The Boo

by Pat Conroy

  The staff’s enthusiasm matched my own. Jeff and Rick Campbell, his chief assistant, discussed the pros and cons of putting the poem into the first issue we were to produce as a staff, but cries of freedom of the press and musty quotes from Horace Greeley carried the day. The poem went in. Like the conspirators against Caesar, we vowed absolute secrecy and like those conspirators we had little insight into the part we played in our own downfall.

  The magazine with the “secret” poem emerged from the press two days before graduation. How the word leaked out no one will ever know. But when the magazine hit the post office boxes, about three hundred sniggering, knee-slapping cadets were there waiting to read the latest screw the cadets had inserted into the heart of the Commandant’s Department. Rumor has it that a copy of the magazine with the poem circled was delivered to General Harris fifteen minutes after its circulation. Tac Officers read it to each other over cups of coffee in the canteen minutes after it emerged from the post office. Guffaws boomed out of the pool hall; laughter broke the silence of the library and cadets raced from the barracks to pick up their copy of the contraband poem. Jeff Benton said later that he spent much of that day praying, while Rick Campbell merely contemplated the feasibility of suicide. I studied the theory of grayness and wondered what in the hell had happened.

  Thus it came to pass that I would meet The Boo under his own rules, in territory alien to me. That night at supper looking up from a plate of hot dogs and sauerkraut, I saw him enter the South Mess Hall. He did not joke with anyone around him. He hunted big game. Near hysteria, I tried to hide behind a pile of sauerkraut which would have dwarfed a small mountain, but when a look of satanic pleasure crossed his face, I knew the reconnaissance mission was over. And here is how it was on a lost day in May when I faced The Boo as Assistant Commandant for the first time.

  “Bum, don’t say a single word. Start writing and remember Clemson isn’t really such a bad place.” Then he slapped a piece of paper in front of me. “I want to know everything, Bubba. Your soul is black. Give me names, dates, addresses, and the wedding anniversary of your parents.” “Colonel, you seem to think I’ve done something wrong,” I answered, my voice cracking only slightly. “I have three ERW’s, Conroy, and your guilty name stinks on all three of them.” “But, Colonel, I have been a model cadet in my three years here.” “You have been a bum. You dazzled me with your footwork for a couple of years but I’ve got your gonads tacked to my desk now and remember, you bum, they’ve got a great ROTC Program at Clemson.” “Colonel, I hope this misunderstanding will not hurt my chances for Regimental Commander.” “It’ll be cleared up when you walk out of here with your bags packed,” Boo answered. “You don’t think I have a chance, Colonel?” I was grasping for straws by this time. “You don’t have a preacher’s chance in hell, Bubba. The only chance you’ve got is for the earth to open and swallow you up before our eyes. Now start writing.”

  I wrote the most nebulous, general, non-implicating ERW ever written. The rights of man and the Bill of Rights figured heavily in my denunciation of a system which did not allow a flavoring of good ole, apple-pie obscenity once in a while. Whatever I wrote, however, remains lost in some impregnable recess of memory which no man shall ever uncover. What sticks in my mind is the blitzkrieg attack The Boo had launched against me in a matter of seconds. The attack left me reeling and stunned, and put me at a crossroads in my Citadel career which led, it seemed, to my eminent departure from the school. The blitzkrieg came in classic Courvoisie fashion: the sudden appearance at the doorway, the eyes swinging over the startled cadets like the beam of a lighthouse across restless waters, the moment of truth when the eyes rested on the proper victim, the quick thrust of the big guns aimed with careful precision at the selected target, and the stern command learned in other wars from other leaders for unconditional surrender.

  The Courvoisie weapons of attack were not spared. His eyes were like laser beams, the stentorian voice broke like thunder off the mounds of sauerkraut around me. He was absolutely certain that he had researched his case so thoroughly, collected so much damaging evidence, and prepared such an airtight case that the only task remaining was to pin the struggling butterfly into the display case he reserved in his museum of infamous cadets.

