by Pat Conroy
“I plan to smuggle some food into the barracks.”
“So what?” Mark said.
“It’s going to be something delicious,” he said.
“So what?”
“It’s going to be something we make.”
“So what?” Pig asked.
“It’s going to be something we want them to eat.”
All of us screamed the same word at the same time.
“Yes!” we screamed.
On Saturday morning after inspection, all the freshmen in R Company drove to the St. Croix mansion on East Bay Street. Tradd and I drove to the Meeting Street Piggly Wiggly to buy the ingredients for the food we would prepare for the upperclassmen. Commerce had a keg of beer delivered to his home and set it up on the first story verandah. Ten of our classmates were drinking beer and sitting on the railing, looking out at the garden and listening to Commerce tell stories of the old Corps. Abigail was waiting for us in the kitchen with a puzzled though richly amused look on her face. Pig and Mark were drinking beer at the kitchen table along with John Kinnell and Jim Massengale.
“Since when did my. plebes become enchanted with the culinary arts?” she asked.
“I’m sure we will need your expertise, Mother,” Tradd said, removing the packages from the brown shopping bags.
“I’ve never cooked anything that didn’t have tomato sauce in it,” Mark said.
“I’ve never eaten anything I cooked, and I sure ain’t gonna eat this slop we’re going to cook up,” Pig added.
“What are you going to cook?” Abigail asked.
“Fudge,” we all answered, exploding with laughter.
“Fudge?” she asked. “I see nothing intrinsically humorous in fudge.”
“It’s got to look like the real stuff, Mrs. St. Croix,” Mark said. “You can’t let us make it look like something out of a peat bog.”
“May I ask whom it’s for?” she said.
“We want to show our appreciation to the cadre who trained us, Abigail,” I said. “Those responsible for turning us into men.”
“I’ll get my Charleston Receipts and we’ll begin,” Abigail said.
“We don’t need canceled checks, Mrs. St. Croix,” Mark said. “We need to know how to cook.”
“Poor Italians, Mother,” Tradd said, smiling at Mark. “I’m beginning to understand Mussolini’s rise to power. ‘Receipts’ is the way our Charleston ancestors used to say ‘recipe,’ Mark. ‘Recipe’ is a modern derivation.”
“Yeh, stupid,” Jim Massengale said cheerfully.
“Poor Charlestonians,” Mark answered. “They don’t know the difference between a recipe and a receipt.”
“Let’s get cooking,” Pig suggested.
“Why are all of you so enamored of those frightful beasts that you want to feed them?”
“You’ve got to show some appreciation, Mrs. St. Croix,” John Kinnell said shyly. “The world wouldn’t be a very nice place without appreciation.”
Mrs. St. Croix began reading aloud the recipe for fudge from her worn and food-spattered copy of Charleston Receipts. You can learn more about the society of Charleston from reading the recipes of her finest and most aristocratic cooks than from any history book ever written about the city. We melted thirty-two squares of Dutch bitter chocolate over a low fire. Then for fifteen minutes we took turns with the eggbeater until the mixture thickened into a creamy smoothness. We added sugar and salt and tasted it with our fingers.
“Now, how much of the other stuff should we add?” I asked.
“We don’t want to kill them,” answered Tradd.
“Speak for yourself, Tradd,” Mark said. “I say we put it all in.”
“What stuff?” Mrs. St. Croix asked.
“This,” Pig said, emptying twenty packages of a chocolate laxative onto the kitchen table.
“You can’t do that. You boys simply cannot put that into the fudge. It’s criminal,” she said.
We began opening the packages of Ex-Lax and emptying the contents of each box into the fudge.
“You’ll make someone very sick,” Abigail said. “Very sick. Perhaps we should consult a physician.”
“We’re not going to make them eat this, Mrs. St. Croix,” Mark said, furiously handling the eggbeater. “In fact, we’re going to beg them not to eat it.”
“We want to help them,” Pig said. “A couple of them just don’t seem regular. This is purely for medicinal purposes.”
“Let’s sprinkle it with rat poison,” Jim said.
“We don’t want them to die,” Mark said. “We only want them to suffer.”
