"Mr. Meecham is bending his elbows," Mary Anne said, raising her hand sweetly.
"Thank you, Miss Meecham. I know your brother does not wish for me to have a conference with your father. Therefore, I am sure we will not have to interrupt class again to admonish him," she said, turning toward Ben as though he were an anthropomorphic representation of a genuine sin.
Ben shot Mary Anne the finger with both of his invisibly nailed hands.
"There was a bad little French boy by the name of Pierre who went to Communion at his tiny parish church in the south of France. At the time, Pierre was in a state of mortal sin as he had eaten a full breakfast only minutes before he came to church. When it came time for Communion, Pierre went to the altar and received the Blessed Eucharist. Instead of going back to his pew, he went out the back of the church and into the graveyard across the street. There, he took the sacred host out of his mouth . . ."
Here, Carters Marie Simon gasped in horror and put her head down on the desk.
"And held the host in his nasty, grubby, unwashed little hands. He wanted to see if he could find a sign that this was indeed the body and blood of our Savior. He laid the host on a tombstone and took a knife from his pocket. Then he cut into the host with his knife. Can anyone in the room tell me what happened?"
A moment of anesthetized silence filled the room until P. K., raising his hand, rising and ejecting out of his seat, shouted," God killed the little booger."
"Of course not, P.K.," the nun sneered. "But something almost as terrible happened. The host began to bleed. At first it was a small flow as though a tiny vein had been cut. Pierre tried to stop it with his handkerchief, his filthy, snot-ridden handkerchief. But that only increased the amount of blood spurting from the host. Soon it was as though an artery had been cut. It burst out of the host and covered the whole tombstone. Pierre tried to stop it by covering it with his hands, by lying on it with his whole body. But nothing would stop the blood. Before he knew it the blood was gushing from the center of the host like a river, spilling onto the holy ground of the cemetery and flowing toward the church. Pierre ran to the church, racing the river of Christ-blood. He flung the church door open and cried out to the priest who was saying the prayers at the foot of the altar. The whole congregation turned and saw Pierre, covered with blood, his eyes frenzied with the sin he had committed. The priest ran toward Pierre, who led the priest to the cemetery, telling him what he had done as they ran. The priest went to the host, to the source of the blood, and touched it with his hands. The blood instantly stopped. The priest looked at Pierre and, trembling with anger, he told the bad little French boy, 'You did wrong, Pierre.' Later that morning, Pierre went to confession. He is now a Catholic priest presiding over the very same parish where he had once desecrated the host. "Sister Loretta paused and took a deep breath. "So I hope that will be a lesson to all of you."
"That's the most beautiful story I've ever heard, Sister," Carters sighed, fulfilled.
"Is that what happens when you chew the host with your teeth, Sister?" P.K. asked.
"I wouldn't say it happens every time, P.K., but I am saying it could happen at any time. The Lord works in mysterious ways."
After the class Ben and Mary Anne walked home, following the curve of the street which followed the curve of the river, past lovely lit-up houses with chandeliers glittering in empty dining rooms, past a gloomy arcade of live oaks, past King Tut's used car lot with its multicolored pennants futtering from an overhead wire like trapped butterflies, past the dentist's office built on reclaimed marsh, past the old elementary school, past a vast marsh that was a dark and pungent gold in the salt-sweet rush of wind that filled their nostrils with smells born far out at sea; they walked slowly and felt good in each other's company.
"I thought Sister Loretta might bury you for three days after we cut you down from the cross," Mary Anne said as she watched Ben massaging his triceps and shoulder muscles.
"Let me just ask you one question, Mary Anne," Ben said calmly. "Do you want me to mangle your face or do you want me just to work you over with a rubber hose so all the damage will be internal?"
"Dad would kill you if you laid a single digit on his adored Mary Anne."
"Baloney," Ben answered," he wouldn't notice if I ripped your nose off your head."
"You're probably right. Dad doesn't pay attention to anything that doesn't wear a uniform or have a jump shot. Of course, I think I would be doing you a big favor if I did help surgically remove your nose. Have you looked at that thing in the mirror lately? Seriously, Ben, is your nose infected?"
"What do you mean infected?" he asked.
