He lay next to her and wondered. Why? She was right, of course. He was driven like a crazy man. But didn’t she understand? Could she understand?
I want to find out what’s going on, Irit. Can you understand that? What’s going on. You know how I’m always telling you about those officers up at West Point coming back from Vietnam, those sergeants I met at Leonard Wood, how they’re always talking about that feeling, that feeling of being there? Well, I think I’m getting close, Irit, I think I’m almost there. I’m going to find out how it feels, how it feels to have been there. I’m going to figure out what’s going on, Irit, if it’s the last goddamn thing I do.
She nodded silently in the dark, holding him tightly, as if she didn’t hold him he would up and go away.
Bloomingburg finished reading the 23rd Psalm and some other passage in the Bible he said was a favorite, folded the black book, and looked up. Slaight was sitting at his desk with tears streaming down his cheeks, a great flood of tears, not just a sprinkle but a thunderstorm, dribbling down his cheeks, down his neck, soaking the neck of his T-shirt. He was sobbing openly, gulping air like a lawn mower engine running rough, gasping, sucking air through soggy nostrils, hands atop his head, elbows askew, knees jiggling, big bloodshot brown eyes pouring water like the old double faucets down in the sinks of Central Area. Slaight gasping, gasping, skirting hyperventilation only by bending at the waist, putting his head between his knees, squeezing air from the lungs, slowing the frantic pumping of the diaphragm, his heaving, quivering rib cage.
Lugar and Buck looked on, not knowing quite what to do. Bloomingburg got up from the bunk, walked over to Slaight’s desk, wrapped his thin arms around Slaight’s back, and held him, Slaight’s wet face tight against Bloomingburg’s stomach. He held Slaight. Each time he felt the sobbing cadet start to gasp, struggling for air, he held him tighter, matching his breathing with Slaight’s, slowing down, slowing, slowing, until finally Slaight was just sitting there at his desk, wrapped in the thin drawers-and-T-shirt-clad body of Jay Bloomingburg. He wasn’t crying any more. He felt empty and selfish. He knew he was drawing strength from this guy, this super-straight-religious nut he had considered a mark. A sucker. The fall guy in a thousand little intercompany practical jokes. Bloomingburg’s problem was that he was a true believer. Anybody could con Bloomingburg out of anything. Even the notorious Billy Dickey, the well-bred dude scam artist from Raleigh, North Carolina, a classmate over in the other battalion, old scamster Dickey could touch Jay Bloomingburg on something as basic as a chain letter, he could sell him chances on cadet lotteries nobody ever seemed to win. Bloomingburg as a firstie was as gullible as a plebe. Most of the firsties in the company owed him money borrowed for weekends long gone and forgotten. Bloomingburg could not say no. Slaight—all of them, really—had always written him off as a kind of quaint, gentle weakling, a nineteenth-century gentleman caught by accident in a poorhouse crammed with louts and fools.
Yet there was Bloomingburg, and there was Slaight in his arms. Chancing upon the scene who could identify the strong from the weak? Who knew what lay within those secret places inside each cadet? Not Slaight. Not Buck. Not Lugar.
Did Jay Bloomingburg?
Slaight mustered up synthetic courage … he found it easier than he had supposed … perhaps the courage wasn’t so synthetic … raised his head and looked at the face above him. Bloomingburg was moving his lips in silent prayer! None of the other guys could see him, for his back was turned to them, but Slaight could. Slaight held still and let Bloomingburg finish his prayer. He looked down at Slaight and smiled.
“You’re okay, Ry. I know what you’re going through. You’ll be okay. Everything will turn out all right.”
Slaight looked at the guy’s face—he knew nothing of what had been going on for the past six months—and he believed him. Jesus. That was weird. Believing old Bloomingburg—about anything, much less this … all the shit flying around his head…. But Bloomingburg had this look, some look on his face Slaight had never seen before, and it said he knew. He fuckin’ knew.
“Thanks, man,” said Slaight coarsely, coughing. “I guess I kinda lost it there for a minute. I’m sorry I laid that stuff on you, man. I didn’t mean it. But this middle-of-the-night Honor Code stuff … man. They ought to just issue those guys white robes and get the whole thing out in the open.”
