The Great Santini Part 7

Bull Meecham pulled into the driveway of the house. Matt leaped from the car and sprinted to the other side of the house, the laughter of his family following him. Then for a moment, Lillian and her children sat quietly, stunned by the size and majesty of the house.

"Bull, the last time you chose a house for the family," Lillian said, "it was so small a family of fleas would have been cramped to distraction. But this ..." She leaned over and kissed him on the neck. "It's beautiful, sugah."

"No," Bull said wistfully. "It's a southern mansion just like you always wanted to live in. It belongs to a man from Chicago who is gonna retire here in two years. He heard that the Chi-city kid needed a house and he cut fifteen big ones off the monthly rent. He knew I was cla.s.s and would take good care of the house. I probably reminded him of Rhett Butler."

As Lillian wandered about the empty rooms of the house carefully making mental notes about furniture placement and room arrangement, Colonel Meecham herded his children to the front porch for a morale check. Mary Anne and Karen sat on the fourth step leading up to the front door; directly behind them sat Ben and Matthew. With his hands placed behind his back, Bull paced in front of them, clearing his throat and gathering his thoughts for the traditional moving day speech. The sun was fully up now and the heat of the August day was beginning to a.s.sert itself with a blood-thickening power. Bull unzipped his flight jacket but did not take it off. In his right hand he carried a swagger stick which occasionally he slapped against his left palm, punctuation marks for the thoughts that crowded and strutted invisibly within him. Finally, he began to speak.

"At ease, hogs," he began. "I want you to listen and listen good. We have bivouacked all night and arrived at our destination, one Ravenel, South Carolina, at approximately 0800 hours, twenty minutes before your commanding officer had planned. Now I have listened to you hogs bellyache about moving to a new town ever since I arrived home from the Med cruise. This said bellyaching will end as of 0859 hours and will not affect the morale of this squadron henceforth. Do I make myself clear?"

His children nodded their agreement with expressionless eyes. The swagger stick slapped against Bull's hand in ten second intervals.

"Your C.O.'s philosophy has always been this: If a little s.h.i.t comes into your life, pretend that it's milk chocolate. It just means that you have to bear down a little bit, reach way down there in that place where the guts reside, dig in, and say to yourselves, There's nothing that can keep me down. Nothing! If anyone gets in your way, you run him down. If anyone thinks they're better than you, you step all over him until he looks like the Graumann Chinese Theater. Now, I know it's rough to leave your friends and move every year. At least it would be rough for other kids. But you," he said, his eyes meeting the eyes of every child, "you are different. You are Marine kids and can chew nails while other kids are sucking on cotton candy. Marine kids are so far ahead of other kids that its criminal. Why? Because of discipline. You've had discipline. You may resent it now, but one day you're going to look back at your ol' Dad and say I owe it all to him. If he had kicked my b.u.t.t a few more times no telling how far I could have gone in life. You hogs have one more advantage that I have not mentioned, but I will mention at this time. It gives you the edge over even Marine kids and that advantage is this: you are Meechams. Now a Meecham has got more goin' for him than any other animal I know. A Meecham is a thoroughbred, a winner all the way. A Meecham gets the best grades, wins the most awards, excels in sports, is the most popular, and is always found near the top no matter what endeavor he undertakes. A Meecham never gives up, never surrenders, never sticks his tail between his legs, never gets weepy, never gets his nose out of joint, and never, never, never, under any circ.u.mstance, loses sight of the fact that it is the Meecham family that he represents, whose honor he is upholding. I want you hogs to let this burg know you're here. I want these crackers to wake up and wonder what in the h.e.l.l just blew into town. Now just one more thing: just because a Meecham has more raw talent than anyone else, that doesn't prevent him from thinkin' about the Man Upstairs every once in a while. Yes, I think you know who I mean. Don't be too proud to ask for his help. I've got this feeling when it comes to favorites with the Man Upstairs, the Meechams rank as high as anyone. Even I myself get down and pray to the Lord Creator every night because I realize that without him I am nothing. The order of the day is to help your mother police up the house. When I return from the base I want to see you hogs sweating blood. By nightfall, this camp should be in A number one order. Inspection order. Do you read me loud and clear?" Bull roared.

"Yes, sir," his children answered.

