Honor and Duty Read online

  More praise for HONOR AND DUTY

  “DEEPLY MOVING … The novel rises to an astonishing power … and confronts issues that trouble many Americans today, including how they feel about their country.… It stands up to the best of Amy Tan for insights into the Chinese community in this country and its emotional tug-of-war among generations.”

  —The San Diego Union-Tribune

  “OVERPOWERING … PHILOSOPHICALLY RICH … A PLEASURE … It has been a long time since anyone has wrestled as profoundly with what we owe family, friends and institutions.… Kai Ting earns his peace dearly; he is a classic hero.”

  —New York Daily News

  “WONDERFUL … ALLURING … Gus Lee churns a great story.… Pages melt away like ice in springtime. An environment few readers have experienced quickly feels familiar as a favorite old pair of jeans.”

  —Denver Post

  “ENTHRALLING … Confirming the promise of his first novel, China Boy, Lee has produced another insightful, moving tale…[and] fashions a convincing first-person narrative in Kai’s voice, skillfully drawing the reader into each of his young narrator’s painful dilemmas.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Ivy Books

  Published by Ballantine Books

  Copyright © 1994 by Gus Lee

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States of America by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material: Paul Simon Music: Excerpt from

  “The Fifty-ninth Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)” by Paul Simon, copyright © 1966 by Paul Simon.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 92-42711

  ISBN 0-8041-1004-2

  ebook ISBN 978-0-8041-5170-2

  This edition published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

  v3.1

  The sad things that happened long ago will always remain part of who we are … but instead of being a burden of guilt, recrimination, and regret that make us constantly stumble … even the saddest things can become, once we have made peace with them, a source of wisdom and strength for the journey that still lies ahead. It is through memory that we are able to reclaim much of our lives that we have long since written off by finding that in everything that has happened to us over the years God was offering us possibilities of new life and healing which, though we may have missed them at the time, we can still … be brought to life by and healed by all these years later.

  —Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  1. BEAST

  2. EXODUS

  3. ROCK

  4. SPROUTS

  5. FATHER

  6. THAYER

  7. PUNG-YOH

  8. RITUALS

  9. HOME

  10. DAYS

  11. SHIM

  12. VALLS

  13. LUCKY

  14. DUKE

  15. MOCKINGBIRD

  16. LOSS

  17. TALK

  18. PURPOSE

  19. CHRISTINE

  20. SOCIETY

  21. BEAR

  22. LAIR

  23. PEARL

  24. LUN

  25. JANIE

  26. DUTY

  27. GUAN YU

  28. FORK

  29. HONOR

  30. PERFECTION

  31. BIG DICK

  32. SNOW

  33. BENEDICT ARNOLD

  34. SWORD POINT

  35. REQUIEM

  36. BELONGING

  37. DREAMS

  38. SERGEANT

  39. THE CORPS

  40. HONOR AND DUTY

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Abbreviations and Glossary

  1

  BEAST

  United States Military Academy, West Point, July 1, 1964

  It was the most beautiful morning in my life. A warm and gentle breeze caressed my face and rustled my shirt as I walked up the winding river road toward West Point. It was late dawn of Reception Day for a thousand men and boys. No one wanted to be here more than I. Sunlight glittered on the Hudson and birds trilled in deep green oaks and maples as I followed the stone wall of Thayer Road to the beat of my pounding heart. I swung the suitcase to the lilt of imaginary bagpipes and the murmur of distant drums. The bag, filled with my worldly goods, was light. I was going to trade it and my past for a new life. I wanted to be the first to report.

  An imposing array of tall, granite towers and stark, gray battlements came into view. Their majestic austerity consumed my vision with each nearing step. I inhaled history. After all the years of hope, I was here. This was America’s Hanlin Academy, its Forest of Pens, designed by Washington, built by Jefferson. It was the object of my father’s desire; here I would fulfill his dreams. The outline of spires seemed to be etchings from his spiritual blueprint, in which I was the human ink.

  The grand oaks whispered sibilantly, carrying away my father’s expectations. For a precious, golden moment, West Point was my dream. I heard the paratrooper captain from the Academy entrance exams say, “West Point is a school in the mountains and the clouds. There, at the River and the Rock, young men are bound to each other not by hopes of fame but by pledges to honor. A West Pointer is an honest man, all his life. He always strives to do the right thing.”

