The Great Santini Part 16

"Do you love Dad, Mama?" Ben asked and Lillian saw that he was blus.h.i.+ng.

"Of course I love your father. He's my husband."

"I don't mean that. I mean do you really love him in such a way that you wouldn't want to live with anybody else?"

"What G.o.d hath joined together, let no man put asunder. I'm very satisfied. Your father is a good provider and he is kind to me."

"I think he treats you c.r.a.ppy."

"He blows his stack at me sometimes, but I let it roll off like water on a duck's back. Harsh words were never fatal to anyone."

"What about harsh fists, Mama? What about when he hits you?"

Lillian said nothing for a few moments. She paused to give her son time to light another cigarette.

"You're smoking these too fast, Mama."

"What ever gave you the idea that your father hits me? He never hits me," Lillian said, looking directly at Ben.

"Gee, Mom, ol' crazy me thought he kicked you today."

"That wasn't much. But I'd leave a man who hit me."

"I've seen him hit you," Ben said, looking into his mother's eyes, and holding his gaze steady.

"You're upset, Ben," Lillian said. "You're starting to imagine things. Your father has never hit me during our entire married life."

"I have seen him hit you at least three times."

"You're exaggerating again, Ben," Lillian answered, laughing to break the tension. "I swear your imagination plays funny tricks on you sometimes."

Ben walked to his bureau drawer and fumbled through several layers of clothes in the bottom drawer. He retrieved a T-s.h.i.+rt, military issue, covered with dried blood. "When Dad hit you two years ago, Mom, I held you in my arms and you were crying. It was on a Friday after happy hour and he came home singing 'Silent Night,' which was strange because it was in March. You met him at the door and started fighting with him because he'd been drinking gin, and you said gin made him wild because it did something to his system. He started hitting you in the face. I ran in and grabbed his legs. He started punching me in the head. Mary Anne came in, and started screaming. He left the house. Your nose was bleeding, and that's how I ruined this T-s.h.i.+rt. I've kept it, Mama, because I wanted it as proof. This is your blood, Mama. Your blood."

"He never hit me," Lillian insisted.

Ben threw up his hands in exasperation, almost despair. "Then I'm a liar."

"I didn't say that."

"Yes you did. I say that he's. .h.i.t you. You say that he hasn't. So I'm a liar, and I'm going to stay a liar."

"You exaggerate, son."

"No, I lie. I love to he. Lying makes me feel good. I'm addicted to it."

"You're upset."

"No, Mama, not me. I just happen to be one of those fun-loving people who enjoy getting a basketball bounced off their heads twenty or thirty times. I like it even better when it's a bowling ball."

"I'm warning you, mister, don't get smart with me. I don't like that, Ben. I simply don't like it."

"I'm sorry, Mama."

"I'm in here because I'm on your side, and I wanted you to let off a little steam. But you've got to understand how hard it is to try and keep peace between your father and you children. All I want is for peace to rule my house. Peace and quiet and good feelings. It's so much easier to have good feelings than discord. I abhor discord."

"We didn't have discord last year, Mama. When Dad was overseas. It was the best year of my life. Why don't you just leave him?"

Lillian reflected a moment, then said, "Because of you children."

"Would you repeat that please? I am near hysteria, but I want to be sure of what you said."

"I won't leave your father because of you children. I know what it's like to grow up in a broken home. I know how terrible a broken home can be. I made a vow that my children would never have to go through what I went through."

"Well, I have also made a vow," Ben said, in slow deliberate words. "My children are never going to have to go through what I have gone through."

"Well, if I were you, mister," Lillian shot back, "I'd count my blessings. Other children haven't had your advantages. Some children don't have enough food to eat, others are sickly, others don't have a roof over their heads, others have parents who hate them."

"And some children have diabetes," Ben said, "and some have leprosy, some get eaten by tigers, some are born without arms, some get struck by lightning, and some use leaves for toilet paper."

Lillian laughed to herself. "You're like him in so many ways."

"Like who?"

"Like your father."

"Don't say that," Ben said, as if in pain.

"I can see him in your face. In your inflection. The way you walk. The way you gesture with your hands. He's everywhere in you."

"That's it, Mom. Drive me to suicide."

"Mark my words, what happened today won't make any difference in five years. You'll look back in later years and understand your father a lot better. He does what he does because he loves you, and wants you to be the best."

Ben began to dance around the room, saying, "I love you, Ben. Punch. I want you to be the best, Ben. Kick. I think you're great, Ben. Throw downstairs. I want you to be tops, Ben. Slug with bra.s.s knuckles. I love you too much for words, Ben. Stomp on kidney."

"You can have your fun, but there's one other thing that's important for you to know. Your father can't live without me. He loves me very much. He wors.h.i.+ps me."

"You could get other men to wors.h.i.+p you. Other men do."

"Your father's my husband."

