by Gus Lee
She looked at me, once again the older sister, the acting mother, the one possessed of greater knowledge.
“Father loved you. You should have seen him, and Mah-mee, when you were born. They went crazy. I had no idea that the craziness about sons had anything to do with us. But with you, we discovered the truth. Mah-mee, for all her celebrations about us, just wanted a son. After all that stuff about Jesus Christ and Christian equality of women, she was still old-way Chinese. And when I saw what all the fuss was about—it was this little thing—this big!” She pressed an angry thumb against the tip of her little finger.
“Gee,” I said, “it’s grown a bit since then.”
“Don’t change the subject. They expected great things from Jennifer and you, nothing from Megan, and less from me. Mah-mee used to rub my cheek and say, ‘Oh, Little Tail, you are so lovely. So beautiful. Don’t worry about school, or grades. Just marry a man with a warm heart, and have many sons!”
I closed my eyes tightly. Janie’s voice was musical, and light, each sound controlling the beating of my heart, threatening to kill me.
“But you. You were the genius. She ordered me to take care of you, to keep your genius intact. To make you into K’an Tse.”
“Ah,” I said, “that’s why I’m stupid. You didn’t keep my genius intact.”
“You’re at West Point,” she said. “How did you get so big?”
“I lift weights and eat like a potbellied pig.”
“You’re exactly what Dad wanted,” she said.
“I was bad in math and it drove him nuts. He tried to teach me math.” I stopped. “Janie, he doesn’t like me. I’m just a thing for him to get the things he wants.”
“What do you think is the difference between us?” she asked.
“One foot and seventy pounds. You’re a lot prettier.”
“Did they kick you out?” she asked quietly.
The waiter cleared our plates. Only later did I realize I hadn’t asked for doggie bags. We drank coffee; mine was mostly cream and sugar, to kill the taste, which Army coffee required.
“Are you going to tell me about my cat?” she asked.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said. “It’s really painful. How about if I wrote about it, and mailed it to you?”
“You must be joking,” she said.
“No, I’m not,” I said.
“Tell me. I already know she’s dead. Did Edna kill her?”
“No, I did,” I said.
26
DUTY
Bartlett Hall, West Point, December 15, 1966
“Byron” Maher was my Juice P. Like Schwarzhedd, he was one of the few faculty already decorated from service in Vietnam, receiving a Silver Star and Bronze Star with “V” device with oak-leaf cluster. The lore about the Bear dealt with tactical genius; the tales of Byron described a madman pit fighter who lived on fury.
I was barely passing Byron Maher’s course, and was only two minutes early—a narrow margin in a society that deemed tardiness close to pederasty. I should have been wondering why he had called, but I ruminated about HMA 273, Revolutionary Warfare, about the French failure to mass at the point of decision and to take the offensive in Indochina. They had gathered in defensive enclaves and were beaten by popular anticolonial, antiwhite nationalism and a lack of French will to protect their empire. I experienced a continuous buzz of low-level anxiety in the bottom of my guts. America was inadvertently following the French plan.
“The major will see you now,” said Mrs. Holm, the department secretary. How could such a nice person work for Juice?
His door was open. Only Plebes saluted faculty indoors, but when I saw his expression, I presented arms. Maher normally had a broad smile on a jovial face, but today was not normal.
He returned my salute. Through his window, winter colors made a dim view as barges inched up the ice-encrusted waterway. Christmas was coming, his children’s Yuletide art was on his bulletin board, and I felt no joy. I never liked Christmas. He pointed me to the chair.
“Know what’s funny, sir?” I asked.
He leaned back in his chair. “Your grades?”
“Sir, a cruel cut. It’s that I’ve hived the answer to a victory in Vietnam, but no one from the Pentagon has called me.”
“That is funny. Now I know why it was so difficult for me to stem the tide of communism in Asia.” He sat up. “Major Noll has excused you from intramurals so we can talk.” He opened his briefcase. I smelled applesauce and old milk. He passed me a standard dark green file folder. “Key natural responses of second-order systems and RL circuits are hurting you at boards. ASPs—look at them. No, as you were. Study them. Sonny Rappa’s our number-one man. We will both help you. He’s a good guy, and is going to put out for you. You be sure to put out for him.