  And his cigar. Dark, nauseous cigars almost always dripped out of The Boo’s mouth as he made his appointed rounds. Whenever he chewed a cadet out, he used these cigars with diabolical cunning. He never reprimanded a cadet with his cigar more than an inch or two away from the victim’s face. As he ranted about the infraction of divine law, he puffed furiously on his cigar. The cadet, traumatized by the voice and frozen by the severity of the moment, had as his main concern the glowing red ash of The Boo’s cigar which threatened to make a cinder of any nose or eye it touched. As The Boo left the mess hall that night and friends swarmed around me to offer consolation, my most immediate thought or the one I can remember now most vividly, was gratitude The Boo’s cigar did not burn a third nostril into my face.

  That night I called my mother and told her to start sending off for college catalogues. In something akin to despair, she wondered how we were to break the news to my father who was stationed in Viet Nam at the time. Dad, like many Citadel fathers, thought the school was created by a special act of God. To tell him I had been given the boot would be like telling him I was the illegitimate son of a communist drug peddler. Mom put up a stiff upper lip, then let me know in definite terms that I had learned no profane language in her household.

  The next day the Shako staff met at The Boo’s office en masse. The gathering had all the trappings of an Irish Wake. None of us smiled, none of us, that is, except The Boo. With few exceptions all of us were reasonably well adjusted cadets and his pleasure at catching all of us in one large sweep of the dragnet was obvious. He smiled contentedly, puffing as always on a wet, nauseous cigar butt. He then interrogated each of us on the respective parts we had played in the conspiracy. When we left the office, each of us commented on his remarkable ability to pinpoint guilt and ferret out the truth no matter how deeply it lay hidden. His one statement to me, “Bubba, no need to ask you anything. You’re in it so deep, Clemson may not take you.” My fate seemingly sealed, I awaited the judgment of General Harris and his council of advisors. I waited and waited. School ended and still I heard nothing. None of the staff had been notified of anything. I went to Colonel Courvoisie’s house in the middle of the summer and asked him what the story was.

  “Bubba, if it was General Clark as President, you would have left campus before the rising sun. General Harris is new—sort of a rookie feeling his way around. I recommended all of you for 3/60, but I don’t think you’re going to get anything.” “That’s great news, Colonel,” I exclaimed. “It’s a living, crying shame. You bums broke the rules and come out smelling like a rose garden, when you should be walking the quad with a rifle on your shoulder, wearing blisters on your feet. You got out of this one, but remember, every time you make a move next year, my eyes are going to be on you like stink on manure.” “Yes, Sir.”

  Luck and timing played a crucial role in my first encounter with The Boo. He told me later that a copy of the magazine had been placed in his hands about eight minutes after distribution. The ninth minute found my name written on a pad by his desk as a prime suspect for investigation. So the poem, conceived as a secret gesture of defiance, taught me an invaluable lesson I was never to forget, a lesson which saved me from certain expulsion the following year when Boo tracked me down again—the lesson was to trust no one, to walk in shadows, and never to expose your intentions to other cadets under any circumstances. An extension of the lesson was to avoid Courvoisie. Behind the cigar, the booming voice, and the penetrating eyes resided a competent Assistant Commandant who took the meaning of discipline seriously and who performed his duty with a kind of bloodhound infallibility that demanded respect from the criminal element in Citadel society.

  The theory of grayness once more held dominion over
my existence. Shell-shocked from the Shako experience, I once more retreated into my cocoon, firmly convinced I would never emerge until Graduation Day. Once more, the chameleon skin fitted me and I consciously strove to be nondescript and inoffensive. All would have been fine but for a single event which found my moral sensibilities deeply offended. Had I not become mad as hell and set myself up as a kind of avenging angel for the cause of justice, my journey toward graduation would have been a waltz.

