The Great Santini (34 page)

"If this was a real attack, all of you would have been wiped out," Bull declared.

"Big deal," Mary Anne said, opening a book. Matt had retreated to the fireplace and armed himself with the shovel his sister had spurned. Karen had picked up the shot putt and was holding it until someone told her what to do.

When Bull realized that Mary Anne was not going to participate in the readiness exercise at all, he took his sword, and lifted her robe past her knees.

"I want to peek at those expensive silk underpants I bought for my sweet little Mary Anne," he teased. "I bought her a different color underpanty for every day of the week. Oh my, she's wearing black. She must be in mourning."

"That's a little sicko, Popsy, a little sicko-sexual weirdness, I would say," Mary Anne said, pulling her robe down.

"En garde, Colonel," Ben called. Bull wheeled toward his son. They dueled with mock ferociousness. The dress sword clanked against the poker and the shovel as Matt came to the aid of his brother. In the corner near the stairs, Karen awaited her orders, still clutching the shot putt with both hands.

"Let's go for the jugular," Ben shouted to Matt.

"Simba Barracuda," Matt answered.

Colonel Meecham stepped back toward the door, unaware of Karen's presence.

"Engage the enemy," he shouted. "The good soldier will always engage the enemy and retreat only if retreat will lead to victory."

He jabbed his sword toward Ben and Matthew, driving them back toward the fireplace. One of his thrusts came uncomfortably close to Ben's right ear.

"Hey, Dad," Ben warned. "You may not have noticed, but that's a real sword you have there. I don't want to lose an ear in this battle."

"Marines have lost more than ears in their long history. But still they come, always attacking, always forging ahead, driving forward without regard to life or limb."

"That's because they're a bunch of dumb creeps," Mary Anne said from the couch.

"What'd you say, Miss Corpse?" Colonel Meecham snapped.

"Nothing."

"Nothing, what?"

"Nothing, sir."

"That's better."

As Colonel Meecham looked over at Mary Anne, Karen saw her chance to join the fray. Using both hands, she made a weak underhanded lob toward her father. She intended that it hit on the other side of him so she could claim he had been killed by an incoming artillery shell.

"Oh, Jesus, Karen," Ben cried out.

With a solid thump, the shot putt landed on Bull's left shoe. The Colonel let out with a scream that was heard the length and breadth of Eliot Street, across the Lawn, and by a trout fisherman anchored in the river near the house. He fell on the couch, hopping and stumbling, almost landing on Mary Anne, who joined the frenzied stampede of siblings for the stairs. A lamp crashed to the floor throwing the room into semidarkness. The bayonet and the Mameluke sword lay on the floor by the couch. Still howling, Bull was trying to remove his shoe to survey the damage. It enraged him as he listened to the thundering feet of his retreating children and heard Mary Anne scream, "Torah! Torah! Torah!" But his mind was not on pursuit, nor would it be until the pain diminished somewhat. He hopped on one foot to the kitchen, tore his sock off his foot, rolled up the pants leg of his dress whites, put his foot in the sink, and ran cold water over the injured toe. The toenail was already turning blue.

In the first startled moment she heard Bull scream, Lillian had started downstairs. She was nearly trampled by her children, whose flight out of the living room was a headlong sprint that left no time for explanations to anyone. "What happened? What happened?" she asked as they flew past her. They did not answer her, for that would have taken time, and very basic enzymes of survival raced through the bloodstreams of the Meecham children as they headed for their preordained hiding place. Lillian watched as they disappeared into Mary Anne's bedroom, and thought to herself that it was strange to see Karen leading the pack. So she walked into the kitchen alone and without forewarning to find out what was causing her husband's outcry.

She found him with his foot in the sink, the faucet running, and his upper torso bent forward examining his toe. He was moaning in pain.

"Athlete's foot?" she asked.

"Ahhh!" he whined in reply.

"Is it your heart?" Lillian asked, knowing that Bull feared heart attacks above all other illnesses.

"Yeah, Lillian," he said. "I'm washing my heart off in the sink. Hell no. It's my goddam big toe."

"Your big toe?" she said, trying not to giggle.

"Yeah, my big toe. If I wasn't wearing shoes, they'd be amputating this toe sure as hell."

"How did it happen?"

"Karen hit me with that goddam shot putt."

"Karen hit you with . . . the shot putt?"

"What do I got to do, Lillian? Write you a book? Yeah, she hit me with the shot putt."

"You mean that big bully Karen hit the little biddy Marine on the big toe during war games?"

"She pitched the son of a bitch from ten feet away. If she hit me in the head, I'd be sitting on the right hand of the Father this very moment."

"I can't wait to tell General Hurley why you're limping tonight."

"If you say one goddam word, I'll poke your eyes out."

"Oh, General, it's really nothing," Lillian teased. "My little daughter was tussling with her father and accidentally crippled him. Bull will be all right if he only learns to pick on someone his own size."

"Very funny. Notice how I'm about to die laughing."

"Why don't you go to the ball wearing just one shoe?" Lillian asked.

"Sure, Lillian, and maybe I can wear my jock strap with a couple of ribbons hanging from my butt. C'mon, help me walk. I've got to walk. I've got to give a toast tonight at the squadron table."

He put his arms around his wife, leaned on her, and tried to put his weight on the sore foot. Lillian began to laugh. It was a giggle at first that soon erupted into legitimate, unconscious laughter that spilled through the house and up the stairs like an endangered music.

The children crouched on the limbs of a water oak that grew outside Mary Anne's window, listened to their mother's laughter, and tried to interpret its meaning. "She's gone crazy," Mary Anne whispered to the others, who were in higher branches.

"He'll kill her for sure now," Matt said. "We might have to go down and save Mom."

