The Great Santini Part 24

"You don't need to say anything about it, Ben. You grew up around it. The only men you really know are pilots. I don't think you'll make the Marine Corps a career, but I think a couple of years will do you some good."

Ben lifted his left shoe up on his chair and began unlacing it. "Sometimes I think you hate the Marine Corps, Mom. Then other times I think you love it. Which is it?"

"What do you want for breakfast? I'll make you anything you want on your birthday."

"Which is it?"

"The Marine Corps has been good to us. It has provided security for us all. We've never been hungry and we've always had a nice roof over our heads. I have no quarrel with the Marine Corps. I do sometimes have a quarrel with what I think it's done to your father."

"Fix me some fried eggs once over light, bacon, toast and honey, and some yellow grits."

"Coming up," Lillian said, lighting the stove.

Mary Anne walked into the kitchen wearing her green bathrobe and slippers. On her face was a heavy residue of Clearasil left over from the bedtime toileting of the night before. Her hair was in pin curls.

"She walks in beauty, like the night," Ben quoted.

"Happy birthday, golden boy," she said. "Eighteen. That's old. That's real, real old. You're gonna be dead before you know it."

"What a terrible thing to say," Lillian said while frying bacon. "If you don't care about Ben's feelings, how do you think that makes me feel?"

"I'm sorry, Mama. I apologize. I know it must be awful being your age and having death staring into your face with every breath you draw."

"I have a lot of good years left in me, girl," Lillian said angrily.

"I imagine you have several anyway."

"Why didn't you wash your face and fix your hair before you came down to breakfast? A lady would never make her appearance until she had at least fixed her face."

"I kind of like it, Mom," Ben said. "Not many guys have a sister with a green face."

"The Clearasil needs time to work. Killing pimples requires patience. By the way, Ben, since women live seven years longer than men on the average, I imagine I'll be attending your funeral one day."

"Mary Anne, that's quite enough from you," Lillian said.

"She's just teasing, Mom," Ben said.

"No, I'm not. I'm serious. I'll even be sad, Ben. Even though you've spent your whole life making vicious remarks to me, I will try not to be amused at your funeral."

"Thanks," Ben said, laughing.

"By the way, I got a great present for you, big brother."

"Dad gave me his flight jacket."

"Of course, that means that the ol' cheapo won't have to spend any money on your birthday. I saved my tiny little allowance to buy this present for you."

"Your allowance is certainly more than I got when I was your age," Lillian said.

Mary Anne ignored her mother's reb.u.t.tal. Turning to Ben she said, "Dad's flight jacket will be good to wrap fish in or cover a body if we ever witness a murder."

"No one thinks you're funny, miss. No one in the whole world thinks you're even mildly amusing."

The kitchen filled up with the odors of fried bacon, eggs frying in bacon grease, toast in the oven, coffee, and grits bubbling in the pot. When everything was ready, Lillian took Ben's plate to a counter out of his vision. She opened a drawer, removed a box, then struck a single match. When she came around the stove, she had put birthday candles into the eggs, the toast, the grits, and lit them all. Lillian and Mary Anne both sang "Happy Birthday" as Ben blew out the candles that flickered over his breakfast meal. Ben knew that he would find candles in his lunch sandwiches and in his school books. Lillian had a genius for the small rites of celebration.

Before he left the house to walk the single mile to the high school, Lillian handed him a letter and told him to read it when he found the time. She told him it was of no importance but just something she wanted him to have. The letter was pa.s.sed with such palpable nonchalance and unconcern that Ben knew that the letter was very important indeed.

In his second period French cla.s.s, he opened the letter and placed it inside his book. He read the letter as another student in the cla.s.s did irreparable damage to the French language and a short story by de Maupa.s.sant. The letter was not long but Ben felt tears coming as soon as he began to read it. "My dear son, my dear Ben, my dear friend who becomes a man today, I want to tell you something," the letter began. "You are my eldest child, the child I have known the longest, the child I have held the longest. I wanted to write you a letter about being a man and what it means to be a man in the fullest sense. I wanted to tell you that gentleness is the quality I have admired the most in men, but then I remembered how gentle you were. So I decided to write something else. I want you to always follow your n.o.blest instincts. I want you to be a force for right and good. I want you to always defend the weak as I have taught you to do. I want you to always be brave and know that whatever you do or wherever you go, you walk with my blessings and my love. Keep your faith in G.o.d, your humility, and your sense of humor. Decide what you want from life then let nothing deter you from getting it. I have had many regrets in my life and many sadnesses but I will never regret the night you were born. I thought I knew about love and the boundaries of love until I raised you these past eighteen years. I knew nothing about love. That has been your gift to me. Happy Birthday. Mama."

