“Ha!” I laughed. “Durrell shit all over his classmates. Wouldn’t you know it?”
Mark did not answer and I began to grow bored with the reading. Commerce was a boring writer and his insights were uninspired. He observed with the eye of an accountant, with unassailable accuracy but no interest in the delicious, gossipy detail, or the incongruities or neuroses of the characters he so drily introduced. He used the language as he would a branch of mathematics.
I learned what grades he received on every test, how many merits or demerits he garnered each month, and how he spent his money.
I began to skip pages, glancing at them perfunctorily. I stopped to read about the Ring Ceremony, noting the small differences in emphasis and tradition. There was a long account of an inspection Commerce himself had conducted on the quadrangle, a description of a girl he had dated from Agnes Scott, a conversation he had with his father, an argument he had with his roommates, more test scores, and some quotations from Marcus Aurelius. I skipped more and more pages, pausing on an entry describing a debutante ball in South Carolina Hall and a parade on Corps Day. Corps Day had not changed at all as I found in Commerce’s earnest, lusterless prose. I turned the Page.
I turned the page and found it.
I was dizzy as I read these words written in the same precise script:
Later that evening after the Corps Day ceremonies had ended, I was inducted into a secret organization known as The Ten. I have heard rumors about The Ten since I was a freshman, but had become convinced that it did not exist. My roommate and I once even argued about it, a debate I recorded earlier in this journal. I cannot even tell Obie he was right. They took us to the President’s house, blindfolded us, then drove us deep into the country for the induction ceremony. Over a hundred members of The Ten were in attendance, and the induction was very impressive indeed. We were told the history of the organization since its beginnings after the Federal occupation of the Institute during Reconstruction. We took an oath to uphold the purity and ideals of The Ten for as long as we shall live. The membership list reads like a Who’s Who list of Institute graduates, and I felt both fortunate and honored to be selected. My uncle, William St. Croix, was my sponsor. . . .
At the bottom of the page, Commerce listed the nine other classmates selected with him. Bentley Durrell was the third name on the list.
“Turn to Corps Day, Mark,” I said. “We’ve found it.”
“Wait a minute, Will. I’m reading something very interesting.”
I took down the next journal after Commerce’s senior year and turned quickly to Corps Day. At the bottom of the page again, I found the names of the second ten men selected for membership in The Ten. I copied the names down carefully in a small notebook I had pulled from my back pocket. Mark was scowling and introspective as he read the Corps Day entry of 1967.
“These ten names are the new members of The Ten from this year’s junior class, Mark. Copy those names. We might get out of this yet. We just might make it, boy,” I said.
I was working fast now, taking down each journal, turning quickly to the Corps Day description, copying the names and going to the next journal. Even when Commerce was overseas, he always carefully recorded the names of the new members on their date of election, not when he received the news.
Mark copied the names of the new inductees in 1967 on a sheet of paper but the troubled, deeply melancholy expression remained on his face. He looked puzzled and indecisive. He removed the second to the last journal from the bottom shelf.
“That’s the year our class was inducted into The Ten. Now we’ll know all the bastards who’ve been fucking with us.”
Mark flipped through the journal. It took him a long time to find the Corps Day entry for 1966, an unconscionably long time. By this time I had listed eight sets of members in my notebook.
I saw Mark stiffen.
“What’s wrong, Mark?” I asked, but he couldn’t speak.
He pointed to something in the journal.
“Oh, my God,” I gasped. “Oh, my God, Mark.”
For five minutes we sat in that room without a word passing between us.
Then Mark spoke, “I’ve got some other things to tell you, Will.”
“About what?”
“About Annie Kate.”
