Annapolis, page 55
Jimmy Branch was high-spirited and funny, an average student and an above-average athlete. So long as he didn’t eat beans in the mess hall, he was a fine roommate.
Hiroaki Tanaka revealed something new about himself at almost every meal. He was, like all of the Japanese who had attended the Academy, descended from a noble samurai family, but his skill was not only with an ancestral sword; gloved fists were his best weapons.
Ray Spruance kept mostly to himself, was seldom hazed, and did little to stand out, but it was already clear that he would be in the top ten percent of his class. Of course, it would not do him much good, because he thought for himself, demonstrating a quiet kind of rebellion that did not always sit well.
As in geometry class. Everyone had already manned the boards—drawn problems from the instructor and regurgitated memorized solutions in chalk. Memories, rather than analyses, had been evaluated. Now, they were moving ahead.
Lieutenant Flanders called for the four ways to prove that a quadrilateral was a parallelogram.
No one, of course, raised a hand. It was much better to make the instructor call upon you. That way, you didn’t look like a drag—an all-purpose term used to describe anything from an overeager student to a girl on an Academy date.
So Flanders picked men out. “Stafford. Give me the easiest way.”
“The easiest way, sir, is if the opposite sides are parallel, sir.”
“Very good.”
In quick succession, three more plebes were pointed out, and three more answers arrived at: opposite sides are congruent; opposite angles are congruent; any pair of consecutive angles is supplementary.
“Very good. Next problem.”
Spruance raised his hand. “Excuse me, sir. But there’s another way.”
“Not according to the book.”
“I know, sir, but I figured out another way.”
“Oh, you did, did you?” Lieutenant Flanders had a pinched face and hard rimless spectacles, and he never gave the impression that he was happy about where he was. He held up the book and said, “The men whose names are on this spine have written a whole book on geometry, mister, and you’re telling me that you know more than they do?”
“It may have been an oversight on their part, sir.”
“Men who write books are thorough people.”
“Yes, sir,” said Spruance, “but I gave this some thought.”
Will cleared his throat, to warn Spruance there was no future on this tack.
Flanders picked up a piece of chalk. “Suppose you show us the product of your thought.”
So Spruance went to the board and drew a parallelogram. Then he drew diagonals through it from the corners. “A quadrilateral is a parallelogram when the diagonals bisect each other, sir.”
Flanders studied it for a moment, stroked his chin, reddened a bit. “Yes, well, you’re right, Spruance. But the procedure was to memorize the answers in the book and move to the next problem. Follow the procedure next time. That’s how we do things around here. Now, sit down.”
There was a moment of silence; then Jimmy Branch raised his hand. “Sir?”
“What?”
“Sir, will the Spruance proof be on the test, sir?”
“That’s a demerit, mister. Disrespect.”
WILL LEFT OPINIONS about the Academy’s method of brute memorization to Spruance. He had too much brute memorization to do.
And he had too much practicing: under the eye of Hiroaki Tanaka, he was becoming a proficient boxer.
And at night he fell into too many long talks, during which young men educated each other about things not found in books.
There was only one topic of talk when war broke out between Russia and Japan: the Russians had brought their Asiatic fleet to Port Arthur, on the Chinese coast, to assert their rights over Manchuria. But what the Russians considered a show of force, the Japanese saw as opportunity. On a February night, a Japanese squadron sneaked into Port Arthur and launched a devastating torpedo attack on the sleeping Russian battleships. For many nights afterward, the plebes analyzed the surprise attack and tried to outdo each other in the number of textbook references they could be heard to use. Nothing could make a plebe feel more like an officer than wrapping his mouth around a term like “torpedo spread” and actually knowing what it meant.
And no matter what was happening, they talked about girls. Once a month, there was a hop, and girls came from Baltimore and Washington and Annapolis. And once a month, Will Stafford fell in love.
