The Boo by Pat Conroy Read Free Book Online

want to me, but please don’t tell anyone how you caught me.”
    Daryl Butker, in a futile attempt to popularize the troubador’s art on The Citadel campus, would waltz into Colonel Courvoisie’s living room, strap on his guitar and sing his ERW’s to the Colonel.
    Another music lover, Caleb Winston, went AWOL his freshman year and took nothing with him but his two guitars. He left toothbrush, underwear, and picture of his girl at The Citadel, but his two damn guitars went over the wall with him.
    During June Week of his freshman year, Denny Copester was creeping back on campus at two in the morning when a campus night watchman ordered him to halt. Since the general run of watchmen at The Citadel are selected at random from the dregs of mankind, Copester decided to make a run for it. The guard who took his job rather seriously, fired a warning shot over Denny’s head. Denny prudently fell to the earth. The Boo gave him a punishment order of 3/60 and fined him 53 cents for the round of ammunition the guard wasted firing the gun.
    Boo often checked the zoo area, otherwise known as “A” Company where the towering jocks grazed in relative tranquility. One night in early spring he saw a room with the lights out, opened the door, flipped the lights on, saw two figures in bed, turned the lights off, and closed the door. As he was taking the two cadets’ names off the door, he could not shake the persistent feeling that something was just not right. He opened the door again, cut on the lights once more, walked over to the beds, and threw back the covers. Dummies, complete with wigs, occupied the beds. Cadets Whitner and Reyt, imbibing freely at The Ark, returned to The Citadel late that night to discover 120 tours awaited them to walk in their leisure time.
    A senior mess-carver learned that a freshman at his table was allergic to tomato juice. He made the freshman drink nine glasses that same morning. The freshman required emergency treatment at the hospital. The Boo and the Commandant’s Department recommended the senior be shipped, but he was given 2/40 instead. This was one of the cruelest violations of the Fourth Class System The Boo heard about during his reign as Assistant Commandant.
    Boo’s association with the band and its members would constitute a book in itself. But one of his habits which eventually became tradition was his solemn march behind the line of bagpipers dressed for parade. On this march, he lifted the skirts of the pipers to make sure they were wearing drawers. J. W. Howt used to exchange wisecracks with The Boo every Friday when this ritual resumed. “Do you like what you see back there, Colonel?” “Howt, everything I see back here looks better than your face.” Each Friday, The Boo and Cadet Howt fired verbal fusillades at each other. What The Boo didn’t see was his photograph pasted onto Howt’s drums, and as the parade began, and the cutting session ended, Howt marched onto the field beating the hell out of his major antagonist.
    Alvin Reet and W. J. Milder, two of the first cadets who made the discovery that The Boo could be a leaping son of a bitch on occasion, burned a cross on his front lawn.
    Bill Winters lingered too long in the barracks after graduation, possibly reflecting on his long and distinguished career as a senior private and bum in residence, when The Boo, tired of waiting, locked the gate and gave Bill the distinction of being the only cadet ever locked in the barracks on the last day of school.
    Before a West Point football game, the Colonel got a phone call from a man named Goldman who said he used to be a private in “G” Company. When The Boo couldn’t place him at first, Goldman said, “Hell, Colonel, you remember me. I was the only Jew in your company.” “Sure, Bubba.” He got the tickets.
    R. V. Gordon studied like hell and had the grades to prove it. He ranked one in the political science department and fully expected to represent The Citadel at a