percent of the Corps is racist, Bubba?” he said, grinning.
“You’re being too cautious, sir. It’s a much higher percentage than that.”
“Did you write that editorial because you wanted to piss off the authorities, or do you really get a hard-on when you think about niggers? Tell me the truth, bum.”
“I knew you wouldn’t sleep for a week, Colonel.”
“Well, Pearce is going to make it, lamb. Pearce has got to make it. His time in history has come.”
“And your time’s over, eh, Colonel?”
“It may be, Bubba. But bums like you never had a time and, God willing, you never will.”
“Colonel,” I asked, finishing the last oyster on my platter, “are you a racist? Do you want Pearce in the school?”
“Yeh, I’m a racist. I liked the school when it was lily-white. Pearce is going to stand out like a raisin on a coconut cake during parade.”
“Then why are you trying to protect him?”
“It’s my duty, Bubba, my job. And when Pearce comes in on Monday, he becomes one of my lambs, and I like to make sure that all my lambs get an even break.”
“I’ll be glad to watch over Pearce, Colonel, but I had best be seen with him only once during the first week.”
“Word will leak out that you’re assigned to him. In fact, I’ve already leaked it. I want the Corps to know that the Bear is watching Mr. Pearce closely.”
“Colonel, when did you graduate from the Institute?”
“Nineteen thirty-eight, Bubba.”
“How do I know that you’re not one of The Ten?” I said, teasing him.
“I was in the bottom five of my class academically,” he answered before he swallowed an oyster.
“Does that mean anything?”
“It means I was stupid, Bubba. The Ten wouldn’t touch someone stupid. That’s stupid with books, Bubba. But I’m Beethoven when it comes to catching my lambs breaking the rules of the Institute. You keep in touch. If you need me, give a yell. Come to me. No one else. No one in the Corps. None of your friends. Me. Spelled B-E-A-R.”
Chapter Four
That evening as I awaited the arrival of my other two roommates, I meditated on the nature of friendship as I practiced the craft. My friends had always come from outside the mainstream. I had always been popular with the fifth column of my peers, those individuals who were princely in their solitude, lords of their own unpraised melancholy. Distrusting the approval of the chosen, I would take the applause of exiles anytime. My friends were all foreigners, and they wore their unbelongingness in their eyes. I hunted for that look; I saw it often, disarrayed and fragmentary and furious, and I approached every boy who invited me in.
I was sitting at my desk in the rear of the alcove shining my inspection shoes when I heard the door open and Mark Santoro come into the room. He did not see me at first, but I smiled as I saw his old fierce scowl when he heard me say, “Hey, Wop.”
It was an old game between us and we could play it for hours without missing a beat. He put his luggage on the floor near his rack and walked toward me.
“You must be new in town, sir,” Mark said respectfully. “It hurts my feelings when a very ugly human being like yourself casts aspersions on my heritage.”
“Wop,” I repeated. “Wop, Wop, Wop, Wop, Wop.”
“Excuse me, sir, you must not have heard me. I asked you kindly to treat me with dignity and respect. So I would suggest that you look for another way to address me before I’m forced to perform radical surgery on that fat nose of yours that your mother stole from an Irish pig.”
“Speaking of noses, yours grew a little bit over the summer, Mark. You could land a DC-8 on that schnozzola of yours.”
“You couldn’t land a fruit fly on that little sniffer of yours.”
“Why don’t you have a nose job, Mark?” I said. “No kidding. It would take a team of twenty-thirty surgeons chopping away like beavers, but they could have it down to normal size after a day or two.”
He put a large finger on my nose. “I’m real sensitive about my nose. Real sensitive.”
“How does it feel, Santoro, to come from a race of men who once ruled the earth, who brought order to the entire Mediterranean world, who redefined the meaning of empire, and who humbled countless warriors and civilizations? How does it really feel to be Italian, Mark, past masters of the universe who now spend all their time rolling dough and making pepperoni pizza?”
“Do you know, McLean, that I didn’t have to take your shit all summer? No one had the balls to tease me this summer. And do you know what,” he said, ominously looming above me, “I missed the hell out of your Irish ass.”
He scooped me out of my chair, the left shoe and the can of polish flying off the table in opposite directions. He squeezed me until I gasped for oxygen. He kissed me on both cheeks. He picked me up again and threw me on my bunk. When finally I could speak, I was looking up at his strong, dark face, his white teeth flashing in a broad smile. After long separations, Mark’s greetings were a form of martial art.
“Mark, it’s so good to see you,” I said.
