The Great Santini Part 45

"What's that got to do with it?"

"Because you'd have done it. Santini would have done it."

"Santini doesn't go around disobeying direct orders."

"You just did, Dad. Remember that you made me memorize the guard orders? I've always had trouble remembering them. But I never had trouble remembering the most important one. You deserted your post."

"I didn't desert my post. I was worried you would step into some deep s.h.i.t coming out here. You made me come out here."

"No, sir, I didn't."

"I thought you might be in trouble, Ben. Can you get that through your thick G.o.ddam little southern boy skull?"

"I thought Toomer might be in trouble."

"I told you Toomer could take care of himself."

"Yes, sir. That's what you told me."

"Is that Toomer in the car?" Bull said, looking for the first time into the interior of the car but looking through the front window at the silhouette propped against the door.

"Yes, sir."

"Hey, Toomer. How you doin', sportsfans?" Bull said, walking to the other side of the car and peering into the window.

"Jesus Christ! Jesus H. Christ! Is he dead?" Bull asked his son.

"Yes, sir."

"Well, that's a good way to ruin a flight jacket, sweet pea. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. You better take him to the hospital, sportsfans. You got it? Jesus Christ. I'll go get the sheriff and tell Arrabelle. Jesus Christ. Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you say something?"

"It wouldn't have made any difference, Dad," Ben said, getting back into the car. "It just wouldn't have made any difference."

Chapter 32.

Mess Night was a formal dinner, a rigidly proper genuflection toward the stiffest and most chivalrous origins of the Marine Corps and one that Bull Meecham believed to be the single most efficacious ceremony for stimulating esprit de corps that a commanding officer had at his disposal. It was a night when Marines could celebrate their ident.i.ty and their origins as Marines; it was a night to sustain and honor the transcendence of their history by a return to the essences, to the latticework of ritual that tied them to the brotherhood of warriors that had gone before them and the men who would bear the scarlet and gold in their wake. Mess Night was a testament of linkage, an evening that allowed for the lyrics of both form and ferocity. Mess Night for the thirty-eight pilots of 367 began at 1920 on the first Friday in March.

The aviators were resplendent in full dress as they drank c.o.c.ktails in the anteroom before the call to dinner. Part of the Marine Band from Biddle Island played light cla.s.sical music as the pilots mingled and took their first drinks. Several of the pilots had made a Coors run to the West Coast the previous week and many of the Marines were beginning the long evening of inst.i.tutionalized drinking by slowly sipping on a Coors beer. In the Marine Corps a pa.s.sionately articulate school of thought had arisen that Coors was the finest American beer; its unavailability on the East Coast made it de rigueur for any Marine aviator who made it to the Coast to return laden down with all the Coors an F-8 could carry It was an unwritten law in Bull Meecham's squadron that anyone who neglected to bring back a shipment of Coors from the West Coast would be court-martialed upon his return and probably shot.

There was caution to the early evening drinking, almost an abstemiousness, for the Mess Night that began with the dignity of a coronation often ended with the survival of the species as a major concern. Many of the younger lieutenants and several of the captains had never attended a Mess Night; they had only heard.

But in this beginning hour, there was only a glittering retinue of officers and gentlemen, a low and decent murmur of conversation, an uncommon restraint among the slim, muscular, seemingly invulnerable men who, slightly t.i.tillated by the light that could dazzle off cordovan and the understated correctness of the full dress uniform, seemed to Bull Meecham to represent everything that was right with the United States.

The wives of the 367 braced themselves for the uncertain homecoming of their spouses. They were neither invited nor welcome at Mess Night. Since its origins in the deckrooms of British warships, the Mess Night had evolved as a gathering of men. At the Meecham house, Lillian told Ben that if necessary he might have to ride out to the air station to drive his father home. Bull had promised Lillian that he would not get drunk, but she was not a young wife and she had heard such promises before.

At 2000 a drummer and fifer began to play "The Roast Beef of Old England" and pilots began filing into the dining room where gleaming candelabra reflected off both the silver service and the finely polished mahogany tables. But before any pilot entered the dining room, he made a last strategic run to the head, for the Mess Night dinners sometimes lasted over two hours during which time wine was consumed in a limitless flow. But one of the most entrenched traditions of Mess Night was that a man could not exit to relieve himself until the dinner was completed unless the president of the Mess granted permission. As President of this Mess Night, Bull Meecham had spread the word that he would grant permission for no head runs during the course of the evening, knowing full well that this one arbitrary rule would become a serious test of manhood before the ceremony was done.

