by Gus Lee
“Tony,” said Barney, “I believe Kai got your main thought. You’re ahead on points and swinging after the bell.”
I knew, with the prescience of the I Ching, the Book of Changes, that Christine exceeded reality. Sitting next to her in history caused my heart to pound as if I were going to sprint or box. I wanted to be American, and she was Miss America. I looked at her school photo for hours the way other kids watched TV, making the experience more personal by speaking to her in imaginary conversations in which I violated ji hui by speaking of my strengths. The beauty of her perfectly proportioned face on the front of the photo overcame the paucity of affection on its back. There was the promise of a future in her words “good friend.”
For three years I had asked her every question about herself I could imagine. I could not know too much about her. She asked me about China and my family. “Doesn’t your mom talk about it?”
“She doesn’t know much about it,” I said. “I mean, my first mother died when I was real little. I hardly knew her.”
“So you have a stepmother,” she said.
“She’s my mother, my true mother,” I recited. “She taught me English. My first mother was not a very good person.”
“Why do you say that?” she asked.
“She was superstitious, and primitive. And a complete religious fanatic—a crazy, illiterate Christian.”
“Do you remember her that way?”
I sighed. “I don’t remember her at all. I mean, I don’t even know what she looked like.” I had said too much.
“But she must have loved you very much.”
“I don’t think so. She was corrupt. She didn’t love me. My real mother raised me, made a lot of sacrifices for me. She taught me English, and—discipline.” I had almost said, “and table manners so I don’t eat like a Chinese.”
“That sounds so harsh, so biased,” she said, frowning.
I shook my head. Edna told the truth. She was my mother.
“I’m biased about you,” I said reverently.
Christine had glanced at the noon, lunch yard basketball game. I had left it in an instant to sit by her.
“Boys like me for my looks.” Her eyes were shaped in large and perfect almonds, almost like Chinese eyes. Her mouth was wondrous mystery. She was breathtaking. Her smile could break a heart from fifty yards, the range of my visual acuity. I nodded vigorously.
She shook her head. “Going on about my looks, about going steady … boys want all your time, to consume you. That’s what I like about you. You don’t care about looks and appearances.”
I gulped. “But your boyfriends are the best-looking guys.”
She waved away the observation that I could not ignore.
On one of those rare sunny days in the fog belt, sitting next to her on the lunch yard steps, I saw our reflection in the cafeteria windows. She was a blond goddess, Grace Kelly in The Swan. My appearance was heartbreaking. Even in my cool Jack Peeve cast-offs, I looked like the kitchen help, an unattractive, broad-shouldered Chinese kid in glasses with a death-row-inmate haircut. I hated what I saw, feeling unworthy to be seated so close to her.
When I passed the locker room mirror on the way to Y boxing class, I faced myself. “You’re an ugly piece a dark, squinty-eyed, fat-lip shit, and you’re stupid thinkin’ you could be with her.” I appreciated my muscles and disliked my face. All that work on my body, and it meant nothing. “You’re revolting,” I added.
“Kid,” said Tony, looking at me, “stow it. Don’t let no one talk to ya like that, even you.”
Christine and I had been good friends until I could no longer contain myself and had to commit social suicide in her presence. I confessed that I loved her, more than humanity had planned or the cosmos or the gods of the East or the West had contemplated. Any normal boy would love her, but even I was surprised by the force of my declaration of affection.
She looked sad. “No, Kai. Please say you’re not serious.”
I looked at her, absorbing her intensity. I was special, and I was like everyone else. I held to this moment of joy and pain.
“I’ve always loved you. I always will. You’re the most beautiful girl in the world. I’m in love in with you.” I could never take it back. I was exhilarated and brokenhearted.
Christine was from a world filled with soft borders, elastic materials, and pastels. I had fallen in love with her when I heard her sing the theme from A Summer Place in accompaniment to the cafeteria jukebox. Her voice was clear and bright, the voice of angels. The sweetness and grace in her voice caused me to close my eyes so I could savor the sound. Christine’s voice and face were more dreamlike than my imagination. It was clear that whoever this girl picked would have a happy life, forever after; I wanted something of her to rub off on me, as if whatever she possessed could be communicated to others, like measles. She was the yin, female, side of America, as much as West Point was the yang. Together, they represented happiness and belonging. Her lack of interest in me only confirmed the wisdom of my taste; it was never easy becoming American. I had not understood in those days the distinction between image and reality, love and affliction.
