“SIR!” Hand screamed. “YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT MY SISTER!”
“I know I’m talking about your sister, Hand. You’re holding a letter I wrote to her tonight in your left hand. In fact, you’ve ruined the goddamn letter, Hand. Look at it. The fuckin’ thing is all wrinkled and soaked with sweat. Give it back to me, mister. What’s the matter with you, Hand? Having problems with the idea that I fucked your sister?” Slaight paused. Hand had begun to tremble.
Slaight stood up and walked over to Hand. He turned slowly as Slaight walked. Slaight stood directly in front of him and looked him in the eyes. Sweat was pouring down his face, and his body was vibrating. He was a good three inches taller than Slaight. He was in superb physical condition. Slaight knew if Hand went for him, it was all over. He told Hand to look at him. Hand bent his head forward so their eyes met.
“What the fuck is the matter with you tonight, Hand? You got problems? You didn’t seem to have any problems that day Crolius told you about fucking his girl friend. In fact, you seemed real cool about it. You were even cool that night I took you over to the Boarders’ Ward to see Crolius, the night before he left the academy. What’s the problem now, Hand? I’m just another Crolius. Your sister is just another girl friend. A fuck is a fuck, Hand. What seems to be your problem?”
“SIR, YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT MY SISTER!”
“I know I’m talking about your sister, Hand. So what’s the goddamn problem? You don’t believe I fucked her? Why don’t you run down to the honor representative and turn me in on an honor violation, Hand? Why don’t you turn me in the way you turned in Crolius?” Slaight waited. Hand stood there shaking and sweating.
“You are really bothered that I fucked your sister, aren’t you, Hand? The idea that I fucked your sister really gets to you, doesn’t it, mister? Well, I fucked your sister, Hand. You don’t believe me, call her up and ask her. You’ll probably surprise the hell out of her, but I’m certain she’ll remember me. I fucked your sister a whole bunch of times, Hand. She seemed to enjoy it. I know I did.” Every time Slaight said fucked your sister, he enunciated every syllable, driving the words into Hand like nails. He shuddered.
Slaight stood in front of Hand for several minutes, waiting for him to say something or do something. Slaight considered the idea that Hand might report him for hazing, but he’d told Hand to fall out and relax. He wasn’t even bracing. Slaight hadn’t touched him. Hand just standing there, shuddering like a cold wind was blowing across his wet khakis. Slaight took a step forward, moving his face to within a couple of inches of Hand’s.
“You really hate me, don’t you, Hand? I mean, you really, really hate me, don’t you?” Hand grimaced, closing his eyes.
“YESSIR!”
Slaight stepped back. Slaight knew he had him boxed, but he knew he had to give him a way out so when his collapse came, it would be complete. Total. A real breakdown.
“Well, now’s your chance, Hand. It’s just you and me alone in this room, and the door is closed. I told you to relax. No more plebe. No more upperclassman. It’s just one man to another man, Hand. Just like you and Crolius. Standing in front of you is the guy who fucked your sister, Hand. If you’re going to do anything about it, now’s your chance. You better take it now, or shut your mouth, get your shit together, and crawl out of here like a good little plebe. You understand that, Hand? I’m giving you your chance. Now take it, or leave it. The choice is yours.”
He stood there, vibrating like a human tuning fork, just stood there, his fists clenched, the letter to his sister crumpled into a wrinkled knot. Slaight looked at Hand, and he knew he had him. He stepped close to Hand, stuck his face up next to Hand’s left ear, and whispered:
“You’re not going to do a damn thing, are you, Hand?” He waited. No answer.
“You’re not gonna do one goddamn fuckin’ thing, are you, Hand?” Still no answer.
“I cannot hear you, Hand. You are going to have to speak up. I am having trouble hearing you, mister.” Then it came.
“NOSIR!” Hand screamed the word. Slaight stood there for a moment. Then he stepped back and told Hand to pull out his snotrag and wipe his face. He did. When he was finished, his face all red and swollen, Slaight put his mouth up near Hand’s ear and yelled:
“THEN SLAP THAT CHICKENSHIT NECK OF YOURS BACK, SMACKHEAD HAND. CRACK THAT NECK OF YOURS UP AGAINST MY WALL.” He flopped back against the wall, sweating and bracing and vibrating. He was finished. Broken.
Slaight stepped away. He felt a strange mixture of guilt and vindication—powerful. Not satisfied. Powerful. There was a difference.
