The Great Santini (43 page)

But then the nuns and priests had gotten to him. Each year they increased their emphasis on sexual education. Most of the boys he knew laughed about what the good sisters and the good fathers had to say about sex. But not Ben. When Sister Marie Daniel stated that masturbation saps your strength, Ben felt incredibly tired, exhausted beyond imagination. When she listed warts, pimples, and madness as direct results of incessant masturbation, Ben looked at the warts on his hands, blushed through the pimples on his face, and felt madness and disorientation violate the frontiers of his psyche. And this same Sister Marie Daniel had told a class full of boys that if" thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. "But Ben had known that she was not talking about eyes and hands, and during the entire year that he was under her influence the image of his penis being lopped off for the glory of God haunted him always. He felt sure that if Sister Marie Daniel had had her way, she would have applied leeches to the penis of every Catholic boy who entered her domain and left them on until each penis was sucked dry of blood, a limp, desiccated sac of flesh that could be snipped off and thrown from her convent window. Nuns could pray their vespers in a penis-littered garden and the sad corpses of boy penises could be reminders that hell would not claim these lads because of sins of the flesh.

The voice of Sister Loretta smashed into his thoughts and he returned to her words.

"Satan also watches you abuse yourself. Only it pleases him and makes him happy. In his everlasting torment and damnation, this is the only thing that eases his pain or brings him any joy. He laughs and calls the other demons to his side, millions of them, screaming, howling, bat-faced men and women with their doomed, tortured faces made happy for a single instant by the sight of you abusing and desecrating the temple of the Holy Ghost—your precious body. But do keep in mind my original point. Sex is very beautiful. But only if it takes place between two people duly married by a priest under the sight of God for the purpose of procreation of children. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Sister," the class answered.

"Are there any questions?"

"No, Sister," the class answered more quickly.

"Now the Virgin Mary can help you during times of temptation. Pray to her often. Pray that she helps you become chaste. Pray to her when impure thoughts come to your mind. Have her statue in your room. Also a statue of Jesus and Joseph and other saints. Turn their eyes toward your bed. Have them watch over you and admonish you with sinless eyes. Keep your rosary beads on your bedside table so you may reach for them when the devil walks at night."

There was no movement among the fetid, dirty little masturbators who sat in an advanced state of spiritual rigor mortis before their catechist. Each boy thought that Sister Loretta was speaking directly to and about him and only him, that somehow she had learned the vile secrets of his bedroom where he waited between spotted sheets and fought with the furious dragon of his own sexuality that issued forth from a forbidden cavern unknown to him, unseen by him. And when once it had been so easy to be good, to be Christian, to refrain from having strange gods before you, to refuse to covet your neighbor's goods, to kill, to covet wives, or to commit adultery: where it had been easy to be priest-like, now there was this cataclysmic beast whose hoofs tracked across a boy's soul, flogged by a demon horseman who could ride through even the sternest gaze of Jesus or Mary, a horseman who could trample God himself if the hour was late, the sky full of stars, the boy alone, and the desire thundering through him in the thickening and enlarging that he both dreaded and loved.

If the devil caused it, if in Ravenel, South Carolina, in the year of 1962, Satan had taken possession of that vulnerable geography around Ben's loins, staked a claim in this beleaguered region; if the rise and ebb of his bright manhood was the sole armature of the Prince of Darkness, then he had developed the most potent weapon. For sometimes it came. His brain would sing with the faces and bodies of girls he passed in hallways, who sat near him in class, who walked into his life and out again in stores, theaters, or trips, and in movies. He had never touched a girl, never held a girl's hands, never made an advance to do so, and had no immediate prospects, but by night he walked like a king before a kingdom of light and flesh where breasts came to his mouth, thighs opened and legs seized him in the moonlight sacrament of entry and surrender, the blood rising, the heart in fury, and all women his lovers, his companions, his prey. Above him, the Blessed Virgin stared at him in enraged alabaster, the Christ on the crucifix howled as though Ben were driving another nail into His body, and the angels in their fiery clusters and starry squadrons lamented the fall from grace in beautiful, silvery billions.

