The Great Santini Part 21

"Basketball's nothing. An absolute zero. Jim Don plays basketball and that's the only reason I even like to cheer at the games. He's captain of the football team, you know. I never saw you at any of the football games. Where'd you normally sit?"

"I never went to any games."

"Boy, you sure are eaten up with school spirit, aren't you, Ben? My daddy's trying to break me and Jim Don up. But he'll never be able to do it. I just hope Jim Don doesn't see us tonight. He beat up one boy that dated me."

"Oh, that's great," Ben said, instinctively checking the rearview mirror.

"He's insanely jealous. But he's so sweet. I just hope he doesn't see us tonight. He told me he'd be out cruising looking for us."

"We won't go anywhere where he can see us."

"Oh we have to. We just have to. We have to make the scene at the Shack. My daddy told me to show you where all the gang hangs out. Jim Don has a new Impala. He packed tomatoes last summer and made enough money for a big down payment. Are those Weejuns you're wearing?" she asked Ben.

"What?" Ben asked.

"Weejuns. Loafers. Everyone at the school wears Weejuns."

"No, they're just loafers. I don't know what kind they are."

"That's a Gant s.h.i.+rt, isn't it?"

"It might be. Mom bought it at the PX yesterday."

"No, it's not Gant," she said impatiently. "The PX doesn't sell them and there's no loop at the back."

"It's Ivy League, though," Ben offered. "It's got b.u.t.tons on the collar."

"That's no big deal."

"I've never been to the Shack," Ben said.

"It's real close to the colored high school. The cutest colored boys in the whole universe work there. They'll just die if they see me with you."

Ansley turned the dial until she heard the Ape bellow from WAPE in Jacksonville. "Every car in the Shack will be tuned to the Big APE," she said, singing along with the music.

Ben turned into the parking lot of the Shack as Ansley slid down in the front seat until her head was not visible to anyone looking in through the driver's side of the car. To his mortification, Ben could see people laughing as they spotted the squadron decals on the side of the car. Choosing the loneliest, most desolate spot he could find, he backed under an overhanging tree in the far corner of the lot. Only then did Ansley's eyes rise to window level and make a peremptory examination of the other cars.

"You don't mind if I say 'hi' to a few of my friends, Ben. I see some cheerleaders and their boyfriends parked over there under the light. Order me a cheeseburger without onions, a Coca-Cola, medium, and a large order of fries if Lewis comes while I'm gone," she said, blowing him a kiss through the window. She seemed shamelessly gratified to be escaping Ben's presence.

Ben rolled down the window and leaned his elbow on the door. He tried to tighten up his face into a mask of insouciance, worldliness, and control. His stomach, though, felt like a s.h.i.+p breaking up on invisible shoals. As Ansley went from car to car, Ben watched her secretly, watching her leaning her b.r.e.a.s.t.s into other boys' arms, flirting with a self-indulgent expertise that seemed vilely calculating from Ben's observation post. Her perfume lingered in the car and attacked him in the soft places of his boyhood. He saw her point his car out to a crowd of faces he half recognized, then he heard her high-pitched giggle and the laughter of her companions; he turned the radio up louder. He stole another look and saw how achingly pretty she was, this curving, mindless nymphet who had perfected the insensate cruelties and the small meannesses of adolescence and sent them marching in snickering battalions toward Ben. Sitting there in the half-darkness, Ben felt cheapened, irreparably damaged by this girl he had known most of his life. But he was not surprised. He knew intuitively that girls like Ansley would elude him always, dance away from him, mocking him, whispering about him in those savagely thoughtless cl.u.s.ters of children living in the pure oxygen of their ordained season. Ansley was part of an aristocracy that brooked no intrusion, at least not now, Ben thought.

Ben ordered two cheeseburgers without onions, two medium Coca-Colas, and two large orders of fries when Lewis, a tall, expressionless black, came to take his order. He was grateful to Lewis just for coming to his car. When the cheeseburgers came, Ben glanced toward Ansley to see if she would return to the car when the order arrived. But she remained where she was in the middle of several football players. Her fingers were traveling secretly to their necks, running along their collars.

