The Great Santini (15 page)

His father did a right face, walked briskly to the doorway, and ran his finger along the doorjamb. His finger was black with dirt.

"He's probably going to wipe my behind to make sure there's no dust up my rectum," Ben thought, again wishing he had the guts to think aloud but knowing that an elaborately structured sense of self-preservation controlled whatever demonic persona within him dreamed up these things to say, heavy with both wit and the seeds of fatality.

Colonel Meecham stood before Ben with a look of incredulity spreading across his face, as if this dirt, this soil of the doorjamb, was somehow a sign that all systems had failed, that some fatal flaw lay hidden in the soul of the entire army. Bull held his disbelieving grimace for a full ten seconds, staring at his finger as though a stigma had formed on his dust-violated digit.

"I'm not believing this, hog, I simply am not believing this. Tell me this is not dirt, hog," he said, putting his finger up between Ben's eyes. "Go ahead and tell me it's not dirt."

"It's not dirt, sir," Ben answered.

"Well, what is it, gyrene?"

"It's blood, sir."

"Blood?" his father said, his frame tightening, attuned to disrespect. "You better not be screwin' with me, troops."

"Sir, a Navy pilot was in the room yesterday and I heard him say, 'Colonel Bull Meecham of the United States Marine Corps is the biggest son of a bitch in the armed forces.' "

His father stared at him, his demeanor blinked on and off, between disbelief and outrage. "And what did you say to him, hog?"

"I didn't say anything, sir. I just beat the hell out of him."

"Well, good man. Good man. You pass inspection with flying colors."

"Look, Mary Anne," Ben answered," my one goal this year is to survive without him mopping the floor with me. I'll play his little games as long as his fists don't bounce off my head every night. It looks to me like you're going to have to learn the same thing after this morning's exhibition."

"He just yelled. He didn't hit. I just happen to think his games are jejune."

"What does 'jejune' mean?" Ben asked.

"Poor dope. Poor jock of a brother. You've been practicing basketball for so long, your brain has atrophied. I'm getting more and more brilliant, while you're getting a better hook shot. When I'm giving my Nobel Prize speech in Stockholm, Benny-Poo, I'll let you stand behind me to throw up a couple of hook shots."

"Just tell me what 'jejune' means.

"You should know. Karen was born at Camp Jejeune."

"Very funny."

"You look it up. I learned it by reading and preparing myself for the production of great literature. So you do the same."

"No, I am going to learn it the easy way," Ben said tackling Mary Anne and pinning her to the bed. "You are going to tell me or I'm going to sit on your head all day."

Ben pinned Mary Anne's arms with his knees and removed her glasses very gently. "Those spectacles have more glass in them than the telescope at Mount Palomar."

"I'm going to spit in your face if you don't let me up."

"Just tell your favorite brother what the word 'jejune' means."

"I'll use it in a sentence, bully. 'Ben "Pimple-face" Meecham often acts jejune when he forces his charming sister to tell him the meaning of words.'"

"That's not good enough, charming sister."

Mary Anne looked toward the open door, smiled at her brother, then yelled," Hey, Mom, Ben's trying to screw me."

Ben clapped his hand over her mouth and listened for the drumming of avenging feet on the stairs. When he turned back to Mary Anne, she was laughing through his hand.

"Are you trying to get me killed, Mary Anne?"

"Well, it is a little sicko-sexual for you to be sitting on top of me like this. I feel like puking."

"Why, just because I'm sitting on you?"

"No, Ben, I just remembered the words of a great man. 'I didn't say anything, sir, I just beat the hell out of him.'"

"I'm playing the game. You notice that I came out of that one with no broken bones."

"He'll get you. He always gets you," his sister said.

*
          
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*

Lillian was talking. "If you can send that girl on Monday I would sure appreciate it, Earline."

"She's wonderful. Hard-working, doesn't drink, and is honest as the day is long."

"And you're sure she'll come?"

"She'll be here. Good-bye, Colonel. The pleasure was mine."

"Ya'll come back, you heah?" Bull mocked, but a glance from Lillian stopped his mimicry cold.