Bull had gone over the menu with the chef of the Officers' Club weeks in advance. He wanted the finest roast beef possible; he wanted the wines to be superb. He wanted to throw a Mess Night that would worm its way into the oral history of the Marine Corps. His normal intolerance of affectation did not extend to the elegant symmetry of Mess Night. The ceremony itself was one which began in refinement, in a spirit of proper felicity.

He had issued a call to the most legendary aviators he had known in the Marine Corps, the ones who had combined uncanny abilities as pilots with the personalities of carnival barkers and exhibitionists. On the invitations he had sent out he wrote personal notes to the six Marines who were stationed as far away from Ravenel as El Toro and as near as Cherry Point. He had written that he wanted to show the sweet peas in his squadron what the Old Corps was like. He wanted to dredge up some of the old dinosaurs that Bull Meecham came up with in the late days of World War II. Three out of the six officers he had invited had flown in for the occasion and now occupied the head table with him. He had not told a single person in the squadron who he was inviting. Instinct told him that if Colonel Varney had discovered who the men Bull had invited were, then Varney would have done his best to cancel the whole event. But Bull felt an obligation to his men that they be exposed to some of the true wild men who still inhabited the ranks of the Corps.

The meal proceeded with a stateliness and underplayed grandeur. Bull had sent Ben out the day before to gather enough fresh oysters for the oyster c.o.c.ktails. The French onion soup was hot when it arrived, a rarity, all noted, at the Officers' Club. The head waiter marched into the room flanked by the drummers and fifers, rolling a huge roast before him. Stopping behind the Mess President, he cut a small piece of the beef and laid it on Bull's plate. Bull ate it slowly with all eyes on him. Finally he announced as Mess Presidents before him had done as long as there had been Mess Nights, "This beef is tasty and fit for human consumption."

When the dinner was over, the waiters cleared the tables quickly and bottles of port were brought out for the traditional toasts. After the gla.s.ses had been filled, Bull rapped a gavel on the head table for silence. He then rose and, lifting his gla.s.s, he said with feeling, "Gentlemen, the President of the United States."

All Marines in the room rose as one and lifting their gla.s.ses they said in unison, "The President," as the band played the national anthem. When the band had finished playing the officers took their seats. After a minute had pa.s.sed Bull rose again and, lifting his gla.s.s of port, this time he stared at Lieutenant Snell who was serving as Vice President of the Mess at the far end of the table.

"Mr. Vice," Bull said in a voice that rang through the dining room, "Corps and Country."

Lieutenant Snell stood and with his gla.s.s at eye level returned the toast by saying, "Long live the United States, and success to the Marines."

The other Marines, lifting their gla.s.ses, thundered, "The Corps!" and the band struck up the Marine Corps hymn.

The old hymn, Bull thought, as the band played "Semper Fidelis." In it were contained all the old poetry and stern cadences of what the Marine Corps embodied and embraced. It was a song that offered more gooseb.u.mps per square inch than any song he had ever heard. He mouthed the words to the song. Montezuma. Tripoli. And felt himself nourished by the plasma of letters and syllables that had come to denote a commitment to gallantry among the men with whom he had chosen to spend his life. In the room were close to fifty men who would die for this flag, this country, this service, and this song. It was a worthy song, and it could stir the embrasures and battlements of a strong man's soul.

When the hymn was over, the waiters brought coffee and Bull rapped with his gavel once again and announced, "The smoking lamp is lighted." Cigars were pa.s.sed around the tables, contraband from Cuba that had been commandeered while the squadron was at Guantanamo. Bull grinned and motioned for his guests to watch as he spotted Captain Brannon urinating into a water gla.s.s beneath the table as he carried on a conversation with the officers who sat across from him.

Then Bull rose to introduce the guests.

"Gentlemen," he said, "before we begin the fun and games portion of the evening, I'd like to introduce our honored guests and give a brief biography of each of them. I think the biography will explain why I invited these particular men to our Mess Night.

