by Pat Conroy
Mark slowly turned around in his chair, pointed a large finger at John Alexander, and said, motioning fiercely, “Get off the desk, motherfucker. I get nervous when people try to tell me things standing on that desk.”
It was the first time I had noticed that Alexander was addressing us while standing on the same desk on which Maccabee had delivered his Hell Night speech.
“What’s eating you, Santoro?” Alexander said, though some of the command had gone out of his voice.
“You’re eating me, you Southern chicken shit. You and the rest of these king cocks from below the Mason-Dixon line.”
Rising to his feet, Mark folded his arms as Pig moved around to his side to demonstrate his support of what his roommate was about to say.
“Pig and I have talked it over. We think Bobby Bentley has more guts than any other knob in this company.”
“He’s a waste, Santoro,” Alexander said.
“When did you make corporal, Alexander?” Mark sneered. “When did you become a member of the cadre? How come you appointed yourself the guy who shits all over one of his classmates?”
“I’ve been talking to Mr. Maccabee and Mr. Blasingame about the problem of Bentley. I don’t know why they chose to talk to me, but I think they felt like I knew what the rest of you guys were thinking. I’m only trying to help this class as a whole. They’re giving the R Company knobs a chance to exercise a little leadership. They’re leaving this to us. We’ve got a chance to earn their respect.”
“It’s their job to run freshmen out of school,” Mark said. “It’s our job to protect our classmates.”
“He doesn’t belong in this school,” Jim Massengale said.
“He makes our class look like shit,” Webb Stockton agreed.
“We’ve got to get rid of the Gerber baby.”
“If we don’t get his ass out of here, they’ll take it out on us.”
I said nothing but got up from the floor and motioned to Tradd. We started to walk out of the room.
“Where are you going, fellow?” Alexander asked sharply. It was a measure of my success at anonymity that Alexander, that most ambitious of freshmen, did not know my name.
“To my room,” I said.
“The meeting’s not over,” Alexander said.
“It is for me.”
“For me, too,” Tradd said. “That boy’s got enough problems without having to worry about his classmates. We’ve done enough to him already, and I think this meeting is ludicrous.”
“You do, eh, St. Croix?” Alexander said. “Well, some people think you don’t belong in this school any more than Bentley does. We ought to run both of you out of here tonight.”
“Alexander, tell me something,” I said.
“What do you want?”
“I’d like a piece of information from you. And you’re the only person in this room who can give it.”
“Well, hurry up and ask it,” he said, looking at his watch. “We’ve got to decide what to do before taps.”
“The question is this: Is it very hard to breathe when you have your nose stuck up the first sergeant’s asshole?”
Tradd and I walked out with the laughter cascading behind us as the meeting broke up.
There were some significant results of that evening: Bentley would not be run out by his own classmates; a friendship began among Mark and Pig and me; and I had made my first open enemy in John Alexander.
After the meeting of the freshmen, the fury of the cadre rose against Bobby Bentley almost daily. And the laughter of the other upperclassmen grew more shrill and derisive as they came from the other three battalions to witness the frenzied efforts of the R Company cadre to run him out of the Corps. It grew deadly serious and assumed dimensions of insensate cruelty that broke the bounds of the plebe system as we had known it until that time.
Yet as the pressure on Bentley became more agonizing and grotesque, something also began to happen to the attitude of the R Company freshmen in general. In our collective unconscious, by slow accretions of awareness, we grew proud that Bobby Bentley was taking everything they could dish out, everything imaginable. They were beating him with their fists and standing on his spine as he did pushups. They flogged his ass with brooms and swords until it bled. They would not let him eat or sleep. Each night he would pass out in the shower room after they had their way with him. Often there were five or ten upperclassmen concentrating all their perverted energies on Bobby Bentley while the others took care of the rest of us.
