A tall, good-looking upperclassman with burred, white-sidewall crew cut, wearing many stripes on the sleeve of his Dress Gray coat, stepped before the class. They nearly gasped. He was the commander of Beast Barracks—the “King of Beasts” they called him, a guy named VanRiper. He was also the Chairman of the Honor Committee, and as he spoke of the code, his voice carried the echoes of the old Riding Hall itself.
“This is your code,” said VanRiper. “It belongs to you.” He struck an impressive, cinematic figure in his crisp white trousers and Dress Gray coat. The new cadets listened raptly.
“In the next two months, you will attend many meetings. The workings of the code will be explained to you in detail, by your company honor representative and others. If you have any questions, you should ask them.”
VanRiper lectured in general terms on the Honor System, the mechanism by which the code was administered by the cadet upper classes. Then he dropped his voice. In low, serious tones through the PA, he told the new cadets the real reason they were in South Aud this night.
Because the Honor Code belonged to the cadets, they were to talk about it with no one outside the Corps of Cadets. Outsiders had no business with the code. His implication was unavoidable. Upon entering West Point and taking the oath, the new cadets were bound by a trust as solemn as the Oath of Allegiance itself to reveal to no one the most important truths of their lives as cadets. He suggested the new cadets not discuss the code even among themselves. They would receive adequate instruction on the code and the Honor System, and if they had any questions or doubts, they should be taken directly to the company honor representative, a first-classman. Discussion of the code among new cadets was dangerous, VanRiper explained. It often led to misinterpretation and misconceptions, either of which could lead further to the dread honor violation, the lone penalty for which was expulsion from the Corps.
It was a narrow, dangerous path along which they would move for the next four years. The only way to reach the end was to follow rules. All you had to do was not lie, cheat, or steal, and you were assured passage into that void known as graduation. There was holiness in the Honor Code that was hard to miss. At meetings with company honor reps, pronouncements about the code were delivered in evangelical tones. This was true when the new cadets were counseled to turn in even their best friends or roommates, should they commit an honor violation. The new cadets owed only one higher allegiance, and that was to God. Short of Him, the code was all.
By the third week of Beast, David Hand recognized perfection in a system requiring him to subordinate all emotion, logic, and reason to a higher goal. So much about Beast was petty, worthless, without meaning. The Honor Code could be used. Though the code did not remove completely the desirability of establishing deep and lasting friendships with classmates, it did provide an excuse if one was needed. Hand grabbed it. The code put most new cadets on the defensive. The code assumed you were at once cop and criminal, best friend and secret agent. The code was vertical. Every cadet’s allegiance was directed upward, to the code. But not David Hand’s. He found a more comfortable allegiance, closer to home: himself. He’d play by the rules, all right. The rules protected him. Deftly, Hand had figured the Honor Code’s greatest shortcoming and turned it to his advantage.
The Honor System defined the code’s strictures along finite lines, spelling out in detail exactly what was considered lying, cheating, and stealing. Additionally, the Honor System defined the slightest deviation from the code as “quibbling,” failure to tell “the whole truth.” In delineating the code, however, the Honor System necessarily established those areas which lay outside its scope. The black-and-white Honor Code was surrounded by a gray sea through which one could swim with alacrity. Thus Hand uncovered the secret of the West Point Honor Code only a few understood as well as he. By consciously defining for its young men what they could not do. West Point unconsciously established what they could do. They could search out the edges of the code and walk them expertly. To David Hand, the West Point Honor Code mirrored the society from which he came. In New Orleans, rules abounded. Finding your way around them was how you got ahead. It was an orderly system with chaos at its core. Mardi Gras alone was evidence that madness was necessary to complete the social equation in New Orleans. At West Point, the equation was more complex—differential instead of algebraic—thus more profound. Plebe year was West Point’s Mardi Gras. And the Honor Code provided the masks behind which the academy hid its true identity.
