The Great Santini Part 39

"That's a nice looking donkey you got there," Ben said.

"That isn't no d-donkey, white boy. This here is Man o' War, the f-f-fastest mule in Ravenel County."

"Well that's about the ugliest mule I ever did see."

"That so. Well, I r-r-reckon you about the ugliest white b-b-boy I've ever seen too."

"How you been doin', Toomer. I've missed seeing you," Ben said, jumping up on the wagon seat beside the black man and punching him affectionately in the arm.

"Not so b-b-bad. Been readin' in the paper you some kinda shiny s-s-stuff now. You too much stuff to go h-h-hunt up Mr. Oyster this weekend?"

"We got an away game on Friday," Ben answered.

"Weekend only last one d-day for you?"

"I'm riding around with Sammy Wertzberger on Sat.u.r.day. There's church on Sunday. How about Sunday afternoon?"

"That's good."

"I wish you could come see me play tonight, Toomer."

"I ain't no fool, white b-boy. Only a crazy n.i.g.g.e.r would go struttin' in the middle of them shabby d-dressin' white folk. But show 'em some strut tonight, white boy. Wiggle when they want to see some w-w-waddle."

"I will, Toomer. Thanks for coming by."

"Now don't play too good so you think you got too much s-s-stuff to come see Toomer."

"You know better than that, Toomer."

"Get off this wagon, white boy."

"Get this d.a.m.n donkey out of this yard 'fore I call the police, flower boy."

On this night, the locker room had exposed nerves. Philip Turner vomited into a janitor's sink surrounded by mops and pails. Coach Spinks put out a cigarette by dropping it into a newly opened bottle of R.C. Art the Fart combed his hair for fifteen minutes straight, sat down to await the pre-game talk, then excused himself explaining that he had forgotten to comb his hair. Ben tied and untied his shoes without a single recollection of having done so. Finally, the whole team was dressed, had listened to Coach Spinks's pre-game harangue, and now waited on that trough of suspended time when each second seems weighed down by the glistening bullion of tension.

"We got to take the challenge to them," Jim Don shouted.

"Yeah," everyone agreed.

"Their a.s.s is gra.s.s and we're the lawnmowers," Art added.

There was a commotion at the locker room door and the manager's voice was raised in a shrill, f.e.c.kless protest. "Ben, Ben, where are you, Ben?" a voice boomed.

Mortified and more than slightly irritated, Ben answered, "Back here, Dad."

Colonel Meecham walked into the alcove red-faced, expansive, and ma.s.sive. It was the first time that Ben had noticed that his father had not changed into his civilian clothes since he had gotten home. Bull walked past several players to get to his son.

"There are college scouts from four different colleges in the stands tonight. Four colleges! You gotta gun it up tonight, boy. Those guys are looking for a scorer."

"Dad would you go back and sit with Mom for G.o.dsakes. We're trying to get ready for a game."

"I'm trying to get you fired up, Ben. There's people come to watch you, son. You ought to go for about forty big ones tonight," Colonel Meecham said, unable to contain his ecstasy.

"We'll help Ben get it tonight, Colonel," Pinkie said.

"Attaboy, Pinkie. I want all you boys to shine tonight. The largest crowd in the history of the school is out there screaming their lungs out. The cheerleaders are so happy they're ... they're ... they're jumping through their own a.s.sholes."

Ben could smell the heavy presence of bourbon on his father's breath. Beneath the flight jacket he could detect the slim outline of his father's silver flask. Since it was not a Friday and there was no happy hour, he had forgotten to keep track of how much liquor his father had consumed. But all the signs were there. Bull Meecham was approaching that prime meridian of inebriation that his wife, his sons, and his daughters, based on a grievously embattled history, had come to fear.

"I'll see you later, Dad," Ben said.

"These boys think they're tough," Bull said, slurring the last two words. "Bust 'em in the chops the first play of the game, sportsfans, and they'll know you mean business. You've got to draw first blood against a bunch of hogs like this. If you show weakness or fear, they'll chew you a new bellyb.u.t.ton."

"Thanks, Dad. See you later," Ben said, leading his father by the arm toward the door.

Bull whispered to Ben when they reached the door, "I want you to look like a G.o.ddam gatling gun, you're shooting so much."

"O.K., Dad. O.K. Go sit with Mama."

"A great ballplayer always has his best games against the best teams."

