Джон Джейкс: North and South

Someone said the main meal of the day was midday dinner. Hence all they got for supper was standard Army leftovers — beef and boiled potatoes. George and Orry were hungry enough that it made no difference. Besides, there were some positively delicious extras: homemade bread, country butter, rich coffee.

At the conclusion of supper the cadet captain gave the order to rise. Cadets and newcomers marched back to barracks, with fifes supplementing the drum cadence. While George and Orry spread their blankets on their iron beds, George's sullen look asked why they had come to this place of loneliness and regimentation.

Between all-in and tattoo, a couple of upperclassmen stopped by to introduce themselves. One, a six-footer named Barnard Bee, was a South Carolinian, which pleased Orry. George was greeted by a cadet from his home state, Winfield Hancock.

South Barracks housed most of the new arrivals, and that night George and Orry met some of them as well. One was a bright, glib little chap from Philadelphia who introduced himself as George McClellan.

"Real society stuff," George noted after McClellan left. "Everybody in eastern Pennsylvania knows his family. They say he's smart. Maybe a genius. He's only fifteen."

Orry left off examining his image in the small looking glass over the washstand; he had already been ordered to get a haircut.

"Fifteen? How can that be? You're supposed to be sixteen to get in here."

George gave him a cynical look. "Unless you have connections in Washington. My father says there's a lot of political pull employed to get certain men admitted. And to keep 'em here if they can't handle the work or get in a jam."

Two more newcomers stopped in a few minutes later. One, an elegantly dressed Virginian named George Pickett, was of medium height, with a quick smile and dark, glossy hair that hung to his shoulders. Pickett said he had been appointed from the state of Illinois, where he had clerked in his uncle's law office. There had been no Virginia appointments available to him. Pickett seemed even more contemptuous of the rules than the other George; his breezy manner was immediately likable.

The second visitor was also a Virginian, but Pickett's enthusiasm seemed forced when he performed introductions. Perhaps Pickett had struck up an acquaintance with the tall, awkward fellow and now regretted it. There was a marked difference between George Pickett of Fauquier County and the new cadet from Clarksburg. Of course that far western section of the state could hardly be considered an authentic part of the South; it was mountainous and populated with a lot of illiterate rustics —

Of which Tom J. Jackson, as he called himself, was a prime example. His skin was sallow; his long, thin nose looked like the blade of a knife. The intensity of his blue-gray eyes made Orry nervous. Jackson tried hard to be as jolly as Pickett, but his lack of social grace made the short visit uncomfortable for all four young men.

"With that phiz, he should be a preacher, not a soldier," George said as he snuffed out the candle. "Looks to me like he's worrying about something. A bellyache. Cramped bowels, maybe. Well, who cares? He won't last ten days."

Orry almost fell off the bed when someone kicked the door open and a stentorian voice exclaimed:

"And you, sir, will not last a fraction of that time if you don't practice a seemly silence at the appropriate moments. Good night, sir!" The door shut, a thunderclap. Even at a time of rest there was no escaping the system — or the upperclassmen.

The drum called them before daylight. The morning that followed was strange and uneasy. A cadet lieutenant, a Kentuckian, threw all their blankets on the floor and lectured them on the correct way to fold bedding and put the room in shape for inspection. George seethed, but their treatment could have been worse. A newcomer in a nearby room was visited by two cadet noncoms, one of whom introduced the other as the post barber. The trusting newcomer surrendered himself to razor and shears. Next time he was seen, he was bald.

Not all the upperclassmen were dedicated to deviling the new arrivals; some offered help. Cadet Bee volunteered to tutor the roommates in any of the subjects on which they would have to recite during entrance examinations — reading, writing, orthography, simple proportions, decimals, and vulgar fractions.

George thanked Bee but said he thought he could get through all right. Orry gratefully accepted the offer. He had always been a wretched student, with a poor memory; he had no illusions about that.

George didn't feel he had to study. He spent the morning asking questions of some of the less hostile upperclassmen. A couple of things that he discovered pleased him immensely.

He learned that a river man frequently rowed to a nook on the bank below the Plain and there awaited the cadets who had blankets or other contraband to trade. The river man's illegal goods included cakes, pies, whiskey, and — blessed news — cigars. George had been smoking since he was fourteen.

Even more satisfying was the news that young female visitors came and went at Roe's Hotel the year round. Women of all ages seemed to be smitten with a certain malady described with a leer and a wink as "cadet fever." George's four-year exile might not be as grim as he'd feared.

He knew he would find the discipline tiresome but the education offered by the Academy was supposedly very fine, so he would negotiate his way around the rules. His roommate was pleasant enough. Likable, even. Not nearly so clannish as some of the Southrons he observed. In less than twenty-four hours many of them, and many

Yankees as well, had found their fellows and formed their own little groups.

After dinner the drum sounded drill call. George was momentarily content as he joined his squad in the street. The contentment departed when he saw the drillmaster — a plebe who would become a yearling as soon as the first class changed the gray for blue.

This fellow surely weighed more than two hundred pounds. The start of a paunch showed beneath his uniform. He had black hair, sly dark eyes, and a complexion that reddened rather than browned in the sunshine. He appeared to be eighteen or nineteen. George thought of him as a porker, a pachyderm, and disliked him on sight.

"I, gentlemen, am your drillmaster, Cadet Bent. Of the great and sovereign state of Ohio." Bent unexpectedly stepped in front of Orry. "Do you have a comment on that, sir?"

Orry gulped. "No, I don't."

"You will reply with 'No, I don't — sir!' "

George had a sudden feeling that the fat cadet had taken time to discover where his charges had come from and was using the information to bait them. To many Southerners, the word Ohio meant just one thing — the state containing Oberlin College, where white and black students defied convention by studying together as equals.

"You gentlemen from down South fancy yourselves superior to we Westerners, do you not, sir?"

Orry's neck reddened. "No, sir, we do not."

"Well, I am pleased you agree with me, sir. Surprised but pleased."

Bent strutted down the squad, passing a couple of obvious bumpkins and choosing George as his next victim. "And you, sir? How do you feel about the West vis-a-vis your section — the East, am I not correct, sir? Which of the three regions is in your view superior?"

George did his best to smile like a perfect idiot. "Why, the East, sir."

"What did you say?"

Bent's bad breath was sickening, but George kept smiling. "The East, sir. Nothing but farmers out West. Present company excepted, naturally, sir."

"Would you make the same remark, sir, if you knew the Bent family had important and highly placed friends in Washington City, sir? Friends whose merest word could affect your standing here?''