An awareness was born among his classmates in those weeks that he was one of us, that Bobby Bentley, our classmate, was a gentle guy, much too gentle for the Institute, that he was showing a quality of courage beyond the strongest of us, and that in his own quiet, determined way, he may just have been the toughest freshman ever to walk through the Gates of Legrand. We began to be ashamed of ourselves for how we had treated him and to talk openly of our admiration for him. Soon he had become a symbol to all of us. He was braver than any of us. He was the best of us. He had endured over thirty days of the Taming, and it was the cadre who was showing signs of breaking.
The beauty of the plebe system, the one awesome virtue of that corrupt rite of passage, was made manifest as we began to gather around him and protect him. The brotherhood was taking effect. When they called for Bobby Bentley it was as though they were calling to all of us, and our commitment to him deepened as we witnessed his debasement and his loneliness.
He made it past the Thanksgiving break. And the Taming went on. In December they called him out of the rack line, separating him as they always did from the main body of plebes to illustrate the extent of his abnormality. We watched as Bobby left our line and followed Fox and Newman into the shadows of the stairwell. But this night when they called for Bentley, Mark left the line without permission and followed right behind him, followed by Pig, by Tradd, by John Kinnell, by Webb Stockton, by Jim Massengale, by me, by all of us. And when they told him to hit the cement and pump out fifty pushups, all thirty-eight of us hit the cement simultaneously. The cadre went berserk. They quelled that small inconsequential revolt with ease as they dispersed us into smaller groups, shivering along the gallery. But it was our first indication of the strength, the formidable, irrefutable strength that comes from solidarity.
That night after taps, Bobby Bentley sneaked into the room of every freshman and thanked us for what we had done and begged us not to do it again. It would only cause trouble for us, he said. He wept when he came to our room and began thanking Tradd and me for the meaningless gesture. As I listened to him cry, his head against my mattress, I wanted to embrace him in the darkness and beg his forgiveness for having spit in his face. But as usual, I did nothing. Many times I would think of the proper thing to do but only rarely could I do it.
It was on December 16, five days before the Christmas break, as they herded us under the stairwell, we remembered hearing rumors that this was the night they were going to make sure that he did not return to the Institute after Christmas. But the cadre did not know that we, the freshmen, were ready for them. We had spent the whole day passing secret communiques among each other. We had planned to divert the attention of the cadre from Bentley to the rest of us, and it was surprising how quickly we adapted ourselves to strategies that disrupted and infuriated and sabotaged the designs and conspiracies of the cadre even if they were only temporary victories.
Again they forced Bobby Bentley out of the long line of plebes, stationing themselves at intervals along the line to make sure we did not follow him again. They made him face us, the thirty-seven against the one. His eyes were luminous with resignation, with the accumulated, embittering humiliation that was forced on him every single night of his life at the Institute. He met the helplessness of our collective gaze with the helplessness of his singular one.
Fox and Newman walked unhurriedly up to him. Silently they stood on each side of him, their mouths pressed close to his ears. When Blasingame gave the signal, they cut loo
se with screams that made all of us jump in the line. As always, urine poured out of Bobby Bentley’s pants, made a pool between his legs. We could hear the piss running on the cement.
Fox and Newman kept screaming, “Piss, piss, piss, piss, you fucking pussy.”
Then they stopped. They stopped when they heard it, when they heard us. You could tell the sound puzzled the cadre as the gallery went quiet. The sound they heard was the sound of the other thirty-seven freshmen pissing in their own pants, in affirmation of our allegiance to Bobby Bentley of Ocilla, Georgia. They heard the sound of urine running all along the gallery. I pissed for all I was worth. The urine was warm on my leg. It was the grandest piss I would ever piss in my life, the prince of pisses. All along the line of freshmen, puddles of urine formed by our shoes as we pissed together, in unison, an indivisible tribe, as brothers, as a class. It was a joyous piss, a sacramental piss, a transcendent one.