"I will, Dad. I promise."

When Ben returned the other players grinned at his obvious discomfiture at his father's intrusion into the forbidden realm of the pre-game locker room. Coach Spinks would not have been amused.

"I'm sorry, gang. Dad gets excited at times like this."

"You think your dad's excited," Art said. "Mine ain't taken a s.h.i.t in three days."

"Neither have I," said Pinkie.

"Boy, your dad's really tanked up," Jim Don said.

"No, he isn't, Jim Don. He's just excited."

"You don't think I know a drunk when I see one," Jim Don countered.

"Shut up, Jim Don," Pinkie said fiercely. "Don't talk like that about someone's old man."

There was a period of silence. Two of the players went to wash their mouths out. Ben leaned over to Pinkie and asked, "Where's your daddy, Pinkie? I haven't seen him at any of the games. Is he here tonight?"

The silence deepened. Ben felt immediately that the question was lanced with pain.

"He was cut in half by a skier's boat two summers ago," Pinkie said.

"G.o.d, I'm sorry, Pinkie."

"You didn't know," Pinkie said.

In the moments that followed Ben forgot about the game and concentrated instead on his uncanny instinct, his intuitive genius for asking the wrong question. This ability normally a.s.serted itself when he was nervous or did not know what to say or felt it was a social obligation to say something. Throughout Ben's life, he could walk up to a complete stranger, ask him a single question, and hit with remarkable accuracy the raw nerve. "Did you sprain your ankle?" Ben would ask. "No, I limp because I had polio as a child," the stranger would reply. "Where is your mother?" Ben would ask. "She died of cancer last night," would come the reply. The nadir of his distinguished career in asking the wrong question had come when he was playing second base in pony league and a boy walked up to bat who clearly had not been trained with an eye for style or cla.s.sicism. Ben yelled out in one of those rare yet complete moments of silence, a doldrum among the spectators, "Hey, why doesn't someone teach that kid how to bat!" Ben heard the gasp from the crowd and in one of those desperate moments of prescience before the trial by fire begins, he knew that the dragon of hurt was hissing out of an empty, grief-ruled place from the boy at home plate. "Why don't you come here and teach me how to bat, wise guy?" the boy said, holding up the stump of his left hand, the bone encased in skin and tapering to a thin, vulnerable cone. The moment had become a metaphor and Ben had found something pure and universal in that moment of exposure, and he carried the image of that stump in his mind as though it were a talisman that could ward off future errors of judgment. But it had not worked that way. If there was an affliction, if there was a secret that caused great pain, if there was something hidden behind a smile or protected by a grimace, then Ben could bring it to the surface with an innocent, ill-conceived question. And he had an instinct for preciseness. He could ask the absolutely worst question at the most inopportune moment. "Why didn't you and Mr. Smith ever have any children?" Ben would ask. "We did," would come the answer from a voice of immeasurable cold, "they all died in a fire." There was never a proper or adequate response to these answers. One merely withered.

The buzzer went off ending the girls' game and the voice of the manager squealed out for the team to take the court. Then there was movement and the borning once more of the transcendent fraternity that comes between athletes in the unseen moments when they move together toward the lights of an arena and the waiting crowd. Suddenly bursting into light and the vision of eight hundred eyes that had gathered to see them prevail, they spread out thoughtlessly, the layup lines forming without conscience, animals of habit. And each boy according to his own capacity drank in the applause that poured over his entrance. Ben bathed in the unction of his shouted name.

Bull and Lillian occupied the fourth row above the scorer's table. They sat with Paige and Virgil Hedgepath and several other pilots from the squadron. Behind them sat Ed Mills, Cleve Goins, Hobie Rawls, Johnnie Voight, Dr. Ratteree, and Zell Posey. Sighting Karen with her two friends to the right and beneath the scoreboard, Ben waved to them and winked as he retrieved a loose ball. He could not find Matt and Mary Anne in the crowd.

At the jump center in the middle of the court, a short, stocky, rat-faced boy came up to Ben, grabbed him by the belt, and growled at him, "You aren't going to score a single G.o.ddam point tonight, Meecham, 'cause I'm gonna be on you like stink on s.h.i.t."

"I ain't Roselle, Peanut," Ben answered.

"What?"

Peninsula was the tallest team that Ravenel had encountered all year. Their center, Sanders, was six feet five inches tall and both their forwards were over six three. Art looked undernourished and lost as he stepped into the circle to jump ball with Sanders.

