by Gus Lee
Saving the nation seemed easier than living with my family. I thought of Uncle Shim teaching me that the sole reason for living, the only justification for my mother’s pain of birth and the cost of children, was to benefit the clan. I was not a good member of my family, and had tried not to think what others thought of me, fearful of the conclusions they ought to reach.
Now I had a new start. I had been invited to merge directly into the white tapestry of American history. I could pretend to be a person who had never known privation of spirit, stomach, heart, or neighborhood, who had never sinned, made bad decisions, produced bad thoughts of ji hui, or caused others to die. I could pretend to be happy, a boy who knew how to smile without outer cause. For once, on this special day, I wondered how others saw me.
The stars began to emerge in a darkening sky. It was eight, a propitious hour. The Eight Immortals, the Eight Ch’ing Banner Armies, the Eight Breezes, the eight Academy candidates. I had been born on the eighth of August, double-eight, double luck.
“Why’d you ask about how I feel?” I asked Mike.
“My gramma says: ‘Know your feelings, make wise decisions.’ ”
I didn’t have grandparents. “Feelings have nothing to do with it,” I said. “I think feelings can screw things up. Like, how can you think if you try to figure out how you feel? And if you figure it out, who cares? What if you feel bad about something? It doesn’t matter.” I took a deep breath.
“I had to come here,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Mike. “You can give up thinking like that. We’re out of high school. The diplomas make us adults. We don’t have to do anything we don’t want to do.”
I looked up the road, toward the Academy. I was an adult. In the morning, I would experience what grown-ups get—respect. I would be a West Point new cadet. I would thrust out my chest like Guan Yu, forget that my mother criticized all I did, and start a new life.
“Mike, it’ll be great,” I said.
“It’ll probably be hard,” he said, putting his hand out.
We shook. I didn’t care. I had made a friend, and felt I was about to enter the script of a very good movie, a Clark Gable film, in which the good guys couldn’t help but win. I had arrived in America.
7
PUNG-YOH
Mr. Alsop’s Room, July 1, 1964
Third Squad reported to Mr. Alsop’s room at 2030 hours—8:30 P.M. I had been at West Point for twelve hours and it felt like ten years. Three hours ago, we had been learning close-order drill with rifles, and a cannon had fired. We were ordered to face the tall American flag at the end of the Plain and to present arms. A bugler played retreat, a haunting, melancholy solo as the flag came down. It sounded like the tune of my life, echoing in my mind.
Mr. Alsop had ordered me to return in my next life as a Mississippian. If they didn’t feed me soon, I would be able to comply. He sat in a spotless uniform; we marveled at his relaxed state, his nonchalance riveting. We braced, lousy with sweat.
He stood. “Ah’m Mr. Alsop. First Detail squad leader, the mos’ ’portant human bein’ in yo’ sorry little crot lives. If yew were a rifle squad, Ah’d be charged with yo’ success. Here, Ah haze those who wish ta be here.” His jaw muscles flexed. “Not fond a screamin’. Don’t take this ta mean Ah’m soft. Factually, Ah’m as hard a man as y’all know.” He placed his muscular hands on the desk and leaned forward on lean arms that seemed to be all tendon.
“Y’all been told the truth. ‘A cadet does not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do.’ Y’all began livin’ that with immediate effect. Nuthin’ is ever goin’ ta be the same. Honor is personal ta yew. Y’all can be slow with a rifle an’ better at football ’n’ track, prefer math ta English. But Honor—yew young gen’l’men must be perfect at it. Yew cannot lie, cheat, or steal.”
He walked slowly by each of us. “It’s the way at West Point. The way. Honor Code an’ System belong to the United States Corps a Cadets. Corps runs the Honor System. Yew can do so much here, long as ya’ll don’ cheat. Cheat or lie, y’all face sword point an’ leave with your tail down lahk lowlife, animal shit-scum. Questions?”
I had a question about false bravado, but I was afraid to stand out. A fist appeared to my right. A new cadet asked if it was an Honor violation to say you were not scared when you were.
“Questions ’bout motivation, Care Factor an’ morale—y’all can try ta pump yo’self with a spirited answer. If y’all can’t tell the difference, state: ‘Sir, may I ask a question?’ and ask it. ’Member, y’all gonna be hazed ta hell an back, all year, anyway, an’ trust me most deeply, gen’lmen: there ain’t nuthin’ worse than violatin’ the Honor Code and gettin’ your young butt handed to ya onna tip of an Academy saber, fornicated for life.”
