Honor and Duty (53 page)

“Hope no one hides boodle on the beam,” he said. “Hope Mike can get Jefferson Faubus rattled.” Mike was going to catch Jeff T. before grace at supper and ask two questions: (1) Jeff T., how come you don’t study Juice with me or Sonny anymore? (2) Jeff T., if you had an Honor problem, you’d report it, wouldn’t you?

“I hope,” said Sonny, “that Jeff T. talks to Big Dick. I hope Massive Richard lives here.” He sighed. “Don’t look forward to hearing him talk. Never says anything nice.”

I wondered what he’d do if he found the wire.

32

New South Barracks, January 20, 1967

Sonny and his bunky Alphabet Burkowski monitored the black-box receiver in their room. They had one of the few two-man rooms in the class. If Big Dick began talking to the cabal, Alphabet would get Benjamin. Mike would get me. Mike and I slept in our sweats that Friday night, ready to run through a snowy night.

I was asleep when someone tried to suffocate me. The gloved hand was on my mouth and jaw in an iron grip, and I couldn’t pull it off, even after my adrenaline kicked in and I began to struggle with my entire body. I noticed, amidst my death rattle, that I was wearing my glasses. I wondered how I had fallen asleep with them.

Someone was saying “Shh!” It was Mike. He was a wrestler, and it seemed he had ten arms and fifteen elbows, like something out of a Henry Harryhausen special-effects movie. Mike released me and moved out the door, his sweats, black parka, and gloves speckled with liquefying snow. I breathed and enjoyed it. It was one in the morning. Clint, Bob, and Deke were asleep. I grabbed my tennis shoes and parka, unmarked my All Right Card, and closed the door silently.

“OC’s on the road here,” whispered Mike in the hallway while I tied my shoes. “Looking for me. I left snow tracks.” He gave me one of my towels. “Use this when we step into far-side barracks, so we don’t track. Going to Sonny’s. He’s receiving from the mike in East Barracks.” He looked up the hall
while I looked down the hall. “I put the glasses on you so you wouldn’t fight me, knucklehead.”

“Sorry. I didn’t notice at first. Next time you try to silence me, don’t kill me while you’re at it. Who’s OC tonight?”

“Hope it’s not Szeden.”

I shivered with the thought. We headed for the stairs and heard muted footsteps in the stair shaft, coming up, fast.

“My room!” I hissed, and we ran silently back down the hall. I marked my card and pointed into the wardrobe, and Mike crept into it. I threw my parka in his face, closed the door after him, pulled off my shoes, placed them hurriedly under the bed, and dove under the covers, my heart pounding against my ribs. I burrowed deeper and faced away from the door, flexed, and forced myself into regular, slow, deep breathing. I took off my glasses.

I couldn’t remember hearing the click of the wardrobe door when I closed it, with Mike inside, before diving into the rack.

Only Major Szeden, the dreaded “Super Tac,” opened cadet room doors during the night. If the OC checked our room, it was Szeden. If Szeden saw the dresser door ajar, he would know the cadet he had chased had entered the closet, unable to completely close it from the inside. The door ajar would be like the Queen’s slip showing during Coronation, or a pair of bright, starched white trousers unzipped during a Full Dress Armed Forces Day Parade down Fifth Avenue. And Szeden, the nocturnal terror, would nuke our little cadet lives into something that would inspire fear for decades.

At 0120, light flooded the room as our door opened.

I imagined the flashlight beam scanning the room, noticing the open wardrobe, the faulty alignment of tennis shoes.

Kip, kip.
Two footsteps into our room. I continued to breathe. Through my closed lids I sensed the bright impact of a flashlight on the wall beside my head.
Kip, kip, kip, kip … kip, kip.
Major Szeden was in our room, searching, taking the grand tour.

It had been rumored that Szeden, when pursuing night-running cadets, reached into bunks to check the pulses in search of an elevated rate—the telltale sign of a feigning sleeper swamped in anxiety. If the OC grabbed my wrist right now, he’d get a count of an easy 268 beats per minute. Relax, breathe. I remembered Pinoy Punsalong’s techniques and lowered my pulse to 200 beats a minute.