Sanders tipped the ball to Peanut Abbott as he had done to begin every game in the whole season. Only this time Ben antic.i.p.ated where Sanders would tip it, left his position as soon as the centers were airborne, reached the spot where the ball landed at precisely the same moment as Abbott, gained control of the ball, and broke for the bucket. Abbott crabbed along beside him until Ben whirled with a reverse dribble, sprinted for the basket, and laid up the first two points of the game. The crowd erupted in a deep, sinewy exaltation of triumph.

Peanut took the ball out in confusion, angry at himself, and anxious to repair the damage and erase the embarra.s.sment. Bull saw Ben set up a trick that Bull had taught his son. Ben pretended to start back to the other end of the court for defense, but his eye was on the rattled guard, Abbott, who stepped out of bounds quickly and looked for the other guard who motioned for the ball near the foul line. The flow of every man on the court was heading for the opposite end of the court until the ball left Abbott's fingers and Ben cut back between the two guards, intercepted the ball cleanly, and in a single dribble scored his second layup in less than twelve seconds.

Then the game a.s.sumed a dimension of reality. Sanders began to work the pivot with a grace and instinct that was a pleasure to watch. There was an artistry to his shots and a lordliness to his moves. He scored on three straight turn around jump shots as the pace of the game quickened. Jim Don scored on a tap in. Abbott scored on a layup when Ben failed to get back on defense. "Defense, Meecham. You b.u.m," he heard his father scream. Philip scored on a long jump shot from the side. Sanders faked Art, wheeled around him, and soared up high for a dunk shot. Coming down court, Ben got by Abbott and drove straight at Sanders, who moved up to stuff the layup. Ben slid the ball of to Art, who scored an unmolested layup.

Toward the end of the quarter, Ben stole two pa.s.ses from the same forward and drove the length of the court to score. On both shots he was fouled by Peanut Abbott. Both shots were answered immediately by two arching, swooping hook shots by Sanders.

In the middle of the second quarter, Ben had a spurt where he played the game better than he had ever played it in his life, played it better than he was capable of playing it. He scored on three savage drives to the basket and on two of the drives he was fouled by Sanders. Then he hit on two jump shots and led two successive fast breaks where he shuffled bounce pa.s.ses to Philip and Art filling the lanes. To end the half, he took the ball away from Abbott on the dribble and scored on an ostentatious reverse layup after a behind-the-back dribble that had more relationship to the big top than it did to basketball.

But no matter what Ben did, his efforts were matched by the unmeretricious competence of Wyatt Sanders. He was simply as good as he had to be.

Several times he slapped Ben on the f.a.n.n.y as Ben pa.s.sed him going to the bench between quarters or during time outs. It was a meaningful slap and Ben understood the message it conveyed. There were times during athletic contests when two of the athletes became aware that the true contest was between them and that their team would win or lose according to the quality of their performance. When Ben's eyes met Sanders's eyes, something of worth was transferred between them. The relationship grew stronger as the game wore on and the sense of compet.i.tion between them intensified. By the fury with which they strove to win, they were honoring each other and celebrating each other's gifts. It was a feeling, a tenderness in the sweetly savage brotherhood of athletics that came very seldom.

By half time Ben had scored twenty-one points and was in the middle of the best game of his life. Sanders had scored sixteen points and was in the middle of one of his best. Calhoun trailed Peninsula by six points. But Sanders had picked up his third foul while trying to intercept a drive by Ben at the end of the half.

The strategy derived by Coach Spinks during intermission was sound and surprisingly so. He wanted Ben to get the ball and drive straight toward Sanders, trying to draw the fourth and fifth fouls. Without Sanders, Spinks felt that the Peninsula team would be demoralized beyond redemption. The key was to eliminate Sanders as soon as possible in the third quarter.

At center court for the second half tip-off, Abbott once more seized Ben's belt and said, "You aren't gonna score a G.o.ddam point this second half, Meecham."

"C'mon, get off it, Abbott. I told you I wasn't Rosie Roselle."

"You wait and see if you score."