  I was seventeen and thirsted for redemption from more wrongs than I could admit. The air was different, and I paused. American flags waved softly, and I imagined the yellow pennons of the Ch’ing emperors snapping across the years of history in the face of gritty Manchurian winds. I saw the great Chinese military hero Guan Yu and his red face and barrel chest. I stood straighter, flexing the arms that had worked in a YMCA weight room for ten years, preparing for this day. I was strong and ready. I exercised one of my talents, learned only this year: I smiled from an inner pleasure. Sparrows whistled in high, five-note calls and a deep and distant buzzer rang. Heat came down and the earth began to warm.

  A mile later, I obeyed the sign “Candidates Report Here.” I stood alone at the great doors to a gray-stoned building. A tall, silver-haired janitor with a badly scarred face stood with his mop and stared at me, a Negro elder studying a Chinese youth at the gateway to West Point. “Good luck to you, young man,” he said as I entered. “Thank you, sir,” I replied, warmed by his kindness.

  The building was a vast gymnasium. I was processed through tables manned by straight-postured Army sergeants. I filled out an ID tags form (Ting, Kai/O-positive/religion: none), surrendered cash ($18.61), received inoculations, and did pull-ups. I could normally do fifty. Unnerved by the observing sergeants, I did forty-two, but I basked in their admiration. I was photographed in a jockstrap, which could not cloak my scoliosis, the curvature of the spine.

  The candidate buses unloaded, and my status of being the first was lost. The reminder, in echoing tones, of a five-year service obligation after graduation, induced a few to leave, beginning a process of attrition that would last for over three years. The grim words invited me to belong to something honorable; there was no going back. We were briefed on the oath of service and directed to Central Area. I was the only Chinese I saw.

  As we left with our bags to meet our fates, the sergeants gazed at us as if we were boys instead of projections of parental ambition. The Negro janitor and I exchanged a glance. He was solemn, as if he were saying farewell to someone he knew. I nodded, appreciating his presence, wishing he knew that I had been raised as a Negro youth, knowing that, for an A
merican, I always dipped my head too low in deference to China.

  We stepped into the bright and angry flare of a day that was now alarmingly hot. The heat broiled my skin. I was entering a huge quadrangle filled with a deep, primitive roar of voices.

  A breathtakingly immaculate cadet awaited me. He thrust his intensely focused features directly into my face and I jerked Man—too close! “Hi,” I gulped, “my name’s Kai and—”

  “DROP THAT BAG!” he roared, and I recoiled as my unguarded mind took his angry words like punches to the head. I gaped as my smarts fled before this yu chao, bad omen. I placed my luggage at my feet. Others began to drop their bags in small “whaps” across the Area.

  “PICK IT UP!” the cadet screamed, then bellowed, “DROP THAT BAG!” I winced as the bag smashed onto the concrete: it contained my father’s carefully preserved Colt super .38 automatic pistol. “PICK IT UP!” I picked it up, faster. “DROP THAT BAG!” I dropped it. “PICK IT UP!” I recovered it before the “UP!” I had become a human marionette, bobbing at my master, disarmed by the emotion.

  “MISTER!” the cadet shouted. “YOU WILL IMMEDIATELY EXECUTE THE COMMAND GIVEN. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?!”

  “Yes,” I said, voice quavering, eardrums ringing.

  “MISTER! You have THREE ANSWERS: ‘YES, SIR,’ ‘NO, SIR,’ AND ‘NO EXCUSE, SIR.’ DO YOU UNDERSTAND?!”

  “Uh, yes, sir,” I said, politely.

  He was impeccable in a starched white shirt with blue, gold-striped shoulder epaulets; a bright, black-visored, snow-white cap; razor-sharp, black-striped gray pants; brilliant shoes; and advertising-quality white gloves. His name tag said “Rice,” a name I liked. I had never seen anyone so marvelously perfect.

  “I CANNOT HEAR YOU, SMACKHEAD!” he bellowed, as if I were back at the hotel rather than an inch from his clanging tonsils.

  “Yes, sir,” I said, pupils and testicles contracting.

  “POP OFF, MISTER! KNOCK YOUR EQUIPMENT TOGETHER! YOU SOUND LIKE A WEEPING GIRL! DO YOU HEAR ME?! DROP THAT BAG!” he screamed.

  “YES, SIR!” I cried, wincing at my own voice, the bag slapping the concrete. His face filled my vision. Uncle Shim believed that shouting was for thoughtless men. To my mother, shouting was a mortal sin. A street ditty inanely ran through my addled brain:

  Step on a crack, break yo’ momma’s back.

  Yell at her face, lose all yo’ grace.

