North and South Trilogy by John Jakes Read Free Book Online Page B

she’s ever run into. We don’t see many in Pennsylvania, and I can’t say I’ve ever met one myself.”
    “You’ll meet plenty at the Academy.”
    “Good. I’m anxious to know what they’re really like. I have this picture, you see—”
    “What kind of picture?”
    “Southerners are people who eat pork and collards, fight with knives, and abuse their niggers.”
    In spite of the way the description offended him, Orry managed to see the attempt at humor in it. “Each of those things is true about some Southerners, but it’s by no means true of all. That’s where misunderstandings arise, I reckon.” He pondered a moment. “I have a picture of a Yankee, too.”
    George grinned. “I thought you might. What is it?”
    “A Yankee’s always ready to invent some new thingamajig or to outwit his neighbor in court. He’s a pert sort who wants to sell you jackknives or tinware, but what he likes best is skinning you.”
    The other burst out laughing. “I’ve met a couple of Yankees like that.”
    “My father says Yankees are trying to run the country now.”
    George couldn’t let that pass. “The way Virginia ran it for so many years?”
    Orry gripped the varnished rail. “Look here—”
    “No, look there.” George decided that if they were to be friends the subject should be changed posthaste. He pointed to the stern, where the two young female passengers were giggling under their parasols. The older woman with them had fallen asleep on a bench.
    George had made love to two girls back home, thus felt worldly. “Shall we go talk to ’em?”
    Orry turned pink and shook his head. “You go if you want. I’m not much for gallanting the belles.”
    “Don’t like to?”
    A sheepish admission: “Don’t know how.”
    “Well, you’d better learn or you’ll miss half the fun in life.” George relaxed against the rail. “Guess I won’t talk to them either. I couldn’t conduct much of a romance between here and West Point.”
    He fell silent, giving in at last to the anxiety that had been growing in him ever since he left home. His family would be staying on in the city, his father to transact some business, the others to enjoy the restaurants, museums, and theaters—while he traveled toward an uncertain future. A lonely one, too. Even if he survived the rigorous disciplines of the Academy, it would be two years before he saw Lehigh Station again. Cadets were granted just one leave, between their second and third years.
    Of course he had to overcome a lot of obstacles before he became eligible for that little holiday. The academic work was reportedly hard, the deviling of plebes by upperclassmen harder still. The institution was frequently criticized for permitting hazing. The criticism usually came from Democrats who hated the whole concept of the place, as Old Hickory had.
    As the steamer moved against the current, the palisades rose on either hand, green with summer leaves. There was no sign of human habitation on the bluffs. The vessel was carrying them into a wilderness. For that reason George welcomed the company of someone else fated to suffer the same uncertainties and, unless he guessed wrong, the same fears of what lay ahead.

2
    T HE STEAMER PROCEEDED NORTH into the Hudson Highlands. About one in the afternoon it rounded the point that gave the institution its more common name. Orry strained for a glimpse of the cadet monument to the great engineer, Kosciusko, on the bluff above, but foliage hid it.
    As the boat maneuvered into the North Dock, the two young men had a breathtaking view of the Hudson gorge stretching north. Ancient glaciers had carved terraced mountainsides and created the peaks with which Orry had familiarized himself through reading. He pointed them out. Mount Taurus behind them on the east shore, Crow-Nest on the west, and, farther upriver, the Shawangunk range.
    “Back there where we passed Constitution Island the Americans strung a chain and boom to hamper navigation