“One moment, sir.” The Bear spoke in a perfectly calm and respectful voice, but he seemed diminished and overshadowed in the presence of the General. “A new delinquency report has been issued from my office today.”
“I don’t see the point, Colonel,” the General said. “Nor do I wish to see your face any longer. Good day, sir.”
“Mr. McLean is prominently listed, sir.”
“I’m quite aware of that, Colonel. I called you this morning to get the final tally of demerits.”
“I didn’t tell you that in the same list, Mr. McLean was awarded a total of fifty-seven merits. Thirty for outstanding performance of duty, five for outstanding personal appearance, five for outstanding room, five for reflecting outstanding credit on Carolina Military Institute. And so on, General. Subtracting merits from demerits, Mr. McLean only has forty-five demerits for the year. The same holds true for Santoro.”
“I see, Colonel,” the General whispered in a rage. “I understand perfectly well.”
“Another thing, sir,” the Bear said. “I heard everything said in this room just now.”
“You eavesdropped, Colonel. You eavesdropped on your superior officer. For what reason, Colonel?”
“I needed to find out something, General. Something very important.
“What did you need to find out?”
“I needed to find out if you were a liar. I was sorry to find out that you were.”
“So you are calling me a liar, Colonel?” the General said in a cool, detached tone.
“I am calling you a goddam liar,” the Bear answered, equally cool, equally detached. “I am calling you a disgrace to the ring, a disgrace to the Line. I am calling you unworthy to be President of this great school. Mr. McLean has given me a list of names, General. The list contains all the names of alleged members of The Ten and the names of the boys they have run out of school for the past thirty years. He has provided me with a complete history of The Ten, a history that turns my stomach, General. I have contacted twelve of the boys who were kidnaped and taken to your plantation house on their last night as cadets. They all have volunteered to swear to the fact in a court of law.”
“You will give the list to me, Colonel,” the General said. “That is a direct order. You will mention this list to no one. You will report to your quarters to await further instructions.”
“You’ll get the list, General, when McLean and Santoro graduate. If they do not graduate, then I will go to the press and give the list to them.”
“Your allegations will seem much less severe and trustworthy when they come from the mouth of a former Commandant of Cadets who was relieved of his command for incompetence. I was going to dismiss you when the school year was over, Colonel, but your insubordination leaves me no choice. You will submit your resignation when you report to my office tomorrow,” the General declared, but then his voice softened, became conciliatory, ingratiating, as though he realized he was pushing too hard, too quickly. His strategy shifted in congruence with his voice. “But Colonel, we are both being far too hasty. We’ve been through far too much together to have our professional relationship end because of the lies of this one boy. And he is lying, Colonel. I assure you of that and his lies nearly cost you your job. I know how much the job means to you, Colonel. There is a chance for you to continue as Commandant and we can forget any of this happened. This can be a simple disagreement among men of good will. I still want you on my team, Colonel Berrineau, but only if you want to be, only if I’m assured of your absolute loyalty to me and my staff. It’s up to you, Colonel, it’s entirely your decision.”
The Bear was silent for a moment, reflective, and his face was worried. I thought I’d lost him.
“General,” the Bear said, “Mr. McLean got involved in all this because of a request I made at the beginning of the year. I feel personally responsible for his involvement in this affair. I didn’t know anything until he came to my quarters two nights ago. Now I know everything.”
“Your job is extremely important to you, is it not, Colonel?”
“Yes, sir, you know it’s important to me.”
“Very good, then. We have struck a deal, Colonel?” the General said.
“You can kiss my ass, General Durrell,” the Bear replied.
“You would betray the Institute, Colonel?” the General whispered harshly.
“No, sir,” the Bear answered without emotion. “I would never do that. Would you, sir?”
“There’s not much loyalty in you, Colonel,” the General replied. “Now get out of my office and you report to your quarters, sir. Colonel Lyall will be Acting Commandant until we can find your replacement.”
“You’re going to be amazed how much loyalty there is in me, General,” the Bear answered. Then turning to me he said, “I’m in it with you all the way, Will. You and I are going to show him what this school can produce, Bubba. We’re going to show him what it really means to wear the ring.” Before he departed, he whispered so only I could hear, “Now when I go, you play the last card. Play it, Bubba.”
When the Bear left the room, I felt the full weight of my isolation and solitude as I faced the General’s hostile, appraising eyes alone. But the mood in the room had changed since the Bear’s declaration of support for me, and for the first time there was something uncertain, even endangered, in the General’s expression.
“I’m signing the papers to expel you from the Institute, Mr. McLean. I wish to remind you that there is nothing personal in this action.”
“What am I being expelled for?”
“Excess demerits, of course, Mr. McLean.”
“I have forty-five demerits for the year, General. You’ll have to come up with something else.”
