The Lords of Discipline

by Pat Conroy

out the pushups. Their faces lay on

They had taught me about power and the abuse of power. Evil would always come to me disguised in systems and dignified by law. There would always be cadres and shower rooms, and they would always have dominion over me. They had taught me to hate them, but more significantly, they taught me that I was probably just like them, that I would abuse power whenever I had it, that I was the enemy of anyone who found himself beneath my boot.

They had promised to make a man out of me and they were doing it. They were making a mean and angry man. They had taken an eighteen-year-old boy. They had shaved his head, humiliated him, exhausted him. They had screamed at him for six months, starved him, made him afraid, obedient, humble, made him cry, made him sorry he was born. They castigated him, spat on him, beat him with their fists, waited for him in packs, sweated the youth out of him, ran him until he dropped, made him hate them and was hated in return, made him weep in front of them, lick their shoes, and beg them to let him leave. Through all this they had left me a poisonous gift. They had made me want to belong to the brotherhood. They made me want to be one of them. And at the end of nine months, I would shake their hands during the recognition ceremony. They would call me by my first name and I would call them by their first names. And at that moment, even Fox, the worst of them all, the most cowardly and the most damaged by the system, would approach me and, with the benediction of history and tradition, call me his brother, his friend and comrade. He would call me himself. He would pass the fire and the dark eyes on to me, as I would pass it ruthlessly on to others. That was the way it worked.

I was privileged to be a part of all this, I thought, as I listened to Commerce talk about his itinerary, and it seemed to me there were far worse strategies in life than to try to make each aspect of one’s existence a minor work of art. But I was also beginning to notice something chilly and remote in an ambiance of such conscious perfection. There was no urgency in the effortless, classical preference for the simple over the ornate and showy. There was no personal statement in the house, no indelible signature of individuality; it was as though the collective unconscious of all Charlestonians, the living and the dead, had formed a committee of restrained equilibrists to design the interior of each room.

Inside that box was an Institute ring. But this ring was different from all the other rings ever made. Engraved in a feathery script on the inside shank was the name: William McLean. Here, at last, was the symbol, the absolute proof, that I was part of all of this, that I had earned the right to love the school, and to criticize it.

The generic word for “brother” is brother.

“Halt, Bubba.” I saw the cigar blazing like a lone, abandoned eye in the alcove. “Bear,” I said, surprised. “What are you doing here at this time of the night?” “I’m the good shepherd and I’ve got to watch over my wayward lambs. What are you so happy about? I get nervous when I see you smile, McLean. You moved across that quad like you were trying out for Tinker Bell.” “A girl, Colonel,” I said. “When did you switch preferences, Bubba?” “Tonight. Tonight, sir.” “McLean,” the Bear said gently, his cigar blazing. “You’re acting like it was the first time, Bubba.” “It was, Colonel.” He reached into his uniform pocket and brought out a Thompson cigar from Tampa, Florida. “Congratulations, Bubba. That’s like inventing the wheel.” I still have that cigar.

I quickly told him the only joke I could remember on the spur of the moment. “A cadet’s definition of an intellectual is anyone who can listen to the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger.”

You had to decide what was estimable and precious in your life and set out to find it.

I still retained the Catholic boy’s belief that sex was some grotesque and beastly urge of men that women endured as part of the misery of their station. Annie Kate’s condition was proof of the wages of sin and the horrors God visited on the impure. I think both of us looked upon her pregnancy that way sometimes.

We had weighed evidence together, argued frequently and sometimes bitterly, agreed and passionately disagreed, but eventually, we had passed judgment on the lives of our peers. I had come out of the experience respecting the integrity and honesty of all of them. There was a sense both of power and of suffering in rendering such irrevocably final decisions. I had seen some of them cry unashamedly after casting guilty verdicts. They had seen me do the same. The system was imperfect and it was brutal. But I had learned something during my tenure on the court: None of these boys received pleasure from hearing the drummers begin their slow dirge in front of second battalion. We did it because we believed in the system and its concept of honor.

against the gold

“I can’t bear