The dances were held at Dahlgren Hall, one of the massive new granite buildings that would flank the future Bancroft Hall. Outside, Dahlgren presented its grand arched facade to Annapolis Harbor. Inside, the hops transformed it into a plebe’s fantasy of glittering lights and lilting waltzes and crinoline petticoats whooshing gently over the floor.
A superintendent of the Naval Academy had said that an officer who did not know how to dance was deficient in the most important of social graces. This, of course, led to regulations, carefully laid out by the Department of Discipline: no modern dances would be performed; the midshipman was to keep his left arm straight during all dances; a space of three inches was to be kept between dancing partners; a midshipman was not to take a young woman by the arm or hand after the dance; and he was not to leave the floor until the dance ended.
And there was at least one unwritten regulation: plebes should not attempt to dance with young women who had drawn the attention of upperclassmen.
It was not until April, at the Spring Hop, that Will Stafford broke the unwritten regulation. There were two reasons.
His sixteen-year-old sister had appeared with several friends. She had wrapped a satin ribbon around her waist and put on her mother’s cameo, and she was busy captivating—of all people—Hiroaki Tanaka. And if this was not reason enough for Will to make an error in judgment, the young woman walking past him was.
She was not as tall as the girls around her, though she moved easily beneath a green satin dress. And her brown hair was piled luxuriantly on the top of her head. Of course, women seldom wore their hair in any other way. It would have been positively immodest for a girl to let her hair down in public, but even the most modest female fashion had its attractions, and Will’s eye was drawn to the place where her upswept hair revealed the delicate skin at the back of her neck.
Almost instinctively, he followed her. “Excuse me.”
She turned—a broad smile, a simple nose, eyes set wide, without pretense, open to just about anything coming her way, including a dance with Will Stafford.
“And the Band Played On” was the song.
But from somewhere behind him, Will Stafford heard a shotgun shell slip into a chamber. It was Dawson. “This young lady danced the last dance with me.”
“Yes,” said Will, coming to attention, eyes, as always, in the boat.
“And I would like to dance with her again.”
Will knew that the girl was studying him, and no doubt judging him by what he was about to do. “The young lady has accepted my invitation for this dance, and it would be impolite of me to withdraw it now.”
Dawson smiled. “But I would like to dance with her again.”
And the girl spoke up. “Excuse me, Midshipman Dawson, but I would—”
“Excuse me, Miss Jane Lord,” said Dawson, his smile gone, his neck reddening above his high collar, “but I am speaking to this mid… this plebe—”
“—whose invitation I have accepted.” Miss Jane Lord was not one to back down. “It would be as impolite of me not to dance with him as it would be of him to withdraw his invitation.”
Will took his eyes from the boat. “You’ll excuse us, Mr. Dawson.”
And the band played on.
Will Stafford put his right hand on the small of her back, kept three inches between them, and extended his left arm, every inch the gentleman.
She looked into his eyes. “Thank you for being so resolute, Midshipman…”
“Stafford. Will Stafford.”
“Dawson is an ass—pardon my French—but to preserve us from further embarrassment, I’m afraid this will have to be my last dance for the evening.” She squeezed his left hand with her right. “So let’s enjoy it.”
And they swirled among the other dancers, the perspiration from their hands mingling delicately.
When it was over, Miss Jane Lord thanked Will Stafford and told him he was very polite. Then she headed toward the cloakroom, sweeping right past Dawson.
Will tried to follow her, but his way was blocked by the double row of brass buttons on Dennis Dawson’s chest. Behind him were three of his friends, and none of them was smiling. The band stepped into a Strauss waltz, and Dawson very deliberately stepped on Will Stafford’s foot.
Will did not flinch. He knew that if he reacted, it would look as if he were striking a superior without provocation, and that was how Dawson’s friends would report it.
So Dawson pressed harder and growled, “Look at me, Stafford.”
Will simply shifted his eyes.
“How does it feel, plebe?”
Will clenched his teeth. “Take your foot—”
Another voice growled, “Dawson!”