"Your nose is so red and runny looking. At least my nose isn't red. I've heard people say you could get a job leading reindeer," Mary Anne said.
"Let's quit," Ben said turning his head toward the river. "I'm tired of the game."
"That means I won," Mary Anne exulted. "Why did you give it all to me, God? Beauty, brains, poise, charm, and devastating wit."
"And a million freckles," Ben added.
"Look who's talking. The old Clearasil kid."
"Pimples don't last forever; freckles do."
"I bet you have pimples when you're seventy years old. You're never going to be able to eat a potato chip," Mary Anne said.
"Let's talk about something serious," Ben said.
"All right, King Solomon. Talk serious."
"What do you think it will be like later on? What do you think we'll be doing?"
"I'll be very famous. Some great men will throw themselves on subway tracks because I refuse their hand in marriage. I'll write several best-selling novels that will be banned by the Catholic Church and my mansion will be a watering place for the great literary and social figures of the late twentieth century. You will still be a zit-faced golden boy throwing up jump shots."
They turned down Eliot Street where the smell of deepset gardens and the bark of aroused dogs followed them past old brick walls covered with lichen and ivy. The moss was thick on the overhanging trees and the light of every star was extinguished in the leafy chapel through which Ben and Mary Anne walked home.
"Be serious, Mary Anne. What do you think will really happen?"
"You'll be a Marine pilot. I'll be married to some creep, having children and wishing I was dead."
"Why? Why does it have to be like that?"
"Because it's written all over both of us."
"I'm not going to be a Marine, Mary Anne. I swear I'm not," Ben said bitterly.
"Yes you will. You'll go to some two-bit southern college and then go into the Marine Corps after you graduate. Dad will swear you in and Mom will be lovely and beautiful and proud. Slowly, all that's good about you will dissolve over the years and you'll begin believing all the stuff Dad believes and acting like Dad acts. You're a golden boy and a fair-haired child. You've got to have people love you and fuss over you. You've got to have them approve. That's where you and I are different. I've never had anybody's approval, so I've learned to live without it. That's why I'm going to be a better person than you before it's all over."
"Do you think either one of us will ever write, Mary Anne?" Ben asked.
Mary Anne thought for a minute, then said," No. We won't write any books. Writing books is something you talk about when you're very young and continue to talk about all your life until you die. You'll write fitness reports on young Marines and I'll write witty notes to my kid's teacher."
"I'm not going to be a Marine! I'm not! I'm not! I'm not!" Ben said.
"Oh, yes you are," Mary Anne said. "Yes you are! Yes you are!" as they crossed the open field of the Lawn. "You are because the Lord, to quote a great woman, works in mysterious ways."
Chapter 17
On October the eleventh, in the darkest, coolest part of the morning, Bull shook Ben awake. The clock on the nightstand beside Ben said that it was four o'clock. Bull ordered his son to dress on the double, to meet him at a muster formation in the kitchen, or be put on
report.
"Why are you getting me up now, Dad?" Ben asked as he swung his feet to the floor and groped for his blue jeans.
"Who dares question the Great Santini? Anyway it's classified top secret until you get downstairs."
Bull was in a grand, exuberant mood. His father was one of the few people Ben had ever met who could wake from a deep sleep fully refreshed. Bull needed no period of adjustment, no time for the luxurious stretching and lolling that Ben thought was the most exquisite pleasure of morning. As he heard Bull's footsteps on the stairs, Ben staggered toward the bathroom. Splashing cold water on his face, the tonnage of missed sleep stacked on his brain lightened only slightly. The bathroom light blinded him as though he were a bat flushed from his cave at noon. Going downstairs, he smelled the pot of coffee perking in the kitchen. His father, in full uniform, sat at the kitchen table, sipping from a steaming cup. On the table was a large gift-wrapped package.
"Happy Birthday, boy," Bull said, averting his eyes from Ben's.
"Hey thanks, Dad," Ben said, rushing for the package. "Of course, I can't believe you woke me up at four in the morning to give me the present."
"This is just the beginning of the morning. The head honcho has some big plans for your birthday. But I wanted you and me to be alone when you opened this present."
