The Great Santini Part 11

"Honey, I know women who are artists with makeup and still are ugly as homemade sin."

"You're so sweet to say that."

"My name's Earline Grantham, Lillian. I was telling your husband, here, the strange man with the given name of an animal, that I live in the old Hall Mansion two houses down, the one by Peterkin Landing. I would have come sooner to visit, but I've been feeling under the weather. I brought you this present," she said handing Lillian the bag of okra.

"Well, bless your heart. Okra. There is nothing that the colonel and I love more than okra. Fried, boiled, baked, or raw. We could eat okra and nothing else."

"I thought it was squash," Bull said.

"Honey, isn't it time for you to inspect the children's rooms? Why don't you go on up and Earline and I will chitchat about women's things."

"Sure. Well, Early, it was good meeting you."

"A pleasure to meet you too, sir."

"C'mon back to the old Meecham Mansion anytime you want to," he said, ascending the stairs with an ursine heaviness, his footsteps an intentional warning to his children.

In his bedroom, the colonel dressed in his fatigues, laced up his field boots, pulled a pair of clean white gloves out of his top drawer, aligned his belt, then found his swagger stick on his closet shelf. Before he left his room, he turned on the small phonograph wedged beneath his night table and laid the needle down on the only record in sight. "Ten-hup," he bellowed to his children as the first cataclysmic strains of the Marine Corps hymn reverberated through the upstairs rooms. "All troops report to their stations immediately. That is an order. I repeat. All troops report to their stations immediately."

Ben grabbed a pile of clothes and stuffed them under the mattress of his bed, smoothing the mattress with his hand to ensure that no lumps were visible. Then he repaired the envelope corners of the bedspread, pulling it tightly, until it stretched across the bed like a drumskin. He surveyed his room once more, then flung his door open, stood at attention, and awaited the coming of his father. When the choir of two-fisted tenors on the record were "proud to bear the t.i.tle" Colonel Meecham entered the room slapping the swagger stick in a steady, tautological rhythm that seemed ominous, even predatory.

He a.n.a.lyzed his son's posture with slouch-hating, dust-loathing eyes. When he held inspections, the colonel's business was posture and cleanliness.

"Shoulders back," he barked. "Stomach in. Eyes straight ahead. Don't look at me, boy, unless you're going to ask me for a date. Get your back straight. Head back. G.o.ddam, you've forgotten a lot in a year."

Turning away from Ben, his expression pained, condescending, as if he were performing an odious task among a doomed genus of animal, Colonel Meecham walked over to Ben's desk and rubbed it with a gloved forefinger. Then he examined the glove to see if any dust had soiled it; none had.

Next, he removed a glove and fished a quarter from the pocket of his fatigues. A new, s.h.i.+ny quarter selected from the pile of change on his dresser, the coin was designated to test the tightness of the sheets and blankets, to test how well the troops made up their beds. Ben had never seen his father use a dull coin for this ceremony. Bull flipped the coin above his head and watched it drop on the bed. It made an anemic, soulless bounce.

"You call this bed made, gyrene?"

"Yes, sir," Ben answered.

"You do?" Bull roared.

"No, sir."

"You don't?" Bull roared again.

"I mean yes, sir."

"You mean nothing, hog. The next time I inspect this room, I want that quarter to bounce up and put my eye out."

"Yes, sir."

Bull turned his attention toward the closet, inspecting the arrangement of shoes, the hanging clothes, and the shelves.

"Your coat belongs on the far left, followed by the s.h.i.+rts and pants. Not vice versa," he said as he opened the drawers of Ben's bureau. "Your underwear and socks are just thrown in this drawer. No order here at all, troops," he said flinging the socks and underwear on the floor.

"Let's check your military knowledge," Bull said, walking up to Ben. "Name all the planes I have flown in the Marine Corps."

"I don't think I remember them all, sir."

"I didn't ask you to think. I just asked you a question, sportsfans."

Ben remained at fixed attention, his eyes not moving from a crucifix that hung on the wall opposite him. Then, in an unsteady voice, he began naming aircraft, not thinking of the individual planes, just letting rote memory do its work, these forgotten phantom aircraft winging out of his brain on their own accord.

