"You're getting smart with me, boy, and that's not smart. Let me tell you what I've done with this knife. I've slaughtered me a couple of hogs. Skinned a few rattlers. A few deer. But that ain't the true beauty of this here knife. When I was a young stud, before I took up with the law, I cut the nuts off a few niggers who been fuckin' with the wrong white folks. Now you ain't never heard a man scream until you hear one with a knife ripping into his balls. Them niggers would a died of bleeding to death or pain if we hadn't taken human pity on 'em and lynched 'em."
"You're gonna wish you were lynched when my father gets back to you," Ben shouted.
"Now, boy, you started making me uneasy. You can get out of this mess without no one really gettin' too riled up and no one asking too many questions. But I'm gonna have to convince you one way or the other that I picked you up for drunk driving and you took a swing at me. Now, I don't want to have to come in that cell and rubber hose you until you're so broke up inside that blood's pourin' out of every openin' you got, but if I have to . . ."
"Good evening, Junior," a voice said from the doorway.
The deputy pivoted in the direction of the doorway and shouted at a featureless face broken up in equidistant penumbras by four bars, "Who's there?"
"It's just me, Junior, your old football coach."
"Mr. Dacus," Ben said.
"You come back tomorrow, Mr. Dacus. You have no business here tonight. The trusty will show you how to get out."
"I know how to get out," Mr. Dacus said in a soothing yet ironic tone. "I want to get in where you are.
"I said you ain't got no business at this jail, Dacus."
"Yes, Junior. I reckon you're right. I guess the only place I got any business at all is over at Wolf Bowditch's house. It's probably too late for this week's paper. No, what am I saying? I still got two days to get it in. You'd think I'd know that since I've been calling in school news for so many years. But Wolf might be interested to know that a married man like yourself, with a wife and two sweet kids, an usher at the Baptist Church and a deputy sheriff to boot, was out copulating with a colored woman on taxpayers time in the taxpayer's squad car. Yep, that's what I call headline news. But you're right, Junior, I don't have any business bothering you at this time of night. I'll be seeing you around. Good night, Ben."
"Wait a goddam minute, Dacus," Palmer ordered, unlocking the outer door, then he said in a voice that had lost its power to intimidate, to bully, in a voice that was nearing hysteria," That fuckin' lyin'-ass Jew."
Mr. Dacus walked into the cell block and faced Junior Palmer nose to nose. They stared at each other in a long, hostile silence. Finally Mr. Dacus spoke.
"Junior, did I ever tell you that you were a pussy football player?"
"I don't want no trouble with you, Dacus. But if you want trouble, I can give it to you in spades, clubs, hearts, and diamonds. Any way you want it," Palmer said, still holding the knife in his right hand.
"This town sure has a thing about knives, Junior. My suggestion to you, and it's only a suggestion and should not be interpreted as a threat, is for you to put that knife away right now."
"And what if I don't take the suggestion. What'll happen then, Dacus?"
"Oh, nothing serious, I don't think," Mr. Dacus answered. "I think the only thing that could happen of any concern to you is that I am thinking about breaking both your arms. And the funny thing about it is that I'm really getting a lot of pleasure from the thought."
"You are?" Palmer hissed.
"I am," Dacus said in a voice bled of emotion.
"You know who you're talking to, Dacus? You, sir, are talking to the law."
"And I happen to know for a fact that the law was the biggest pussy football player I ever coached. The law was afraid of human contact. The law was afraid to block, to tackle, to run, or to bump heads. I also know that the law was afraid of his football coach and still is."
"I ain't afraid of nothin', Dacus."
"I know of two things you're afraid of, Junior," Dacus said, rolling up the sleeves of his sweater, slowly, deliberately. The muscles on his forearm were defined in brutal knots. "You are afraid of these two hands, Junior. I want you to look at these two hands and study them. These are mean hands, Junior. They're much larger than yours. Much faster. These are boxer's hands. Boxer's hands are also called killer hands because they can break up a face. You've never seen me use these hands, Junior. But you've heard. You've heard about how I can use them."
"You get out of here, Dacus."
"Sure, Junior. Unlock the boy. He's not going to say anything about what he saw. You aren't going to say anything about his being here tonight. No one's going to get hurt by all this. I'll talk to Ben's father and tell him it was all a case of mistaken identity. I'm not going to say a word. Nothing happened. This affair is over. Just unlock the door, Junior."
As Palmer was releasing Ben, Mr. Dacus said," If I ever hear you talking to a kid from my high school like I heard you talking to Ben, I am going to leave my size eleven footprints on your scrotum. Do you understand me, Junior?"
"Don't you ever come back to this jail, Dacus. Don't you ever come near me," Palmer spat in the half light of the anteroom, a wantonness twisting his face.
"I hope I never have to, Junior."
"Move, boy!" Palmer screamed at Ben. "Don't you open your fucking mouth! This could hurt me bad if it gets out, Dacus."
