The Great Santini (48 page)

"Yes, sir," the man answered darkly.

"I mean it, Butch, you're always fucking around, raising hell, and playing practical jokes. You've got to be serious, man. We're in the business of war, and we can't have a Harpo Marx like you flying an airplane."

"You're joking with me, aren't you, sir?" Brannon asked, as a smile began to build on the spartan isthmus around his mouth.

"No, that's not all," Bull shouted, enjoying himself as he always did when facing a man totally without humor. "I've been looking at that fat-assed sloppy body of yours, and I am going to order you to stay in shape. You're a Marine, Brannon, and you may think all that baby fat is cute, but we've got an image to uphold."

"I keep in shape, sir. I'm in better shape than any man in this outfit, and I'll prove it if you like."

"I want you to take me more seriously, Captain. You've got to try to be more literal. I never, and this is an order, I never want you to think I'm being sarcastic or that I'm shittin' around with you. Because, White America, I mean what I say."

"Yes, sir. Will that be all, sir?"

"See you at happy hour, Captain. And I'll buy every drink that touches your lips if I see Beasley carried out of the club."

"This is Rock Hudson," Bull said. "I'm calling from Hollywood to see if Mary Anne Meecham will accept my hand in marriage."

"What do you want, Poopsie?"

"Don't call me 'Poopsie,'" Bull ordered. "Where's your mother?"

"She's shopping downtown."

"When she gonna get back?"

"She didn't say, Daddy dear."

"What's Ben doing?"

"Oh, superhero is resting up for his starring role tonight."

"Well, don't make any noise. We want him fresh tonight."

"Oh, of course, we do, Poopsie. I'd just die if precious allstar went out on the floor not fresh. I think I'd feel personally responsible."

"You're a real wiseass sometimes, Mary Anne. Tell your mother I'm going to happy hour with the boys, and will meet you at the game."

"If Mom calls you up at happy hour, youll have to buy a round of drinks for everybody at the club, won't you, Poopsie, dear? I'll leave her a note to call you as soon as possible."

"Tell her if she does, I'll have to get morose with her," Bull growled. "By the way, how are your studies coming?"

"Fine, Poopsie, fine. I'm failing algebra, American history, and French," she said, knowing that her father's thoughts had drifted to other matters.

"That's good," he answered. "Keep it up. Good grades are the only things that count for a girl. Tell your mother I'll meet her at the game. That's an order I expect to be carried out."

"Oh tremble, tremble. Yes, sir. Bye-bye, Rock Hudson."

When her father put the receiver down, Mary Anne, whispering a tuneless half-remembered melody, thumbed through the telephone directory, and with her pen, marked the number of the Ravenel Air Station's Officers' Club.

Bull Meecham required his pilots to go to happy hour every Friday. Not only was it a ritual that stimulated esprit and fraternity in his squadron, it also helped relax his pilots and provided them an outlet to cut loose from the tensions of flight, from the unspoken knowledge that every time a pilot took a plane up, he was riding with death on his wings. Bull himself was obsessed by a carefully concealed fear that he would die in a plane, and he knew that death in flight could assume many shapes, a light on a control panel, a subtle change in an engine's pitch, a frozen control, a migratory bird. To Bull, death could be a matter of inches and could be read as clearly as an alphabet in the lidless eyes of gauges. Though he could not explain this to Lillian or his children because he thought it would frighten them, he wanted to tell them this someday: that pilots are killed in the blink of an eye. He had seen injured jets fall from the sky as inexorably as arrows pulled from strong bows. Death itself had assumed human shape for Bull, and there were times, like landing on an aircraft carrier at night, that he felt its presence, a dark, slouching rider on the wing, a cold stranger who lived on the wing, and in the pit of the stomach. But fear and death were laughed at and another round ordered. Happy hour was a good place to bray, to regenerate courage, and to be infected with the enthusiasm of other men who lived to fly. So as Bull pulled up to the parking lot of the Officers' Club, he saw groups of pilots arriving wearing their flight jackets. They have come back to earth for another Friday, he thought, they have come down to celebrate the brotherhood of men who fly, an inviolate brotherhood closed to other men, to lesser men, to unwinged men. Bull walked into the club as Friday grew darker and the sun moved toward El Toro.