She knows about me, Ben thought to himself, she knows and this lecture is directed at me and no one else. Did Father Pinckney tell her about my confession? They probably exchange notes. Hey, Sister, by the way, did you know that Ben Meecham beats off at night quite a bit. Shocking, isn't it? I was surprised myself considering how many times he receives communion and serves Mass.

Feeling dead, Ben's mind skipped to the hills of Alabama where his mother's kin would whisper to him when Lillian paid calls alone about their private visions of Catholicism. The hill people had a warped, yet sensual, mythology invented to explain to themselves this mumbo-jumbo that Lillian had embraced when she married the pilot from the Midwest. Ben's great aunt told him the truth about priests and nuns. "They are not what you think they are. When you take a bride in the Catholic Church, one hears tell that the priest spends the first night with her while you pray tied and bound upon the altar. And I, myself, have seen, Benjamin, on motor trips to Atlanta, two or three nuns circling the walls of cemeteries praying for the bones of the murdered infants implanted in them by priests. I have heard their lamentations. When you are older we'll take you to the river by the New Zion Baptist Church and have Brother Catlett wash you in the blood of the Lamb."

Then Sister Loretta, washed in the blood of dead infants, gave out the assignment for the next meeting in January. "Memorize the Act of Hope which will be found in the index of prayers in the back of your Catechism. I think we've accomplished a lot in this meeting. P. K., you and Gilbert can quit holding hands unless you wish to walk home that way."

The class laughed except for Gilbert, P. K., and Ben. "You are dismissed. Have a happy and holy Christmas."

It was Christmas Eve. The tide was going out in the river. The air was cold, breezeless, and stars sparkled through moss and waited for a bright half-risen moon to climb higher in the sky. A group of carolers from the Blood of His Son Baptist Church sang from house to house, a choir of dark voices moving from one end of town to another, the collective lights of their candles winking and dancing at the end of surprised verandas. Their songs were full of renewal and their presence before the mansions set back from the Lawn brought forth the gray aristocracy of the town to wave and call to the singers whose faces, bright under stars and behind candles, smiled as they sang about the birth of God.

The Meecham family prepared for midnight Mass. Mary Anne and Ben, fully dressed, knelt before the Christmas tree rattling presents that bore their names.

"Is this all the presents?" Mary Anne asked.

"You know Mom and Dad bring down most of the presents after we go to bed," Ben answered.

"Of course I know it. I can tell you where every present in this house is hidden."

"How do you know?" Ben challenged.

"Because I've snooped around a lot. Gone on reconnaissance missions. Paid off informants. I'm real nosy when it comes to presents."

"You can say that again."

Picking up a very small present, shaking it for some telltale clue of its content, balancing it on her palm, she weighed and analyzed it with the expertise of a rapidly developing sense of human avarice.

"What's in this one?" she asked. "No sound from the little devil."

"It's a suppository. It's from me, with love," Ben said.

"Very witty, feces face," she snapped. "No, it's probably a diamond ring. Five carats or more. Probably sent by a stranger who has seen me from afar. A shy billionaire who's been inflamed to passion by the sight of my body."

"He must not only be a shy billionaire. He must be a real ugly billionaire."

"Keep it up, jump-shooter," Mary Anne said, "and I'll have to roll out the big guns."

"What could you say to me that I couldn't handle?"

"Oh, I wouldn't say it to you. I'd go up to Daddy-poo and tell him that I saw you sniffin' Mom's underwear on the clothesline. "

"You wouldn't do that!" Ben cried out.

"No one messes with Big Mary Anne. It's suicide. Because there's nobody in the world that fights as dirty."

"You're just like Dad," Ben said.

"I read that in a book recently. About some poor creep who liked to stick his nose in his mama's nasty ol' panties. Of course, if I told Dad that I saw you doing it . . ."

"He'd just kill me and that would be it. No questions asked," Ben said.

