by Pat Conroy
Alexander adjusted the switch controlling the amount of current sent into Pearce’s body. You could judge the force and duration of the current by the intensity of Pearce’s screams. I was nauseated and thought I might vomit in the bushes. I did not know how long I could be a spectator to such outrage. Then Pearce lost consciousness and the masks cheered. One of them threw a bucket of water into Pearce’s face to revive him. Another took off his shirt and began mopping his chest of perspiration. I noticed the long, ugly, centipede-shaped scar incised into his left shoulder and knew I had discerned the identity of a second member of The Ten: my friend and fellow athlete Cain Gilbreath.
But even without the scar I should have recognized Cain’s massive shoulders and his thick, brutal neck. The masks had hypnotized me; the masks and the rings that proved that all the members of The Ten were my classmates. If I could have ripped the masks from their heads, I was sure I could identify each member of the organization.
As Pearce fought his way back to consciousness, the phone rang in a distant room in the house, a sound as incongruous and misplaced as the chandelier casting a delicate light on the masked figures surrounding the naked black boy strapped to the wooden chair. The masks turned to each other in featureless puzzlement. Then one of them left the room quickly. The phone rang five times before it was answered.
When he returned he whispered something to the group. Two of them came directly toward the window where I was positioned. I sank down into the green depths of the azaleas, and breathing hard, I watched through the foliage as they peered into the black night. One of them glanced downward to the exact spot where I was hidden. As they returned to the group, I lowcrawled on my hands and knees to the thickest, most impenetrable part of the hedge. I saw a light go on in the custodian’s house two hundred yards away, then go out again. I wondered if he had seen me at the window, and I was angry that I had forgotten about the existence of the fucking custodian. As I burrowed into the brush cover, the front door of the plantation house swung open, and two of them, armed with M-1’s with fixed bayonets, moved swiftly into the yard and began stabbing the bushes with their bayonets. They did not speak but moved with extreme deliberation around the house, stabbing viciously and at random into the dark yielding thicknesses of the azalea hedge. I flattened myself and did not draw a breath for a full minute as they passed above me. The blade of one bayonet passed two feet above my head and was delivered with such force and thrust it would have skewered my throat had its aim been truer. How would the General explain a bayoneted athlete in the azaleas, I wondered, as they continued to work their way patiently around the house. My heart beat against the earth and my lips bit into the rooted, sandy soil. I did not move for twenty minutes, and I thought I would not move again that night until I was sure I could make a clean, unobserved escape. But I wanted to get away from that house, and most of all, I wanted to return to the secure anchorage of my room, to the safety of roommates. I wanted to escape from all responsibility for Pearce. I didn’t move or lift my head until I heard Pearce screaming again. Undone, I put my hands over my ears, but the screams cut through my fingers and my eardrums felt as if they were being lacerated with glass.
I rose to the window once again and saw one of them dousing Pearce with gasoline. He poured the gasoline over Pearce s head, into his face, and splashed it against his chest and groin. The high-pitched voices were in full cry again as the lunatic chorus sang out their imbecilic, vicious chant of loathing. They gathered in the far corner of the room and lit candles in a ritualistic and strangely beautiful ceremony. Bowing to each other and grinning beneath the cloth masks, they began a slow cadenced march toward Pearce, the candles held like swords in front of them as they made their long approach.
“Set the nigger on fire.”
“You gonna leave, nigger?”
“Fire, nigger, fire.”
Pearce, delirious and insensate with terror, began screaming out of exhaustion and terror.
“I’ll leave, sir. Please, sir. I’ll leave. I’ll leave. Never come back, sir. Please, sir.”
And still they came, the fire before them.
I almost vomited again; I went down on my knees and tried to keep from retching. Pearce’s screams, nausea, the smell of gasoline through the open windows, the sweetness of the azaleas. My hand found a brick.
I came out of those azaleas with that brick, with that weapon.
