The Lords of Discipline (72 page)

As we neared the reviewing stand, I followed the movement of the guidon and when it fell my neck snapped to the right at the exact moment John Kinnell completed the command, “Eyes. . . right.” Faces materialized out of the blurred crowd. I saw Coach Byrum, the General, Colonel Reynolds, Abigail and Commerce, and faces of men and women I would never know as long as I lived, people I would know only on this one march, who would die for me as soon as I passed them, whose anonymous faces represented the majority of the human race.

We turned again at the opposite end of the parade ground and headed toward fourth battalion, breaking into the Romeo song as soon as we left the grass. Girls waiting for their dates gathered in shy, giggling clusters around the front sally ports. Cadets whistled at the girls. Rifle butts slammed down on the concrete in the barracks. We passed beneath the main arch and crossed the checkerboard squares of the quadrangle on the way to the R Company area. The senior privates broke ranks and began to mount the stairs on their way to their rooms.

Tradd dressed quickly and left to join his parents for the long ride to Fort Benning. He was having trouble looking at me. Mark did not come into the room until after Tradd left. He was introspective and brooding when he entered the room. Undressing, he threw his uniform into the corner on the floor.

“Let’s stay drunk this weekend, Mark,” I said. “That will make Monday easier. The Bear told me they were kicking us out on Monday, big fella. He was acting funny, Mark,” I said, fingering the Bear’s ring on my desk.

“Will,” Mark said, looking up at me with his large and infinitely sad eyes.

“What’s wrong, Mark?”

“Do you know when you spotted Abigail and Commerce at parade today?”

“Yeh,” I answered. “That was them. I saw them again when we passed in review.”

“I know it was them,” he said, “but did you see who was standing next to Commerce? Standing next to him and talking like they were old friends. I mean, arms on each other’s shoulders and everything?”

“They were in a crowd, Mark,” I said. “I was lucky enough to be able to spot them.”

“I wasn’t sure when we were way out on the field,” he said. “But when we passed in review, I caught a good glimpse of the guy, Will. I almost dropped my sword.”

“Who was it, Mark? Goddam, I’m dying of curiosity.”

He walked up to me and took my shoulders into his large hands.

“Will,” he said. “It was Dan Molligen. The guy we put on the tracks.”

Chapter Forty-five

F
or the first time since I had received the gift from Abigail, I slipped my key into the gleaming oak door of the St. Croix mansion. Mark stood watch in the shadows of the piazza, observing an elderly couple crossing Meeting Street. It was a sad and fragrant dusk in the starless city, and a mild rain was falling. I would be leaving Charleston soon, I thought, leaving the city of the two rivers, which had imparted a passionate sense of aesthetics within me, which had given me a love of antiquity and cloistered gardens. I would be leaving the city that had taught me to fear the world.

The door opened and I stepped into the entry hall. With that single step, I betrayed the spirit of the gift and the trust of Abigail St. Croix. I whispered to Mark to follow, and as I did my voice seemed to belong to a stranger. Was it because it was a man’s voice at last? I wondered, but I doubted it. I did not feel the confidence I associated with manhood as I moved through the tenebrous gloom of the house. I was afraid again, but I had lived with fear a long time now and some vague presentiment that it would always be present. Fear was an old, familiar inhabitant by now, but I had developed strategies for hiding and suppressing it. Or at least, I thought 1 had. In those days I was coming to realize that everything I once believed about myself had no truth or validity at all. And I did not know how to reverse the habits and testimonies of a twenty-two-year lie.

“What are we looking for?” Mark demanded. “Why are we here? Do you think we’ll find Molligen in the bathroom taking a whizz?”

“I know where we might find some kind of an answer to all this,” I said, walking over to the credenza in the dining room where the liquor was kept. “If I’m wrong, then the St. Croixs never have to know we entered their house while they were away. Do you want a drink?”

“Scotch,” he said, as I knew he would. My hand moved clumsily among the crystal decanters in the dark and I chose the Jack Daniels for myself, the Chivas Regal for Mark. Always there were divisions of geography and preference between us, rites we observed out of habit and affection.

“Scotch tastes like orangutan piss to me,” I said.

“It tastes like Scotch to me,” said Mark. “I’ve never tasted orangutan piss.”

