"Tell General Durrell to kiss my fanny if you see him, boys," Commerce shouted to the television, trying to direct the subject far away from the remark that had wounded his son. "I saw the pompous son of a bitch on King Street the other day. I think he was buying elevator shoes. He isn't satisfied with being six-three. You would think he was somebody the way he carries on. My God, he's from Spartanburg. Spartanburg of all the pitiful places. The upcountry. The goddam, no-count upcountry.

"The first exhibition football game is on Saturday night, Will," he continued. "Why don't you and Pig and Mark plan to watch it with me?" Commerce asked, aware he was being tested again in a trial by silence.

"Tradd," Abigail sighed, but easily, and teasing again, "I'm thinking about having your father fed intravenously during football season this year. Hook up a couple of gallons of Cutty Sark and glucose beside his easy chair."

"You might try to find other pursuits, Father. Other avocations. Only vulgarians and Methodists watch football games with such fanaticism."

"Your poor old man is a vulgarian, Tradd. No doubt about it. A goddam one hundred percent unreconstructed vulgarian. Will, I don't know if I've ever told you this story, but about ten years ago I read in the paper that bowlers have the lowest IQ's of any athletes and were generally from a socially inferior class. Well, I ran right out and joined a bowling league in North Charleston. One sixty-four average. Met the greatest guys I've ever met on land."

"How come you never invited these greatest guys on land for dinner, Father?"

"They must have been from Spartanburg," Abigail teased. "The upcountry."

"Bowling is so sweaty and uncultured," Tradd sniffed, winking at me.

"Culture!" Commerce screamed at the television. "I've had culture shoved down my throat since I was born. Do you know I've been going to operas since I was six, Will? Six years old and I'm listening to fat broads belting out dago songs to bald-headed fags wearing silver pants. You can take all the culture in America, tow it out to the Sargasso Sea, and set it on fire and I wouldn't even spit once to put it out. I'm embarrassed to tell you how often I wished my name were not St. Croix but something like John Smith or John Nigger. That's it. John Thicklipped Nigger. That's the name I'd have chosen."

"Father, you certainly do overstate your case," Tradd said, turning toward the window and facing Charleston harbor again.

"Who wants some more iced tea?" Abigail chirped brightly.

"I'm going to my room and let y'all literati get in some chi-chi cultural chit-chat before dinner. Will, could I see you upstairs for a minute? If you'll excuse me, dear," he said, rising and bowing to his wife in a quick, snapping motion like a blade returning to a jackknife.

By the time I followed Commerce upstairs, he was moving a potted palm outside of his study. Carefully unlocking the door, he then disappeared into this forbidden sanctum for a moment, leaving me to fidget in the hallway. No one was allowed in his private study, and according to Tradd and Abigail, no one entered the room, even when Commerce was out to sea. When he came out of the room, he led me by the arm to the third-story porch. We stared out at the garden, an aromatic black sea of vegetation that breathed in the salt from the river.

"Do you see it?" he asked.

"See what?"

"I put it on when I went into the room. On my hand, Will."

I looked down on his right hand and saw its dull shine.

"The ring," I said.

"I keep it in my room. Along with everything else."

"Gold, frankincense, and myrrh."

"Books and notes. Things I've collected in ports around the world that Abigail thinks are junk."

"Why don't you wear the ring all the time, Commerce?" I asked. "You're the only Institute man I know who doesn't treat the ring as if it were made from the nails of the True Cross."

"My years at the Institute were the happiest in my whole life, Will. But ever since Durrell came back to be president and changed the plebe system into that brutal mess, I haven't worn the ring. It was all his ego, too, Will. When I talked to him about it, he told me he was going to make sure that the Institute had the toughest plebe system in the world. According to you and Tradd, he succeeded admirably. But it wasn't that bad when he and I were knobs. In fact, it was kind of fun."

"You were in General Durrell's class, weren't you?"

"Yes, I know some things about him, too. I kept a diary when I was a cadet. It was good practice for when I went to sea and had to keep a log. I can look back and tell you everything I did since I was fifteen years old. I'm very disciplined about some things, Will."