I threw it high, lobbing it like a grenade through the window, the glass shattering with a surreal cleanliness, and continuing its arc, almost in slow motion and somehow dreamlike, the brick exploded into the chandelier and the room, suddenly silent, burst into a dazzling shower of ruined glass.
I smashed another pane with my fist, felt the bite of glass in the heel of my palm, and shouted into the room, “Pearce, it’s Will McLean and I’ve seen it all.” And pointing to the shoulder with the scar, I yelled, “And I know you, Cain Gilbreath, you motherfucker. And you, John Alexander. I know you.”
Then I was running. I saw them moving toward the doors and exits, and my brain, overpowered with the images and visions of this demonic night, turned toward escape. I sprinted around the side of the house, moving low and fast, using the cover of the hedge until I had to break into the open and be exposed to the light. Already, I had made my first mistake and had run in the opposite direction from my car.
“There he is. Get him,” I heard someone yell from the back door.
But by that time I had reached the road to the beach and I headed toward the sound of the breakers like a sprinter fast out of the blocks. I was running blindly down the road in complete darkness. If there had been a tree planted in the middle of the road I would never have seen it and would have left my brain decomposing in its bark. I remembered the road being straight, and I had to trust the accuracy of that memory because I began to hear the footsteps in pursuit of me, footsteps matching me stride for stride. My hand was aching in the cold and I could feel the blood warm between my fingers and dripping off my damaged hand. I was afraid the loss of blood would weaken me, slow me down, and allow them to catch me. Already there was a lightness in my head.
But I broke suddenly out onto the open beach and sprinted to the left, through soft, difficult sand, until I hit the hard wet sand at the ocean’s edge.
Then I took off. The sprinter in me, the dashman, the flashy guard trained under the lights, ignited on that fast sand and let loose for two hundred deliriously heady yards, until I thought my lungs would burst. A light fog dusted the beach and the air was completely still, as though the earth and the water were thickening around me, trapping me cunningly in the thickness.
Casting a quick glance over my shoulder, I saw three black masks following me in the fog. Cain Gilbreath, with his thick, formidable body, was pursuing me with a grim intensity that frightened me more than anything had all night. I thought that my friendship with Cain would have meant enough to make me immune from his pursuit, at least. The three of them were running easily, pacing themselves, intent on letting me run myself out, exhausting myself in the first mile. I pressed my palm against my heart and tried to stem the flow of blood.
Behind them, two others emerged from the road and took up the chase through the fog. The distance made them little more than ethereal, insubstantial creatures, and I knew they had little chance of catching me.
I tried to form a strategy as I ran. I tried to concentrate my energies and clear my thoughts. Slowing down, I decided that I was the master of this chase even though I was the pursued.
Let me set the pace, I thought, feeling the blood against my chest, let me decide how the race will be run. My pursuers knew I was fast, had watched me on the court, knew that I was not a distance man, knew that I would fade fast over long distances. My forte was the quick explosive burst of speed, the change of pace and direction, and an ability to run as much as I needed to run. And as far, I thought. And as far.
I was a basketball player, I told myself, a running, jiving, fast-talking, quick
-handed guard, and I had taken to the courts when I was nine years old and had never stopped running, never stopped shooting, never stopped developing those leg muscles that would carry me away from them. I could bleed and still outrun them. I had bled before in the fury of games and had never asked to come out in my life. Bleeding was a sign of honor among athletes, and I had left my blood and my sweat on a dozen courts around the South and would have loved to leave them on a hundred more.
So I ran. I ran. I tried to forget the slow men behind me and tried to remember instead the hurting lessons of my game, the injured knees, the sprained ankles, the burning thirst of practice, the elbows in the mouth, the missing teeth of forwards. If they caught me, I reasoned, it would be because they had earned the capture and they wanted me more than I wanted to escape. But no one has wanted things more than I have, I thought. That was the gift and hunger I brought to my game. I did not have the talent to match the hunger, but, by God, I had the speed.