“Kai—oh, please—don’t change our friendship.” Her face was radiant, her fingers gripping my forearm, studying my muscles, neither of us particularly experienced with touching.
I looked at her hand touching me. It made the pain go away. But the confession was a blow I had landed on the simple nature of our unromantic friendship. I had been special by being Chinese and unique in apparently evading her global spell on boys. Now I was like all the others, in the worst way, emphasizing the dissonance of my Negro ’hood sliding around her Swedish-Irish roots and Upper West Portal rose gardens. She was the love of my life; as a mature teenager, she resisted commitments, dedicating loyalty to deceased Germans. “I can’t stand school; it has no adults,” she said. She read Immanuel Kant, studied Kierkegaard, and admired Heidegger. “I can’t wait to start college.” Her voice was the call of sirens, delivering laments. She had criticized boxing and my teaching younger kids the Sweet Science. She did not understand that boxing had saved my life, that by learning a code of fighting I had found physical courage and, ironically, a way to avoid bloodshed. She disliked West Point on general principle.
Christine graduated six months early, in the middle of our senior year. Early graduation was in the gym, and I watched her go the way Abelard must have watched Heloise after the knife fell. Her absence from my own graduation, with a thousand of us at the Masonic Auditorium, seemed a greater reality than the moment when my name was called with other scholarship students, and I received the applause of my classmates, so pleased, so uncomfortable, and so lonely for her.
An old sensation with formless edges and no bottom, a thing that seemed foreboding and enclosing, a thing that sucked air and denied thought and caused pain, welled up in me, expanding through my chest and into the small corners where I tried to hide.
I had selected for the love of my life someone who was more dream than girl, someone utterly beyond my reach. She was drawn to me for every cause except romance. I hoped to have improved myself in her eyes by being accepted at the toughest of American schools, and it had only pushed me farther away.
I was proud of my self-control, for I had told her only once how luminously beautiful she was.
The only mail I received was a letter from Major General Schwarzhedd and a note from someone whose name I did not at first recognize. The letter from Na-men congratulated me on my appointment. “Beast Barracks,” he wrote,
was one of the hardest times of my life. This may seem unlikely to those enduring it, but my classmates and I still genuinely laugh about the horrors of Beast. I am very proud of you, and I know that my pride is only a fraction of what your father feels. During the dark days of the war we used to talk about his someday having a son. I prayed for that. I believe he prayed, in his own way, that his son would be who you are. I know how happy he is, because I too, through the Grace of th
e God and my own good blessings, have a son, who is also a West Pointer. Godspeed, and do not give up.
H. “Na-men” Schwarzhedd.
The other letter seemed to be from a child, corrected by an adult; with the cross-outs, it was hard to read. It was signed “Deloitte.” I realized that it was from Sippy Suds.
How you Kai? you boxing what weight? Keep lef hand hi abt yo head + chin down! Jesus love me + sav me frm drnk. He wok wit me + tok wit me and love you to you her me boy! R. Jones sa hello, mis you boy. Deloitte.
“ROOM ATTEN-HUT!!” screamed Mersey and Pee Wee McCloud.
It was Mr. Fideli. On August 1, First Detail Beast had departed for summer leave. Messrs. Alsop, Arvin, Spillaney, Armentrot, Stoner, and the other modern Inquisitors had done a final inspection in ranks, openly wondering who would survive Second Beast. Then they left, leaving only Mr. Fideli to serve a second tour. Why him? we wondered. Bad yeh, very bad karma.
He gave me special Plebe poop to spec. It wasn’t military, but nonsense from Broadway plays, like A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. He usually arrived to give me more.
“Sir, a little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down our pants. Sir, you have heard minor tones and middling chords, but mine are wretched, odious, and creaking. It is auditory Armageddon, screechy, off-key, and forlornly Ting-y.”