David Hand embraced the Honor Code because it was familiar territory. Its beautiful irony—by identifying evil, the code emboldened cadets to explore and closely acquaint themselves with its cousin, the edge—fascinated Hand, entranced him. The Honor Code offered him a system he accepted unquestioningly. Hand had never taken anything seriously in his life. Examining the code and its myriad nuances, he found he needed it. The Honor Code gave order to his life. The Honor Code epitomized a creature Hand found irresistible: Proud, dignified, taut with military bearing and discipline, dedicated to principles larger than the self, the code’s vision of an ideal cadet was ineluctably masculine.
David Hand fell in love with the Honor Code early the third week of Beast Barracks.
Slaight was casting wildly about for a way to flush out Dippel and his crummy little scheme, getting guys to run errands for him, in return for blind dates on weekends. Slaight imagined him, sitting in his room, flipping through the pages of his yearbook, each photo of a pretty girl like money in the goddamn bank. Slaight was pissed. Nobody from the squad was coming forward because they all saw Dippel and his magic yearbook as the only game in town, which indeed it was. But doing a guy a favor was one thing. Pimping for personal profit was something else. In desperation, Slaight decided to call together his squad one night and hold what was known in those days as a “manhood session.” He would ask his squad of eleven men, bracing in a semicircle around his desk, who among them was still a virgin. Maybe that would flush out Dippel and put the hammer on his little operation. He called for the squad. When they were positioned, he asked:
“Okay, beans. Who among you is still cherry? We got any virgins in this squad, any of you little bastards not gotten laid by your girl friends back home? Come on. Let’s see it.”
The new cadets chanced anxious glances at one another, to see if anyone would thrust forward a fist—the cadet equivalent of raising one’s hand—the nearly sacrosanct admission he hadn’t “gotten any” from his girl friend. There was a moment’s pause as they inspected each other. Slaight watched the scene with detached amusement, recalling the exact same moment his plebe year during Beast, the exact same feeling. He’d been the only one in the squad to hold out his fist. Slaight watched the anxiety in the room heat to a cherry glow. For sure, that dufus Dippel, who couldn’t get his pecker out without catching it in his zipper, would be the one. David Hand stuck out his fist. Slaight was wrong. His plan backfired. But he had to play it out.
“Ah. Hand. Still cherry, huh?”
“Yessir,” Hand answered matter-of-factly.
“Can’t hear you, Hand. You saying you haven’t gotten any from your girl friend back home?”
“YESSIR,” said Hand, his fist still at right angles to his body.
Fuckin’ kid’s got guts. He surveyed the rest of the squad to see if any of the rest of them would snicker at Hand. This was their chance to get back at the guy who had been lording it over them for the past two weeks, the guy who could do everything better than they could. Slaight pitied Hand when he and his roommates reached their room. Hand would never see the end of this. He remembered his own experience as a plebe, the total humiliation … the ribbing and cutting the rest of the guys had done … cherry … cherry … cherry…. Slaight regretted he had called the “manhood session.” Not only had his Dippel plan failed, but it backfired on Hand, guy who’d pulled Dippel through his first two weeks of Beast. Jesus. There was something about Hand … something admirable about his arrogance.
“S
tand at attention, Hand,” commanded Slaight. He had to do something.
“If I hear any of you fuckers dishing out shit to Hand because he had the balls to admit he’s still cherry … if I hear one fuckin’ peep outta you beans, I’ll have every last one of you decorating the walls in here until the end of this detail, right up to the minute I go on leave. Is that understood?”
“YESSIR!” The squad chorused the word.
“It just so happens, gentlemen, that my squad leader held a manhood session exactly like this one when I was a beanhead in Beast. And I was the poor fuckin’ smack, the only cherry beanhead in the squad, and I was standing there with my fist in the air like some kinda goddamn goon, just like Hand. So I know how it feels. Now, you smacks post back to your rooms and get your fannies ready for bed. And remember. If I hear one goddamn word, that man’s gonna wish to hell he’d never dipped his fuckin’ wick, I’m going to sweat so much of his neck up against my wall. You got that?”