"What is it?" Ben asked, lifting the package and measuring its satisfying heaviness.
"It's a training bra," Bull said, grinning into his coffee. "Open it, boy. I've been saving this for your eighteenth birthday for a long time."
Ben ripped the paper off the package, then lifted the cover off the box. Inside Ben stared at an old leather flight jacket with a warm fur collar and the patch of the Red Cobra Squadron on the sleeve. He removed the flight jacket and held it up for a moment, the odor of leather mingling with the coffee smells.
"What do I do with it, Dad?"
"Put it on. It's yours. That was my first flight jacket. The one I wore when I flew in WW Two with the Cobras," Bull said as Ben slipped the jacket on.
"It's really nice."
"They don't make 'em like that anymore. That's part of the Old Corps. That jacket shows me a lot of class."
"This is a wonderful gift, Dad. Thanks a lot," Ben said looking at his father, feeling somehow transfigured and invulnerable as he zipped up the jacket that was much too large for him.
"Just remember that there are some Marines who would cut your balls off if they saw you wearing this around town. It's not a damn letter jacket. I don't want you to wear it to school or anything. It's something between us. You can wear it around the house or at night."
"I'll be careful."
"Good soldier. Christ, Ben, you're eighteen. I was just sitting here thinking about when you were born. I was on a hop when you were born. All I heard when I landed was that your mother was in the hospital. I went crazy. I hit a hundred miles an hour getting to that hospital. Three M.P. trucks were chasing me as I ran through the front door and up the three flights of stairs to the maternity ward. Then all of a sudden there's this weird skinny Navy doctor telling me I had a fine healthy son and I was nearly thrown out of that hospital I was whooping so loud. I ran down to that window as fast as I could go, knocking nurses out of the way, running over small children, and crashing into patients on their way to the operating room. I'll never forget you screaming your head off while I tapped at the window and bragged to everyone who passed by that the toughest little fighter pilot in the world had been born. Then I ran down to see your mother, expecting her to look like horseshit from hell after punching you out of her system. Well, she was sitting up in that hospital bed looking prettier than I'd ever seen her. Your mother's the only woman in the world that looks like a million bucks ten hours after she's delivered a child. That was eighteen years ago. Eighteen years ago today. I was twenty-three then, just five years older than you are right now," he said, studying Ben with new interest.
"I've got to register for the draft within ten days," Ben said, adjusting the fur collar.
"I'll get off early from the squadron one day next week and take you. But I got something big planned for this morning," Bull said, looking down at his watch. "Let me pour you a cup of coffee, then we have to hit the road. What do you take in yours?"
"Mama doesn't let me drink coffee."
"I ain't Mama. You'll take it black," Bull said, pouring out a cup. "You won't like the taste at first but you'll get used to it fast. I've never trusted a man who put cream or sugar in his coffee. Just like I never really trusted a man who put Coca-Cola in his bourbon. You can drink this in the car," Bull said, handing it to Ben.
"Where are we going?"
"Are you a detective?" Bull answered, then remembering it was his son's birthday, he said," This is all part of the surprise I have in store for you. So let's double time out to the car. I told Sergeant Hicks we'd be outside of B barracks at 0500 hours."
As they drove toward Biddle Island Marine Corps Training Depot, Ben downed the hot, acrid coffee as though he were enjoying it. Bull drove through the dark streets of Paradise past the peeling warped shacks and dog-ruled groceries with their glowing Coca-Cola signs. Bull was talking and smoking one Camel after another. It was during these night rides with his father that the feeling of what it was like to be an adult often possessed Ben. A swift prescience with the strength of adrenaline flowed through him and heralded a day when he would speak to Bull Meecham man to man, as a friend and equal. Only at brief moments had Bull given his sons glimpses of what it would be like to be accepted in that fraternity of men that Bull felt comfortable around. Now, sitting behind the headlights, Bull speaking easily and unself-consciously, Ben in a sudden blaze of perception realized that Bull had forgotten, at least for the moment, that he was addressing a son.
