Gray Girl (26 page)

What?
 
“Sir, I don't understand?”

“We’ve had a death in the H-3 family
tonight.
 
Our mascot, Cadet Harold,
has met an untimely demise.”
 
He
said this with a completely straight face.
 
“We were just preparing for the burial with full honors when your situation
came to our attention.”
 

Dogety finally spoke, “I will show
you the location where you will dig Cadet Harold's grave, which must be the
size of a shoebox.
 
You will do this
using only your bayonet and a Mess Hall serving spoon.
 
Do you understand your task, Miss
Wishart?”

“Yes, Sir.”
Cadet Harold?
 
She
didn't even know they had an H-3 mascot.

“Good.”
 
Then both the Commander and the Executive
Officer stood at attention.
 
Cadet
Holdern said, “Present Arms,” and they all saluted.
 
Jan didn't quite understand who was
saluting whom.
 
Then she noticed the
upperclassmen staring at the floor.
 
Between the beds with the unsheathed sabers was a shoebox.
 

Jan followed Dogety outside across
The Apron and onto The Plain.
 
She
was never afraid of Dogety; she just hated how much he seemed to disdain
her.
 
As they walked, she thought
she felt disgust flowing from him.
 
When they arrived at the center of The Plain, Dogety pulled out a large
spoon, handed it to Jan and said, “Start digging, Wishart.”

Jan knelt down and began to dig the
hole.
 
The bayonet proved to be an
essential tool in the half-frozen terra firma.
 
She forgot to wear gloves, and her
fingers became numb from the cold.
 
Once she loosened the ground with the bayonet, she was able to scoop out
the dirt with the spoon.
 
Dogety
walked around her in circles like a wolf stalking its prey.
 
For at least twenty minutes, he said
nothing.
 
Then he stopped pacing and
said, “Wishart, you surprised me tonight.
 
I never thought you had it in you.
 
I thought you were too weak for this place.
 
But tonight, you proved otherwise.
 
You can take it, AND you can dish it
out.
 
You made me proud,
Wishart.”
 
Jan kept digging,
ignoring him.
 
“WISHART!
 
I'M TALKING TO YOU!”

“Yes, Sir.”
 

Then Dogety squatted down and put his
face right up next to her ear.
 
“I
did a pretty good job with you after all.
 
I can graduate knowing my work here is done.”
 
Then he stood back up and resumed his
circling.
 
She finished the hole in
about an hour.
 
Dogety measured it
and made her dig another inch deeper.
     

          
At
2400 hours, Company H-3 held formation on The Plain.
 
One of the cadets played “Taps” on a
flute while another ceremoniously lowered the shoebox casket into the
hole.
 
The Commander shouted
“Present Arms.”
 
All of Company H-3
saluted as Cadet Harold the Hamster was laid to rest.

25

Friday,
May 7, 1982

2030 Hours

Dear
Jan,

I’ve
been trying to talk to my Honor Rep, but he’s been “tied up” all
day—that’s all his roommate will tell me.
 
You didn’t tell me much, but I believe I
will be able to help.
 
I have filled
out a statement and only need to submit it to the Honor Rep
.
 
I
want to be sure to follow the
chain of command, but I understand that once it’s submitted, I will be called
to testify.

I
guess the jig will be up for me then.

SKIP

She quickly scribbled a reply and taped it back on her door.
 

SKIP,

This
is great news…I don’t know what it is you know, but I trust it will be useful
to me.
 
Don’t delay!
 
Make sure your Honor Rep gets in touch
with my Honor Rep, Cadet Trane, ASAP!
 
I’m going to bug him until he tells me he’s heard something.
 
I will go by his room every 30 minutes
tonight…so get moving. PLEASE!

Thank
you so much.
 

Jan

Jan filled in Angel and Kristi quickly while changing into shower
uniform.
 
Then, dressed in only a
thin, gray, polyester bathrobe, over flip-flops, with a towel draped over the
right arm, she pinged down the hallway to the women’s latrine.
 
After showering, she exited the latrine
in the same way only with wet hair.
 

Dogety called to her as she passed his door,
 
“Miss Wishart, come here for a minute,
please.”
 

