No one spoke much. There were mutters and grumbles of complaint, but I think each one of us was too caught up in his own fears to say much of anything to his fellows. We mustered in the usual place, and Corporal Dent appeared to curse and blame us for his miserable life. I felt dull and discouraged and wondered briefly why I had ever wanted so desperately to be here. This was not the golden future I had imagined for myself. This was misery, pure and simple. I wondered if Spink had been right. Maybe it would just be a relief to be sent home, with all expectations of me vanished forever. I gave myself a shake, trying to dispel my gloominess. Dent gave me a demerit for moving in ranks. I scarcely noticed.
We waited in the cold and the dark until our cadet officers came by and reviewed us. Surprisingly, they found little to scorn us for that day. Perhaps they, too, dreaded the day’s exams, even though the upperclassmen were immune from the culling process. Or perhaps they looked forward to Dark Evening’s holiday and felt merciful to us. Maybe it was simply too dark for Jaffers to see that I had not brushed my jacket and that my trousers had spent the night on the floor, not on a hanger. In any case, Cadet Captain Jaffers allowed as how we would do, and we were dismissed from our inspection.
We marched off to a breakfast I had no stomach for. I forced myself to eat, reminding myself of Sergeant Duril’s saying, “The soldier who doesn’t break his fast when he can is a fool.” At the table, only Gord seemed to eat with a will. Spink pecked at his food. Trist heaped his plate, ate five bites, and then pushed at the rest as if he were poking a dead animal with a stick. Ordinarily Corporal Dent would have demanded that he eat whatever he took, and lectured us all that a man who took supplies greedily and then wasted them was a liability to his whole regiment. Dent, however, had found as many possible excuses as he could of late to leave us alone at table, so there was no one to rebuke us for the half-eaten meals that day.
We fell in and marched off through a cold day that was just now turning gray to our first class. In Military History, the entire chalkboard was already covered in questions written out in Captain Infal’s sloping hand. He greeted us with, “Come in, leave your books closed, and start writing. I will collect your papers at the end of class. No talking until then.”
And that was it. I set out my paper and began writing. I tried to pace myself, to be sure that I would write at least some sort of answer to each question, and did well enough at that. I left space at the ends of some answers to allow myself to add more detail if I had time. I struggled with dates and with the sequences of the sea battles. I wrote until my pen was slick in my fingers and my hand ached. And suddenly Captain Infal was announcing, “That’s it, Cadets. Finish the sentence you are writing and put your pens away. Leave your papers on your desk. I will take them up. Dismissed.”
And that was it. The day outside had warmed a bit, but not enough to melt the ice on the walkways. The closer we got to the river, the more bitterly the wind blew. The dilapidated math and science building creaked in the cold. There were coal stoves in each classroom, but their warmth did not seem to extend more than a few feet beyond their sullen iron bellies. We took our customary places, with Gord sitting on one side of Spink and me on the other. Captain Rusk saw us seated, then went to the board and began writing the first problem. “Begin as you are ready,” he instructed us. I gave Spink a reassuring smile but I don’t think he saw it. His nose was red with cold, and the rest of his face white with weariness and perhaps fear.
I recognized Rusk’s first problem as one directly out of the textbook examples. I could have simply written the answer, but he demanded that all work be shown. I worked steadily, taking down each problem as he wrote it, and several times blessed my father for seeing me so well prepared for my first year at the Academy.
Midway through the test, it happened. I heard a small crunch, and then Gord’s hand shot immediately into the air. Rusk sighed. “Yes, Cadet?”
“I’ve broken my pencil, sir. May I ask to borrow one?”
Rusk sighed. “A prepared soldier would have an extra one with him. You cannot always depend on your comrades, though you should always be in a position to let them depend on you. Has anyone an extra pencil that Cadet Lading may use?”
Spink lifted his hand. “I do, sir.”
“Then lend it, Cadet. Please continue with your tests.”
Gord leaned over to accept the pencil Spink offered. As he did so, his desk bumped against his sizable midsection, and then lurched against Spink’s. Both their papers cascaded to the floor under Spink’s desk. Spink leaned down, gathered the papers, and handed Gord’s back to him, along with the extra pencil. I watched this from the corner of my eye. And I could not be certain that Spink gave Gord back every sheet that truly belonged to him.