"First, on my right is Colonel John 'Blue b.a.l.l.s' Conners," Bull said, motioning his hand toward a thin, rangy man who had worn a constant smile the whole evening. "Blue b.a.l.l.s is one of the best dog-fighters in this man's Marine Corps. He is also one of the sloppiest, grossest Marine aviators ever to make the rank of bird colonel. I would like to explain his nickname. For some reason which I will never be able to explain a flight of four of us Marine types got s...o...b..und in South Dakota one winter and, sportsfans, you ain't never been s...o...b..und till you been s...o...b..und in South Dakota. The blizzard lasted for five days and being men not afraid to take a drop of liquor we proceeded to get as drunk as humanly possible. One of our companions lapsed into a state that resembled rigor mortis, but the rest of us just kept drinking. The snow kept falling and piling up in huge drifts around the BOQ where we traded war stories with some p.u.s.s.y Air Force types," Bull said, pausing for the derisive roar he knew would come at the mention of the Air Force.

"Tempers were growing short because Blue b.a.l.l.s had started punching out promising young Air Force pilots because he didn't like the fact that they claimed to have legitimate fathers. Well, one of the Air Force pilots bet John over there that he couldn't run naked around that BOQ through all that snow. John, a man not known for his moderation, started tearing his clothes off his body and before we could stop him, he raced out the front door and was in the snow. Now it was ten below zero outside and the snow had piled up in drifts of seven and eight feet in some places. We ran to the windows on the second floor and began a reconnaissance mission of following Conners around the building, 'cause we thought sure the boy was gonna die before he got ten feet. All we could see was the top of Conners's head charging through the snow like a plow, busting his a.s.s for the pride and honor of the Marine Corps. The boys in the Air Force started making bets about how long it would take for Conners to die out there in the snow, but we knew he had been drinking for three days and that the alcohol was acting as an antifreeze in his body. We also knew Conners wouldn't dare die and leave us humiliated in that Air Force BOQ. Well, on he charged around that building, disappearing from sight in a ten-foot drift on one occasion, freezing his skinny little a.s.s off, and kept on charging until he collapsed in our arms at the front door. His whole naked ugly body was as red as a strawberry, except for his two b.a.l.l.s which were the brightest blue you have ever seen. It was also on this occasion that we discovered that Blue b.a.l.l.s had the smallest p.e.c.k.e.r in the Marine Corps. Gentlemen, I present to you Colonel Blue b.a.l.l.s Conners."

Colonel Conners arose to a tumultuous ovation which he finally calmed by raising a muscular arm in the air to signal for quiet.

"Gentlemen," he said in a mellifluous voice, "your C.O. is the most notorious liar in the Marine Corps. It has also been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that he is a h.o.m.os.e.xual. He goes down on generals and statues in parks. The story he just told you is pure fabrication. There was only a touch of frost on the ground and what slowed me up on that particular occasion was the prodigious size of my member. As I raced around the BOQ, my member dragged a full three feet behind me as I ran. I finally just had to pick the thing up, hurl it over my shoulder, and continue to run. My nickname is not Blue b.a.l.l.s, as your lying C.O. a.s.serts. Gentlemen, my nickname is Python p.e.n.i.s."

Bull stood again, joining in the applause for Colonel Conners's retort, then, when the noise subsided, began to introduce his second guest of the evening. He gestured toward a swarthy, hatchet-nosed man whose face betrayed not the smallest nuance of emotion. "The next guest I would like to tell you about is Lieutenant Colonel William Blitcher, better known as Apache Bill to us old-timers. Apache Bill is a full-blooded p.a.w.nee Indian and the reason we named him Apache is because it p.i.s.sed him off so d.a.m.n bad every time we called him anything besides a p.a.w.nee. Apache Bill joined the Corps so he could screw white women and fly airplanes. He's a quiet man with a powerful temper. I'd like to tell a story to ill.u.s.trate why it's bad news to p.i.s.s off Apache Bill. When I was a new captain, long before I rose to the meteoric heights of light colonel, my squadron at Cherry Point, of which Apache Bill was a member, was simulating carrier landings on the runway and a senior captain was acting as the Landing Signal Officer, giving us cuts or wave-offs as we came in to land. Well, Apache Bill had a hot date that night with one of those monstrous things that pa.s.sed for a female in his eyes and he was anxious to land his bird and go spooning. Well, he came in for his landing, made a perfect approach, and much to his surprise was waved off by the L.S.O. Now, Apache Bill was not getting along too well with the L.S.O. anyway and being a man with a legendary short fuse, he circled around and, instead of making another pa.s.s at the carrier landing, decided to cut the L.S.O. in half with his Corsair. He came in low on a strafing run and would have chopped the pogue in half had the L.S.O. not prudently flattened himself on the runway. Well, to make a long story short Apache Bill chased that poor son of a b.i.t.c.h all over that runway for an hour with most of the base watching and laughing like h.e.l.l. And yes, gentlemen, there was a court-martial and yes, gentlemen, Apache Bill was found guilty. He was moved back two hundred numbers on the seniority sheet. One of the court-martial board said later that the board found him guilty for not catching the L.S.O. Gentlemen, I present to you with great pride and admiration Apache Bill Blitcher."