"Sergeant," Bull said to Ben, "dismiss the troops."

Ben walked down to his father, saluted him sharply, about-faced and shouted, "Dis-missed."

From the veranda above them, Lillian called down to her husband, "When are you going to check in at the base, sugah?"

"Why don't I wait till Monday? I can help unpack boxes and supervise the hogs."

"Oh, no," said Mary Anne to herself, but her eyes blazed up to her mother in a silent entreaty.

"Our marriage can't survive your staying around here to help, Bull. No, you are banished from this house until late this afternoon. You remember what happened last time. Your fuse is too short on moving day. You check in and we'll take care of the movers."

Each child breathed easier when the colonel grunted his reluctant a.s.sent. It was always better when Colonel Meecham was exiled under edict from his harried wife and disappeared from the house on moving day, for long experience had taught them that the colonel's temper shortened considerably in the chaotic milieu of unopened boxes and pictureless walls. On the last three moves, Bull had swaggered among the movers shouting out commands as though they were laggard corporals in need of KP. He caused enough resentment on the last move to stir an eventual mutiny that led the head mover to ask him to leave the premises if he wanted his furniture anywhere other than on the front lawn. It is often difficult for military officers to grasp the fact that the civilian world does not hold them in shivering awe. Bull's family also remembered that Ben had been the victim of his father's frustration at the end of the three previous settling-in days, receiving backhands on two of those occasions, and a semi-strangling on the third. Wiser now, Ben had told his mother that he would disappear for the day if she did not devise a plan to keep the colonel out of the maelstrom of this ill-omened day. He was not offering his body as a human sacrifice again just because his father could not exist in the center of chaos.

"Let's face it, Mom," Ben had told her, "Dad ain't exactly priestlike when we move into a new place."

At nine o'clock, Bull pulled a clean uniform from a clothes bag that hung in the car. He took the uniform directly to Ben and told him to prepare it for use by the sharpest Marine officer in the Corps. Ben took the uniform from his father, smoothed it with his hand, spread a blanket on the lawn, then laid the uniform reverently on top of the blanket. Then he pinned the ribbons, insignia of rank, and appropriate decorations onto his father's blouse. It was a ritual he could perform in his sleep, one for which his father had trained him from childhood.

"Are you going to wear your inspection shoes or your work shoes, Dad?" Ben asked.

"Use your noggin, sportsfans," Bull snapped. "I'm not gonna be waltzing through a field of s.h.i.t flowers this morning. This is a pretty important meeting. Do you get it?"

"Aye, aye, sir. Inspection shoes it is," Ben said. He walked to the front seat of the car and lifted a pair of shoes whose toes were covered by white sweat socks from under the seat. Gingerly, Ben removed the socks. He stared deeply into the gloss on the shoes.

"You scratched these shoes badly, Dad, the last time you wore them. You got to be more careful with these babies."

"I don't have to be careful as long as I have you around to shine 'em up," his father retorted, not gruffly, but as a statement of irrefutable fact.

"What did you do without me when you were sailing around on that aircraft carrier last year?"

"I got hold of a real ambitious corporal," he replied.

Under some road maps in the glove compartment, Ben retrieved a rusty can of cordovan polish and a thin silken handkerchief spotted with dried circles of polish. Out of the corner of his eye, Ben saw his father lift the uniform off the blanket, inspect the angle and position of the silver leaves, eyeing the placement of ribbons, then grunting approval without acknowledging his son. There are some things you can never forget, Ben thought. Finding a shady place on the veranda, he leaned up against a column and began to shine his father's shoes. Even though he resented the way his father took this duty for granted, he derived a guarded satisfaction from his custodianship of his father's shoes. With him rested the basic responsibility for his father's military appearance. The shoes were Ben's greatest challenge and most enduring joy. Bull was hard on shoes. Some Marines could make a good spit shine last for a week, but Bull's shoes would look as if they had been on a forced march after only several days' wear. Ben loosened the top of the can of Kiwi with a dime, wrapped the handkerchief tightly around his middle finger, put some water into the top of the polish can, dabbed a small amount of polish on the rag, then in a circular motion lightly applied the polish to the shoe. It delighted him always to find the mirror in the shoe's face, to rediscover the dark reflection released as the finger thinned the polish on the hard, good-smelling leather. Touch was the thing, lightness in the finger, the sparing use of water, never spit, the thinness of the rag, and a stingy use of polish. Once a shoe had a good base, it was a simple matter to restore its brilliance when the shine faded. As his finger moved, Ben watched his face appear as if he were standing over a clear pool; his eyes stared into his darker eyes, reflected in the black waters of cordovan. Looking up, he could see his mother through the large curtainless windows inspecting a fine old mantelpiece in the living room. He had never seen her happier with a new house.

