Honor and Duty (33 page)

“Like WHAT?” I exploded.

“Fuckin’ A, Ting, cool it!” said Duke. “Don’t go ape on me again. God, you are so fucked up! You’re not a kike or a ninny!”

I stood, the chair scraping sourly. “Go to hell, Troth.”

“Get a handle, man,” said Duke, frowning and leaning back.

I wanted him to take it back, and I wanted him to say it again so I could hurt him. I was hot with booze. Nameless angers raged.

“Shit, Ting,” said Smits, “you got a black momma, or what?”

The room went out of focus. There stood Momma LaRue, in the faded purple down-to-the-floor, with her smooth, handsome face, touching my cheek.

“Yes,” I said, in a gravelly voice I didn’t recognize as I moved. Lorbus grabbed my arm and I tore it free, liking the action, the room turning red. I didn’t know math worth crap, but I knew this. “Cool it,” hissed Bob. “You’re in a Q and if you brawl you’ll get booted. I heard you almost did this as a Plebe! Now can it!”

I blinked, heart still pounding, blind, raging, homicidal adrenaline surging through my arms and fists. I couldn’t think, my mind full of unworkable ooze. I wanted to hit Troth’s and Smits’s dirty, ugly, white mouths. There had been no physical contact and I tasted blood in my mouth and Toos and I were backed up against five white boys and no joke or smart remark could end this. I moved for Troth.

A fist pounded on the door and I hesitated. “Screw ’em,” said Smits.

The door opened. A bearlike man in an Army athletic shirt and sweats filled the doorway. He made Smits look small. The red dissipated and my vision returned, details announcing themselves. The rotating fan had a bullet hole in its base. My cards were on the floor and I had a large number of red chips,
neatly stacked. Through the upbeat and mourning voice of Johnny Rivers, I heard the bearlike man say, “Sir, please turn down the music.” His voice was thinner than his frame, but it was crystal clear.

Colonel Smits looked up. Smirking, he walked slowly. BOQ rooms were small. He took his time. He turned the volume down slightly.

“More would be great, sir,” said the bear at the door.

Smits turned the volume back up, grinning at us as eardrums popped and the pictures shimmied. Smits grinned.

“Less,” said the bear, and then he smiled hugely, his teeth glinting in the light of the cheap crimson Japanese table lamps. It was the smile of a man who would never be troubled by the minutiae of life. He was younger than Smits, a lot bigger, with more blood in the brain, more vinegar in his fists, judgment in his stance. He had a barrel chest, broad, well-defined shoulders, thick arms, and a reddening face—Guan Yu in the flesh. A new tension, older and sharper than the one sparking between me and Troth and Smits, filled the room. There was a link between Smits and this big man. Like the one between the Capulets and the Montagues.

Smits turned the volume down. I blinked, and took a deep breath against my hammering heart. I had been ready to screw things up. I was in my stance, as stupid as stupid could be. I quietly sat down.

“Just playin’ cards,
Major
,” Smits said. “Saturday-night R&R in the
privacy
of our shitty Q too rich for your blue blood?”

“Not at all, sir,” he said. “Good to play cards. Good to be a good neighbor. Need sodas or hot dogs, sir? I got extra.”

“Negative. Don’t need a goddamned thing,
Major
,” said Smits. “Hope we didn’t fuck up your beauty sleep.”

The bear smiled. “Good night, sir.” He closed the door.

“Who was that?” asked Clint.

“That,” said Duke, “was Major H. Norman Schwarzhedd.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said.

“Ohhh,” said some.

H. Norman Schwarzhedd, the same name as the renowned Na-men—he was the son of the general, the son of my father’s wartime friend. I looked at the door, wanting it to reopen. But I had seen him, and heard him, felt his presence. I looked at Troth, emptily.

Duke looked away from me as he spoke rapidly. “He got
put in for the Medal of Honor but got a second Silver Star. Gotta be one of the Point’s most decorated graduates, just reeking of
contacts.
Damn, is he
big?
” Trying to be cheerful.

“I heard he was coming,” said Bob, who patted my shoulder. “Calm down, buddy,” he said.

