The Great Santini (14 page)

After he swallowed the egg yolks whole, Bull spread a gluttonous helping of Crosse and Blackwell orange marmalade on two pieces of toast and consumed them with as much noise as relish.

"Darling," Lillian said," have I ever told you that you eat like a pig?"

Bull looked up at her and answered with orange teeth, "Yeah, you've yapped about that maybe ten thousand times."

"You still chew with your mouth open. If you hope to make general, you'll have to learn the table manners of a gentleman."

"That's one good reason not to make general."

"I'd sure like to be a general's wife."

"Well, it don't look like you'll ever be one."

"Nothing's impossible."

"Me makin' general is."

"Close your mouth," she ordered. "I can become physically ill watching you eat."

Bull pulled back from the table and belched, a low sour note from an old tuba. When Lillian failed to correct him, he screwed up his face again, worked his throat muscles and summoned an even louder burp, this one an octave higher, more musical, more evocative of the meal just completed. He saw her wince. When Lillian winced her whole body was affected. She looked up from washing dishes and saw the river full of small sailboats leaning toward the far shore and knifing toward the bridge which was not in her view. The day was bright, the water green, and the wind full as Lillian saw her whole kitchen window fill up with the September regatta, as though she were watching a painting that changed as she watched it.

"The sailboats are so beautiful. It looks like the river is full of white butterflies, Bull. They're having a race."

Bull walked to the window and looked.

"You mean those boats are racing?" he asked.

"Yes, of course they're racing. I used to sail down at Sea Island when I was in high school. Or rather my boy friends used to take me sailing."

"Hey," Bull said," now there's a sport you can get enthused about. Sailboat racing. Man, look at 'em go. My blood is boiling with excitement. I'm a veritable bundle of nerves awaiting the outcome of this race."

"You're such a peasant," Lillian said, going back to her dishes.

"Yeah! yeah! yeah!" Bull said, walking toward the living room with the morning paper. "Finish the dishes."

Whenever Bull left a room it was a natural reflex for him to leave an order behind him. It was efficacious for an officer to keep the troops busy, he thought, and when he exited a place, he left a trail of assignments in his wake no matter where he was. He sat in his favorite chair and began to read the Charleston
News
and
Courier.
Already, he had heard the locals refer to it as the Newsless Courier, and he had immediately adapted the bastardized version as his own. Each day, Bull poured torrents of contumely on his morning paper. Lillian could hear him in the kitchen. The children could hear him upstairs.

"Hey, newspaper, give me the scores, would ya? Oh, here they are in the goddam women's section. C'mon, White Sox, get me some hits. Die, Landis, die, so the Sox can buy a decent center fielder. Hey, Mantle makes every catch look easy while Mays makes a routine pop fly look like his Vic Wertz catch in the Series. Ted, hit another one. Attaboy, Thumper, tell 'em you flew with Bull Meecham, too. Killebrew's picking his nose again. He's got two knuckles stuck up his nostrils looking for a lamb's tail."

After he finished the sports section, having checked the progress of the White Sox, memorized the rankings of the teams in the majors and the statistical leaders in the race for the three most important batting titles, he turned with reluctance and ire to the front page. He could not control the news, and the front page was a source of continuous aggravation to a man who wanted life to be cut into symmetrical quadrants and accessible frontiers. With a bellicose finger, he jabbed at a picture of Fidel Castro. "You bearded fag. I'd like to fly an F-8 to Havana, chase you down main street, and blow smoke rings up your ass. Oh, and McNamara. Cutting fat off the Pentagon budget requests. I can't believe my man, Kennedy, put McNamara in charge of Defense. Russia will attack us with everything she's got and we'll be throwing rocks because McNamara cut the fat. De Gaulle. De Gaulle," he said as if the word caused him physical pain. "Lord, why did you put so many jerks in the world at the same time?"

"Amen," he heard Lillian call from the kitchen.

"Amen," he heard Mary Anne echo upstairs.

"Get to work, Mary Anne," he yelled upstairs.

Bull got up to answer a timid knock at the door. Before him was a blue-haired, aristocratic woman, very small, elegant, and old. On first appearance she looked to be composed of various shades of blue and white. In one thin arm, threaded with veins in a kind of senescent bas-relief, was a basket. In the other was a brown paper bag.