For years she had dreamed of being the mistress of so splendid a house. She had been raised to appreciate anything that was old and to hold in mild contempt anything new or showy. Here, standing on the living room's rift cut pine boards and studying the carved spandrel ornaments on the staircase, she seemed to have come to a place long destined for her. The disrepair of the house did not bother her at all, the crumbling plaster, the peeling wallpaper, the faded paints or the columns; none of it made any difference. She had been reared to inhabit a house as fine as this and only the accidental liaison with a man in love with the Marine Corps had interfered with this consummation.

"They don't build houses like they used to," she heard her husband say behind her. He was dressed in his uniform except for his shoes.

"You look absolutely Napoleonic in your uniform, Bull. Yes, you're right. People used to take pride in their work."

"This whole country's going to the weenie dogs. To build a house like this today would cost you an arm and a leg. I'd like to take this same house up to Chi-city, put her down by Lake Mich and sell her for about two hundred thousand big ones."

"No, sugah, this house belongs here. Nowhere else. It would be sacrilegious to move this house to the Midwest. By the way, Bull, I suggest you put on your little booties before you go saluting the bra.s.s."

"Ben's putting a spit shine on 'em for me."

"Ben's a fine Marine, isn't he?" Lillian purred sarcastically.

"Quantico will be a snap after he's been with me for twenty years," Bull boasted.

"Darling," Lillian said, "anything would be a snap after that."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing at all. Now you run along and meet all the nice officers; the movers will be here soon and we have work to do."

"You sure you don't want me to supervise the hogs in putting away the ordnance?"

"Absolutely positive, Colonel."

Bull paused at the front door and asked Lillian, "How should I handle Varney, Lil?"

"I've been waiting for you to ask me that question."

"Maybe I'll wait till Monday. That'll give me some time to plan a little strategy."

"Get it over with today. Then you won't be thinking about it and brooding over it tonight. You're professionals. You can work it out just by being mature."

"No, we can't. It goes too deep."

"Well, you better try, Bull. He outranks you."

"Can you believe all the G.o.ddam luck? Of all the group commanders in the world, I get cornholed with that p.u.s.s.y son of a b.i.t.c.h."

"Watch your language, please. Little ears might be listening. What I would do if I were you is to walk in there bold as can be as though he were my best friend. You never believe me but more flies are caught with honey ..."

"Than with horses.h.i.t," Bull finished.

"Shame on you. Now go so we can start to work. And Bull. This house. You outdid yourself."

The colonel's face lit up with pride. He looked around the house unable to contain his euphoria over his selection of a dwelling. He saluted his wife smartly. Then he shouted to his invisible children scattered about the grounds, "You help your mother today and no yappin'." As an aside to his wife, he said, "If any of the troops give you any lip, there will be a summary court-martial when the Great Santini gets home."

"I've been handling the troops without you for a whole year, Santini, and I've done a darn good job of it."

"They're a little ragged, but I'll whip 'em into shape."

"That's what I'm afraid of."

"You don't think I can handle 'em, Lil?" he asked darkly.

"No, I think you can, Bull. That's what I'm afraid of. How you'll handle them."

Colonel Meecham pulled the station wagon out of the driveway. It was caked with the night dirt of Georgia and South Carolina. His family watched him leave, then fanning out in well-drilled squads they set about a.s.saulting the long-standing dust from the recesses and corners of the ma.s.sive house. Armed with sponges, soap, brooms, and mops, they sweated together in the climbing August sun, working hurriedly before the movers arrived. Mrs. Meecham wanted her furniture placed in a clean house.

