The Great Santini (53 page)

When order was restored somewhat, the referees called time out while Dr. Ratteree examined the injuries sustained by Peanut Abbott. One of the referees came to the Calhoun huddle, pointed to Ben, and said," Number thirteen, you're out of the game. Go to the shower room. Coach Spinks, there will be a report made to the high school commission about this boy. "Ben trotted down the sidelines toward the locker room. Before he could enter the doorway, his father caught him and clapped him on the back again and again. "That's my boy. That's playing like you were a Chicago boy. That's how a Chicago boy would do it. And don't think those scouts weren't impressed. They're looking for a guy with a killer instinct. That's showing guts, Ben. I'm proud of you, son. "And then desperately, Ben plunged through the double doors, away from the voice of the crowd, into the anonymity of the dressing room where he sat on the wooden bench before his locker and cried out of shame.

For two minutes he wept, his arms folded on his thighs, his head buried in his arms. He did not hear Mr. Dacus enter the locker room nor see him sit down against the cinderblock wall. Finally, Mr. Dacus spoke to Ben. "How's the little pissant?"

"I've never felt worse in my whole life," Ben choked out between sobs.

"Abbott's got a broken arm. I bet he feels worse than you do."

"I'm sorry, Mr. D. Oh God, I am so sorry."

"He looked like he was hurting pretty bad. The bone was sticking through the flesh when we put him in the police car with Doc Ratteree to go down to the hospital. You messed up bad, pissant."

"Yes, sir. I know."

"What do you think I ought to do about it?"

"I don't know, sir."

"Well help me think about it, Ben. Calhoun is my high school. I'm damn proud of it and damn proud of the kids that attend it. It's well thought of all over the state because of the accomplishments of these kids. They've worked hard to make the image of Calhoun High respectable and worthy of that respect. Then along comes some sorry damn pissant who doesn't have the guts to tell his father to go take a flying jump when that father is just about as wrong as a father can possibly be. So because he has no guts, he breaks a boy's arm in the most unsportsmanlike display I have ever witnessed in my whole life. What you did, Ben, was low, base, cowardly, and unforgivable."

"Yes, sir. I know," Ben said.

"What do you think I ought to do about it?"

"Take me outside and kill me," Ben answered.

"No, pissant. I'm not going to do that. But you are never going to participate in another varsity sport at Calhoun High School. You have four games left in the basketball season. You will not be playing in any of them, nor will you be allowed to play baseball this spring. Do you think that's fair?"

"Yes, sir."

"I don't. I don't think that's a fair exchange for a broken arm. I think you're getting the best end of the deal."

"Yes, sir."

"I want to extract as much bad feeling as I can from you, Ben. Most of all, I wanted you to know how disappointed I am in you personally and how what you did tonight disgusts me as badly as anything one of my students has ever done. Take the uniform off. I don't want to see a Calhoun uniform even near you," Mr. Dacus said, walking slowly toward the door. Before he went back to watch the final quarter he turned to Ben and said, "See you in school, pissant. It isn't the end of the world."

On the Saturday after the Peninsula game, Sammy Wertzberger drove up in front of the Meecham house driving a 1959 Fleetwood Cadillac. He honked his horn twice and waited until Ben rushed through the front door, bounded down the stairs, and entered the passenger side of the car. The Big APE radio from Jacksonville was turned to such a high volume that Ben did not hear the first three sentences Sammy spoke to him after he was in the car. Finally, Ben leaned over and turned the volume knob.

"I said Dad let me have the big Jew canoe tonight," Sammy said, cackling his high-pitched laugh.

"Why do you call it that, Sammy?"

"So I can beat the Christians to the punch. They also call this car 'Sammy's Jewish Submarine.'"

"It must be tough being a child of Israel."

"No tougher than being a child of Rome. Everyone in this town thinks you're weirder than hell for that shit you do at the foul line," Sammy said, turning down River Street and cruising past the storefronts, the image of the Cadillac sliding dreamlike past the illuminated plate glass windows.

"That's not shit. That's the sign of the cross."