"Discipline is the one gift the Institute has not bestowed upon me."

"You fought it, boy," Commerce said. "Discipline comes easy when you decide to go whole hog at something."

He stared at the ring for a full minute without speaking.

"Tell Tradd that I didn't mean to hurt his feelings, Will. It just slipped out."

"Why don't you tell him, Commerce? I'm sure it would mean a lot more coming from you than from me."

"If you don't tell him, Will, he'll never know how sorry I am when I say these things to him. Please tell him."

"I will, sir."

"I noticed something years ago, son. When I'm with the people I love most, I feel lonelier than at any other time on earth. Lonely, Will. Lonely. Lonely," he declared in an undermined voice. Suddenly he turned his eyes toward me for understanding, for affirmation.

He gave me a look that linked us as spiritual allies, resolute desperadoes in headlong flight from the false and sinister veneer of Charleston. I did not return the look with equal measure or with any measure of faith in his basic premise that we shared some immensely suggestive linkage of soul and temperament. All because I like to watch football games, I thought. Since I was born a McLean and not a St. Croix, I was not tormented by the formidable demons of the city that cried out in disengaged voices for conformity from its sons and daughters. I could not help or even sympathize with the agony of being too well born, too well bred, or too well named. Nor could I help but notice that Commerce, despite his objections to the city, had chosen to live out his life in the dead center of the tribe he professed to hate. The pull of Charleston was lunar and feminine and partisan and even affected those natives, like Commerce, who professed to loathe her extensive artifice and the carnivorous etiquette of its social structure. He could no more cease being a Charlestonian than I could cease being a Caucasian male. Charleston possessed his soul and there was nothing he or I could do about it.

But he seemed satisfied with the look I gave him. I have eyes that give people what they want, eyes that whore in order to please, commiserate, endorse, affirm. People take from my eyes anything and everything that they need. Usually, I am simply looking at someone as they tell me a story; I am later amazed to discover they have believed I was agreeing with them completely. I have the eyes of a ward politician or a priest on the make with choirboys. I have eyes I have 'learned to distrust completely.

"I'll tell Tradd what you said, Commerce," I said as he left the porch and disappeared into his room, which was lit only by a ship's lantern. I heard the door lock behind him.

When I left the house that evening, I turned to look back at the Tradd-St. Croix mansion and thought of the many accidents and distortions of fate that had occurred to make my history and the history of this splendid house commingle. Tradd had brought me home for dinner at the beginning of our freshman year, right after we had become roommates. When we left that night to return to the Institute, Abigail had taken me aside and thanked me for helping her son. I told her that I thought Tradd was incredibly brave and that he was enduring the full savage brutality of the plebe system without complaint. Later that year, on another of my visits, she had pressed something into my palm. It was a key to the Tradd-St. Croix mansion. "You have a home in Charleston now, Will," she had said. "You can use that key anytime you want to, whether we're here or not."

I had never used the key, but I always kept it with me and I always liked to think that I could enter the house whenever I pleased. I wondered what the builder of the house, the distinguished barrister, Rhett St. Croix, would say if he knew that Will McLean was walking the streets of Charleston with a key to his house.

Chapter Three.

It took a brief moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness when I entered Henry's Restaurant at noon the next day The August sun was dazzling at high noon in Charleston. I walked toward the smell of cigar smoke. The Bear was sitting in a corner booth with an unimpeded view of the door. He was eating a dozen raw oysters and had ordered a dozen for me. I saluted him before I took a seat across from him.

"I think I'll have oysters, Colonel."

"Don't eat the shells, Bubba. Just spit. 'em out on the plate."

"I've never eaten oysters that taste like cigars," I said through a miasma of smoke.

"No joking around today, Bubba," Colonel Berrineau said, extinguishing his cigar. "You and Poppa Bear are going to have a serious heart to heart."