"I've known Sarge Hicks since Korea. If you want to see a Marine's Marine then this guy's the one, Ben. He's a small little turd, but he's built like a fireplug, low, squat, and he's got the face of a man who likes to hit cripples. He looks like he should have a job killing snakes. I called him the other day and asked him when he was getting in a new bunch of recruits. It happened to fall on your birthday so I asked him if I could bring you out to see him whip his boys into shape. I told him he could trust you not to say anything to anybody about what you see. These boys you'll see this morning have been here a couple of days already. They got haircuts and uniforms but this will be the first day they'll really know what it's like to be in the Corps. He can eat recruits from what I've heard. I asked him if he still broke recruits in like he did in 'fifty-eight. He told me he'd think about it. That's Hicksie's way of saying O.K. We just can't go mouthing off about what we see here this morning. It's classified. Roger?"
"Roger," Ben answered.
The car moved through the darkness at a rapid speed, turned left at the Sanctified Church of the Crucified Jesus, and took the Biddle Creek Road which followed the river toward the training depot. Ben grew aware of the flight jacket again. The gift had substantiality and an indefinable quality of endurance. The leather flight jacket was an anachronism in 1962. It had been replaced by a nylon, light-weight flight jacket that was bled of glamour or romance. The leather jacket belonged to the days of the Corsair when men dueled in the skies for possession of Pacific atolls and for airspace above the gray, endangered fleets. But many pilots kept the leather jackets, not only for the sake of tradition but for a more aesthetic reason: the leather jacket looked better than the nylon pretender and made the pilot who wore it look better. Pilots who gathered together wearing the old style flight jacket looked like a well-bred motorcycle gang.
Ben folded his arms and felt the cracked, lined leather between his fingers. The jacket felt good all over. He could not have felt more changed if he had put on the silks of Father Pinckney, prayed over a piece of unleavened bread, and felt it quiver with the life and light of God. The jacket he wore was a part of his father's history, a fragment of Bull's biography that occurred before Ben's birth. Ben put his nose in
to the leather sleeve and breathed in rich memories of his own life. He could remember burrowing his head into his father's jacket when he was a child, in the days when he was allowed to hug and caress his father, in the days before his father declared it inappropriate. The sons of Marines all come to a day when their fathers moved away from their embrace. The men of the flight jacket. The strong fathers. Ben could see them all, coming through the door of his home, his score of homes, the men who played such a large role in his life. He could see them in their leather flight jackets, their dark mantles, having just come down from doing things that smaller, punier men could never do, doing things that only gods could do. All during his growing up, boys would brag to Ben about their fathers. "My father works for the second largest real estate company in eastern North Carolina," or" My father is the most important lawyer in this town. "And Ben would only smile and tell them with the maddening condescension of a child who knows he has won a contest that his father and all his father's best friends could fly faster than any birds, set an army on fire, or reduce a city of a million people to dust and memory. And it was dust and memory that had Ben now as they rode past the gate at the entryway of Biddle Island Training Depot, the guard saluting them in the sudden light of the sentry box, his form revealed in surreal and unclear lines, as they pushed down the main road that turned into a causeway crossing a vast marsh. The marsh stretched for miles on either side of the road with an ominous symmetry. A man escaping from Biddle Island would do better to try his luck with the river, the tides, and the sharks, than to test the quiet susurrant heart of the marsh. Though the marsh had a look of lush maternity, Toomer had taught Ben that the marsh was a monster. The tall grasses were green razors that could section a man's flesh into an infinite number of fine, almost invisible slices. The oyster beds that lay hidden in the marsh could cut like axes. But worst of all, a man could get lost in the marsh, lose all sense of direction and wander aimlessly in circles, being sucked in by the mud, and maddened by the sameness of the earth, no matter which way he turned. Ben wondered how many young boys from New England or the Midwest had escaped from their barracks in a fever of desperation and tried to cross the marsh on foot. Or how many had come to the river's edge, seen the lights of Ravenel blinking across the river, and had begun the long swim, until too late they realized that no swimmer could fight the power of the moon, this recall of water by oceans, and had let the water take them toward the black, roiled whitecaps along the lips of Prince Ashley Island where they died soundlessly, far from the eyes of Drill Instructors, safe from the mayhem of barracks. He did not know. He felt the jacket again and knew that he wore a part of his father.