The silence that followed his words betrayed that some of us still wondered, and Corporal Dent grinned, rejoicing evilly in the suspicions he had sown. If he had stopped there, I think he would have retained a great deal of power over us, but he pushed it one step further. “Five demerits more for every man at this table for your earlier mockery of me. Subordinates should never laugh at the man who commands them.”
Some of us would now be marching off demerits until sundown, and we knew it. Inwardly, I snarled at the little popinjay, but I kept my eyes down and my tongue still. Across from me, Kort picked up his fork and began eating. A wise move. If we had not finished by the time the order came to clear off all tables, we would simply go hungry. Gradually the rest of us took up our utensils and began to eat. My hunger, so pressing just a few minutes ago, seemed to have fled. I ate because I knew logically that it was a good idea, not from any eagerness. Dent looked around at all of us and probably decided that we were well cowed. He had just taken up a spoonful of soup when Spink shocked me by speaking.
“Corporal Dent, I do not recall that any of us here mocked you. We enjoyed a remark that Cadet Trist made, but surely you do not think you were the butt of any joke among us?” Spink’s face was solemn and without guile as he asked his question. His earnestness caught Corporal Dent off guard. He stared at Spink, and I could almost see him searching his memory to find the insult he had claimed to himself.
“You laughed,” he said at last. “And that offended me. That is sufficient.”
A strange thing happened then. Spink and Trist exchanged a look. I almost pitied Corporal Dent at that moment, for I suddenly knew that, all unknowing, he had forged a brief alliance between the two rivals. Trist spoke, his sincerity almost as convincing as Spink’s had been. “Your pardon, Corporal Dent. From now on, I am sure we will all endeavor to save our laughter for when you are not present.” He looked round at all of us as he spoke, and we all managed to nod gravely and with great apparent sincerity. It was as if a chain of resolve suddenly linked us. No matter how we might clash elsewhere, from now on we would be united against Dent. He rewarded our deception of him by nodding solemnly and saying, “Even as it should be, Cadets,” completely unaware that we had now secured his permission to mock him behind his back.
That thought gave me comfort that evening as our entire patrol marched off our demerits together. It even somewhat sustained me during the next day of classes. All of us had been too weary to do more than a cursory job on our assignments, and all of us were soundly berated by our instructors and given an extra heavy load of study work as punishment. The egalitarian injustice we labored under seemed to unite us as we stood straight despite Corporal Dent’s efforts to grind us down.
Yet it did not extend as widely as I’d hoped. United against Dent we might be, but Spink and Trist still chafed one another. They seldom challenged each other directly for our loyalty; the division was now most plain in how they treated Gord.
Gord continued to tutor Spink in his math, and gained for his efforts a solid friend. Spink’s scores were not astounding, but his marks were solid and passing. We all knew that without Gord’s help, Spink would have been on probation if not expelled from the Academy. Gord was generous with the time he gave Spink, and most of us admired him for it. But after Dent’s accusation about Gord’s birth, Trist began to needle Gord in sly ways. He began to refer to Gord’s drilling of Spink on his basic math facts as his “catechism lesson.” Occasionally, he would refer to Gord as “our good bessom,” a term usually reserved for a priest who instructs acolytes. The nickname spread throughout our patrol. I think that Spink and I were the only ones who never jestingly called him “Bessom Gord.” On the surface, it was just a play on Gord’s role in drilling Spink on repetitive facts, but the undercurrent was that perhaps, just perhaps, Gord had been intended for the priesthood rather than the military. Every time someone called him Bessom Gord, I felt a small prick of doubt about him. I am sure Gord felt the jab of the possible insult more keenly.
Gord was stoic about it, as he was about almost all the teasing he endured. Stoic as a priest, I one day found myself thinking, and then tried to stifle the thought. He had an almost inhuman capacity to tolerate mockery. I think that even Trist regretted his cruelty the next day when he unthinkingly asked “Bessom Gord” to pass the bread at table, for Corporal Dent immediately seized on the name, and used it at every opportunity. It spread like wildfire from the corporal throughout the second-year echelon of cadets. We had little contact with second– or third-year cadets, and yet before the day was out, some had called mockingly for Bessom Gord to come and bless them as we were marching past them on our way to classes. When that happened, it felt as if the mockery fell on all of us, and I could almost feel the ill will building toward Gord. It was hard not to resent him for the mockery that included us.