"One of you is, that's for sure."

"Put a 'sir' at the end of your sentences, mister. You may be gone but you're going out of here like a cadet."

"Sir," I said mockingly.

"You found out that The Ten actually exists?" he asked, and I exploded.

"I don't deserve to be played with, sir," I screamed at him. "I've been played with enough in the past couple of weeks, sir. Your bastards have put me and Mark on fishhooks, sir, and let us dangle from the lines, sir. I've had enough, sir. Enough, do you hear me, sir? Do you hear me good, sir? Enough, goddammit. You set me up and I walked right into the trap. The liaison for Pearce. What bullshit! I got a roommate killed. My roommate's dead because you called me to your office at the beginning of the year. It's like I put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger, sir. That's horrible to live with for the rest of your life, sir."

"Don't you see, Bubba," he said, "don't you understand I'm the only one who can help you and Santoro? And I'm not even sure I can help you now."

"You can help me by leaving me alone," I said.

He walked over to my desk. He removed his Institute ring and laid it in the center of the desk.

"Bubba, you take this ring. You know what it means to me. I'm giving you this ring as a pledge that I'm talking the truth. The ring is my word of honor. If you don't believe me then throw my ring away. Come to my quarters when you've figured some of this out. There's not much time. On Monday I'll have to sign an order of dismissal for excess demerits. That's twelve days before you graduate, Bubba."

The last call for parade sounded through the barracks.

"Don't be late to formation, Bubba," he said, leaving the room. "I'd hate to have to write you up."

Chapter Forty-four.

I did not have time to analyze the meaning of the Bear's visit or the significance of the symbolic removing of his ring as proof of his word. The gesture had moved me powerfully and confused me deeply. But I was late to formation and R Company was leaving the barracks as I hit the quadrangle and I had to sprint to overtake them. I did not want to miss my last parade at the Institute.

I loved those Friday afternoon parades at the Institute. It was the one military ceremony that never failed to please me, to satisfy some instinctive human craving for ceremony within me. It was the Corps's grandest hour, the coming together of the four battalions in a stunningly beautiful and ritualistic dance of two thousand across the parade ground.

When R Company strutted on the field that day, I felt closer to the Corps than I ever had, felt the old solidarity and oneness of the brotherhood as they marched in unison to the drums and bugles and bagpipes. The seniors of R Company had gathered around me in a protective phalanx, enveloped me in the heart of the company, bantered with me all the way out to the field, and, in the way of the . Corps, tried to make me forget for a time the events that had led to my imminent expulsion.

A vast crowd had gathered in the reviewing stand, and the richly variegated colors in their summer garments made the stand look like an enormous impressionist painting in the sunlight. American flags snapped in the wind on top of every building contiguous to the parade ground. The General, in a snow-white dress uniform, watched as the companies moved out to their positions, following the sharp flowing movements of seventeen guidon corporals. I would gladly have left R Company, walked over to where the General was standing, and beat out his dentures with the stock of my M-1, but the astonishing power of the group had seized me again, and I marched as one with the Corps, congruent with the multilimbed kinetics of the regiment, obedient to the cadence of drums as two thousand heels struck lowcountry dirt at the same time.

R Company moved into its position on the parade ground as smoothly as a ship gliding into its moorings. John Kinnell gave the command for the company to halt. I studied Jim Massengale's ample shoulders. As I did, a mosquito the size of a thumbnail landed on the back of his neck. Mosquitoes and gnats were put on earth to test the fortitude of cadets at parade.

"B-52, six o'clock, Jim," I whispered through clenched teeth.

"Fuck," Jim sore. "I got to kill the little cocksucker."

"Hell, Jim," Murray Seivers said, biting his chin strap, "you're almost a Whole Man. Only a pussy would slap that poor little mosquito."

"Little!" Jim protested. "He almost knocked me over when he landed. Oh, Jesus! He's already sucked a gallon of my blood."

"That's a smart mosquito," Murray whispered. "He picked the fattest blivet in the Corps."

"You ever seen Jim's dick?" Webb Stockton said, joining the secret colloquy among the seniors. "It's fourteen pounds of baby fat. When he's with a girl it doesn't get hard, it sweats."

"Hey, Santoro," Eddie Sheer whispered to Mark at the front of the company, "the sun's hot as hell. How about moving your nose an inch and darkening this side of the parade ground?"

"What's the difference between an Italian and a nigger?" Jim whispered through the ranks.

"I don't know, you fat fucking creep, but I better like the answer," Mark said as we presented arms by order of the Battalion Commander.

"The spelling," Jim said.

To the audience in the reviewing stand, the companies presented an image of absolute stillness, order, silence, and discipline. But all along the ranks the companies engaged in secret interior dialogues. Cadets at parade were masterful ventriloquists and adept at not getting caught unaware by the quiet approach of a tac officer from the rear. You developed an uncanny sixth sense about when it was safe to communicate and when it was not. Yet there were moments of absolute stillness among the ranks. When we presented arms for the national anthem, not a single word was spoken. When the General announced the names of alumni killed in Vietnam, there was not a single movement or sound in the ranks. Even in breaking the rules, an inviolable etiquette was at work. The Corps made its own rules and broke them all in the proper time. Many of the jokes at parade we had heard as freshmen from the senior privates. They were part of the legacy and tradition of R Company.

"Beaver shot. Ten o'clock. Yellow dress," Jim whispered.

"That's my mama," Eddie Sheer gasped in mock surprise.

"No, it isn't," Murray said, "that's my daddy. I told him never to come to parade dressed like that."

"I thought that beaver looked funny," Webb said.

"Beaver shot, twelve o'clock," Jim said again. Jim's whole sexual life was centered around carelessly seated women at parade.

"That woman's standing up," Webb complained.

"Use your imagination," said Henry Peak.

"Hey, Tradd," I said, my eyes scanning the crowd, "there's your folks."

"Where, Will?" he asked.

"Two o'clock."

"Which one's the mother?" Webb asked.

"Please leave my mother out of this grossness," Tradd pleaded.

"She looks like a real lady, Tradd," Jim said.

"Thank you for not being gross, James," Tradd said, a little too quickly.

"Do you think she would like to sit in my face?" Jim asked.

When the Regimental Commander gave the loud resonant command to pass in review and the bagpipers led the band across the entire length of the field, I had a long moment of resigned sadness when I realized that I would miss all of this, would miss the uncomplicated camaraderie of boys, would miss being a part of something so alien yet so magical to me.

I followed the drums, submitted myself to them, as R Company moved out in a simultaneous step, the first lovely movement of our dance across the green. It was that submission to a larger will that I secretly loved about the Institute, the complete subjugation of the ego to the grand scheme and the utter majesty of moving in step with two thousand men. The drums sounded in my ear and in my brain, as I instinctively obeyed the rhythm of the Corps. "Discipline, discipline, discipline," the drums said each time my foot struck the ground. We made the turn at the far end of the parade ground and began our exaggerated, formal strut past the eyes of tourists and alumni and generals.

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.

For 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.