“He’s a fuckin’ blowhard,” growled Smits. “Jerk thinks livin’ in a mousetrap is all right. He’s a suckin’ mouse chaser. I got boh-coo bad-mouth for this Q. This Q is
number ten!
This Q
sucks.
Had better in Nam—can you believe that shit? You boys see where married officers live? Up the hill? Squeezeville! They live like the damn Queen a Sheba. Treat us like number-ten dogshit. Goddamn Army scrags your ribbons and gives you a goddamn
house
cuz you were sucking stupid enough to marry two legs joined in the middle. And he fucked up our game. Shit! I woulda taken this hand, too.”

A silence came over the table. An officer bad-mouthing another officer? Duncing
all
women? And calling a war hero a blowhard?

“Yeah, married idiots got it licked, boh-coo,” affirmed Duke.

“Let me tell you boys something,” said Smits. “The world’s an anus. It’s all that it’s cracked up to be, and it’s out there, ready to come
di di mau
and get you in the cheeks. Can’t trust one butthole in the setup,” he said. “Asshole careerists in charge are only out to do you. Don’t
even
waste your time tryin’ to figure it. No suckin’ answer. You’re gonna be Airborne Ranger engineers, the best and the brightest, and they’re gonna fart you boys out and zip you up in body bags before you can say ‘Slope City.’ ”

I stared at Smits. The more he drank, the more he had a black meter to his speech, the placement of emphasis not the pattern of a white man’s speech.

“Win this shit, gotta take the
offensive
, not pass gas in the fuckin’ hurricane. We’re just fartin’ in the wind, so the whole thing eats it
big.
” He pulled down more Bushmills.

“Like that song,” he said softly. It was “The House of the Rising Sun.” “Many a poor boy …” He leaned forward and belched wetly, his red eyes searching our faces, looking for friends.

“Build defilades, brothers. Do your own rules. Run up the Jolly Roger.” He held up two fingers. “Two standards.
Two
suckin’ worlds. You gotta be cool on this West Point shit, and
be cool in a big suckin’ boh-coo hurry or it’ll eat your livin’ guts.”

Only Duke nodded his head. I shook mine. Lorbus and Torres were tight-lipped. I thought of the smiling, bearlike major who also had returned from Vietnam, but could not be more different from Smits. In the silence, Miles collected the cards, returned bets, and dealt seven-card, no-look sweat.

I bet blindly, wondering what Major Schwarzhedd was doing. I wondered if he looked like his father. The major was probably about the same age as the first Major Schwarzhedd was when he was running around in the bush with Major Ting of the Chinese Army. I was ready to leave.

Arch bet harder and won with three kings. “That’s it for me, hombres,” he said, “Gotta book. You want to get some air, Kai?” he asked.

I cashed out. Smits was staring into the bottom of his glass.

“Thanks again, sir, for inviting us,” Arch said.

“Then don’t leave early, soldier, takin’ our winnings,” he said thickly, looking at me quizzically, the booze changing him.

“Gotta go. I’m a goat,” I said.

“What’s your excuse, Torres,” mumbled Smits.

“Aim low, hit low,” said Arch.

“So leave already,” said Duke.

“Turn up the volume on the way out,” said Smits.

I went to the stereo, Arch and I putting on our dress-gray tunics. The dial was set at three. I moved the dial to three and a half and left a ten in the cup.

21

West Point Library, September 7, 1966

Major H. Norman Schwarzhedd became my P in the mechanics of solids, yet another break-my-heart Cow engineering
course. He taught the second-from-the-cellar section, where I was the second-from-the-bottom man. He gave no hint of knowing about my father.

Legends followed Schwarzhedd like iron filings after magnets. He had been the first cadet since MacArthur to break down the reveille cannon and reassemble it atop Central Barracks, and had succeeded in turning back the clock tower in East Barracks thirteen minutes in distant salute to George Orwell. In Vietnam, he had fought like Napoleon in fatigues. Reportedly, he possessed a fulminating anger.

“You’re NOT AUTHORIZED to be indifferent to this course!” he shouted, crashing the classroom pointer on my desk, fragmenting it and raining splinters on the blackboard and his carefully drafted bridging diagrams while my heart seized in imitated infarction.

