The Great Santini (25 page)

"Did you see that movie playin' at the Palmetto?" Cleve Goins, the auto parts man asked without directing the question to anyone in particular. No one answered, but Cleve continued anyway. "What's this damn world comin' to anyhow? Will someone tell me? There was bare titty all over the screen. My wife made me cover her eyes. I told Wyatt Gosnell that I wasn't gonna set a toe in his motion picture house until he could start showin' some family entertainment."

"Yeah, it must have been bad all right," Ed Mills, the postman said. "Wyatt told me you stayed through that movie twice."

"He didn't say any such a thing, Ed."

"You wouldn't a missed that pitcher show if it'd been playin' in Red China," Johnnie Voight hissed into his coffee.

"I heard they had to pull ol' Cleve away from that screen four or five times 'cause he kept runnin' up there to get a closer look," another man said.

"Liar. A doctor of medicine lyin' like a field nigger," Cleve shot back. "I was just tryin' to tell you all that someone ought to do something about that trash that's being shown in this town. There was one scene, sure enough, when I thought the hero was gonna slap it to her right before my eyes. He was a rubbin' and a underlatin' and a pantin' like an old boar tryin' to get hisself a little."

"God bless us all," the doctor whined. "Can't somebody go over to Cleve's store and buy a carburetor or something so we can escape this ungodly chatter."

"I just thought you boys might be interested," Cleve said, his feelings hurt.

"What time does that movie start?" Ed asked. Everyone in the grill laughed except for Cleve, who assumed a posture of righteous disgruntlement.

Hobie Rawls, his ample frame encased in a white apron, approached Colonel Meecham and asked if he was ready to order.

"Yes, sir, I am," Colonel Meecham answered. "I'll take two eggs over light, bacon, a cup of coffee, and hash browns."

"Sorry, Colonel. We only serve grits. It's kind of a custom down here."

"No hash browns, eh? That's a shame," Colonel Meecham said.

"Where are you from?" the doctor asked, sitting two stools down to Bull's right.

Bull glanced up and answered the doctor's reflection in the mirror. "Chicago, Doc."

"You just get stationed here?" Hobie asked.

"I've been here for a while. I'm C.O. of 367 over at the air station."

Ed Mills said," It seems to me that a man who flies jets ought to be able to eat a few grits."

"I wouldn't mind eating grits if there's ever a famine," the colonel answered.

Ed studied the colonel's features. "Do you live in the old Huger place over on the Lawn?" he asked.

"Yep, at least I guess it's the old Huger place. It doesn't have a nametag."

"Your name's Meecham. I've been delivering mail to your house for a couple of weeks now."

"That's one thing about this town, Colonel. A man can't fart in this town without it sounding like a thunderclap. I'm Zell Posey. If you ever need any legal work done, I'm at your service. "Posey was a starkly thin man with vulnerable eyes and a leg brace. These were the first words he had spoken to anyone.

"Thank you, sir. I'm Bull Meecham and if anything comes up, I'll remember you. By the way, Ed," he said to the postman, who occupied the first stool by the door," how long have you been delivering mail?"

"He's been messin' up people's mail for thirty years now," a man with a florid, hawk-nosed face said from a far booth.

"Just like you been messin' up people's hair, Pride," Ed retorted.

"Kilgo can plain mess up a man's head of hair," Cleve agreed.

"Well, with you, Cleve, I ain't got a great deal to work with," Kilgo said.

"Ol' Lady Medusa won't go to nobody 'cept Pride Kilgo," the doctor added.

"Don't listen to them, Colonel. I'm a master of my trade. An artist," Kilgo said. "Which is more than I can say for the Doc. I knew a man that went to Doc Ratteree with a hangnail one time and ended up getting his arm sawed off to the elbow. And I swear on a Bible, it was the wrong damn arm."

"God bless the dimwit," the doctor exhaled.

"There's been many a man who walked into ol' Doc's office healthy as a roach and come out with a sheet over his face," Cleve said.

"Damn you, Cleve. You weren't talking so big when your wife had pneumonia last year."

"It's O.K., Doc," Ed Mills rasped. "I can say for a fact that you've saved one or two people from certain death in your career. And if I stay here all day I can probably even come up with their names."

"He saved Hoyt Simms's life for sure, by insurin' his wife didn't live through that operation."

