"Yes. He paid for the gas."

"But even if he had not paid for the gas, you insist it still would belong to Mr. Pignetti."

"And to you and Tradd. It would belong to all of us," I said.

"I will not even honor this line of reasoning with an objection, Mr. Grace," Jim Rowland said from his chair.

"Then I suggest you keep quiet, Mr. Prosecutor," Gauldin answered, still miffed.

"Your witness, Mr. Prosecutor," Mark said.

"I do not have a single thing to ask Mr. McLean," Jim Rowland said, coming up from behind me, grabbing the back of my chair, and looking over my head at the members of the committee. "Except this: Why didn't Mr. Pignetti just tell you he was going down to the parking lot to siphon off a couple of gallons of your gas, Will? I mean really. Even though you had this beautiful relationship in this room, please explain to me, and the members of this court why Mr. Pignetti just didn't tell you that he needed a couple of gallons worth of gas and was going down to take them from your car, which, of course, as we all know by now, in this beautiful and socialistic room, was also his car."

"I don't know why he didn't tell me," I answered, grateful to be telling the truth again. "I think he might have been embarrassed to tell me."

"Embarrassed?" Jim said sarcastically. "Embarrassed? How could anyone be embarrassed in this beautiful room? All were comrades in this room. All was common property. How could there possibly be embarrassment in fantasyland, in this fourth battalion utopia?"

"I had just lent Pig twenty dollars. Tradd had lent him thirty. Mark had lent him five. I don't think Pig wanted to waste any of that money on gasoline."

"And why not, Mr. McLean?" Jim said, leaning down close to my ear. "I think fifty-five dollars is more than sufficient to buy a tank of gasoline."

"Pig was getting married this Saturday in St. Mary's Church downtown," I said. "I'm sure he wanted to use all that money for his honeymoon. I'm sure he didn't want to waste any of it on gasoline."

"You are aware, Mr. McLean, that this is a military college and that we sign statements at the beginning of the year saying we are not married," Jim stated officiously.

"Yes, I have heard this is a military college," I answered, irritated by his tone of voice, but I caught an admonishing gesture from Tradd warning me that this was an inappropriate time to practice the craft of my wiseass humor. "But I only said that Mr. Pignetti was planning to get married. The ceremony was set, his fiancee was flying down, the papers were being readied, they had both taken blood tests, but unless Mr. Pignetti had actually gone through the entire wedding ceremony, he would not have been married. It's just like the gasoline."

"Nonsense," Rowland said.

"Possibly," I answered. "But you also realize that being married while you're a cadet is not an honor violation. It's an expellable offense but only through the Commandant's Department. All of us know seniors who are married. Some of us have even met the children of our classmates."

"But flouting the rules of the Institute seems to have been common in this beautiful room."

"If you would like, Mr. Rowland, I can introduce you to a cadet sitting on this honor court tonight who is married. It's not a common practice in the Corps of Cadets but it's not all that uncommon either."

I had made an irrevocable tactical error and regretted it as soon as I had spoken. My rigid competitiveness made me want to win every single verbal joust with Jim Rowland. When I saw Fuzzy Swanson blush deeply and begin to write notes furiously on the yellow pad in front of him, I knew I had probably lost Pig one crucial vote on the committee. I had no right to forfeit any votes for my roommate because of some perverse psychic hunger to illustrate the cunning of my wit.

"I hope the committee will forgive me that indiscretion. I had no right to say that and I apologize," I said, but I had lost Fuzzy Swanson forever.

"You certainly didn't, Mr. McLean," Gauldin agreed.

"So you are testifying to the court that you believe Mr. Pignetti was stealing gas because he was embarrassed to ask his roommates for any more money," Jim Rowland said.

"I did not testify that Mr. Pignetti was stealing gas," I corrected. "I testified that he stole absolutely nothing."

"No further questions, your honor," Jim Rowland said, returning to his seat.

"Do members of the honor court have any further questions?" Gauldin asked. Then he granted a twenty-minute recess while we prepared final arguments.