In the elixir of these thoughts, in the high velocity of these thoughts, I turned toward my enemies again, forty yards behind me now. But I noticed with alarm that the last two had closed the gap considerably and were only ten yards behind Gilbreath and his companions. The last two were sprinters and were going to make a run for me before this race was finished.
Then I saw Gilbreath look over his shoulder.
And I heard this sound:
“Oink, oink.”
“Pig,” I shouted and stopped.
I whirled around, started back down the beach, and braced myself for the charge of Cain Gilbreath.
He rushed at me, came hard and with a low center of gravity, and I stood waiting for the charge, loose and crouching, aware of the blood spilling down my hand again. He came at me with superb, deadly balance, handling his bulk well, and before the collision I realized Cain had spent long seasons coming out of the line at defensive back, coming straight ahead in bone-stirring downfield blocks, coming toward dummies held by taut, screaming coaches at practice, and at that moment I knew I would learn the difference between a pulling lineman and a flashy guard. He had been bred and honed for contact; I had been trained to avoid it. His shoulder caught me at the knees and his full weight upended me. I flipped in a wild somersault and landed on my back. I rolled away from him and felt the shock of the cold breakers sting my hand. I rolled to avoid him, but he was quicker off the ground and his fist slammed into my cheek and his second blow glanced off my eyebrow. I moved into a fetal position and tried to cover my face with my hands as waves broke over me. He left me suddenly, and opening my eyes, I knew the pulling guard was going to learn some swift lessons about hitting the roommate of Mark Santoro and Dante Pignetti.
Mark reached him first.
Cain rose to meet him like a linebacker crouching to intercept a halfback, but Mark knew little about organized athletics. He came at Gilbreath like a streetfighter with little time on his hands and kicked Gilbreath in the nuts, dropping him to his knees. The second kick was to the face; the third to the stomach.
Mark turned the prone and bleeding body of Cain Gilbreath over on the sand, went down with his knees on Gilbreath’s arms, and began hitting his face with deliberate, brutal punches. After the third, I grabbed Mark.
Behind us, Pig had cut down one member of The Ten with a left hook to the nose and dispatched the other with a karate kick to the chest. Both of them scrambled to their feet and wisely began running back toward the house.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” I shouted.
We left Gilbreath lying on the beach, in the cold, in the fog, with the tide going out in the Atlantic.
Tradd, nervous in the shadows of the south sally port, let us in the barracks an hour before reveille with keys purloined again from the sleeping guard. Pig returned the keys, slipping into the guardroom as silently as though he was under water. My left eye had swollen shut, and when we got to our room, Tradd, with great and ginger concern, cleaned the cut on my cheek, removing grains of sand and clots of blood. He applied a cold compress to my eye and disinfected the deep cut in my hand by pouring alcohol directly on the wound.
“You deserve pain,” Tradd said when I screamed. “You deserve an award for stupidity and vanity. I wish I could stick your whole head in alcohol.”
“You missed the big one, paisan,” Pig said to Tradd as he danced and shadowboxed around the room, aglow with the fevers of combat and running and escape. “Will was the wagon train. The Ten was the Indians. And me and Mark was the fucking U.S. Cavalry sweeping out of the hills in the nick of time.”
“Someone had to let you fools in the barracks,” Tradd said.
“Thanks for following me out there,” I said to Pig and Mark. “I don’t know what they would have done if they’d caught me.”
“Catch you?” Pig scoffed. “You can’t catch anything that scared. You were flying down that beach, boy.”
“I didn’t want to go,” Mark grumbled, removing his wet shoes and socks and hurling them at his press. “Meatbrain over there talked me into it. He said you couldn’t handle it alone. You had it made until you threw that brick. You should have just seen what was going on and drifted on back here. You promised us you’d be careful. Throwing that brick was just stupid.”
“Will doing something stupid would surprise you?” Tradd asked. “Stupidity’s just a habit of his. The poor fool’s fallen in love with stupidity, and who knows what troubles his shenanigans tonight will bring this room? I want everyone in this room to know that I deplore all of your actions tonight and I refuse to share complicity in them. Y’all are acting like criminals and ruffians and fools.”