"Gentlemen," Apache Bill said when the tumult of his introduction had subsided. "I knew Bull Meecham long before he had his s.e.x change operation."

Even in the midst of the whooping and hollering following his opening line, Apache Bill did not change expression, did not give even a hint that his face was not a mold or the image on a coin. When the shouting stopped, he continued, "I love flying with a pa.s.sion, purple. I love flying with good pilots, period. I love flying with Bull Meecham because he flies a bird the way it ought to be flown. He disproves the old saying that there are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots. Bull Meecham is an old bold pilot and so am I. Since he always tells that story about me and the L.S.O., I will tell the story about how he got his nickname. Do you know that story?" Apache Bill asked the pilots of the squadron.

"No," they screamed.

"He was a first lieutenant and he was taking a little R and R with a real young innocent kid. They went to a beach in Hawaii and upon seeing all those broads down on the beach sunning their gorgeous, willing bodies the young boy said, 'There's a field of cows down there, man. Let's make like young bulls, run down there real fast, and f.u.c.k one of them.'

" 'No,' Meecham said after pausing for a moment, 'let's make like old bulls. Let's walk down there real slow and f.u.c.k 'em all.' "

Once again the full-throated hurrahs arose as the Marines began to cut through the membrane that enclosed the first half of the Mess Night and began to cross the threshold to where an inst.i.tutional wildness became the final confirmation of brotherhood. The Mess Night was bridled by stiffness and form only in the first hours; now the evening was moving quickly toward a more visceral, more wanton kind of tradition. In the voices of thick-necked men was heard a rising quality of debauch, the baying of a collective id.

"Before I sit down, I would like to tell you who the Landing Signal Officer on that field was that I chased for an hour," Apache Bill said.

"You're gonna get me in trouble, Apache," Bull said.

"It was Colonel Joseph Varney, U.S.M.C., and I regret to this day I didn't cut his legs off."

When Bull arose to introduce the last guest, he winked at Butch Brannon, then pointed to a ma.s.sively constructed lieutenant colonel who was pouring himself gla.s.ses of bourbon on the rocks from a bottle he had brought with him from the bar. The man was the largest and most physically imposing man in the room. He had soft places and was girdled with a ponderous stomach and huge b.u.t.tocks, but the weight did not diminish his formidability.

"The final guest here on my right is this puny, frail-boned creature who goes by the name of Rabies Odum. Now I want you folks to be very careful of Rabies because he has a few peculiarities which will get you in trouble if he takes a keen dislike to you. He is known to hate grunts more than any aviator in the Marine Air Wing. Every time he sees a grunt, he acts like a mad dog, foams at the mouth, and if not restrained, eventually bites the grunt on the leg causing gangrene and death. He was an all-American football player at Alabama the year before they started taking boys on the team. He shot down two enemy planes in Korea and is one of the best air support pilots I have ever seen. He's proud of his fat body and he considers himself to be the strongest, toughest, meanest son of a b.i.t.c.h ever to don the uniform of a U.S. Marine. The only way I got him down here tonight was to tell him we got someone in this squadron who can chew him a new a.s.shole."

"Brannon," someone yelled.

"Where's this Brannon?" Odum growled.

"Here, sir," Brannon said, rising out of his seat, egged on by the cheers of his squadron.

For ten seconds Odum stared at Brannon, silently measuring the man against old opponents. Finally he began to laugh and shake his head sadly. "Ha ha. This is the best you got, Bull? This musclebound abortion got me to Ravenel from the West Coast?"

Brannon straightened himself up, took a long drink from the bottle of port, set it down and said to Odum, "Sir."

"Yes, son, what is it?" Odum said, almost yawning.