"Good morning, sir," the woman chirped in a voice that reminded Bull of a small, extinct bird. "I live two houses down from you on the Lawn in the old Hall Mansion. I've been uniforgivably derelict for not having paid a social call before now, but my doctor thought I was going to die last week."

"That's no excuse," Bull said.

"I know it, and I might perish from sheer embarrassment. But no mind, I brought you a little gift to repair the damage," she said, handing him the paper bag.

Bull peered into the bag unconfidently, paused for a moment, then said," Ma'am there's nothing I like better than zucchini."

"Sir, I'm delighted to hear it, and on my next social visit, I promise to bring you some. That's okra."

Bull threw his head back, laughed, then invited the woman inside. "C'mon in and set a spell, honey," he said in an exaggerated southern accent.

"I thought you'd never ask. I'm perishing in this heat. My name is Earline Grantham, sir. Who are you?"

"They call me Bull Meecham, ma'am. I'm a colonel out at the air station."

"I heard you were a military family. Word travels around fast in this neighborhood. So you, Mr. Bull, are a Marine officer."

"A fighter pilot, ma'am. Best one in the Corps. What was your name again, ma'am? I didn't catch it the first time."

"Mrs. Earline Grantham."

"Earline, eh," Bull grinned. "It always tickles me, these names you southerners come up with. Earline, eh. It sounds like something you put in your crankshaft."

Mrs. Grantham had pulled some knitting from her basket and the click of needles, like the rubbing of the smallest of bones, entered the conversation. "Earline was my grandmother's name, sir," the woman answered. "Is Bull a family name?"

"Ha, ha, Earline, buddy, you're O.K. Hey, Lillian," he called to the kitchen," c'mon out here and meet my new buddy."

"Just a sec, sugah. Let me dry my hands and I'l be right out."

"My grandfather was a military officer, Colonel. A major. He died for the Gray at Antietam."

"No kidding. My great-grandfather might have killed him."

"Then your great-grandfather fought for the Union, I surmise."

"He fought for the winners. I surmise that your grandpa was picked off while fighting for the losers."

"My grandfather died nobly for a cause in which he deeply believed."

"My ol' granddoodle got drafted."

"Where are you from, Colonel?"

"Windy City, U.S.A. The Hog Killer of the World. Shycago, Illinois."

Mrs. Grantham nodded her head," I find that easy to believe."

"Let me get my wife out here, Early. I married a grit during the war and her great-grandfather got his behind shot off fighting for the losers too. You would have a lot to talk over."

But Lillian was already entering the room, closing the door to the dining room lightly as she came. She swept past her husband and with elaborate gestures that seemed natural on her, she grasped Mrs. Grantham's hand and introduced herself. "Hello, I'm Lillian Meecham. So very happy to meet you."

"You are such a beauty, child. You remind me of myself when I was younger."

"Did you hear that, sugah?" she said turning toward Bull. "Did you ever meet a sweeter thing in your life? But I'm not pretty at all. I just have my mother's strong features and I'm good with makeup."

"Honey, I know women who are artists with makeup and still are ugly as homemade sin."

"You're so sweet to say that."

"My name's Earline Grantham, Lillian. I was telling your husband, here, the strange man with the given name of an animal, that I live in the old Hall Mansion two houses down, the one by Peterkin Landing. I would have come sooner to visit, but I've been feeling under the weather. I brought you this present," she said handing Lillian the bag of okra.

"Well, bless your heart. Okra. There is nothing that the colonel and I love more than okra. Fried, boiled, baked, or raw. We could eat okra and nothing else."

"I thought it was squash," Bull said.

"Honey, isn't it time for you to inspect the children's rooms? Why don't you go on up and Earline and I will chitchat about women's things."

"Sure. Well, Early, it was good meeting you."

"A pleasure to meet you too, sir."

"C'mon back to the old Meecham Mansion any time you want to," he said, ascending the stairs with an ursine heaviness, his footsteps an intentional warning to his children.