Then he saw Jim Don Cooper's car pull up beside her. He watched as Ansley entered the car, rushed across the seat, and kissed him long and pa.s.sionately on the lips. They talked, made out some more, then talked again. He saw Jim Don turn completely around in his seat and stare belligerently at Ben. "Oh great," Ben thought, "now he comes over and beats the s.h.i.+t out of me while I'm sitting in the Werewolf Squadron car." But Jim Don did not leave his car; Ansley did. With her girlish, provocative gait, she ran over to Ben's side of the car and began eating french fries as she whispered to Ben.

"Ben, I want you to be the sweetest boy in the world and let me spend the rest of the night with my steady. We're going to a party one of the cheerleaders is giving out at the beach. You don't mind, do you?"

"No, Ansley, I don't mind at all," Ben said.

"You're so sweet. I told Jim Don you'd be glad to help us out. Now you won't mention this to your parents, will you, Ben?"

"No. I won't say a word."

"O.K. Bye-bye. And I really had a great time with you tonight. I mean that seriously. You have a wonderful personality. And thanks tons for being so understanding," she said, leaving the car.

"Do you want your cheeseburger?" Ben asked.

"No, you eat mine too. Jim Don just ordered me one," she said, turning and running back toward the Impala.

No one seemed to notice the car after its abandonment by Ansley Matthews; no one seemed to notice the modest solitaire of Ben in his fall from the grandeur of courting cheerleaders. He was skewered by the eyes of strangers no longer. Thank G.o.d for the Big APE radio in Jacksonville that sang to Ben with the same dispa.s.sion it sang to every other car in the Shack. Ben ate his cheeseburger slowly, thinking about what he could do for the rest of the evening, knowing he could not return home early to face the interrogation of his parents or the teasing of Mary Anne.

He started up the car, his eyes burning. Good-bye, my cheerleader, my first date. Good-bye my colonel's daughter, my dark-lashed d.u.c.h.ess, my beauty, my brown-eyed queen. Good-bye my one-hour bride, my sixty-minute love, my redlipped empress, my Weejun-shod inamorata. Why do I love you and girls like you? Ben thought. Why do I love you in secret? Then coldly, as he looked at her again, one final time, as he drove his car past her boyfriend's Impala, as he saw her laugh at the decal and point, it was then that he knew her for the first time and he had an urge to lean out of his window and cavalierly shout au revoir to his enemy.

In a fury, he turned from the Shack and drove toward town. He didn't see the car pull out behind him and follow him. He heard a car blowing its horn at him as he pulled in front of the National Cemetery on Granville Street. Pulling over to the curb, Ben peered into the interior of a red and black Rambler American that pulled alongside of him. Ben turned out his lights and waited for the driver of the Rambler to identify himself. The Rambler pulled in front of him and a small-boned boy leaped out of the car and walked back toward Ben with a ludicrously exaggerated swagger.

"You're probably saying to yourself, Ben, that a true stud like Sammy Wertzberger always has a date with some gorgeous honey on a Sat.u.r.day night. But it just so happens that I'm resting my body from a drive-in movie last night where I was attacked again and again by a lovely nymphomaniac."

"Sammy. I've never been so glad to see anybody in my whole life."

"I just heard about what Ansley the a.s.shole did to you. I thought you'd already left when I saw you pull out."

"I've known her for a long time. She used to be pretty nice."

"Why don't you ride shotgun up there in the Jewish submarine and I'll show you the town. Maybe then we can catch the late movie at the Breeze Theater."

"That sounds great to me."

"Let's make like horses.h.i.+t and hit the trail."

"Thanks for following me, Sammy."

"The night is young," Sammy said to Ben. "And there are thousands of women waiting to get their hands on the both of us."

Chapter 16.

Ravenel had a single Catholic priest and his name was Thomas Aquinas Pinckney, a thin tubercular man who stood six feet seven inches tall and was rumored to drink too much of the blood of Christ at the Consecration. When Father Pinckney opened his rectory door, bending down to duck his head beneath the doorway, the first thing the new colonel said to him was, "My name is Colonel Bull Meecham, Father. I think it's a disgrace that this burg doesn't have a Catholic school. And since you're the C.O., I hold you personally responsible."

"Boston?" the priest asked.

"No, Father, Chicago," Bull answered.

"Come in, Colonel, and we'll drink something sinful while we discuss this important spiritual matter."