Bill Halsey was shorter than Dawson and the other third classmen who had closed around Will, but when he entered their tight little circle, he looked as if he might butt them all through the arched front doors and right into the river. “This is my plebe you’re bothering, mister.”
Will felt the pressure on his foot released. Even in the Academy, the chain of command held.
“Now, my drag and I want to enjoy the rest of the hop,” said Halsey. “My plebe does, too. Spoil it for us, and I’ll spoil it for you.”
And Dawson offered Halsey a wide smile.
AROUND MIDNIGHT, WILL lay awake, thinking alternately about Jane Lord smiling at him and about his own sister dancing with a samurai.
Suddenly the door burst open, and a metallic voice shouted, “Sandwich!”
Will rolled over. “What the—”
“Sandwich time! Plebes out of bed!”
It was dark in the room, but the door was open to the silhouettes of three men reeling drunkenly.
“Plebes out of bed.”
Thump!
“Jesus!” Will jumped up, realizing that they had just pulled Jimmy Branch, mattress and all, out of his bunk.
The door was slammed and locked, and the lights flashed on.
And there was Dawson, smiling one of his smiles. “Sandwich time. The class of ’06 is hungry. What plebe are we going to eat?”
“Get out of here,” said Jimmy Branch sleepily.
“Be quiet,” one of them warned, “or we’ll eat you.”
“No,” said Dawson. “We want a Stafford sandwich.”
One of the others ordered Will to lie down on the mattress that they had dragged onto the floor.
“Go to hell,” said Will.
“What did you say?” demanded Dawson. “Are you rejecting a direct order? Do you know what this means?”
“That you’ll haze me for another month. I can take it.”
“Get on the mattress,” growled Dawson. “Now.”
“No.”
And Dawson stepped over the boundary. He grabbed Will by the collar of his pajamas, stuck out a foot, and pulled Will over onto the mattress.
Before he could get up, Will’s own mattress was slapped over him, pinning him face down.
“Sandwich!” screamed one of the third classmen, and they piled on.
The plebe sandwich was a third-class favorite, a paralyzing torture that put three big men on a plebe’s back. The harder Will struggled, the more fun they seemed to take in trying to find his head under the mattress and stomp on it.
And then Will felt a foot plant itself on either side of his head, pinning his face to the bottom mattress. This was a new trick. When he tried to move, another set of feet planted itself around his hips. And a third set was planted on either side of his feet.
He struggled and kicked. He screamed against the horsehair in the mattress. Were they hazing him or trying to kill him?
And suddenly all the bodies were lifted off of him.
Jimmy Branch had thrown a cross-body block that was as good as anything he had ever thrown on the football field. At the same moment, Hiroaki burst into the room, swinging a broomstick like a samurai sword. He brought it down on one head while Jimmy delivered another hard body block that slammed one of the upperclassmen against a door.
In an instant, Dawson was the only third classman left standing.
“You’re in trouble now,” warned Dawson as Will Stafford crawled to his feet, gasping and cursing. “I’ll put out the word. You can’t take a hazing.”
“You put a hand on me. That changes things.” Will pointed a finger at Dawson. “I have the right to fight back. Tomorrow night, in Halsey’s room. Be there, and bring your fists, sir.”
THE NEXT DAY, Abraham Stafford came to visit his son the plebe.
He was serving another tour in Washington, at the Bureau of Ships. He missed sea duty and sea pay, and at thirty-nine years old, he still stood eighteen years away from captaincy. But as Julia always told him, good things happened when he came into the orbit of Theodore Roosevelt. And in Washington, Theodore Roosevelt was the sun.
It was a warm spring Sunday, and Will would have loved the chance to go to his grandmother’s house for dinner. But his father was a stickler for regulations, and plebes only had liberty on Saturdays.
So father and son strolled around the Academy while Will tried to find ways to bring up two uncomfortable topics.