From behind the counter, Hobie called out," Any of you gentlemen want any coffee, raise your paws."

"Yeah, I don't think Hoyt could have lived another day with that woman."

"Why did Doc operate on Mrs. Simms?"

"He didn't operate," Ed Mills said. "He was giving her a blood test and she bled to death."

"God bless 'em to hell."

"He made Stinky Sanders, the mortician, the richest man in town, Colonel," Hobie Rawls said while pouring coffee into Bull's cup from a steaming glass globe.

"Stinky gives the sonbitch ten percent on every stiff he delivers to get drained," Cleve said, jubilant that the heat was off him.

"That's a goddam lie," Ed Mills objected in his acidulated voice," and I'll fight any man who says that about the Doc. He gets twenty percent on a stiff if he gets a nickel."

"Hobie," a man from a back booth cried out, invisible to Bull," something's wrong with my eggs. They taste good."

"Well, send it back to the kitchen. Don't let Hobie get away with somethin' as serious as that."

"Colonel, I think I better warn ya," Ed Mills said from his position on the first stool," Jimbo Punt used to eat an egg a day on that same stool where you're sittin'. He dropped dead of blood poisoning less than a year ago and the boy was only twelve years old."

"He drowned in the river, and he was eighteen, Colonel," Hobie corrected.

The cluster of bells thong-tied to the upper hinges of the entrance door jingled and a short, thin woman with a cigarette hanging straight downward from her mouth walked in. The laws of gravity were about to apply to a long ash that clung to the cigarette. In her face, Bull read a history of too much caffeine and nicotine and too much of something else, but whatever it was, it was much worse. The lines in her face looked earned; they were not decorations casually bestowed. She chose the stool by Ed Mills and barked to Hobie for a cup of coffee. Though she was the only woman in the grill, she did not seem to notice, nor did her entry diminish the feeling of fraternity that enriched the early morning banter.

"If it ain't Bertha Grimmitt—you ain't been in here in a coon's age," Cleve Goins shouted.

"Shut up, Cleve," Bertha answered in a strong, slow voice with a brassy resonance that could hang in a room for a long time. "I've always hated you."

Bull thought," That'll shut ol' Cleve up, I bet."

"Wa-hoooo," Cleve yelped instead.

"Where'd you park your broom, Bertha?" a voice asked from a middle booth.

"You boys leave Miss Bertha alone," Hobie said.

"Don't worry about me, Hobie," Bertha said, "these boys don't worry me."

"Truer words were never spoken."

After taking two deep swallows of coffee she announced to all the men in the grill, and Bull took note that the boys at Hobie's took their cues from Bertha, that" It's great to be here among the Dead Pecker Club again, listening to all the dead peckers mouth off like they still had a little vinegar left in them."

"Ah, the flower of southern womanhood," the crippled man at the kitchen end of the counter sighed. It was the lawyer, Zell Posey, and by his tone Bull knew that bad blood moved between him and Bertha.

"I hope I didn't offend his royal highness by including him in the Dead Pecker Club."

"Offend me, Madame?" Posey replied with regal disdain. "I barely even admit to myself that you're alive. "Zell Posey spoke with a voice that was a cry of pain. His face was noble; a face sculpted from an aggrieved aristocracy that was bleeding out through weak tributaries in the long delta of the twentieth century. His eyes contained a fire that could not ignite the other frontiers of his body.

"That's because you've got that nose of yours stuck so far in the air that you never get to look down to see us common nits on the ground."

"Oh, c'mon, Bertha," a voice said. "Zell's got blue blood. That's why his nose is stuck up in the air."

"Yeah, I know," Bertha said. "He's gotta have his nose up in the air so he can sniff that angel shit. "Then she turned her eyes down the counter and saw Colonel Meecham stirring the grits that Hobie had insisted on heaping on his plate. He enjoyed eavesdropping on verbal swordplay that had edge, and even wickedness. Bull heard Bertha speaking to him. "The Dead Pecker Club has a new member, I see. Colonel, my name is Bertha Grimmitt. I'm your friendly neighborhood florist.

"Bull Meecham, ma'am," he answered saluting her in the mirror.

"Got any kids?" she asked.

"Four, ma'am," he answered.