"Then why are you still talking about it, Junior?"
The cold night air outside the jail entered Ben's lungs like the fires of resurrection. He screamed out his freedom. Then he got in step with Mr. Dacus as the principal walked toward River Street. "Anything," Ben said. "Anything at all I can do for you, Mr. Dacus. You just let me know. If you want you can use my body as a doormat and wipe your feet on my back when you go in and out of your house. You can hang me by my feet from your ceiling, put candles in my nose, ears, and mouth, and use me as a chandelier. What I'm trying to say, Mr. Dacus, is thanks for coming to get me."
The principal was walking with long, rapid strides. His blond hair was brushed straight back and his face shone with a ruddy health in the February air. "It's a funny thing, Ben. The power old coaches have over their former ballplayers. Once you've played for someone, sweated blood for them, won and lost games for them, then that person is transformed forever in your eyes. He simply isn't human anymore. He's something better than human, something stern and demanding. He tries to extract performances from your body that exceed your talent. He makes you more than you really are. He gives you a uniform, an identity, a feeling of brotherhood like you have never known before and most likely will never know again. He includes you. Because he chooses you, selects you from the scrawny bunch of boys who come out for the first day's practice, you owe him something. All you can do for the rest of your life is feel gratitude that he let you taste the small dose of glory, a dose that really means nothing, but means absolutely everything to a boy growing up. What I'm saying, Ben, is that the reason I could get you tonight was because I used to coach Junior in football."
"Was he as bad as you said he was?" Ben asked.
"Hell, no," Mr. Dacus chuckled," he wasn't bad. God knows there were some poor pissants a hell of a lot worse off than he was. He was a little afraid, that's all. Just like a lot of kids are. Just like I was the first time I put on a uniform in high school. A lot of times fear is a good healthy thing. Fear made me get out of boxing."
"You went to the Olympics. You couldn't have been too afraid."
"I didn't go to the Olympics, Ben. I went to the Olympic trials. Before I die this town will have it that I beat hell out of Joe Louis at Madison Square Garden. The boy who beat me in the trials nearly killed me, Ben. He beat me all over the ring for three rounds. I was blinded by my own blood when the referee stopped the fight. I had come to the limits of my skill as a boxer. The boy that beat me was knocked out cold thirty seconds after the first round began by the best boxer I ever laid my eyes on. That boxer went on to win the Olym
pic bronze medal, then lose his first five fights as a pro. Athletics is a strange world. You climb to your peak, but often that is not very impressive unless there are very small peaks around you."
"Then why play sports at all?"
"It's very important, Ben. Sports show you your limits. Sports teach humility. Sooner or later the athlete becomes humble no matter how good he is. But he plays until he has reached as high as he can."
"I play basketball because I have to win a scholarship," Ben announced.
"No, that's not true," Mr. Dacus disagreed, turning down River Street and walking down the sidewalk beneath the massive wind-sculpted water oaks that paralleled the river. 'That's not even close to the truth. You play basketball because you love your father."
"I hate my father," Ben said darkly.
"No, you love him and he loves you. I've seen a lot of Marine fathers since I've been at the high school, Ben. Hundreds upon hundreds of them, year after year. They're a tight-assed lot and your father is as tight-assed as any of them. They love their families with their hearts and souls and they wage war against them to prove it. All your dad is doing is loving you by trying to live his life over again through you. He makes bad mistakes, but he makes them because he is part of an organization that does not tolerate substandard performance. He just sometimes forgets there's a difference between a Marine and a son. Did he give you that shiner?"
"Yes, sir. Palmer called him down to the jail and told him I resisted an arrest for drunken driving. He hit me when I came up to the bars to talk to him."
"Your father is the dream of a high school principal or a deputy sheriff. He believes in the institution over the individual even when the individual is his own child. That's why he's such a good Marine."
"And such a lousy father."
"You'll come to understand him better when you grow up."
"I'll never love him, though."
"Sure you will. I told you that you love him right now and I meant it. There's something profound about boys and their fathers. There's bad blood, it seems, almost always, and yet there's this inevitable tenderness that neither of them recognizes when it's present. But over a lifetime it's hard to hate the seed that fathered you."
"How did you know to come down to the jail tonight? Was it Sammy?"
"He called me and told me the whole story. He's really upset. We better call him when we get to my house."
"Your house?"
"Yeah, I want you to spend the night with my wife and me tonight. We can put some ice on your eye, give you a little dinner, and let you get some rest. Ill go over and talk to your father tomorrow morning. We got to be good friends during basketball season and if he isn't mad at me for kicking you off the team, I think I can smooth the whole thing over."
"He thinks you were right to kick me off the team."
"I was," Mr. Dacus said simply.
"But he still loved it that I hurt that boy."
"In both cases, he is the perfect Marine."
"I'm cold," Ben said, looking out toward the river.