“We’ve got them, Tradd,” I said, holding a wet cloth over my hurt eye, amused at Tradd’s prissy discontent. “Gilbreath is one of them. So is Alexander. I’ve got three numbers from their car stickers. They’ve got to come to us now. They’ve got to make a deal with us.”
“And we’re going to take any deal they offer,” Mark said, addressing me directly. “We don’t have any bargaining power at all, Will. We know a couple of names. So what? We know they get their rocks off kidnaping knobs and niggers. So what? They got the General and we got our dicks in our hands. This is the last night we’re going to play fuck around with that bunch. They’re into some serious shit that we don’t know about and understand. Gilbreath is one of your best friends, Will. You guys have been wisecracking for four years, and he was trying to kill you out on that beach. He was swinging from left field. I mean, serious punching. Why? He was afraid of something, man. Your being there scared the shit out of him. No, we’re going to make peace with The Ten. If we’ve got to kiss their asses on the parade ground at high noon and give them an hour to draw a crowd, then we’re going to do it.”
“We don’t kiss ass in this room,” Pig said proudly. “Not unless we want to. We kick ass instead. We kick ass and take names and call muster. We stick together like brothers and go on secret missions for her majesty. We have adventures and great times. That was the most fun I’ve ever had in my life out there on the beach tonight. Man, you should have seen those bastards’ faces when they looked back and saw it was me and Mark chasing them.”
“I have no philosophical problem about kissing ass, as you so crudely call it,” Tradd said to Mark. “I agree with you that the position of this room is vulnerable. I feel vulnerable and I haven’t even gone on any of your silly, childish forays against The Ten. But I do believe that Will is responsible for all of our involvement. You must also be responsible for getting us safely out of this, Will. You owe all of us that much, at least.”
“You guys don’t understand,” I said, appealing to Tradd and Mark. “We’re smarter than they are. We’ll win because we use our heads better and we’ll take more chances than they will. They can’t match the imagination of this room. The creativity. They don’t know what we’ll do next because we don’t know. We’re unpredictable.”
Mark’s voice was strained and febrile as he answered me. “I’m not creative, Will
. And I’m not that smart. But I’m smart enough to know you can get us out of this. But barely. You can barely get us out of this safely. I want to finish out this year. I’m like Tradd and I just want to be safe, Will. Do you understand that? Safe! Be smart and creative as hell. But think about making this room feel safe again. You owe that to the three of us.”
“I’ll take care of The Ten today,” I said. “They’ll have to come to me with terms. I’ll make a deal with them. We’ll keep our mouths shut if they let Pearce finish out the year. We’ve got them by the short hairs, boys. They’re absolutely powerless.”
“I wonder what they’ll tell the General about that broken window,” Mark thought aloud. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw you throw that brick.”
“The window’s cheap,” I laughed. “I took down a chandelier with that brick.”
“Will,” Tradd shouted in alarm and disgust. “Those chandeliers at the General’s home are priceless. They’re famous in the lowcountry as being among the finest ever brought to the New World from England. They cannot be replaced.”
“Let him replace it with a light bulb. That’s what he gets for letting his house be used as a torture chamber.”
“You don’t destroy beautiful things to make a point,” Tradd argued.
“It was an attention-getting device, Tradd,” I said. “It worked. It got me more attention than I’ve ever gotten in my life.”
“Listen to me and Tradd,” Mark said earnestly. “And make us safe again, Will.”
Pig came up to my bunk and whispered to me so the others couldn’t hear, “They’re chicken shit, Will. You and I are the only two men in the room.”
“These guys are just getting cold feet, Pig,” I said, proud to be included in the ranks of men by the strongest man I knew.
“They’re not like us, Will. They don’t like being out there on the high wire. That’s when you and I are at our best, when we’re on the high wire.”