She took Ben's hands in hers and tried to look into his eyes, but Ben turned his head away from her. The basketball still sounded on the backyard court. Bull was practicing his two-hand set shot from long range. Standing Ben up, she led him to one side of the window, and they both watched Bull shooting and retrieving the ball on the driveway below them. A minute pa.s.sed without either of them speaking. Finally, Lillian spoke. "Have you ever heard your father apologize to anyone for anything?"

Ben shook his head. "I've never heard him say 'I'm sorry' to anyone."

"He never has," Lillian said. "But I know him better than you do, better than you will ever know him. Do you know why he's down there practicing his shooting tonight?"

"No, ma'am."

"He's admitting to you that the gap is closing. That he has to practice if he's going to beat you from now on. He's admitting some hard things. He's admitting that he's getting older."

"That doesn't change anything."

"I'm sure it doesn't, son. Because you're angry," Lillian said, walking toward the door, "but the real reason he's down on the court tonight is that he knows you'll hear him. You've got a strange father, Ben, but in his own way, that's him down there saying, 'I'm sorry, Ben. I was wrong.' "

Chapter 12.

Colonel Meecham sat behind the desk, savoring the richness of his first moments as the commanding officer of squadron 367. He was alone for the first time since the change of command ceremony and the forceful chords of the Marine Corps hymn and the proud rhythms of men marching in cadence still sang in his brain: the memory of guidons fluttering and heads snapping to the right to pay homage to the new commander filled him with profound gratification; the pomp of flags and the joy of watching a ma.s.s of men on the march because he had shouldered the lonely accoutrements of command caused him a moment of fear, awed by the long files of men who marched to fulfill the demands of ceremony, the long grip of tradition.

His family had stood with him on the reviewing stand. His sons and daughters lined up like a squad, s.h.i.+ny as new dimes, performed their minor functions well. Lillian Meecham had been radiant, a dazzling partner who added charm to a family so drilled and weighted down with the responsibility of obedience that they seemed to function and move together like a machine. It had gone well. The command had pa.s.sed to him. Yet now that the command was his, the fulfillment of an old and troubled dream, he suffered a hollowness of spirit that had the unmistakable dimension of anticlimax. He had wanted this for so long, scratched his way along the belly of the beast for so many years, fighting off mediocre fitness reports and the rumors that he was too unstable, too volatile to lead a squadron, that the being there seemed less real than the struggle and long ascent to get there. It was a paradox, and Bull Meecham could take anything with more equanimity than paradox. He was, at this very moment, behind this desk, the commander of a fighter squadron, and by some fraudulence or legerdemain of time, all the sweetness had gone out of it, the honey of triumph left his lips dry and his greatest moment with only the memory of what he thought it would taste like to sustain him.

Then he thought, "I'm a Marine, not a f.u.c.king philosopher."

He rang for Sergeant Lat.i.to. A dark, grizzled man with a face that looked as though a war might have been fought over its craggy terrain stood at his desk a moment later.

"Yes, sir," the sergeant said.

"Did all the pilots get the word about the briefing today, Sergeant?" the C.O. asked.

"Yes, sir, all pilots and officers will meet in the briefing room at 1230 hours."

"Good man, Sergeant. Where are you from, by the way?"

"Brooklyn, sir," the man replied.

"You're a Jewish boy, aren't you?" the colonel asked without smiling, but his eyes s.h.i.+ned with a mirth the sergeant did not see.

"No, sir, I'm an Italian. My father came from the Old Country."

"Your Daddy's from Israel, eh? It's no crime to be Jewish, Lat.i.to. Don't be ashamed of it."

"I beg the colonel's pardon, sir. But I swear that I'm Italian."

"Look, Sergeant," the colonel said, his voice lowering now, the brightness fading from his eyes, fading into a stone and hardness, "If I want to think you're Jewish, then you are gonna be Jewish. If I want you to eat matzo b.a.l.l.s instead of pizza, then you'll do it. I like men under my command to jump at everything I say. Especially my top sergeant."

"Sir," the sergeant sputtered, "I'm proud of being an Italian."

"Sarge, you can learn to be proud of being a Jewboy just as easy. That will be all, Lat.i.to."

"Yes, sir," the sergeant saluted.

As the sergeant turned to leave, Colonel Meecham called to him, "Does your wife make good lasagna, Lat.i.to?"

The sergeant stopped and without turning around, but coming to stiff attention, said, "The best, sir. At least in this part of the country."

"I'd sure like to get a little lasagna the next time she fixes a batch."

"You will, sir," Lat.i.to said, smiling. "You will."

At precisely 1230 hours, Colonel Bull Meecham strode into the briefing room to meet the officers of his squadron for the first time. He had known several of them in previous a.s.signments and other bases and he had met almost all of them in the days preceding his inauguration as their commander. This would be the first time he addressed them as a group.

He had rehea.r.s.ed this speech for twelve years. By studying the strengths and weaknesses of commanders he had served under, he had collected shards and fragments of the speech he would one day deliver to men who looked upon him as their commander. He had descanted his theories about leaders.h.i.+p and command, his love for the oldest traditions of the Corps, his definition of duty so often and in the tumult of so many crises that he had practically a.s.sured himself that whatever came out when he spoke on that appointed day would be the effluent of hard experience, the natural residue of his years in the Marine Corps, and his philosophy of the officer.

