The Great Santini (44 page)

"Let me tell Karen and Matt about it. They were too young to remember this famous incident. This house only had one bathroom and Dad used to stay in there poopin' and readin' the paper on Sunday morning for what seemed like weeks. The whole family used to be lined up outside the door screaming in pain and begging Dad to hurry up. He'd just sit in there grunting and threatening to kill us if we uttered another peep of complaint. When you're younger you haven't developed the muscles of steel necessary to keep from wee-weeing on cross-country trips or long Sunday mornings. Well, one Sunday morning, ol' Ben here, yes, our marvelous, hero-brother, all star, all-American golden boy that we love, couldn't stand it any longer. I mean this boy had to pee and pee bad. His very teeth were floating and his voice was a plaintive cry as he begged our father to rise from his throne and enter into family life. Finally, ol' Mom came along to save the day."

"Good ol' Mom," Karen said.

"Yes, good ol' Mom, the queen of good taste, brought a quart milk carton and told him to do his business in it. Ben did so. But then he was faced with a dilemma. What should he do with the carton of foulness he now possessed? He thought for a minute, then decided to put it in the refrigerator until Dad came out. Then he would take the carton of wee-wee and dispose of it in the toilet now fully covered by Dad's behind. But Benny-boy had a short memory, and after he had relieved his swollen bladder, he went out to play with his friends. Ben was kind of dumb in those days. After Daddy-poo came out of the bathroom, he decided that he wanted a bowl of cereal . . ."

"Oh, wow," Matthew cried.

"I don't believe it, Mary Anne. You're making this up."

"Yes, my children, have respect and let your dearly beloved older sister continue. Well, Daddy goes to the refrigerator and pulls out a carton of what he thinks is nice fresh milk. Then he goes to the cupboard and gets a bowl and some Raisin Bran. The next thing the family hears is a scream that can only be described as pure disgust. Ben remembers the carton, runs into the kitchen at the exact moment our father begins puking on the kitchen table. He grabs the carton and starts to run out the door. Dad chases him. Boy with carton of pee runs for his life. Man vomits as he chases boy. Man catches boy. Carton of pee spills on the floor. Man sticks boy's face into the spilled pee until woman saves boy. It was one of the greatest family scenes in the history of families," Mary Anne said.

"Un-Jesus-Christ-believable," Matthew exhaled.

"I was close to death," Ben said, remembering.

"Shut up," Mary Anne whispered," here they come."

Their parents walked downstairs, Lillian skipping lightly, proud of her beauty, aware of it; her husband followed, pulling at his necktie, uncomfortable in the full dress regalia of civilians. He noticed the sudden quiet of his children as he entered the room and he took this as a good sign. He liked a room to fall silent as he entered it. For him, silence was a precise instrument for gauging respect. A master sergeant had once reported to him that the rumor of his coming had silenced a mess hall. Bull considered that report one of the highest compliments he had ever received.

It was eleven fifteen now. The eyes of the Meecham children burned with the excitement of secret gifts camouflaged beneath wrapping paper. The memories of old Christmases winged through the room like richly plumed birds and rested on the pungent branches of the tinsel-heavy tree the family as a unit had decorated. No battles were ever fought in the Meecham home on the night before Christmas. It was a time when happiness was allowed to spill over, to inundate all rooms, to rule all faces, and to reign unmolested in the turbulent kingdom of the fighter pilot. It was as though happiness was the order of the day.

Christmas Eve was also a time when the children could tease their father and know there would be no sudden explosion or descent into fury. They took advantage of the occasion.

"Hey, Dad," Ben grinned," how long had that tree been dead when you bought it?"

"What do you mean, dead, sportsfans. That's a gorgeous tree.

"Yeah, Ben," Mary Anne said, joining in the chase. "Lots of people would be grateful for a brown tree."

"Darlings," Mrs. Meecham said," be thankful for this tree. There are lots of children in the world who won't have a Christmas tree this Christmas. Think of the poor Communist children who won't have a tree. And the poor Jews."

"Well, having this tree is kind of like not having a tree at all," Ben said.