“Suffering is too good for them,” Tradd said. “I want agony.” “What has this school done to my sweet boy?” Abigail asked. “To all my sweet boys.”
We calculated our entry into the barracks precisely. We eschewed the obligatory silence of plebes and entered noisily, screaming, drunk, out of control. Fifteen of us made the right-angle turn at T Company and immediately spotted ten or twelve upperclassmen loitering beneath the light beside the R Company stairwell. Pig was in the lead. As he passed the garbage can on first division, he kicked it clattering into the quadrangle. The upperclassmen fanned out to intercept us. The first five of us were carrying beautifully wrapped boxes laden with chocolate fudge.
“Halt, dumbheads,” a voice commanded. It was Fox.
“Where do you think you’re going, afterbirths?” Newman asked.
“Apologize to that garbage can, Mr. Pignetti,” Wentworth said to Pig.
Pig moved out on the quadrangle, replaced the garbage can, then climbed inside it, bracing. “Sir, Mr. Garbage Can, sir. Cadet Recruit Pignetti apologizes for bumping into you and causing you undue agitation, sir.”
“I asked you a question, dumbheads,” Newman said angrily. “Where are you waste-products going?”
“To our rooms, sir,” Mark answered.
“What are in those boxes, nurds?” Fox asked.
“Nothing, sir,” Tradd answered.
“It looks like it might be something good to eat, nurds. Right, nurds?” Wentworth said, his voice friendly and intimate.
“No, sir,” all fifteen of us answered joyfully.
“Is that an official statement, dumbheads?” Fox asked.
“No, sir,” we answered again.
“Aha!” Wentworth said. “So when we invoke the honor system you finally tell the truth. I’d hate to haul all of you before the honor court before you can enjoy the pleasures and privileges of being upperclassmen, dumbheads. I can’t believe the good knobs of Big R would try to deny their cadre their rightful privilege to partake of your food.”
“Sir. Permission to make a statement, sir,” Tradd asked.
“Pop off, faggot,” Newman barked.
“Sir, my mother made something for me and my classmates to eat while we started studying for exams. She would be glad to make some more for the upperclassmen next week, sir. I’m perfectly sure of that, sir.”
“That’s nice, faggot. That’s sweet. It really is,” Newman said. “But we upperclassmen have a responsibility to you fucking nurds. We have to make sure that the food in those boxes is not poison. You need some brave men to taste what’s in those boxes. So why don’t you gentlemen hand those six boxes over to the customs inspectors and do fifty pushups while we inspect the contents.”
The fifteen of us hit the gallery and began pumping out the fifty pushups in unison, matching our voices and cadences. We could barely keep from laughing when we heard Fox exclaim, “It’s goddam chocolate fudge.”
He took a thick piece and began eating it. “With pecans in it. It’s a goddam bonanza.”
Upperclassmen surged toward the six boxes of chocolate, tearing off the wrapping, and grabbing as much fudge for themselves as they could. As the cry of “Fudge” went aloft in R Company, upperclassmen from the upper three divisions hurried down the stairs to claim their portions. The rush turned into a moderate, jostling stampede as we freshmen performed the happiest pushu
ps of our plebe year. When we rose to our feet again, there was not a single piece of fudge remaining. The six boxes lay crumpled and empty on the gallery.
Newman said, licking the chocolate from his fingers, “Because you didn’t want to generously share your good fortune with your superiors, dumbheads, you don’t get anything. Now get to your rooms, asswipes. The all-in check has already begun.”
We waited until forty-five minutes after midnight before we crept out into the shadowy, deserted galleries. I could see Jim Massengale and Murray Seivers moving cautiously along the railing on fourth division. John Kinnell and Webb Stockton had already entered the latrine on third division. R Company freshmen were entering into the O and N Company areas, moving in the shadows. Tradd and I were responsible for the second division latrine. Mark and Pig headed for the first.
