The Boo (13 page)

Then Larry went on a motorcycle kick. The sight of a Citadel cadet on a motorcycle roaring across the Cooper River Bridge in dress uniform was strange indeed. The cadet image seemed a bit ludicrous when Larry pulled up to a stop light, revved his motor, then sped off to a party at the Isle of Palms. On one occasion he became the talk of the town. Larry took his girl to a Citadel Hop on his motorcycle. He arrived at her house resplendent in his full dress uniform, silk gloves on his hands, and a new shine on his inspection shoes. His girl bounced out of the house wearing a full length formal, blew her tolerant father a kiss, consoled her weeping mother, and climbed up behind Larry. They zoomed off into the night. Puzzled motorists stared after them. People waved. Some blew their horns. Larry and his girl kept going, oblivious to the ripple they were causing as they passed by. They roared onto The Citadel campus, the big Harley sputtering defiantly. Larry rode up to the door of the armory, offered his arm to his beloved, and marched into the prom like he owned the State of Rhode Island. Some cadets who witnessed the scene felt Larry would make a better member of the Hell’s Angels than the Corps of Cadets. Of course, Larry didn’t give a damn.

It is important to remember Larry’s background. It explains many things about a particular incident in the spring of 1966. On this night, something snapped in Larry. The dark side of Larry Latini was unleashed upon a trembling world. Some atavistic impulse triggered Larry into action and gave The Citadel one of her more memorable nights. It started with a rumor. A group of Charleston hoods had beaten up Rick Clifford, Larry’s roommate, while Rick was playing pool at The Ark. The rumor further specified that these were the same hoods who had lead-piped a couple of cadets the summer before and left them bleeding in an uptown alley. Though the rumor was false, Larry did not realize it. In the code of the Gang, each member was a brother. If one brother was beaten, then someone had to pay. He left the barracks on the run. A contingent of “B” Company jocks and weight lifters followed him. They wanted to see the molars fly.

He entered The Ark and looked quickly around. Clifford wasn’t there. “They must have hidden the body,” Larry said to himself, possibly remembering some cardinal rule of his gang days. Larry spotted a suspicious looking group in the back of the bar, playing pool, and minding their own business. They looked guilty to Larry. Some unfortunate greaser made a spurious remark to Larry. He caught the first fist of the evening. He flew across the pool table and landed under the legs of a pinball machine. The boy spit a tooth out of his bleeding mouth. Meanwhile, Larry had taken on the rest of the pool players. His fists pounded anyone who came into range. No method prevailed in his quixotic annihilation of those who had wronged his roommate. Teeth clattered on the floor. Blood spewed from four noses. The hoods bounced cue balls off Latini’s head. They swung cue sticks at his body. This just served to fan his wrath. One foolish lad shouted to Latini that he was nothing but a “Goddam wop.” Larry ran up to him, stuck two fingers between his teeth and cheeks, and ripped as hard as he could. The boy’s lips were split open in two places. No other challenger appeared. Nor did anyone else mention Larry’s Italian heritage. Satisfied that he had avenged his roommate sufficiently, Larry returned to the barracks. Several days later he received a bill for $173. This was the combined doctor bill of all the boys he mauled at The Ark.

Boo
stormed into The Ark the very next day. The story of Latini mopping up half the refuse of Charleston on The Ark’s floor dominated conversation around The Citadel. The image of the cadet as scholar, soldier, and gentleman was hard pressed to include the cadet as bar-fighter or hood-pounder.
Boo
walked up to the owner of The Ark and asked to speak to him.

“I’m Courvoisie of The Citadel. I heard one of my lambs got into a fight here last night. I just wanted to tell you if any cadet ever gets in a fight down here again or if one of my boys gets hurt in any way, I am going to put this place off limits to cadets and post guards around it to make sure nobody comes here. Do you understand me, Sir?”

“Yes, Sir, Colonel.” The owner understood perfectly.

Larry Latini graduated with his class. To do this, he curtailed his career as an all-southern conference tackle. He quit football his senior year in order to study. On graduation day he brought Colonel Courvoisie a gift. It was a charcoal portrait of
The Boo
done by Latini’s sister.