Bull had mostly listened that first day as this stricken, energetic man paced the sitting room of his rectory speaking with a mellifluous ba.s.so profundo voice that demanded and received unwavering attention. His gestures were theatrical and wild, generated by an animal impatience that possessed his body. "Colonel," he shouted, "do you realize that Red China has more Roman Catholics than the state of South Carolina. And do you realize that the good Sisters of Mercy are strained to the very limits of endurance to send us one good sister to labor in the vineyards of Ravenel. And Colonel, do you, in your wisdom, understand that numbers dictate the Bishop's decision over whether to build a Catholic school in Ravenel. We are growing, yes, but as for a Catholic school, we are many years from such a prodigious undertaking."

"Begging your Father's pardon," Bull said, "but baloney."

"Colonel, why does the Lord send two or three Marines a year to torment me on this subject? Why does he punish me?"

"He wants you to build a Catholic school."

"And I want to build you another drink," Father Pinckney said, taking Bull's gla.s.s to the bar. "In my early daydreams, Colonel, in those high fantasies one deludes himself with in the first days of priesthood, I imagined myself a prince of the Church, a robed and venerated Cardinal, perhaps, enshrined in Gothic cathedrals and wors.h.i.+ped by flocks of sinful paris.h.i.+oners. I never thought I would be fighting verbal banana wars with Marines and their wives over bingo games and Catholic schools in this gnat of a town. I am a priest whose inclination is toward the great cities of the world but whose destiny was to degenerate in this sad village."

That day Bull had signed Ben and Matthew up to serve the 11:15 Sunday Ma.s.s for the entire school year. He also enrolled Ben and Mary Anne in the Wednesday-night catechism cla.s.s sponsored by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine. He reminded his children that it was his duty as a Catholic father to ensure that their souls did not rust during their year away from Catholic schools. Nor did Ben's argument that eleven years of Catholic school were eleven more than Jesus Christ himself received dissuade his father from sending his two oldest children to the night cla.s.ses held at St. Philomena's Hall, a resurrected Victorian house purchased and refurbished as a cla.s.sroom for young Catholics in a hostilely Protestant world. The first cla.s.s was held the last Wednesday in September with Sister Loretta Marie presiding.

The nun's face was blanched out like Lenten candlewax. Its whiteness contrasted starkly with the black veil that framed her head like a shroud. Her voice was a disapproving monotone. Whether discussing Herod slaughtering infants or Christ rising from the dead, her voice registered the same faint level of disapproval. When she walked, her long rosary clicked with a most repressed, arrhythmic music. Ben had watched her at church and her pinched bloodless face and the stiffness of her bearing, as though her joints lacked oil, made him grant her a wide and respectful berth. Both expert at translating the character of nuns, Ben and Mary Anne divided them into two distinct and irreconcilable categories: the Smiles and the Vampires. The Smiles were joyous women who took pleasure in life's smallest, most inconsequential gifts, who loved children and the act of teaching, and who loved G.o.d with a simplicity and ingenuousness that made one believe in the efficacy of a nun's vocation. The Vampires were terrible, desiccated women who entered the convent because they hated themselves and thought that by surrendering their lives to their redeemer, this self-hatred would turn to something good and palliative. But it never happened that way. The convent never solved their problems, only magnified them a hundredfold. When they taught, they were at best bloodless and inoffensive; at their worst, they could ruin a child's life. Two Vampires had ruled Ben in their reign of terror. One, Sister Mary Patricia, had put clothespins on his ears and nose for an entire afternoon when he failed to turn in his math homework. Another, Sister Mary Bernadette, wrapped her wool shawl around his head and made him walk with her for a thirty-minute recess period, his head in darkness burrowed into her b.r.e.a.s.t.s which were full, forbidden, and untouched. So when he appraised Sister Loretta Marie it was with eyes that had spent a lifetime studying the habits and peccadilloes of nuns. When he asked Mary Anne what she thought about the new nun in their lives, Mary Anne did not answer; she put up her two hands and covered her throat.

The nun began the cla.s.s with the Lord's Prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance. In her hand was a small clicker or cricket which she snapped when she wanted the cla.s.s to stand up or sit down. She had a pa.s.sion for the simultaneous. For a full minute, the cla.s.s practiced rising and sitting in unison as she pressed the lever of her cricket and appraised the harmony of ebb and augmentation of her new charges. Finally, she was satisfied and gave a last deliciously full click that had the sound of finality about it.