When Ben walked into the Officers' Club that afternoon, he did not see his father at first. It took a long moment for his eyes to adjust to the dark. He could make out the shapes of pilots sitting around the bar, large shoulders and barbered heads silhouetted in the pale light that spilled into the bar from the dining room. The talk was loud and virile. The sound of ice against gla.s.s and crystal made a scant music as Ben tried to find the silhouette of his father.

Ben was dressed in a dark blue suit that Lillian had bought at a PX sale for ten dollars the year before. It had been a little small when she bought it and now the sleeves were high up Ben's wrists and too much ankle showed between his cuff and his shoe. His brown hair was combed into a moderately high pompadour and had the slick appearance that came with the overly ambitious application of Wild Root Cream Oil. There were white traces on the back of his hair where he had not rubbed in the hair tonic. His face had a quality of inlaid unripeness. He studied the shadows. All of them looked like his father and none of them did. Gradually, his eyes adjusted and faces materialized. In the far corner, he saw Bull and Colonel Hedgepath watching him, enjoying his uncertainty, his callowness.

"Congratulations, G.o.dson," Colonel Hedgepath said, rising to shake Ben's hand.

"Thanks, Colonel."

"Paige took our present over to your house this morning. Then she and your mother chewed the fat for about four hours. She called to tell me dinner would be late, so I decided to come over here and have a quick drink. d.a.m.n, it makes me mad that you're eighteen."

"Why, Colonel?"

"Because that means I'm eighteen years older than I was when you were baptized. It means I'm getting old."

"Sit down, boy," Bull said to Ben. "What'll you have?"

"I'll have a c.o.ke, Dad," Ben answered.

"That's not what I mean," Bull said. "I didn't bring you over here this afternoon to drink soda pop and eat pretzels. You're eighteen and that means you're now old enough to buy a drink. You ever drank before?"

"Just when you gave me sips of your drinks or beer," Ben said.

"Well, it's my job to see that you learn to drink like a gentleman," Bull said.

"I better give you a few lessons, Bull, so you'll know something about the subject," Colonel Hedgepath said.

"Hey, Virge, why don't you go under the table and bite hard on the biggest thing you see."

"I'm tired of chewing on your big toe, Bull."

"What do you want to drink, sportsfans?" Bull said, ignoring Colonel Hedgepath. "What would you like to drink?"

"Mom will get mad, Dad," Ben warned.

"You've probably noticed I'm shaking all over. I'm practically pa.s.sing out from fear," Bull said.

"Ben's right, Bull. Lillian is not going to like it at all," said Colonel Hedgepath.

"Virge, I realize that Paige has got a ring in your nose and a handle on your a.s.s. But some of us Marines are the masters of our households. Our word is law. I'm going to teach my eighteen-year-old son how to drink."

"It's almost basketball season, Dad. I'm in training."

"You just don't have the nads. You just got a terminal case of the yellow spine," Bull said.

"If the boy doesn't want to drink, don't make him drink, Bull."

"I don't think they serve lemonade, Ben," his father teased. "They might have a spare lollipop around."

The waiter was pa.s.sing near the table where the two officers and the boy sat. Ben called him over with an inaudible snap of the fingers. He knew that the eyes of the two Marines were on him; he also knew that he was in the middle of a test that had something to do with the tortoise-slow approach of manhood. He hesitated. He thought. Then he asked, "Do you have a menu, sir?"

His father and Colonel Hedgepath howled with laughter. But most of Ben's hatred and humiliation was directed at the waiter, who shook his head with a patronizingly bemused tolerance. Without waiting for his father's laughter to die, Ben lowered his voice and said, "Then I'll have a double martini on the rocks with a twist of lemon." He had heard this drink ordered at squadron parties when his parents entertained the pilots in their home. Instead of quelling the laughter of the two men who sat with him, it merely increased it. Ben noticed that other Marines were beginning to watch their table as the word of the neophyte drinker spread around the bar.

"Do you know what a double martini is, son?" Bull asked.

"Of course. It's what I usually have when I sneak out with my friends," Ben said half-snappishly.

"What's it made of?" Bull asked.

"Leave my G.o.dson alone," Virgil said to Bull.

"It's made out of liquor," Ben said.

