“Do you think you won that little skirmish, Mr. McLean?” the General asked.
“I didn’t need to win it, General. I received my orders this summer that I was to report back to the cadre and be prepared to lecture the freshmen on the honor system.”
“You are wrong, Mr. McLean. You did need to win it. If I had known that a senior private was to be a member of the 1966 cadre, I would have put a stop to it myself. Your presence on campus was a bit of a surprise to me, but I think you will perform your duties adequately”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Let me tell you a little story, Mr. McLean. I hope you have the time. Ten years ago I was watching a swim meet when I watched our star swimmer stop competing in the middle of the race and climb out of the pool. I heard him tell the swimming coach that he had just choked up, that he simply could not go on. I called him to my office the next day and told him I was taking away his Army contract, that I did not want a person like him in the Armed Forces, someone who might choke up and quit during the middle of a battle. I told him I did not tolerate quitters. To me, a quitter is not only dishonorable, he is immoral. Do you agree, Mr. McLean?”
“I guess so, sir.”
“I think you are like me, one of those men who would rather die than quit. I’ve watched you play basketball for three years, McLean. You won’t quit out there either. Men are born with that instinct or they are not. It’s an absolute necessity for a professional soldier. I would not know how to lead an army in retreat, Mr. McLean.”
The General had never retreated in his entire career nor had he lost a single battle in which his troops engaged the enemy. But his splendid military reputation had been ventilated slightly by revisionist innuendoes that Bentley Durrell had sacrificed too many men in his encounters with the enemy, that he had traded too much American blood for too little Japanese real estate. Once, when ordering the capture of a heavily fortified Japanese position, he had screamed to his staff that he didn’t care if it took a shipload of dog tags to do it. General Durrell won that battle while incurring extraordinarily heavy losses and picked up a battlefield nickname in the process. “Shipload” Durrell was more popular with the American public than he was with the infantrymen who cleared the way for his triumphal push toward the Japanese mainland.
“The gentleman who did not finish the swimming race became one of our most successful alumni, Mr. McLean. He is a lawyer in Nashville, Tennessee, and I hear from him every year. He thanks me now for giving him such a valuable lesson so early in life. He has never quit at anything since. The reason I am letting you address the freshmen is because you fought back when I confronted you with Alexander and Braselton. I love a competitive spirit. Now, just what is the nature of your enmity with Cadet Alexander?”
“I think he’s a jerk, sir.”
“You are talking to the President of this college, Mr. McLean,” the General snapped harshly at me. “You will mind your mouth and manners.”
“I’m sorry, sir. It began with a disagreement our plebe year.”
“I happen to think Cadet Alexander is one of the most impressive cadets ever to go through the Long Gray Line. A born leader.”
“Yes, sir. He thinks that too, sir. I just don’t agree, sir.”
“Do you think you are potentially as fine a leader as Cadet Alexander?”
“No, sir. I don’t think I’m much of a leader at all. Sir, Alexander and I had a fight when we were knobs. Not much of a fight, really, more of a shoving match. It happened after another freshman left the Institute. Since then, we’ve kept out of each other’s way. We usually don’t even talk to each other on campus unless it’s to exchange unpleasantries. It’s nothing serious, sir. There’s always going to be a couple of people you don’t like out of two thousand.”
“Well, that will be all, Mr. McLean. Do your duty with the freshmen. Good day.”
“Good day, sir, and thank you, sir,” I said, saluting.
Before I got to the door, I heard the General ask, “Who won the fight between you and Cadet Alexander, McLean? I’m curious.”
“I did, sir,” I answered. Then smiling, I added, “He quit.”
Chapter Six
After a fine dinner at the St. Croixs’ on Sunday night, Abigail invited me to join her on a walk along the Battery. My roommates all returned early to the barracks. With the rest of the cadre, they would rise early to greet the freshmen as they arrived on campus. I had no assignments until the honor code speech on Wednesday morning.
Our pace was unhurried as Abigail and I left the house. We walked down East Bay Street, crossed South Battery, and continued under the grove of wind-hewn oaks to the seawall that separated the aristocracy from the Ashley River. The tide was high and almost perfectly still, with the moon’s image graven into the water’s surface in a silvery imperfect coinage. Abigail drifted ahead of me, her head thrown back, looking at the stars. I did not try to catch up to her. Instead, I watched her as she danced awkwardly up the steps of the seawall, pausing against the railing to study the soft lights of houses strung along the shore of James Island. This walk was ritual with her. She knew this promenade well enough to give her undivided attention to stars and water and the lights of the familiar, marvelous harbor. The tide was reversing slowly, almost imperceptibly. The Atlantic was inhaling, and the two rivers that sketched the shape of Charleston began to feel the immense, light-inspirited authority of the lunar flux. To me, there was always a severe magnificence in this recall of rivers, especially on these clear, humming nights in the lowcountry when the air was sweet breathed and starry. I loved these salt rivers more than I loved the sea; I loved the movement of tides more than I loved the fury of surf. Something in me was congruent with this land, something affirmed when I witnessed the startled, piping rush of shrimp or the flash of starlight on the scales of mullet. I could feel myself relax and change whenever I returned to the lowcountry and saw the vast green expanses of marsh, feminine as lace, delicate as calligraphy. The lowcountry had its own special ache and sting. In Charleston I had found the flawless city rising splendidly, economically, out of a ripe, immaculate landscape. But it was also the city of the Institute and I never could quite forgive her for that single indiscretion.