"I'm never going to leave this tree," Karen said to no one person in particular. "I'm going to stay up here until I die."

"They've got to go to the ball in fifteen minutes, Karen. They've got to leave by then," Ben said.

"Of course, they may have to amputate Dad's foot. Colonel Hopalong Meecham," Mary Anne said.

"That's not funny, Mary Anne," Karen said angrily.

"You'll get the trophy, Karen. Just like a hunter who kills a deer, you'll be able to hang Dad's toe on your wall."

"He'll be all right, Karen," Ben said.

"Ah, the perfect one has spoken."

Matthew said from the highest branch," I don't think he's going to be all right until he's killed Karen with his bare hands."

"Daddy's never hit me!" Karen said.

"That's because you're the apple of his one eye, dear child. You're the pretty, petite little daughter he's always wanted," Mary Anne said.

"I'll bet anything that if it had been me who hit him with that shot putt, he'd be setting this tree on fire right now," Ben said.

"Is Mom still laughing?" Karen said, straining to hear.

"It's very tough to laugh when Dad's hands have cut off your windpipe," Mary Anne said.

"Karen," Ben said, looking at the branch directly above him," Why did you throw that shot putt? I'm not saying it was a bad idea. In fact, it gave me more pure pleasure than I've had in a long time, but it surprised me a little bit that you threw it."

"I just don't know. I just threw it."

Once again, their mother's laughter spilled out of a downstairs window. The children listened in the tree, silent as fruit. Then they heard their father laugh too. His sharp sense of the ludicrous had caught up with him, and despite himself, he became amused at the absurdity of events that had left him limping around in the full splendor of his dress uniform. His toe was now a deep and angry aqua, but the anger and much of the pain had diminished.

"My God, you're almost human again, Bull," Lillian said laughing.

"I bet the kids don't come out of hiding for three days," he replied.

"Doesn't it bother you at all that they're afraid of you?"

"Hell, no," Bull answered, gingerly inserting his foot back into his shoe. "It would bother me if they weren't afraid of me. It's my job to see that they stay afraid of me."

"That's silly, and you know it."

"Silly? It ain't so silly. They jump when I say jump. Just like you do."

"Let's go," Lillian said. "We're supposed to be meeting the squadron at the club for drinks right now. Then we're all driving over to the mess hall together for the ball."

"Don't rush me. They'll wait for the C.O."

"Have you memorized the toast?"

"Yeah, it's a great toast. Ben and Mary Anne helped me write it up. Those two are good with the words."

"Did they write the whole thing?"

"The spirit behind the whole thing was mine. They just wrote the words."

"Did they write all the words?"

"I did the polishing."

"Let's go, Bull. My God, that uniform's tight on you. You look like a package of pork sausage."

"I'm the handsomest son of a bitch ever to serve in the United States Marine Corps."

"Then, let's ride, handsome, or we'll be late for the birthday ball."

They walked out the front door arm in arm, down the stairs, and to the driveway at the side of the house. Bull opened the door for his wife. As he walked to his door, Lillian turned to the tree where her children remained hidden, blew them a kiss, and gave them a victory sign with her gloved fingers. They heard her laugh again as the car pulled out of the driveway, and eased onto Eliot Street.

Only when the car was out of sight did the Meecham children open Mary Anne's window and clamber out of the branches into the house.

The women of the pilots, in long elegant dresses, clung to their husbands, guiding them around the room to make sure the proper courtesies were paid, to ensure that the fine obeisances and homages were proffered to those high ranking officers and their ladies who were in positions to make or break careers. Afterward, they returned to the long tables where each squadron sat beneath the squadron emblem, pouring drinks, laughing, the spirit of the evening inoculating them slowly.

Lillian stood at the center of a large group of 367 wives. She enjoyed her role as the confidante of young wives and the envy of the wives her own age. As she stood among them leading the conversation through small rhetorical hills, she looked around at" her girls" and could put them in categories by signs she recognized. The daily golfers had dark, unseasonal tans and the hard casualness of women who had strolled the front nine too many times to curb the restlessness they felt when exiled to the small towns where the Marines built their bases. She saw women who smiled too much or drank too much and these were the women ordered to have a good time by their husbands. There were women who clung to her and laughed at her every joke, and administered to her every whim, and she knew that these were the ambitious women who were driving their husbands forward in the ranks. There were many others who could not be shuffled into convenient categories, but it was because they were skilled at hiding the signs of their satisfaction or their discontent. Whatever their story, these wives were appendages, roses climbing on the trellises. Their roles were decorative on this night and on all others; the glory was their husband's and their sustenance came from what nourishment they could derive from his reflection. In the room, the band played slow waltzes and streamers began to sag from the roof in scarlet, gold, and forest green parabolas, and Lillian talked gaily to the wives, her friends, her comrades, her rivals.

As she went to fetch her husband she found him talking to a group of four young pilots from 367. Like pilots everywhere they had escaped from their wives to talk about flying. Bull had reached a point of inarticulateness, and he was demonstrating a maneuver by using his hands as the aircraft. Sooner or later, pilots always resorted to their hands when discussing the mysteries and secrets of flight. Lillian went up to her husband and as soon as every eye was on her, she curtsied charmingly and asked him for the next dance.

Ben was emptying a bag of dog feces onto a large plate on the dining room table. Mary Anne, using a spatula from her mother's silver service, was shaping the feces into a remote semblance of a cake. Their noses wrinkling in disgust, yet enjoying their inclusion for the first time into this forbidden bacchanal, Karen and Matt watched each detail of the operation with the keenest interest. Fearing youthful tongues, Ben and Mary Anne had not allowed the other two to participate in their bastardized version of the ball until this year.