“It’s my fixed opinion that if you master these, you’ll pass the WFRs at end of semester.” He was out of his blouse with all the ribbons and steel on it. He rested his harshly crew-cut head on a large hand, the elbow propped on his knee, and studied me. Like most who did so, he frowned. He looked like an older Steve McQueen.
“Thank you very much, sir,” I said.
“Know what I liked about Plebe year?” he asked dreamily.
I opened my mouth.
“Not a damn thing,” he snapped in his perfect diction. “Plebe year, you’re a blind, simple tool, the fates on your back. The American nightmare: no control. Know what I like about life?”
“Food, sir?”
“Everything,” he said. “Life after Plebe year is seventh heaven. Even on a battlefield, in a fight not of my choosing, at the worst time for my men, I got more maneuver options than I did as a Plebe. I thank the Academy for that lesson. I remind myself of that whenever I don’t appreciate being alive, or fail to be grateful for the big things.”
He stood, stopping by the window. I admired his naturally straight posture. “Now you have choices, the ability to influence events. To do it honorably. People don’t know this, ’cause they didn’t do Plebe year. You did. Feel lucky.”
He looked outside as if checking for eavesdroppers, and then locked the door. He was a muscular, athletically compact, broad-shouldered man, five feet nine, with a ramrod back. His eyes were darkly deep and lined around the corners, where a habit of laughter had carved kindly. His face was squarish. He seemed unhealthily pale, like Pearl Yee, but with a pallor of mood rather than of bacteria. When I watched Schwarzhedd move, I felt his determination. Maher strode with a supremely cocky confidence, the attitude of an indomitable rip-your-face-off street fighter. Tactics taught us the management of war. Schwarzhedd was the manager; Maher was the war.
War sat down. “Going to ask for something very hard,” he said. “What’s the toughest physical test you’ve faced here?”
“Stepladder, sir,” I said. I hated heights. The Stepladder was a log lattice that went thirty-five feet up. I had climbed it with my eyes screwed shut, imagining my death below.
He laughed, high and funny. “This is tougher than a low night, high-wind jump into the enemy rear. Almost as hard as seeing some of your people hurt by the enemy, because this one’s going to come from your own hand. The salient point is,” he said deeply, “that you’ll do it because I’m a good leader, and no one can resist me.” He placed his hands over his eyes, massaging his face, trying, I presumed, to reduce his pallor. His large, gold class ring shined, like Father’s Infantry School ring.
“Do you like cheating?” he asked.
I blinked. “No, sir,” I said.
“Hate it?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Hate it a lot?”
“Sir, the Honor Code doesn’t have gradations. It’s binary. So yes, sir, I hate it a lot.”
“How strong is the spirit of the Honor Code in your company?”
“Very strong, sir. Rock hard, sir,” I said.
“Don’t bullshit me. How strong is it in your class?”
“Rock solid, sir.” I
was barely breathing, not liking this.
“You have classmates who don’t share your feelings. I got cheating going on. In my section, GODDAMMIT!” His eyes turned glacial, homicidal, and they glared at me as my eyes widened, as if it were my fault. I wondered if it was. Our own section. I looked at him the way mice look at cobras. He was almost cross-eyed with anger, his face reddening. I was sitting entirely too close to him, because it was obvious-he wanted to hit something. I did not want this man with so much inner chi to hit me. I didn’t want to hear any of this. Bad feelings, jing ji, taboo. He was talking about my classmates and Honor, and dishonor. Cheating? Not possible.
“Cheating,” he said, marveling. “Why tell you? One, I trust you. Usually you’re dumber than three lieutenants in a jeep and stupider than shark shit on the ocean floor. But you’re not getting any help from anyone. God’s not helping you. Your answers are preposterous, make-believe, from the ‘Twilight Zone.’
“Two, I need you to get them, the planners. Need a cadet who’s good in the night. You surprised the paratroopers on your patrol’s final assault. I like that. Need a guy who gets along with everyone, who socializes all over the Corps, who communicates. Noll says that’s you. You communicate with everyone instead of studying.
