“Well, well, well. Mr. Slaight. Imagine finding you here.” The voice came from somewhere behind him, and Slaight turned around on the bench in the whirlpool to see who it was.
“Using your Saturday evenings profitably these days, I see,” said the voice. It was Consor, the doctor Slaight had had when he was a plebe, twenty-eight days with this guy thumping his chest and peering down his throat and shooting his fanny full of antibiotics. Twenty-eight days under the supervision of a doctor, and the goddamn guy had to be a grad. Now he’s the Saturday duty doctor. Slaight cursed his luck. He’d never get any codeine out of Consor. Grad docs were too hip to cadet scams.
“How’s it going, Major Consor?” asked Slaight. “Long time no see.”
“Maybe long time no see for you, Mr. Slaight, but I’ve picked up your scent over here occasionally. It seems your chest colds and flus dovetail nicely with the schedule of midterm exams, I’ve noticed, Mr. Slaight. Let’s see. How many days of bed rest have you pulled down over the past year, Slaight? Ten? Twenty?”
“Been keeping an eye on me, have you, sir?”
“You bet, Slaight, You may cough your way past these young captains we’ve got over here, but the first time you draw me on sick call, I’ll shove so many needles full of distilled water in your ass, you won’t be able to sit down for a week.”
“Come on, sir, you know I wouldn’t try to pull anything on sick call. Only time I’ve been over here this year was when I got the flu. They gave me the basic load of pills and sent me to bed for a few days, that’s all. I was sick. For real.”
“How many days, Slaight? How many days of bed rest you rack up this year? Tell me. I’m curious.”
“Eight, sir. Four pairs. I never pulled down a whole week. There’s guys in my company who talk their way into a week of bed rest all the time. Not me, sir. I just come in for a couple of days’ rack when I get worn out, that’s all. Nothing outrageous.”
“Indeed. What are you doing over here tonight, Slaight? Working on your muscle tone for summer leave?” The major was standing next to the whirlpool tank in his khakis and white coat, grinning like he’d caught Slaight breaking some minor regulation, which he had. Technically, the whirlpool was a prescription therapy, and cadets needed a doctor’s signature on a “sick slip” to use it. Slaight’s deal with the orderlies in the physical therapy room had been strictly off the books. He traded a week of whirlpool for a stack of back-issue Playboys.
“Nosir. I’ve been on the area all week. I’ve got an Emergency Sick Call slip to come over and have somebody take a look at my feet. Are you the duty doctor tonight, sir?”
“You guessed it, Slaight. What seems to be the problem with your tootsies?” The major grinned widely and leaned on the tank. Slaight lifted one of his legs and propped his foot on the edge of the steel tank. The whirlpool had softened the skin around the edges of the broken blisters, and the bleeding had stopped. But his feet still looked like Salisbury steak, raw. The major whistled.
“Christ, Slaight, why haven’t you been over here before this? Your goddamn feet are a crime.”
“I’ve been coming over every day after area formation, sir, getting them worked on. I just peeled off all the moleskin and bandages. That’s why they look sorry.” He had both feet on the edge of the whirlpool now, and the quite purr of the Jacuzzi vibrated his toes slightly.
“You mean you’ve been over here every day this week, and nobody has issued you a medical excuse slip from the area formation?” The major looked incredulous as he picked at Slaight’s raw toes.
“I’ve been coming every day, yessir, and one or two of the docs who’ve seen me have tried to issue me a medical excuse, but I don’t want one, sir. Can’t take one. Got to walk my hours and get them over with. I’ve only got seven left to walk, then I’m finished. I’ll be off on Thursday.”
“What do you mean you can’t take a medical excuse, young man? If a doctor issues you a medical excuse from the area, you take it, and that’s that.”
