The Lords of Discipline

by Pat Conroy

  On the bed I was a lone, absurd figure in the history of my times, a sleeper in the century of ruthless law, of bombers over suburbs, of artillery barrages destroying the gaily painted walls of kindergartens. In my bed, I dreamed of military science classes, imaginary troop movements, and the portraits of boys slain in Vietnam hanging from the library walls. In these dreams I satisfied my own sick and overextended need to be my own greatest hero. I had a passion for the undefiled virtuous stand and a need to sacrifice myself for some immaculate cause. I knew this and hated myself for it and could do nothing about it. Ah, Annie Kate, I will marry you and adopt your child because I’m so good. Ah, Bo Maybank, of course I’ll be your friend and accept your soft towels because I’m so kind. Ah, Tom Pearce, of course I will ease your journey through the plebe system because I am so saintly. Ah, Pig, of course I will defend you before the honor court even though you have been dishonorable because I am so noble. Who else would I take as prisoners of my high sanctity before my life was over?

  I tried to think of Pig during this time but it was hard. I can seldom judge how I feel about an important event in my life as it happens. There is always a time lapse before I am sure exactly what it is I feel. I did know that my refusal to rise from my bed upset my roommates and alarmed my classmates in R Company. They thought it was my finer sensibilities and my greater love of Pig that put me in the bed, that separated me from the rest of them. I secretly enjoyed my honorary role as chief mourner. They thought well of me because I was not like them, because I was unable to carry on and incapable of blocking the horror of that suicide on the tracks.

  “Too sensitive,” they would whisper as they conferred with each other in the alcove. They did not know I was Pig’s avenger and cadre-man, not his chief mourner. I would open my eyes and smile at my friends, then return to the business of sleeping. I kept my hatred secret behind that smile as I always did. The smile was the weapon to keep your eyes on. I should have warned my friends never to turn their backs on my smile. But I was not talking in those days; I was looking for something. In daydreams, I saw myself cut down by firing squads in sun-bleached courtyards as I screamed out the word Libertad to the small tyrant who watched from the palace window. I threw myself on hand grenades, and charged into the machine-gun fire aimed by impregnable gunners. But I was not looking for that so I slept some more and could not move very well in those days or participate in the life of the campus, which continued undisturbed as it always had and always would. Nothing could still the coming of reveille, the gathering of platoons, or the striking of flags at retreat.

  But I did not get in trouble with the Commandant’s Department during this period, and it was one of those times I loved the Corps of Cadets with all my heart. For the Corps conspired to protect me, to give me time for collecting myself, for surrendering myself up to whatever force took up residence within when my roommate died. There were times when the Corps could be a powerful protector of its own members, and if ever its love was turned on you for any reason, you were always surprised and ennobled by the heat and fire and passion of it. During those days, the Corps reminded me that I was one of them and that I had paid my dues to the Line. They fed me, protected me from the eyes of the OC, from the gaze of observant teachers, from the interrogations of the officers, from delinquency reports, white slips, demerits, or formation reports. The Corps kept the Institute at bay until I was ready to rejoin it. And word had gotten around the Line that something smelled about the way Dante Pignetti had been run out of school. It was not a rumor, but more a feeling, vague and ethereal, which settled into the collective consciousness of the Corps. The feeling ran so strong that it took the form of a joke.

  At first I was shocked when I saw Pig’s death becoming a subject for cadet humor. An unknown author had scratched this line into the paint above the urinal on fourth division: Dante Pignetti was railroaded out of the Institute. Since, all cadets were honor-bound never to speak Pig’s name aloud, his death became a natural subject for the school’s graffiti writers. Angry, I took my belt buckle and scratched out Pig’s name. But I thought more about it and what I knew about cadet psychology and how they dealt with tragedy. They had laughed at Pig’s death. That was the only way the Corps could deal with it or anything like it. There was a fierce and undeniable health in their response. And beneath the humor, on a much deeper level, was the sentiment that something was imbalanced and unanswered and unjust in the death on the tracks. The Corps was wondering what it was that had driven Pig to such a horrible death.