"A real live pecker here at Hobie's. That's as rare as a good joke on these stools," she laughed.

Hobie asked," Ya got any kids that'll be going to the high school?"

"Yep. Two of them, Hobie. And one of them is going to be your star basketball player."

"Is that right?" Hobie answered. "My girl's gonna be a senior."

"You Marines breed like mink. I know one sergeant over on the island what had eleven children. Most of'em boys," Cleve said.

"You'll have to excuse these Philistines, Colonel," Zell spoke up. "I assure you that the trash you heard in Hobie's this morning is not indicative of the citizens of Ravenel. There are many gentlemen and ladies [he said bowing hostilely toward Bertha] of genuine distinction and cultural awareness."

"Thus speaketh the deadest pecker in the family of man. A fossil imprinted with ferns and the skeletons of fish," Bertha said through a cigarette.

"There is no culture or refinement here. That's what I detest about this restaurant," Zell said.

"Why do you think we come here, Zell?" Ed Burns answered from the opposite stool.

Colonel Meecham rose to pay his check. He looked down at his grits and said," That's the worst Cream of Wheat I've ever tasted."

"That's Georgia ice cream," Doc Ratteree said.

"Every time I eat grits, it becomes perfectly clear to me why the South lost the war."

"We gonna see you again, Colonel?" Hobie asked.

"You boys are gonna have a hard time getting rid of me," Bull answered. "Enjoyed it."

"Give them Russians hell today, Colonel," Bertha called as he left the restaurant.

He walked out into the smoky brightness of River Street which was beginning to shake off the inertia of the dawn. It was a moist, hot September day and the air was heavy enough to exact a toll from anyone consuming it. Before the colonel could get to his car, a voice hailed him from behind. He turned around and watched Zell Posey limping toward him.

"Colonel," Zell said, when he reached him," I just wanted to tell you how much I admire the courage and professionalism of the Marine Corps."

"Thanks very much, Mr. Posey."

"I tried to join the Marines during the Second World War, but they didn't seem to have room for one-legged men. I really wanted to fight with the Corps. I really did," he said, looking past the colonel toward the curving road. "I lost the leg in a boating accident when I was a child. But I wanted you to know that."

Bull was fidgeting as he always did when someone stripped away an outer layer of himself and revealed something intensely personal. Not even a metatarsal of any family skeleton interested Bull Meecham if the family was not his own. But Zell continued to open up until Bull, renouncing his role of confessor, insisted that he had to get to work.

"Of course," Zell said. "But just one other thing, Colonel. Don't take seriously what Bertha says. She doesn't mean a thing by it."

"I know she doesn't," Bull said. "That's some broad."

"She was once my wife," Zell said, turning to walk to his office.

Three weeks after the beginning of school, Bull arrived home from the squadron at the precise instant that Lillian was setting dinner on the table. In her career as a Marine wife she had failed in her efforts to train her husband to call when he would be working late or not returning home at all. Bull washed his hands at the kitchen sink, dried them on one of Lillian's aprons, and joined the family for grace. As the pilot said grace, he rubbed his hands together in anticipation of the evening meal and spoke the words of the prayer so rapidly that it would take a most patient deity to find gratitude in the stream of rhetoric offered at the Meecham table. Then Bull, in an expansive mood, shouted," Chow down, troops," lifting a piece of roast from the platter and biting into it before the meat even touched his plate.

"Bull, sugah," Lillian said," they've invented these weird new instruments. They're called forks."

"Yeh, that's right," Bull acknowledged, still fingering the roast. "They've also got these weird old instruments called hands. They work better."

"I don't think you should eat like that in front of the children," she said.

"Get off my back, will you!" Bull shouted. "I've had a tough day at the office making the world safe for democracy. I'm hungry."

"I'm thinking about having a trough built at your end of the table so you can just stick your whole head into a pile of slop."

"Mama thinks you eat like a pig, Daddy. She's just trying to help you develop good table manners," Karen said.

"I've heard that pigs get sick to their stomachs while eating at the same table with Dad," Mary Anne said.

"O.K., O.K.," Bull sighed, placing his meat on his plate and lifting up a fork with mock delicacy. "Will someone please pass the Coquille Saint Jack?"

"I'm trying to set a good example for the children."

"They have great table manners."

"That's because their mother happens to be a woman of some refinement."