Abigail slowed her walk and turned to wait for me to catch up. The wind caught her hair, honey-colored and sensibly cut, but she brushed it back with a charming, distracted sweep of her hand. She was smiling and her face was younger, even girlish, in the darkness. She took my hand, and we skipped down the seawall for twenty yards. Then she stopped and walked to the railing. With her eyes closed, she began inhaling the warm, fragrant air in large breaths. The wind was rising slowly.
“There is an old Charleston joke, Will,” she said with her eyes tightly shut. “Someone asked an old Charleston woman why she never traveled anywhere and she replied, ‘Why should I travel, sir? I am already here.’ That’s the way I feel about this city.”
“That’s not how I feel about Charleston. It’s not that I don’t like the city. I do like it. I love the way this city looks. But sometimes I don’t like the way this city feels. It feels dead to me and sometimes it feels mean. I don’t know whether it’s the city itself or because of the Institute. Maybe if I hadn’t gone to the Institute I’d feel the same way about the city you do.”
“All the boys complain about the Institute while they’re there, Will. You know that. Then as soon as they graduate they become crazed fanatics about the place, lunatic alumni who think the place was designed by God on the first day he rested. You’ll be just like all the rest of them when you graduate, mark my words.”
“I’ll never be like that, Abigail.”
“Hush, you simpleton. I’m telling you gospel stuff and you’re not even listening. Now I want you to tell me something else, and I’ve got a good reason for asking. Who is the girl creature in your life? You’ve never brought a girl to the house a single time since you’ve been rooming with Tradd and I demand a plausible explanation.”
&
nbsp; “There is no girl creature, Abigail.”
“Pourquoi, monsieur?”
“I don’t have time,” I lied.
“Nonsense, monsieur.”
“Girls have this funny habit. They turn green when I come in sight. I don’t know what’s really the problem. I’ve never learned to talk with girls. I don’t know how to say the things I hear other boys say to them, and I feel stupid trying. I’m not comfortable around them and, God knows, they’re not comfortable around me.”
“Confidence, Will. Confidence,” she said soothingly. “You’ve got to start realizing that you’re adorable and eligible and desirable. You’re twenty-one and composed of fresh, juicy, tender, delectable man-flesh. We’ll find a girl for you this year.”
“I don’t like South of Broad girls, Abigail,” I said. “You know that, don’t you? You set me up with that one girl when I was a sophomore. What was her name? Buffy or Missy or Punkin or something. I’d have done the world a favor if I’d drop-kicked her off the Cooper River Bridge at low tide. She was the biggest snob I’ve ever met.”
Abigail giggled with pleasure. “I admit it was not a match made in heaven, Will, but Suki was a darling-looking girl and I thought you two might get along just famously. Stranger things have happened between men and women. But you certainly must try to get over this prejudice you have against snobs. I came from a long, distinguished family of snobs, and you absolutely adore me.”
Clumsily, she leaned forward and kissed me on the lips. She held the kiss for several seconds; it was chaste, motherly, the way women always kissed me. Her eyes were invisible in the shadows cast by the streetlight.
“How does that make you feel, Will?” Abigail asked softly. “Does that make you feel better?”
“It makes me feel hopeful that Commerce isn’t watching, that your friends don’t see us, that nobody sees us,” I said blushing.
“Oh, Commerce wouldn’t care what I did. He hasn’t cared about things like that for years. For decades. It was a friendly gesture, Will. You’re like a son to me and I’m trying to build up your confidence. I hope I didn’t embarrass you. I don’t pull off things like that very well.”
“I’m glad you did it, Abigail,” I said, and now I could see that she was embarrassed, too.
I did not know if Abigail could really gauge the extent of my inexperience with women, my absolute lack of confidence around them, my fear of them. But I suspected she knew it instinctively. My virginity was settling in hard on me. It seemed both silly and rather affectingly pitiful that a twenty-one-year-old male with awesome enthusiasm and all his parts intact had not managed to make love to a single woman. Though I had taken no vows of chastity, women responded to me as though I were an affable rural curate with no thunder in my pants. It was not that I lacked the desire, the necessary heat: There was something almost nuclear about the lust. Sex had become the central, consuming obsession in my life. It charged the cells of my blood with energy, jewel-fire light, and the sweet forbidden glucose of sin. Restless and on the prowl, I had entered my young manhood tired and desperate to be done with these sexless days, though sexless is not completely accurate. Cadets become clandestine but brilliantly imaginative masturbators of a very high order. Show me a product of a military school and I will show you a man who can beat off without moving a muscle, without rustling a sheet.