Jim Rowland pulled no surprises in his summation; he was not given to verbal legerdemain or tricks of logic. He had a mind that worked in cogent and predictable ways but he brought to his argument a profound integrity, a total commitment to his belief in Pig's guilt. When he finished, I knew from the silence in the room, the quality and menace and duration of the silence, that Jim Rowland had convinced at least some of the members of the court of that guilt.

Tradd lifted himself up from his seat and walked to the center of the room in his shy, unhurried gait. His voice quavered as he began to speak. The words he spoke were fragile and delicate. Jim Rowlands summation had the strength of his integrity behind it; Tradd St. Croix's summation would be a cry from his heart.

"I know the court has been angered by our defense of our roommate, Dante Pignetti. This is because we love our roommate and would do almost anything to save him from a conviction by the honor court. But there is one thing I personally would like the court to consider when you make this decision. It's something that has nothing to do with the honor code but has everything to do with why Pig was out in the parking lot that night. It's because Pig's poor. I don't mean just that he comes from a family that doesn't have enough money. I mean poor in ways that the rest of us will never be able to understand. I have always had money, plenty of money, and it never occurred to me how I would act if I had no money at all. Pig is the first person I ever knew well who is without money. You act differently when you're poor. It affects the way you view the world, and you worry irrationally about how you're going to pay your tuition or buy your uniforms or borrow enough money to pay for your ring. It makes you different from everyone around you."

Tradd paused and looked at Pig. But Pig was looking at the floor and a deep crimson flush of humiliation and shame colored his face. Tradd continued, and his voice gained power and conviction as he turned back to face the members of the committee. "I would like for the court to consider carefully what Will said, what Mark said, and what I am saying to you now. The system was different in our room. We never talked about it because it embarrassed all of us to talk about it. But our room had to be different because of the simple yet crucial fact that Pig was poor. Will didn't have much money and neither did Mark. I was the rich kid in the room, and they had to protect me just as they had to protect Pig. If any of us received any extra money from our parents, we kept what we needed and put the rest of it into the room kitty. We pooled the money we did not need. I was not allowed to put in more money than Mark or Will. That was their rule because I was rich. If Mark, Will, and I had been rooming together we would not have had to work out that system. The system developed because Pig was in that room, and we had to figure out a way to get him money without humiliating him. Whenever he could, Pig would put money in the kitty, and those were the happiest days in the room. Normally, he would only take money from the kitty and he would always do it when we were not in the room, when we were not witnesses to him accepting our charity. But he knew it was for him. You see, we felt sorry for Pig, and guilty that he was poor and we were not.

"I think something terrible happened with our system. I think we put Pig on the dole. He was the poor kid, and we decided we would get him through college whether he asked for it or not. We turned him into a welfare case.

"I believe Pig when he tells me he took gas only from Will's car or Mark's car or my car. I believe he felt he had asked for too much already. He knew that what was ours was his for the asking. He knew that we would have gotten him more money if he needed more money, that we would have bought him gas for his car if he had only asked. I believe that Pig took the gas only because it would be one less thing he would have to ask for.

"We believe that there is nothing Pig could steal from us. If it was ours, then it was his, too. If he had been caught trying to siphon gas from another cadet's car, then there would not have been a trial tonight. None of us would have defended him. But it was Will McLean's car, gentlemen, and Will McLean's gas. Pig could not steal from Will McLean and he could not steal from Mark Santoro and he could not steal from me. If there were a theft or an attempted theft, then I would like this court to show me the victim. You have heard the so-called victim testify that there was no theft. You cannot steal what belongs to you, what you know is yours. When the court deliberates, it will have to decide about the efficacy of the way our room worked.

"There has been an incredible courage in Pig's career at the Institute. He has been an exemplary cadet, a platoon leader. He finished second in his platoon during ROTC summer camp. He has studied hard and performed well for the Institute wrestling team. You must decide tonight whether Dante Pignetti will wear the ring or not. You must decide whether you are going to punish him for being poor. We trust you will think about these things, gentlemen, and render a verdict of innocent."

Gauldin Grace hit the table once with his gavel. "The court will be cleared for the deliberation of the honor committee."

