P Deutermann - Darkside

“Sounds like piling on.”

“Yep. That’s what happens. They get loaded down until it’s hopeless, and then they resign. Keep in mind, we’re talking about the shitbirds here. Most plebes make it, one way or another.”

Ev could hear Liz get up and walk around her office. “What personal attributes would line a guy up for shitbird designation?”

Julie said, “I guess it’s like art: We know one when we see one.”

“But how do shitbirds get in? I’ve read that there are ten thousand applicants who qualify each year, but only twelve hundred or so get admitted.”

Julie cleared her throat. “Everyone here, except the prior enlisted, is on a political appointment. Congressmen and senators from the fifty states. The president, the vice president. All appointments are supposed to be competitive, but-”

“But what?”

“Well, some people are more special than others. Football players, for instance. I can’t prove this, but everybody knows that some of them don’t belong here, academically speaking. Still, they get preferential treatment-their own tables in the mess hall, special chow, extra academic attention, curved grading. Some minorities get special breaks, too. These hug-’em-and-and-love-’em programs come along, to get people in here from inner-city situations. And some people just manage to fool the system.”

“What category was Midshipman Dell?”

“Category?”

“I guess I’m asking if Dell was thought of as someone busting his ass or a shitbird.”

“Oh. I think Dell was on the edge,” Julie said slowly. “Maybe someone who’d been busting his ass but was now sinking into the failure mode. You know those National Geographic programs, where they show an old or sick animal being eased out of the herd? Like that. I wasn’t close to the Dell situation. The people responsible for Dell were the firsties and youngsters in his own company. You’d have to ask them.”

“And you didn’t really know him in any other context?”

“Why do you keep asking me that?” Julie said with an audible touch of heat. “I’ve told you, and I’ve told everyone else-”

Liz interrupted her. “I’m having a problem with the notion that he chose your room at random to go in and heist a pair of your underwear,” she said. “Unless he was a panty fetishist, in which case they should have found a stash somewhere.”

Julie was silent for a moment. Ev could just see her expression-he’d heard the anger in her voice. “I can’t explain that, and I don’t know what else they’ve found. I did not know him, and certainly not on an underwear basis! And I can’t help it if you don’t believe that.”

“It’s not just me, Julie,” Liz said. There were noises indicating she was sitting back down. “If this is indeed a homicide, the cops are going to pull that string until something emerges. Cops look for connections, in addition to motive, opportunity, and means.”

“Okay, so what’s my motive supposed to be? And for that matter, opportunity? I was asleep in my bed when he went out that window. Whose side are you on, anyway?”

Ev groaned out loud, but Liz waved it off, as if she’d been expecting his reaction. “I’m on your side. The point of this meeting was to introduce you to the tone and tenor of a homicide investigation. I don’t know what the cops have, but something’s gone off the tracks with the suicide or accident theory. There was something else going on here, and I need to make sure that you don’t know what it is.”

Once again, Ev could almost see his daughter, sitting there in a barely controlled rage. She did not reply.

“Julie, look at me,” Liz ordered. “Did part of the problem with Dell have anything to do with sexual orientation? Was Midshipman Dell gay?”

“I don’t know,” Julie said. Ev had heard that tone of voice, too, but not for several years. Joanne sometimes had to be restrained from slapping the shit out of her when she got that way.

“Let me try the question another way: Were there rumors that Dell was gay?”

“Possibly.” Ev perked up at that. This was new.

“Oh, c’mon,” Liz was saying. “Possibly? There either were or there weren’t.”

“I don’t really know. Sometimes upperclassmen call a plebe a faggot when they don’t mean it. Faggot. Maggot. Worm. Shitbird. Fuckup. You know, DI stuff.”

“DI?” Liz asked. Ev heard Julie sigh.

“Drill instructor. Look, you’re a civilian. I’m not sure you’re going to understand all this stuff.”

“Try me.”

“Okay,” Julie said. “The whole point of plebe year is to break down the individual civilian teenager and remold him into someone with a military mind-set. To drive the plebes together so they begin to think like a unit-roommates, a class within the company, then a class within the Brigade. To expose them to pressure, so they learn to think fast on their feet and to organize their hours to get it all done, their schoolwork, their plebe duties, their rooms, their uniforms, all of it.”

Liz said, “My first husband was a Marine pilot. He used to talk about Marine OCS. Same kind of thing, but with one big difference, I think: The Marines had professional drill instructors, whereas what I’m hearing now is that this program is run by the midshipmen themselves.”

“Not entirely,” Julie said. “The program is supervised by the company and battalion officers. There’s a whole executive department in Bancroft Hall.”

“But basically, at the sharp end, it’s kids running kids.”

“Well, that’s the system we were handed,” Julie said sweetly. “We didn’t invent it, and it’s been succeeding for a hundred and fifty years. I went through it, and earned the right to continue to a commission. This crop of plebes is going to go through it if they want to earn that same right.”

Liz changed tack. “Back to homosexuals, whom, I assume, occasionally slip through the admissions process. I thought the official Navy policy on gays was don’t ask, don’t tell. They keep their sexuality a secret, their hands to themselves, and no one is allowed to go after them.”

“That’s the policy.”

“And? You sound like it really isn’t the policy.”

Ev could hear Julie sit back in her chair and take a deep breath, as if forcing herself to relax. “The Academy isn’t the Navy, Ms. DeWinter,” she said finally. “Or so we’re often told by the commissioned officers. As in, Don’t confuse Bancroft Hall with the fleet.”

“What is it, then?”

“My father says that Bancroft Hall is like a big simulator. It looks like the Navy, but it isn’t. Same thing at West Point, too, from what I saw during our exchange weekend. Being a plebe in Bancroft Hall is like being in a pressure cooker. Officer Candidate School is, too, but that only lasts three months. Plebe year lasts one whole year.”

“So it’s a matter of scale?”

“This place takes four years to develop naval officers who can take the heat, who can stand up to steady pressure and not only perform but perform in a superior fashion. Ultimately, it becomes a matter of pride: Keep dumping stuff on my head-the academic load, the required athletics program, the physical tests, the whole plebe year, the constant inspections, the competition for class standing, responsibility for leading the lower classes-and I can not only hack it but do it well. Because I want to, and because I’m going to show them.”

“You’ve been to hack-it school, as my first ex used to say.”

“Precisely. It’s competitive across the board, from admission to commission, and we’re always being tested. Strong men and women, with strong character, visible moral courage, a clear sense of ethics. We consciously address issues of right and wrong. It’s a black-and-white world we live in, or at least that’s what the system tries to accomplish.”