Dress Gray

by Lucian K. Truscott

  “Hand, you dullard, don’t you realize Crolius is the only goddamn friend you’ve got in this squad? He was the guy who helped you last week with those out-of-control roommates of yours, Dippel and Woodruff. Only when you and Crolius were working together on them did their shit finally start coming together. Crolius didn’t have to give you any help. They weren’t his goddamn roommates. He did it to help you as much as them. He did it to help the squad, dammit. Don’t you understand that?”

  “Yessir. I understand. His behavior last week in no way obviates the fact that today he quibbled.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about, Hand? Crolius came to you. He volunteered the information. You didn’t catch him hiding anything … lying, for crying out loud. He wasn’t hiding. It was his way of letting you know that you might still be a virgin, but he identifies with you, Hand. Don’t you see that?”

  “Yessir. I still say the man quibbled.”

  “Quibbling. Jesus. You know what a broad fuckin’ area quibbling is, Hand? You know how fuckin’ broad it is? Lemme tell you. You don’t. And what you’re going to do if you go the next step with this, which is to the company honor representative, what you’re going to do is open up a whole big can of fuckin’ worms you know nothing—nothing—about, you understand me? You’re going to create an enormous amount of trouble for Crolius, who’s only trying to be a friend to you, the only decent fucker in the whole damn squad. And you’re going to plunge him into deep shit, Hand. He might go up before the Honor Committee. He might not. But it doesn’t really matter. The minute you report him to the honor rep, you’re going to create doubt in everybody’s minds about old Crolius. No matter what happens to him from that time on, his reputation as a cadet will be stained until the day he leaves this goddamn place. You understand what I’m telling you, mister? You understand the gravity of the situation you’re creating here? You’re fuckin’ around with another man’s life, Hand. Has that thought occurred to you?”

  “Yessir.”

  “And you still figure you’re willing to fuck with another man’s life because you’ve got quibbling fuckin’ down, is that it, Hand?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Well, I knew you were an arrogant little prick, but I guess I just never knew how arrogant. You amaze me, Hand. You really do.” Slaight sat there staring at him. Hand stared back, impassive. Emotionless.

  “I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do, Hand. I’m gonna tell you a little story about old Ry Slaight, just like I told the squad the other day that I had to be the only one to admit I was cherry back in my Beast squad. I’m gonna teach you a fuckin’ lesson about quibbling, mister. Then you can make up your mind whether you still want to see the honor rep. Got that?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Now listen up, Hand. One weekend last year, I was on a trip-section down to New York, and me and a couple of other guys checked into the Statler Hilton in our uniforms, our Dress Gray uniforms. Some chicks noticed us down in the lobby, and in a few minutes, up in our rooms, just as we’re changing into civvies and getting ready for a night on the town, there comes this knock at the door. These girls are all from Seton Hall, a Catholic girls’ school near here. And they’re all in formal gowns. It’s their big class ball at the Waldorf Hotel, uptown, seventy-five fuckin’ bucks a head. And one of them got stood up by some Princeton preppie fuck-stick. So they asked me and this classmate of mine, John Lugar, if one of us would wear our uniform and take the girl who got stood up to the ball at the Waldorf. She’d shelled out $150, and this stupid shit from Princeton had taken a walk on her, and there she was downstairs in some room crying her little beadies out. So to make a long story short, me and Lugar flipped and I lost. I put my uniform back on, went downstairs to pick her up, and she turns out to be a goddamn fox! At least 2.8 out of 3.0. I mean a looker. So I lucked out—a good-looking chick, tickets to a $150 dinner-dance—what more could I ask, right?”

  “Yessir.”