In a faculty composed of war heroes, canal architects, all-American athletes, nuclear engineers, nation builders, espionage masters, Heisman Trophy winners, Rhodes scholars, and rocket scientists, Schwarzhedd drew an affectionately romanticized reputation among the Corps. Wild rumors abounded to explain the sources of his many nicknames—“the Bear,” “the Blitz,” “Hannibal.” In a school where Honor was all and honesty was presumed, we relished tall tales about the man with the pretzled name. He had graduated high, played football, lettered in track and field, and been a member of the Dialectic Society, founded in 1816. I joined the society, as those without charisma seek its growth through association. I helped write the system-razzing skit for the Hundredth Night Play, held a hundred days before graduation.

The major was of a size that suggested the bigger-than-life statues that populated West Point like penguins at the South Pole. He had a large torso, big feet, and a booming voice. His head was the result of geometry at work. The square jaw, sheer-sided cheeks, and wide temples suggested he had been formed by a large-bladed hatchet wielded by a sculptor who had focused on the big parts. His fierce, penetrating eyes under strong, animated brows seemed at odds with his neatly linear mouth, which teased at the edge of an outlaw smirk, a nighttime-raiding smile that could crawl up your drainpipes and leave laughter in the middle of a bad storm. I liked that part. I didn’t like the burning eyes, the brows beetling with muscular intent.

En route to the library, I passed George Patton in bronze, his
pearl-handled revolvers on his hips. In an air pocket within the hands were four of his stars—small secrets held inside, like a Taoist spirit. River winds keened through his profile. I always thought it was because he had spent five years at the Academy; he had flunked a course and been given the “turnback” option—repeating an entire year.

I was reading a pristine copy of Fairbank’s
East Asia: The Modern Transformation
in the third-floor reading room when a deep voice said, “None of that is on tomorrow’s writ.”

I looked up. Major Schwarzhedd was sitting serenely, as if he were a part of the library, waiting for pigeons to alight. I was surprised by his presence and by his silence; in my experience, there was little he did without ample dynamism. I, who prided myself on my silence in the woods, had been surprised by a man as large as South Aud and as quiet as a tactical atomic weapon.

The banked lights in the tall ceiling illuminated the brightly burning eyes of Ulysses S. Grant and H. Norman Schwarzhedd. The four orbs fixed me in dark, steely gazes. I wasn’t happy to see the major. I knew this because I had stopped breathing, sweat was on my upper lip, and my shoes and Jockey shorts had shrunk. He had come by to check on the halt, the lame, and the dumb, and had found all three in one body, studying Chinese history.

“Hi, sir,” I said, blushing a little.

“And a very cheery good evening to you,” he said, his mouth smiling for an instant. “Is this how you pass your time?”

“No, sir. Usually, I’m in the military section. This is a new book from Harvard’s Yenching Institute. My uncle recommended it.”

He looked at me, expressionless, and I was reminded of my
dababa.
Actually, it was like looking at three Uncle Shims while sitting in a pool of water as live power lines sparked, which aptly described my progress in engineering as well as my success in adhering to the ancient ways of my heritage. I heard the high wind whistling over Patton’s statue outside the granite walls.

“What does the book tell you?” he asked politely.

“Sir, China is all families, in ritualized relationships, based on obligation and duty. Duty is done by honoring others.”

I looked at him. He was still listening.

“Here, we try to make money, be successful, and look good.”

He smiled.

“K’ung Fu-tzu, Confucius, said, ‘Subdue the self, honor the rituals, and benefit society. Do not work for individual gain.’ ”

“Interesting,” he said. “Perhaps the sages knew something we rediscovered a couple hundred years ago. Or perhaps there are life principles which transcend times and nations.”

I surveyed the colorful collage on his chest: the sky blue Combat Infantryman’s Badge; the bright silver U.S. Master Parachutist wings; the red, white, and blues of the Silver Star and Bronze Star, each with bright gold, oak-leaf clusters; the green and white Army Commendation Medal with gold “V” devices for valor; the deep burgundy and bright white of the Purple Heart; the blue and gold Air Medals; and the greens, yellows, and reds of the Vietnam service medals. On the right were golden Vietnamese Jumpmaster wings. On his shoulders were the black, gray, and gold USMA patch with the Helmet of Athena, the bright yellow and black Ranger Tab, and the bright red, double-A patch of the all-American, 82nd Airborne Division. The colors of brass, and courage. I looked at them and imagined their cost in fear, pressure, and anguish.