When I was a freshman, I had quickly learned the central underground law of the Corps. The law was unwritten and unpublicized and essential for survival in that militant, inflammatory zone entered through the Gates of Legrand. The law was this: If you are ever in trouble, no matter if it is related to the Institute or not, go see the Bear. You sought out the Bear when there was trouble or disaffection or grief. You looked for the Bear when the system turned mean. You found him when there was nowhere else to go. In my tenure at the Institute, I never saw a cadet in serious trouble who did not request an interview with the Bear as soon as possible. Often, he would yell at the cadet, berate him for negligence or stupidity, offer to pay his tuition to Clemson, burn him for unshined shoes, insult him in front of the secretaries in the commandant's office; but always, always, he would help him in any way he could. That was the last, indispensable codicil to the law. No one outside the barracks was aware of the law's secret unofficial existence, not even the Bear.

"Bubba, I know you've heard about Pearce coming to the Institute."

"The Negro?"

"Yeh. That's the one. We're a little behind the times, Bubba. Every other school in South Carolina integrated a good while ago and God knows we held out as long as we could, but Mr. Pearce is coming through these gates next Monday and he isn't coming to mow the lawn or fry chicken in the mess hall. He's entering the Long Gray Line. Now some very powerful alumni have tried for years to keep this school as white as a flounder's belly. We're one of the last holdouts in the South, if not the last. Now, several members of the Board of Visitors know that it's very important for this young lamb to make it through this school. Otherwise, there could be real trouble with Federal funds and every other damn thing. They also know that the General has hated everything black since a platoon of niggers he commanded in the Pacific broke and ran from the Japs. So they're just sweet-talking the General and keeping him out of it. The Board doesn't talk much to the General unless they want water changed into Burgundy or the Ashley River parted. He's the school's miracle man, Bubba, but he's a little too old to have much to do with the nuts and bolts of running the place. I asked you here today because we've got to keep Pearce in school. That means we've got to keep these Carolina white boys off his tail as much as we can."

"You'll have to put him in a cage for that, Colonel. And if you show him any favoritism at all, the whole Corps will run him out, and you and I know they can get rid of any freshman they want to if they're so inclined. They could run Samson and Hercules out of here the same night if they thought they didn't belong here."

"Bubba, thanks for the lecture about the Corps. But I've been watching it a lot longer than you have and I know what the Corps can and cannot do a lot better than you do. But you're right. They can run him out with the morning trash. The thing is we selected Pearce over five other black applicants. We lucked out-or at least we think we did. He's smart. Comes from a good family, wants to make a career out of the military, and is pretty good looking for a nigger. But most important, he's tough. He could eat any five other freshmen for breakfast. But God knows he's going to need to be tough. We want you to be his liaison, Bubba. You watch over him when you can. Work out a system where he can contact you if things get out of control. He got a bunch of threatening letters this summer, and word is out that there's a group on campus that doesn't want him to make it, that has sworn to run out every nigger that the Federal government jams down our throat. It's up to you and me and the other authorities and good cadets to make sure they fail."

"What group, Colonel?" I said, puzzled.

"If I knew who it was, Bubba, I wouldn't be wasting my breath talking to you. They'd be walking so many tours on the second battalion quad that they'd have blood blisters where their toes used to be. All we know, Bubba-and this is just guessing-is that we think it's a secret group. One of the Board of Visitors thinks it might be The Ten."

"The Ten is a myth, Colonel. It's supposed to be a secret organization, but no one can tell me it's possible to keep a secret on this campus."

"Pearce got a letter from The Ten this summer," the Bear said, looking toward the door.

"He did?" I said. "What did it say?"

"It mainly warned him to keep his black ass out of the Corps of Cadets if he knew what was good for him. It also said that niggers were living proof that Indians did fuck buffalo."

"He'd better get used to that kind of stuff, Colonel. But how do you know the letter came from The Ten?"

"I'm a detective, Bubba. It was signed 'The Ten.' "

"It could have been anyone, Colonel. It could've been me. That's been a joke on campus since I was a knob."

"I know, Bubba, I know," he said, rolling his eyes at me and daintily picking the cigar stub out of the ashtray. He began to chew on it as he resumed speaking. "I've never seen one ounce of proof that it exists since I've been here. But there's a rumor in the Corps that someone's out to get Pearce and the Bear listens to rumors. Do you know why the Commandant's Department wants you as Pearce's liaison?"