At the very rear of the room, Ben and Mary Anne wrote each other notes while Sister Loretta Marie intoned about the dangers to the soul represented by dancing cheek to cheek and rock and roll music. Mary Anne wrote to Ben in her scrawling penmans.h.i.+p that even her long apprentices.h.i.+p in Catholic schools did not correct, "You have a huge pimple at the end of your nose and everybody is looking at you and laughing at you. It's real ugly."

Ben replied, "Some people think freckles are cute. I don't. It looks to me like millions of ants p.o.o.ped on your face."

"Now, cla.s.s, everyone listen up. You two back there," Sister Loretta said, talking to Ben and Mary Anne. "You're not required to take notes tonight. I want everybody's strict attention as I discuss a matter of utmost importance. You are all young adults; therefore, I feel as though I can speak to you as young adults. I've been watching several members of this cla.s.s as they walk back from receiving the Eucharist at Sunday Ma.s.s. What I have seen frankly disturbs me very much. It might behoove this cla.s.s for me to remind them that the body and blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ is on our tongues when the priest gives us the host."

Mary Anne scribbled something on the paper and Ben read, "Jesus Christ tastes a lot like bread."

"You're going to h.e.l.l for all eternity," he wrote back, underlining the word "all."

"What has shocked me," Sister Loretta continued, shaking her head in repugnance, "and I mean literally shocked me, was when I saw certain members of this cla.s.s, and I am not going to mention any names, actually chewing the host like it was a Hershey bar or something. Let me ask all of you one question. Would you like someone chewing on you?"

"No, Sister," the cla.s.s answered.

"Of course you wouldn't. Neither does Jesus. The host is supposed to dissolve on the tongue. It should melt slowly and you should think about the Lord being present on your tongue. You want him to stay present on your tongue as long as you can. You do not want to hurry him along by crudely chewing him up and sending him quickly to your stomach."

"I bet he likes the stomach better than where he goes next," Mary Anne wrote and Ben put his hand over his eyes.

"For those of you who are chewing up the Lord instead of letting him melt slowly on your tongue, I can say very little except that I am sure the Lord finds it most unpleasant to be chewed up quickly by the hasty molars of young Catholic boys and girls who do not treasure the sanct.i.ty of his company. Frankly, it has been all that I could do to keep from yanking those individuals by the ear when I see them walk by like cattle chewing their cud. The proper way to receive communion is to let your mouth fill up with saliva and let the saliva slowly and beautifully melt the body of the Lord and then let him repose in your soul, in the temple of the Holy Ghost."

"Help, I'm drowning in spit," Mary Anne wrote. "Signed, Jesu." But Ben refused to even read what she had written; flirtations with sacrilege bothered him deeply.

"Sister, Sister." A boy raised his hand in the front of the room. Sister Loretta clicked and he rose to his feet.

"You're slouching, P.K. That's better. Now what is your question?" the nun asked.

"A lot of times, Sister, the host gets stuck on the roof of my mouth. I mean it sticks up there like flypaper and it even makes it hard to breathe. Does the Lord get mad if I take my tongue and lick it off the roof of my mouth, because to tell you the truth, it gets mighty uncomfortable up there."

The cla.s.s giggled. P.K. turned around and smiled, proud that he had asked a question that aroused laughter from his peers behind him. Giggling was a form of mutiny to the nun and she quelled it with a wintery narrowing of her eyes.

"That's a very good question, P.K., and one that requires serious deliberation. Does anyone have any ideas about that particular theological consideration? How about you, Miss Carters Marie Simon?"

"Brown-noser," Mary Anne wrote.

A pretty girl who was in several of Mary Anne's cla.s.ses at the high school stood up and answered, "I don't think a body should remove the host from the top of the mouth. When it happens to me, I let the host alone and suffer, offering it up to the poor souls in purgatory. I think my suffering is the least I can do since the Lord Jesus suffered so for me."

"Oh, puke," Mary Anne whispered in Ben's ear, abandoning her pen and paper since Ben was adamant about refusing to read what she had written.