"Sir," Brannon said, "you are fat."

Odum rose from his seat, walked around the table, grabbing a fresh cigar as he went, and pulled up a chair in front of Brannon. He straddled the chair backward and stared into Brannon's eyes as though he were a carnivore studying food. Brannon stared back and the two men hung suspended in a moment of unanimated hostility until Odum began to roar like a lion at Brannon. Again and again, louder and louder, Odum would unleash a thunderous feline howl, a cat sound, unbridled, fulminating from deep within the man until Brannon, a servant to the wishes and moods of his fellow pilots, began to roar back, and the waiters who were clearing silver and china from the table witnessed two Marines in full dress snarling and hissing at each other like animals.

Until Odum suddenly stopped and offered Brannon the cigar. Hesitantly, Brannon accepted and offered Odum a cigar from his section of the mess. Odum struck a match, lit Brannon's cigar, then threw the burning match into Brannon's lap. As Brannon extinguished the match, Odum began eating his cigar, taking large bites and swallowing the tobacco with the relish of a gourmand. Brannon, now bound to play out whatever mad charade that Odum wished, dutifully and with utmost gravity began to consume his cigar after he had carefully extinguished it in his water gla.s.s.

At this moment the gavel of the Mess President resounded through the room and Bull Meecham released all pilots from the strictures and controls of the formal Mess with these words: "Gentlemen, will you join me at the bar."

Now was the time of hard drinking, rising volubility, and the games of pilots. Bull was drinking martinis out of either hand. A projector started up and a stag movie flickered grainily on a wall opposite the bar. A naked woman smiling concupiscently at the camera fornicated with a donkey, a German shepherd, a Negro, and her own finger. Sitting at the bar, Odum and Brannon arm-wrestled while members of the squadron slapped down money on the bar betting on their favorites. Veins stood out in bas-relief on the necks of both men but neither arm moved more than two or three degrees to the right or left of the fulcrum point. Four bartenders moved in an unrehea.r.s.ed dance as they tried to provide drinks to the impatient Marines who screamed at them above the broadening dimensions of pandemonium loose in the Officers' Club. A line of young pilots were trying their skill at throwing down flaming hookers. They each ordered a gla.s.s of Courvoisier brandy, lit the fumes that rose invisibly above the lip of the gla.s.s, watched the blue flame until it was burning brightly, then, picking up the gla.s.s, they tossed the liquid down their throats. If they were good, a small blue flame would still be burning at the bottom of the gla.s.s when they slammed it down on the bar.

At midnight Apache Bill and Blue b.a.l.l.s Conners began wetting down a long slick black table with Coors beer and issued a call to all pilots with hair on their a.s.ses to prepare for carrier landings. A line of pilots began to form at the opposite end of the room, many of them removing their shoes and socks. Bull Meecham was the first in line, chugging what was left of his two martinis, then throwing the gla.s.ses the length of the room into the brick fireplace. Two dozen gla.s.ses followed his in a bright shower of crystal.

Several lieutenants rolled up tablecloths to act as landing cables and stood on either side of the far end of the beer-slick table. There were three landing cables that could stop a plane from rolling off the carrier deck into the ocean. Apache Bill found a huge summer fan which he placed at the very end of the carrier deck with the blades of the fan an added inducement for pilots to make sure they hooked onto one of the three landing cables.

"There's a bad f.u.c.king wind you have to land into, you bunch of Bull's p.u.s.s.ies," Apache Bill yelled. "If you don't hook onto the last cable, then you get a bad case of the chicken s.h.i.ts."

Captain Johnson stood on the chair with two napkins in his outstretched arms. Blue b.a.l.l.s had designated him as the Landing Signal Officer. Blue b.a.l.l.s himself stood near the middle of the table with a bucket in his hands; opposite him stood Apache Bill with another bucket.

Bull straightened his arms out behind him in the angle of an F-8, then ran as fast as he could toward the table keeping his eye affixed on the arms of Captain Johnson. The noise was deafening as he neared the point where he would leave his feet and slide the entire length of the table, hooking his feet into one of the landing cables before being chopped up by the fan. Right before he jumped, Johnson gave him a cut. He catapulted to the center of the table, his arms behind him, and shot down the table with extraordinary speed, his eyes filling up with the vision of silver blades waiting for him like a mouth.

As he pa.s.sed Apache Bill, a bucket of water was thrown on him. "Rain squall," the men screamed.