  George Owl, “O” Company Commander, was a nice guy with a poor sense of humor. Since most cadets spend half their time teasing other cadets, this could prove to be a serious impediment in the confining surroundings of battalion life. Whenever Mr. Owl walked by a group of Fourth Battalion cadets he generally was met with a chorus of “Hoot, Hoot, Hoot.” If he had ignored this unimaginative slur on his good name, the habit would probably have died a natural death. But George faced several problems. His Tactical Officer that year was an ambitious, self-aggrandizing officer who exerted a great deal of pressure on “O” Company to perform well in parades, inspections, etc. Most of this pressure fell on George and the strain was beginning to show. When clusters of jocks from “T” Company started chanting, “hoot, hoot” and when sophomores from his own company started doing it behind his back, something had to break. It did.

  Fourth Battalion engaged in a battalion owl call on a Thursday night in early May. Owl paled with rage and frustration. His obvious irritation spurred the cadets on. He huffed and puffed, ranted to the crowd, and struck a rather ludicrous posture when he tried to halt the chanting by raising his arm defiantly. The next day proved to be critical in the life of George Owl, when the pressure finally became too much, and in a moment of supreme frustration, George Owl went momentarily berserk.

  … Friday afternoon parade with its flurry of banners and strut of the bandsmen responding to the roll of drums, began with its usual precision. The companies marched out impressively, the First Sergeant barking cadence and the guidon fluttering above the marching cadets. Owl stood in front of Third Battalion watching the smaller companies file out to parade. “O” Company would be along in a matter of seconds. He would then lead them out in the field. But as the men from Kilo passed him, a sophomore in the middle of the ranks let out a loud derisive, “Hoot, Hoot.” Enraged, Owl wheeled toward the marching company, hoping to spot the offending cadet. All he saw was a cadet in the last rank laughing at his reaction. Without thought and without hesitation, Cadet Owl, Commander of “O” Company, and one of the top twenty ranking officers in his class, took his sword and plunged it into the leg of the sophomore who dared laugh.

  The sword went in about an inch of thigh. Needless to say, the sophomore was taken aback, but in the shock of the moment simply marched out to the parade. He never lost step while this strange incident occurred. The moment passed, George cooled off and gamely led “O” Company to the parade ground.

  “K” Company Commander swung his men into their appointed slots and waited for Charlie Buzze, the Battalion Commander, to give “order arms.” The young sophomore felt something warm on his leg, looked down, and saw that his dress whites were drenched in blood. He prudently posted, walked off the field, and went straight to the hospital. Miss Maloney stopped the bleeding, then patched the wound. No stitches were required.

  The timing of this event was important. It came at a time when a series of confrontations between cadet officers and cadet privates left ill-feeling among a large segment of the corps. Several months before, Peter Them, a senior private of gargantuan proportions, had squirted mustard on the chair of Jerry Bayne, a Cadet Major. Bayne rose out of his chair in the mess hall with a great orange blotch staining his otherwise flawless appearance. Bayne exchanged words with Them and the result was Peter the Great walking the Second Battalion quadrangle to the tune of sixty tours.

  The rift between privates and non-commissioned officers widened when Rodney Engard, a football player with a low-frustration level, picked a cadet sergeant straight up in the air, held him there for several poignant moments, then showed him the way out of the room. A hot young “Tac” smelled Engard blood and demanded Rodney be shown the way out of Lesesne Gate. Debates flourished around campus. Some cadets, primarily officers, felt that Engard should be punished severely. Other cadets, privates, felt the cadet sergeant overstepped his jurisdiction and that Rodney should have thrown him over the fourth division. So the incident that the Company Commander could solve with a single meeting of the protagonists became a raging issue on campus. Rodney’s punishment was a mere 120 tours.