  “BRACE, MISTER! You are CROOKED! PUSH that neck IN! KEEP YOUR EYES UP—SQUASH THAT NECK BACK! MAKE WRINKLES IN YOUR CHIN! CRAM IT IN! ROLL YOUR SHOULDERS BACK! PUFF OUT THAT PUNY, BIRDLIKE CHEST! HEELS TOGETHER, FEET AT FORTY-FIVE DEGREES! ELBOWS IN! THUMBS BEHIND THE SEAMS OF YOUR TROUSERS! KEEP YOUR HEAD STRAIGHT! ROLL YOUR HIPS UNDER! How old are you, SMACKHEAD!?”

  I balked. He had almost spit in my face. “Se-seventeen,” I said. Ten years in the ring spoke to me: take your stance, gloves high, and box this bully with the Godzilla voice. It was an old tune: China boy trips in and bingo from the jump, it’s Fist City.

  “IRP!—IMMEDIATE RESPONSE, PLEASE! ‘SEVENTEEN, SIR,’ RIGHT?! NOT ‘Se-seventeen.’ ” The “IRP!” was the dark, sonorous belch of a thunder lizard; “RIGHT?!” was the sound of silk being slit by a sharp butcher knife. The cadence and emphasis of his speech were almost Negro, but there was no comfort in it.

  “Yessir, seventeen, SIR, YESSIR!!”

  “CROTHEAD,” he hissed, “I WANT SEVENTEEN WRINKLES! PICK UP THAT BAG! BRACE! ROLL YOUR SHOULDERS DOWN AND BACK! LIFT YOUR HEAD UP! CRAM YOUR NECK IN! BRACING IS THE MILITARY POSTURE FOR A MEMBER OF THE FOURTH CLASS! IF YOU SURVIVE BEAST, YOU WILL BRACE FOR ONE YEAR! DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME, DUMBJOHNWILLIE CROT!? SOUND-OFF!”

  “YES, SIR!” I cried.

  “KEEP YOUR BEADY LITTLE EYES STRAIGHT AHEAD! NEW CADETS ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO GAZE AROUND! REPORT TO THE MAN IN THE RED SASH AND SAY, ‘Sir, New Cadet X reports to the Man in the Red Sash as ordered.’ PRESENT ARMS—SALUTE HIM. DO YOU UNDERSTAND, CROTWASTE!”

  “YES, SIR!” I screamed, catching only the inner threat of his incomprehensible speech. I struggled with the seventeen parts of bracing while recovering my luggage and trying to breathe the bad air and survive the truly awful lack of ho, harmony, in this place.

  “NEW CADETS DOUBLE-TIME WHEN THEY ARE ABOUT THEIR DUTIES. ‘DOUBLE-TIME’ MEANS YOU WILL RUN IN A MILITARY MANNER, FOREARMS PARALLEL TO THE GROUND, HEAD IN. POST, MISTER!” he bellowed, and I trembled isometrically in exaggerated rigidity, trying to simulate an American picket fence post, stiff, unbreathing, and white.

  “POST, MISTER! DO NOT SPAZ ON ME! TAKE YOUR POST AND GET YOUR SORRY UNMILITARY WAYS OUT OF MY AREA! MOVE IT!”

  I bolted and crashed into someone. “Oof,” he said. I bounced off, staggered sideways in the staccato minuet of a bracing wino confused by the rotation of the earth. I cleverly dropped my bag and tripped over it backward and crashed awkwardly. My victim smashed hard into the Area, nose down, hurling his bag into another candidate, who went down like a lone pin plucked by a speeding bowling ball. “OW!” said this one. The admission of pain drew cadre like shoppers to bargains and they descended on him with rabid enthusiasm. The man I had hit was Sonny Rappa, whom I had met yesterday at the Hotel Thayer. I helped him up while making seventeen wrinkles. I wanted to apologize but it wasn’t one of my three answers. I mouthed “Sorry,” my pantomime making his cheeks redden, his cheeks swelling. He guffawed. He covered his mouth.

  A horde of upperclassmen shouted at us so intimately they seemed to be in our clothes. Sonny’s bellows and my shouts echoed within the gray rock fortress. We screamed with these dapper nightmare men until the world became a single, blinding roar. I was blamed for knocking down a classmate. Sonny was blamed for laughing without authorization and for looking like Sal Mineo. I began to feel personally responsible for the national debt, the tensions of the cold war, and the oppressiveness of a New York summer.

  They shouted accusations; we shrieked “YES, SIR!” like stuck records. Any prohibitions about yelling at elders died in that hot, sweaty square. Here, a failure to yell at superiors could lead to whatever followed torture—the kind of punishment one deserves for doing something really wrong, like willfully burning down Paris.