Chapter Forty-six
At eleven o’clock, after we had carefully replaced the journals and eliminated all traces of our presence in the house, we left the St. Croix mansion and returned to the Institute. We had filled our notebooks with names and dates, with information that would alter, transform, and ruin utterly the fragile, tenuous network of destinies and alliances that had begun in innocence when I first talked to Cadet Recruit Pearce in September. That is how fate wounds you, I thought, as Mark steered down Rutledge Avenue. It sets you up with the banality of common events, camouflages the danger signals, positions you with kind and mothering hands, whispers graceful cadences and cunning lullabies, and leads you blithely to terrifying reckoning, perhaps to extinction, but always to banality again. If it was not fate, then I did not know what to call it, did not know its name. But I felt its malignant presence in that slow ride toward the barracks, through those charming streets of immense, enduring houses, through darkness and sadness and rain. I felt all the pain of growing older, the hazard of wisdom, and the death of beautiful illusions. There was a change in me, a violent shift in the sand, and I felt the cobra stir in the blood. I felt heat; I felt ice.
When we reached the parking lot beside fourth battalion, I embraced Mark tenderly and held him for over a minute, the big man limp and inert in my arms.
“I’ll take care of the rest of it tonight, Mark. Try to get some sleep. I’ll be back before taps. We’re going to make it, son.”
“Who gives a damn? I hate this school. I hate this city,” he said.
“It’s not the school or the city, Mark. We know that now. It’s this other thing. It’s this aberration. Now remember we don’t tell anyone.”
I left Mark and walked past the tennis courts, smelling the sweet aroma of wet clay. I glanced toward the General’s house to my left as I came to the doorway of the Bear’s quarters. His wife answered the doorbell and told me that the Colonel was upstairs in his bedroom watching television. She invited me inside and asked me if I wanted a cup of coffee. “Yes, ma’am,” I said, and climbed the stairs to the Colonel’s bedroom.
“Colonel,” I called out at the top of the stairs.
“Drive in, Bubba,” he said from the bedroom.
He was in his pajamas, smoking a cigar, reading a book, and there was gunfire on the television, although I did not notice what was playing. I saluted him out of habit even though he wasn’t in uniform. Out of habit, he saluted back.
“What’s wrong, Bubba?” he asked.
“Everything, Colonel,” I said, unable to meet his gaze. “The whole goddam world is wrong.”
“If you’re just learning that, lamb, then you’re on your way to being a man.”
“I know who they are, Colonel. I know every goddam one of them.”
“The Ten, Bubba?”
“Yes, sir. Here’s why I thought you were one of them. Cain Gilbreath gave me this photograph when I told him I was coming to you for help.”
I handed him the photograph of Poteete being tortured with him in the background.
“It’s a fake, Bubba. You should have been able to see that.”
“I see it now, Colonel. I didn’t see it then. I looked at your class, Colonel. I found the names of the ten men in your class who are members. Your name wasn’t among them. You were telling the truth the whole time. They knew you would help me so they faked the picture.”
“The ring is my word, Bubba. The ring means something.”
“I shouldn’t have come to this school, Colonel. I didn’t belong here. I’ve hated all this. It’s been bad for me.”
“Some good, some bad, Bubba. It’s your school for the rest of your life. No matter what happens.”
>
“I mean that it’s not my nature to live in a place like this. It’s a cruel place, Colonel, a loveless place.”
“Sometimes, Bubba. Just like any other place.”
I took his ring out of my pocket and he placed it on his finger. He did not mention my tears and neither did Mrs. Berrineau when she brought the coffee. I was not the first cadet to come to the Berrineau house because of some grief or personal hurt, nor would I be the last. It was a law of the Corps I had learned in the first month of my freshman year, only I had ignored it: If you’re in trouble, go to the Bear. I was one of a long line of cadets who had wept while sitting on the foot of his bed. He did not mind. He expected it of boys.
Then I spread out my notebook and told him the entire history of The Ten and the names of every single graduate who held membership in the secret order. Every so often, he would whistle as I named a former governor of the state, a United States Senator, ambassadors, presidents of large corporations, Army generals. As I spoke, I knew that Colonel Reynolds would be pleased. On this night I had become a historian and had finally discovered a primary source.
