American Fraternity Man (67 page)

“Just fabric?” he says. “Not physical abuse or any of that shit.”

“Sam. I can help, really.”

“There’s a rat,” Sam says. “Fucking snitch.”

“Who? What do you mean?”

“Every day, I tell these pledges that this is a
fraternity
, ‘kay, a
secret
society. We’re all adults now, I keep telling them. We don’t reveal our secrets. Am I right?”

“
Sure.”

“‘Kay,” he says. “That’s all I need to hear. This organization is founded on
secrecy
. Our letters. Our ritual. We don’t run and tell our parents what we do.”

“What happened, Sam? Tell me. I can help.”

“We’ve always blindfolded,” he says. “It’s always been like that. It was never against the rules
before
. When I came into Big Brother Night three years ago, they blindfolded
me
. I didn’t complain.
Nobody
complained. You don’t fuck with tradition.”

“You’re right, Sam,” I say.
The rules haven’t changed, but I don’t argue.

“Last Friday, we do the same thing as always. We blindfold the pledges and have them march into this dark room. We’re in the fraternal robes, all the brothers singing ‘Song for a Brother’ just like it says in the New Member Education manual.
I mean, it’s in the manuals that
you guys
gave us. We quiz them about one another,” he says and pauses. “I can’t believe I’m telling fucking Nationals about this.”

“Don’t worry. You’re right about the manuals, Sam.” This entire ceremony, blindfolds included, is outlined in the national officer
binder that we give each chapter delegation at our annual Transitional Leadership Conference; the undergraduates are
supposed
to do all of this, even though another manual—the Risk Management Handbook—forbids the blindfolds. The Initiation Ritual itself, a twenty-minute experience for each pledge, is a highly scripted and choreographed performance involving candles and fires, tricks in perspective, trust, quick scares, and is dependent upon blindfolds. Historically, the pledge is also supposed to “walk Initiation free of spirit and unencumbered by earthly burden.” Butt-naked, in other words. To enhance the experience, or…I don’t know what. Generations of Nikes were forced to undress and walk Initiation in the nude, and although some old-school chapters still do it, the National Headquarters now sells “fraternal robes,” a more popular option. But hell, you can do whatever you want in the Initiation Ritual. Why the fuck not? It’s a ceremony hidden behind of veil of secrecy for more than a century, the idea of secrecy sworn by oath in the ritual itself,
blood oath
at some chapters (
naked
blood oath at others)…
I will never betray the secrets of Nu Kappa Epsilon
…if the ritual ever became public, the meaning of the letters public, it would be almost worse than some alcohol lawsuit because it would mean that the national brotherhood had failed. In the eyes of the National Headquarters, it’s
leadership development
that makes us a fraternity and not a drinking club. But in the eyes of many of our brothers and alumni (especially the oldest among them), it’s the shared rituals; they bind the generations togethers, and no one will change a
single
motherfucking detail of any of them. “Go on,” I say. “Tell me what happened.”

“They’re blindfolded in this dark room,” he says, “and we give them these far-fetched questions that they can’t answer. A test of brotherhood
. Like, ‘Name the hometowns of your pledge brothers,’ shit like that. Every time they get one wrong, all the brothers get, you know,
loud
, and yell at the pledges about how they should know these things about their brothers. They’re blindfolded, so it’s scary for them, but it’s”— silence—“it’s
nothing
.”

“Is that it, then?” I ask. “You get loud, and that’s the whole ceremony?”

“After that, we pretend to have a fake blackball session. Pretend to kick them all out. We tell them to
get the fuck out of
…I mean, we tell them to
leave
the room so we can vote on whether or not to keep ‘em in the fraternity. Just then, though, a brother walks behind each pledge—this is the Big Brother—and he whispers the information into their ears, the answers to the questions, and he argues for a second chance. They answer correctly this time, see? With a little help from their new Big Brother? That’s when we remove the blindfolds and reveal the pledge’s Big Brother for the first time. And we sing the song again, go through the explanation about how real brotherhood isn’t just memorizing stuff, but
being there
for your brothers.”

“That sounds acceptable,” I say, but I suspect that the New Mexico State version of these events
includes additional layers that Sam keeps hidden behind his chapter’s veil. “And one of the pledges was upset by this? Even after he heard the positive message of the Big Brother ritual?”

“
Wasn’t just him. Some pledge told his
parents
the ritual.”

“Okay, well—”

“The
entire
ritual!”

“Relax, Sam. Headquarters will defend you on this.”

“Shit.”

“And anyway, that’s a pledge ritual, not the Initiation Ritual. It’s not one of the Higher Secrets.”

“Well, fuck,” he says. “That’s not all of it, you know?”

“There’s more?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I guess.”

“Tell me, Sam. I can help.”

After talking evasively for another minute or so, finally Sam is ready to reveal the rest of the narrative. “This has got to stay between us. I’m not kidding.” Yes, I say. I can keep your secret. Trust me. Sam exhales. Tells me, Okay, listen: before the ceremony, he sat the pledges—fifteen of them, blindfolded—in the backs of pick-up trucks and hauled them to a pecan farm on the periphery of developed Las Cruces; like prisoners-of-war, he had them all march single-file through the rows of pecan trees, arms outstretched and clutching the shoulders of the man walking in front of them. Occasionally one of the pledges would trip over a root or over upturned soil or get smacked in the face with a renegade branch, but finally they all came to a creek or an irrigation canal or something (all Sam knows is that the farmer is a Nike alumnus who looks the other way when the brothers use his property, or so they’ve always been told), and Sam marched the pledges onto a modest wooden bridge with low railings, twenty feet over the rock-cut water. And there, with boards creaking below their feet, a steady stream rushing below the boards, Sam made each blindfolded pledge—one at a time, “so it was
safe
,” he says—climb a stepladder that he’d positioned in the center of the bridge, stand tall, fold his hands over his chest, turn around, and fall backward.