The movers arrived at eleven that morning, powerfully muscled, red-faced men who grunted officiously over the dead weight of refrigerators and air conditioners. In alternating currents of laughter and profanity, they journeyed time after time from the inside of the truck to the interior of the house, authentic beasts of burden accustomed to inflamed muscles and sugar-voiced housewives like Mrs. Meecham who thought a mover's only goal in life was the destruction of irreplaceable heirlooms and fragile gla.s.sware. Ben would catch s.n.a.t.c.hes of his mother's lamentations to the movers and smile every time he heard them answer in a peremptory "Yas'm."

"Be careful, sugah," he heard her say to the largest of the men. "My best china is in that box, darling, and I declare you are throwing it around like a shot putt."

To another, Mary Anne heard Lillian plead, "Sweetie pie, a man of your gargantuan proportions can wreak untold destruction if you're not careful. The treasures of my heart are in that box. Pretend you're carrying eggs. They ought to hire tiny little men to move the fragile objects and have ya'll giants move pianos and things."

In the middle of the move she whispered to Ben, "You have to watch movers very closely, son. They are brutes like your father. They are destroyers of beautiful things."

By three o'clock, the movers had laid out carpets, positioned furniture, hooked up the washing machine and dryer, and filled each room with the stencil-marked boxes that the Meechams would have to unpack. When the ordeal was over, when Lillian Meecham half believed that her personal riches were not reduced to dust from mishandling, and when the movers drove off griping about incipient hernias, the gears of the truck grinding against the humidity of the afternoon, the family was left with the task of getting the house into inspection order for the critical gaze of Colonel Meecham. For them, the day was beginning in earnest.

"All right, darlings," Lillian called to her children, slapping her hands together, "here's the battle plan. We'll concentrate on the downstairs. Let's unpack all the downstairs boxes and get them out of sight. We will hang the pictures, try to make things look natural, and hope that your father does not realize that the house is a long way from being in tiptop shape. Then you each will be responsible for unpacking the boxes in your own room. But you can do that tomorrow morning. As for now, let's get to the business of the living room."

"G.o.d, it's hot, Mama," Mary Anne said. "I feel like Dante."

"It must be a hundred in the shade," Matt added.

"Just think about being in a cool place. That always helps. Let's pretend this is our new home in Norway. There's a fjord outside and snow on the mountains."

"That just makes me all the hotter, Mama," Karen said. "Let's go for a swim at the base pool and do this later."

"Can't do it, little sister," Ben said. "G.o.dzilla will be back at six."

"Ben," his mother warned.

They began to unpack the boxes that contained the accoutrements of the living room. Ben emptied one box that held ashtrays from j.a.pan, four statues of Buddha in various postures and degrees of corpulence, six oriental silk screens, and two camel seats from Morocco. The room was already studded with five sets of bra.s.s candlesticks from Taiwan. On one wall was a large painting of a Seine river scene which Bull had bought while drunk in Paris. Soon the room was piled with goatskin rugs from Lebanon, richly embroidered blankets from Arabia, Libyan tapestries, and swords from Toledo crossed over a coat of arms. In the center of the room, fronting a large, overstuffed sofa, was a large bra.s.s table with mahogany legs and a single oriental letter embossed in its center.

"What does that c.h.i.n.k letter mean, Mama?" Matthew asked.

"It means that this table is a piece of c.r.a.p in Chinese," Mary Anne answered.

"I don't know, Matt," his mother answered. "Your father picked it up when he was overseas one time."

"Ol' Wes.p.a.c housing," Mary Anne sniffed. "Nothing is so tacky as this junk Marines pick up when they're overseas."

"Some Marines know what to buy. Your father has some difficulty in telling the difference between treasure and garbage."

"No, that's not fair, Mama. Dad is an expert when it comes to garbage."

"Hey, Mama," Ben said, "half this house looks like the Teahouse of the August Moon and the other half looks like A Thousand and One Nights."

"We don't have anything from America," Karen said, as though she were seeing her family's possessions for the first time.

"Dad's taste is so terrible," Mary Anne announced.

"Yes," her mother replied, "but he thinks the things he buys are beautiful and we don't want to hurt his feelings."

"I don't mind hurting his feelings," Mary Anne said. "Besides, we've got enough stuff from China to make me think I've got slanty eyes, Mama. We ought to get something to remind the little children of this family that we are American. A couple of c.o.ke bottles or something. Maybe a box of Hershey bars."

"I've told kids that I spoke Chinese before I spoke English and they believed me after I showed them the house," Ben said.