He smiled. “Are you writing in your journal? Quietly, please.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.” He pointed his fine chin at me. “Two decades after Beethoven sketched an idea it became an opus. I think of him when I hear you sing, because Beethoven was as deaf as an old shoe. I commend to you the painting of him, listening to a storm that bends trees, but he cannot hear. Mr. Ting, you actively fraternize with your classmates, all over Beast. Were you always a social maven?”
“No, sir.”
“Why not?”
I hesitated. “Sir, I worked. Sir, my mother did not allow me to—socialize.”
“Allow me to understand you. Are you saying that you now possess more social freedoms than you did as a high school senior?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. Bestier and McCloud blinked.
“Well. Was I the first to critique your singing?”
“No, sir. Sir, when I was twelve, singing in a Baptist church, a little girl said to me, ‘Y’all don’ havta sing evera song.’ ”
Mr. Fideli laughed. “Thespis does not hold your future.” He faced my roomies. “Heed—I dub New Cadet Ting—‘Caruso.’ Nicknames are almost obligatory here, Caruso. Down Thespis, up Mars. Who knows what happened in Southeast Asia this month?”
No fists emerged. He paced, his expression thoughtful, his brilliantly shined shoes hitting our floor. “Two weeks ago, North Vietnamese patrol boats attacked the U.S. destroyers Maddox and the C. Turner Joy in Tonkin Gulf. We retaliated with air strikes on North Vietnamese naval ports. Gentlemen, we are about to enter a ground war in Asia, against all good military advice.”
The American army fighting Asians. I would look like the enemy. I had prayed to the gods that this would not happen.
Three companies were drilling under cadre commands to fifes and drums, making the sharp music of five hundred rifles slapping from hands to shoulders with the sound of a huge mechanical beast throwing steel. We had six minutes to gym formation under arms.
“Mr. Bestier, your father is Major General Pierce Bestier. Is it true that he has prepared you since infancy for the Point?”
“Yes, sir,” Clint said.
“What’s the most important lesson he imparted to you?”
“To take care of my classmates, sir.”
Fideli turned to Pee Wee. “We all know and admire your father, General Ira Costain McCloud. What lesson did he give you?”
“Sir,” he said in that cartoonish voice, “the same thing.”
The buzzer rang, rattling my teeth. The minute caller called five minutes to formation.
“Are you gentlemen going to make it through Beast?”
Clint, Pee Wee, and I said yes. Mersey remained silent.
“You are now fretting about permanent regimental assignments after Beast. Do not. These are mere details. Worry instead about Honor and the Corps. ‘Let Duty be well performed, Honor be e’er untarned,’ ” he quoted from the school song. “Sound off,” he said.
“ ‘LET DUTY BE WELL PERFORMED, HONOR BE E’ER UNTARNED!’ ”
Mr. Fidel’s omnipresent smile was absent, which sent an electric chill down my spine. He looked into our eyes. I did not see a jocular, baritoned cadet, but the bright eyes of a true believer, a man who sang and joked, but took life most seriously.
We always worked in the dark, after taps, to complete duties. After an hour of preparing our gear, we were able to crawl into our bunks. We were worried about our regimental assignments.
“We don’t want First Regiment,” Clint said quietly after taps, referring to his notebook by the light from his Zippo. “It’s awful, hard-core, full of Grayhog butt-kickers like Spillaney and Stoner. Second Regiment’s Greenwich Village, beatniks, like Fideli.” Clint flipped pages. “Companies H, B, G, and A are Hell-One, Bitch-One, Guts-One, and Aches-One. In the Second Regiment, they’re Happy-Two, Beach-Two, Gomer-Two, and Aloha-Two. We’ll get our assignments tomorrow.”
“Hope we get Second Regiment,” I said fervently, closing my eyes and praying to Wen-ch’ang, the scholarship god.
Some minutes passed. Mersey was snoring and I couldn’t sleep, even though I didn’t have to report to Mr. O’Ware. “Clint,” I said softly, “you ever have the same nightmare, over and over again?”
“No,” he whispered. “You?”
“Used to. A guy I knew and his dad died when I was a kid. Used to dream about him every night. Clint—you afraid of anything?”
He thought. “No, but I worry about academics.” He fell silent as an upperclassman walked down the hall. “I’m not real good,” he whispered. “But I’ve never failed at anything. And my dad expects me to succeed. So I will, whatever it takes.”