  “So I take her up to the Waldorf with the rest of these hens and their dates from Princeton and Yale and places like that. I’m in my Dress Gray. And who do I run into up there, but some dufus firstie, who comes up to me, right in front of the girl, and asks me what I’m doing in Dress Gray at a formal ball, where I should be wearing full Dress Gray, the formal uniform. I told him how I’d gotten roped into escorting this girl I didn’t even know, and he wanders off, and I thought everything was cool. Then I get back here to West Point, and Sunday night, the honor rep comes around to my room and tells me I’ve been reported for quibbling by some firstie. Said the guy had reported me for an “intent to deceive” because these civilians didn’t know the goddamn difference between Dress Gray and full Dress Gray, and he just figured I was trying to pull a fast one on them. Well. I mean, Jesus! I thought I was doing the noble cadet thing, right? And I get reported for fuckin’ ‘quibbling,’ by some half-wit firstie from another company who doesn’t know me, never seen me in his life. Man, I was pissed. Anyway, the thing goes to an honor subcommittee, and ends there. I explained to them what the story was, and they killed the charges. The honor rep told me he knew it was a crock of shit, but he had to take it to the subcommittee, because that’s the way the system works. You getting what I’m telling you, Hand?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Are you sure, mister?”

  “Yessir.”

  “So you understand what I mean about this quibbling thing. It’s a can of goddamn worms, Hand. It’s like this gigantic gray area in the system. I know they tell you there’s no gray areas—there’s only black and fuckin’ white. But I’ve been here two years longer than you, Hand, and I’ve seen the system work, up close. I’ve seen the Honor Committee come swooping down on a guy, and before you know it, he’s gone, and you never even find out what he was supposed to have done. Then you hear about another guy who’s done some outrageous shit, and the Honor Committee finds a goddamn loophole in the Honor System, and he’s let off the hook. Before the Honor Committee, Hand, there are no rules of evidence, no procedural rights, no right to representation by counsel, no right to confront witnesses against you … not a solitary goddamn right you are afforded as a citizen of the United States under the Bill of Rights. The Honor Code is a hell of a good thing, Hand. Nobody can argue with those words, ‘A cadet does not lie, cheat, or steal.’ But Jesus, the Honor Committee—sometimes they operate like they’re wearing black hoods, sometimes they decide the fate of a guy in a matter of seconds, and it’s a decision that’s going to follow the guy all his life. Nobody’s perfect, Hand. These guys who end up as honor reps on the Honor Committee, that doesn’t make them any more perfect than you or me or the guys who are charged with honor violations whose cases they’ve got to hear. Now listen up to me, Hand. You listening?”

  “Yessir.”

  “I am not sitting here telling you I don’t believe in the Honor Code. I believe in the code as much as any other swinging dick around here. But I’ve got my problems with the Honor System. It seems to me—hell, it’s been my experience—that there are just too fuckin’ many opportunities for abuses within the system, and not enough protections for individuals, which is you and me—and Crolius. Am I making myself clear, Hand?”

  “Yessir.”

  “The single fact that a man cannot confront the witnesses against him just turns my fuckin’ stomach, Hand. It makes me sick. Turns a goddamn Honor Board into a kangaroo court, is what it does. And some of these guys I’ve seen kicked out of here on honor. Jesus. I wish you could see them when they go. It’s fuckin’ pathetic. They’re turned into overnight outcasts. Lepers. So lemme tell you something, Hand. If you go to the honor rep with this thing Crolius told you this afternoon, you are fuckin’ with another man’s life, and you’re fuckin’ with it in a very, very serious way. So you better be very, very serious about your convictions. And you better be sure of your motives, mister. You ever heard the old saying ‘Discretion is the better part of valor’?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Yea
h. Well, around here it could use a little rewording. At West Point, discretion is the better part of honor. And the discretion belongs to you, Hand. You. I’ve told you my experiences, and I’ve told you my judgment on this. I don’t think Crolius was quibbling. I don’t think the little fucker is capable of quibbling. Don’t think it’d even occur to him. Where he comes from, getting it is probably just getting it, any old fuckin’ way. Hell, they probably bang sheep in his home county. Who knows? And if you bang a sheep, are you still cherry? Shit, Hand. Crolius was treating you honorably. He was taking you into his confidence. If you report him for quibbling, you better have your shit together, and you better have it together good. Because the whole fuckin’ world is liable to come down on that smart-ass head of yours if you don’t. Now. You made up your mind?”

  “Yessir.”

  “What are you gonna do, Hand?”

  “I am going to report Crolius to the honor representative, sir. The man quibbled. His case belongs before the Honor Committee, not here, between us.”