Sanders easily controlled the jump ball, tapping it to the redheaded guard who played opposite Abbott. The guard dribbled it into his own back court as he watched for Sanders who was maneuvering to get free underneath. When Sanders broke for the foul line, the guard lofted a lazy pa.s.s in the middle. Jim Don antic.i.p.ated the pa.s.s and intercepted it on the run. Ben broke for the far basket. Jim Don's pa.s.s was long and Ben had to sprint for it. As he caught the ball, he had to shoot at the exact same instant. He threw the ball up softly, off balance as he headed out of bounds. The ball rolled around the rim and dropped out. Ben tried to regain his balance before he slammed into the folding chairs and spectators sitting at his end of the court. He gained control of himself by falling against a man and a woman, bracing his fall against their shoulders. At the split second he was turning around Peanut Abbott cracked into the back of Ben's head, his forearm shivering against the base of the brain. Ben flew over two rows of folding chairs and fell on top of a small girl who screamed until a host of arms lifted Ben out of the wreckage and off the girl.

Ben's vision had blurred and he had difficulty fixing his eye on a single point in the mayhem that had unleashed itself. One of the referees was keeping Jim Don from swinging at Peanut Abbott. The noise was deafening. As Ben tried to clear his head he had one crystal clear vision: his father coming out of the stands, ma.s.sive, enraged, and shouting words that Ben could not hear. Then Bull was over him screaming, screaming, screaming, "You better get that little b.a.s.t.a.r.d or you don't come home tonight! I'll beat your a.s.s if you don't get that little b.a.s.t.a.r.d! You hear me, boy?"

And Ben nodded yes. Yes. And the referee signaled that Ben was to shoot two foul shots for an intentional foul. He heard a warning being issued to Peanut Abbott and he felt the hands of his teammates grasping his shoulders and asking him if he was all right. Yes. Yes. He answered through a haze that was alternately too much light and too much darkness. Coach Spinks called time out to let tempers cool and let Ben collect himself. Bull followed Ben to the huddle. "You get him. I'm gonna stay down here on this floor till you put him on the deck." Then, Ben tasted the water that the manager held in a ladle. He poured it over his head. He splashed it against his face, closed his eyes, and jerked his head back when the ammonia capsule was placed by his nostril. "You all right, poot?" Coach Spinks said. "Yes. I'm all right." "Get that little pimp," he heard his father cry out near the huddle of players, "or I'm gonna get you."

He went to the foul line, his head clearing slowly. He missed the first shot. He missed the second one. Looking to the sidelines, he saw his father keeping step with him, following him down the court in front of the first row of spectators. His face was savagely contorted. "Get him. Get him," his father chanted. Ben intercepted a pa.s.s intended for Abbott, beat him down court, and laid the ball in. Bull had run with him, sprinted along the sidelines along with him, stalking him, stalking his son. "You'd better get him, G.o.ddammit, or don't come home." His father's voice entered Ben's ear like an icepick. There was not another voice he could hear in the crowd of four hundred. It was the voice of his besieged youth. The voice that had screamed out the death of enemy pilots in the Pacific. The voice that had swept down on retreating battalions crossing the Naktong River in Korea. The voice that could order a squadron from the heavens to set fire to Havana or to decimate a Russian fleet or to start a world war. But most of all, as Ben watched the violent figure of his father pacing the sidelines, it was a voice that Ben knew he would obey, that he was programed to obey, a voice that he dared not disobey. Sanders scored. Pinkie took the ball out of bounds and pa.s.sed it to Ben. "Get him, son." "Yes, sir," Ben said in reflex as he brought the ball up the court, eyes pinned on that rodent face of his enemy. As he neared Peanut, Ben suddenly flipped the ball directly in Peanut's hands, stepped aside, and with a flourish of his arm offered Peanut Abbott the whole court and an easy layup. Surprised, Peanut hesitated, then broke for his basket, not noticing that Ben trailed him and not noticing that a flight jacketed figure trailed Ben on the sidelines. As he reached the foul line, Peanut slowed up, wanting to make sure he did not blow the sure layup. When he left his feet, Ben Meecham was there. Timing Abbott's leap perfectly, Ben's shoulder cut the boy's feet from under him when Abbott was at the apex of his jump. Abbott somersaulted, wildly, dangerously out of control. He came down hard, his arm hitting the wooden floor first, then his head. The crack of a broken bone shot through the gymnasium. Ben was tackled by one of the forwards who flailed at him with both his fists and his feet. Whistles blew, both benches emptied, coaches sprinted to the floor, Mr. Dacus wrestled Jim Don Cooper to the court, and the man on the P.A. system pleaded for the fans to remain in their seats. Pinkie and Philip had mounted the back of the forward who had tackled Ben.