In his bedroom, the colonel dressed in his fatigues, laced up his field boots, pulled a pair of clean white gloves out of his top drawer, aligned his belt, then found his swagger stick on his closet shelf. Before he left his room, he turned on the small phonograph wedged beneath his night table and laid the needle down on the only record in sight. "Ten-hup," he bellowed to his children as the first cataclysmic strains of the Marine Corps hymn reverberated through the upstairs rooms. "All troops report to their stations immediately. That is an order. I repeat. All troops report to their stations immediately."

Ben grabbed a pile of clothes and stuffed them under the mattress of his bed, smoothing the mattress with his hand to ensure that no lumps were visible. Then he repaired the envelope corners of the bedspread, pulling it tightly, until it stretched across the bed like a drumskin. He surveyed his room once more, then flung his door open, stood at attention, and awaited the coming of his father. When the choir of two-fisted tenors on the record were" proud to bear the title" Colonel Meecham entered the room slapping the swagger stick in a steady, tautological rhythm that seemed ominous, even predatory.

He analyzed his son's posture with slouch-hating, dust-loathing eyes. When he held inspections, the colonel's business was posture and cleanliness.

"Shoulders back," he barked. "Stomach in. Eyes straight ahead. Don't look at me, boy, unless you're going to ask me for a date. Get your back straight. Head back. Goddam, you've forgotten a lot in a year."

Turning away from Ben, his expression pained, condescending, as if he were performing an odious task among a doomed genus of animal, Colonel Meecham walked over to Ben's desk and rubbed it with a gloved forefinger. Then he examined the glove to see if any dust had soiled it; none had.

Next, he removed a glove and fished a quarter from the pocket of his fatigues. A new, shiny quarter selected from the pile of change on his dresser, the coin was designated to test the tightness of the sheets and blankets, to test how well the troops made up their beds. Ben had never seen his father use a dull coin for this ceremony. Bull flipped the coin above his head and watched it drop on the bed. It made an anemic, soulless bounce.

"You call this bed made, gyrene?"

"Yes, sir," Ben answered.

"You do?" Bull roared.

"No, sir."

"You don't?" Bull roared again.

"I mean yes, sir.

"You mean nothing, hog. The next time I inspect this room, I want that quarter to bounce up and put my eye out."

"Yes, sir."

Bull turned his attention toward the closet, inspecting the arrangement of shoes, the hanging clothes, and the shelves.

"Your coat belongs on the far left, followed by the shirts and pants. Not vice versa," he said as he opened the drawers of Ben's bureau. "Your underwear and socks are just thrown in this drawer. No order here at all, troops," he said flinging the socks and underwear on the floor.

"Let's check your military knowledge," Bull said, walking up to Ben. "Name all the planes I have flown in the Marine Corps."

"I don't think I remember them all, sir."

"I didn't ask you to think. I just asked you a question, sports fans."

Ben remained at fixed attention, his eyes not moving from a crucifix that hung on the wall opposite him. Then, in an unsteady voice, he began naming aircraft, not thinking of the individual planes, just letting rote memory do its work, these forgotten phantom aircraft winging out of his brain on their own accord.

"You missed two of them, but they were both trainers so it's not that important," Bull said turning away from Ben. Bull examined the crucifix. "Two demerits here. Jesus has got toe cheese. "The colonel's laugh boomed through the house. Walking to Ben's desk, Bull pointed at one of the books with his swagger stick.

"Look over here, hog. Is this a skin book?"

"Pardon me, sir?" Ben asked, blushing deeply.

"Is this a skin book? Is this a book you read to pound your talleywhacker?"

"No, sir. That's
Anna
Karenina.
Mom gave that to me and Mary Anne to read. That's a Russian novel."

"Of course it's Russian. I was just testo-testing you to keep you sharp. Take your eyes off me, mister. Do you want to get in my pants?"

"No, sir."

"Good. Now these novels, to return to the subject, which your mother has you read, are a total waste of time. They're not real. They have no relationship to anything tangible. They don't help you accomplish anything. Do you know, son, strange as it may seem, what is the best book I've ever read?"

"No, sir."

His father paused, and looked around as if he was unwilling to let this priceless shard of information fall into the wrong hands. Finally, he said,"
The
Baltimore
Catechism.
It has all the answers. It's clean, concise, and it doesn't make your little earthworm hard. These novels you and Mary Anne read all the time are just so much bullshit. You ought to concentrate on the classics like
The
Baltimore
Catechism.
"