When Bobby Bentley saw what we were doing he began crying, no, not crying, he was screaming, he was coming apart, astonished and moved by our embracing of him, our championing of him. He raised his hands to us in thanks. Some of us cried to hear him; some of us cried when we saw him lift his hands in that melancholy inconsolable gesture of gratitude for the impure, overdue mercy of the formerly merciless.
The cadre recovered quickly and forced us to be face down in our own urine. They rubbed our noses in it, made us roll in it, soak it into our uniforms, rub it into our hair and faces until they were nauseated and repulsed by the stink of us all. We did pushups until we dropped exhausted against the cement and could not rise and felt their kicks and punches land on our backs and necks. Some of us were vomiting, then all of us were vomiting. And I tell you there was a shimmering beauty and an inexorable nobility to those thirty-seven boys who rolled in piss and vomit as an act of contrition toward Bobby Bentley.
The cadre was all over us, but in those moments we had stepped out of their range of control. As we rolled in urine and vomit, in that hideous, stinking baptism, we rolled together as a class for the first time, as though controlled by a single, invincible will, and on that night, they could not hurt us, could not touch us, could not even approach us in the ecstasy and amplitude of our solidarity.
On this night we had ceased being plebes and had united together into an inseparable, undefeatable band. My joy was the joy of the tribe; my love was the love of the group, roaring and brawling and singing out in a single defiant voice. It was the first night we had defeated the fourth class system. We were no longer plebes on that gallery We had become brothers, we had become men, revolutionaries, and there was nothing on that night they could do to stop us. The victory belonged to the class of 1967 and to Bobby Bentley of Ocilla, Georgia.
But at formation the next evening, the second battalion commander and the regimental executive officer walked up behind Bobby Bentley, whispered something to him, and led him out of the barracks in the darkness. He did not return for evening study period and was marked absent at the all-in check at taps. Nor did he appear the next day at reveille or at lunch. When we checked his room after mess that night, we found that someone had packed his luggage and taken his uniforms. The upperclassmen did not know exactly what happened, but they said he had required special attention. Two days before the Christmas break he withdrew from school and never came back to say good-bye. Some said he left because he felt ashamed that he had implicated his classmates in his predicament. But there was another rumor that sounded far more sinister. The senior next door intimated to Tradd and me that he suspected Bentley had become a project of a secret organization called The Ten. Since the R Company cadre had failed to remove Bentley from the Corps, The Ten had decided to move. No one could survive the attention of The Ten. That was the rumor, that was the legend, although the senior was quick to admit that no one really knew if The Ten existed or not.
There were thirty-seven of us from R Company who had survived until Christmas. Six of us would decide not to return after the holidays. We began the cold season with thirty-one plebes and the worst of the system behind us.
Chapter Eighteen
These, then, are the memories of my nine long months as a plebe. In the barracks I learned much of what there was to know about my times, my unconscionable century. I grew accustomed to a climate of outrage and atrocity. I knew well the vernacular of suffering, and all the language and canons of the Institute had dissolved in my bloodstream. I understood the system by January, and I acquiesced to its laws by remaining. I was beginning to feel I had lived my whole life in enemy country. I felt they were killing off all that was good about me, but I didn’t know what to do about it. I would do anything but quit.
So I retreated within myself. I tried to measure the magnitude of the felonies committed in the name of discipline and tradition, but I could not assign a value to the ruin of boys. I knew about the terrorism of the human spirit and understood that ruthless, immoral forces had planted alien flags in my soul. The plebe system gave cruelty a good name, disguised sadism in the severe raiment of duty. There was a field of energy to the cadres meanness. I felt the puissance and evil of their thoughtless, callow maggotry. I would never forgive them. At the Institute, you had one year of terror and three of recovery, but I never recovered. I only learned the utter fatuity of resistance. Something in the eyes of plebes changed from the month of September to the month of June. Something in my eyes changed for all time.