"That's right," Bull said seriously, "you have done a lot of drinking. I guess I'm just the old doubting Thomas. For a minute I didn't think you knew what you were talking about."

"That's a real alligator you ordered, G.o.dson," Virgil said, winking at Ben.

"If you guys think you can handle it, I might let you have a taste," Ben said.

"I'm gonna stick here and nurse my gla.s.s of root beer," Bull said.

The waiter brought the martini to the table. He looked Ben over carefully. Ben fidgeted under the scrutiny. He tried to make his face look old but had no idea which expression he possessed made him look the oldest.

"You got an I.D., kid?"

"Sure, buddy," Ben said in his toughest voice, "I got an I.D."

The waiter studied it for a moment. Then said, "Is this the eleventh?"

"All day," Ben said.

"Happy Birthday, kid," the waiter said so that the whole room could hear.

As he picked up his gla.s.s, Ben saw his father rise to his feet and begin to speak to every Marine in the bar. "Gentlemen, please excuse me. But I would like you to join me in a toast to my oldest son who is eighteen today. He has just ordered his first drink and before he begins drinking it, I would like to wish him a long life, a wife as fine as his mother, and a son as fine as he has been. To my son."

The Marines cheered loudly. Bull clinked his gla.s.s against Ben's. Ben then lifted his gla.s.s and touched it against his G.o.dfather's. For the second time that day, Ben was near tears. He looked in the face of Virgil Hedgepath and saw that Virgil too was deeply moved by Bull's toast. Always, in Virgil's face, the ache of childlessness was writ in an astonished surprise that would attack his eyes, then loosen the muscles of his face. It was what made Ben feel extraordinarily close to Virgil. Especially now, as Ben sipped his first drink. The martini went down hard, burning his tongue and throat in its pa.s.sage. He tried not to wince or choke. He forced down a desire to spit the liquid across the table. He got it down, smiled, and felt a small tinge of wonder as an unfamiliar fire spread along his stomach. As he readied himself for the next sip, he thought that the flame in his stomach was the secret behind the mystery of why men wasted so much of their lives in these dark, forbidden rooms and why Lillian Meecham spent so much of her life worrying about Bull's love affair with "O" Club bars.

"How is it, big man?" Bull asked.

"I've tasted better," Ben said roughly, "but it's fit to drink." He took another swallow, thinking to himself that every line he had spoken was lifted without due credit from a half dozen different movies he had seen in his lifetime. The second swallow was easier. The third was still easier.

"I'd slow down a bit, Ben. That's a man's drink you ordered."

"That's why I ordered it, Virgil," Ben said.

"That's Colonel Hedgepath to you, mister," Bull said.

"I thought with us guys sitting around, Dad. You know, just drinking and talking. We could all relax."

"If you call me Bull, we'll be going to duke city."

Ben took a longer drink. "Hey, this is great," he said looking around the bar. "This is really great."

"Bartender," Virgil called, "another drink for my G.o.dson."

"What's in this thing anyway?" Ben said laughing.

"Liquor," Bull said, hitting Virgil with his elbow.

"This is great. This is really great," Ben said.

"How are you going to smuggle him past Lillian?"

"h.e.l.l," Bull answered, "we've got a party to go to as soon as we leave here."

"Then I wouldn't touch this next drink, Ben. You already look like you've had enough."

"Heck, Virge, I don't even have a buzz on," Ben said, giggling loudly.

"It's Colonel Hedgepath, son."

"That's to you, Dad. But to me he's just good ol' Virge. Right, Virge?" Ben said putting his arm around his G.o.dfather and hugging his neck.

"That's right, Ben. Ben and Virge. Drinking buddies."

"Hey, this is great, Dad," Ben said. "This is really great."

"You like it, eh?" Bull said.

"You know what I think, Dad?" Ben said, taking another drink of his second martini.

"No, what?"

"I think it's great. I think it's really great! Just sitting here drinking with the Marines. I think it's great. I think it's really great. Have another drink, Dad. You too, Virge. This one's on me."

Twenty minutes later, Ben Meecham, eighteen years old, on the brink of manhood, was carried from the Officers' Club of Ravenel Air Station on the shoulders of his father. When they arrived home at nightfall, Bull bore his son past his mother, his brother, and his sisters, past a birthday cake, and presents. Bull and Lillian had a long and bitter fight that night. But Ben did not hear it. He heard nothing until he woke up to a most disagreeable noontime the next day.