He began to speak, aware that he had come to the barricade, that he was mounting it, that this time would never come again-the commander spoke, without notes, but from deep in the hardest, holiest place of him.

"You men," he began, "now have the privilege of serving under the meanest, toughest, screamingest squadron commander in the Marine Corps." He paused, eyed each man in the room, then finished, "Me," he growled. "You also have the privilege of serving the best squadron commander," he said, and paused, then said, "Me again.

"Now I am in a very special and very fortunate position. I am the commander of a squadron that has the best G.o.ddam pilots ever to put their a.s.ses on the seats of a jet aircraft. If you are not the best pilots in the Marine Corps, if you are not the best pilots in the armed forces, if you are not the best pilots in the world, then you will be after spending six months with me as your commander. In the next couple of months you are going to fly like you have never flown before, do things with jet planes you never thought possible, become proficient in phases of aviation you never dreamed of. In the next couple of months you have a tough steak to chew, men, but you are going to get so G.o.ddam good at flying a jet, you are going to forget you have wives and children at home and that the White Sox are going to win the American League Pennant.

"Now I don't want you to look at me like I was just your Commanding Officer. I want you to look at me kind of like I was a G.o.d. If I say something, you pretend it's coming from the burning bush. If I sneeze, you sneeze. If I catch leprosy, I want to see some noses dropping off. If I wipe my a.s.s, I want to see the hand of every pilot reaching down to clean up his r.e.c.t.u.m. We are Marines. We are members of the proudest, most elite group of fighting men in the history of the world. There is not a force on earth that can stand up to us, that can defeat us in battle, that can prevent us from performing our duty, that can deny us victory, that can interrupt our destiny. We are Marines. Marine Corps fighting men. Marine Corps fighter pilots. Marine Corps warriors. Marine Corps killers. We will wear our uniforms with pride. We will honor the traditions of the Corps in all things we do as a squadron. As the commanding officer of this squadron, I am going to tell you that this squadron is going to become a legend in the Marine Corps within thirty days, because I am going to lead the toughest, flyingest sons a b.i.t.c.hes in the world, or I am going to kick some a.s.s all over this base." He shouted, his face red, and his eyes affixed on the essential rect.i.tude of his goal. The men of his squadron sat transfixed. There was no s.h.i.+fting, no clearing of throats, no coughing, and no restlessness. They were not bored.

"Now. I want obedience and devotion to duty. But there is one kind of Marine I hate," he said, as all ears in the room waited for the word. "I don't want n.o.body sniffin' my farts. Fart sniffers become generals unless they happen to get under my command. If you want to suck on some b.a.l.l.s, I suggest you buy a pack of marbles because I hate a nut suckin', ball swingin', fart sniffin' b.a.s.t.a.r.d worse than I hate all the Russians in the Kremlin." He roared, looking about the room, rolling now, caught up in the rhythms of his own oratory, the fever and righteousness of his message. "You men are under Bull Meecham now and you're gonna look back at all this as the finest days you spent in the Marine Corps. If a pilot of mine f.u.c.ks up, then I'll take a pound of his a.s.s, but if anyone outside this squadron tries to nail 'em they will have to nail Bull Meecham too. We are in this together, men. We are members of the Werewolf Squadron 367 and we are going to make history. I would like to welcome you, gentlemen, to the best squadron ever a.s.sembled.

"Now," he said, the rhythm broken, the major portion of his address over, "I'd like to ask a few general questions. Did anyone in this squadron attend an Ivy League school?"

One pilot raised his hand in the back of the room, raised it hesitantly, like a banner of surrender. "Where did you go, Lieutenant?" Colonel Meecham asked.

"Cornell, sir," the lieutenant answered.

"Cornell," the colonel thundered.

"Yes, sir, Cornell," the lieutenant answered, less sure of himself.

"You proud of it, son?" the colonel asked.

"Yes, sir."

All eyes turned to Colonel Meecham who was leaning forward on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet, glowering with unconcealed menace at the Ivy Leaguer. "Sheeeee-iiitt," the colonel hissed, "that's what I think of the whole Ivy League. The Ivy League is what's wrong with this country today. Cornell! Cornell! Cornell is a pansy school. Lieutenant, I want you to make me forget you went there by becoming the flying tiger of this outfit. Do I make myself clear, Lieutenant?"

"Yes, sir," the lieutenant shouted.

"Now," the colonel said, "is there anybody from the Naval Academy?"

Once again, a single hand went up from the gathering of pilots.

"What cla.s.s were you in, mister?" the colonel asked.

"Cla.s.s of 'fifty-seven, sir," the young captain, who rose to attention, answered.

"That's nice, Captain. That's very nice. That's a gentleman's school, sure enough. Why didn't you fly with the pelicans like the rest of your cla.s.smates?"