  The most amusing incident occurred by accident. A tradition at The Citadel, time honored and rather sacred, took place every March when the seniors went out of wool pants for the last time in their careers. At the final supper in wools the underclassmen ripped the wool pants from the bodies of unprotesting seniors. The result was a motley arrangement of rags and loin cloths draped haphazardly over private and not-so private parts of the body. Pandemonium ruled unchallenged as wool-hungry sophomores pursued giggling seniors over and under tables. War whoops, screams, and the sound of ripping wool added spice to the strange, chaotic ritual of the annual pants-snatching contest. When it was over, seniors sat at the table naked from the waist down.

  “This is not military, nor is it dignified,” said Jim Probsdorfer, Regimental Commander for the Class of 1967. His staff agreed. So an ultimatum issued from the lofty chambers in Second Battalion said that henceforth no senior shall be forcibly removed from his pants. Cadets grumbled, but Probsdorfer, as all Regimental Commanders, was a kind of surrogate god who held many thunderbolts in his pack of whiteslips. The appointed night came. The Corps, threatened with tours, confinements and/or death, responded very well at first. Even the putrescent wool pants of several senior privates went untouched by glittering sergeants who thought they would be doing The Citadel a favor by destroying them.

  It started somewhere in the Fourth Battalion. Some lad known only to Jesus sneaked a surreptitious hand to the back pocket of some also anonymous senior and ripped the living hell out of his pants. The chain reaction spread throughout the battalion and within seconds every senior in the south mess hall sat admiring his fruit of the looms. Then a kind of rippling hush gripped everyone. Probsdorfer and several of his staff members stood with menacing glares before the rioting battalion. Silence. Probsdorfer walked slowly down the aisle beside the kitchen. Waiters scurried out to see what edict he would make to the fourth battalion staff, what punishment he would mete out to the offending companies. This impressive display of leadership was so awe-inspiring that no one seemed to notice the huge, weighty figure of John Bowditch, 260 pound behemoth, crawling like a G.I. under barbwire, squirming his way under table and chairs, positioning himself for the leap which would immortalize his name forever in any discussion of kamikaze maneuvers at The Citadel. Probsdorfer walked slowly, eyeballing the entire battalion, and did not see the huddled, massive figure of Bowditch crouched behind a chair Probsdorfer would have to pass. No one saw Bowditch until he sprang like an overweight leopard and drove a shoulder into the belly of an astonished Regimental Commander. He knocked him through the swinging doors which led to the kitchen, where they disappeared from sight. Seeing the Regimental Commander handled with such impropriety is something like watching the rape of the Pope. A gasp arose, hissing disbelief. Then all was silent. A moment later, Big John emerged. He waved Jim Probsdorfer’s wool pants like a victory banner over his head. The place went wild. Chicken bones filled the air. Gobs of mashed potatoes flung by fifty hands landed on chairs and heads. A food fight broke out in full force. Probsdorfer in probably the most humiliating situation ever encountered by a cadet officer, slinked out of the back door of the kitchen and scuttled to his room. Though Bowditch became an instant folk hero, a sort of Beowulf, this did not prevent him from walking sixty tours for “assaulting and humiliating the Regimental Commander and inciting to riot.” So when George Owl stabbed the sophomore private with his sword, the
privates of the Corps were more concerned than usual about the punishment the Commandant’s Department would recommend. Cadets argued the various aspects of the case. Would the fact that Owl was a Company Commander affect the thinking of the powers who resided in Jenkins Hall? It did. The word spread slowly, but a few days after the parade, a recurrent rumor spread through every room of each battalion: Owl was going to get off scot free, without any punishment whatsoever.

  Believing in the natural order of things, I was more astounded than angry. It seemed inconceivable that Owl would not receive even a single demerit for plunging a sword into another cadet’s leg. No matter how much pressure he was under, no matter what prior conditions contributed to Owl’s actions, I could see no justification in condoning his act completely. The administration merely whitewashed the incident. The sophomore prudently kept his mouth shut after his Company Commander explained the likely consequences if he (the sophomore) tried to crucify Owl.