For one hour the court remained locked behind the huge oak doors that led to their inner chambers. We awaited the verdict in the small anteroom across the hall where witnesses were sequestered before being called in to testify. Tradd went down to the first floor and bought a package of Marlboros from a machine in the knob canteen. None of us smoked on anything like a regular basis, but all of us smoked that night. At first, we did not talk about the case at all. Instead, we reminisced about our plebe year, about Hell Night, about the time we put laxative in the fudge, about our first weekend leave, about Christmas furloughs, rank sheets-we talked about anything that would not remind us why we were gathered together in that room. We laughed too much but the laughter felt good. It was a sweet time together and it made the waiting go faster. At times, Pig would lose the drift of the conversation, and his mind would float out alone to a place where we could not follow. His eyes never left the floor. But before the hour was up, he finally had to speak to us about what had happened in court.

"What are our chances, Will?" he asked. "You know those guys and I don't. They all looked like they would stomp babies to me."

"I honestly don't know, Pig," I answered. "I don't even know how I would vote if I didn't know you. The case is a little strange."

"They won't kick me out," Pig said, but his words sounded more like prayer than conviction. "They won't kick me out because I'm a senior and I wear the ring and I've come so far. It's only a little more than a month before we graduate. I wasn't thinking good, with Theresa coming down on Saturday."

"When was your thinking ever good, asshole-breath?" Mark said, scowling beneath blue smoke.

"You didn't have any right telling them that my family was poor, Tradd," Pig said, more to himself than to Tradd. "They looked at me like I was shit when you were saying all that. You said it like I didn't pull my weight in the room, like I was some kind of freeloader. Hell, I always put in my fair share, paisan. You should have told them that. When you guys caught cold, who pumped you up with Vitamin C? Pig, that's who. And when you looked anemic last year, Tradd, who was right there with the old iron tablets? Pig, that's who. They should know all that. And you should have told them that my family may not have all the money in the world, but that the Pignettis are proud and don't bow their heads for no man. Those assholes don't have any respect for me. They think I'm shit. And look at them. They're all in lousy shape. I mean really poor health. I'm going to write out a weight program for each one of them, Will. No matter how it comes out, I want these creeps to take better care of their bodies. They think I don't have any pride or self-respect. I got more pride than all them motherfuckers put together. You should have told them that, paisan."

"I'm sorry, Pig," Tradd said. "I thought they could see that. I didn't think there was any need to say something that is so obvious to everyone."

"And, Pig," I cautioned, "no matter what the outcome. I mean, I pray it's going to be good, but if it isn't, you've got to take it like a man. Do you understand? You can't kick the door of the honor court shut and beat the living shit out of everything that moves in the room."

Pig raised his hand calmly and said, "I told you that I have more pride than anyone in that room. They think I'm just a poor Italian slob. After they find me innocent, I'll go to each of their rooms in the barracks, and I'll explain to them that Tradd forgot to tell them about the pride of the Pignetti family."

There was a knock at the door.

Paul Vacendak, the secretary of the honor court, opened the door and told us the court had reached a verdict.

We knelt together in the center of that small room, held hands, and Mark led us in reciting the Lord's Prayer. Pig's hand was slick with sweat when I grasped it.

Entering the room, we took our seats and tried to interpret the expressions on the members' faces. But these boys were now seasoned veterans of judging their peers, and they gave no overt signals of how they had voted.

Gauldin Grace's voice rang out in the room. "The accused will rise and face the honor court."

Pig rose to attention and faced them with a rigid, implacable courage.

"The members of this court find you guilty as charged."

Pig's knees buckled at the sound of the word guilty. He staggered forward a single unconscious step as though he had not clearly heard the verdict, as though he needed clarification. Then he turned back toward us and put his arms out to us like a child asking his mother for protection.

Then he let out a cry of pain I will carry with me every single day of my life. The cry was so unexpected, so high-pitched and despairing. It was the cry of a small animal, a tiny nocturnal creature, a herbivore that depended on stealth and speed for survival. There was no strength in the cry, and it reduced my roommate to the level of prey.

We caught him in mid-stagger. Mark pulled his arm around his shoulder and took his whole weight.

"Gauldin, could we have a few minutes before we go to the parade ground?" I asked. .

"Hurry, Will," he answered. "He can call his parents from the witness room. You know the procedure. And Will."

"Yeh, Gauldin," I said, unable to look at him.