“Want you to use those skills to find the cheats. Scope the Corps; find ’em, fix ’em, so the code can dust ’em.
“Three, work with me on this, and some Juice might rub off, and you can graduate. What do you think?”
“I can’t imagine any of my classmates cheating, sir,” I said.
“Your imagination’s not the test. That’s why I have to know how your class reads the Code. What’s the baseline? Ting, you guys are the leading edge of the war babies. Going to outnumber everyone else in this country, which frankly scares the hell out of me. You’re our first expansion class. You guys were born 1945 to ’47, when fifteen million GIs and WACs came home and celebrated with the double-backed grapple, giving the world, you.”
I cleared my guilty throat.
“West Point’s going to be rebuilt as the Corps grows to forty-four hundred. They’re even going to move Washington’s statue.” He looked out at the river. “You grew up pampered—no war, depression, Hitler, Dachau, Bulge, Okinawa. Korea happened when you were sucking formula. Cars and rock and roll, Elvis Presley, hula hoops, transistor radios, TV, Howdy Doody, Hostess Twinkies, and the Beatles. Great prep for shit-kicking Reds.”
He looked at me. “If you guys don’t buy Honor, I gotta know before I start rolling my jewels around on the tarmac.”
The phone rang. “Excuse me. Major Maher speaking, sir.”
I rubbed my face the way Maher did. I cleaned my glasses. My hands shook. Cheating in the class. A cabal. An Underground Nation, a tribe in moral exile with a mutinous agenda. How could anyone do that—turn Honor on its ear, and rip off classmates? It was a horrendous thought, like learning how to poison people in cooking school. No, I decided: there was no parallel.
Why me? I made Plebes laugh in a bitter year. I wore the wool, toted the rifle, halfway grubbed the tenths, and did the dance of the Cow squad leader. I almost fit in, and this would blow it. It wouldn’t be a cadet duncing others; it’d be that Chinese cadet turning in classmates. Maher was asking me to stand out, to surrender my fitting in. I could say: “Sir, I feel my deficiencies too keenly; I must refuse.” But I honored the Code. That, as Major Maher would say, was the salient point. Maybe, the salient point was that I was stupid. Had I mucked more tenths, I’d be in a different section. I had been chosen to serve my country in a special mission, and had been selected from the ranks of the brilliant for my stupidity.
“No more calls, please, Mrs. Holm,” and he hung up.
He faced me, making me feel like standing. “What’s the salient point?” He glared at me. “Honor. Eighty clicks downriver are twelve million people on a little island who get up every morning so they can beat someone or take something they don’t have. That’s America out there doing business: buy, kick, scratch, gouge, bribe, screw your way up the ladder. For what? Money! We have a nation with the manners of an organ-grinder and the morals of his monkey.
“We’re not going to have an Army like that. Our pay makes us volunteers. We do our management on blue sky and the flag. Best perk’s a free funeral, unless they lose your goddamned body on an untidy battlefield. Can’t give atomic artillery and tanks to a million testosterone-crazy men and give them managers who operate from self-interest. We need guys who are into sacrifice.
“How do you make guys like that? Ting, I’m glad you asked—I’m going to tell you. Get the best you can find. Test them with cold fire. Beast, Plebe year. Bloodless terror, combat without death, starvation with food on their plates, sacrifices where no one dies. Stress the holy crap out of them, mold them into a team that’ll die for the next guy. Teach ’em that values are bigger than education, that Honor’s the key to it all, king of the world. Bigger than American success, which is a crock if you look at it close enough.
“This is not college. Candidates don’t walk in here by filling out a form and cadets don’t graduate unless they’ve trooped down Honor road for four years. Grads are going to be handed feces for pay and fifty-five living human beings to lead in combat. Imagine what kind of Army we’d have if the leadership were thieves. GOOD GOD IN THE SKY!”
He cleared his throat. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to make you jump.” He reached down and retrieved my hat, which had flown across the room. He went to his file cabinet. “I am now passing you a file.” It was labeled “Written Final Reviews 1966/EE 304A” and was marked with a red diagonal slash across its front. Various chop marks, from department head to head of exam committee to Faculty Examinations Work Group, ran down its front in a vertical column of bright red ink. I looked up at him. He put my hat on his desk.