We entered the brightly lit latrine on the run. Tradd gathered every single roll of toilet paper and threw them into the utility sink which he had filled with water and ammonia. Working quickly, I covered the toilet seats with thick coats of black shoe polish. Tradd unscrewed the light bulbs in the ceiling, plunging the room into total darkness, and placed the bulbs in the pocket of his bathrobe. I turned the hot water nozzles in the shower on full blast. It was a hot night and the steam rising from the shower room floor made it impossible to breathe. Then I clogged the drain. Before we left, Tradd removed the eight light bulbs from his pocket and shattered them on the tile floor near the entrance.
“It’s gross the way the upperclassmen go around barefooted in the galleries all the time,” Tradd whispered. “This will discourage them.”
“You’re going to make a great upperclassman, St. Croix.”
We heard Pig and Mark come back up the stairs.
“Finished?” Pig asked softly as he approached.
“Finished,” Tradd responded. ;
“Good. Let me wire the door shut. You get to the room.”
Working with speed and efficiency, Pig twisted four feet of barbed wire around the handles of the latrine door and then the screen door with a large pair of pliers. He could not have locked the door more effectively with a deadbolt.
“Let’s get to our room quick. They’ll be flying all over the barracks in a couple of minutes,” Pig said.
Mark spotted a coke bottle atop some refuse in the garbage can. He took it to the room and, upon reaching the alcove, threw the bottle half the length of the gallery, shattering glass across the cement in front of the latrine door.
“It’s going to be like crossing a mine field getting in there.”
We lay in our racks, waiting and talking to each other in the darkness. Mark lit a cigarette. I asked for one and he threw me the pack. Inexpertly, I lit one and choked as I tried to inhale. I had never smoked a cigarette, and I tried to imitate Mark’s brooding, sorrowful insouciance as he blew symmetrical plumes of smoke toward the ceiling.
“This has been one of the best days of my life,” Tradd said from above me.
“There are some really good guys in our class. All paisans. All brothers,” said Pig.
“Do you think our class will be as bad as the cadre of this year?” I asked. “Do you think we’ll treat freshmen the same way?”
There was a moment of silence in the room.
“Yes,” Mark said.
“Yes,” said Pig and Tradd.
“So we haven’t really learned anything at all,” I said.
“That’s not true, paisan,” Pig said, laughing. “We learned how to rack ass.”
“And to make fudge,” Mark said, as we heard a door open suddenly on the first division.
It was followed quickly by two doors opening on third division. We heard the sound of flip-flops slapping against the galleries as someone sprinted toward the latrine. Another door opened and once again we heard the desperate feet passing our door. Screams and profanity resounded through the barracks as feet were cut by the glass and barbed wire punctured the flesh of hands. Doors were opening all over R Company. The sound of an M-1 stock beating against the barbed wire on third division echoed around the barracks. On the galleries, it was beginning to sound like a track meet. We heard a loud scream on second division.
“You should always wear shoes when you go to the latrine,” Mark said. “You can never tell when there might be a broken coke bottle on the gallery.”
One voice began chanting, “Toilet paper. Toilet paper. Toilet paper.”
“Watch out for this glass.”
“The water’s hot as hell.”
We left our beds and crept to the door, looking out on the gallery. Sitting astride the four garbage cans on fourth division were four R Company upperclassmen with expressions of consummate suffering on their faces. We saw Newman walking back to his room, naked except for his flip-flops. He was carrying his rifle by its sling. As he passed the room, we saw a large circle of polish on his buttocks. He was limping as though he was in great pain. He got halfway to his room, then, due to some urgent message delivered by nature, sprinted back to the latrine.
Blasingame, who had been asleep when we had come into the barracks, came up the stairs from third division with a quizzical, obdurate look on his face. Amazed, he studied the upperclassmen sitting naked on the garbage cans, as motionless as statuary.
“Boys,” he called out. “Boys. Boys. What’s happening to Big R? All my boys are shitting in cans. Goddam, boys. Use the latrines. Jesus Christ, all my boys are shitting in cans.”
Pig had stuffed a towel in his mouth to keep from laughing out loud. I ran back to my rack and muffled my laughter in my pillow. Tradd and Mark were rolling on the floor. Tears were streaming down Mark’s face.