“Open your mouth wide and say, ‘ah.’ ”

“How can we joke at a time like this?” he said wearily as he walked into the entrance hall and sat down on the first step of the spiral staircase. “We’re going to be kicked out of school on Monday.”

“It won’t be so bad for you, Mark. You’re Italian. No one can really expect an Italian boy to finish a four-year college. It defies all laws of genetics.”

“It defies all laws of chance that I haven’t beaten your brains out at least once in four years,” he said as he laughed.

The jokes made us feel better. We drank slowly, listening to the rain. I studied a portrait of Abigail that hung above the mantel in the dining room. It was visible from where we sat on the stairway, illuminated by a soft, diffuse light from the street. Abigail’s mother had commissioned the portrait the year Abigail and Commerce were married. It was a callow, boyish face in the portrait, with a forced and unconvincing smile. The portrait failed to capture any glimpses into Abigail’s fragility and bruised loneliness. It did not hint of the delicately subtle charm of her awkwardness. The only essential quality of the woman it reflected was her awesome integrity, her unimpeachable correctness. Her stare was an accusation to me.

“Do you think you’ve ever had a relative who’s had her portrait painted?” I asked Mark.

“Naw,” he answered. “We take snapshots in my family.”

“Do you think if Abigail had been our age she might have been attracted to us?” I asked. “Do you think she might have fallen in love with one of us?”

“Don’t talk dirty about Abigail,” Mark said, displeased.

“I’m not talking dirty,” I protested. “I’m serious and I’m talking about falling in love.”

Mark leaned forward, staring at the portrait for some clue or manifestation from the youthful, stiffly formal Abigail. In the portrait she was exactly our age.

“Naw,” he said finally. “She wouldn’t have given us a second look. You and I weren’t born right to get one of these South of Broad chicks. They marry birth certificates and houses down here. That’s why this city’s so fucked up.”

“Mark, I went out with a South of Broad girl this year.”

“We knew it was somebody,” he answered. “We didn’t see your ass on weekends for the first six months of school. Thanks for introducing me. What’s the matter; does she break out in hives when she meets Yankees or were you just ashamed of me?”

“No, it wasn’t like that at all, Mark,” I said. “She was pregnant.”

“Congratulations, Daddy,” he said, squeezing my shoulder lustily.

“It wasn’t my child,” I said. “I wanted it to be, Mark. I even started thinking of it as mine and thinking up names for it if it was a boy or a girl. I don’t know what it was—it didn’t make it.”

“What happened to the broad?”

“She ditched me after the kid was born dead.”

“The bitch finally came to her senses, huh?” Mark said, but he saw me wince with pain and memory. “Hey, I’m sorry, Will. I’m sorry I said that. I’m just glad you’re interested in broads at all. You had us wondering for a long time. I thought you and Tradd might have had something going on the side.”

“Did you really?”

“Not really. But you haven’t exactly been murder on the broads since I’ve known you. And you’re so goddam secretive about women.”

“I’ve always been interested in girls, but that doesn’t mean I can talk to them unless I know them really well. I’ve always thought girls would like me if they ever got to know me. You know, that wonderful, sensitive guy I’m convinced I am. I always thought that they would love me if they could get past my sarcasm and my fear of them. This girl got past it all. Her name was Annie Kate Gervais, Mark. Isn’t that a beautiful name? I let down all the defenses for her. I thought about her every moment. I felt alive thinking about her, on fire. I was on fire when I was away from her, too, Mark, but it was a different kind of fire. I told Annie Kate things I had never told anybody. I felt handsome around her. For the first time in my whole life, I felt handsome. I’d look in the mirror and I’d feel good about the way I looked. She changed me completely, Mark, and I’ll never be the same person I was before. I’ll never be happy until I feel that way about someone again and she feels the same about me. But she left me and I’m sure I’ll never see her or hear from her again. See, I was sure she loved me as much as I did her. I was sure she dreamed about me as much as I dreamed about her. But I was wrong, Mark. I was wrong about that just like I’ve been wrong about everything else this year. I can’t even look at her house now. I can’t go to the places where we walked. I hurt every time I think about her. I’m afraid I won’t ever find that again. And I feel ugly again, so ugly that I can’t stand it.”

“You had it bad, son,” Mark said softly. “But that’s what you get for going after one of these society dames. You should have known she was out of your league. And anyway, Will, if she didn’t love you as much as you loved her, then she’s not worth a shit. I mean that. She’s not worth a shit.”