“How’d you live without me,” Will? And you start being nicer to us sweet Italian boys.”
“Nice!” I yelped. “If it even looks Italian, I’m nice to it, man. I’m not stupid. I’m nice to grease bubbles, oil slicks, and lube jobs. They all remind me of two of my roommates. How’s your mother and father?”
“Begged me to change roommates and sent their love. They want you and Tradd to crack down on my ass and make me study. By the way, where’s Pig and Tradd?”
“Pig hasn’t shown,” I said, glancing at my watch.
“If I know muscle beach, he’ll be rolling in two minutes after muster, wearing a track suit and a hard-on.”
“You go on over to Tradd’s house, Mark. Abigail’s fixing dinner for all of us tonight.
I’ll wait for Pig and bring him over later. I think Commerce would like someone to watch the baseball game with him. He’s been riding Tradd pretty hard again. But put your uniform on, son. You’re a senior now.”
Mark picked me up again and crushed me against his powerful, hirsute chest. He kissed me again on both cheeks and with no self-consciousness at all looked into my eyes with benign tenderness and said, “I love you, Will.”
My answer was a lesson in history and sociology and you could derive some of the major differences between Ireland and Italy by the emotional diffidence of my response. Both of us were unassailable proof that each of the tribes of Europe had imported their own separate fevers, predilections, and reveries into the capricious, turbulent consciousness of America. Our Europes were different; our Americas were different. Mark was emotional and sentimental beneath his scowling, brooding visage. I feared emotion, dreaded any commitment of spirit, and was helpless to translate the murmurings of the inarticulate lover I felt screaming from within. In a laugh-it-off, pretend-it-isn’t-serious, tight-assed parody of the Irish American, preserved like a scorpion in my emotional amber, I answered, “I think you’re a gaping asshole.” We had said the same thing and Mark left for dinner at the St. Croixs’ as I continued to wait for Pig.
Pig. Dante Pignetti. I had heard upperclassmen say that there had never been a freshman like him in recent memory. He was the only member of my class who was not affected or scarred by the plebe system at all. In fact, throughout that first year, he gave intimations that he loved both its regularities and its aberrations. It was an act of orgasmic pleasure for him to do a pushup, a devotional of unutterable joy to do fifty. Once I had watched three juniors work on him for an hour, trying to break down his indefatigable stamina with a grueling, synchronized combination of running stairs, holding out an M-1 rifle, and pushups, but they never even began to crack Pig and eventually surrendered out of sheer boredom and a begrudging awe. But awe was not the right word. It was fear. If they had broken Dante Pignetti, I am sure that none of them would have slept soundly for the rest of the year, for he carried with him a legendary unpredictability and an awesome capacity for rage. His body was a work of art forged through arduous repetitive hours with weights. It was not the type of body I admired—the long fluid muscles of swimmers hold more esthetic appeal for me—but it had a magnetic, almost nuclear, tension. His upper torso was breathtaking, his chest muscles, his shoulders, all were simply extraordinary. He did not play football; his love affairs were with the weights, with boxing and wrestling, with karate, with all sports that hurt seriously.
In the first month of our plebe year, upperclassmen came from the other three battalions to see Pig, and the cadre would force him to strip off his shirt and stand braced as the obscene, uninvited eyes of upperclassmen examined his already famous physique. From my vantage point in the second platoon, I could see the entire ceremony, and I filled up with an immense pride for this freshman, so much a man that our inquisitors, our lean tormentors, were coming to the ranks of plebes to study the most magnificent body in the Corps. They would hit him in the stomach as hard as they could and he would take their best punches. I could not convey how beautiful Dante Pignetti looked to me then, exposed to sunlight, barechested, struck by them, admired by them, more than them. As I was witnessing the strangeness of this ceremony, I decided on the spot to make friends with him. Wisdom and a knack for survival told me that it was no foolish act to have the strongest man in the Corps tied up with my destiny. Because powerful men inspire fear, they usually have very few friends and almost never have developed the soft skills necessary to make friends; they have spent too much time developing their pectoral muscles. I also knew Pig would instinctively like me. As I watched him from a distance, I knew with absolute surety that Pig had isolated and imprisoned himself in his own physical invulnerability. He was lonely that first year, and he smiled foolishly, boyishly, when I asked him to walk downtown for a beer.
There was a disturbance outside on the gallery. The door shivered violently as someone was hurled against it. I heard shouts, profanity. Suddenly, the door was flung open and Gooch Fraser flew into the room and tumbled onto the floor. Pig was behind him and gave him a swift kick on the buttocks that sent Gooch sprawling into Mark’s luggage.