A small eternity passed. The door closed. Mike would wait
for me to open the wardrobe. Major Szeden was the father of the sly fox. Sometimes he wore one tennis shoe and one cordovan; when he ran, it sounded as if he were walking. In situations like this, he entered cadet rooms, walked around, huffed, and then closed the door. Everyone would spring out of their beds, ready to try again to go over the wall to Snuffy’s for a midnight toff, and find Major Szeden standing in the center of their room, glaring while the cadets prepared for punishment tours until the New Ice Age.

After ten minutes, I stirred and rose as if I had to go to the latrine. He was gone. The door to the wardrobe was securely closed. I opened it and Mike crossed his eyes, put both index fingers into his mouth, stretched it, and stuck his tongue out.

After arguing, we did it Mike’s way. It was an old theme: Do you cross your patrol over an enemy road all at once, or one at a time? The answer always depended on tactical circumstances. Mike thought that two of us crossing at the same time represented double the risk in noise and observability. I thought it cut the risk in half, but he was the starman and I was the math goat. Mike ran across the Area cleanly and headed for Sonny’s room.

I began to run. “
YOU!!!
HAAALT!!!” cried a big voice.

I sprinted, raising big billows of snow, almost dropping my towel with its “TING A-3” laundry mark. As I entered the far-side barracks, I stamped my feet, leaving large footprints, pushed the swinging doors onto the first floor, removed my shoes, backtracked through the swinging door, giving it a huge push inward, and sprinted madly up the stairs. Sonny was on the third floor.

The doors slammed against their stops as Szeden burst into the building, and I braked. He started up the stairs, making my heart fall. He cursed. His footfalls went down the stairs, following footprints and the swinging door onto the first floor.

I cut off on the second floor and ran to the central staircase, then went up to the third, my thighs pumping while I drove my arms with all my might, compelling my legs to keep pace. I entered Sonny’s room in a slide and quietly closed the door.

“What kept you?” asked Mike.

“Szeden saw me crossing and chased me,” I gasped.

“God! You didn’t lead him here, did you?” asked Mike.

“Guys! Hold it down!” hissed Sonny, scribbling, his ear flush against a small five-inch speaker. “I might get a name.…”

I took my towel and tucked it into the bottom jamb of the door, to keep the light from going into the hallway. Upper-classmen had unlimited lights, but I didn’t want to draw any attention. Mike Benjamin and I were unauthorized to be here.

“Is it Troth?” I asked quietly.

Sonny’s door was opening, pushing the towel along the floor.

“ROOM, TEN-HUT!” cried Alphabet, and we all snapped to attention. Sonny’s posture was askew; he was bent over slightly, his eyes agog as he stared at Major Szeden while still listening to the scratchy conversations coming faintly through the speaker.

Major Szeden glared. He had fallen in the snow. It caked his overcoat and had gone up his sleeves, dropping onto the floor. Snow was packed in the space between his cordovans and his socks, on his face, and on the gold oak-leaved visor of his cap. It graced his massively indented brows, his burning, volcanic eyes, his rabid, snarling, salivating mouth. He entered the room.
Kip, kip, kip.

We were almost the leaders of the Corps and I wondered if I could recite the Days. How is the Cow? Good, sir, and you?

“How many authorized heah?” he asked through his teeth.

“Two, sir,” said Alphabet. Their roomie, Jimmy Basphault, had been medically separated after years of sports injuries.

“I don’t give a shit who the twerp is, the asshole can be bought off or shoved off. Now who’s helping?” said a tinny voice in the speaker.

“Who said that?” asked Major Szeden.

“Sir, I believe Cadet Troth said that,” said Sonny.

“Which a yew young gen’l’men is Mistah Troth?” asked the major. His burning eyes fixed on us, he brushed the bright yellow “OC” brassard on his upper arm, sprinkling us with snow.

“Sir, Mr. Troth is not present,” said Sonny. “We’re hearing his voice, and the voices of others, through this speaker.”

“You gen’l’men snowin’ me?” he asked.

“No way! We’re not takin’ this thing one damn step further! It’s already wreckin’ us! Now you’re talking about—what? Beating people up? Killing them? That’s bullshit!”

“What in the
hail
is goin’ on here?” asked Major Szeden.