“Thanks for everything, Colonel. I wanted to get you something nice, so my sister did this.”

“Latini, only God and I know what a bum you really are.” Both of them smiled.

THE SCOWL ON MONK’S FACE

Nobody messed with Monk. This was an unwritten law in the early sixties around the first battalion. Monk was an Irishman; a surly, brusque graduate of an Irish ghetto in the Bronx. When aroused to the full fever-pitch of his anger, Monk was a formidable and dangerous adversary. He smiled infrequently. The few friends he made at The Citadel became aware of a distance in Monk, some impenetrable wall he erected to separate his friends from even the slightest awareness of his past. And it was this same past that provided the clue to the burden and the scowl Monk always dragged with him. For a long time, Monk walked the campus in silence, rebuffed overtures at friendship, projected a dark and irredeemable personality to the world he passed. It took a while, but Monk finally told a few close friends his story.

Monk’s grandparents had been driven to America when the great famine had decimated the potato crop in Ireland. They made the best of their misfortune. Monk’s grandfather prospered in the New World. A ruthless determination and adamant refusal to buckle under to the pressure of competitors had netted the family a considerable fortune. A new noun, millionaire, described Monk’s grandfather and grandpa liked the sound of it. Like many of the Irish patriarchs who immigrated to America in the late nineteenth century, he was fiercely protective and possessive of his children. All of his children followed his directives to the last syllable. All of them married the proper spouses and entered the proper professions. All except one. Monk’s mother embarked on a destiny not supervised by the stern visage of her father. She fell in love with a handsome Irish face and strong calloused hands and lips that drank beer from a laborer’s bench. She fell in love with a factory worker named Mike. A nice guy without money, without a future, and without the approval or respect of his girl friend’s father. They were married.

The full fury of the family was vented against both of them. The girl had committed the unpardonable sin of falling in love without the approval of her father. A family council was held under the auspices of the wronged patriarch. Monk’s mother and father were banished from the family circle.

Mike and his wife fared poorly. He lost one job after another while his wife suffered under the humiliation and disdain of the family who rejected and ignored her. The family, with collective solidarity, refused to acknowledge the presence of their former member. Cinderella had chosen her impoverished prince and the kingdom she betrayed would never be opened to her again. Mike, possibly because of the grave pressures exerted on him, or because he bore the full responsibility of his wife’s exile, turned to the bottle. Poverty of the cruelest kind entered their lives and the lives of their children, who appeared almost yearly at regular intervals.

Monk was the first born child. His formative years were hungry years. The streets served as the training ground for his youth, where the quick fist and the quick foot were the two most important elements of survival. Monk had both. He left a string of bloody noses down the long row of houses on his street and arrived home sporting the same on many occasions.

When he was twelve years old his mother was taken to the hospital. Two days later she was dead. It happened so quickly that her family had no time to make reparations or amends. They had no time to accept her back into the fold with outstretched and forgiving arms. She had died without the courtesy of allowing her family to say they were sorry. The funeral was thick with flowers and voices raised in grief. Monk’s father was an outcast, a pariah at the funeral of his own wife. Naturally, the great family decided in a sober-faced council that the children could not continue to live with their father. So Monk and the kids moved from the sinister alleys of the Bronx to the elegant mansions inhabited by New York’s most affluent society. Monk suddenly found himself thrust into a world of silk and linen, where no one cursed or wrote on the bathroom walls, where no one fought or bloodied anyone’s nose, and where no one put their elbows on the table or sneezed without covering their mouths. He attended a respectable private school, was tutored in etiquette by a lemon-faced aunt, and walked through the corridors of his grandfather’s house with the gnawing thought that every step he took was a betrayal of his father. The scowl on Monk’s face was becoming pronounced.