I rose and began walking up the stairs.

“Let’s get this over with,” I said.

“Why don’t we just leave, Will?” Mark said behind me. “I don’t like the way this feels. It isn’t right. It just isn’t right.”

“We’ve come to the point in our lives, Mark, when being right or wrong doesn’t make much difference anymore. It’s the only thing I know to do. If you’re sure that you saw Commerce and Molligen together.”

“I’m sure.”

“Then we might find out how they know each other.”

“How are we going to find that out?”

“We’re going to read Commerce’s journals, Mark,” I said, turning to face my roommate on the dark stairs.

“Are you crazy, Will?” Mark said, holding my wrist. “Have you flipped your tree?”

“What do we have to lose, Mark?” I said. “Name me one goddam thing we’ve got to lose.”

“Commerce, Abigail, and Tradd,” he said.

“I’ve got to try everything, Mark. Everything. Do you understand that? I got us into this. All of this is my fault. Every time I look at you I feel guilty. I think that if you only had had another roommate, then you’d dance across that stage June Week without a hitch. I could take it if it was just me, Mark. I really could. But I hurt the whole room. Tradd can’t look at either one of us without practically crying. You’ve got to start over as an academic junior at some lousy college in Pennsylvania and lose your Army contract in the process. And one guy eats a train because he couldn’t stand it. I don’t know if there’s anything in Commerce’s journals to help us. But if we can just get a clue, something, anything that I can bluff the General with.”

“Let’s go,” Mark said.

We climbed to the third floor and came to the locked door where Commerce had his office. I went to the palm outside his door and moved it as I had seen him do in September. The key was beneath the planter. I took it and walked to the forbidden door, the one place in Charleston where I knew Commerce felt completely safe. I inserted the key into the lock, looked back at Mark, then pushed into the room.

The office reflected the concerns and passions of a mariner. It was furnished like a captain’s cabin on a ship. There were nautical charts and sextants, rare shells, and immaculate small models of every ship on which Commerce had served during his life on the shipping lanes. His desk was made from a hatch cover of a derelict vessel.

We lit a small captain’s lantern and pulled the thick black curtains on the windows. On bookshelves against the wall, we saw the three rows of the leather-bound journals of Commerce St. Croix, the personal literature of one man’s voyage on the earth. The journals looked like a set of expensive encyclopedias.

“Great,” Mark said. “This is only going to take three years to read all this shit.”

“We’ll work fast and only read references about the Institute,” I answered, taking the first journal off the shelf. I opened it and read the first entry. “Christ, he wrote this on his fifteenth birthday. He wasn’t even at the Institute then.”

“I’ll go through the last journal and work back,” Mark suggested. “You go through his years at the Institute and work forward.”

“Each journal represents a year in his life, Mark,” I said, pointing to the first page of the second journal. “We are dealing with an organized man.”

“Shut up,” Mark said. “I’m reading about a hangover Commerce had on New Year’s Day this year in Marseilles. Holy shit, Will, Commerce had a broad in bed with him.”

“Don’t read the personal stuff, Mark,” I said disapprovingly. “That’s prying into Commerce’s private life.”

Mark looked up at me scornfully and said, “Oh, I see. We’re going to read Commerce’s journals, but we want to make sure we don’t pry into his private life. Excuse me for being born stupid.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I find it interesting that the upper classes like to play hide the banana when they get away from their wives. Could you imagine what Tradd would think of his father doing that?”

“Let’s get to work, Mark.”

“We’re not going to find a thing,” he said.

“Maybe, maybe not.”

I began reading the journal of Commerce’s freshman year at the Institute. It was fascinating to compare the evolution of the plebe system from his time to the 1960s. His knob year lacked the brutality and harassment that had marked our initiation into the fraternity of Institute men. At that time, the Institute was more of a training ground for gentlemen of the manor than anything else. There were no sweat parties in the shower rooms and no tradition for breaking plebes. Commerce had enjoyed the rituals of military drill and had flourished in the environment of an austere and congenial discipline. It was a happy boy who kept this meticulous and rather banal account of his first year. I came across one name that caught my eye immediately. Bentley Durrell was in Commerce’s physics class and they had met in the library to exchange notes before a test.