"Did they ask you to prove it?" Lillian asked while cutting some masking tape from a box.

"Sure," he answered. "I just recited a few prayers at the foot of the altar. Introibo and Altare Dei. Poor ol' Protestants don't know any better."

"Ben, do you remember that time I told Jamie Polk you only spoke Latin and that was the only language Catholic boys were allowed to speak? Every time he would ask Ben a question, Ben would hit him with a line from the Confiteor."

"Shame on you both. It's not something I would be proud of."

They emptied the boxes with the expertness of four straight years' experience. Everything had a place, Mrs. Meecham kept reminding her children, everything belonged somewhere. Linens were placed on closet shelves. China was dusted and neatly stacked in a gla.s.s-fronted cabinet; the silverware was filed away in the kitchen drawers nearest the sink. The kitchen began to rattle with implements. Matt and Karen hung pots and pans on nails in the pantry. Slowly, the boxes downstairs began to empty and Ben piled them in the backyard where they lay like the discarded sh.e.l.ls of reptiles.

Order was drawn from chaos by cunningly applied laws tested on previous moving days. Some boxes were stacked in closets, others were hidden in the attic. The downstairs began to shape up at about the same time that Lillian sensed her children could take no more.

Lillian walked to a box in the front hall stenciled "shrine." Always, in every move, she unpacked this box. She did not allow her children to touch it. In the box, carefully wrapped, was a crucifix, a slender graceful icon of the Virgin Mary, a smaller statue of Michael the Archangel standing astride a fallen angel whose face was swollen with fear, two small candlesticks, a box of milk white candles, a small font for holy water, and rosary beads her husband had given her when she converted to Catholicism. Finally, she removed a plastic model of an F-8 Crusader, paused to fix a misplaced decal with a small application of spit, then set it down in a window ledge.

She had chosen the location of her shrine the moment she entered the door of her new home. It was in the vestibule underneath the stairway, to the left of the front door. She set up a card table which she covered with a filigree lace tablecloth from Florence. The crucifix she hung from the wall, fascinated, as she always was, by the realism of the tiny nails lodged in the crockery feet of Jesus. Next, she twisted the candles into the small bra.s.s holders, filled the font with stale holy water, put a small oriental rug in front of the altar, and positioned Michael strategically to the far left. Finally, she placed Mary directly below her crucified son. At her feet, she placed the airplane Bull Meecham flew.

Behind her, the children gathered, watching each ritualistic step in the installation of the shrine.

Mary Anne whispered to Ben, "Oh, Jesus. Here we have the Lady of the Fighter Pilot again. Why don't you tell Mom that it's a bit much?"

"Why don't you tell her, big b.a.l.l.s?" Ben whispered back.

Before Mary Anne could answer, Lillian motioned for her children to come to the vestibule. "Let's say a prayer, thanking the Blessed Mother for a safe trip."

The children knelt while Lillian lit the candles. Then she began to pray aloud and Ben, her son, had an image of her prayers floating light as pollen into the ear of G.o.d.

Chapter 6.

Oleander bushes flanked the road leading up to the main gate of the Ravenel Marine Air Station. Colonel Meecham watched as an F-8 lifted off an unseen airway, cleared the treeline, thundered eastward, accelerating and rising in a clean parabola. As Bull's eyes followed the plane, he had an old feeling come over him and he knew he wanted to climb into a jet very soon. He heard the afterburner of the jet kick off, the plane bank to the right and fade like a sliver of light into a blue sky. The feeling was a thirst, a thirst borne of time, of memory, of blood; an almost diabetic thirst that afflicted him whenever he pa.s.sed a long period of time without flying. He had not flown in the month he had been home and he felt this abstinence in his mouth and bones.

Pulling up to the gate, Bull studied the young PFC who stared at the unfamiliar b.u.mper sticker on the front of the car. The dust from the trip and the dried b.u.t.terfly parts made it difficult to decipher. Finally, the guard looked into the car and spied the silver leaves on Bull's collar. Gracelessly, the PFC pumped a salute. Instead of returning the salute, Bull stopped the car completely and stared with visible truculence at the guard who held his salute as rigidly as some umpires who call strikes on batters with exaggerated formality. Bull spoke to the boy in a frozen, humorless voice.