“Sir,” I said, “we’re doing an Honor investigation, acting under an op order issued on 15 December by Major Chase Maher, EE 304A exam officer. Sir, I’m not authorized to be
here. I think Honor has precedence over the Blue Book. We have to track the conversation which is coming through this speaker. Sir, I request permission to continue here, and to report to your office tomorrow to be placed on report for unauthorized absence from rooms.”

Major Szeden looked at me as if he were watching pigs fly while they sang the Alma Mater in Swahili.

“You watch. There’s a chink and a kike doin’ this shit. And I bet there’s a dago, too. You gonna let
them
push you out of the Academy? They’re here ’cause of the Hire the Handicapped program. Screw ’em in the ear!”

“Don’t use those names,” said a voice.

“Aw, fuck
you
in the ear!”

“Take yo’ notes, gen’l’men.
Yew
,” the major said, pointing his gloved finger at my nose, “outside.”

I gulped and followed him.

“Mistah, indulge mah curiosity. Yew set any diversions up ta get me ta be in New South tonight?”

“No, sir,” I said. “We wouldn’t want you anywhere near us. Nothing personal.” I couldn’t believe we didn’t check the OC list. Szeden wrote the biggest slugs in the Academy; he might give me life imprisonment, or the electric chair, or something worse.

“Someone’s bin playin’ hail with me all night. Customarily, cadets don’t fix ta play games when
Ah’m
on duty.”

“No, absolutely not, sir,” I said.

“Got an anonymous call in the guard room. Said a fire’d be set in east- or westside New South, aftah midnight. Fire marshal’s been through both buildings. CQs report nuthin’.

“Signal flares got popped ovah the river by the train station. MPs and Ah ran down theah. On mah way back, Ah saw a cadet runnin’ inta the other wing. Ah did a room-ta-room and couldn’t find him.”

Diversions drew Major Szeden into Third Regiment, while the cabal met in the Fourth.

“How many a yew crossed the Area jus’ now?”

“Two, sir.”

“Yew were the second fugitive, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“An’ how’d y’all proceed ta this room?” He had canted his head sideways, so I was now looking at one of his eyeballs, pronouncedly red, slightly palpitating, bulging in a most ominous manner. I almost expected the eyeball to spit at me. I
heard the great Immortal Poe’s laugh from the sepulchre of the steam tunnels.

I told him what I had done.

“Ah knew Ah’d bin suckered offa the stairs, but Ah thought there were two a you, split high and low.” He shook his head. “Ah knew Ah’d bin had when Ah saw the wet footprints end in the entryway. Still, that was
a fine
chase.”

“Sir, how did you track me to the room?”

His smile vanished, and he frowned. I felt like bracing.

“Hate ta surrender tactical secrets, Mistah Ting.” He knew my name. He looked at his watch. “It’s 0140. Semestah’s new an’ no whufers in range. Mos’ cadets are in dreamland, hunkered undah brown boys. In New South, only one light’s on. This room. When Ah lost y’all on the firs’ floor, Ah beelined heah. Ah was most confused by no light ’neath the door.”

He pulled a stethoscope out of his overcoat pocket. “Ah listened, and heard conversin’.”

He appreciated my gaping mouth. Then he leaned forward.

“Y’all gonna think this is an ignorant question. All Asians creep in the night like you?”

“But you saw me, sir.”

“But Ah couldn’t
catch
you. Ah pride mahself on that.” He smiled crookedly at me, rubbing his tongue against an eye-tooth, his eyes hooded and half shuttered, the gator before his meal.

“Ah’d be honored if ya’ll called on me if ya need he’p with yo’ situation. No need ta drive two-dash-ones to mah office. Y’all taught me a lesson in city warfare, an’ that means the Tactical Department owes you one.”

I saluted him. He smiled, snow wet on his face, and returned it. I stood at attention in the hall as he walked away.

“Hey, great news,” I said. “We’re not getting written up.”

I looked at Mike’s ashen face.

Sonny’s eyes were wet and he was shaking his head. “It’s big,” he said. “We got fifty classmates in this, easy. All the regiments and most of the companies. But no names.” He looked at me. “God help us all.”