We listened to distant screams. I hated rules about school clothes and posture, table manners, restrictions—Edna’s rules. I respected the rules in the ring, in sports, on the street. Honor. I was bracing, but I wanted to smile. I was in a terrible place for food and comfort, but the architecture was correct.
“I present y’all Mr. Spillaney. Your boys, sir.”
Spillaney had no neck. A football player, snarling like Old Evil, the terrible, child-eating bulldog in the Panhandle. Bad omen. I shivered. All the upperclassmen were yu chao, bearers of hunger, anger, fear, and disharmony. But I still had hope. Maybe he’d discuss food.
“Thank you, sir,” he said. “YOU PUKING CROTS MAKE ME SICK!!” he screamed, spit flying. My guts jumped, my heart stopped, and my pulse went up. We quivered and braced, stuck rigidly in various corners and open spaces of walls like two-by-fours in a house to be framed, raw wood waiting for iron nails. After a day of Kafkaesque panic, dining à la Torquemada, and de Sadeian social conditioning, Mr. Spillaney’s fury inspired gallons of new adrenal fluid to rush through our drained smackhead bodies.
We had marched to Trophy Point dressed in gray trousers, short-sleeved shirts, empty epaulets, and white gloves. A band had played marches full of emotion which had tickled my heart. We had stood at Trophy Point’s Battle Monument to take the oath at the river with gloveless right hands, and we had crossed a boundary into another country, trembling with the weight of our pledge to protect the nation. I remembered Guan Yu. I thought: Now things will get better.
“THERE’S ONE REASON YOU’RE ALIVE—WHY I DON’T KILL ALL OF YOU!” he cried. Our eyes popped with attentiveness.
“I HATE NAVY WORSE THAN I HATE YOU! You might make it to do the President’s bidding, or you’ll be scabby-assed, money-sucking civilians. But either way, that damned Squid U, Crab State, will still be stinkin’ up the Severn River AND TRYING TO BEAT US SIX YEARS STRAIGHT!” He took a deep breath, which deprived much of upper New York State of oxygen.
“Say again after me: ‘I HATE NAVY AND ROGER STAUBACH!’ ”
“I HATE NAVY AND ROGER STAUBACH!!”
“Rotate your stupid knob noggins and look at each other. Six a you stupid little knobs aren’t going to make it to the Navy game. Four knobs in this room are going to leave during Beast! My lung air’s wasted on the half of you who’re low on Care Factor!” He glared at us, circling the room. I was swamped in feelings. I felt guilty, hungry, fearful, exhausted, thirsty, confused, beleaguered. And hungrier than before I started the inventory.
Six little knobs out of fourteen? We had heard one in three. Now it was nearly one in two? What had happened since yesterday? Did our futures fluctuate with the Dow Jones? Was it my fault?
“I wanted AOT Carson to be with my OAO. But ole Spike got shafted and I got Beast One and you puking tools.” His face was Tragedy’s, the alphabet soup alarming. Who was AOT Carson?
“Honor, A Squad ball, and beating the living crap outa Navy—that’s West Point. The rest of it’s crap. Well, you can’t get it. You will. Don’t think I hate you personally; I just hate you.”
He blinked. “You got these.” He held up what looked like a small address book. “Bugle Notes. Spec it; start on page one-twelve. Be pre
pared to spout it cold. Get nothing wrong. You spaz, more gets laid on you till you bounce out on a carpet of quill.”
He inspected us, studying the bodies of the football players. “Dirty little grunged-out knobs are beat, starving, pissed, and scared. I wasn’t scared, ’cause I was gonna play Navy and pay them back for everything that’s ever gone wrong in my life. Listen up.
“One. Crap here causes constipation. You don’t eat, so you might not brush your stupid little knob teeth. Humidity’s bad, so you might think showering’s not doing any good. REPORT TO YOUR SQUAD LEADER BEFORE TAPS THAT YOU HAVE SHOWERED, BRUSHED YOUR TEETH, THAT YOU HAVE, OR HAVE NOT, MOVED YOUR KNOBBY LITTLE BOWELS IN THE LAST TWENTY-FOUR HOURS! DO YOU UNDERSTAND?!”
“YES, SIR!” we shouted.
He smiled vacuously. “Write a letter to your congressman, or to the President, whoever appointed you to this marvelous frigging place, thanking His Magnificence, pledging to uphold his unwarranted high expectations of you. That’s ’cause they don’t know what a hard thing it is they’ve done to you. Think you came to cotillion dances where girls throw you room keys. Haven’t understood since Ike was President. This place is hard.”