“I am protecting you and Mr. Santoro from a far greater charge, Mr. McLean. A certain Daniel Molligen, a ’64 graduate, was going to bring criminal charges against you and Mr. Santoro for assault and kidnaping. It was only my personal intervention on your behalf which prevented him from going to the police. But the nature of the crime is grievous enough to require your expulsion. The Blue Book specifically states that any cadet accused of a felony will be subject to instant expulsion. I would like to do you and your roommate a favor by keeping this off your record. It would be wise for you to go along with excess demerits. Very wise, Mr. McLean, and very important. You see, I would be more than happy to intervene personally on your behalf with other college presidents. And I would hate to see you do something foolish and never be allowed to complete your college education.”
“And how would you do that, General?”
“I will put on your record that you were expelled on a morals charge of the most heinous nature, Mr. McLean. I would not like to do that. But with your threats and unfounded accusations, you would leave me very little choice. But I’m certain we can work something out, Will. Don’t you agree?”
“What do I have to do to graduate, General? That’s all I want. For me and my roommate to graduate.”
“You’ll have no problem graduating, Will. It just won’t be from the Institute. Things have gone a little too far for that. But it’s not the end of the world. I might even be able to pull a few strings for you and Mr. Santoro and see that your tuitions and educational expenses are provided for. You seem to think there’s some plot against you, Will, and that’s simply not true. You may have convinced Colonel Berrineau, but there are no secret organizations, nothing of that sort. There is only Mr. Molligen and his willingness to press charges against you. I’m trying to help you in every way that I can, but you’re trying to make it so difficult for me. I just don’t want to see a young man’s life ruined.”
“And what would I have to do, General?”
“Nothing, Will. Nothing at all. Many cadets who are expelled for excess demerits often write me after they graduate from other colleges and thank me for giving them such a valuable lesson so early in life. Discipline is both valuable and effective, Will. The only thing I ask of you is that you keep in
touch. Drop me a letter when you get settled in your new school. Let me know how you’re doing. I’m always going to be interested in your career. I mean that sincerely. And if I can ever help you in any way, I will do it gladly and you have my word of honor on it.”
“Can I have your word of honor on another thing, sir?”
“Certainly, Will.”
“Can I have your word of honor that The Ten does not exist?”
He leaned forward over his desk; his eyes met mine steadily.
“You have my word of honor, Will,” he whispered.
“And all I have to do is to leave the Institute quietly.”
“That and convince Colonel Berrineau that you were stretching the truth when you concocted that information about The Ten. That shouldn’t be very difficult. Without you and your roommate, he would look a bit foolish going to the newspapers. Colonel Berrineau would never be able to find work again, and I know you wouldn’t want to be responsible for that.”
“So you want me to betray the Bear?”
“Not betray him, Will. Certainly not that. But bring him to his senses, son. Make him see the light as you’re seeing it now.”
“I do see the light, General.”
“I knew you would, Will. The future is so important. So important, indeed.”
“So is the present, General. Because you have to make a decision in the present. You have to make a very important decision right now, General.”
“What do you mean, Will?”
“Look out the window, General. Look to your left. Standing by the mailbox across the street.”
Calmly, the General looked out the window and saw Mark Santoro standing beside the mailbox holding a large stack of letters in his hand. I slid a thick letter across his desk.
“General,” I said, “my roommate is across the street at the faculty mailbox. He is holding fifty letters in his hand. Some are addressed to twenty-five reporters across the state. Others are addressed to influential state senators and representatives who did not attend the Institute. In the letter before you is a brief description of The Ten, including the methods for eliminating freshmen from the ranks of the Corps. Words like kidnaping and torture are used quite frequently. There is also a separate list of every single member of The Ten. If I walk to the window and take off my ring, Mark will mail every single letter. Tonight, we will hand deliver a copy of the letter to every single member of the Corps of Cadets. At this very moment, you can decide whether The Ten remains a secret organization or becomes the most famous group in South Carolina.”
The General rose from his seat and walked over to the window.
“Report back to the barracks immediately, Mr. Santoro,” he shouted out to Mark from the open window. “I have called the Provost Marshal.”
Mark Santoro smiled at General Bentley Durrell, war hero and four-star general, and shot him the finger.
I walked over beside the General and slowly began to remove my ring.
The General grabbed my wrist.
His hands were spidery, liver-spotted; their fragility moved me with their age. Their spent, exhausted weakness.
“Send your roommate back to the barracks, Mr. McLean. I think we can arrange something satisfactory to both sides.”
He picked up the papers he had just signed expelling me from school and began tearing them up, deliberately and carefully.
I gave a thumbs up signal to Mark and he began walking toward the barracks. Then I turned again to face General Durrell alone.
He had returned to his seat; his eyes were closed and his face was loosened and unjoined as though all the salts and preservatives of unvanquishable authority had washed away in some sudden, unforeseeable monsoon. But he calmed himself as he sat there and I watched as the disciplined old veteran returned slowly, reviving himself as he mastered his environment again, as he realized once more who he was and who I was, the vast division of age and experience that separated us, as we faced each other in the nakedness of truth at last, without stratagems or mysteries or any more cards to play, in the hot afternoon. sun of that sweltering Charleston day in 1967.