  The Ten bided their time and the days passed without incident. I got better and stronger. I waited for them to move again. But this time would be different, I told myself. This time I would do everything I had to do.

  I had discovered a power unknown to me and I would use it.

  The Ten could match my strategies, but not my fury.

  Chapter Forty-three

  I had attended military science classes for four years, and frontal assaults obsessed me. When I read military history, the romance and desperation of charges attracted my attention and respect. Marines and their sons were comfortable only with fierce, contested landings on beachheads and the subsequent inland drive, moving in a straight undeviating line and killing everything that threatened to halt their advance. This was a legacy from my father. I would rather confront and be confronted directly. I wanted to see the swift charge of my enemy as he made his perilous approach to my zone of fire. My nature did not respond as well to envelopment movements, to the stealth of an enemy who trusted in more complicated operations. I did not want to hear the twigs break in the forest behind me or quail flush before the platoon advancing on their bellies to my rear. But frontal assaults lacked subtlety and grace. That was not how The Ten would come for me and Mark Santoro.

  It was on Friday in the second week of May, with the hot damp weather stealing into the lowcountry, that Mark entered the room after evening mess and said, “Well now, at least, we know how they’re going to fuck us.”

  “What are you talking about, Mark?”

  “Have you seen the latest demerit list?” said Mark.

  “No.”

  “Well, I suggest you take a good look at it,” he said. “Your name takes up a full page. Mine takes up a little more than a page.”

  “How many demerits did I get?” I asked.

  “Not many,” Mark answered. “Only thirty-two. Thirty-two big ones, baby. Ol’ Mark came in at thirty-five. They’ve torn our room apart on four occasions in the last four days when we were in class and burned us for everything from improperly folded socks to fart stains on our underwear. At least they’re not going after Tradd. That’s probably because his family founded America and then decided to buy South Carolina.”

  “They can’t do that, Mark,” I said. “They can’t get away with giving seniors that many demerits. Everyone will know they’re after us.”

  “They seem to be getting away with it to me,” he said. “They shipped three seniors last year for excess demerits and five the year before. It’s not that unusual.”

  Tradd entered the room and said in a worried voice, “Did y’all see the DL?”

  “See it?” Mark replied. “I was the fucking DL. Me and Mr. Sensitive here.”

  “What are you going to do about it?” Tradd asked.

  “Who gave us the demerits?” I said, ignoring Tradd’s question because I had no immediate answer. “Who were the reporting officers?”

  “There were four different ones,” Mark said. “Asshole Butler. Asshole Wentworth. Asshole Davis. And flaming asshole Allison.”

  “All Institute grads,” I said, thinking aloud.

  “Bingo, Mr. Einstein,” Mark said, pacing the room. “They’re going to run us out of here on excess demerits. They’re going to kick us out of here a couple of days before graduation. I bet those motherfuckers time it perfectly. I bet they hit us with our last demerits right before the General hands us our diplomas.”

  “How many demerits do you
have so far this year, Will?” Tradd asked, going to his desk and tearing a sheet of paper from his notebook.

  “Before this DL I had forty-five,” I said.

  Tradd figured quickly and said, “You now have seventy-seven demerits for the year, Will. Since a senior is allowed a hundred, you have only twenty-three to go before you’re out.”

  “I had twenty-three for the year when I woke up this morning and shaved my pretty face,” Mark said. “Now I’ve got fifty-eight big pimples on my shiny Italian ass with plenty of time to plant forty-two more.”

  “We’ve got to think,” I said.

  “Think about what, Will?” Mark said. “There’s nothing to think about except getting ready for Saturday-morning inspection tomorrow. I’m going to look like the Hope Diamond when Mudge inspects me and I’m going to get every knob in R Company up here to get this room ready for inspection. I’m going to blitz down my dick and dare Mudge to give me a single demerit. And this room is going to look like Betty Crocker’s kitchen.”