"Yeah. Shit. Why do you do that stuff anyway?"

"If I make the shot, Sammy, then there's a God. If I miss it, then there's not."

"That makes sense to me. Hey, what do you want to do tonight, Ben? Go to the Shack?"

"Naw. The whole team will be there. I feel like Cain when I'm around those guys now," Ben said as the car turned a corner on Rutledge Street and passed the small white framed grocery store that Sammy's father owned. "What does your daddy do anyway, Sammy? Does he make a living off that store?"

"No, Ben, that's just a front. I was going to tell you sooner or later, but you've forced my hand. That store's just a front. He makes his real cash dough screwing Saint Bernards for stag movies. I wish he would screw Red Pettus in a stag movie."

"Red giving you some more trouble?"

"Not real trouble. He just says things every time I see him."

"Why don't you just punch him once or twice?"

"There's one thing you seem to have forgotten about Sammy Wertzberger, Marine brat, and it's very important in understanding the nature of that great and noble man. Sammy Wertzberger is one of the greatest cowards that ever lived. Sammy Wertzberger doesn't fight unless he's fighting blind or crippled people. Or real small women."

"Red's just a bully. You've got to stand up to him sometime."

"Oh no. That's where you're wrong. I can sit and whimper and fall to my knees and beg for mercy for my whole lifetime. That's the nature of a true coward. I've made a very careful study of myself and from every conceivable angle, I'm a total chicken shit. Oh, I forgot to tell you, Ben," Sammy said, slowing the car down and looking over the back seat. "Look on the floor and bring it up here with us."

Ben pulled a 12-gauge double barreled shotgun off the floorboards of the back seat. "Is it loaded?" Ben said, handling the weapon with caution. "What did you bring this thing for?"

"It's not loaded. I brought it because the next time I run with the bulls at Pamplona I'm gonna take this baby with me. If one of those big bastards gets near me I'm gonna make about ten thousand cheeseburgers out of him," Sammy shouted, gripped by one of the Hemingway fantasies which came to him, Ben had noticed, with more and more frequency. "Now, I thought since neither of us have dates tonight . . ."

"Yeah, it's very rare when you and I don't have dates."

"But since this does happen to be one of those rare occasions when we are not seducing fair young maidens, I think we ought to head for the beach and have a little fun with those young lovers parked in the moonlight. You know, sneak up on couples making out and shoot the shotgun off right beside their car."

"What if the guy jumps out and beats hell out of us?"

"Who's gonna jump out and beat the hell out of a guy holding a shotgun, man? Besides, well just shoot it and run our nuts off."

"O.K., but you do the shooting and I'll do the running."

They were on the beach highway now, passing long stretches of tomato and cucumber fields that quilted both sides of the road, passing the lights of the blue-shuttered shacks of the barrier-island blacks, passing over the small bridges that spanned the salt creeks that fingered deep into the marsh, passing black men walking the shoulder of the highway, black churches, and a hundred other reminders that once you left the town of Ravenel and crossed the waters toward the barrier islands, you had entered the land of the freed slave, the gullah black, and it was a very different land from the one you had just left. Ben had asked Arrabelle where the voodoo people lived in Ravenel County and she had replied," Every time you white folk go to the beach to color yourself up, you pass by some haint-fearin' people. And I'll tell you this, a bad spirit ain't gonna enter no house which done got the shutters painted blue. Now I just know that be a fact. "The Cadillac passed small, smoke-filled clubs with loud music and black people spilling out of open doors and sometimes overflowing into the highway.

"Hey, Ben," Sammy said after they had passed several minutes in silence.

"Yeah, Sammy?"

"Do you realize that there are guys out there gettin' it right now. I mean gettin' it while we're just riding around talking about it."

"We're not talking about it."

"Well, I want to start talking about it. Here's what I would like to be doing right now instead of being with you. No offense, Ben, buddy-roo. No, I'd like to be biting Mary Lou Scoggins on her left thigh. And then I'd like to take my whole head and put it between Olive Tatum's boobs and bounce them back and forth between my nose. But mostly, I'd like to walk up to Cindy White in the hall at school, bite her on her delicious little fanny and hang on for dear life as she raced around the hall trying to shake me off. By the way, Ben, you know who wants to date me?"