“No can do, sir. My tac, Major Grimshaw, won’t let anybody in the company be excused from the area for any reason. We had guys walking hours this winter with hundred-degree fevers. Grimshaw says if you take a medical, he’ll give you double hours for every hour you get excused from. Nobody wants to walk those extra hours, sir. Guys in the Company will crawl the area rather than have Grimshaw come down on them like that. Last year, one of the firsties decided to take a medical excuse from the area in May, and Grimshaw had him walking seven hours a day all through June Week, soon as his excuse ran out. Guy walked up until the night before graduation. He was so worn out, he didn’t even bother going to the graduation ball. Family didn’t even come up for June Week. He was broken. Everybody in the company saw him go, day by day, just fading away out there on the area. He had hemorrhoids, shin splints, I think the guy even had bursitis by the time he was finished with the area. Grimshaw put him out there for eight days, seven hours a day, fifty-six hours in all. It was incredible. I’m not about to lock horns with Grimshaw after that.”
Major Consor shook his head slowly from side to side, poking a wood tongue depressor softly into the flesh of Slaight’s right foot. He reached over and shut off the Jacuzzi.
“Get yourself out of there, dry off, and come down to my office. We’ll take a look at those feet of yours.” The doctor turned and walked out of the PT room as Slaight pulled himself slowly from the steaming tub. Old Consor wasn’t such a bad dude after all. He pulled on his summer-weight gray trousers, stuck his feet in a pair of cotton hospital slippers he’d gotten from one of the nurses’ aides, and shuffled down the hall. He found Consor sitting at his desk in a small room near the dispensary, right where he’d been two years ago. Prints, line drawings, and posters of ski scenes decorated the tiny windowless room. His M.D. and Internal Medicine Specialist certificates were mounted over his desk, along with framed diplomas from Airborne and Ranger schools.
Major George Consor was a small man, 5'6” tall, the absolute minimum required height for admission to West Point. At thirty-two, he was already balding, a shiny spot forming at the crown of his head. His face was all angles, rights and lefts and ups and downs, handsome in a broken, Picasso-like way. Slaight had been up to his house for dinner a couple of times when he was a yearling, after Consor had him as a patient the year before. He remembered that Consor had a good-looking dark-haired wife and three little kids who always seemed to be running around in pajamas with feet on them, fuzzy little outfits, pale blue and pink, real little-kid-looking. Once after dinner when they were having coffee in the living room, and the kids were off in bed, Consor’s wife said that Slaight and her husband looked a lot alike. The remark made the two of them nervous, because they did look something alike, like brothers ten years apart maybe. Slaight’s nose had been broken twice when he was a kid and had a perceptible bend to the left, and a bulge, a knot of extra cartilage right on the bridge below his eyes. His cheekbones were pronounced. The hollows formed in his cheeks and tapered to a pointed chin. Looking at Consor’s face again, a year later, well, they did look alike, which probably explained the gentle tension between them, the constant verbal jabbing and ducking and joking that went on whenever they met in the stands at a football game or in the lobby after a movie. Slaight hadn’t been invited up for dinner after that night. Consor’s wife had made one of those observations women sometimes noticed which seemed to … get in the way … interrupt the flow of things between Slaight and her husband. Slaight remembered the subtle tension in the room after Mrs. Consor had said they looked alike. It was sexual.
“Have a seat, Mr. Slaight,” said the major. “Put your feet up on that stool.” Slaight did as he was told. The major worked silently, quickly, surely, swabbing each foot with some kind of antiseptic solution, drying them with sterile gauze. Then he took a roll of what looked like thick white tape from a cabinet next to his desk.
“This is some new stuff we just got in,” he explained, as he began cutting away with a pa
ir of scissors. “It’s padded moleskin, a quarter inch of high-density foam with an adhesive backing. Better than the old cotton stuff. They developed it for Vietnam, but they found it just absorbed moisture and jungle rot over there, so they shipped it all back to the States. Now we’ve got it.” He applied the thick moleskin to Slaight’s feet with gentle skill, ringing the raw areas with open circles of padding, leaving a hole in the middle for the raw skin to breathe. When he was finished, Slaight’s feet looked like something out of Walt Disney … or the space program. White stuff in a weird, arty pattern all over the place … Slaight stood up. They felt good. He’d been so mesmerized watching Consor work on his feet, he’d forgotten what a good doctor the guy was.
“What else have they been doing for you over here this week?” asked the major, with genuine concern.