  “That won’t do any good, Mark,” I said. “They’ll get us even if I look good as God and you look like my son. So this is how they’re going to do it.”

  “You’ve got to resign,” Tradd said seriously. “That is your only chance to get out of this with any dignity.”

  “I’m graduating with my class, Tradd,” Mark said with startling fervor. “I’ve sweated blood with this class and I’m walking out of this dump with them.”

  “That’s how I feel about it, too, Tradd,” I said. “Only if I go, I’m going to make The Ten a household word across this state.”

  “That’s foolishness,” Tradd said. “That’s just nonsense and foolishness. You must act sensibly and do what you have to do. Threats can’t help you now, Will. Now you’ve got to salvage what you can.”

  There was a loud shuffle of feet in the alcove and a knock on the door. John Kinnell, the R Company commander, came through the door first. He was followed by the other seventeen seniors in R Company.

  “Supreme Commander,” I said to John, “to what do we owe the pleasure of this visit?”

  “We’re having a meeting of the R Company seniors and we thought we would use your room.”

  “Thanks for asking, John,” Tradd said.

  There were twenty-one of us left of the sixty frightened boys who had entered R Company as freshmen in 1963. We were the veterans of a thousand formations together, a hundred parades, and countless hours of the easy camaraderie that is so simple and uncomplicated among boys bound by a common goal. They came into the room loosely, joking and slapping ass, and took their seats on the desks and floor and racks. But there was a seriousness to their visit belied by all the humor and banter.

  “Hey, McLean,” Jim Massengale said, “you can date my sister for the Graduation Hop if you buy a flea collar.”

  “Who’s going to pay for the roach tablets to kill all those bugs crawling around the hair on her legs?” Henry Peak added, poking Jim in his fleshy stomach.

  “OK, fellas,” John Kinnell said, motioning for quiet with his hands. “Let’s get this meeting started.”

  The room fell silent. It was always wonderful to me how John could control a group of cadets by virtue of his shyness and interior serenity. He was the antithesis of the prototypical cadet leader. He lacked aggressiveness, manipulation, and all those drives and instincts that marked the others in the Corps. We had selected him as company commander for his modesty, his quiet integrity, his simple goodness, and none of us had ever had a single regret.

  “We wanted to have this meeting up here tonight because we’re worried about you two,” John said to me and Mark. “Something strange is going on in this room and none of us knows what it is. Now you don’t have to tell us if you don’t think it’s any of our business. And I mean that, Will and Mark. You know that I mean it. But after what happened on the tracks and after seeing the DL tonight. . . well, the guys and I started putting things together and we’d like to know what’s going on. If we can, we’d like to help you.”

  “Who ever heard of a senior getting thirty demos on a DL?” Murray Seivers said. “Knobs don’t even rate thirty on one list. Maybe I can understand you racking up that many, Will. You’re a fucking load militarily, but Mark is as sharp as anyone around.”

  “Something stinks in Big R, boys, and you’re not letting your classmates in on it,” Jim Massengale said.

  “We’ve been through too much shit together, man, to let you guys get run out right before graduation.”

  John said, “We haven’t heard anything from Will or Mark. Tradd, do you know what’s going on?”

  “Someone wants to run Will and Mark out of school,” said Tradd simply.

  “Why?” eighteen voices asked.

  “Because we found something out,” I said. “We can’t tell you about it now, guys. Because that’s the only thing we’ve got going for us, that no one else knows. But if it looks like we’re not going to make it, we’ll tell you everything.”

  “You’ve got Romeo Company going for you, Will,” John said. “And if we can help you out, we will. We wanted you to know that.”

  “Thanks, John. Thanks to all of you guys,” I said. “But we’re not out of here yet. We’ve just got to make it through the next two weeks. And it seems like the smartest thing for us to do is keep our mouths shut and hope for the best.”

  “To keep your mouth shut, Will,” Tradd said. “That might be too much for your nervous system.”

  “Let’s tell them everything,” Mark said suddenly. “Let’s tell them that we’ve got some mean mothers out to get us.”