Bloomingburg walked over to the bunk, picked up his Bible, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with what Slaight said.
“Anything I can do for you, Jay….” Slaight’s words trailed off.
“Hey!” Bloomingburg turned, all smiles. “You can help me with my poly sci paper next week. You know how I always pick topics that are too broad, and end up with fifty books and five footnotes and go Dee,” meaning Deficient, flunking, 1.9 or less out of 3.0. “Well, you can help me pick a topic and poop me up on how you do those papers. I’ve seen you. You spend about an hour in the library taking notes, an hour in the periodicals room, check out four books, and they hand you a 2.8 or a 2.9 like you deserved it or something.”
“Well. You said it yourself. I do.” Slaight laughed. They all laughed. It was pushing 3 A.M., and the atmosphere in the room was like the last three hours had never happened. Buck checked the TV movie listings in the Times.
“Goddamn-goddamn,” he announced, drawing everyone’s attention. “Thunder Road is playing the late-late show on Channel 5 in ten minutes. Anybody wanna go downstairs and get a Coke and watch it? Gotta watch fuckin’ Thunder Road, man. Music alone’s worth staying up.”
“Can I come?” asked Bloomingburg. He had never joined their late-late show craziness before. Ever.
“Sure,” said Buck. “Bring your Brown Boy. Gets cold down there in the basement.”
“You might miss chapel tomorrow morning, Jay,” teased Lugar.
Bloomingburg blushed.
“Shit, Lugar. I don’t think God’ll mind this once,” said Slaight.
“Don’t guess He will,” said Buck. “Come on.”
They watched Robert Mitchem drive fast cars for fast money and die young, and they climbed in the rack at 5 A.M., an hour before reveille. Company D-3 wouldn’t see much of them the next day. they were too busy catching up on lost racktime.
33
Noon, Thursday, October 31, 1968. The plebe mail carrier delivered a letter to Room 226. It was a blue envelope, addressed to Slaight, and it looked familiar. He stuffed the letter in the pocket of his short overcoat and walked out to ranks. The regiment marched off to lunch. As they rounded the corner onto Brewerton Road, they could smell it. Whole companies of cadets moaned in unison as they made the turn. Veal cutlets. Brussels sprouts. Mashed potatoes. The odor was like last night’s leftovers had been left to rot on the tables. The high mustard cabbage stench of the sprouts was mixing with cheap veal, frying in what was probably reconstituted french-fry oil … moans could be heard in Central Area, in Old South, everywhere the mess hall could be smelled.
Seated at the table in the south wing of the mess hall, Slaight tore open the envelope. It was from Samantha. Her handwriting was crisp, real longhand, not the phony-preppy rounded t’s, p’s and g’s a lot of other girls affected. She wanted to know what had been going on with her brother’s case. She mentioned Vassar, where her studies were as challenging as the life-style was tedious … five days of tough academics, then two days dating around the Ivy League schools. That was why Slaight referred to Vassar as the West Point of the Seven Sisters. Vassar girls couldn’t wait for weekends, to get away. They were just like cadets.
At the bottom of her letter, she mentioned she had gone through her brother’s letters a second time. It had taken her this long to summon the inner strength to face them. She discovered David Hand had a second, less obvious obsession, other than Ry Slaight: someone called “William Beatty.” She enclosed a Xerox of the first letter she received from Hand mentioning Beatty.
I met this real gentleman from Washington last week, just by chance. I was out walking aroun
d the Plain on Saturday, and he pulled up in a car and asked if I wanted a ride. I climbed in, just to get warm. It was one of those really cold December days. Anyway, his name is William Beatty, and he is some kind of deputy Secretary of Defense down in the Pentagon. He comes up to West Point all the time, knows lots of cadets and officers. He asked me if I wanted to have dinner with him at the Thayer that night, and I said yes, of course! What a good deal! It was a nice dinner, and he asked me if I would escort him to chapel Sunday morning. Another good deal! I got to go to late services, instead of going early at 0800! We had brunch in the mess hall together. He was really impressive—very intelligent, and of course incredibly well versed on military matters. The strange thing was, he seemed to know everybody Sunday morning at brunch, and most of the guys who came up to talk with him were really high-ranking firsties, and all of them who weren’t in my regiment recognized me! (Plebes can’t be recognized by guys in their own regiment until June Week, or else.) He told me he’s coming up here again after Christmas, so I guess I’ll see him then. Oh yes. The other thing was that he told me to be sure to join the Military Affairs Club this year, so I can get two trips to the Pentagon every year, starting next year. He said he would show me around personally. He’s the most impressive man I’ve met so far as a cadet, Sam, and he’s not even an officer. Isn’t that something?