When I had finished, the Bear said, “In two days, Bubba, you go to the General’s office to get your walking papers. We’ve got over forty-eight hours to prepare a surprise for him. You and Santoro report to my office at 0800 tomorrow. We’ve got final exams, Bubba, final exams.”
“Colonel, won’t you get in trouble with the General when he finds out you know all this?”
“Sure, Bubba,” the Bear said through his cigar smoke. “He’ll fire me.”
“But this is your career, Colonel.”
“I don’t mind, Bubba. The Army was my career, and I loved every minute of it. This is just icing on the cake. This is just playing shepherd to my flock of lambs. And there’s one thing you never understood, McLean, you being a Bolshevik and everything. I love this school. That’s a simple fact. And I love what this school and this ring are supposed to stand for. And I’ll tell you something else, Bubba.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We’re going to break The Ten on Monday. But we better be ready when Monday rolls around, Bubba, because the General’s smarter than you and I are ever going to be. Now I’m going to call in some debts from some of the lambs who owe me big favors. I’ll get all the dirt I can on The Ten in your class. And the Bear is going to have a heart-to-heart with Mr. Pearce. He’s going to sign a full report about what happened at that house that night or I’m going to crucify him without wood or nails. Meanwhile, you give me a list of the names of cadets you would trust with your gonads. And I mean trust completely, Bubba.”
“Right now, Colonel, you could take all the cadets I still trust and have a meeting in a kayak out on the Ashley River.”
“Glad you can still laugh, lamb. But come growling and serious to my office tomorrow. You aren’t out of the woods yet. The only thing you’ve done tonight is to lead the Bear into those woods with you. And, Bubba . . .”
“Yes, sir?”
“It’s lonely in the god-blessed woods.”
Chapter Forty-seven
When I walked into his office on Monday afternoon. General Bentley Durrell looked like the last surviving member of an elite but critically endangered peerage. His manner was efficient; his demeanor pontifical. He studied me with the eyes of a hunter. His mouth tightened with bureaucratic indignation as he prepared to initiate the rites of excommunication from the Corps of Cadets. His face was lined with a cruel though delicate glaciation of years and a wrinkled bunching of the flesh beneath his chin. He was, at once, an old man and an incontestably handsome one. He stared at me dispassionately for an indeterminate amount of time. I had expected to be afraid but instead, there had been a restorative investiture of calm now that we had finally arrived at the hour of reckoning. For the first time, I was facing the specter and power and the incorporeal evil of The Ten with all my questions answered and all my fears allayed. For the first time I was walking the world unafraid of generals. For the first time I was approaching General Durrell as an adult; I was facing him as a man.
I saluted him and he returned my salute.
“I want to call a truce, sir,” I said, surprising him by speaking first.
He was genuinely amused by my opening sally. “A truce?” he replied in his remarkable deep voice. “I wasn’t aware there was a war between us.”
“Yes, sir. There is a war between us.”
“Who declared that war?” he asked.
“Circumstance declared it.”
“What is this war all about, Mr. McLean? I’ve always preferred men who speak straight, who get directly to the point. Do you know why you’ve been summoned to my office today?”
“I’ll be kicked out of school today, General. Nine days before I graduate.”
“You’re correct, Mr. McLean. This is one of the saddest duties of my office and one of the most necessary. It always grieves us to be forced to expel a senior, especially one who has come so far in the line. Now if you had been cautious, if you had shined up properly, if you had conducted yourself judiciously, if you had modified your behavior to blend in with the average cadet, then I think you would have had no problem in graduating with your class, Mr. McLean.”
“The word was put out to run me and my roommate out of the Corps, General. Every clue comes back to you. You have decided to run me out, sir.”
He laughed contemptuously and said, “I have more important matters to consider than the excess demerits of a senior private.”