“They’ve been giving me Darvon 65’s and codeine, sir,” said Slaight. The doctor reached in a desk drawer and pulled out two yellow manila envelopes and handed them to Slaight. Each contained about a dozen capsules, Darvon and codeine.
“Now. Let’s see. Anything else we can do for you? Morphine?” The doctor laughed that dry crackle of his and pushed his chair back against his desk. Slaight was surprised. Consor was known as a lifer, one of the rare army doctors who intended to make it a career. He’d figured Consor would balk at codeine. Slaight grinned.
“You know, sir, there is one thing you could do for me.”
“Sit down, Mr. Slaight,” said the major, indicating the same chair with his forefinger. He always addressed cadets as “mister” the proper way, avoiding the first-name familiarity preferred by many young officers. Consor’s manner made Slaight feel … respected. That was it. With Consor, there was no illusion of equality, that bullshit all us men together nonsense you got from some officers. Instead, you got this steady feeling the man respected you as a cadet, as a surbordinate. It made Slaight feel comfortable, but hardly at ease. The difference was subtle but sure. Consor knew what it was all about.
“What have you got on your mind, young man?” asked the major. “You want me to see what I can do about your tac, Grimshaw? I think what he’s doing with your company is reprehensible …”
“Nosir,” Slaight cut in. “Nosir. That’s the one thing I don’t want you doing. I’m the only guy in the company on the area right now, and if you so much as squeaked, he’d know where it was coming from. He’d put my stuff in a sling and hang it there for the rest of my days. I don’t want to spend firstie year pounding ground.”
“I see what you mean,” said Consor. “What is it, then? What do you want to talk about?”
“You’re the duty doc today, sir. You hear anything abbot this plebe they found up in Popolopen this morning, drowned? His name was David Hand. He was in my squad last year during first Beast detail. I heard he was dead out on the area, but nobody seems to know anything more than that.”
“Sure. I know all about the deceased cadet. I did the autopsy on the body this morning at 0900. Very peculiar case. Very peculiar case, indeed. I started cutting on the body at 0900, finished with him about an hour later. Some colonel from Brigade Headquarters came into my office here and demanded all copies of my report. I told him this was very irregular, but the provost marshall was with him, Fitzgerald, with whom I work all the time on these things. They use me for autopsies because of my internal medicine specialty. Fitzgerald indicated that it was okay to turn the whole thing over to the colonel. Peculiar, nevertheless.”
“So? Did you give him your report, sir?”
“Well. You are curious about this, aren’t you, Slaight?”
“Yessir. I knew the kid pretty well. He was from New Orleans. Had a sister at Vassar. I used to date her when I was a plebe. In fact, she was the girl who used to come and visit me when I was down with pneumonia. Maybe you remember her.”
“Indeed I do. The rather tall girl with auburn hair? Quite attractive?”
“That’s the one.”
“Well. I see your interest has some basis other than aimless curiosity. I guess I can tell you about the deceased Mr. Hand. But I don’t know … you’re going to have to keep this pretty close to your chest, you understand? An autopsy is a sensitive medical matter. And this one seemed particularly sensitive, given the circumstances of the young man’s death. The colonel and the provost marshal seemed highly agitated about the whole business.”
“Yessir. I understand, sir.” Slaight leaned forward eagerly.
‘"Well.” Consor had a Jack Benny way with the word “well,” pausing after he said it, waiting for a modicum of suspense to build before going on.
“Well.” He paused again, straightening the little pair of Ben Franklin glasses which were always perched on his nose like they were about to fall off. “I gave them my report, of course. I’d just finished typing it myself. You know they don’t give us any clerical backup over here. All the clerks and jerks are over in the Tactical Department or down in Thayer Hall. They asked for the whole thing … all the copies. I handed them over. It wasn’t until they had left that I remembered my handwritten draft.” Consor tapped a pile of papers on his desk. Slaight glanced at the pile and looked Consor in the eye.
“So what did you determine, sir? What was the cause of death?”