I had once read in a book that traced the natural history of blue whales that the great creatures often had to travel thousands of miles through the dark waters of the Pacific Ocean to find a mate. They conducted their search with the fever and furious attention of beasts aware of the imminence of extinction. As the whaling fleets depleted their numbers, scientists conjectured that there were whales who would exhaust themselves in fruitless wandering and never connect with any mate at all. When I read about those solitary leviathans, I feared I had stumbled on an allegory of my own life, that I would spend my life unable to make a connection, unable to find someone attracted by the beauty and urgency of my song. Sometimes I felt like an endangered species.
Holding hands, Abigail and I walked for thirty minutes through those charmed, lovely streets South of Broad. It was 11:30 when I left her house to return to the barracks. As I opened my car door, I saw a note stuck in the windshield wiper.
I read it beneath the streetlight, my eyes straining to decipher the feathery, feminine script. The note was brief but to the point: “You have no right to park here. Tourists and cadets are ruining Charleston. Please park your car somewhere else or I will call the police.” There was no signature.
I looked around in the darkness. There was nothing illegal or impertinent about where I had parked, nothing at all. Before I got into the car, however, I saw a girl watching me from the unlit entrance to Stoll’s Alley, twenty yards away. She was wearing a scarf, a raincoat, and a pair of sunglasses.
When she realized I had seen her, she turned and began walking quickly down the narrow alleyway. I sprinted after her. She had not gotten very far. It was difficult navigating a tree-shaded Charleston lane wearing sunglasses as the hour approached midnight.
She stopped suddenly and wheeled toward me as I approached.
“Did you leave this note on my car?” I asked.
“You have no right to park your car on this street,” she said in a harsh, strident whisper.
“When did you inherit it?”
“What?” she asked.
“The street.”
“Cadets think they are so funny. I’ve always hated cadets,” she said.
“At least we have something in common.”
“I’ve got to go,” the girl said furtively, glancing over her shoulder. “My mother would kill me if she knew I was out here talking to you. What’s your name, cadet? You’ve got a funny looking nose. Hurry up now. I don’t have much time. I want to know your name.”
“Take back what you said about my nose.”
“I will not. You have a perfectly ludicrous nose. I would try to cover it up with something if I were you. Now tell me your name so you can take your tacky car and your silly nose back to the barracks.”
“My name is Will.”
She laughed and said, “I knew it. I knew your name would be silly, too.”
“You’ve been in Charleston too long. You think it’s normal for a boy’s first name to be Prioleau or Pinckney or Cathedral or Seawall or any of those other stupid family names they stick on kids.”
“Those are aristocratic names,” she explained with infuriating haughtiness. “ ‘Will’ is not aristocratic. What’s your last name?”
“Aristocratic. Will Aristocratic. I’m Greek.”
“You’re not a comedian and I’m not very amused.”
“McLean. Will McLean,” I said, trying to invest abundant dignity in that modest but comfortable monicker.
“An ethnic,” she giggled. “A Hibernian. The Irish drink too much and they are never serious. They also beat their children and ignore their wives.”
“That’s me, OK. What’s your name?”
“I wouldn’t tell you if I wanted to. That’s none of your business. And I couldn’t tell you if I wanted to,” she said, involuntarily looking backward over her shoulder again.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not supposed to be in Charleston. I am studying Spanish at the University of California at Santa Barbara. I’m very good at languages, and I’ve always refused to date cadets from the Institute. They are such animals and do not know how to behave as gentlemen. And there are far too many ethnics among them. Do you know that once upon a time they would only let Southerners into the Institute? It used to be a fine school.”
“How do you like Santa Barbara?” I asked.
“I think you are a very cruel person,” she said behind her sunglasses. “I don’t think I want to talk to you any longer. You have no cause to try to embarrass me or to hurt my feelings.”
“Can I ask you another question? Two questions, really. Why are you wearing a raincoat when
it’s not raining and why are you wearing sunglasses twenty minutes before midnight?”
“It’s none of your business how I dress, Mr. McLean. A gentleman would never think to ask such personal questions. But ethnics are taught to be blunt when they grow up in tract housing, aren’t they?”
I turned and began walking back down Stall’s Alley, saying as I went, “I hope you pass your next Spanish test.” But I stopped when I heard her say in a voice that was half reconciliation and half plea, “I just wanted to be friendly. I just wanted to talk to someone. You looked like you might be friendly, but that’s just because of your silly nose. And you smile all the time.”
“Someone once told me,” I said, returning to her, “that I was the only person in the world who thought it was a military duty to appear to be in a good mood.”
“Do you have a girl friend, Will McLean?”
“Last time I checked three hundred girls from Sweet Briar had carnal designs on my body.”
“Please don’t make fun of me,” she said in an estranged, helpless voice that made me feel like an insensitive bully. “Please don’t.”
“I’m not. I’m making fun of myself. I’ve never had a girl friend. Girls look upon me as their big brother, their father confessor, their friend, and good buddy. They like to kiss me on the forehead when I take them home at night.”
“Do you think I’m pretty?” she asked suddenly.
“I don’t know,” I said, staring at her face in the darkness.
“Just yes or no.”
“You’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen in sunglasses and a raincoat and a scarf on a perfect Charleston night.”
“Who told you that you were on stage? Who told you that you were a great comedian? Is that how people with your background make it out of the ghetto?”