"Frankenstein's daughter."

"Very funny. But Emma Lee Givens has put out the word that she's hot for Sammy's bod."

"That's really nice, Sammy," Ben said. "She's just about the nicest girl at Calhoun High. And you know she's one of the smartest."

"Yeah, I heard she liked me from Mr. Loring. He just hinted around a bit and I got the message. Teachers love to be matchmakers. I guess Emma Lee just drooled over my gorgeous body in silence all these years and finally could bear it no longer. She knew she had to make a move fast because she was just one of ten thousand girls who were making plans to sample the bodily wares of that stud, Sammy Wertzberger. Sammy Wertzberger," he repeated. "Do you think my name sounds funny, Ben?" he asked.

"What?"

"Tell me the truth. Do you think my name, Sammy Wertzberger, sounds funny?"

"No, it sounds O.K."

"You're lying."

"No, I'm not. I don't think it sounds funny."

"All right. We'll conduct a test. You pretend that you're me and you're meeting someone for the first time. Now walk up to this imaginary person and introduce yourself without laughing."

"Hello," Ben said seriously," my name is Sammy Wertzberger. "Then he giggled.

"See, it's impossible. It's impossible to say my name without laughing. I can't even do it. That's why I've always wanted to change my name to something like Rock Troy," Sammy said. "That sounds good."

They heard breakers crashing against the beach and the air was heavy with salt and spray. There were several cars parked along the beach road with couples welded together in clenched silhouettes.

"I want to find someone who's parking alone. Someone who really means business. I know the best spot in Ravenel County. Not many people know about it. Only the real lady-killers like myself."

Sammy drove along the road that paralleled the beach for more than a mile. Then the road took a slight turn inland at the point where private homes and private property began and the state beach ended. Turning out the lights of his car, Sammy grabbed the shotgun, loaded two shells in the barrels, and motioned for Ben to follow him quietly. Soon, they were creeping down an infrequently traveled dirt road lined with palmettos and mossy live oaks. It was a cold, soundless night, black as obsidian, and Ben could only follow the sound of Sammy's insistent plunge toward the ocean. He had lost sight of Sammy as soon as they left the main road.

There was a long curve in the road that led them to an arch of trees that covered the dirt road before it died in a series of low sand dunes near the beach. Parked beneath the trees was a car. Sammy grabbed Ben by the wrist and pulled him behind a tree thirty yards away from the automobile. A radio was playing loudly from the car. But as the two boys watched from their covert looking post, the thing that held their fascination the longest was the fact that they had advanced to within striking distance of a police car.

"I'm getting out of here, Sammy," Ben whispered. "See you back at the Jew canoe."

"Wait a minute. That's Junior Palmer's prowl car. He's a deputy sheriff."

"I'm leaving, Sammy. You could end up dead shooting that shotgun off near a sheriff."

"I'm not going to shoot this shotgun. I'm going to do something far more exciting and far more dangerous."

"Let me know how it turns out when you see me Monday, you hear?"

"You don't understand, Ben," Sammy whispered, "I'm gonna sneak up there and find out who Palmer's with. He's married and has two kids."

"Sammy. You are nuts, man. Weren't you the guy who was telling me what a big coward he was just a little while ago? Anyway, that might be his wife in the car."

"Oh, c'mon, Ben, nobody goes out and parks with his wife. He's messing around with somebody. Now I'm gonna sneak behind that tree where the car is parked and see if I can't see in the window who Palmer's with. I've always wanted to get something on that son of a bitch. You hold the gun," Sammy said, slipping off commando style toward the police car. He paused after he had gone a few feet and said," Cover me."

Keeping to the shadows and taking his time, Sammy advanced to the strategic oak and remained concealed in the shadows for over five minutes. Then Ben saw Sammy's shadow, quiet as a ferret, retreating along the same route he had advanced, but stopping behind each tree to ensure that he had not been seen.