“Hand,” said Slaight slowly and carefully. “Hand, you drive around to my room tomorrow morning five minutes before reveille, and you drive around every morning at that time until I leave here. You drive around, Hand, and you better be looking good, mister, because I’m gonna be watching you. I’m gonna be watching you, Hand. Remember that. Now, get outta here. Get outta my sight.” Hand spun out of the room like a blown tire, out of control.
The next morning he showed up at Slaight’s room late. He had completely fallen apart. His shoes weren’t shined, his belt buckle was smudged, he hadn’t shaved. Hand was broken, and he had nothing to fall back on. No place to go. The amazing thing, Slaight noticed, was that Hand knew exactly what had happened to him. He never asked for any help from his squadmates, and he never asked for a break from Slaight. Even in defeat, he retained a strange dignity. He had played the game his way, and he’d lost, and he would pay the price. One thing about Hand. He knew the goddamn rules.
The morning Slaight left the Beast Detail to go on leave, he called Hand into his room one last time. Drive around, he told him. That’s what it was all about. Drive around. Control. Do as you’re told. Drive fuckin’ around.
Hand showed up on time. Utter perfection. He knew Slaight was going on leave at noon, and he had pulled himself together one last time. As he stood at attention in Slaight’s room, Slaight saw that look on his face again—a look of detachment, like he was only half there. The expression on his face was taunting, arrogant. Slaight saw Hand standing there, a statue, and he dismissed him without a word. His face had said it all.
Slaight had gotten to him, all right. But not completely. There was still a place, somewhere inside him, deep in there, deep, that neither Slaight nor Beast Barracks would ever touch. With some incredible strength from that place inside him, Hand had picked himself up, pieced himself together, and he was standing there in Slaight’s room telling him; I’m going to make it, Slaight. He was saying, I learned my lesson. I won’t make the same mistake twice. I’m going to play the game my way and win.
Slaight never forgot the look on the kid’s face. He never forgot David Hand. The kid had fuckin’ guts. You had to say that for him. He’d found an edge, and he’d walked it, and he’d survived. Slaight had no way of knowing precisely what edge Hand had explored. Nor was he yet well enough acquainted with himself to have realized that David Hand had used him. Hand would emulate his squad leader, Ry Slaight
Then he’d get killed for it.
* * *
BOOK IV
* * *
The Kingdom of Steam
23
“Have you told anyone else what you have told me tonight, Ry?”
“No.” Irit sat next to him, her right hand on the back of his neck. She had been sitting there listening to him for the better part of two hours while he told her about David Hand.
“Why not? I do not see how you can live with all of this inside of you, Ry. I don’t see how.” Slaight sipped his third bourbon on the rocks.
“I don’t know, Irit. I don’t know why. I probably wouldn’t be telling you, except all this shit with Hedges went down today, and well … you’re you, Irit, you know?”
“No, I do not know, Ry. I do not understand. I can understand the things you have told me tonight. I can understand why they happened. But I do not understand why you have never told anyone. Have you told your parents?
Have you told your father, Ry?”
“No.”
“Why not, Ry? It would seem to me that your family should be the first to know, if you have … problems.”
“Problems! What fuckin’ problems!” Slaight exploded, nearly spilling his drink, standing up, pacing.
“What fuckin’ problems? All this shit I told you tonight was just West Point, Irit, until Hand went and got himself drowned. It was all just West fuckin’ Point, what happened up there every day. Who’s got problems? All you’ve got up there is one day after another coming down on your head. You wanna look at it that way, my whole goddamn life up there is a problem, one big goddamn headache. You wanna look at things that way, I probably ought to be put fuckin’ away for what I’ve done, Irit. Locked up. Jesus! What am I supposed to tell you?”
“But your family, Ry …”
“My family! Are you kidding? What the fuck would they know? They’re sitting out there in Kansas running goddamn horse stables, is what they’re doing. My old man didn’t even want me to go to West Point. He and I haven’t had a nickel’s worth of shit to say to each other in the last three years. I go home, and it’s like visiting a goddamn funeral parlor. Eat scrambled eggs for breakfast. Grill steaks for supper. Drink fuckin’ beers and stand around and watch the rich kids from Kansas City ride their horses around the riding ring. Drink more beers. Watch the sun go down. Watch TV. Go to bed. It’s the same story for everybody I know up there. What are your parents supposed to think? You don’t go around telling your parents and friends everything that happens to you at West Point. You can’t. You can’t expect them to understand what it was like to be a goddamn plebe. You can’t expect them to understand about Beast. You just can’t.”