Dang.
 
Haven’t we had enough time together
today?
 
“Yes, Sir?”
 
She stood at
the entrance to his room.
 
His
roommate probably had a weekend pass.
 

“Come in, please,” he said.
 
She walked into his room in the bathrobe and flip-
flops,
towel still draped over one arm.
 
“Please, sit down.”
 
Cadet
rooms have limited seating choices: a bed, a desk chair, a footlocker or the
floor.
  
Jan sat on his
roommate’s bed.
 
Dogety stood up
from his desk, walked to the door and closed it.
 
Then he sat down on the bed, next to
Jan, so close that their thighs were touching.
  

Both stared at her flip-flopped feet.
 
Neither spoke for what seemed like a
full minute.
 
Then, he placed his
right hand over her left, picking it up gently and moving it onto his
thigh.
 
Jan couldn’t move.
 
Fraternization was forbidden between
plebes and upperclassmen.
 
If anyone
opened Dogety’s door at that point, they would have been in even more trouble.
 
Holding hands behind closed doors was
bad enough.
 
Jan dressed in only a
bathrobe made it even worse.

But she wasn’t terribly worried about being caught at that moment.
 
For most of the entire year, she wanted
Dogety to leave her alone.
 
Now, she
felt something different, something strange and hidden but also somewhat
familiar.
 
It gnawed at her, but she
couldn’t think of the word to describe it.
 
Anger maybe, because he wasn’t supposed to be tender.
 
He was supposed to play his usual role,
and she didn’t know quite what to do with this “nice” Dogety.
 
Maybe she felt angry that he waited this
long, almost to the end of the year, to be vulnerable with her.
 

“Jan,” he said, “
you
don’t need to help
me.
 
I need to help you.”
 

“I know you do.
 
That’s what
I have been saying all along,” she turned to face him.
 

“Well, you’ve taught me a valuable lesson.
 
I will make this right,” he said turning
to her.
 

An uncomfortable silence stood between them.
 
Sam Dogety dipped his head toward
hers.
 
She did not back away.
 
He kissed her lips once, softly and
gently.
  
They parted
momentarily.
 
Then both came toward
each other with a fierce, desperate resolve—kissing so hard it almost
hurt.

26

A
cadet's busy schedule is not without its lighter moments.

Cadet Activities, Bugle Notes, 81,
p.89

West Point turned even grayer in late
February.
 
Plebes formed up for
breakfast in morning grayness and again for dinner formation in evening
grayness.
 
A perpetual cycle took
hold—gray over gray over gray over gray.

The fourth classmen continued to
count down the days until spring break, ring weekend and graduation.
 
This part of poop seemed to serve a
greater purpose.
 
It’s a daily reminder that all this shit will
eventually end.

With drill suspended during these
gray months, Jan and Drew joined the Cadet Ushering Club.
 
In Dress Gray over gray with white belts
and white gloves, they handed out playbills at Eisenhower Hall for a new
Broadway play called,
Fiddler on the Roof
.

Dogety and his date came to their
door.
 
“Evening, Wishart,” he said.

“Evening, Sir.”
 

“When did you start ushering?”

“In January, Sir.”

“Oh.
 
First time I've seen you here.”

First time I've seen you here, too
.
 

“Next time, shine your shoes.
 
Those are unacceptable, Wishart.”

“Yes, Sir.”
 
Jan gave a thumbs-down signal to
Drew.
 
Jan judged male cadets,
giving an inconspicuous thumbs-up at her side if one was good looking.
 
Thumbs-down meant “not so much.”
 
Drew judged the female companions.
 
They rarely encountered male and female
cadets together.
 
And they never saw
female cadets with civilian men.
 

Jan enjoyed this unofficial part of
ushering—judging the looks of male upperclassmen.
 
She rated them not only on their facial
attraction but also on their body type—tall, short, heavy set, skinny,
etc.
 
The cadets had to pass the
“whole package test”—good-looking face, nice hair, above-average height, and
not too heavy nor too skinny.
 
Most
importantly, above all else, the male cadet had to say “thank you” when she
handed him the playbill.
 