Shower, teeth, bowels, letter to Congressman Mailliard, I said to myself. Let’s see, S-T-B-C. There was something else … someone else I was supposed to write to.
“Who here got an AAA letter?” asked Mr. Spillaney.
The Automobile Association of America? My father had gotten an AAA letter, asking him to join. Fists came out, mine among them.
“What sport, Ting?” asked Mr. Spillaney.
Oh, God. Sport? “SIR, I DO NOT UNDERSTAND!” I cried.
“What sport, KNUCKLEHEAD, did Triple A recruit you for?”
“SIR, I MADE A MISTAKE!”
“WHADDAYA MEAN! YOU DIDN’T CONFUSE THE HOLY ARMY ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION FOR THE AMERICAN AUTO ASSOCIATION, DID YOU?!”
“YES, SIR!” Some of the other fists withdrew.
“THERE’S ALWAYS TEN PERCENT THAT DON’T GET THE WORD! WHEN YOU TIE UP, SPOUT, ‘SIR, MAY I MAKE A CORRECTION?’ TING! I’M GONNA REMEMBER YOU! YOU JUST CRAPPED ON A HUNDRED YEARS OF ARMY ATHLETICS! PUSH IT IN, CRAPHEAD. YOU GOT THE BRAINS OF A BORE BRUSH! DROP AND GIMME FIFTY PUSH-UPS, CALLING ’em OUT FOR THE ARMY TEAM!! Last,” he said with great equanimity while I shouted “ONE, ARMY TEAM! TWO, ARMY TEAM!” “You will learn this line, and you will repeat it now, after me: ‘SIR. ALL THAT I AM, AND ALL THAT I CAN EVER HOPE TO BE, I OWE TO MR. ALSOP, MY FIRST DETAIL BEAST BARRACKS SQUAD LEADER!’ NOW BANG ’EM TOGETHER!!”
“SIR, ALL THAT I AM, AND ALL THAT I CAN EVER HOPE TO BE, I OWE TO MR. ALSOP, MY FIRST DETAIL BEAST BARRACKS SQUAD LEADER!!”
“Clint Bestier.” He was a young, scrubbed Gary Cooper, tall, nauseatingly handsome, and unnaturally self-assured. Guys like him reminded me why I had not a chance with Christine Carlson.
“Kai Ting,” I said, shaking hands.
“Mick McCloud. Pee Wee,” said a huge, Ernest Borgnine–like guy who had a slow, thick, comically dumb voice that was only two tics above Goofy’s. Instantly, I felt smarter, if not handsomer.
“Stew Mersey. This sucks,” said the third roommate, tall and angry with a long nose. He had looked like a blond surfer until the shears had met his skull and taken no prisoners. We felt the unfamiliar contours of our own shorn heads. They studied themselves in the sink mirror, awed by the changes. I didn’t look; I knew what I looked like, and being reminded gave me no pleasure. I was accustomed to bad do’s; my mother had dictated the style.
“I’d like to part my hair,” I had said to her. “Please.”
Edna had accompanied me to the barbershop. “Cut it very short so it conforms to the shape of his head,” she had told the barber. “Cut it as always, regardless of what he says.”
“Look a tad better different, ma’am,” the barber had said.
She had glared at him, and I had felt sorry for both of us.
I smiled at my roommates. My bad haircut now had company.
“Like petting a skinned, sweating cat,” said Bestier, smiling. He even sounded like the young Gary Cooper—innocent and earnest.
Never before had I sweated so much without being in a gym. White salt residue spotted armpits and the centers of chests. We looked like fugitives from a chain gang. I would’ve preferred a rock quarry. Ball and chain, armed guards, and snarling dogs would have represented an improvement, because at some point, prisoners got hardtack with their water.
We had a sink and took turns sucking from the faucet, sounding like rude drunks struggling for peace at a beer tap. I retrieved Momma LaRue’s green plastic cup from my suitcase and we used it like pilgrims at Lourdes. Everyone but Pee Wee French-bathed in the sink, groaning as the cold water hit our lathered skin.
“Don’t like water,” said Pee Wee in his slow, moronic voice.
“Sure feels good,” I said, remembering my talk with Mike about feelings. I wondered what company he and Sonny Rappa were in.
“I don’t like water,” said Pee Wee, louder.