When we could finally speak, Tradd said, “Do you think they’ll have a sweat party tonight? How long will it take them before they figure it out?”
“They’ll have to finish their business before they can figure it out,” Pig said. “And, paisan, they’re gonna be too weak to think about giving any sweat parties. Some of them will be on the commode for the rest of the night.”
The sweat party the next day was the longest and toughest of the year, but we laughed our way through it. They knew and we knew that we were a scant two weeks away from being upperclassmen. We had made it.
Chapter Twenty-one
Then it was June week, with tanned cadets walking by the storefronts of King Street in their white summer uniforms and the parents and relatives of seniors filling up all the hotels in the city and the suburbs. We had a full-dress parade each day and checked for our final grades taped on classroom doors in the academic buildings. Tradd surprised everyone and won the Star of the East medal as best-drilled cadet, in competition beneath the bright sweltering sun with cadets from every other company. Mark, Pig, and I cheered for him from the reviewing stand as Abigail and Commerce watched their son nervously sitting under an umbrella with General and Mrs. Durrell. When he was announced the winner, every member of R Company swarmed onto the field and carried him on their shoulders back to the barracks. By winning the Star of the East, R Company had accumulated enough points to remain honor company for another year, and Maccabee received the Commandant’s Cup from the General at parade the following day. Tradd had his picture taken with the General and Abigail and Commerce, and it appeared on the first page of the B section in the Charleston News and Courier on Wednesday of June week. He was the first Charleston boy to win the medal in twenty years, and as he said, smiling at his father, the first St. Croix to win it in history.
The rank sheets came out announcing the corporals among my classmates for the next year. Tradd, Mark, and Pig would be corporals and I would be a private, the highest military rank I would ever attain. I had been ranked in the bottom five of my class. The only reason I was not ranked lower was because Pig had rated me number one on his rank sheet. “Because of that poem, paisan,” he exclaimed. “Because you’ve got hair on your ass.” It was a ranking that I appreciated but which very few others understood.
The basketball te
am had a cookout at General Durrell’s plantation house north of Charleston. Reuben Clapsaddle and I were the only survivors of the plebe system among the freshmen. Lancey Hemphill was named the most valuable player and Wig Bowman was named team captain for the next year by Coach Byrum. It had been another long, losing season for the varsity, and most of the team ate their steaks quickly and escaped the melancholy accusatory eyes of our coach. The General delivered a rather grumpy speech on the invaluable lessons to be derived from losing. Mrs. Durrell poured lemonade and apologized for not having attended a single game. She was every inch the General’s wife and moved with the taut, tensile grace common to high-born Southern women.
Pig’s girl friend, Theresa, flew down from New York and stayed for the entire week at the Francis Marion Hotel. She was a shy, frail-boned girl with long, shining hair like a blackbird’s wing. She was as delicate as Pig was not, and it was obvious that they loved each other very much. It was good to be around them, and I studied how people were required to act when they were in love so I would know the forms and nuances of that sweet delirium if and when it happened to me. Pig let me dance with her at the graduation hop. I was the only other boy she had ever danced with since she met Pig when she was fourteen.
“Don’t get too close, paisan,” he warned gently. “He’s like a brother to me, Theresa, but I can’t let him get too close.”
I did not get too close. I had never danced a slow dance with a girl without touching her, but I did with Theresa as Mark and Tradd laughed at me from their table.
I attended that hop with the sister of my squad sergeant, Quigley. Her name was Susan and I didn’t like her very much. She was a fine girl, but her face was suggestive of a variety of memories, all of them bad and all of them permanent. Her face was her brother’s face and as I danced with her, her mouth reminded me of his mouth, her eyes became his eyes, and her breath was her brother’s, not her own. She could not help who her brother was and neither could I. But a Quigley with breasts was still a Quigley. In the backwaters of consciousness I looked upon her as linked in secret, obscene ways to the cadre, a soft breeder of cadremen and plebe systems. Her brother had not been the worst, but he had been one of them. I had licked and kissed his shoes during my Taming and could not bring myself to kiss his sister no matter how many times she pressed against me or how many times she turned her face toward mine as we walked along the Battery after the hop.