  Slaight stood up. Hand stood up.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing, Hand, because the minute you walk out of this room and head over to the honor rep, your actions are going to follow you and follow you just like a goddamn shadow, and no matter where you go, no matter what you do, no matter the resolution of the case, you’re never gonna get away from that shadow, Hand. Never.”

  “I am sure, sir. Good evening, sir.” Hand saluted and departed.

  He reported Crolius to the company honor rep that night. The honor rep made his report to the full Honor Committee, which authorized a subcommittee hearing, the Honor System equivalent of a grand jury. The subcommittee decided that the case should go before a full twelve-man Honor Board, the system’s equivalent of a trial. All of this happened within a matter of two hours after Hand left Slaight’s room.

  The next night, the Cadet Honor Board met to hear Crolius’ case. He had been given less than twenty-four hours to prepare a “defense.” Slaight had never really understood what an accused cadet was permitted to do before a full Honor Board—just sit there silently, defend himself, call witnesses, who knew? The whole business was shrouded in a mystique manufactured into the Honor System by design. The mystique kicked the whole idea of “honor” onto a higher realm … a higher realm than, say, the cadet realm. This was, after all, honor. And a cadet was only a cadet.

  Slaight didn’t understand how the system worked, but he knew board hearings were open to upperclassmen, so he decided to attend. Crolius was called. He was first. At a long felt-covered table, twelve first-classmen sat in their Dress Gray coats and peppered Crolius with a rapid-fire series of picky little questions about exactly what words he’d used to tell Hand this and tell Hand that. Crolius, who had been a new cadet exactly nineteen days, was completely intimidated. He got so entangled in his story of sexual experiences, he only served to confuse the board, which interpreted Crolius’ frightened behavior as further evidence of quibbling. It was a vicious circle. Crolius was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.

  Slaight stood up in the back of the room and asked to volunteer as a witness in Crolius’ behalf, since he had been the first person to whom the new cadet’s alleged “violation” had been reported. He explained he was Crolius’ squad leader, he knew the young man well, and that he thought he could clear up some of the confusion caused by Crolius’s obvious misunderstanding of the proceedings.

  The chairman of the Honor Board ruled Slaight was out of order, and commanded him to sit down. Crolius turned and looked at Slaight. He knew he was finished, and he didn’t know why. Slaight and Crolius were dismissed from the hearing room. A few minutes later, a representative from the Honor Board fetched them from the hallway. The chairman of the Honor Board pronounced the verdict. Guilty. The board had not even bothered to call Hand to testify.

  Crolius was served with papers asking that he in good faith and in keeping with the tenets of the Honor Code resign from the academy. The board had no power to officially expel a cadet from the academy. They could only ask him to resign. But all cadets understood. Anybody who didn’t resign, who one way or another retained status as a cadet, would be “silenced.” No further explanation was necessary. Crolius agreed to resign. It was 11:30 P.M., July 19, 1967. Crolius hadn’t been a new cadet for three weeks yet. He hadn’t been allowed his first weekend privileges. Only nineteen days had elapsed since the first day of Beast, and already the Cadet Honor Committee was ousting a new cadet for the offense of “quibbling,” an offense so broad and so dangerously vague it boggled Slaight’s imagination. He was pissed. At himself for having held the manhood session in the first place. At the Honor Committee, for coming on like a bunch of goddamn Nazis, for not giving the kid a chance to explain himself in his slow Kentucky drawl. And he was pissed at David Hand, because Hand had violated Crolius’ confidence. He’d stepped on the only guy who had reached out to him. Hand thought he was better than Crolius. Hell, he thought he was better than everybody.

  Late that night, Crolius was moved from his room in the 11th Division of barracks to a place called the Boarders’ Ward, a no man’s land where resignees and others leaving the academy for one reason or another were interred until they could be outprocessed. It was the final humiliation. They were no longer cadets. They were “boarders.”