He began to speak to me in a fatigued, desiccated voice. “If I had gotten to you early enough, Mr. McLean,” he began, “if I had recognized your potential, I could have made an outstanding cadet out of you, an outstanding soldier. You think well on your feet. Very rare for an athlete. What a shame you remained hidden from me until the very last. What a loss for both of us.”
“I would make a terrible soldier, General,” I said. “This school has proven that to me.”
“Why, Mr. McLean?” he asked, his eyes still tightly closed.
“Because, sir,” I answered, “I think I would willingly die for a man like Colonel Berrineau, but I could never follow a man like you.”
His eyes opened, an angry flowering of yellow light.
“No cadet has ever talked to me like that, Mr. McLean,” he said. “No cadet has ever dared. They tell me I’m greatly feared in the Corps of Cadets, and I’ve always taken that as a most extraordinary compliment. Imagine an old man like me being feared by two thousand bucks in the prime of their manhood.”
“I’ve always been afraid of you, sir,” I admitted. “Scared to death of you. I never could speak to you even when you came back into the locker room to congratulate the team after a victory. I’ve never spoken to you without fear or a sense of inadequacy. I was required to read your book when I was a knob, required to memorize your battle campaigns, to read your biography. My father had wanted you to run for President instead of Eisenhower. I grew up hearing your name. I’ll never forget seeing you on that first day of school four years ago when you talked to the incoming freshmen about duty, honor, and a moral commitment to serve mankind. One thing never occurred to me that day.”
“What is that?” he asked wearily.
“It never occurred to me that I might be a better man than you ever were, General. And that I would meet many far better men here at the Institute.”
He rose imperiously and began pacing the carpet behind his desk, every inch the General again, every inch the Great Man defending the sanctity of his myth.
“You!” he sneered. “You will never be one percent of the man I am or was, Mr. McLean. When I took the job as President of this college, I sensed this country was in imminent danger from within and without. I knew that it was going to take men of iron to turn this country around. I took this job because I wanted to fill this nation with patriots, with men who would die for this country rather than submit to tyrants. I wanted to turn out men unlike you in every way, Mr. McLean, men who could change the history of the world, who would take from the Institute a vision of America so great and so transcendent that nothing could damage that vision. I wanted to produce a new breed of valiant men, citizen warriors, who would continue to strive to make this country the greatest in the history of the world. And I have done it, Mr. McLean. And I will continue to do it even if one or two misfits like you and your roommate make it through the Institute. You will do me no harm, Mr. McLean, and you will make no mark.”
“Yeh, yeh, yeh,” I answered. “I’ve heard it all before, General. I’ve heard it in every speech you’ve ever delivered to the Corps. Now I just don’t believe any of it when it comes from your lips.”
“You will leave my office immediately, Mr. McLean. But first, I need a single piece of information from you. I need to know how you came in possession of that list. You and your roommate will graduate with your class. But I must know where you got the list.”
“And if I don’t tell you?”
“Then you will not graduate and I will have to fight against your slander in other ways. It would be difficult for the college but we could weather the storm, Mr. McLean. There is no doubt about that.”
“I broke into Commerce St. Croix’s house and copied the lists from his journals. He doesn’t know I did it.”
“You’re a man of high moral integrity, McLean,” the General answered. “I could expe
ll you for that reprehensible act alone.”
“You didn’t exactly model your career after the life of Christ, General Durrell,” I answered.
“You are free to go, Mr. McLean,” he said, in control again. “But I want your word of honor that you will destroy those letters. Every single copy of them.”
“You have my word of honor, sir.”
I saluted him and began walking to the door. Before I reached the door, I heard him say, “One last thing, McLean. Do you ever think about your place in history? What do you think will be your place in the history of the Institute? I already know my place. But what about yours? Tell me about your place in the history of the school.”
He was laughing at me, mocking me, and I turned, loathing every single thing he stood for on earth.
“General,” I said, “I want you to hear this and I want you to think about it.”
“What do you have to say, McLean?”
“I plan to write that history, sir.”
Chapter Forty-eight
That night I sat alone in the St. Croix garden, listening as Tradd and Abigail played a duet for harp and piano in the music room. Far off in the city, I could hear the barking of dogs and the sound of traffic on Broad Street. Biding my time circumspectly among the roses, I watched them in secret, thinking the long, troubled thoughts of my last days as a cadet. In the supernatural light of chandeliers, their faces were clear and shining; they appeared so thoughtlessly unmarked, so charmingly innocent of all the furies and conspiracies and irreversible fragmentations that had brought me to their garden.
Abigail’s arms moved with elegant grace along the shining gold strings of the harp. At the piano, Tradd’s white fine-boned face was taut with rapt concentration as he read the notes of the score and instantly translated them into sound. The music infiltrated the garden like the movement of flowers. There was an unnamable loneliness to the harp and also a quiet, decorous lust in its accompaniment. I had learned about flowers and music in the St. Croix mansion. And I had learned much, much more.