"We're all sorry. It was horrible. But we voted the way we had to. The guys want you to know that they're thinking about you."

"Tell them thanks, Gauldin."

When we returned to the witness room, we sat him down in one of the wing-backed leather chairs near the door. We did not know how to look at him or how to speak to him. Already, we were putting distance between ourselves and him. We were beginning the merciless process of turning him into a stranger, someone we had never known, someone we would never know again, someone so untouchable and unclean of spirit that we would not acknowledge him on the streets if we passed him ten years hence. That was the process Mark, Tradd, and I had begun as we fought for last words to say to him, as we struggled toward a humane and brotherly farewell.

As we sat there, we heard the drummers begin their cold tattoo of banishment on the parade ground, heard its sinister echo as it pulsed along the galleries of the four battalions, as it summoned the regiment for the drumming out.

"Just remember this," I said desperately. "This isn't the end of the world. There are other colleges and they won't even know what this fucking honor system is. They won't even know what a military school is. You can start over. The General will write you a good letter of recommendation. He'll just say you couldn't adjust to the military way of life. You've got to forget this as soon as you can."

"You've got to call your parents," Mark said. "They'll be waiting to hear what happened."

"I didn't tell them that I'd been accused of an honor violation," he said, breathing hard, as though he had just completed a longdistance run.

"What!" Mark shouted. "You didn't prepare them at all?"

He lifted his eyes as though he heard the drums for the first time. "How could I tell my parents that their son might get kicked out of the Institute? They would never have gotten over it," he whispered.

"What do you think this will do to them?" Mark said, but softened immediately. "I'm sorry. Jesus, I'm sorry."

"Do you want me to call them?" Tradd asked. "I could break it to them gently or even better, I could have Mother do it. She always knows what to say in situations like this."

"No, I'll tell them when the time is right," he said. "When it's right for me."

"Try not to think about what's happening on the parade ground tonight," Tradd advised. "Don't think about it and you'll get over it much more quickly."

I looked at Pig and said, "I've got to ask you to give me your ring."

"No," he said, furiously clenching his fist.

"You have no choice," I said, lowering my eyes. "I've got to give it to Gauldin when I leave the room."

"Let me keep the ring, Will," he begged, "I earned it. I earned the right to wear it. They're taking everything else away from me."

"Give me the ring," I said.

"It's mine, Will."

"Not anymore."

"Give him the fucking ring," Mark said savagely, turning toward the door. "You're making it too hard."

He removed the ring and threw it at my head. It missed by inches and struck the lampshade on the far side of the room.

"Be a man. Be a fucking man," Mark said. "Let's see some of that pride you bullshitted about."

"You'll see it, paisan," he said, but a light went out in his eyes and something deadly replaced that light. "You'll see it and you'll always remember Dante Pignetti for his pride. I promise you that."

"You can catch the train for New York if you hurry," Tradd said, checking his watch. "Or else you can catch a Trailways downtown. One leaves at three in the morning, I think."

I retrieved the ring, placed it in my breast pocket, and walked over to him. There was a knock on the door.

"It's time," I said.

He rose to his feet and turned toward the door with his back toward us.

"Good-bye, paisans," he said. "And thank you. Thank you from my heart. My heart, paisans."

We surrounded him and the three of us embraced him for the last time. He did not look at us and he did not return our embraces. He pulled away from us and left the room without looking back. I felt his ring in my breast pocket with my hand, and I felt my own heart beating against the gold band.

When we reached the parade ground the Corps was assembling for the drumming out. My body felt as if it had been shot full of Novocain. We did not walk; we staggered out of Durrell Hall and watched as the regiment divided into two parts, like a huge cell in the process of a grotesque, unnatural mitosis. The Corps split up into two enormous lines stretching from one end of the parade ground to the other, a thousand cadets staring at a thousand other cadets, with a corridor six feet wide between them. It was down this corridor that he would march for the last time in a ruthless parade of one. It was called The Walk of Shame by the Corps and it was the most dreaded and barbaric ceremony at the Institute. I had sent nine boys on The Walk of Shame. I had felt a perfect justification for it and had convinced myself it was the price of dishonor in a school in which honor was a sacred word. I had swelled with power at my ability to summon the sleeping regiment.