  Slaight took David Hand over to the Boarders’ Ward the next night. He took him to the room where Crolius sat alone on his bunk, waiting to go back to Kentucky and explain to his parents and his friends and his high school teachers and to the editor of the local paper who had run a front-page story on Crolius congratulating him for being the first town son to be appointed to West Point, and to his girl friend and to her parents—to everybody in his little town in Kentucky—how he had come to resign from the Military Academy so suddenly, where for almost three weeks in the letters he wrote home, he had seemed so happy and so proud. Crolius was sitting there on his bunk in his khakis. It was clear he understood so little about why he was leaving, he was at a loss for words. In his mind, West Point and honor were one. Now he was leaving West Point because of honor, but he didn’t understand why. Slaight ordered David Hand into the room and said:

  “Hand. You’re the man who reported Crolius for what you alleged was quibbling. Now he’d got to go home and explain the whole thing to everybody. You sit down here, Hand, and you explain to Crolius why he was found guilty by the Honor Board. You explain to him why he was asked to resign. You explain to him, Hand, why he, Crolius, ‘quibbled.’ When you’re through explaining your extensive understanding of Crolius’ fate to him, you report back to my room.” Slaight walked out, leaving accuser and accused alone.

  Hand reported to Slaight after fifteen minutes with Crolius. He had been unmoved. A violation was a violation. Crolius had quibbled. The Honor Board had found him guilty. He had agreed to resign. The system had worked. What was important to Hand was not Crolius, the man. What was important was the system. Hand had seen Crolius ousted from the academy for “quibbling.” He thought he knew how the system worked.

  Slaight dismissed Hand. He sat at his desk alone. So Hand thought he knew the system now, huh? Well, he’d give Hand a brand-new view of the system at work, up close. He’d take Hand on a journey through the system, through the digestive process which consumed young American boys and produced cadets and eventually, Regular Army officers. It would take time, and it would take thought, and it would take careful, well-planned, and elegantly executed action. But in the end, he’d get inside David Hand and find whatever little worm was in there calling itself a soul and confront the little fucker. Everything up until now, including the Honor Board exercise with Crolius, would seem like so much pitty-pat when Slaight was through with David Hand. Slaight would move on Hand, and he’d move on him for the next twelve days like he was running a goddamn tactical military operation. After all, he reasoned with a certain smile, wasn’t that what he’d been trained for?

  Taps sounded. Slaight
had fucked up, and fucked up but good. Dippel was still running his two-bit operation out of Room 1144. Crolius was gone. Squad morale had ebbed to an all-time low. But Slaight still had twelve days before the end of the First Detail of Beast Barracks. And David Hand remained. He would be dealt with. No doubt about it.

  22

  It was the way of Beast Barracks. One little mistake, one miserable little slip, one step out of line, just one—one, goddammit—and that was it. The whole thing came crashing down around your ears. It was the same for both plebes and upperclassmen, or seemed that way.

  If a plebe fucked up, it was like his life came to a screeching halt. Suddenly, nothing he did was right. Everything was wrong. He’d be standing out in the area, look down, and discover that one of his shoes was untied. Just when he figured he’d finally gotten his shit together! What to do? Reach down and tie it, and risk getting caught, making a personal correction in ranks? Or wait for the inevitable arrival of the squad leader, his slow pacing of the squad—he’d notice the untied shoe. You just knew he would. He’d look down and see the laces flopping on the ground, and he’d look up, fix the plebe with his eyes, and say something like …

  Well, well, well, Mr. Dumb Crot. What have we here? A clown act? You tryin’ for some kinda award or somethin’? Who you think you are, anyway? Charlie fuckin’ Chaplin? Baggy pants, untied shoes, a goddamn dress-off that looks like somebody inflated a basketball and stuck it up the back of your shirt. You look like a goddamn clown, mister. You don’t belong in this squad, you don’t belong in this company, you don’t belong in Beast Barracks, you don’t belong in West Point, you belong in a goddamn circus. Now DRIVE AROUND to my room tonight at 2130, and I wanna see that uniform of yours sparkle. I wanna see you shine, mister. You hear me? I wanna look up and see you standin’ there in the door of my room lookin’ so fuckin’ good you sparkle. You hear me talkin’? You’re gonna blind me, mister, you’re gonna put my fuckin’ eyes out you’re lookin’ so … so cool….