As he pa.s.sed Blue b.a.l.l.s in a blur, he felt the sting of ice cubes flung into his face and the voice of Colonel Conners warning, "Hailstorm," and still he watched the blades and felt himself pa.s.s over the first cable, and the second, and lowering his feet quickly his toes dug into the table and his feet hooked into the third cable right before he slid into the teeth of the fan. The third cable stopped him dead. He rose, blowing kisses to his squadron, then hopped down to watch the next pilot racing at full speed toward the landing deck.

At three in the morning, Bull ordered his entire squadron to line up single file behind him. Three of the men had pa.s.sed out and could not obey this direct if slurringly articulated order. When he looked behind him and saw a wobbling, pixilated ma.s.s of men doing their best to imitate a line, he barked, "Follow me, hogs. Follow your C.O. and that is an order."

Bull marched them through the bar, past the dining room, out past the barbecue pits, the tennis courts, and toward the swimming pool. He led them to the deep end of the pool, mounted the diving board, and, still marching, shouting the cadences of Quantico, Bull marched off the end of the board followed by every pilot in 367 and the three guests who had flown to Ravenel for the celebration.

At four in the morning, Bull Meecham arrived home. Lillian awaited him in the kitchen.

Ben awoke and heard the unsteady voice of his father raised in a song that in the history of late-night homecomings was a traditional chant of warning. Over the house, the song hung from the ceiling, each word roach-faced and menacingly out of season.

"Silent Night, Holy Night, All is Calm, All is Bright."

And then he lay there as the danse macabre of the demons of fear that lived in his body began in earnest. And he heard his mother's voice, the voice of Lillian, the voice of the prettiest girl in Atlanta, Georgia, toughened, forged into a blade, a voice of a lady-in-waiting who had sallied forth to duel with the mailed knight crossing a moat that separated them. He heard the voice of the woman created by a marriage that had its own surprises and labyrinths, its own shadows and secret minotaurs. The song rose in volume, strangely bled of Christmas or of celebration. Now, at this moment, Ben thought, this song is a summons to battle, and as his senses sharpened in the dark, he could hear the forces of wrath gathering around the house and he knew that this would be one of the bad times. He girded himself and knew this would be a conflict that would extend the thresholds of his fear of his father and his cowardice before the plowman who had granted him life. He would act bravely; he would force himself to act bravely. But he knew. Even brave acts could not allay the fear: the consuming fear that ruled him whenever he had to face Bull Meecham boy to man. As he lay in his bed, he heard Karen's door opening and the sound of small, frantic feet on the stairs. Karen is first down, Ben thought. Good for Karen. And then Matthew's door and Mary Anne's door opened simultaneously and he could imagine Mary Anne straightening her gla.s.ses and Matthew's fury contained in that small body as they ran to help their mother, as they ran toward the song that always meant the same thing. But Ben knew that the only child who could influence the battle at all was lying in bed awaiting the gift of courage. Then he heard his mother begin to scream at his father and Ben thought, "Don't, Mom. Don't fight him now. Let it go."