“I’m not sure I should be telling you anything about my autopsy, Slaight. Under normal circumstances, such a report is to be considered confidential until I’m officially notified otherwise.”
“Come on, sir. I knew the kid. Knew him pretty well, in fact. I’m not just curious. I’m … involved.” The word popped from Slaight’s mouth involuntarily and hung in the air between them like smoke.
“Well …” Consor paused again, pushing his glasses up on his nose. The glasses were not army issue. Nor was the white jacket he wore, a Dacron and cotton loose-fitting garment he must have picked up in medical school. What set the white jacket apart from those worn by other academy doctors was that Consor’s was not starched. In fact, there was nothing starched about Dr. Consor. In some way Slaight had never been able to put his finger on, Consor didn’t fit. He was the academy’s only doctor who was also a grad, a distinction of absolutely no merit where other West Pointers were concerned. To have dropped out of the sacred combat arms and embraced the discipline of medicine put Consor in a class of one at West Point in 1968. He wasn’t just different. He was what the tacs liked to call “a strange bird.” It was a pejorative description, and it wasn’t meant to be funny. Consor must have sensed this, for he flaunted the extent to which he was different from West Pointers of his grade. He chose to live off-post, though he was eligible for government-sponsored housing. He never made the Officers Club “Happy Hour” scene. He was known as something of a loner. The granny glasses Consor wore symbolized his breakaway stance as a grad, but Slaight sensed Consor’s ambivalence about West Point ran deeper than his image suggested.
From precocious personal experience, rooted in his life on the unpredictable, dingy, rotten streets of Leavenworth, Slaight knew that one’s image was composed of both myth and reality. Myth served as a shield to protect reality. Construction and maintenance of one’s image was necessary. Slaight had learned at an early age, for in myth could be found power reality often lacked. Slaight had detected in Consor this carefully balanced equation which comprised his image as “a strange bird,” an oddball West Pointer, a loner on the verge of being an outcast. But Consor had never, ever let Slaight get away with anything, even the tiniest con. He played the game—doctor/patient, officer/cadet—and he played it straight. This part of him was real, believable. The rest of it, the granny glasses and all, Slaight guessed was myth, at least in part. Consor used this portion of his image to mask emotions with which Consor had not come to grips.
Slaight watched the doctor. He didn’t know whether Consor would reveal his findings. The doctor shifted from side to side in his chair. He was staring out the door, down the hall, as if expecting a visitor to enter at any moment. He wasn’t nervous. Nor was he two
-faced, a “schizo,” as cadets liked to call officers who played buddy-buddy one minute and wrote you up for insurbordination the next. Consor was acting the way he always acted. Every motion of his body, every move of his eyes, the way he kept his hands folded, fingers interlocking, in his lap—everything was planned and executed with precision. Slaight figured Dr. Consor needed his planned, precise behavior for the same reason he had created a two-dimensional image for himself. Slaight figured Consor loved West Point, but couldn’t bring himself to admit it. Consor had probably suffered an obscene, grim, and, worst of all, lonely plebe year because he was Jewish. In those days, the late 1950s, cadets literally tortured Jewish plebes. It was a part of the academy’s heritage everyone had forgotten except its victims. Consor signaled his individuality as a doctor, as a grad, and as a man, for he had been victorious. He had persevered. And for reasons unknown to Slaight, Dr. Consor had drawn an odd but clearly visible strength from his experience. He had a look in his eyes, magnified by his frameless granny glasses, that was impossible to ignore. Consor’s eyes were gentle, pale blue, droopy at the edges. When focused and fixed with a glare, they telegraphed: Don’t fuck with me.
“Well …” said Consor again, drawing in a deep breath. Slaight leaped into the gap.
“Out on the area, they said it was an accident, Hand drowning. The word’s out. They’re gonna announce it in the mess hall at supper.”
“That’s peculiar,” said Consor, studying his fingernails absent-mindedly.
“Why so, sir?”
“I would have thought by now they’d have an academy-wide search going full force. I thought they would demand anyone with knowledge of Hand’s death to come forward immediately.”
“No search, sir. No demands.” Slaight baited him.
“He drowned, of course.”
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