Even if
all the physical attributes were there, a “non-thanking” cadet automatically received
a thumbs-down from Jan.
  
She
gave the thumbs-down more often than not.

Drew gave Dogety’s date a
thumbs-up.
 
Shit, why couldn't
she have been butt ugly?

After the show began, an old woman,
who was about fifty, rose from her seat and walked up the aisle to their
door.
 
Jan got up from her back row
seat, opened the door and waited in the lobby until the woman returned from the
restroom.
 
As Jan reached for the
door again, the woman whispered, “Excuse me, Miss.
 
I just have to ask you a question.”

“Yes, Ma’am?”
 

“Are you a lesbian?”

What??
 
“No, Ma'am, I'm not.”
 
She held the door as the woman entered
the theater again.
 
Then Jan
whispered to her, “Are you?”
 

The woman huffed and snorted back
down the aisle to her seat.
 
Ha!
That's what you get for asking a stupid-ass question!!
  
Jan returned to her seat next to
Drew who signaled thumbs-up.

Dear
Jan,

No
need to be worried.
 
I am not a
stalker.
 
But you’ll have to excuse
guys for staring at you in Drowning.
 
We males tend to stare at females, especially when they have little
on.
 

I
heard you had the honor of digging the grave for dearly departed Cadet
Harold.
 
It was certainly a better
sentence than what they could have given you.
 
I hope you will be more careful.
 
There are a lot of killjoys here who do
their best to make sure no one has fun.

I
hope to hear from you soon,

SKIP

Dear
SKIP,

Ah-ha!
 
So you are in my Drowning class!
 
That narrows it down considerably.
 
I don’t think you are in my Company, so
you are probably in G or I.
 
It
won’t be long now until I discover your identity.
 
I hope you’re ready!

And
while men may like to stare at women with very little on, all that leering
makes us rather uncomfortable.
 
A
little subtlety would go a long way.
 
Especially since we are practically naked in the Speedos.
 
But I have to
admit,
you guys have it worse Speedo-wise.

Yes,
I dug Harold's grave.
 
Apparently,
there are no secrets at West Point.
 
I have tried to stay away from the killjoys.
 
Unfortunately, they seem to find their
way to me anyway.
 
There are just so
many of them. There is one in particular who takes great pleasure in trying to
upset me.
 
Not that he has to try
very hard.
 
I am generally unhappy
anyway.

I
guess most of it is because of this place—the rules, the demands,
the
stress of being a plebe.
 
But sometimes I wonder if there are
other reasons.
 
I come from a really
good family.
 
I have parents who
love me and have always taken good care of me.
 
I have friends back home and one or two
here.
 
I really have no reason to be
unhappy—
no
 
excuses
for being miserable (other than the whole WP thing).
 

Yet,
I am.

Jan

“Take boards!”
 
Captain
Ortiz commanded.
 
The entire
calculus class popped out of their chairs to stand in front of a section of
chalkboard.
 
Jan lifted a piece of
chalk and rested her head against the black slate.
 
Captain Ortiz said, “
Set
up the integral to determine the work to empty a full swimming pool of water
that has a rectangular bottom with length twelve feet and width ten feet and a rectangular
top with length twenty feet and width ten feet.
 
The pool is eight feet underground.
 
The water has a density of approximately
62.4 pounds per cubic foot.
 
You may
work together in pairs.”

Oh, gawd.
 
She lifted her head and tried to write something,
anything
, on
the board.
 
To her left, Rick
Davidson scribbled intensely on his chalkboard section.
 
She wished this prior service, combat
veteran, whom everyone seemed to fawn over, would demonstrate a weakness in at
least one thing.

She concentrated.
 
Swimming
pool is twelve feet by ten feet at the bottom.
 
Drawing a rectangle, she wrote “12” on
the long side, and “10” on the short side.
 
She drew another one on top and wrote “20” and “10” on the long and
short sides.
 
Then, she drew lines
between the two rectangles and wrote “8” next to one of the connecting lines.
 
Water density is what…?
 

She put squiggly lines in between the two rectangles to simulate water
while she tried to remember the density.

“Sixty-two point four pounds per cubic feet,
”
 
Rick
Davidson said.