“YESSIR!”
“Now, POST.”
They left on the double.
Over the next few days, Hand grew more distant from his roommates … from the whole squad. You could see it. Hand would show up out in the ranks for a formation. He’d be the first one out there, maybe two or three minutes early. And there he’d stand, all alone, until the rest of them would arrive. They’d move in next to him without exchanging secret glances, the way plebes always did, trying to beat the system, get away with breaking little rules like muttering “heeeeaauh,” that seal-honk, the way Slaight and buck used to do when they were plebes. Leroy Buck was a squad leader in one of the other platoons in Slaight’s company, and the two of them stayed up late nights talking about the David Hand situation. It seemed irresoluble. Hand was just as stiff, just as arrogant, just as perfect in his own special way as his classmates, the rest of the squad, were tight-knit as a team. They were like mutually opposing forces, like-poles of two magnets, repelling each other. The truly remarkable thing was that Hand alone appeared to have the strength of the other ten altogether.
Slaight watched them carefully. No one was taunting Hand, at least not out in the open where he could see it. But he could imagine the little diddlyshit that was going on behind closed doors after taps at night, the snide comments, the slippery crap guys pulled on other guys, especially when they were forced to be as close together as a squad in Beast Barracks.
Still, Hand managed to maintain his own. When Woodruff would hold one of his song sessions in Room 1144, Hand would find a reason to be down in the sinks, shaving or taking a shower by himself. He would return to his room precisely at taps, just as the Hellcat began blowing taps, before the cadet in charge of quarters (the CQ) would hit the 11th Division yelling “ALLRIGHT,” the old cadet password, echoed by each successive cadet room up the stairwell, from 1111 on up to 1144, signaling that each cadet was present and accounted for at taps, negating the need for a physical inspection of rooms. Hand would make it back to his room before taps, before the Allright, after the rest of the squad had returned to their rooms. He didn’t want to have much to do with them, nor they with him.
Morale in the squad bottomed. They sagged, the plebes, slogging their way through each day without enthusiasm, without the sense of irony and humor so necessary … so necessary to fuckin’ survive. They weren’t surviving. The squad was dying. Slaight began to have premonitions of mass resignations. He felt guilty and helpless. Guilty because it had been he who had forced the issue with Hand. And helpless because Hand was such an ironheaded bastard, as inflexible as the Military Academy itself. There seemed little Slaight could do to bring Hand and the squad back together. He couldn’t patch things up. He and Leroy Buck pondered the problem. There just didn’t seem to be anything they could do. Hand was such a plucky scrapper of a guy, they both began wondering if he came from Cajun stock down in New Orleans. But there was something else about him, something … well … prudish. That was it. Hand was a goddamn prude. Thinking he was better than the rest of them was conceited, stuffy, morally superior. Slaight began to wonder. He’d never seen anyone quite like Hand before, anyone tied in such a neat, impregnable knot. Slaight wondered if there wasn’t something hiding inside Hand’s knot. Having no patience for the incompetence and weaknesses of the other guys in the squad was one thing. But Hand really hated it. He hated weakness. He hated weakness like nobody Slaight had ever seen before. And so Slaight wondered: Why? Why?
He called Hand into his room once or twice for regular counseling sessions—the whole squad got the same counseling so nobody could accuse Hand of receiving special treatment. He told Hand to relax, chatted with him, probed him, tried to figure where all that hate was coming from. Hand wouldn’t open up. Not a crack. Slaight learned only one thing in his sessions with Hand, something he would never have suspected without those informal chats. Hand knew nothing—absolutely nothing—about Slaight and his sister, Samantha. It seemed amazing at first, and Slaight probed, tested, talked openly of Vassar and Vassar girls in general, giving Hand every opportunity to let on that he knew Slaight and his sister had gone steady. Finally the conclusion was inescapable. Samantha had told her brother nothing about Ry Slaight. Hand didn’t know.