“Open it,” he said, and I did. There were the exam questions. Involuntarily, I closed the file, and he laughed.
“Mock-ups. Not the real McCoy. Leaving them in my file cabinet, bait for the bad guys. If there is a cheating ring, and they’re using theft, this file of questions will be lifted. And answers prepared. I’m looking for a joker and a hive.”
He returned the file to the cabinet and sat down, facing me, leaning on his knees. “Help me find them. I’m calling the first guy Big Dick,” he said. “Big Dick” was the dessert risk game.
“I close my eyes, Ting, seeing through the tactical fog. Big Dick’s my enemy.” His eyes burned. Maher’s hands came out, fingers extended stiffly, his teeth showing, and I knew I was inches away from a man who had killed actual people while displaying this exact expression. I cleared my throat.
“I see a joker, a user, a manipulator. A tweaker. Someone who’d go out of his way to tell a woman she was homely, a guy who’d tell Cookie in the chow line that his creamed slop on a shingle tasted bad. A guy who’d take someone else’s Swiss watch apart just to screw with it. Likes disorder. Likes to make chaos inside unity. Likes to whack off on the system. See him? I’ve started to see this dirty sonofabitch every night.
“But Big Dick needs a hive, someone very good in Juice who can answer any problem, who could read that file”—he pointed at me, his chin up, his eyes now closed—“gin the solutions, and pass ’em out. The hive’s a damned Good Samaritan who can’t draw the line. Doesn’t cheat to screw others; he does it to help them. This guy is Big Dick’s exact opposite. I don’t see this guy so clearly. But he’s incidental. His West Point days, his military career, are dead, but he’s not the problem. Big Dick, he’s the problem.” He looked at me. “Help me nab the Dick Brothers, Ting. You’re Alfred E. Neuman in Juice, and you’re okay in tactics. We can do it.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, my voice weak, my will uncertain.
“Like fence-sitting? Like that fence up your butt more than you hate cheaters? Don’t tell me that! You’re going to help me find, fix, and frappé Big Dick before he spits in our soup.”
“What do you want me to do, sir?” I a
sked.
“Good man! First—”
“Sir, I’m sorry. But I’m not sure if I want to help you on this. I just wanted to know what it involved.” Honor required me to come clean. “I want to know how much profile there is in this.”
He took a deep breath, then blew it out. I shivered a little inside from his building anger.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Twenty, sir.”
“Time to be older. Time to be a company commander, responsible for the lives and deaths of others, not a Cow squad leader with eight little kids who sweat poop, meals, tenths, sports, brace palsy, constipation, and sleep. Major Noll says you’re his best squad leader. Fine. That’s mouseshit. Time to be a man. To figure out the meaning of duty. Who gives a crap about ‘profile’? What are you, a careerist in the making?
“Ting, someone’s screwing with West Point. That’s not as bad as screwing with God or trying to kill the President, but it’s still major-league cheap.”
He stood up. “Maybe you haven’t heard. We have the Code, which I promise you does not exist anywhere else in the world. BY GOD, I’LL NOT HAVE ANY JOKER COME INTO MY SECTION AND DICK IT UP!” He kicked his chair, which bounced off the desk, making the goosenecked lamp collapse and books fall like dominoes on my hat while the chair tipped and crashed to the floor. Maher paced in a tight circle, a panther confined, tortured, by the anonymity of Big Dick. The casters on the upended chair continued to spin. Did all my profs become angry in my presence? What was it about me that inspired them to shout at me? Was it my face? Was I frowning?
He stopped in front of me. I was almost crouched in my chair, my body torn between congratulating him and shaking his hand and jumping through his window into the icy river. He sighed.
“You guys give up so much—women and wine and song at the height of your youth—giving up everything so you can serve in a war where your own country’s a bigger pain in the ass than the enemy. You get four years of college in your first three years. You put out too much to allow this thing—this piracy—this bullshit—to go on in your face. I’m going to stop it. I just want to do it smart. You want this kind of crap happening here?” he demanded.