“Then you agree with the—what did you call him?—the chairman of the Honor Committee, the one who gave the lecture to the plebes. You agree with him when he said you were not supposed to tell anyone about your life at West Point. You believe in the need for secrecy. You believe that West Point should remain apart from the rest of the world. You believe that don’t you, Ry?”
Slaight sipped his drink. He didn’t believe it, not for a goddamn minute did he believe it. But he had practiced it, right along with the rest of them. He had practiced it until this very moment, when he sat in his girl friend’s living room and told her all he knew about David Hand.
“I don’t believe that bullshit, Irit. Christ, if I really believed it, I wouldn’t have told you a thing. It’s not as simple as … either you believe or you don’t believe. It’s not black and white. I don’t believe in that secrecy crap, never have. But I’ve lived it. I’ve been caught right in the middle of it because until now, there didn’t seem to be any other choice. Even now, it seems like this whole thing was forced into the open. It’s like, I had to tell you. I didn’t have any choice. You already knew too much. Christ. Listen to me. I sound like some World War II spy movie on the TV late movie. You knew too much, baby, so I hadda tell ya, but now it’s all over between us, see? This is ridiculous.”
“It’s not ridiculous, Ry. This is very serious. I have the feeling you are admitting to some doubts you never knew you had before now.”
“Yeah, I know. You’re right. But Jesus, Irit, West Point. What more can I tell you?”
“You can finish telling me why you’ve never told anyone about your experiences there.”
“Finish! Irit, don’t you understand? I told you about me and David Hand, but that’s just, like, the tip of the iceberg or something. How can I make you understand? You go to West Point when you’re eighteen. You become a cadet. You do things. You go on leave. You go home for Christmas. You see your folks. You meet a girl. You have a drink in a bar and you talk to the person sitting next to you on a plane. What are you supposed to say to any of them? Listen, yesterday I told this plebe to drive around to my room, and when he came in, he looked like shit. His shoes weren’t shined and he needed a dress-off, and he didn’t know the movie schedule for the week. So I told him to drive around to my room every morning before reveille for the next month. That’ll fix him. Fix what? Fix his goddamn dress-off? Nobody even knows what a fuckin’ dress-off is. Jesus, what are you supposed to say to anybody? Being a cadet is like … being some kind of god. They put you up there and tell you that you’re better than everybody else, and at first you know it’s all bullshit, but after a while, you’ve listened to it for so goddamn long, you begin to believe it.”
Slaight sipped his drink and paced.
“How the fuck is anybody supposed to understand the shit that goes down up there? Huh? Listen, when I was a plebe, I had this roommate. His name was Danny Gottlieb. He was a Jewish guy from Brooklyn. Father was a tailor. The whole thing. A cliché. Going to West Point was the biggest fuckin’ thing ever happened in his family. So he gets up there, and this guy in the company, a cow by the name of Ryder, he hates Gottlieb. Not because he’s a Jew, but because his body is shaped like a pear, you know? He’s just … like this pear … narrow shoulders, wide in the gut and the hips. He’s in shape and everything, but he looks like a pear. What can I tell you. So Ryder hates Gottlieb. Every day Gottlieb works on his stuff, getting ready to go out to formation. He works on his stuff until it’s all perfect. Then he goes out and stands in formation. Down the stairs comes Ryder. You can hear him. He’s bullshitting with the other cows. He comes through the door to the barracks and he spies Gottlieb standing in ranks. He walks toward him. He gets ten feet away, and he says, ‘Gottlieb, what is that thread doing hanging out of your pocket?’ Gottlieb looks down, and sure enough, hanging from his pocket is this tiny little piece of thread, about a half inch long. He says, ‘Sir, I do not know.’ Ryder tells him to drive around at 2130. So the rest of the day, Gottlieb’s whole life is ruined. Ruined. Do you understand? Gottlieb can’t study, because he’s got to work on his shoes, work on his uniform, work on learning all his poop, so he won’t catch any shit from Ryder when he drives around at 2130. But he just knows. He fuckin’ knows he’s gonna catch a load of shit when he drives around, because it happens every day. Every goddamn day. The same thing. The same way. And me and my other roommate, we need Gottlieb to poop-us-up in math, because he’s got the calculus down. But Gottlieb hasn’t got time to help us, because all he can do is think about driving around to Ryder’s room. It went on like that for a fuckin’ year. All of plebe year. Nine goddamn months. Every goddamn day. Ryder telling Gottlieb to drive around. And you know what? The next year, Ryder becomes company commander, and he’s the best goddamn company commander we ever had. He never gives Gottlieb any shit. They become good friends. How do you figure it, Irit? A total flaming asshole like Ryder becomes a first-rate company commander. Gottlieb, who hated and feared him for a whole year, would cut his arm off for him the next year, because Ryder was always watching out for the company’s shit. Always taking care of us. Keeping the tac off our necks. Best goddamn CO we ever had. How do you figure it, Irit?”