"I think that is a wonderful answer, Carters. That is exactly the answer I expected from this cla.s.s. It seems crude and ill-bred to peel the host off the roof of your mouth simply because it is uncomfortable. Christ, too, was uncomfortable on the cross. Yes, he was very uncomfortable with the nails tearing his hands and feet, the crown of thorns splitting his head." She turned toward the crucifix that hung above the blackboard; all eyes in the cla.s.s followed her lead. "For three agonizing hours he hung on the cross, suffering for us. For Carters, for P.K., for Andy, for Father Pinckney, for Sister Loretta Marie-for all the Catholics who would ever live, so that we might sit on his right hand in the golden kingdom of G.o.d. Yes, Jesus suffered and this is one reason why we should never complain about the insignificant pains and frustrations we have in our lives. The next time you have a headache, think about having a nail driven through your foot."

Sister Loretta was still staring balefully at the crucified redeemer. Cupping her hand, Mary Anne whispered to Ben, "The next time you pick your nose, think about having a nail driven through your nostril."

Ben laughed and the whole cla.s.s turned around, as if obedient to one of Sister Loretta's clicks, to witness the removal of a malignancy from the cla.s.s.

"Perhaps, Mr. Meecham, you could enlighten the cla.s.s as to what is so humorous about a crucifixion."

"Nothing, Sister," Ben said. "I just thought of something funny that happened a few days ago."

"Please share it with the cla.s.s," the nun demanded.

"I've forgotten it already, Sister," Ben stammered, and the cla.s.s laughed.

"Indeed," the nun hissed. "Since Mr. Meecham is not interested in the lesson, I think I will use him for a little experiment I thought up to ill.u.s.trate the suffering of Christ on the cross. I was going to save this for another cla.s.s, but this might prove to Mr. Meecham that I take these C.C.D. cla.s.ses very seriously. Come to the front of the room by the blackboard, Mr. Meecham."

Casting a single murderous glance at Mary Anne, Ben walked to the front of the room and stood before Sister Loretta's podium.

"You are a big, strong boy, Mr. Meecham. Let us see how really strong you are. Go to the blackboard, turn, and face the cla.s.s. Now put out your arms. All the way out, Mr. Meecham," the nun said with sudden fierceness, "as if you were stretching them out to be nailed to a cross. That is it. That is fine. Now there are only forty-five minutes left in this cla.s.s. I want you to hold your arms out until the cla.s.s is over. No fair bending your arms at the elbows. Just like that for forty-five minutes. Before long, cla.s.s, Mr. Meecham's arms will feel like lead. Somebody watch and tell me if Mr. Meecham cheats by bending his arms."

"I will, Sister," Mary Anne said cheerfully.

"Thank you, Miss Meecham. It would behoove us to remember that Christ was not able to bend his arms on the cross. Is that not right, children?"

"Yes, Sister," they chanted.

Ben was not taking his symbolic crucifixion with any excess humor. He was not one who enjoyed public exposure or ridicule. The arm muscles would begin to hurt, but it was the personal denuding he experienced under the many-eyed gaze of the cla.s.s that was the prime cause of his discomfiture and embarra.s.sment.

Sister Loretta continued her monotone: "But the subject tonight was the Eucharist and I was reminded of a true story about the Eucharist that I heard firsthand from a Benedictine father who conducted a retreat at my Mother House in Philadelphia last summer. This true story took place in France and I think it would behoove us to think of P.K.'s question as I relate this story to you."

"Mr. Meecham is bending his elbows," Mary Anne said, raising her hand sweetly.

"Thank you, Miss Meecham. I know your brother does not wish for me to have a conference with your father. Therefore, I am sure we will not have to interrupt cla.s.s again to admonish him," she said, turning toward Ben as though he were an anthropomorphic representation of a genuine sin.

Ben shot Mary Anne the finger with both of his invisibly nailed hands.

"There was a bad little French boy by the name of Pierre who went to Communion at his tiny parish church in the south of France. At the time, Pierre was in a state of mortal sin as he had eaten a full breakfast only minutes before he came to church. When it came time for Communion, Pierre went to the altar and received the Blessed Eucharist. Instead of going back to his pew, he went out the back of the church and into the graveyard across the street. There, he took the sacred host out of his mouth ..."

Here, Carters Marie Simon gasped in horror and put her head down on the desk.

"And held the host in his nasty, grubby, unwashed little hands. He wanted to see if he could find a sign that this was indeed the body and blood of our Savior. He laid the host on a tombstone and took a knife from his pocket. Then he cut into the host with his knife. Can anyone in the room tell me what happened?"

A moment of anesthetized silence filled the room until P.K., raising his hand, rising and ejecting out of his seat, shouted, "G.o.d killed the little booger."