Ji hui. He shouldn’t have said that. I curled up, providing a smaller profile for both of us from watching gods. I kept seeing Leo Washington’s face. Here, where I had roommates, a rifle, a bayonet, and walls, the nightmare had evaporated. I wondered if I would dream of Leo if I were alone again. I realized how much Clint’s presence had meant to me during Beast. I put on my glasses.
“Clint,” I whispered.
“Hmm,” he said sleepily.
“Think we’ll always be friends?”
Clint turned in his cot. “Uh-huh,” he murmured.
I nodded. I thought of Toos. “I’ll always be yours,” I said.
“I’ll be your bud,” said Pee Wee slowly, “if you go to sleep.”
In the morning, before physical training, we braced in the south sally port and reviewed the lists of regimental assignments into regular West Point companies. Pee Wee was the only one to get Second Regiment. I was in First Regiment, Company H. These were my mates for the next four years.
David Neil Alduss Jackson Flynn Latimer II
James Ryan Barisone Robert Myres Lorbus
Jeffrey True Bartels Leigh Sachs McSon
Clinton David Bestier Peck Levine Mankoff
James Drew Butte Earl Tecumseh Mims
Jeremy Odette Conoyer III Saul Hoeck Patterson
Sponson Charles DeVries Joseph NMN Rensler II
Terrence Phillip Dirkette Matthew McBall Rodgers
Chad King Enders Deke Ross Schibsted
David Benjamin Glick William Christian Shine
Robert Thought Hamblin Kai NMN Ting
Luke Ansara Hansen Acheson Rey Torres
Richard Mause Hoggatt Anthony Mercury Ziegler
It was great to see Clint on the list, but I worried what the subsequent cost of such good foo chi, fortune, would be.
I, Caruso, was about to live with guys named Tree, Zoo Keeper, Spoon, Moon, The Man, Curve Wrecker, Pensive, Moose, Big Bus, Meatball, and Rocket
Scientist.
I learned that Mike Benjamin and Sonny Rappa were also in First Regiment. I had taken great risks to remain in contact with them throughout Beast; I would do the same during Plebe year, whatever it took.
10
DAYS
Mess Hall, September 11, 1964
“Rensler, how’s the cow?” asked Mr. Grabzchek.
“Sir, she walks, she talks, she’s full of chalk; the lacteal fluid extracted from the female of the bovine species is highly prolific to the fourth degree!” That is, we had four milks left.
We were no longer Beasts and new cadets; we were Plebes, which was like a Sing Sing inmate bragging about having graduated to Devil’s Island. We had despaired on the first day of the fall term, when two thousand boomingly well-fed upperclassmen returned to West Point and descended on us like Goths on Rome. They outnumbered us, three to one. We now had academics, athletics, parades, reviews, tactical officers, quill and demerits, and games of risk.
“Who wants to go Big Dick?” asked Mr. Kunselman. As a Yearling who had been a Plebe two months ago, he was predictably reckless. In Big Dick, all ten cadets spun knives; those landing with their cutting edges toward the plates were “in” and would divide the entire dessert between them. The “outs” received none. It was a game of risk designed to advance greed.
“Nah,” said Mr. Grabzchek, a Cow squad leader, “it’s just stinkin’ sheet cake.”
A bigger risk was requesting a Fall-out with Big Bites. If one of the Plebes had won a bout or could tell a winning joke, the table com might grant a Fall-out and Big Bites—releasing us from bracing so we could eat like pigs. But if the offering was deemed “puny” or inadequately amusing, wrath, catcalls, punishment, and endless recitations would replace nutrition.
Yesterday, Joey Rensler had told the “Thayer” joke. “Sir, permission ta tell a joke for a Fall-out with Big Bites!” he had cried in his wildly rampant Bronx accent.
“Better be good, Rensler,” warned Mr. Kirchhoff.
“Sir! Two officers in de Amazon get captured by dese seriously giant tribesmen, who tie ’em up an’ take ’em to de chief. Chief’s surrounded by hundreds a giant warriahs. De chief points a big spear in de first guy’s face an’ screams: Thayer or death?