"I've hired a maid," Lillian said. "A squadron commander's wife needs one."

But Bull was not listening. He had walked to the end of the veranda and was staring at the dilapidated garage beside the house. Though the manic edge had lifted since the inspection, still the juggernaut of Saturday moved over him, the nothingness implicit in a day of rest, when his world lay fallow, and he suffered all his demons running within him, sprinters in a bottle. He called to Lillian to come look. "That lazy kid of yours hasn't put the basketball goal up yet. Tell him to get on it before I bat him in the head."

Lillian, who had her strategies and moved from one to another with instinct her only guide, ignored her husband's grievance. She said, "A squadron commander's wife needs a maid."

An hour past dawn on the following Monday, a thick, grandly muscled woman arrived on the back steps of the Meecham house and waited for the sleeping house to stir. Though she was barely an inch over five feet tall, her arms were massive with thick, knotted biceps and her forearms were threaded with protruding veins and hard sinew. She had the appearance of a displaced and bespectacled Sumo wrestler. Her flesh was dark in the deep ebony of a lowcountry black. As she waited, she sat perfectly still watching the river. Her expression was tranquil, indecipherable. The lines in her face were in those regions where sorrow had tracked its passage.

The woman was sitting on the back steps when Bull Meecham hurried out the back door. He was on his way to the air station for additional briefings on the squadron he would soon command. Before he reached the first step, he stopped and regarded the dark Buddha blocking his passage. If there was a single group in America that Bull had difficulty with over the simplest forms of address, a group as mysterious to him as children, it was southern blacks. He had nothing at all to say to them so he generally retreated into his self-aggrandized mythology.

"Stand by for a fighter pilot," Bull boomed at the woman.

"What you say, Cap'n?" the woman answered, turning around to look at Colonel Meecham.

"I am the Great Santini," Bull said, beating one fist against his chest and smiling without confidence. He knew he was making a complete ass out of himself but had no idea how to organize a retreat at this juncture of the conversation.

"I never work for no Eye-talian family before."

"Do I look Eye-talian, madame?"

The woman appraised him with deep-set charcoal eyes. "I reckon," she said finally.

"Pure Irish, ma'am. Not a trace of anything lower flows through my veins."

"I guess I'm 'bout near pure as you, Cap'n," the woman said, causing Bull to throw his head back and holler with laughter. The woman stood up and faced the colonel.

"Now you are a solid-looking woman, ma'am. And I mean that as a compliment. You look solid all over."

"I can punch hard as a man, at least that what my dead husband used to tell the other boys that work the shrimp boat with him."

"Well, I'd stick with punchin' women, ma'am. You'd be no match for the men I hang around. I'm in the Corps, but I guess you could tell that from my uniform."

"You want to punch my shoulder?" the woman asked.

"Pardon me, ma'am?"

"You want to punch my shoulder? I used to win money when mans try to trade punches with me."

"No, ma'am. I might hurt you and cause internal bleeding or something."

"Shoot, man. Who you talking to about bleeding? You go on now and hit Arrabelle's shoulder first," the woman said, climbing up to the back porch where she and the Marine could be on the same level. Bull saw immediately that he had activated competitive juices within this prodigiously constructed woman. Making a fist, Bull punched lightly against the woman's shoulder.

"Hey, you're solid as a rock," Bull said with true admiration.

"Now, my turn," the woman said, eyes gleaming.

"You want to hit me?" Bull said. "All right, ma'am, but you be careful you don't hurt yourself."

"Move on down a stair," she directed as Bull followed her orders and descended one stair.

The woman spit on her right fist and rubbed it in with her left hand. It was an effort for Bull to keep from bellowing with laughter. With her fist cocked beneath her chin, she backed up against the porch railing, then, hopping like a shot putter, she flew across the porch, left her feet at the precisely strategic moment, and landed a punch on Bull's shoulder bone at the exact juncture where it met his arm. If he had not been holding onto the railing, Bull was positive he would have been airborne at the moment of impact. As it was, his shoulder was paralyzed by a shockwave of pain that traveled the length of his arm. He fought for breath.

"I fought with lots of mans in my life," she said in explanation. "I beat a few of 'em, too."