All these crimes and dismemberments my friends and classmates find diminished and neutralized in memory. There is merit in forgetfulness. It is one of the gentlest forms of healing—and one of the most dangerous. But I am a prisoner of memory, and I have needed to clear out the debris of that year for many years. The year had too much to do with the kind of men my classmates and I became and the kind we did not become. Not one of my classmates will agree with many of my observations or conclusions about the system. They will say I was embittered, and I was. They will say that I did not belong there, and they will be right. They will say that I am trying to hurt the Institute, and they will be right again. But they are not prisoners of these memories as I am. I am describing the apprenticeship of a passionate dissenter. I am describing my education and the path that led me to manhood.
What was monstrous in September was normal by January. I returned to winter darkness, to icy winds along the gallery, to basketball games, and midterm exams. There were sweat parties every night after mess, abuse when we ate our food, hazing, sadness. Once again we endured the humiliations of the system, only by now we were veterans. Each time we walked into the barracks it was an act of singular courage. Each time we left our rooms we chanced an unpleasant encounter on the galleries. Some of us made it; some of us did not. It made very little difference which in the long run, but I was curious about the nature of both the survivors and the quitters.
Three more R Company freshmen left in January. They discovered at mess one morning that Lawrence Masters was allergic to tomato juice. At mess, you never made the mistake of admitting you did not like a certain food. I had refused to take any spinach when it was passed to me during the first month of school. I ate four plates of spinach when the cadre realized I loathed it. I developed a canny appetite for all food after that, but an allergy was a different thing. No plebe had yet offered that excuse. Fox forced Masters to drink eleven glasses of tomato juice. Masters was at Roper Hospital for two days in intensive care. For a time, they thought he might die. He did not, but he never returned to R Company.
Albie Boles was ranked fifth in the class on the first semester rank sheets. He performed well militarily and academically and seemed to be one of those kids who navigated through the plebe system unscathed. At three in the morning one Thursday, Albie woke the entire barracks screaming, “Help me! Help me! Please help me!” He was dreaming, but he began to have the same dream every night. In the dream, the cadre members would surround him, armed with icepicks and butcher knives, then move toward him, smiling as they came. Each night he woke
up screaming out the same words. During the day, he was an exemplary freshman, but each night, the cadre approached closer and closer and his appeals for help became more desperate and unhinged. His screams were unnerving, and they finally forced him to take a medical discharge.
I witnessed the breaking of Howie Snyders. He was standing across from me during a sweat party after church one Sunday. We were forced to hold our M-1 rifles out at arm’s length while the cadre kept watch and threatened us if we dropped the rifles. Eventually, if you held the rifle out long enough, you lost control of the muscles in your upper arms no matter how strong you were. The weak boys could not hold the rifle out very long, just as they could not do pushups very long or run very far. Howie Snyders was always dropping his M-1 to the pavement and always receiving demerits for gross abuse of government property.
Howie also wore his fear too openly. He had a luckless, timorous face like a hamster’s. The upperclassmen could smell his fear. It was as pungent to them as the smell of fish about to turn. They were attracted to this terror; it stimulated their own cruelty. On this particular Sunday, Howie had dropped his rifle five consecutive times and he had drawn the company of three upperclassmen. When he put out the rifle the sixth time, something terrible happened to Howie Snyders. I had seen freshmen come apart before, but I had never seen anything like this. Something attacked his nervous system like a virulent toxin. His entire body went into convulsions and he lay moaning on the gallery as though he was having an epileptic fit. His eyes rolled back in his head, saliva ran from his mouth, tears streamed from his eyes, and he bounced across the concrete like a beached fish. The cadre began chanting above him, “Die, die, die, die.” But one of them—Wentworth, the company exec, I think, but it really doesn’t matter—put a broomstick in his mouth to make sure he would not swallow his tongue. It was not epilepsy and the doctors insisted that there was no physical dysfunction responsible for those symptoms. But Howie started to display the same symptoms during every sweat party on the galleries, until one night he was honorably discharged after biting off a piece of his tongue. Newman claimed the piece of Howie’s tongue as a souvenir and preserved it in formaldehyde and displayed it proudly on his desk.