Slaight read the Beatty Xerox a second time, then passed it to Lugar and Buck. On his way to class after lunch, he dropped the letter off with lawyer Bassett. Hand’s description of his weekend with William Beatty had been uncannily perceptive. It fit precisely everything Slaight had heard about him. Beatty pulled a kind of … power seduction … that was it! … power seduction …
impress the hell out of them with Pentagon gossip and offers of introductions to men in power. Beatty made it abundantly clear, Slaight had learned, that he invited cadets down to the Pentagon for very good reasons. If a firstie was going into the Infantry, Beatty would arrange a lunch with the colonel in charge of Infantry Branch personnel … the man in charge of assignments to choice command slots in choice posts around the globe. If a firstie showed unusual interest in his Ordinance Engineering course, which was essentially a course in the study of the science of weaponry, Beatty would arrange to escort him out to the research and development command at Fort Belvoir. The only piece that didn’t fit was David Hand himself. What was Beatty doing impressing a lowly plebe? His normal protégés were first-classmen. Plebes … well, they had three years to go before Pentagon contacts and trips to research centers would do them any good.
When Slaight returned from his two afternoon classes at 3:15 P.M., the D-3 CQ had two messages for him: See Bassett today. See the commandant, 1730, 5:30 P.M., Friday, November 1, 1968. Tomorrow.
Bassett wanted to shoot the breeze. The request for legal counsel before the Aptitude Board was still neatly lodged in legal wrangling, so everything was going as planned on that front. Slaight told him about the abortive honor violation charges Hedges had lodged against him on Monday. Bassett packed his pipe and nodded, lit it, filling his windowless office with smoke which disappeared into the ceiling, through an exhaust fan, hidden behind an egg-crate plastic false ceiling with concealed fluorescent lighting, heating and air-conditioning ducts, electric wiring, sundry untidiness. All classrooms in Thayer Hall were like that: windowless, lit by fluorescence. Bright colors and small, fifteen-to-sixteen-man classes made the place tolerable. Just barely. Not Bassett’s closet. Nearly waist-deep in organized chaos, the only way to survive, obviously, was to stay stoned on coffee and this strange, bitter mix of pipe tobacco.
Bassett didn’t seem surprised at the honor subcommittee … he never seemed particularly surprised at anything, having concluded, apparently, at West Point the totally bizarre was perfectly normal. You got the impression if Bassett learned a day had passed without incident, he’d get really upset. Too quiet, he’d mutter. Better keep our antenna out. Once Bassett chuckled and used a slogan Slaight had seen on the bumper of VW buses outfitted for hippiedom on the highways: “Paranoia is its own reward.”
Slaight was adjusting to the confines of Bassett’s cubbyhole when the lawyer cleared a hole in the papers on his desk, and produced three typescript documents. One was an official paper documenting that Hedges had ordered Slaight’s name withdrawn from the list of cadets excused from class for SCUSA. No longer did they need the word of the frightened major who had been OIC of Slaight’s committee.
The second was a copy of the report of the cadet honor subcommittee to the commandant on the disposition of charges against Rysam Parker Slaight III.
“Recommend no further action be taken,” was the last line of the report.
“Recommend!” yelled Slaight, coughing. “Who the hell are they recommending to, anyway? Hedges or the chairman of the Honor Committee?”
“Rather clear, don’t you think?” Bassett held up the cover letter on the report. It was addressed to, and initialed by, Brigadier General Charles Sherill Hedges, Commandant of Cadets.
“That kind of puts the lie to the old ‘cadets run the code’ myth, doesn’t it?”
“Indeed it does,” said Bassett, bouncing his eyebrows gleefully. “How do you think I came to possess this little item? Divine intervention?”
“No. How?”
