The Great Santini (35 page)

"Do we have enough shoo-shoo?" Karen asked.

"We ought to," Ben said. "I got every piece I could find in this town."

"What if Dad catches us?" Matt asked.

"How can he catch us? He won't be home until three or four this morning," Mary Anne answered. "Anyway, we're just celebrating the birth of the Corps same as him."

"With a few variations," Ben corrected. "This is just our little way of saying thanks to the Corps for all it has done to us. You have the candles, Karen?"

"Yes, but I don't want to put them in that nasty cake."

"If Dad catches us making fun of the Marine Corps, he'll make us eat that cake."

"Quit worrying, will you?" Ben said. "If that's the worst thing he'd do to us, I'd be glad to eat a piece."

The table was immaculately set. The tablecloth was of Florentine lace used only on the most special occasions by their mother. Mary Anne laid out fine bone china and carefully placed the ornately embossed silverware beside the plates and wine crystal. Two candelabra burned with twelve new long stemmed candles. A strict adherence to form was the order of the night. The cake was the single obscenity in an atmosphere of rigorous decorum.

Dress for the night was a matter of taste. Ben wore a bathing suit, his father's flight jacket, frogman flippers, and an Indian headdress. Matt and Karen clad themselves with random selections from various summer and winter uniforms. They rolled up sleeves and pantlegs which were many sizes too large, and wore dress caps backward. Mary Anne put on pink tights, a fatigue jacket, field cap, and her father's jock strap which she stuffed with Kleenex. Then they regrouped in the dining room for the ceremony.

The children stood behind their chairs going rigid when Mary Anne said," Ten-hup."

Ben went to the record player he had brought down from his parents' room, and put on the Marine Corps hymn. He then spoke. "Good evening, fellow officers. Fellow whores for the Corps."

"Good evening, sir."

"We are gathered here tonight to pay homage to the United States Marine Corpse. As you know, the Marine Corpse is composed of the bravest fighting men who ever lived. The Corpse cannot be killed in battle. The Corpse cannot be denied their strategic objectives by any fighting force on earth. But what is not so well known and what we have come to celebrate tonight is the fact that the Marine Corpse is also the biggest collection of farts and assholes ever to gather together under one banner."

"Hear ye, hear ye," the others shouted, reading from the scripts Mary Anne had prepared.

"We will sing our version of the Marine Corpse HYMN. This version was written by Mary Anne Meecham, the charming daughter of that modest, self-effacing, painfully shy fighter pilot, Bull Meecham, that wonderful little man who calls himself. The Great Santini.' Mary Anne, you sweet little thing, would you wiggle up here and lead these gyrenes in your version of the hymn?"

In an exaggerated southern accent, Mary Anne replied," Why, lawdy, I'd be pleased as sweet potato pie to lead you big strong handsome Marines in your big strong handsome hymn. All right now, all you strong handsome honey pies and you strong handsome sugar dumplings, ya'll sing along with me. Benjamin, will yo please start the record over for yo dahlin sister?"

"Why sho, sister sweet," Ben said.

"Everybody together now, you heah? Let's sing."

In his room, Ben packed his gym shoes and trunks into a blue zippered bag that had the Marine Corps seal stamped in white on the outside. From his top drawer he pulled two pairs of sweat socks rounded into uneven balls, stepped back toward the door, and lofted both pair of socks toward the open bag. He made one shot, missed the other, but retrieved the missed shot quickly, gave a head fake, pretended to dribble, went up with two defenders on him, and dunked the socks into the bag, then adjusted the zipper.

"It's over for you today, hotshot," Mary Anne said, standing at the doorway.

"What do you mean?" Ben asked.

"First basketball practice. You become the golden boy today. Loved by all. Adored by every creep in the world. After a couple of games, I'll become known as Ben Meecham's sister. But the saddest thing of all, the really sad thing, Ben, is that there's some poor guy who's waking up this morning who thinks he's going to be first string, has planned on it for a whole year, and who doesn't even know you're alive."

"I've got to make the team first," Ben replied.

"False modesty is your worst fault, big brother. You've got to learn to enjoy bragging. I love to brag. I just don't have anything to brag about."

At school that day Ben's mind wandered far from his studies and the voices of teachers. Mary Anne was right. Ben knew that the exile was almost over, that his term of loneliness would be shortened the first time he touched the ball in practice. Since the beginning of school, his every waking hour was directed toward that moment. In new schools, redemption came from his ability to go around anyone with a basketball. But he always worried about the first essential step: the making of the team. He worried most about his shooting, that his touch would desert him, that his fingers would stiffen, and that the coach's eye would fix on him every time he missed a shot. He had nightmares that he would take ten, twenty, or thirty jump shots in the first practice and not make a single one of them. He also feared the stupidity of coaches, especially high school coaches in the Deep South who usually regarded basketball as a bastard, weak-kneed son who whined and piddled away the dark season between football and baseball. Anything could happen during a first practice. Tryouts were a time of fear for any boy.

Ben had awakened that morning, while it was still dark, with the butterflies, the old, invisible protozoa of fear that invaded the stomach on the days of contests or of testing. In the morning dark, he had thought of what might go wrong, of why he might not make the team. The thought of being cut made him physically sick and the butterflies moved within him with the burning wings of nausea. But no matter how he tried, he could not think of a reason why he should not make the team. For the past eight years on every day that it was possible, he had shot a hundred jump shots a day, made a hundred layups, and attempted a hundred foul shots. He had once dribbled a basketball lefthanded to and from school for an entire year because he had heard Bob Cousy say that a great guard must be able to dribble well with either hand. But the biggest reason he thought he would make the team was geographical. Ravenel, South Carolina, was so far removed from the proving grounds of American basketball that it seemed impossible to Ben that excellence could be found among the homegrown boys. His main concern was that some Marine kid from California or D.C. had slipped in and, like him, was biding his time until the first practice.