"You missed two of them, but they were both trainers so it's not that important," Bull said turning away from Ben. Bull examined the crucifix. "Two demerits here. Jesus has got toe cheese." The colonel's laugh boomed through the house. Walking to Ben's desk, Bull pointed at one of the books with his swagger stick.

"Look over here, hog. Is this a skin book?"

"Pardon me, sir?" Ben asked, blus.h.i.+ng deeply.

"Is this a skin book? Is this a book you read to pound your talleywhacker?"

"No, sir. That's Anna Karenina. Mom gave that to me and Mary Anne to read. That's a Russian novel."

"Of course it's Russian. I was just testo-testing you to keep you sharp. Take your eyes off me, mister. Do you want to get in my pants?"

"No, sir."

"Good. Now these novels, to return to the subject, which your mother has you read, are a total waste of time. They're not real. They have no relations.h.i.+p to anything tangible. They don't help you accomplish anything. Do you know, son, strange as it may seem, what is the best book I've ever read?"

"No, sir."

His father paused, and looked around as if he was unwilling to let this priceless shard of information fall into the wrong hands. Finally, he said, "The Baltimore Catechism. It has all the answers. It's clean, concise, and it doesn't make your little earthworm hard. These novels you and Mary Anne read all the time are just so much bulls.h.i.+t. You ought to concentrate on the cla.s.sics like The Baltimore Catechism."

His father did a right face, walked briskly to the doorway, and ran his finger along the doorjamb. His finger was black with dirt.

"He's probably going to wipe my behind to make sure there's no dust up my r.e.c.t.u.m," Ben thought, again wis.h.i.+ng he had the guts to think aloud but knowing that an elaborately structured sense of self-preservation controlled whatever demonic persona within him dreamed up these things to say, heavy with both wit and the seeds of fatality.

Colonel Meecham stood before Ben with a look of incredulity spreading across his face, as if this dirt, this soil of the doorjamb, was somehow a sign that all systems had failed, that some fatal flaw lay hidden in the soul of the entire army Bull held his disbelieving grimace for a full ten seconds, staring at his finger as though a stigma had formed on his dust-violated digit.

"I'm not believing this, hog, I simply am not believing this. Tell me this is not dirt, hog," he said, putting his finger up between Ben's eyes. "Go ahead and tell me it's not dirt."

"It's not dirt, sir," Ben answered.

"Well, what is it, gyrene?"

"It's blood, sir."

"Blood?" his father said, his frame tightening, attuned to disrespect. "You better not be screwin' with me, troops."

"Sir, a Navy pilot was in the room yesterday and I heard him say, 'Colonel Bull Meecham of the United States Marine Corps is the biggest son of a b.i.t.c.h in the armed forces.' "

His father stared at him, his demeanor blinked on and off, between disbelief and outrage. "And what did you say to him, hog?"

"I didn't say anything, sir. I just beat the h.e.l.l out of him."

"Well, good man. Good man. You pa.s.s inspection with flying colors."

After Colonel Meecham had conducted the inspections of the other rooms, Mary Anne walked into Ben's room holding her stomach with melodramatic hyperbole. "You don't mind if I puke all over the room, do you?" she said.

"Look, Mary Anne," Ben answered, "my one goal this year is to survive without him mopping the floor with me. I'll play his little games as long as his fists don't bounce off my head every night. It looks to me like you're going to have to learn the same thing after this morning's exhibition."

"He just yelled. He didn't hit. I just happen to think his games are jejune."

"What does 'jejune' mean?" Ben asked.

"Poor dope. Poor jock of a brother. You've been practicing basketball for so long, your brain has atrophied. I'm getting more and more brilliant, while you're getting a better hook shot. When I'm giving my n.o.bel Prize speech in Stockholm, Benny-poo, I'll let you stand behind me to throw up a couple of hook shots."

"Just tell me what 'jejune' means."

"You should know. Karen was born at Camp Jejeune."

"Very funny."

"You look it up. I learned it by reading and preparing myself for the production of great literature. So you do the same."

"No, I am going to learn it the easy way," Ben said tackling Mary Anne and pinning her to the bed. "You are going to tell me or I'm going to sit on your head all day."

Ben pinned Mary Anne's arms with his knees and removed her gla.s.ses very gently. "Those spectacles have more gla.s.s in them than the telescope at Mount Palomar."