“One of your classmates. Certain of your classmates have made the same conclusion you’ve just made and are taking the situation into their own hands—principally in the Fourth Regiment, I might add. I am not at liberty to disclose to you the identity of the man who passed this document to me—lawyer-client privilege, you know—but he gave his permission that you be allowed to see it. You’ve got more friends than you know, over in the happy Fourth. I would guess—roughly, this is—about a hundred of them. They’ve got the neatest little cheating system you’ve ever seen.”
“And you got the report to Hedges from one of them? That thing could only have come from—from an honor rep. Christ!” Bassett grinned and puffed.
“Lawyer-client privilege. Cannot disclose.” Slaight had hit the nail on the head. There was at least one honor rep involved in a cheating ring in the Fourth Regiment. Phew! Hot stuff.
“Take a look at this,” said Bassett, peering over his glasses. His red nose looked like a small plum.
Slaight read the poop-sheet. It was a deposition, or sworn statement, telexed from somewhere. All identifying marks had been taped out with white tape before Xeroxing. Slaight skimmed the telex. His eyes stopped skimming when he hit the part about the second-class epaulet found at the scene of the crime.
“A cow epaulet was found up there at Popolopen, where Hand was floating?”
“Not where he was floating. Read on. It was found beneath his neatly folded uniform. The young man was nude when fished out of the lake, if you’ll recall.”
Slaight kept reading, closer now. The telex was a copy of a sworn statement taken from one of the military policemen who had been on the scene the morning Hand’s body was discovered. Other than Hand’s uniform—complete with personal effects, shoes and all—the only thing found on the scene was a cow epaulet, an epaulet belonging to one of Slaight’s classmates, for they had been cows back in May when Hand drowned. The epaulet disappeared and was never seen again by the MP. Two days later, he found himself on his way to Korea, where the sworn statement had been taken. Slaight handed the poop-sheet back to Bassett with a quizzical look on his face.
“A Harvard Law classmate of mine, not quite so fortunate as myself, is boring himself to death in Seoul these days. I got on the army long-distance system one night, patched myself through the main Pentagon switchboard, and tracked him down. He found the MP and took the statement.” Bassett knocked his pipe on the heel of his shoe, pausing to reload and relight.
“As you can see, this telex appears to narrow our prospective suspects drastically—your classmates who were scheduled to speak at Hand’s high school along with the man from ‘68.”
“Jesus. That is a help.”
“Not so fast, Slaight. Don’t jump to conclusions. Creep up on them, slowly, so they don’t see you coming.” Bassett grinned. His wide round face was infectious, the delight he took, rooting around in the academy’s dirty laundry.
“I stayed late at the office early this week and made some calls to Mr. Hand’s alma mater, his high school. The guidance counselor who arranged the cadet recruiter lectures confirmed who actually spoke that day. The same three who were scheduled to speak by the academy. We should have known. Cadets are so marvelously responsible … predictable.”
“Yeah. Don’t I know it,” said Slaight.
“The same guidance counselor, who was quite eager to be of help actually, provided me with three interesting bits of information. Follow me closely: One of your classmates was from New Orleans and spent all his free time at home. Your other classmate was from the same company—they were roommates—and he stayed with the same family. Their time in New Orleans is entirely accountable. The guidance counselor reserved a room in one of the larger French Quarter hotels for the man from the class of 1968. The same guidance counselor was David Hand’s guidance counselor and was instrumental in his decision on the Military Academy. The same guidance counselor introduced Hand to the cadet from the class of 1968. Later, she said, Hand had referred to the cadet when discussing his decision to attend West Point. She was unbridled in her opinion that our man from ‘68 had had what she called a ‘quite profound effect on David.’ Little did she know.”
“She remember his name?”
“Of course. Her memory matches exactly the name we have from the Registrar’s Office. She even recalled that young David had written her not long after entering West Point, complaining. She was careful to point out almost all college freshmen complain. No college ever lives up to its reputation, she said. Anyway, she said she received a letter from young Hand while he was in Beast Barracks complaining that his squad leader did not live up to the image he had of cadets from his acquaintanceship with our man from ‘68.” Bassett chuckled, pipe smoke seeming to emerge from his ears, his shirt collar, everywhere at once.
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