"The editorial?" I ventured.

"Yeh, Bubba, you flaming Bolshevik, the editorial," he said, leaning across the table, his brown eyes twinkling. "I was against letting the school paper print your editorial. If we're going to have censorship, I think we ought to have real censorship, not the namby-pamby kind. But it did help spot the one bona fide nigger-lover in the Corps."

"Not everyone in the Corps is a racist, Colonel. There are a few holier-than-thou deviants among us."

"How about if I say that ninety-nine percent of the Corps is racist, Bubba?" he said, grinning.

"You're being too cautious, sir. It's a much higher percentage than that."

"Did you write that editorial because you wanted to piss off the authorities, or do you really get a hard-on when you think about niggers? Tell me the truth, bum."

"I knew you wouldn't sleep for a week, Colonel."

"Well, Pearce is going to make it, lamb. Pearce has got to make it. His time in history has come."

"And your time's over, eh, Colonel?"

"It may be, Bubba. But bums like you never had a time and, God willing, you never will."

"Colonel," I asked, finishing the last oyster on my platter, "are you a racist? Do you want Pearce in the school?"

"Yeh, I'm a racist. I liked the school when it was lily-white. Pearce is going to stand out like a raisin on a coconut cake during parade."

"Then why are you trying to protect him?"

"It's my duty, Bubba, my job. And when Pearce comes in on Monday, he becomes one of my lambs, and I like to make sure that all my lambs get an even break."

"I'll be glad to watch over Pearce, Colonel, but I had best be seen with him only once during the first week."

"Word will leak out that you're assigned to him. In fact, I've already leaked it. I want the Corps to know that the Bear is watching Mr. Pearce closely."

"Colonel, when did you graduate from the Institute?"

"Nineteen thirty-eight, Bubba."

"How do I know that you're not one of The Ten?" I said, teasing him.

"I was in the bottom five of my class academically," he answered before he swallowed an oyster.

"Does that mean anything?"

"It means I was stupid, Bubba. The Ten wouldn't touch someone stupid. That's stupid with books, Bubba. But I'm Beethoven when it comes to catching my lambs breaking the rules of the Institute. You keep in touch. If you need me, give a yell. Come to me. No one else. No one in the Corps. None of your friends. Me. Spelled B-E-A-R."

Chapter Four.

That evening as I awaited the arrival of my other two roommates, I meditated on the nature of friendship as I practiced the craft. My friends had always come from outside the mainstream. I had always been popular with the fifth column of my peers, those individuals who were princely in their solitude, lords of their own unpraised melancholy. Distrusting the approval of the chosen, I would take the applause of exiles anytime. My friends were all foreigners, and they wore their unbelongingness in their eyes. I hunted for that look; I saw it often, disarrayed and fragmentary and furious, and I approached every boy who invited me in.

I was sitting at my desk in the rear of the alcove shining my inspection shoes when I heard the door open and Mark Santoro come into the room. He did not see me at first, but I smiled as I saw his old fierce scowl when he heard me say, "Hey, Wop."

It was an old game between us and we could play it for hours without missing a beat. He put his luggage on the floor near his rack and walked toward me.

"You must be new in town, sir," Mark said respectfully. "It hurts my feelings when a very ugly human being like yourself casts aspersions on my heritage."

"Wop," I repeated. "Wop, Wop, Wop, Wop, Wop."

"Excuse me, sir, you must not have heard me. I asked you kindly to treat me with dignity and respect. So I would suggest that you look for another way to address me before I'm forced to perform radical surgery on that fat nose of yours that your mother stole from an Irish pig."

"Speaking of noses, yours grew a little bit over the summer, Mark. You could land a DC-8 on that schnozzola of yours."

"You couldn't land a fruit fly on that little sniffer of yours."

"Why don't you have a nose job, Mark?" I said. "No kidding. It would take a team of twenty-thirty surgeons chopping away like beavers, but they could have it down to normal size after a day or two."