“Thanks,” she said, thinking he was a bit presumptuous.
 
She wrote the water density on top of
the waves.
  
Then she
sighed.
 
I have no freaking
idea.
 

“Would you like some help?”
 
Rick asked.

Not really.
 
But since I am pretty much lost, I guess
any help is better than none.
 
“Um, yes, please.
 
If you don’t mind,
”
 
Jan
said.

“I’m pretty sure I can figure it out.”
 

I’m sure you can.
 
You know everything, don’t you?
 
“Great, that’s just…great.”
 

“It’s not that hard really.”

Nothing’s hard for you, I know…

“Just think about it like this:
 
we are trying to determine the work to empty the pool, right?”
  
Rick moved over to her chalkboard
section.

“Uh, okay,” she said.
 
He
can be “Mr. Know It All” because I am clearly not.
 

“So we say work equals,” he wrote “W=” on the board.
 
“The water density or 62.4 pounds has to
be lifted from zero to eight feet which is the depth of the pool.”
 
He continued writing the equation.

Jan tried to follow him.
 
“Then we multiply the results of that by the volume of water or length
times width times height.”
 
He moved
closer to her and pointed at her trapezoid drawing with simulated water.
 
“See, you have it all drawn out
already.”
  
Then he wrote the
equation again on her board.
 
“Work
equals 62.4 integral of zero to eight times ten times Y plus twelve times eight
minus Y times DY.”
 
He turned to
her, only a few inches away.
 

She looked from the board to him, “Are you speaking English?”

“Did I lose you?”

“Way back at W equals.”

“Okay, sorry, Jan.”

Maybe he’s not such a
bad-ass
after all.
 
“Oh, it’s not your
fault.
 
I’m just not the sharpest
knife in this calculus drawer.”

“Well, I could…”

“Take seats!”
 
Captain Ortiz
commanded.
 
Jan sat back down while
watching Rick Davidson return to his seat.
 
“Looks like most of you worked through the problem correctly.
 
Cadet Davidson, please explain how you
came up with your equation.”

Rick walked back to the chalkboard with Jan’s pool drawing.
 
“Cadet Wishart has given us a visual
depiction of the problem.”
 
The
class chuckled.
 

Jan glared at him.
 
Jerk!

After he finished explaining, they went through a couple more practice
problems at their desks while Captain Ortiz walked around checking their
work.
 
She managed to make it look
like she had a handle on the situation.
  
But she thought calculus felt more
like drowning than “Drowning.”

Drew sat on Jan’s bed with his back
leaning against the wall and his long legs dangling over the side.
 
They wore the winter PT uniform: gray
sweatshirt with ARMY in black letters across the chest over gray
sweatpants.
 

“Drew?”
 
Jan asked when Angel and Kristi left the
room.

“Yes, dear.”
 

“Do you think I’m pretty?”

“Honey, your very pretty.”

“Hmmm.”

“Hmmm, what?”

“Well, I don’t think most guys
consider me attractive.”

“Of course they do.”

“Well, then why do they all act like
jerks?”
 
Jan’s voice rose.

“Well, first, they don’t ALL act like
jerks.
 
Some do, sure, but some
women are jerks, too.
 
So, we’re
even on that score.”

“Drew, come on.
 
I’m awash in a sea of men, and you’re
the only one I can talk to.
 
What
does that say?”
 

“It says I’m an awesome guy.”
 
He looked at his nails.

“That’s true; you are.
 
But it also says guys avoid me for some
reason…”

“Well, it could have a teensy, weensy
bit to do with you.”
 
Drew held his
thumb and forefinger close together in front of his face.

“What do you mean?”
 
Jan didn’t like where this was going.

“Well, you are a little
intimidating.
 
Guys are afraid of
girls, you know?”

“No, I don’t know.
 
Enlighten me.”
 

“Women scare men; they always
have.”
 
Drew seemed to know all
about the subject.

“You have got to be kidding me.
 
It’s men who are the scary ones!
 
They have all the power, too.
 
Since when have women been in charge of
things?”

“Well, okay, you’re right of course.
Men have always dominated the world.
 
But women have power over men, sexually and otherwise.”