"Baloney, this is a perfect tree," Colonel Meecham said defensively. "It was the best tree in the lot."

"The lot was located at the edge of the Gobi Desert," Mary Anne said.

Karen said," This tree is naked on the other side. It doesn't have but two branches."

"This tree is the most gorgeous we've ever had. The head honcho has spoken. I don't want to hear any more yappin'. We got to get to church by 2330 hours."

They walked to the church, past the great houses that rested in the shadow of the Lawn, singing fragments of Christmas carols in the atonal Meecham voices, and laughing at every joke anyone made. Ben pretended to dribble a basketball down the street while his father pretended to guard him. "Defense," Lillian cried to her husband as she broke into a strange, graceful dance that involved a series of spins and leaps with precarious high-heeled landings that halted the imaginary basketball game as every eye in the family fastened to the spinning figure wildly dancing toward the church, her yellow dress coming high above her knees. She rarely danced for her family and they in turn often forgot that she had taken ballet lessons up until the time she married Lieutenant Meecham. But when she danced, it was with a feral grace, a controlled wildness that had been preserved secretly in her body. Now, the whole family joined the dance, leaping, screaming, and racing past parked cars and the weird shadows cast by palmettos. Even Bull Meecham leaped like a fawn in imitation of his wife. This mad, violently happy dance lasted until Cobia Street met Pinckney, and then it stopped, as the small Greek Revival outline of The Infant of Prague Church came in sight and Bull growled," At ease. At ease. We don't want God to see us crappin' around."

Father Pinckney began the high Mass at midnight. In a thick drawl, more ponderous than his low mass responses, the priest spoke the Latin phrases with a sonorous, dramatic discernment. In his more public moments, Father Pinckney tried to hide his southern accent, but even through the Latin and the incense the state of Tennessee was advertised and glorified each time he spoke a word.

The altar was adorned with thick, fragrant clusters of flowers illuminated by the slender white stemmed candles that burned from six candelabra. The priest's vestments shone with the white and gold jubilation of the church celebrating the birth of its redeemer. P. K. Hill swung the censer and plumes of incense smoked out of the chained gold globe filling the church with an odor that Ben always connected with the smell of God, just as he connected unleavened bread with the taste of God. Ben and Matthew were serving Mass in red cassocks worn only on feast days and special holidays. To Ben, the Latin responses had more gravity at night, especially when combined with a choir and a packed church. A manger scene was set up at the left side of the altar. Ben could see the Christ Child out of the corner of his eye. Above him, the Christ in agony hung above the altar. God on the borning day and the dying day brought to this single moment past midnight presided over the reenactment of the Christian mystery by an alcoholic priest from Tennessee, a boy bent low to say the confiteor, and a churchful of people praying beside a river in Ravenel, South Carolina.

Ben believed in God on Christmas Eve above all other times, and on this night, he turned always away from the stern man on the cross, and ceased to believe in the hellmaker, the firelover, the predatory creator, the godly carnivore who flung men and angels into a place of darkness and devastation, pain and endless fire. On this night, he gave himself to the child, not the gnarled carpenter who himself was nailed to the wood he once worked with until he was called to walk among the Jews. The child would not send anyone to the flames. Ben knew this; felt it; hoped it.

Ben swung his body toward the priest and the middle of the altar. He tapped his breast solemnly when he reached the words that always moved him, even though spoken in the secret tongue of a dead language: Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa. Through my fault. Through my fault. Through my most grievous fault. Somehow, Ben felt, dead languages could sway God more easily than a language soiled by everyday use.

Sister Loretta Marie prayed in the first row, her pinched face stiff with the effort of prayer. Moving her lips rapidly, she held her rosary tightly and recited each Hail Mary with a desperate gravity, as though she were flinging anvils at the gates of Heaven. There was no softness to her prayers. They welled up out of a dry unhappy place in her, the barren back-forty of a soul hurt by the savagery of the world to its ugly women. She prayed hard with her eyes fiercely closed.