When order was restored somewhat, the referees called time out while Dr. Ratteree examined the injuries sustained by Peanut Abbott. One of the referees came to the Calhoun huddle, pointed to Ben, and said, "Number thirteen, you're out of the game. Go to the shower room. Coach Spinks, there will be a report made to the high school commission about this boy." Ben trotted down the sidelines toward the locker room. Before he could enter the doorway, his father caught him and clapped him on the back again and again. "That's my boy. That's playing like you were a Chicago boy. That's how a Chicago boy would do it. And don't think those scouts weren't impressed. They're looking for a guy with a killer instinct. That's showing guts, Ben. I'm proud of you, son." And then desperately, Ben plunged through the double doors, away from the voice of the crowd, into the anonymity of the dressing room where he sat on the wooden bench before his locker and cried out of shame.

For two minutes he wept, his arms folded on his thighs, his head buried in his arms. He did not hear Mr. Dacus enter the locker room nor see him sit down against the cinderblock wall. Finally, Mr. Dacus spoke to Ben. "How's the little p.i.s.sant?"

"I've never felt worse in my whole life," Ben choked out between sobs.

"Abbott's got a broken arm. I bet he feels worse than you do."

"I'm sorry, Mr. D. Oh G.o.d, I am so sorry."

"He looked like he was hurting pretty bad. The bone was sticking through the flesh when we put him in the police car with Doc Ratteree to go down to the hospital. You messed up bad, p.i.s.sant."

"Yes, sir. I know."

"What do you think I ought to do about it?"

"I don't know, sir."

"Well help me think about it, Ben. Calhoun is my high school. I'm d.a.m.n proud of it and d.a.m.n proud of the kids that attend it. It's well thought of all over the state because of the accomplishments of these kids. They've worked hard to make the image of Calhoun High respectable and worthy of that respect. Then along comes some sorry d.a.m.n p.i.s.sant who doesn't have the guts to tell his father to go take a flying jump when that father is just about as wrong as a father can possibly be. So because he has no guts, he breaks a boy's arm in the most unsportsmanlike display I have ever witnessed in my whole life. What you did, Ben, was low, base, cowardly, and unforgivable."

"Yes, sir. I know," Ben said.

"What do you think I ought to do about it?"

"Take me outside and kill me," Ben answered.

"No, p.i.s.sant. I'm not going to do that. But you are never going to partic.i.p.ate in another varsity sport at Calhoun High School. You have four games left in the basketball season. You will not be playing in any of them, nor will you be allowed to play baseball this spring. Do you think that's fair?"

"Yes, sir."

"I don't. I don't think that's a fair exchange for a broken arm. I think you're getting the best end of the deal."

"Yes, sir."

"I want to extract as much bad feeling as I can from you, Ben. Most of all, I wanted you to know how disappointed I am in you personally and how what you did tonight disgusts me as badly as anything one of my students has ever done. Take the uniform off. I don't want to see a Calhoun uniform even near you," Mr. Dacus said, walking slowly toward the door. Before he went back to watch the final quarter he turned to Ben and said, "See you in school, p.i.s.sant. It isn't the end of the world."

That night in bed, Ben heard his mother tiptoe in the room and sit down on his bed. He braced himself for one of Lillian's cold, puissant lectures to enfilade the dispirited citadel of his self-respect. He waited for her anger to come in fusillades of outraged motherhood, smothering southern plat.i.tudes, and Catholic theology. Her stare impaled him through the dark. But she said nothing. She merely groped until she found his hand. Then she just held it. Nothing more.

Chapter 28.

On the Sat.u.r.day after the Peninsula game, Sammy Wertzberger drove up in front of the Meecham house driving a 1959 Fleetwood Cadillac. He honked his horn twice and waited until Ben rushed through the front door, bounded down the stairs, and entered the pa.s.senger side of the car. The Big APE radio from Jacksonville was turned to such a high volume that Ben did not hear the first three sentences Sammy spoke to him after he was in the car. Finally, Ben leaned over and turned the volume k.n.o.b.

"I said Dad let me have the big Jew canoe tonight," Sammy said, cackling his high-pitched laugh.

"Why do you call it that, Sammy?"