Ben had received his training on the outdoor courts near Washington, D.C. when his father had been stationed at the Pentagon. For three years, from sixth to eighth grade, Ben would go to the courts adjacent to the Centre Theater in Alexandria, Virginia, to learn the fundamentals from boys much older and stronger than he. For two years he was humiliated, teased, and taunted as he tried to shoot over taller boys, pass through crowds of arms, or defend against athletes who considered it a gift to let Ben guard them. But he earned respect because he returned to the courts every day no matter how severely he had been humiliated the day before. Eventually he became a kind of mascot, and the bigger boys liked him in the way they always like the smallest and the youngest member of their group. It was on this court that Ben learned he could dribble, that he was quick, and that he could beat others because he loved to hustle. He learned to fake and pass, to set pies, and to lead a fast break. In his three year apprenticeship, he learned the game. As he improved, he was called" The Weasel" by the other boys and by eighth grade he was selected to play in the full court Saturday morning games that were violent, often bloody affairs, where he was accepted by the high school boys because he could handle the ball well. No one played defense on the courts. Defense was a kind of approximation; everyone just tried to hurt the guy they were guarding once in a while to let him know they were around. Ben had seen two boys carried off the courts on Saturday morning with concussions. That was defense. Ben knew when he woke up on this morning that no one in Ravenel, South Carolina, had been spawned on such a training ground. For on the courts of Alexandria and Arlington, as on most of the courts of the D.C. area, most of the players were black and the swift passionate laws Ben had learned in those years were more valuable than the tutoring he had received from any coach, even his father. And Ben knew that south of Alexandria, Virginia, white boys didn't learn anything from black boys.

That afternoon, Coach Otis Spinks gathered all the tryouts in the center bleachers. The returnees from the previous year, already assured of a place on the team, shot layups as they glanced arrogantly toward the boys in the bleachers, sizing up the group as a whole. There was hatred in their appraisal. "Good luck, rookies," one boy called out, evoking a laugh from his teammates. Ben saw that the boy was Jim Don Cooper, the linebacker and captain of the football team, and the boy who had gone steady for three years with Ansley Matthews.

Coach Spinks stared at a clipboard while he sucked on a half empty bottle of R.C. Cola. Ben had heard the players discussing Coach Spinks's addiction to this particular soft drink. It was claimed that he consumed three sixpacks of R.C. daily, flavored with two packs of Lucky Strikes. His stomach was enormous, an incongruous attachment to an otherwise finely proportioned body. As the coach called names from his list of tryouts, Ben looked around and studied faces as lonely as his. Odd, he thought, I've never seen any of these boys, yet I must have passed them in the halls dozens of times. It gave him a feeling of camaraderie with those outcasts who had come to this gymnasium hoping to find their identity and feed on the secret bread of glory that had been denied them, who had felt isolated and banished from the main flow of student life for so long. Each boy seemed to be saying," I have a name and a face and a laugh and a cry. Can you see me? Can you hear me?" Ben also noticed that almost every boy quivered with excitement. Hands trembled. Feet tapped out nervous tattoos. The bleachers were filled up with new basketball shoes. The shoes seemed blindingly, tragically white, as fresh as wet paint. The smell of shoes lifted straight from their boxes filled Ben's nostrils. A sadness gripped him as he realized how many pairs of new shoes were bought for nothing. The bleachers in this moment were ruled by virgin shoes and wool socks fresh from cellophane. The bleachers swarmed with youth unanchored, unpraised, and convulsed with the dreams of gangly boys and fat boys who wanted to be a part of something with a desperation that was almost palpable and alive. Then Ben listened to Coach Spinks's introductory speech.

"I'm a football coach, boys. Y'all should know that. I never have cottoned too much to basketball because, to tell you the truth, I thought it was a game invented for the boys who were too chicken to play football. It always kind of embarrasses me to see boys running around in their underwear flashing their armpits. I don't really know all that much about this game. But I've read a couple of books and talked to a couple of old ballplayers and it seems to me that this here is a simple game."

Coach Spinks pointed to a young blond boy in the front row and said," Do you like to put it in a hole, son?" The varsity laughed behind him as they continued to shoot layups.

"Pardon me, sir?" the boy asked, terribly flustered.

"Do you like to put it in a hole? I love to put mine in a hole," the coach said, winking at the other boys in the stands and turning toward the returnees who grinned at the old joke. "Well, that's the name of this game. The team that can put a basketball in that hole most often always wins these games. As y'all know, I got me some stud horses coming back from last year's team, so it's gonna be real tough for you boys to make the team. I don't mean to discourage you now, but with seven players back from last year's team, that means only three of you has a chance to get a uniform. Now I'll give y'all a good look over and if you can put it in the hole or pull leather off the wood, then I can always use another stud in the stable. Looking around, I don't see many tall boys in the crowd except for Mumford there," he said pointing with his R.C. bottle at a skinny blond boy who sat in the same row as Ben. The boy reddened at the mention of his name. All eyes in the gym turned on him. "And I know he can't rebound since I cut him for two years runnin' now. "Laughter resounded through the gym as Mumford rested his arms on his prominent knees and stared hard at the laces of his new shoes.