The Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy

when it was lily-white. Pearce is going to stand out like a raisin on a coconut cake during parade.”
    “Then why are you trying to protect him?”
    “It’s my duty, Bubba, my job. And when Pearce comes in on Monday, he becomes one of my lambs, and I like to make sure that all my lambs get an even break.”
    “I’ll be glad to watch over Pearce, Colonel, but I had best be seen with him only once during the first week.”
    “Word will leak out that you’re assigned to him. In fact, I’ve already leaked it. I want the Corps to know that the Bear is watching Mr. Pearce closely.”
    “Colonel, when did you graduate from the Institute?”
    “Nineteen thirty-eight, Bubba.”
    “How do I know that you’re not one of The Ten?” I said, teasing him.
    “I was in the bottom five of my class academically,” he answered before he swallowed an oyster.
    “Does that mean anything?”
    “It means I was stupid, Bubba. The Ten wouldn’t touch someone stupid. That’s stupid with books, Bubba. But I’m Beethoven when it comes to catching my lambs breaking the rules of the Institute. You keep in touch. If you need me, give a yell. Come to me. No one else. No one in the Corps. None of your friends. Me. Spelled B-E-A-R.”

Chapter Four
    T hat evening as I awaited the arrival of my other two roommates, I meditated on the nature of friendship as I practiced the craft. My friends had always come from outside the mainstream. I had always been popular with the fifth column of my peers, those individuals who were princely in their solitude, lords of their own unpraised melancholy. Distrusting the approval of the chosen, I would take the applause of exiles anytime. My friends were all foreigners, and they wore their unbelongingness in their eyes. I hunted for that look; I saw it often, disarrayed and fragmentary and furious, and I approached every boy who invited me in.
    I was sitting at my desk in the rear of the alcove shining my inspection shoes when I heard the door open and Mark Santoro come into the room. He did not see me at first, but I smiled as I saw his old fierce scowl when he heard me say, “Hey, Wop.”
    It was an old game between us and we could play it for hours without missing a beat. He put his luggage on the floor near his rack and walked toward me.
    “You must be new in town, sir,” Mark said respectfully. “It hurts my feelings when a very ugly human being like yourself casts aspersions on my heritage.”
    “Wop,” I repeated. “Wop, Wop, Wop, Wop, Wop.”
    “Excuse me, sir, you must not have heard me. I asked you kindly to treat me with dignity and respect. So I would suggest that you look for another way to address me before I’m forced to perform radical surgery on that fat nose of yours that your mother stole from an Irish pig.”
    “Speaking of noses, yours grew a little bit over the summer, Mark. You could land a DC-8 on that schnozzola of yours.”
    “You couldn’t land a fruit fly on that little sniffer of yours.”
    “Why don’t you have a nose job, Mark?” I said. “No kidding. It would take a team of twenty-thirty surgeons chopping away like beavers, but they could have it down to normal size after a day or two.”
    He put a large finger on my nose. “I’m real sensitive about my nose. Real sensitive.”
    “How does it feel, Santoro, to come from a race of men who once ruled the earth, who brought order to the entire Mediterranean world, who redefined the meaning of empire, and who humbled countless warriors and civilizations? How does it really feel to be Italian, Mark, past masters of the universe who now spend all their time rolling dough and making pepperoni pizza?”
    “Do you know, McLean, that I didn’t have to take your shit all summer? No one had the balls to tease me this summer. And do you know what,” he said, ominously looming above me, “I missed the hell out of your Irish ass.”
    He scooped me out of my chair, the left shoe and the can of polish flying off the table