  “Who are they, Mark?” Webb asked.

  “Don’t, Mark,” I said. “That will only make it worse. Then we won’t even be able to bargain.”

  “We can’t bargain now,” Mark said, agitated and moving about. “You see anyone in this room trying to bargain with us? Show me the son of a bitch and I’ll bargain my ass off.”

  “Sorry, Mark,” Tradd said soothingly. “Will’s right. If you keep quiet this might blow over. They might be bluffing.”

  “If you guys can’t tell us what’s happening,” John said, maintaining his calm, “then there’s no way we can help you. You’ll have to go it alone. We don’t even know if anyone’s really after you or not.”

  “Someone is really after us,” Mark said directly to John. “I’ll prove that to you.”

  “How?”

  “No matter how Will and I shine up for inspection tomorrow, no matter how many knobs help clean up this room tonight, I will bet good money that he and I get murdered.”

  “Forget getting knobs to help,” Murray said, looking at his classmates. “We’ll clean your room. Twenty-one seniors cleaning a room ought to make damn sure that you sloppy bastards don’t get burned tomorrow.”

  “All right,” several voices said as the seniors of R Company began picking up brooms and dustpans, pulling our shoes and brass out of our presses, singing the R Company song as they worked.

  “We will clean this gross room, gentlemen,” said Harry.

  “We will receive a merit or two, gentlemen,” said Eddie.

  “Who’s going to bathe McLean?” said Murray.

  “Not me,” said Jim. “I’m in charge of burning his uniforms and disinfecting his socks.”

  “If a fly shits in here, wipe his little ass for him,” said Webb.

  “Negative, put diapers on him before he shits,” said Eddie Sheer.

  Mark, Tradd, and I watched our classmates in silence. Then we began the long preparation for the most important inspection of our lives.

  When I Walked out onto the quadrangle for inspection the next morning, my shoes were astonishing things, all black dazzle, glittering in the bright sunlight like two small lakes seen from a plane. I felt as if I were wearing two pieces of furniture instead of shoes.

  The seniors gathered around me and Mark, inspecting us with their trained and expert eyes. Henry Peak brought out his shine rag and removed
a smudge from my breastplate. I felt hands straightening my webbing from behind, adjusting my cartridge box, and wiping the lint from my shako.

  John Kinnell brought me my rifle as if he were delivering good news to the king. I took it from him gingerly.

  “This rifle better be clean, dumbhead,” I said to him. “Mudge better not find any oil on this deadly anachronism.”

  “I boiled it down last night,” John replied, winking at me.

  “That’s illegal, son. That’s against all the rules of the Institute. I feel it is my duty as an exemplary cadet to report you to the proper authorities.”

  “Go ahead and report me,” John said. “The inside of that rifle is as clean as a new baby’s asshole. You could perform surgery with that mother and not worry about infection. If Mudge gives you any demerits for that rifle, then I’m going to tell him after inspection that I was the one who cleaned it.”

  “Thanks, John. Thanks for everything.”

  “I’d like to see them give you a single demerit,” he said. “You look good. You almost look as good as me.”

  “I feel like a jewel,” I said. “A fucking jewel. I just love shining up. I think I’m turning into a military dick.”

  A cadet in full-dress salt-and-pepper looked like a baroque piece from a nineteenth-century chess set. The uniform blouse, with its shiny bronze buttons and its tight cut, emphasized the curve of the chest and shoulders and the strength of the young back. The starched white pants came up high against the crotch, and the emphasis again was boldly erotic as you felt the tightness around the buttocks and the pull against the groin. Inspection, like parade, was fraught with sexuality.

  I never felt entirely comfortable in the everyday cotton fields we wore to class, but in full dress I felt like an absurd and fantastic hybrid. But on this morning I felt pure and untouchable. There was a snap and cleanliness in the air and I was soldierly. I was ready for the Major. I stood there, alert and frisky, the sharpest son of a bitch in the regiment.