I collapsed on a cot and studied the room. It had old ceiling lights and windowpanes, a light transom above the door, a partition creating two alcoves with bunk beds in each, four steel lockers against the plain walls, and metal desks in the middle. It was coldly bare on a hot night. Occasional new-cadet screams pierced the night. These were the barracks occupied by Sheridan, Sherman, MacArthur, Stilwell, Patton, and Na-men, my father’s friend.
“I’m eighteen and they did this crap to me,” said Mersey, lying on the floor. He sat up, leaving a puddle of sweat. “Gonna write to my hometown paper and expose West Point.”
I laughed, but he was serious. Our equipment resembled everything in a Sears store after a big quake. I had read libraries of military works, but the gear—some of it modern military equipment and some of it eighteenth century—made little sense. We had banked like indiscriminate chipmunks, storing madly for winter shortages yet to be announced. Their strangeness was threatening. We had everything here except food, freedom, and comprehension.
“Unbelievable crap!” muttered Stew Mersey. “After all the shit to get here—all for ‘Drop that bag!’ Shoulda told them to screw off, turned around, and walked out.” Some had.
Bestier, the quintessential white boy, listened attentively. His clear, bright eyes had witnessed success in life. His physique had been well fed and well trained. I thought that nothing bad had ever happened to him. Bestier was the young man I had always wanted to be, able to fit in; tall and fit for the street, with a cinematic Caucasian face that could be used for aftershave ads or a target for a girl’s kisses. Edna would never have picked on me if I had looked like him. She always flirted with Jack Peeve.
“Let’s get to work,” Bestier said. He began folding clothes and placing them in a locker according to a chart that listed hundreds of items, like “helmet, steel, one each; helmet cover, camouflage, jungle, one each; helmet liner, one each.”
“Want to know how to do this, watch me. Gotta hustle.” He moved faster with each repeated task. His long and narrow, aquiline face was shaded by a growing beard. He slowed down, showing me how to fold the drollies, the undershirts, the cartridge belts. Heat came from everywhere, including my own confused body.
Toussaint had told me years ago that the South was hot. The East was no slouch. I looked at my new roommates. It was as if the gods had given me three strong friends with whom to share this hard experience. I thought of Toos, whom I hadn’t seen in three years.
“You pung-yoh. Number-One Pung-yoh,” I had said to him once.
“Whachu mean, ‘pung you’?” asked Toussaint.
“Pung-yoh—friend,” I said. “In Chinese.”
“Aw, China! Thought you were cussin’ me! I was gonna say, ‘Well, pung you, you punk!’ ”
We laughed.
“See, China—you can laugh, real good.”
“China,” he had hissed at me when I was seven, “don’ laugh! That boy done cut you bad! He’s laug
hin’ at you. Don’t help him out!” Later, “You hear that, China?” he whispered. “That’s funny. Now laugh. You ’member this sound”—and he laughed his high, wonderful cackle, and I joined him sounding like a jaw-busted jackass, while he coached me on the sounds of human joy.
“Lissen, China. When the ball come in, don’t hit it with your face. Use the hands. Catch it like this, cradle it in, like it was a friend. See? Don’t be jukin’ your head back and forth. Hands up and think it in. Can’t catch nuthin’ with your mouth.
“Hey! Don’t hold the bat like that! Hitchuself that ball! Lookit that pitcher! Give ’im the eye! No, man—he’s over there!”
“No, no. China. Momma says, don’t say ‘dat’ or ‘dem’ or ‘dese.’ Say it like this—see, move your lips: ‘that,’ ‘them.’ ”
I made a face. “I don’ talk like dat,” I said.
“Right, China—surely you don’t,” he said.
I would look at his face to figure out my mood. If men drew blades or dogs coupled, I’d study his face so I could set mine. Toos was always explaining things to me. He told me on the way out of the Strand Theater on Market that the movie we’d just seen, Pinocchio, was about me.
I didn’t get it. But I was a boy tied up in strings, trying to be real and to think at the same time. Toos saw that Tony Barraza, my Y coach, was Gepetto, an adoptive father trying to form new limbs for me through the human carpentry of iron bodybuilding. Toos was in the role of a blond fairy godmother in a pastel blue dress with a magic wand, giving me second chances from ages seven to fourteen.
When we were ten, I found Toos crying behind a wall on the Anza yard. The sight of tear tracks on his strong dark cheeks shot pains into my heart and guts and made me pant while standing still.
“Toos—what’s wrong?” My eyes got wet because his were.
“Nothin’. Double nothin’.” He wiped his face with his sleeves. “Nothin’. You hear? I do not cry.” He looked away.