He was sent to The Citadel where, it was thought, the discipline and Spartan existence would make him appreciative and grateful for the luxuries his grandfather’s house provided. The plebe system barely challenged the boy who had fought in the slums of the Irish tenement sections of New York. His body, hard and sinuous, adapted easily to the rigors of nightly sweat parties and mental harassment. But the plebe system did nothing to alleviate the bitterness which was becoming the key element in the composition of Monk’s personality. His classmates were aloof and more than a little wary of the mirthless Irishman. A year passed before Monk came to trust anyone enough to tell them his story. He told it to few people. They were his friends. The words surfaced bitterly. “Whenever I go home to New York I walk into that goddam big house and listen to my grandfather tell me what a son of a bitch my father was. I just eat my food and listen without saying anything. The next day I go out looking for my Dad. I go from bar to bar in the places I know he hangs out. Eventually, I find him all dirty and drunk and I say, ‘Dad, you want to go out for dinner?’ ‘Sure, Monk,’ he says to me. ‘I could sure use a good meal!’ I take him up to a hotel room I’ve rented for him, let him take a good bath, all hot and everything. Then I take him out for a steak dinner. Neither one of us talks much. Just sit there and grin every once in a while. I want to tell him things and I know he wants to tell me things, but mostly we just eat and look at each other or talk about baseball. After the meal, I take him back to the hotel and put him to bed. He drops off to sleep almost immediately. I put a twenty into his pocket. Then I leave. It kills me to know that he’s always wandering around. Always wandering around. Never doing nothing. Just moving around all the time.”

One of Monk’s friends told Colonel Courvoisie the story.
The Boo
had become friendly with Monk while the latter was walking tours in the second battalion sallyport and had wondered what chip rested so securely on Monk’s shoulder.
The Boo
would gently banter the frowning Irishman as Monk paced back and forth with his rifle on his shoulder. Monk would chide back and the two soon found themselves stopping to chat whenever they met on campus.
Boo
signed several weekend passes for Monk and a few other favors cemented a friendship which would last for two years.

It is difficult to describe
Boo’s
relationship to cadets in cases like this. With Monk as with many other cadets, it seems probable that
The Boo
represented the father-image that Monk so desperately needed: a warm, yet stern figure who was a blend of warmth and strength in equal proportions, and who asked nothing in return for his interest and regard for you. As
The Boo
has said on occasion, “Many boys are sent to The Citadel because their parents had failed them somewhere along the line. Because the parents realize their failure, they figure that The Citadel can do the job for them. Some of them feel that discipline will compensate for the lack of love. More than our share of kids come from broken homes or from parents who just didn’t give a damn.”

Monk came to
The Boo
in his office many times just to talk.
The Boo
listened and gave advice. They laughed and talked of many things. Monk never told
The Boo
about his father;
Boo
never asked Monk to tell him. But he did complain bitterly about his aunt who never let up on him, never relented in her criticism, and never withdrew the pressure she felt was her duty to levy upon him.

During his senior year the pressure became extremely intense. Monk told
The Boo
that he didn’t know how much longer he could take her harping and bitching. The next day, the aforementioned aunt received a phone call from Lt. Colonel T. N. Courvoisie. “Madame, this is Courvoisie, The Citadel. I just wanted to call and tell you Monk is a good boy. You are putting a little too much pressure on him right now. Graduation is coming up and he needs to concentrate on getting out of The Citadel. He can’t be thinking about what you’re telling him and what his professors are telling him at the same time. So, Madame, I just wanted to call and let you know your nephew is doing fine at The Citadel, but needs to know that you love and support him. If you need anything, please feel free to call me.” The aunt uttered a few respectful “Yes Sirs,” but she had not said, “Go to hell,” or, “It’s none of your business.” In the beginning of the book, the stentorian voice of
The Boo
was discussed at length. In person, it can freeze hummingbirds in mid-flight, but on the telephone it is something else indeed, something almost god-like in its power to transfix and to control.
Boo’s
humanity is expressed in person by gentle modulations of the great voice or a sudden softness of the large, playful eyes. He is almost incapable of gentleness on the telephone. Call him at The Citadel sometimes, and imagine you are Moses talking to the Burning Bush. It is not difficult. Monk’s aunt let the pressure off Monk.