Then he heard Karen scream out, "Quit hurting Mama," and Ben was out of bed, borne down the stairs by the old Irish version of the divine wind, by the blood of the kamikaze, and he was running now as he heard Mary Anne cry out his name, and he entered the kitchen in time to see his father hideously drunk and laughing. He had Lillian pinned against one wall holding her by the throat as she tried to scratch out his eyes. Matt was holding on to one leg, trying to lift it off the floor. Mary Anne was biting his wrist, trying to pull one arm away from her mother's throat and Karen was. .h.i.tting his back with fists that could inflict no pain. Of the noises loose in the room, of the screams, of the words, Bull's laughter was the most ominous. And his eyes were wild with the drink. The dragon was loose in his eyes. And Ben came with momentum, driven by fear as he entered the kitchen as a foot soldier bound by the rites of a perverted chivalry written into the family's history. Each time he came to fight his father only one thing had changed: each time Ben was larger and stronger than he had been the time before. With his head down he drove one hundred and sixty pounds of sonflesh into his father's stomach. He pumped his legs hard and felt his father's weight shift and the man stumble. Bull's grip was wrenched loose from Lillian's throat and Ben saw Mary Anne and Matt fly off and away as he drove his father into the refrigerator. But then he realized that the moment of surprise had slipped away forever and that he could not take his father to the ground. And a new dimension entered the combat: a father's awareness of a growing son, the son as challenger, the son as threat, the son as successor, the son as man. But before Bull could turn to the business of Ben, Lillian came at him again, came for his eyes with a five-bladed hand, but he backhanded her and she slumped against the counter, blood spilling from her bottom lip, blood and tears commingling as in a sacrament. Then Bull turned on Ben and his hands went around Ben's throat, both hands tightened, gained control, and Ben was lifted off the floor by his throat. Then Mary Anne sank her teeth into her father's right arm, but Bull lashed out with his right arm, holding Ben suspended by one hand. Mary Anne crashed off the kitchen table, her gla.s.ses shattering on the floor, but she came back across the room, running blindly, going into battle against a blurred enemy. Matt received a slap to the face that spun him to the floor where he lay for a moment crying because he was small and because he did not matter and because he could not hurt the man who was hurting him. Then, for a second, there were Ben and his father, eye to eye, as intimate as lovers, and the fingers tightened on the throat and Ben gagged. Slowly, Bull took Ben's head and began slamming it into the wall. Once. Twice. Three times. Then the family was on him again, resurrected by the sound of Ben's skull meeting the wall. They came at him from four sides and they came at him with teeth and nails and tears and the fury of four small nations who have nothing left to lose. Bull dropped Ben and stood there, his hands down beside him. He no longer tried to fight, but acted stunned as if for the first time there was some illumination, some comprehension of the enormity of the resistance in a once placid kingdom. Bull stood there accepting the small hurts of the border skirmishes waged on four frontiers of his body. Ben saw the dragon melt out of Bull's eyes and there came a moment when Ben could have hit his father in the face with a fist that was a lifetime in coming. There was nothing to stop him and he could feel the fist tighten and the punch being telegraphed for eighteen years and he almost sang for joy and through the membrane of his hatred he kicked like a fetus and he prepared to hit the face and make it bleed. But he could not. He would have if he could, but he could not. Though he wanted to hurt this man like he had been hurt, like he had known hurt, he could not hit him. He could not hit the father; he could not hit the face of the father that would be the face of his father for all time.

In a wilderness of screaming and weeping, in a wasteland of his own creation, Bull shook off the inconsequential warriors that swarmed around him and stumbled out of the kitchen, down the back stairs, and into the night.

They listened to the screen door slam. They lay on the floor and wept. Mary Anne was holding a hand over one eye while Karen leaned against her shoulder and cried. Matthew's face was buried in his hands and sobs burst out of him without a sound. The weeping had an accidentally contrapuntal harmony, a symphony of grief in the blood-stained kitchen. For ten minutes they sat in their appointed places where they had been flung in the last moments before the furious exit.

It was Mary Anne who broke the silence when she called out to the blurs on the floor around her.

"Who's the biggest jerk of all?!" she shouted. But no one answered or knew how to answer.

The family did not recognize immediately the nature of the game.

"I said, 'Who's the biggest jerk of all?' " she cried out again.

This time the family was ready, primed for the question, and they screamed out, "The Great Santini!"

And Mary Anne continued in a voice that broke into fragments as she spoke, "Who stinks the worst? Who is a big dope? And who is made out of puke and fish feces?"

"The Great Santini!"

"Who wears a bra.s.siere and women's panties all the time?"

"The Great Santini!"

"Who's a Communist and a h.o.m.os.e.xual and probably pa.s.sing for white?"

"The Great Santini!"

Then they were laughing, the species of laughter that often comes as a bridesmaid of violence. It comes for no reason or from a geography of the spirit that is an untracked and foreign land. It was Lillian who began to laugh and it spread to her children and possessed them, a laughter one part hysteria and one part relief. It was an affirmation that the fight was over and that they had banded together, fought for each other, bled for each other, and that they would fight anything that moved, anything that lived, anything that entered the house of Meecham to wage war against a Meecham. Even if that thing was the source and orginator of that house.

As Ben was getting back in bed, Lillian appeared at the door of his bedroom and said, "Your father's not back yet. I'm getting worried about him."

"I hope he died of pain out in the marsh," Ben said.

"He didn't take the car, sugah. That means he's afoot. I'm worried that he pa.s.sed out somewhere in the neighborhood."

"Too bad. A real shame, Mama."

"I want you to go look for him."