The Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy Read Free Book Online Page A

we’re here or not.”
    I had never used the key, but I always kept it with me and I always liked to think that I could enter the house whenever I pleased. I wondered what the builder of the house, the distinguished barrister, Rhett St. Croix, would say if he knew that Will McLean was walking the streets of Charleston with a key to his house.

Chapter Three
    I t took a brief moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness when I entered Henry’s Restaurant at noon the next day The August sun was dazzling at high noon in Charleston. I walked toward the smell of cigar smoke. The Bear was sitting in a corner booth with an unimpeded view of the door. He was eating a dozen raw oysters and had ordered a dozen for me. I saluted him before I took a seat across from him.
    “I think I’ll have oysters, Colonel.”
    “Don’t eat the shells, Bubba. Just spit. ’em out on the plate.”
    “I’ve never eaten oysters that taste like cigars,” I said through a miasma of smoke.
    “No joking around today, Bubba,” Colonel Berrineau said, extinguishing his cigar. “You and Poppa Bear are going to have a serious heart to heart.”
    When I was a freshman, I had quickly learned the central underground law of the Corps. The law was unwritten and unpublicized and essential for survival in that militant, inflammatory zone entered through the Gates of Legrand. The law was this: If you are ever in trouble, no matter if it is related to the Institute or not, go see the Bear. You sought out the Bear when there was trouble or disaffection or grief. You looked for the Bear when the system turned mean. You found him when there was nowhere else to go. In my tenure at the Institute, I never saw a cadet in serious trouble who did not request an interview with the Bear as soon as possible. Often, he would yell at the cadet, berate him for negligence or stupidity, offer to pay his tuition to Clemson, burn him for unshined shoes, insult him in front of the secretaries in the commandant’s office; but always, always, he would help him in any way he could. That was the last, indispensable codicil to the law. No one outside the barracks was aware of the law’s secret unofficial existence, not even the Bear.
    “Bubba, I know you’ve heard about Pearce coming to the Institute.”
    “The Negro?”
    “Yeh. That’s the one. We’re a little behind the times, Bubba. Every other school in South Carolina integrated a good while ago and God knows we held out as long as we could, but Mr. Pearce is coming through these gates next Monday and he isn’t coming to mow the lawn or fry chicken in the mess hall. He’s entering the Long Gray Line. Now some very powerful alumni have tried for years to keep this school as white as a flounder’s belly. We’re one of the last holdouts in the South, if not the last. Now, several members of the Board of Visitors know that it’s very important for this young lamb to make it through this school. Otherwise, there could be real trouble with Federal funds and every other damn thing. They also know that the General has hated everything black since a platoon of niggers he commanded in the Pacific broke and ran from the Japs. So they’re just sweet-talking the General and keeping him out of it. The Board doesn’t talk much to the General unless they want water changed into Burgundy or the Ashley River parted. He’s the school’s miracle man, Bubba, but he’s a little too old to have much to do with the nuts and bolts of running the place. I asked you here today because we’ve got to keep Pearce in school. That means we’ve got to keep these Carolina white boys off his tail as much as we can.”
    “You’ll have to put him in a cage for that, Colonel. And if you show him any favoritism at all, the whole Corps will run him out, and you and I know they can get rid of any freshman they want to if they’re so inclined. They could run Samson and Hercules out of here the same night if they thought they didn’t belong