“Over here, Toecheese,” Pig ordered.
“Pig?” I said in a half-question, half-greeting.
“I can’t say hello now, paisan,” Pig answered, throwing his suitcase on the bed and snapping it open. “Toecheese has just insulted my girl.”
“I didn’t know you had a girl, Pig,” Gooch whined. Gooch Fraser was a junior sergeant and as harmless and inoffensive as a gerbil.
“You call me Mr. Pignetti. I don’t like the way you say ‘Pig.’ ”
“Please, Mr. Pignetti. I didn’t mean anything.”
“I’ve got to teach you a lesson, Toecheese,” Pig explained. “I’ve got to make sure it doesn’t happen again. I’m going to show you a picture of the girl you just insulted and you’ll understand why I become a wild man when someone says something nasty about her.”
“But, Pig . . .” Gooch said, desperately trying to explain.
“Shut up,” Pig yelled, slapping Gooch on the top of the head. “I’m Pignetti to you and you’re Mr. Nothin’ to me. I’d be doing myself a favor to strangle your scrawny, greasy neck. Now watch as I show you the girl you insulted.”
He reverently slid the photograph out of his suitcase. I had seen the photograph for three straight years; it was as familiar to me as the face of Lincoln on a five-dollar bill.
“There,” Pig said with obvious self-justification. “Now do you understand why I become a homicidal maniac when some nothin’ makes a dirty remark about her? Did you ever see such a beautiful woman?”
Then he slapped Gooch on the back of the head again.
“Take your beady eyes off her!” he screamed. “You’re not worthy to gaze upon such an exquisite sight. If you only knew how good she was, how kind she was, how humble, how quiet, how smart—you wouldn’t blame me for throwing you to your death off fourth division. You’d beg me to kill you. That’s how ashamed you’d be.”
“I didn’t know, Mr. Pignetti. I really didn’t know.”
“What did Gooch say, Pig?” I asked.
“I asked him if he got any pussy this summer,” Gooch explained to me with penitent, uncomprehending eyes.
Pig slapped him on the back of the head and kicked his ribs until Gooch lay hunched in a fetal position on the floor.
“Did you hear him use that word in front of Theresa?” Pig said to me.
“That’s not Theresa, Pig,” I said. “That’s a photograph of Theresa.”
“It’s the same thing to me, Will. You know that. It’s like church. When I look at the statue of the Virgin, I fill up with love. I kiss the feet of the statue like it was the mother of God herself.”
“Gooch,” I said.
“Yes, Mr. McLean.”
“It’s Will, Gooch. Apologize to the photograph of Theresa and Pig might let you go sometime this week.”
“I might rip your gall bladder out with my bare hands if you don’t,” Pig said.
“I’m sorry, Theresa,” Gooch whined. “I’m so sorry.”
Pig chopped him to the floor again with a rabbit punch to the neck. Then looking up at me again for approval, he said, “He just doesn’t learn, beloved roommate.”
“What did I do wrong?” Gooch moaned.
“You mentioned her first name. I don’t want Theresa’s name ever mentioned by a scummy tongue like yours. Its all I can do right now to keep from tearing your tongue out of your head.”
“Call her Miss Devito,” I instructed.
“I’m sorry, Miss Devito. I apologize. I’ll never do it again,” Gooch said, nearing hysteria.
“That’s better, Nothin’,” Pig said, appeased as last.
But Gooch was swept away by the theatricality of remorse. He made a swift, fervent grab at the phot
ograph and began planting wet, sorrowful kisses all over Theresa’s dark, shining face.
A demonic howl rose from Pig’s furious lips as he began to cuff Gooch’s ears with stinging slaps that resounded throughout the room. I jumped on Pig’s back and screamed at Gooch, “Run, man. I can only hold him for a second.”
With speed born of terror, the normally phlegmatic Gooch Fraser sprinted from the room without a single wasted motion.
Pig did not move. I was wrapped around his back like a ludicrous, outsized papoose. I waited for him to separate our bodies with one of the fierce, hammering blows that he kept in his inexhaustible repertoire. But he remained motionless as though he had hibernated on the spot. Finally I spoke.
“Pig, we’re late to Abigail’s house. So let’s get ready. I don’t want to have to whip your behind before dinner.”
“Will,” he said.
“Yeh, Pig.”
“You can’t hold me for a second, beloved roommate. You can’t even hold me for a nanosecond.”
“I worked out this summer, Pig. My strength has become gorillalike.”
“Do you know what I learned over the summer?” he said in his low rumbling voice.
“No.”