“A trust fall,” Sam says. “They thought we were making them walk the plank, you know? Into the water? But we had a bunch of brothers who caught them when they stepped off the ladder. Teaches the pledges to trust that we wouldn’t put them in harm’s way?”

“That’s not in the manual.”

“Nothing’s ever happened,” Sam says. “
We would never hurt them, all right? I would never…I’ve got a younger sister, a younger brother, and fine, I’ll pick on them and give them a hard time or whatever, but if anyone touched a Goddamn hair on their heads, I’d”—voice trembling and growing louder—“I’d beat his face into the fucking ground, do you hear me? That’s how I feel about our pledges, ‘kay? We love them, do you hear me?”

“I hear you.”

“It’s just…one of our pledges told his parents, see, and they were pissed.
Pissed
. How could someone blindfold their son on a bridge, he could have died, blah blah blah. They called the university and got our Greek Affairs Director on the line. He called me—
me
, personally—and asked if the whole deal was true.”

“You didn’t confirm it, did you?” I ask.

“I said
maybe
, and he started talking about hazing, about suspensions. Student Conduct Board.”

“Does the kid want to pursue this? Or is it just his parents?”

“His parents,” Sam says. “Our pledges fucking loved the ceremony. Aren’t you listening to me? The thing is, there’s a picture.”

“
Of, for fuck’s sake. A picture? Of what?”

“When we had the pledges in the back of the pick-up truck? Blindfolded? Someone took a picture of us while we were driving back to the fraternity house. The Greek Advisor emailed me a copy of the picture. All these kids in white shirts, hunched over, heads down, black blindfolds on. Looks so much worse than it is.”

“The Greek Advisor has this picture?”

“He gets pictures all the time, that’s what he told me,” Sam says. “Every time there’s anything weird going on around the university, people take pictures and assume it’s a fraternity. Could
be the fucking football team, but the Greek Advisor files the pictures away in case he hears anything else. In our case, he gets a phone call from some parents, and all of a sudden he’s got a story that matches the pictures. Knows who it is.”

“
Sam. How could you let a
picture
get taken?”

“They’re using the blindfolding charge to put us on ‘exploratory suspension’ for the rest of the semester,” Sam says. “And they want to conduct some big investigation.”

“Investigation, fuck,” I say. The further this situation progresses—another lawsuit for Nu Kappa Epsilon in addition to the
Sandor Lawsuit, LaFaber said during the summer, and the entire National Fraternity could be wiped out—the greater the chance someone will uncover all the details of
my
visit, too, the Etiquette Dinner and the pledge humiliation that
I
watched, the trip to Mexico, the pledge DDs, the sex in Maria’s dorm room, the vomit in the sink. Hell, if the university administration takes Sam Anderson down, he’d hand me over without a moment’s hesitation.
Our Educational Consultant condoned all of thi
s, he’d say.
Take him! Take him
! And Jose—based on what I remember from Juarez, Jose looking pissed because, why? because I was dancing with Maria, his dream girl maybe?—Jose might not even need to hear someone ask before he sold me out. “Let me handle this,” I say. “Make sure your Greek Advisor has
my
cell phone number. Don’t say another word to him, no matter what he says. Without confession, without clear evidence, all is hearsay.
Refer all questions to me
.”

Bu
t still I’m thinking: have the parents called the National Headquarters? Has LaFaber heard about this? If so, he’ll want to know if I saw anything suspicious in New Mexico. “And tell your Greek Advisor
not
to call Headquarters,” I say. “I’m the national representative. Let me handle it, and this thing won’t last another week.”

“You’re sure?” Sam asks.

“Blindfolding is against the hazing guidelines, but it’s not serious,” I say, knowing that this single situation, like the fabric, is only superficial. It’s what lies beneath—the details an investigation might reveal—that is damning. “Don’t worry. I’m not worried.”

Sam exhales. “All right. I trust you.”

“That’s right, Sam. We’re good?”

“I hope so.” He exhales again. “So where you at these days?”

“Heading to Bowling Green State in Ohio,” I say. “It’s getting cold. But ya’ll don’t have that problem in Las Cruces, do you?”

“Little bi
t,” he says. “Nights are chilly. Gets cold really quick, soon as the sun sets. Happens so quick, you freak. What about the women out there in O-
hi
-o? Any honeys?”

“We’ll see.”

“Oh,” he says. “That reminds me. Maria keeps asking me about you.”

“Maria?”

“You didn’t forget about her already, did you?”

“No, no,” I say. “O
f course I didn’t forget about her. What—” and I scratch the back of my neck, smooth my pants, scratch the back of my neck, “what’s she saying?”

“I don’t know. I only ran into her once. She was like, ‘why isn’t he calling me’ and shit. I don’t know. I played it off.
Said you had family issues in Florida. Your mom died.”

“Oh God, Sam,” I say, but
Sam is reassured that I’ll do everything in my power to deflect the Greek Advisor and the parents and bury the blindfold situation, so I let it go. “Keep me updated,” I say. “Everything, no matter how minor.” And then we hang up.

But all of this came from nowhere, came like a cold night in the desert.

I pull my Explorer back onto the highway, every bump in the road pounding into my new tires, my dented wheels, reverberating through the cabin.

*

The day is dark and wet by the time I arrive on the Bowling Green campus, only dim sunlight behind a wall of granite-gray clouds cemented across the sky. Everywhere, students walk uncertainly, some holding up umbrellas and others carrying them at their sides. But the rapid-fire rain starts and stops without pattern, twenty-second spurts, two-minute spurts, usually pouring at the very moment when everyone has folded and re-sheathed their umbrellas.