The Great Santini (67 page)

Every head but Ben's. He did not hear the first part of the eulogy. He heard the voice and admired its power. But he was remembering a walk with Toomer in the black-gum swamp of St. Catherine's Island when Toomer had come across the
track of a large Eastern Diamondback rattler. Toomer had stopped, hunted for a stick, and with great deliberation had marked a large" X" across the track of the snake.

"That snake gonna die by next sunrise, white boy," Toomer had said and Ben knew that Toomer was sharing with him one of those secrets of the lowcountry whose origins came from the myths of lost tribes; the black men of Ravenel had remedies
for their daily fears. Somehow Ben felt that the snake too shared the belief of its extinction and could feel the" X" cut into the long, beautiful spine, severing the diamond at an intersection between the rattlers and the fangs the moment Toomer planted the" X. "And as he tried to catch hold of Virgil's voice and focus on the praise of his father, Ben thought that maybe some angel of death had beheld Toomer's act, liked its mystery and style, and had been watching as Bull Meecham flew back from
Key West, and had seen the jetstream cut across the state of Florida in a keen and perishable track. Maybe this diamond-backed angel had picked up a stick and marked an" X" across
the track of Bull Meecham. Maybe that is how death worked with all things: someone would come upon your trail, your markings, and violate them with an" X." Some friend or enemy
or angel would kill you by defiling the marks you left in your passage.

Then, fighting to return to Virgil, Ben heard the words, "Bull Meecham was a lover of flight, a pilot who took joy in the immense pleasure, the supreme and indescribable pleasure in flying an F-8 faster than the speed of sound. No one besides a fighter pilot will ever know this feeling. There is no way to explain it or to tell how it feels or how wonderful it is. Bull Meecham loved it and because he loved it, he became one of the best fighter pilots that ever stood up for Semper Fi.

"I like the fact that if Bull Meecham had to die, he died like a fighter pilot. He was lucky enough to die in his plane. If the truth were known, that is the way all of us would choose to leave this earth. Bull Meecham died as a pilot, as a Marine,
as a Marine fighter pilot. I like the fact that Bull did that stupid, reckless act of turning away from the town before he punched out, an action that cost him his life. But I can see him thinking in that stubborn, mule-like way of his, 'If I punch out of this bird down there, I got kids down there. Other hogs got kids down there. I got friends down there.'

"I want to tell his kids that their father was a strange man, but all the pilots in this church are strange men and we cultivate this strangeness, this separateness that makes us a breed apart, hard to understand, hard to explain, even to ourselves. All fighter pilots are enigmas, but Marine fighter pilots are not of this world.

"I honor Bull Meecham. I honor his courage, his career, his achievement, his sense of duty, his love of flight, and his love of the Corps. I honor Lieutenant Colonel W. P. Meecham. I honor the Marine. I honor the Hero. I honor his family. I honor his death and I promise that I shall remember him. I also want to tell Ben, Mary Anne, Matthew, Karen, and Lillian that I will like the world less without Bull. It will be a duller, more colorless place. I want to cry but cannot. That is one of the things wrong with fighter pilots. I cannot cry. But I shall remember him and I shall honor that memory.

"Even now I honor it. For I can hear Bull saying now even as I speak his eulogy, 'Hey, Virge, cut your yappin'.' And that would be the voice of the real Bull Meecham. That would be the voice of the fighter pilot."

At the graveyard as the priest said the final prayers and the riflemen prepared their farewell volleys, and the bugler stood erect until the moment for taps, Ben heard the planes coming for the fly-over that was traditional for the death of a pilot. He looked up as he had looked up as a child when his father would bring the black-winged Corsair over their house in New Bern, North Carolina. Ben was seven years old and he would run outside and watch his father dip his wings, wheel like a hawk, then climb high above the Neuse River and plummet like a falling angel as Ben looked up.

The jets flew over the burial cortège in a tight formation that had an odd imbalance to it. It took Ben a moment to realize what the misalignment was, but he had forgotten about the military's allegiance to symbolism. There was one plane missing in the formation. Bull Meecham's plane. The fallen aviator was represented by his absence. As he watched, Ben wished he could be watching the man in the Corsair once again, young again, showing off in the black cold wings once more, performing for his son a last time before he had to turn from Ben, to wave once and turn away from his son, point his craft straight up and climb toward stars and suns, toward galaxies and night.

"The movers left this broom, Ben."

"I can strap it on top of the car, Mama."

"Are you sure you're not too tired to drive?"

"No, I feel good. We high school graduates are often called upon to drive at night and we rise to the occasion. Is Okra in the car?"

"Ask Matthew."

"Hey, Matt!" Ben said, leaning in one of the windows. "We got Okra?"

"There he is on the front seat."

"He's got to go in the back. Did he go to the bathroom?"

"How would I know, Ben?"

"Did all of you go to the bathroom?" Ben asked.

"Do you want a written affidavit, feces face?" Mary Anne said from the back seat.

"It's just so we don't have to stop every fifteen seconds."

"Why are we leaving at three in the morning, Ben?"

"We always leave early in the morning," he answered. "There's no traffic. You make better time. Dad was right about that. Anyway, Mom has an interview for a job in Atlanta tomorrow afternoon."

Lillian Meecham got in the car. Ben started the engine and they moved out of the driveway slowly, each of them looking at the grand and elegant house for a last time.

"I don't want to leave Ravenel, Mom. I'll never see Mary Helen and Alice and Cynthia ever again."

"Well be back to Ravenel, sugah. Well come back to visit."

"That's what you said about Cherry Point and New River."

"We'll get back to Cherry Point and New River someday."

"No we won't, Mama. We never do."

"That's right, Karen. You'll never see any of them again," Mary Anne said. "They're all dead."