“Not since The Ten was discovered, sir.”
“The Ten, Mr. McLean? What is The Ten? I’ve been hearing rumors about the existence of The Ten since I was a cadet. I can assure you that no such organization exists.”
“Members are selected on Corps Day each year, General. You were selected with nine of your classmates in the spring of your junior year.”
“We’ve known about the existence of cadet fraternities for years, Mr. McLean. I was in one and so was every other graduate who ever came through here. It’s a frivolity we tolerate probably because there’s nothing we could do to stop them anyhow.”
“The Ten is no fraternity, sir. It’s a gang and you’re responsible for its excesses.”
“Are you trying to blackmail me, Mr. McLean?” he said, smiling at his hands, in perfect control of the situation.
“Yes, sir, I sure am,” I answered. “I want to make a deal with you. My roommate and I will remain quiet about The Ten if you allow us to graduate.”
“I find that most amusing, Mr. McLean. I also find you insulting and impertinent. How should I react to these desperate charges of yours, Mr. McLean? Should I act afraid? Should I tremble before your unprovable accusations? I helped land the victorious Army of the Pacific during World War II, I was a roving ambassador for President Eisenhower, have met the crowned heads of Europe and half the leaders of the Iron Curtain countries, so you will excuse me if I’m not suitably impressed by your idle, cowardly threats. But you tell me, Mr. McLean. If you were I, how would you react?”
“I would act ashamed, sir.”
“You are going to need this air of moral superiority to get you through the rest of what might prove to be a very trying day for you,” the General answered, his anger measurable in the slow, burning floridity in the hollows of his cheeks. “Your case is cut and dried and there is no question of leniency. Major Mudge, your tactical officer, has recommended instant dismissal and I have concurred with his recommendation. I must ask you now for your ring.”
“No,” I said.
“Put a ‘sir’ on that, mister,” the General said, pushing his chair back from his desk.
“No, sir,” I said. “You don’t get my ring until I’m officially withdrawn from the Institute. That is clearly stated in the Blue Book.”
“That moment is but a signature away, Mr. McLean,” said the General as he reached for a pen on his desk.
“Don’t sign that paper, sir,” I said, surprised at the confidence,
no, the command, in my voice.
He looked up at me and we stared at each other for a moment. He looked at the door, then back at me.
“Mr. McLean, I want to make this as easy on you as possible. I cannot tell you how this action saddens me, but you know the rules of the Institute. It is my duty to sign these papers to expel you from the Institute. This action is irrevocable and I am doing it in the best interest of the school and yourself. I will write a letter of recommendation for you that will enable you to attend and graduate from any college in the country. All this will depend on your conducting yourself like a gentleman.”
“I conduct myself like a gentleman when I’m in the presence of gentlemen.”
“Your impudence will only jeopardize your future, sir,” he said, preparing to write.
“What I know will also jeopardize yours, General,” I answered. “What I know about The Ten.”
“Who would believe you when you tried to slander the Institute? Who would believe the word of an expelled, embittered cadet from the Institute?”
There was a loud knock on the door.
The Bear entered the General’s office in his dress uniform. He saluted the General and stood directly beside me facing him. The desk had become a point of division and demarcation. “I would believe that cadet, General.”
“Colonel Berrineau, may I ask who ordered you to report to my office?” the General said, recovering from his initial astonishment.
“Mr. McLean asked me here, sir,” the Bear answered. “He asked for my help. He said that you were running him out of school.”
“Good day, Colonel,” the General ordered coldly, rising out of his seat, “I am the only one who extends invitations to my office, not Mr. McLean. You will report back to your office and you will have a satisfactory excuse for your actions when I speak with you at 0800 tomorrow. And, for the record, I am not running Mr. McLean out of school. I am simply acting on a recommendation of his tactical officer and expelling him for excess demerits. This is not a pleasant task and I fail to understand why you are helping Mr. McLean in making it even more difficult.”