“I don’t know, Ry.”
“I don’t know either. And how do you figure this? Gottlieb, who had the most hellish plebe year imaginable, he becomes a regular gray-hog. That’s like a super-straight cadet. If anybody had an excuse to slack off yearling year, it was him. But no. Gottlieb digs in, and he’s straight-arrow. But these other guys in the company, guys who never had to drive around to Ryder’s room once, guys who never had to drive around period, who just ghosted through with hardly a plebe year at all, they start resigning like some kind of an epidemic hit, like the last train is pulling out of Woo Poo, and you better get on. Now. So the Tactical Department, they watch about twenty guys in the company resign in a row, and they figure something’s up. They send this major over from the Department of Military Psychology and Leadership. They’re going to do a study. They want to know why so many guys are resigning. So the major is meeting with us twice a week, and he’s gotten us broken down into different discussion groups and stuff, and we’re all supposed to give him reports on what we think is wrong with West Point. Well. W
here do you start. Right? One night we’re all sitting down in the sinks meeting with this major, he isn’t a grad, and he’s a real nice guy. Everybody really likes him. So one night, he just asks for a show of hands. How many are going to resign? A half-dozen guys raise their hands. He starts to ask them why. Guys are saying stuff like, they don’t like the educational system, they’ve decided they don’t want to be officers in the army after all, they’re disillusioned with this part of the system or that part of the system. Pretty stock answers. You could get the same shit from any half-dozen yearlings at West Point anytime. Hell, you could hear the same shit from any half-dozen college sophomores about any goddamn college in the country. Finally he gets around to this dude Whitford, from Tennessee. Whitford’s a real character. He’s got an accent so fuckin’ thick—Christ, he made Leroy Buck sound like he was from Boston. So he asks Whitford, and old Whitford says—I wish you could have heard him—old Whitford says, ‘Suh, suh, Ah’ll tell yew what. This here place, Whest Phoint … waaalll, suh, Whest Phoint is just lahke this big coffin. Yuh come heah on the fust day a Beast, and yuh climbs in the big coffin, and they puts the lid down on yuh. And every day, they drives in another nail, suh. Every day, they drives in another nail.’ Old Whitford laid that on the major, and he just called a halt to the whole thing, took the stuff he’d gotten from us back to the Department of Military Psychology and Leadership, and we never heard another thing about it. The study was over. Old Whitford resigned and went back to Tennessee, enrolled in the University of Tennessee, got himself in some fraternity, and he was writring us letters back all the time telling us what a good time he was having and shit. Then one day Leroy Buck, who had been his roommate plebe year, got a letter from Whitford. On a single sheet of paper is written just one line. Please buy me a Brown Boy and mail it to me, Leroy. Whitford couldn’t get along there without his Brown Boy. So Leroy goes up to Cadet Supply and buys him a Brown Boy and we stuck it in a big box and mailed it down to Whitford at U.T., and we never heard another word from him. I guess he was too embarrassed after that to write to us about what a good time he was having. Because no matter what he’d said, the truth was, he missed West Point. He missed the company. He missed the guys. He was too embarrassed to admit it to us. Asking for a Brown Boy was his way of saying he was kind of sorry he’d resigned. That was one of the weird things. All those guys who resigned … you always had the feeling that they regretted resigning on some level … like they would always wonder: Did they do the right thing? For the rest of their lives they’d wonder. And they’d wonder: Did they resign because they just couldn’t cut it? Christ, I’ve read these stories in the Times about the problems they’re having at Ivy League schools with students coping under the strain of academic competition. One story I read said most of the schools have had to open mental health facilities for the students. Man. Competition is one thing. But the shit that goes down at West Point!”
Dress Gray Page 28