"Exactly. So I would advise my golden boy brother to beware when he deals with his brilliant, but modest, sister."

"I got you a gift that I thought you'd like, Mary Anne. You're always complaining about your freckles, so I got you a gallon of hydrochloric acid. You just pour the whole thing over your head and it's guaranteed to remove every freckle on your body. Also your nose, your ears, and your lips."

Karen and Matthew entered the room and headed straight for the presents under the tree. Following behind them was Mrs. Meecham, radiant in a yellow dress, her red hair piled fashionably, and her finest jewelry glistening around her neck, above her left breast, and on her wrists and ears. Ben and Mary Anne sat transfixed. There were times when it stunned them both how beautiful Lillian could be.

"I pay homage to the queen," Ben said with a flourish.

"Thank you, darling," Mrs. Meecham beamed, curtsying and blowing kisses to her son. "This is just an old something I had in the closet to put on. I haven't had anything new or exciting to wear in a coon's age."

"Does it ever bother you, Mama, that all your children look like toads?" Mary Anne said.

"Speak for yourself, Mary Anne," Karen said.

"I've got the most darling children in the universe. All of you are beautiful in your own way," Lillian said. "Mary Anne, you've just never realized that you'd be far prettier if you'd just take a little time to fix yourself up. It takes time and work to be pretty. Like myself, I've just got an average face, but I've learned some tricks of the trade over the years that make me seem prettier than I really am. When I was a girl I was as gawky and ungainly as they come, but I knew I had to use all the tricks of the trade available and I said to myself, 'Why Lillian, you're just as pretty as any of those northwest Atlanta girls,' and do you know what? Just saying it and thinking it made it come true. Because I saw myself as pretty, I became pretty. If you think you are ugly, you will be ugly, mark my words. I even think depression is caused by thinking about things that depress you. I feel that if you think positively, things will turn out for the better. It's also a matter of good taste to talk about only happy things."

"Have you taught me to have good taste, Mama? Is that another trick of the trade I haven't learned?" Mary Anne said.

"Good taste is not something you can be taught. It's not something you obtain in a store or go to college to learn. You either have it or you don't. It is passed down from generation to generation in a straight line, but not everybody in a family gets it. It's like high cheekbones. Your father will never have good taste and I will never be without it. You could drain every drop of blood from my body and what was left would include my innate good taste. I'm chock full of it."

"I've got it, Mama. I know I've got it. I got it from you," Karen said.

"Of course you do, sugah."

"Where's the creature from the Black Lagoon?" Ben said, changing the subject.

"Don't talk about your father like that on Christmas Eve. Shame on you," Mrs. Meecham admonished. "Your father's in the bathroom."

"That means he'll be in there about three days," Matt said.

Karen said, her face very serious," What does that man do in there for so long?"

"He's going number two," Mary Anne said with delicacy.

"He excretes in prodigious amounts, Karen, not seen on the earth since prehistoric times when dinosaurs let fly," Ben said.

"Ben!" Lillian said.

"You don't have good taste," Karen said to her older brother.

"Y'all ever get a whiff of the bathroom when he comes out?"

"It smells like something crawled up his behind and died," said Mary Anne.

"I'm shocked to hear that coming from a young southern lady," Lillian exclaimed, but a half-smile betrayed her attempted sternness.

"That's in poor taste," Karen said, glancing toward her mother for approval.

"I bet if you lit a match right by the toilet the second he got up," Ben said," the whole house would explode."

"Hush, Ben, he might hear you," Lillian said, again casting a quick glance to the stair and listening for his heavy walk. "I'll go upstairs and hurry him up a little."

"You better take a gas mask," Ben said.

"Poor taste, poor taste, Ben," Karen chirped.

"You will find, Karen," Mary Anne said as she watched her mother climb the last stairs," that poor taste is a lot more fun than good taste. Good taste is real boring. "Then turning to Ben she said," Ben, do you remember the time we lived in that little house with only one bathroom up in North Carolina? The one right outside of Cherry Point?"

"My bladder just screamed when you mentioned it."