"I'm going to spit in your face if you don't let me up."

"Just tell your favorite brother what the word jejune' means."

"I'll use it in a sentence, bully. 'Ben "Pimple-face" Meecham often acts jejune when he forces his charming sister to tell him the meaning of words.' "

"That's not good enough, charming sister."

Mary Anne looked toward the open door, smiled at her brother, then yelled, "Hey, Mom, Ben's trying to screw me."

Ben clapped his hand over her mouth and listened for the drumming of avenging feet on the stairs. When he turned back to Mary Anne, she was laughing through his hand.

"Are you trying to get me killed, Mary Anne?"

"Well, it is a little sicko-s.e.xual for you to be sitting on top of me like this. I feel like puking."

"Why, just because I'm sitting on you?"

"No, Ben, I just remembered the words of a great man. 'I didn't say anything, sir, I just beat the h.e.l.l out of him.' "

"I'm playing the game. You notice that I came out of that one with no broken bones."

"He'll get you. He always gets you," his sister said.

When Bull descended the stairs, Lillian was on the front porch saying good-bye to Earline Grantham. Earline was making a graceful exit and one got the feeling from watching her leave that there would always be grace and symmetry to her departures.

Lillian was talking. "If you can send that girl on Monday I would sure appreciate it, Earline."

"She's wonderful. Hard-working, doesn't drink, and is honest as the day is long."

"And you're sure she'll come?"

"She'll be here. Good-bye, Colonel. The pleasure was mine."

"Ya'll come back, you heah?" Bull mocked, but a glance from Lillian stopped his mimicry cold.

"I've hired a maid," Lillian said. "A squadron commander's wife needs one."

But Bull was not listening. He had walked to the end of the veranda and was staring at the dilapidated garage beside the house. Though the manic edge had lifted since the inspection, still the juggernaut of Sat.u.r.day moved over him, the nothingness implicit in a day of rest, when his world lay fallow, and he suffered all his demons running within him, sprinters in a bottle. He called to Lillian to come look. "That lazy kid of yours hasn't put the basketball goal up yet. Tell him to get on it before I bat him in the head."

Lillian, who had her strategies and moved from one to another with instinct her only guide, ignored her husband's grievance. She said, "A squadron commander's wife needs a maid."

Chapter 9.

An hour past dawn on the following Monday, a thick, grandly muscled woman arrived on the back steps of the Meecham house and waited for the sleeping house to stir. Though she was barely an inch over five feet tall, her arms were ma.s.sive with thick, knotted biceps and her forearms were threaded with protruding veins and hard sinew. She had the appearance of a displaced and bespectacled Sumo wrestler. Her flesh was dark in the deep ebony of a low-country black. As she waited, she sat perfectly still watching the river. Her expression was tranquil, indecipherable. The lines in her face were in those regions where sorrow had tracked its pa.s.sage.

The woman was sitting on the back steps when Bull Meecham hurried out the back door. He was on his way to the air station for additional briefings on the squadron he would soon command. Before he reached the first step, he stopped and regarded the dark Buddha blocking his pa.s.sage. If there was a single group in America that Bull had difficulty with over the simplest forms of address, a group as mysterious to him as children, it was southern blacks. He had nothing at all to say to them so he generally retreated into his self-aggrandized mythology.

"Stand by for a fighter pilot," Bull boomed at the woman.

"What you say, Cap'n?" the woman answered, turning around to look at Colonel Meecham.

"I am the Great Santini," Bull said, beating one fist against his chest and smiling without confidence. He knew he was making a complete a.s.s out of himself but had no idea how to organize a retreat at this juncture of the conversation.

"I never work for no Eye-talian family before."

"Do I look Eye-talian, madame?"

The woman appraised him with deep-set charcoal eyes. "I reckon," she said finally.

"Pure Irish, ma'am. Not a trace of anything lower flows through my veins."

"I guess I'm 'bout near pure as you, Cap'n," the woman said, causing Bull to throw his head back and holler with laughter. The woman stood up and faced the colonel.

"Now you are a solid-looking woman, ma'am. And I mean that as a compliment. You look solid all over."

"I can punch hard as a man, at least that what my dead husband used to tell the other boys that work the shrimp boat with him."