The Great Santini Part 26

Before school began, Lillian gathered her children before the shrine beneath the stairs. She lit candles beside Our Lady of the Fighter Pilot and she dusted off the model of the F-8 that Matthew had constructed for his father one Christmas. As ordered, all the children had brought their rosaries with them.

"What are we praying for, Mama?" Karen asked.

"A special intention," Lillian answered, impatient to begin.

"What's the special intention, if I may be so bold as to ask?" Mary Anne asked.

"Peace," Lillian said, beginning the Apostles' Creed.

Chapter 19.

In the early evening of November 10, Bull and Lillian dressed with great care for the Marine Corps birthday ball. They dressed in silence on opposite sides of their bedroom. Lillian was in a slip at her dressing table carefully applying her makeup. Bull reflected on whether dress whites that had been tailored for a one-hundred-ninety-pound man would permit the entry of the same man who now weighed two hundred and twenty pounds. They both dressed as if they did not know the other was in the room.

This was the night that always filled Bull Meecham with a deep pride in the Corps. It was a night of confirmation when he felt an almost mystical affinity with every man who had ever borne the motto of semper fidelis. All over the world, on this one night, he knew, every Marine, active or retired, in groups of thousands, in small cl.u.s.ters, or single sentries patrolling unfriendly borders, all of them, to the last man, turned to this night in celebration and pride. On this night, they drank to the birth of the Corps. For Bull, this night released a sad cargo of memory that held the names and faces of pilots he had seen flaming toward a violent death in Pacific waters, all the dead Marines he had known, the old faces smiling in motionless portraits frozen by recall: they came to him now, the lost squadrons of brash, c.o.c.ky pilots culled from the sky by a world that thrived on the blood of young men. He remembered too giving close air support in Korea to a retreating Marine battalion, and seeing the dead Marines frozen grotesquely in the snow. At times he could close his eyes and see those dead Marines rise, see them come out of the snow, their uniforms pressed, boots s.h.i.+ning, and their rifles gleaming; and he followed them marching, the lost battalions marching under wind-snapped flags and dancing guidons, coming at him in endless procession, calling to him in the animal roar of many men speaking as one, lifting their eyes to his plane, saluting him as he dove toward the enemy that was always there. On this night, he thought of all the dead Marines he had known and not known, and he loved all of them; the beauty and loss of this night moved him. Death in battle was the one poetry that almost released tears in Bull Meecham.

He fastened the collar of his dress blouse. In his twenty years as a Marine he had gained weight each year. At first it was a couple of pounds a year, undetectable even to him. But lately, the leanness of his youth was deserting him at an accelerated pace. More and more, he was coming to dread the yearly physical. He dieted on eggs and cottage cheese three or four times a year. Too impatient to endure a long range diet, he went on radical diets that seemed like preludes to famine. But no matter how stringent the effort, the thicknesses of middle age were encircling him and threatening to overwhelm the athlete's body, the Marine's body of which he was so proud. It was not that he looked fat; he did not. But there is a harsh message in the veracity of collars and photographs. The collar to his dress whites fit so tightly that it was an act of semi-strangulation to put it on. The Marine in the mirror was almost a caricature of the slim, youthful pilot who stood beside his Corsair in a photograph on Lillian's dresser. The Marine in the mirror unfastened his collar and would not fasten it again until it was absolutely necessary. He did not like the feeling of blood trapped in his head.

"Too tight, fatso," he heard his wife say.

"Naw, it isn't too tight," he snapped. "A uniform's supposed to be snug. It isn't supposed to fit like a nightgown."

"I can still wear the gown I wore to my first birthday ball."

"Big deal."

"There's no reason to be sensitive about being a little overweight, Bull. A lot of people are fat," she teased. "Maybe it's your glands."

"Quit your yappin' and get dressed, Lillian, or we're gonna be late for the ball. I'm not kidding. Get a move on," Bull said, looking at his watch.

"Don't rush me, Bull. I want you to be proud of the way I look tonight. I bought a gown that could win wars."

"Just hurry it up."

"Bull, you haven't been exactly pleasant to live with since the Cuban rift," Lillian said, her voice filled with concern.

"It ain't my job to be pleasant to live with. It's my job to fly birds."

"It's your job to be civil when you get home."

Again looking into the mirror, Bull said, "Mirror, mirror on the wall. Who's the toughest leatherneck of all?" Then, in a strained falsetto, he answered his own question, "You are, Oh Great Santini." Then in his own voice, he said, "Good answer, mirror. I'd have busted your s.h.i.+ny b.u.t.t if you had said anything else."

"Bull, darling, why don't you use some of that energy and go downstairs and talk to the children. You've been positively beastly to them since you've been home. You owe it to them to be nice on the birthday of the Marine Corps. This is supposed to be the happiest day of the year for a Marine," Lillian said.

"Not a bad idea, sportsfans. I think I'll find out how they respond to a surprise enemy attack." He went to his top dresser drawer and retrieved a bayonet he had found on a decayed j.a.panese soldier near an airfield in the Philippines. He also lifted out a shot putt his wife had given him for a Christmas present as a way for him to release tensions built up during a day's work. From his closet, he unsheathed the Mameluke sword which he had bought the same day he was commissioned a Marine officer. He put the bayonet in his teeth, carried the shot putt in his left hand, the sword in his right.

"Put that shot putt down, Bull Meecham. The last time you used it as a grenade it broke right through a window at Cherry Point. Now you be careful with those children. You might hurt one of them."

He growled at her through the bayonet.

Silently, Colonel Meecham moved toward the den where his children were watching television and doing homework during commercials. Ben was lying on the floor with his head propped up by pillows. Mary Anne lay on the couch, her hair in pin curls. Both Matt and Karen were sitting in overstuffed chairs with unopened books in their hands. Bull calculated the distance between himself and Ben, then lobbed the shot putt in the air. It missed Ben's head by less than five feet, and tore a chunk of plaster out of the wall. Then Bull charged into the room shouting, "Torah, Torah, Torah." Matt scrambled toward the kitchen, but his father nimbly cut off that path of retreat. Ben rolled over toward the fireplace and armed himself with a poker. He yelled at Mary Anne to arm herself with a hearth shovel while he held his father at bay. Mary Anne shouted back that she was not going to lower herself by playing in one of her father's silly war games.

"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 partic.i.p.ate 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-s.e.xual 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 sh.e.l.l.

"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 anch.o.r.ed 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 semi-darkness. 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 pantleg 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 was.h.i.+ng my heart off in the sink. h.e.l.l no. It's my G.o.ddam 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 h.e.l.l."

"How did it happen?"

"Karen hit me with that G.o.ddam 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 'ittle biddy Marine on the big toe during war games?"

"She pitched the son of a b.i.t.c.h 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 G.o.ddam 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 b.u.t.t. 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, pet.i.te 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 G.o.d, 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?"

"h.e.l.l, 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?"