They studied the construction site where Bancroft Hall was rising into something altogether impressive. They wandered toward the river and looked at the Holland. Abraham pronounced the submersible an interesting experiment, but never a threat to a fine battleship.
In the yard, the trees were leafing out. Beneath them, young ladies were strolling with the upperclassmen, and every midshipman snapped a salute at the commander. Will liked to be seen in the yard with his father. It was one of the wonders of the working blue uniform that it could make a plebe and a commander look very much the same, except for the rank insignia on the high collar. Now that he wore a uniform, he felt closer to his father, almost his equal. The fact that he had grown two inches in the last year helped, too.
“What do you think of these Japanese, Father?” he asked.
“Admirable people. Hardworking, industrious, doing a good job on the Russians… I hear that Hiroaki danced with Katherine last night.”
Two midshipmen came past. Salute, salute.
“You don’t mind?” Will was surprised, and relieved, too.
“Dancing is a perfect form of social communication, to be encouraged between nations as much as between men and women. Just so long as no one falls in love after a single dance.”
Will did not like to tell tales on his sister, and Hiroaki was his good friend, but there were some things that his father had to know. Now that the truth about his sister was out, Will clapped his hands behind his back and tried to find a casual way to bring up his other problem.
By the time they reached the Tripoli Monument, he had thought of nothing, so he decided to be direct. “Were you ever hazed?”
“Oh, sure.” Abraham nodded, smiled benignly. “Everyone gets hazed.”
“But isn’t it against regulations?”
“When regulations meet traditions, regulations sometimes lose. A good hazing lets you know where you stand in the chain of command. And it helps you to think straight when someone forces you to recite a page from Jane’s Fighting Ships while you’re standing on your head.”
“Did… did an upperclassman ever put his hands on you in a hazing?”
Abraham stopped and looked at his son. “Did someone—”
Will looked down at the gravel path.
“Have you done anything about this?” asked Abraham.
“Not yet, sir. There are regulations. There are also traditions.”
“You have two choices, then.” Abraham put his hand on Will’s shoulder. “Follow regulations and put the boy on report. Or follow tradition and beat the shit out of him.”
And Will felt better. “If I end up on report for fighting, you’ll understand?”
“I’ll even have Mother send you a cake.”
THEY MET IN Halsey’s room, just after supper.
Desks and chairs had been put up on the beds, creating a kind of boxing ring.
The weapons: three-ounce gloves.
The length: three-minute rounds until someone quit or was knocked out, or until the seconds decided the fight should be stopped.
Will Stafford’s second was Jimmy Branch.
Dawson brought one of the usual faces seen with him on his hazing hunts.
It had been agreed that if Will won this fight, there would be no further hazing on him or his friends. If he lost, the last month of plebe year would be hell.
“Steam right in at him,” said Bill Halsey in the corridor before the fight. “You’re skinnier but just as tall. Hit him one in the belly, and he should fold up.”
A few moments later, Ray Spruance whispered in his other ear, “If I was fighting him, I’d size him up, reserve my strength, and save my best punch for the moment when it might do the most damage.”
Will did not do either.
When the bell rang for the first round, Dawson danced to the middle of the room, gloves high in perfect Marquis of Queensberry style.
But Will Stafford came slowly into the center of the room, with his hands low, and stuck out his chin.
A look of puzzlement came over Dawson’s face. Why wasn’t he ready to fight? Why was he offering his chin? For a split second Dawson lowered his hands.
That was all Will Stafford needed. From nowhere, he sent his right hand hurtling toward Dawson’s nose. And the lights went out for the third classman from Ohio.
“A single punch, well placed.” That was how the story would be told.
When Dawson came to and tried to claim that he had been suckered, Bill Halsey told him there was a difference between “suckered” and “outsmarted.” “Do you want everyone to say that Will Stafford’s fists were a little quicker than yours, or did he just have a better plan? Now shake hands and agree that all troubles are settled.”