  One cadet, motivated by our stirring interpretation of Laurel and Hardy at West Point, began to psychically sandblast us with howling halitosis and flying spit. He yelled with an intent that would outlast the words, as if he wanted to reach my past and allow me to wear the marks of his voice forever, with an imprinting I thought only parents possessed. “YOU ARE IN IT NOW, CREEP! YOU ARE IN THE PAIN PALACE, THE HURT HOOCH, THE OUCH POUCH, THE BRUISE BAG—THE LAST PLACE YOU EVER WANTED! YOU NEVER WIPE OUT A CLASSMATE, CROTHEAD SMACKCREEP! I WILL NOT FORGET YOU, SHITFACE! I AM MR. O’WARE! POST, MARS-MAN!” I trembled with my foul luck.

  We braced in line with others who once had been promising young Americans, awaiting the pleasure of the Man in the Red Sash. I kept my beady little eyes straight ahead and puffed out my puny, birdlike chest. The din of five hundred boys screaming at the cadre resounded from the tall, dun battlements. The maelstrom of screams grew as the morning passed, disturbing the calm of the cloudless blue sky. Luggage fell in random harmonies across the concrete of the Area. This was more than freshman registration for classes; I knew we were being prepared for war. I missed the West Point of The Long Gray Line, with boxing and camaraderie. It had reminded me of a China and a Chinese academy I had never known, a place of honor and of belonging, a school in the mountains and the clouds.

  It was my turn, contorting as I threw a stupendously athletic and unmilitary salute based on a lifetime’s study of war movies.

  “SIR! NEW CADET TING REPORTS TO THE SASH WITH THE RED MAN AS ORDERED!” Oh, crap! English! I grimaced and frowned, as if fierceness in expression could erase my words.

  The Sash man was a stone-cold dude with a black shield on his sky-blue epaulet. Dark, visor-shaded eyes of murderous flint bore into me, augers into young wood. I trembled. The Man in the Red Sash fixed me with
his frigid, cobralike gaze. I wasn’t a candidate or a new cadet. I wasn’t blood Chinese or inner Colored boy. I was a little, terrified bunny rabbit who had fallen through a crack and landed in Crocodile City, no longer competent in English, twitching with fear, wondering if they’d snap my neck before they ate me.

  “SCREW IN THAT DUMBCROT NECK! TRY THAT AGAIN, SMACKHEAD!”

  He delivered the last word with a ringing, baritone resonance that loosened the grip of my glasses on my head. I mastered the salute after he corrected my arms, shoulders, elbows, wrist, hand, fingers, thumb, eyeballs, chin, neck, and head.

  “MISTER! GLASSES IMPLY WEAKNESS AND INVITE WEAK MARKSMANSHIP! THAT INVITES DEFEAT IN BATTLE! WHY ARE YOU WEARING GLASSES?!” he roared, the tassel on his red sash swaying.

  “NO EXCUSE, SIR!” Wearing glasses—or being Chinese or Negro or in any way different—was always dangerous. But he treated me just as he had the others: with a crushing lack of human regard, with an authority that exceeded the inculcation of simple shock.

  “ARE YOU SCARED, MISTER?!” he roared.

  I was ready to die of fear. This was a question about heart. “NO, SIR!” I screamed.

  “WHAT IS YOUR NAME, CROTHEAD?”

  I only had three answers, so I thought it was a trick question. “SIR, MY NAME IS TING!” He looked at his clipboard.

  “CROT! You are in Fourth New Cadet Company, tenth division of barracks. REPORT TO YOUR COMPANY FIRST SERGEANT. POST!”

  I ran; skidded to a stop with both shoes; avoided another near crash with Sonny while he saluted; recovered my bag; and ran with the refined, continental suaveness of a myopic, spavined, bespectacled, perspiring, jet-lagged, bracing jackass with a suitcase, a military manner, and an enemy named Mr. O’Ware.

  More new cadets entered the ancient gray stone tunnel, passing from the banal, gentrified urbanity of Thayer Road into the consuming, bone-crushing buzzsaw of the cadre.

  Inside the stone quadrangle of Central Area, hundreds of us double-timed while bracing and searching for signs in a world laced tight with torment and abusive accusation. We were like casualties from a giant train wreck, in which all coincidentally had emerged with identical orthopedic injuries. We looked like science fiction zombies. I felt as if we were being used as stuffing for sausages, and the factory management had decided to allow us to scream in unison as we were being compressed into the skin.