Colonel Meecham stood at the back door of the church, his arms crossed, and his mind wandering. He never sat with the family in church. Instead, he stood guard in the rear to the unconcealed chagrin of the ushers. There, he half prayed, half thought. As a first prayer, he prayed for the fighter pilots in his squadron, for God to keep them safe in His high dominion. Then he would thank God for his family. He prayed in formulas that rolled out of his brain like the beat of drums. He prayed for the President, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, and other men in the top echelons of the Corps. Often, without thinking, he would go down half the chain of command before his prayers would take another form. Sometimes he would think about the relationship of Catholics and the military. Good Catholics make good soldiers, he thought. The soldier has to obey his commanding officer without questioning his orders. Same with Catholics. God's the Commanding Officer and the Pope is His first sergeant. God tells the Pope what He wants done and the Pope lays down the law. The Church is the structure wherein laws are administered. The Church and the Pentagon are alike in that respect. I am Commanding Officer of 367. God is the C.O. of the Universe. Both of us have similar responsibilities. O Lord, make me worthy of the squadron I command and please give me the chance to kill Castro.

In the middle of the service Ben was hit with the vision of Ansley Matthews naked before him. He mounted her at the gospel, drove deep inside her, her breasts soft and giving beneath him, her loins wet with wanting him, her smells the strong smells Ben imagined a woman gave off in the heat of love-making. His penis went erect under his cassock. Ansley's tongue drove into his ear; she whispered his name, then screamed his name as he bit into her phantom shoulder. "Fuck me. Fuck me," the ghost of her screamed to him in a language that was not dead nor could not die.

All during Father Pinckney's Christmas sermon, Ansley possessed his brain like a torturer, Ansley the nude, desiring him in full Technicolor. Ben only caught snatches of the sermon even though he tried hard to eliminate this forbidden yet splendid mirage by concentrating on the words of the priest. Once he saw Father Pinckney pointing to the statue of Mary and saying," Only Mary, the mother of God, could wear both the white rose of virginity and the red carnation of motherhood. "He fought against the image as he and Matt walked to the cruets for the Lavabo. As he poured the wine into the chalice, he could see Ansley's breast coming out of the chalice into his face, extinguishing all thoughts of salvation, all delusions of holiness. He sucked a nipple that was not there, slavered on the neck of a girl he had barely spoken to, foamed over a sin that took place in the uncontrolled cosmos beneath his skull.

He once had a thought. A near occasion of sin. The Pope could make a law. He could make masturbation a prayer. Make it a sacrament. He could call it self-love and give plenary indulgences for its religious performance. If he did, Ben had thought, Ben Meecham would waltz into the kingdom of God. If it became a sacrament, Ben felt that he would be a high priest, a cardinal of the upward stroke, a pope of wasted seed.

The Jesus on the cross stared at Ben's erect penis which was a stone rising out of the center of him. The Christ Child lifted himself above the manger and pointed toward Ben's belt. Then Father Pinckney lifted the holiest fingers in Tennessee, held a white host aloft, whispered the old dead prayers, believed in the deepest mystery, believed that the bread and the child and the nailed carpenter were one. The bells rang in Ben's hand, the penis withered, Ansley Matthews set his body free, and Ben turned in all the fury of a Catholic boyhood, in the dazzling cyclone of his belief, toward the moment when the bread became the light.

Father Pinckney held bread in his hands. Father Pinckney held God in his hands. Three times the bells sang. The bread trembled. Ben looked up and believed.

The host convulsed like a fetus, kicked with new blood. Arteries burst through to the strongest grain of wheat where the soul of God took root, where a new heart more ancient than time, stronger than nations, pumped godblood to the smallest vein in the bread. Teeth formed in the grain of Christ and soft, unleavened nails scratched against the fingers of Father Pinckney. A mouth formed a cry in the voice of the bread. Eyes that came to life in the moonblaze of sacristies and witnessed the birth of the world struggled to open against the priest's grip. In the perfect circle of the host, lungs began to breathe the incensed air, the same lungs that had breathed in the blackness of the void, the ozone of creation, and the fire of molded stars hatched by hands large enough to arrange galaxies. Softly, God grew in the hands of one priest; in the womb of his hands the Christ grew. A man and a god lives far in the bread, deep in the grain. And Ben Meecham believed.