Another day passed without incident. Slaight was getting more and more depressed. If you couldn’t lash together a goddamn squad of beanheads, then what the fuck could you do with yourself? Doubt nagged at him like a vulture. He figured any minute the Big Wazoo was gonna come down and call his number, and that was gonna be it, man. It.
At 7 P.M., right after supper, a loud, single knock came on his door.
“Enter.”
“Sir, New Cadet Hand requests permission to speak.” Hand was in the door, stiffly at attention, impeccable as usual.
“Come on in, Hand. What’s on your mind?” It looked like Hand had finally come around to complain that he was getting razzed by his roommates. Then he saw Hand’s face. For the first time all week, he looked calm. Content. Hand stood bracing in front of Slaight’s desk, eyes riveted on a spot on the wall above Slaight’s head.
“Sir, I would like to report a man for an honor violation, and I was wondering, sir. Are you the man to whom I should report?” Slaight grimaced. Here it comes.
“Yeah. What is it? Who is it? Relax, Hand. Sit down. Tell me the whole thing, beginning to end.”
Hand sat down in a chair across the desk from Slaight, his back straight, head thrust forward. He spelled out what he had denned for himself as a textbook case of quibbling. It seemed that Crolius, a short, hawk-faced miner’s son from the hill country of Kentucky, had confided in Hand that day—after three days of silence on the matter—that he was not a virgin, exactly, but he was “kind of a virgin, you know, if you want to look at it that way,” as Hand recalled Crolius’ words. Their conversation had taken place that afternoon in the showers. Hand was the last one down in the sinks showering after bayonet drill, and Crolius had remained after the others had gone upstairs. He obviously felt sorry for Hand and the way he’d been treated by the rest of the squad since the manhood session three days ago. So Crolius had decided to confide in Hand, believing Hand would feel better knowing there was another guy in the squad who was … well … uncertain about his manhood.
“Kind of a virgin, you know, if you want to look at it that way” was a rarefied definition of sexual experience to which eighteen-year-olds were privy in a lonesome way in those days. Crolius was going steady with his high school girl friend back home in Kentucky, and just before he had left for the academy, in a fit of passion, they had gotten into some heavy petting. Once or twice—he couldn’t remember exactly—he’d gotten his penis out of his pants, and his girl friend had fondled it. And once he had gotten her pants down, and he poked his penis around “down there,” as Crolius told Hand, and he had come. That much was for sure, he said. There had been “one hell of a goddamn mess.” But he couldn’t be sure he had gotten “inside.” Now you could take getting “inside,” or you could leave it, so far a
s Crolius was concerned. The whole thing sure had felt good, he told Hand.
Hand asked him if he was going to tell Slaight that he was still “cherry,” and Crolius had said, hell no, far as he was concerned, messing around down there and getting off was “it.” David Hand wasn’t so sure. In fact, he told Slaight, the more he thought about it during supper, the more he figured Crolius had quibbled when he hadn’t stuck out his fist at the manhood session, admitting he was “cherry.” He was as much as admitting he quibbled now, explaining his doubt that he had gotten “inside.” Hand related his interpretation of the fact with a self-satisfied look on his face.
“Are you serious about this, Hand?” Slaight asked incredulously.
“Yessir. Quite serious. The man quibbled. I want to report him.”
Slaight tried to poke holes in Hand’s interpretation of the definition of quibbling, pointing out that to Crolius, what he had done had been “it” so far as he was concerned. And when it came to quibbling, the intent to deceive was all-important. How could Crolius have an intent to deceive, when he’d just spelled out to Hand in graphic detail his own sexual experience? Hand stood fast. He had listened to the lectures from the company honor representative with the six senses of a goddamn eagle, and he was convinced he had caught Crolius quibbling. He was going to see Crolius tried before the Honor Committee for not having joined him in sticking out his fist at the manhood session. Slaight was dumbfounded. He stared hard across the desk, fixed Hand’s eyes, and held them.
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