"You call that punching?" Bull said, regaining his poise under fire. "I thought you were really going to show me something."

"Let me do it again."

"Naw, I'm worried about your hand. If you get hurt then the law's gonna come and say I have to pay all the doctor bills."

"Watch out for internal bleeding, Dad," Ben said, laughing from an upstairs window.

"Get out of here, jocko," Bull roared, then turning to the black woman he said," You looking for a little money, ma'am?"

"You givin' it away?" the woman asked.

"I'll always help the needy and infirm, ma'am. Here's a dollar. That'll buy a couple of watermelons and keep you going for a couple of days."

"Thank you, Cap'n."

"Well, you can go now. I guess you kind of make a circuit of this neighborhood getting handouts. It looks like pretty good hunting grounds to me. I'd be doin' the same thing if I thought I could make a living at it."

"This is might fine hunting grounds right here on this step," the woman said. "I just made me a dollar bill sittin' and waitin' for Mrs. Meecham to come down and unlatch the door. I be Arrabelle Smalls, your new maid, Cap'n. You be seein' a lot of Arrabelle 'cause she's a hard-workin' so and so and you can ask anybody white or colored and they tell you the same thing."

"Shoot," Bull sneered," I talked to some folks already and they told me that Arrabelle Smalls was the laziest, most worthless, most good-for-nothing so and so that ever spit between two lips.

"Don't you put no mouth on me, Cap'n. You didn't talk to no one 'cept maybe some crazy man walkin' around with a fool rattlin' around in his head if you hear that about Arrabelle."

"Well, everyone I talked to agreed that you were real nice," Bull said, rubbing his shoulder. "It's just that they seemed to think you were lazy as hell."

"Who puttin' that kind of trash mouth on me?"

"Everybody I've talked to in this town."

Lillian Meecham opened the back door and said, stretching out her hand in greeting," Good morning. You must be the woman that Mrs. Grantham said she was going to send. I'm Lillian Meecham. And this gentleman who is now teasing you is Lieutenant Colonel Bull Meecham, my husband and captain of this sinking ship."

"I've got to hit the road, sportsfans. Nice meeting you, ma'am. By the way, Earline Grantham told me you spent a few years in jail for stealing silver out of nice houses."

"Miss Earline didn't say nothin' about no stealin'," Arrabelle answered.

"You'll get used to his teasing, Arrabelle. Or else you won't. But it'll be there one way or the other."

"That's a teasin' fool of a man," Arrabelle said, a broad grin breaking across her face. From the smile, Lillian could tell that Arrabelle had thoroughly enjoyed her initial encounter with Bull Meecham.

"What's your full name, darling?" Lillian asked.

"I be Arrabelle Smalls. I be married to Moultrie Smalls till he drown when his shrimp boat break up in a storm off St. Catherine's Island three year ago."

"I'm dreadfully sorry about your husband."

"We all got to die of somethin'."

"Sit down while I get us some coffee," Lillian said, gesturing toward the kitchen table.

"I stand," Arrabelle said.

"Please sit down, Arrabelle. We're going to get to be too good of friends for me to be sitting and you to be standing while we're having coffee each morning. Now tell me. Where have you worked before?"

"There ain't much of a place where I ain't done some work in my years. I been shuckin' the oyster for five year but Mr. Peeples done gone and buy himself an Iron Man and put over thirty girls out of work, some of which been with that sorry man for over twenty years. Before that I headed shrimps when Moultrie Small's boat comes in. I do some headin' now. You can't even follow my hand I move 'em so fast. For that I works for many famblies as a maid and raise up lots of white children for their mamas. Lord, I raise some white childrens that love me so much. Even right now. Hobie downtown at the restaurant one of my babies. The preacherman at the Baptist Church a baby of mine. So his wife is. When I be younger, I pick the tomato, the cucumber, the bean, the cotton. Anything that need pickin', I pick it. In the Hoover years when I was very young, I do anything to get by. My man, Moultrie, catch the mink, the coon, and the otter those years and sell the hide to any mans what got a nickel to his pocket. That was tough in those coon and possum Hoover years. For white folks, too."