In a large room adjacent to the main bar, the pilots of 367 and the pilots of 234 faced each other from opposite sides of the room. Two tables were set up in the middle of the room with twenty-four bottles of cold Coors beer on each one. The pilots had bought drinks from the bar and were beginning to warm up to the festivities. They began to taunt each other across the room.

"Hey, 367, I heard one of your pilots had to get a hysterectomy last week," a voice rang out.

"That's right. It turned out to be your wife dressed in your flight suit. We recognized her by her mustache," Major Reynolds, Bull's executive officer, shot back.

"Why don't you pussies from 367 go buy yourself some Kotex and leave this room to some real fighter pilots?"

"We're afraid if we leave ol' 234 might have a circle jerk here."

Finally Cecil Causey stepped to the center of the room, slapped a twenty dollar bill on the table and announced," I'll bet drinks on the house that Captain Clifford Strait of 234 has the hairiest ass of any pilot in this room."

"Bullshit," Bull growled.

"He's right, Colonel," Captain Johnson said. "Strait's got an ass on him like an ape."

"I know that, Johnson," Bull answered in a loud voice. "The only reason Strait ain't classified as an ape is 'cause he has an opposable thumb. The same goes for all those ape bastards in 234."

"Shit," Captain Brannon said," I know a lot of apes who have too much fucking pride to join 234."

"I know one that didn't, sure enough," someone from the 234 crowd said.

"Where's Strait?" Brannon said. "I'll match my ass with any man's. Get him out here."

Captain Strait swaggered out from the ranks of 234 as though he had a long and distinguished history of victory in contests of this ilk. He was swarthy, dark haired, and one of those men who always look as if they need a shave no matter what the time of day. Slowly, he unbuckled his pants and dropped his trousers to the floor. Brannon removed his trousers at the same time. Then, dropping their skivvies, both men bent over to allow their asses to endure the careful scholarship and unoccluded scrutiny of the two squadrons. Soon there was heavy laughter coming from 234.

"Brannon ain't got a hair on his ass compared to Strait," Causey said to Bull. "You buy the first round."

"Well," Bull replied, conscious that every pilot from both squadrons was listening for his reply," it's good to know that 234 is first in something. They can't fly, they can't fuck, and they can't drink. But they are the goddam champs when it comes to hairy assholes. Now let's get serious, and get to the beer chugging contest. Of course, after looking at Strait's ass, I think we ought to have a banana eating contest, and let Strait start it off."

A bartender brought a phone into the room with a long extension cord. He walked through the Marines and handed the phone to Bull. "It's your wife calling, Colonel."

An explosive cheer went through the room as all the pilots headed for the bar to order their free round of drinks. "I'll have Wild Turkey on the rocks," shouted Cecil Causey, leading the charge to the bar. Bull was blushing as he took the phone, and spat savagely," What in the hell are you calling me for at happy hour, Lillian. Have you gone out of your goddam bush?"

"Poopsie," Mary Anne's voice said," I just wanted to call you and tell you how much I appreciate your love and affection for me, and how I will dedicate my whole life to being worthy of your blind worship of me."

"Mary Anne, this little prank has cost me over fifty dollars," Bull said, controlling himself with effort. "I would advise you to start running now. I would suggest you go south toward the swamps because when I find you, I'm going to break every bone in your body."

"I think I'm in love, Poopsie," Mary Anne continued. "I think I'm going to marry a Ubangi."

"You ain't gonna be in any position to marry a Ubangi or anyone else when I get finished with you."

Some of the pilots were drifting back from the bar, still laughing at the rare faux pas of a colonel's wife calling her husband at happy hour. Normally, this heinous breach of decorum was the pitfall of young lieutenants' wives. Bull grabbed Cecil and put him on the phone. "This is my daughter, not my wife. Here, talk to Mary Anne, Cecil."

"Oh sure," the pilots laughed.

"Hello," said Colonel Causey.

"Hi, Colonel Causey, this is Mary Anne. Please pretend that you're talking to my mama. My brother and I have been planning this for a long time."