"Please don't," Lillian said to Mary Anne.

"It's time, Mama. As far as Karen is concerned, Mary Helen and Alice and Cynthia are as good as dead."

"Well it's good-bye, Ravenel," Matt said. "I'm ready to move. I like moving. I wish we weren't going back to Atlanta. I'd like to go somewhere completely new."

Ben eased the car down Eliot Street and onto Granville. Every point they passed was a landmark; every block contained memories. They passed the cemetery where their father was buried and none of them looked in that direction. Lillian began the rosary for a safe trip. The family did not feel like singing.

They were out of town and heading down the Atlanta road when Ben felt something warm and wet on the back of his neck. With his left hand he wiped away a warm inconsequential water from his neck. He looked into the rearview mirror as he slowed for a crossroads and saw Mary Anne with a silver spoon catching tears as they fell from her eyes and flicking the spoon at her brother.

"Hey, cut it out, Mary Anne," Ben said angrily. "I'm not Santini. "That he had invoked his father's nom de guerre surprised him. He thought about the words he had just said and felt more tears splash against his neck. He pressed the accelerator and they were traveling again, moving down a dark southern highway, moving, rolling again as they had done so many times before. The tears hit again in the purest form of grief and protest.

His anger subsided, for it was Mary Anne and at that moment he knew she would always fling tears at men who sat in front seats and at all the men in her life. Her weapons would always come from her eyes and her tongue, from her face. For his whole life, Ben had thought that he was her most significant ally, but lately, he had come to look at himself differently. He was beginning to suspect and recognize his own venomously subtle enmity to his own sister. Because he had been afraid, he had said" yes" to everything his parents wanted, had let himself be sculpted by his parents' wishes, had danced to the music of his parents' every dream, and had betrayed his sister by not preparing them for a girl who would not dance. But Ben knew that there was a girl named Mary Anne in the back seat who could teach Lillian and all the other lovely women in the world things about beauty they would never know. He had always thought that Mary Anne had been harmed by the coldness of her father and the beauty of her mother. It was only lately that he was having small moments of clarity, of illumination, and seeing himself for the first time as the closest of Mary Ann's enemies, the kindest of her assassins.

Then he said the words again. "I am not Santini," but this time he said them where only he could hear.

And he realized that he lived in a Santiniless world now and he trembled when he thought that he was, in many ways, relieved that his father was dead. It made him angry that a burden was lifted from him at his father's funeral and it made him suffer. He wanted to wake his mother and ask her questions but he knew that Lillian could not help him now. Twenty-five miles of highway passed without his knowledge, twenty-five miles vanished because Ben had retreated to the land behind the eye again. The children of violent men develop vivid powers of fantasy. Ben Meecham wanted to pray but he was afraid he was not worthy of prayer. But he was even more afraid that he had no belief in prayer. Yet he had belief in wonder and in the next twenty-five miles of black Carolina highway, he thought:

Can a boy begin a prayer with the hatred of his father in his heart? Can that boy walk up to the altar of God and can he lay that hatred out? Can he spew his hate and tell his story? Can he tell about beatings and humiliations? Can he tell of the Marine who stormed the beaches of his childhood? Can he look into the eye of God and spit into that purest source of light for engendering his soul in the seed of a father who did not know the secret of tenderness, a father who loved in strange, undecipherable ways, a father who did not know how to love, a father who did not know how to try?

And what would this God be like, this God of Ben Meecham, this God that Ben was losing fast and barely believed in? In the privacy of the next hundred miles, Ben thought about the kind of God he would approach, that the God would have to look a certain way, and in his mind Ben began to assemble the God he would speak to about his father. This would be the God of Ben Meecham:

Ben would give Him the sweetness of Lillian, the dark, honest eyes of Arrabelle, the soft virility of Mr. Dacus, the birthmark of Pinkie on his throat, and Ogden Loring's upcountry drawl. Ben would give Him the shoulders of Virgil Hedgepath, the innocence of Karen, the spoon and tears of Mary Anne, the high-pitched laugh of Sammy, Matt's intensity, and the loyalty of the Gray. And Ben would put this God on a street like River Street and he would have this God lift his voice in the holy song of Toomer. The hands of this God would be bright with flowers that would never die and this God would sing and stutter and limp along an alleyway and pass judgment in the land beside the river. He would hold mercy in a bouquet of azaleas and he would listen to Ben.

On the sixtieth mile, Ben could see this God as he crossed the Savannah River into Georgia. He could see him in the canvas of his eye, in the brilliant kingdom of his eye. This God was leaning back against the wall of Hobie's restaurant dazzling the universe with the beauty of Toomer's song. Ben would interrupt this God and this God would not mind.

And can one boy who has said ten thousand times in secret monologues," I hate you. I hate you," as his father passed him, can this boy approach this singing God and can he look into the eye of God and confess this sin and have that God say to him in the thunder that is perfect truth that the boy has not come to talk to him about the hatred of his father, but has come to talk about mysteries that only gods can interpret, that only gods can translate? Can there be a translation by this God all strong and embarrassed, all awkward and kind? Can He smile as He says it? How wonderful the smile of God as he talks to a boy. And the translation of a boy screaming "I hate you. I hate you" to his father who cannot hear him would be simple for such a God. Simple, direct, and transferable to all men, all women, all people of all nations of the earth.

But Ben knew the translation and he let the God off with a smile, let him go back to his song, and back to his flowers on River Street. In the secret eye behind his eyes, in Ben's true empire, he heard and saw and knew.

And for the flight-jacketed boy on the road to Atlanta, he filled up for the first time, he filled up even though he knew the hatred would return, but for now, he filled up as if he would burst. Ben Meecham filled up on the road to Atlanta with the love of his father, with the love of Santini.

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