Listening to the shouts of the company commanders moving the sluggish platoons into position, dressing up to the right, I took my place at the end of the immense file, out of place, far away from R Company, but at the spot where he would take his last step on campus. There was a yellow cab parked at the north end of the parade ground. The light in the cab was on, its motor was running, and the cab driver was smoking a cigarette and reading a newspaper.

I stood between Mark and Tradd. I wanted to say something to them but there were no proper words. I wanted desperately to hold their hands, to touch them again, to make some human connection that would make the darkness right again. But I was a cadet who was well trained and I stood at attention, waiting.

The drums ceased and the parade ground was as silent as an inland sea. At the other end of the parade ground, I heard Gauldin Grace's harsh, overextended voice screaming out the findings of the honor court.

"Gentlemen, the honor court has met tonight and has found Pignetti, D. A., Company R, guilty of the honor violation of stealing. His name will never be spoken by any man from Carolina Military Institute. He will never return to this campus so long as he may live. His name and memory are anathema to anyone who aspires to wear the ring. Let him go from us and never be heard from again. Let him begin The Walk of Shame."

The drums resumed their pulse. He began his last slow walk a quarter of a mile from his roommates. As he walked between the first two cadets in the line, they performed a simultaneous about-face and turned their backs to him. The next two cadets repeated the maneuver and the next two and the next two and the next two, turning from him as he passed before them.

Nameless, he marched in step on the long unrepeatable promenade between the divided regiment. Nameless, he had become a disgraced regiment of one as he navigated the narrow green corridor of grass between the backs of boys.

There was a dark intimacy to this ceremony of excommunication. I could hear the breathing of the two thousand, but that was all. This was a ritual amazing because of its silence. I stood in the grass awaiting the moment I would renounce my roommate.

With a sidelong glance, I studied his proud approach between the lines. I began to read the mysteries between those lines. As he walked he hurt me. As he walked, I could feel him changing me forever. As he came, I could feel my part in all of this. His face came into focus; it was set like statuary. He was marching like a creature with intimate associations with the depths, something eyeless and with a nervous system of such primitive simplicity that he was beyond pain, beyond touch. His face held a cold strange beauty as he approached, as his peers danced their about-faces in his passage, a rippling, exotically symmetrical maneuvering of the regiment, each in his own time, each a stunning duet of rejection.

I know now what I should have done. I always know it too late. Now I know what the code of friendship required of Tradd, Mark, and me. We should have left that line and made that walk with him. We should have lifted him up on our shoulders, and carried him through the lines. We should have stripped off our uniforms and hurled them at the honor committee, ripped off our insignia and epaulets and flung them at all those who dared turn from us. We should have walked together, arm in arm, the four of us, laughing and mocking, inseparable, and shouting "fuck you" to all who turned their backs on us, kicking their asses, and daring anyone to make a move toward any of us. We should have swaggered down those disciplined ranks, drunken and out of control, delirious with the powerful insulin of our shared history. We should have walked with the bright shimmer of murderous, unrepentant angels and accepted the banishment from the Corps together. We should have set the barracks on fire, salted the parade ground, and spat on the great seal of the Institute. Together, we should have gone out there in a blaze of obscenity and sacrilege. We should have become monstrous men and our salvation would have lain in the very nature of our monstrousness. We should have abandoned that campus with outrage and rebellion and wildness. We should have vomited out the bile of those four years in the barracks and walked as four against the two thousand, four against the regiment, shouting, "No, no, no, no."

But we did nothing; we were boys.

He saw us when he heard Mark sobbing. None of us had ever heard Mark cry before. It was a new sound in the universe. Mark must have held that first sob for a full half-minute; it burst out of his lungs in an explosion of grief. When Mark broke, I felt permission to break and I passed that permission to Tradd. It was a simple weeping he saw as he passed us, three boys crying and crying hard as we stood on the trimmed greensward listening to the drums that dishonored our roommate.

He stopped as he passed us by and spoke to all of us. His voice was stern and peremptory. "Turn," he commanded.

Mark had not executed an about-face when he passed in front of him, nor had I, nor had Tradd.