"That's right, Colonel. This is Ben. I'm on the upstairs phone."

"Hello, Lillian. How are ya doing, honey? Why sure I'll tell him," Colonel Causey said in an extravagant, generous voice. His eyes were dancing from pilot to pilot. "You want him to bring home paper towels and a bottle of Ivory Liquid. Bobby pins, cigarettes, and what? Oh Lillian, I can't tell him that. No, he's my friend. And so are you. Oh, if you insist. Bye-bye, honey," Cecil said, putting the phone down, his forehead wrinkled as though something of great urgency was weighing upon him.

In a sepulchral voice filled with concern, Cecil said, "Lillian said she wanted me to send a pilot from 234 home with Colonel Meecham tonight. It seems as though Lillian ain't had none in a year or two. She did say that she didn't want to do nothing immoral with one of my pilots. She just wanted to lay her hand down there beside it, and dream of those days when Bull could get it up."

For thirty seconds, both squadrons whooped and hollered in an obstreperous rally that was becoming more paleolithic in nature in direct proportion to the number of drinks consumed. Some pilots had drinks in both hands. Others were making discreet but frequent runs back to the bar to replenish empty glasses. Bull and Cecil sparred with each other, both landing pulled punches to the body, then backing off to begin the beer chugging contest.

"Are your four pilots ready, Colonel?" Colonel Causey asked.

"That is affirmative, Colonel," Bull replied.

A neutral lieutenant from an A-4 squadron quickly and efficiently snapped the caps off each bottle of beer. The two C.O.'s would begin the contest, followed by the squadron executive officers, then followed by the youngest lieutenant in each squadron. The real warhorse among the contestants drank last; this position of honor was reserved for the best chugger in the squadron.

The rules were simple. When a pilot had finished a beer, he would slam it down on the table, step quickly aside, and let the next pilot continue the chugging. Each pilot would chug six beers. The squadron that emptied their twenty-four bottles first would be declared the victors, provided that when the judge poured the residue of beer and foam from the twenty-four bottles into a shot glass, the glass did not overflow.

"If anyone pukes, the other squadron wins," Bull shouted above the din.

"If one of my boys pukes, he's gonna lick it up himself," Cecil said.

"My boys ain't gonna puke unless one of them accidentally looks at that fucked up looking face of yours," Bull teased.

Captain Brannon, lining up in his position as premiere chugger, shouted to Captain Strait, who was nursing a drink in the crowd, "Hey, Monkey Ass, you ain't drinking with the men?"

"Leave him alone, White America," Bull growled. "Strait's a specialist. He only enters hairy ass contests."

Major Reynolds, the exec, was giving last-minute instructions to Lieutenant Snell, the youngest man in 367, and fresh from flight school. He had been in the squadron less than a month and was noticeably unnerved by being thrust into competition so early in his tenure with the squadron.

"Throw your head back, close off your wind pipe, and just let the beer flow down your throat. Don't gulp, and goddammit, don't try to breathe."

"I was in a fraternity, sir," Snell said.

"Who gives a shit?" Captain Brannon observed.

"Give the kid support, Butch," Reynolds said.

"If we don't win, kid," Butch said," I'm going to be awfully pissed."

"Colonel," Bull said to Cecil," If any of your pilots need to go potty during the contest, some of my boys will take them to the men's room and hold their hands."

"You sure that's all they'll hold?"

"Stand by, fighter pilots," the A-4 pilot barked, as Bull and Cecil grasped their first bottle. Out of the corner of his eye, Bull saw Beasley for the first time, and the only mystery to him was how he had gone so long without at least capturing a glimpse of the man. Beasley had pulled up another table and was standing on it, shouting encouragement to the gladiators who drank for him. His face was unlined and innocent to the point of being virtuous, a Botticelli in a flight jacket. His voice carried above the general disharmony and virile hum of the squadrons. But the voice was not what had attracted Bull's attention to Beasley. It was his dress. He spied the ascot beneath the flight jacket, the cartridge belt criss-crossing his torso, the Bowie knife, and the crowning touch, a World War I Von Richtofen flying cap. Bull turned to Brannon and received a thumbs down signal.