“We’ve come to see you about the Greek, Lieutenant,” a PFC, maybe nine years old, was speaking for the whole first floor. The younger boys of this floor had elected him to speak for them. Four other boys had come up to the third floor dormitory where the oldest boys lived.

Russell put down his book, closed the curtain, and slid his feet over his bed. The boys were standing near the door.

“Close the door,” Russell said. One of the smallest boys closed the door behind him, and they all came closer.

Officers had the best rooms, and only one roommate. Younger boys lived four to a room.

“At ease, gentlemen.” There was, despite everything, a true military order to the boys’ lives. They respected the Lieutenant deeply, as Russell had when he first arrived. The boys didn’t really relax. “What’s the problem?” Russell asked. The PFC stepped forward, a real tow-head who wasn’t afraid of much and who would one day die in Lebanon. (Several of Russell’s schoolmates would die in the armed forces.)

“The Greek’s coming down onto the first floor at night, sir. He tries to do stuff . . . to the younger boys.” He spoke as if he wasn’t one of them.

“What kind of stuff?” Russell asked. He knew what kind, or at least he suspected that he knew, but he had to be certain what he was dealing with.

The boy turned away and looked at his friends. No one who hasn’t been through it understands what happens to children who are forced to leave home at an early age. They mature and they make new bonds, bonds that may be even stronger than the familial ones they’ve been forced to break (this break is very profound). Ironically, this new family was what would make them good soldiers later. The military was their mother and father.

The boy looked Russell in the eye. “He . . . you know, wants to touch.” The boy started to turn crimson. His friends looked everywhere but at Russell.

“I get it,” Russell said. He held his hand up.

“We’ve spoken to the house mother, Mrs. Crimp, but she hasn’t done anything about it, sir. She’s always asleep when he comes down.” Russell watched the boys nod in unison.

Lisa Crimp had been a dottering old shrew who smelled of lilac water and fish when he’d been on the first floor years before; she couldn’t have gotten any better with age. Her biggest concern was that sick boys not bother her during the day, when she was watching soap operas. God help you if you ventured into her room then. She’d cuff you and tell you to get out. If you told anyone, it was your word against hers. She was his first lesson in fascism.

Russell stood up and went to the little bookcase he shared with his roommate. He slid his copy of Dana’s Two Years Before The Mast in with the other books he’d collected. He turned and looked at the boys, and saw the time. Taps would play in a few minutes, and if they weren’t in their rooms, their house mother would give them five demerits.

Demerits were not just a silly way of dehumanizing children; they were a real scorecard. If boys got too many during the week, those who lived close enough couldn’t leave the school to spend the weekend at home. For the boys who rarely went home, like Russell, demerits meant they couldn’t leave the school to go to the shopping center on Saturday, to see a film or meet girls or play pick-up basketball. You would be confined to the school. Nothing was more horrible or lonely than those hours after the movie let out, as they made their way back in groups through the Saturday evening streets, with their sidewalks lined with homes. Each step carried its own kind of disappointment and the promise of a better day, when they would be in charge of their lives.

Russell always felt stupidest on Saturdays, and dehumanized on Sundays by the trip to church to listen to old men prattle on about something they called God. God didn’t go to school with them, so who gave a shit about him?

Russell waited for Paterson to get back from playing taps. Paterson and he went back to their first days here, in the second grade. Paterson’s mother had died that year, and he wasn’t talking much. His taps were lovely, soft, pitiful things.

Russell watched Paterson put the trumpet down on his desk. He pulled the mouthpiece out, as he always did, and stood it up on the edge of the bookcase. He took his hat off and laid it down next to it. Russell and Paterson had lived together at the school through most of their childhood, and now into the first years of puberty. Although they would never see each other after they left the school, they would often think of one another.

“The first floor was here,” Russell said. He had been looking up at the ceiling of the room, at the holes in the varnished knotty pine. He looked now at his friend as he undressed. Paterson would go on to become a famous heart surgeon; his father was a surgeon, and his grandfather before that.

“Yeah,” Paterson said.

“The Greek is wandering.” Wandering was what they called it back when they were on the first floor.

“That’s not good,” Paterson said, and sat down at the desk. He bent down and unlaced his shoes. Their Spartan furniture was old, from the Thirties, all with art deco motifs and very heavy dark lacquer.

“I want you to leave the pistol case unlocked tomorrow after practice,” Russell said. He heard the sound of Paterson’s shoes on the closet floor. He and Paterson had had a fight once, years before, and they’d gone into the closet of their room to have it so that no one could hear. It had been wild slugging in the dark, hitting with shoes and hangers, whatever they could grab.

They had come back to their room and it had been torn up by the duty officer; they had left something undone or unclean. Each blamed the other, and they fought like that in the dark, like animals, full of hate for everything around them. They never fought again after that.

“What are you going to do, rob a bank?” Paterson said.

“No. I’m going to go speak to the Greek.” There was a long silence. Paterson undid his pants, folding them carefully. He walked to the closet, and Russell heard him hang them up. Then he re-crossed the room, opened his chest of drawers, and took out his pajamas. “Well, will you do it?” Russell asked. Paterson stepped into his pajamas, took off his shirt, and put it in the pile on the floor of soiled clothes that they would drop off at the laundry after breakfast. He turned off the desk light and got into bed in the dark. They used to talk more at night, but since Paterson’s mother died, he had stopped that. It seemed he just wanted to sleep, or study, or be busy with whatever.

“Okay,” Paterson said, turning over. “You got it.”

Russell had wanted to ask him if he was all right, if there was something wrong, but military school isn’t like a real family, and you don’t ask about things that make you weak. That was the rule: show no weakness. Even between friends.

He hadn’t needed light. He’d lived here for over eight years, and knew the school so well he could have gotten around it if he’d gone blind. He went down to the indoor shooting range in the basement of the gym, to the gun cabinet on the wall. The climbing ropes dangled in the dark behind him.

Paterson was in charge of locking the gun case after practice and keeping the key. He had left the metal locker door open, unlocking it after he played taps. Russell felt for the first pistol on the specially designed cabinet. There were twenty-five .45 automatics, their barrels buried in wooden slots. He took one and dropped the clip out, making sure it was empty. He racked the action twice to make certain, then he left the gym and went across the grass towards his dormitory. He collected leaves on his slippers as he made his way back to speak to the Greek.

He opened the Greek’s door. The Greek slept by the window; both he and his roommate were asleep. Russell turned on the small flashlight, walked between the beds, and climbed up on The Greek’s bed, putting his knees on either side of the sleeping boy’s body. The Greek was big, six feet and two hundred pounds. There was no way Russell could beat him in a fight, he’d known that. He had simply decided to use the lesson he’d been taught in school: Superior tactics, combined with overwhelming force, win battles.