"Why didn't you tell me, pissant?" Mr. Dacus said. He put his arm around Ben and pulled him close to his body. It was not the hardness of the principal's body that amazed Ben; it had something to do with the realization that he had never been held this closely and this lovingly by a man. Slowly Ben put his arm around the man's waist as they turned toward the Dacus home.
Chapter 30
Ben and Mary Anne waited for Sammy and Emma Lee Givens. They drank huge glasses of iced tea, sugared and garnished with mint leaves. Mary Anne was lying on the Pawley's Island rope hammock that Lillian had bought for Bull's birthday in early February. Ben was sitting on the bannister looking out toward the houses that lined the lawn.
A screendoor slammed shut and a lawnmower started up somewhere down the street. The fires of spring had come to Ravenel in a rush, in a blaze of color and odor, and spring could be tasted everywhere in the bee-emblazoned gardens and the seed-gifted winds. The old part of the town, fiercely antebellum, rested in the stillest slackwater celebration of itself, in the habiliment of azaleas cutting into shadows with a soft-winged blue, or a deepening ruby. This spring was a fire without thrift in the grand literature of the seasons the Meecham family had watched from their verandas. Ben breathed deeply, catching the scent of gardenias, and the river, half honey, half wine.
"God, this town is beautiful at this time of the year," Ben said.
"What a deep and profound thought, Ben. I bet no one else has ever said that before," Mary Anne said. "You really should try to train yourself to think in original phrases."
"How would you like to digest thirty-two teeth that once were fastened to your gums?"
"That's better. You ought to thank me for making you more aware of the language."
"I'm so lucky. Other guys have sisters that set them up with dates with gorgeous girls. Me. I got a sister who makes me more aware of the language."
"Do you realize that next year, Ben, you and I will be separated for the first time in our whole lives."
"I hadn't thought of that," Ben said. "I hadn't looked at the bright side of leaving home yet."
"You'll appreciate me one day. After my suicide and the entire literary world is in mourning and after kings and princes hurl their bodies on my casket so intense is their grief, then you'll appreciate me. Then you'll regret the vicious way you've treated me all your life. But you're a Philistine, Ben, and I'm an artist. It's been perfectly obvious to me for years that I must suffer at my family's hands until I blossom into the greatest writer of the twentieth century."
"You'll be lucky to blossom into a horse turd."
"Your bathroom humor does not amuse me. But no kidding, Ben, I've wondered in how many thousands of different ways you'll miss me next year. My wit, you'll miss. There's no question about that. Being raised with the wittiest, most charming woman in America has probably ruined you with other women. Next, you'll probably miss my genius. A mind like mine only comes along once every couple of generations and I know you'll look back and think, 'I never really appreciated that brilliant sister of mine.'"
"Hey, brilliant sister," Ben said," you going to write me when I'm in college?"
"No, not unless you promise to save every letter I write."
"Why do I have to save them?"
"Because they'll be collected someday after my death. Then they'll be published in a small, elegant volume."
"This is after your suicide."
"Precisely. There will be many letters from great poets, novelists, scholars, barons, dukes, and captains of industry. Your letters will be placed at the very end of the book where they will not be obtrusive. Your letters will be of absolutely no literary importance, but they will show that Mary Anne Meecham did love the barbarian members of her family even though they treated her viciously. Mary Anne Meecham's vast and compassionate spirit will shine through these letters."
"How shall I act at your funeral?" Ben asked. "Subdued? Ashamed of having treated you viciously? Or should I just be the ol' barbarian I always was?"
"I want there to be no holding back at my funeral. I don't want there to be any stiff upper lips when it comes to my death. I want there to be real grief. I want blubbering and wailing and loud gnashing of teeth. I want people to kill themselves rather than face a world that does not include Mary Anne Meecham. I want people to wonder aloud about whether it is really worth it to continue without the friendship of this magnificent human being, this goddess, this genius, this radiant beauty. And I will want an open casket, Ben. Remember that, because I imagine you'll have the honor of being in charge of the petty details that will go along with my funeral. I want to be buried in a black dress with a strand of pearls around my snow-white neck. I will have no freckles then, since freckles tend to fade as a woman gets older. But the important thing, Ben, is that I want there to be no one in the audience who is not absolutely heartbroken that I have departed this life. If you spot anyone who seems only saddened, throw him o
ut. If you spot anyone who is not wracked by sobbing, then get him the hell out of my sight. Can you imagine what an empty, desolate place the world is going to be without Mary Anne Meecham?"
"I don't know. It sounds kind of nice to me."
Sammy pulled his car into the driveway along the side of the house. Sammy and Emma Lee walked up the front stairs holding hands.
"Hi, Ben and Mary Anne," Emma Lee said.
"I wouldn't let him hold your hand like that, Emma Lee," Ben said. "I know the boy well and he's a sexual maniac."
"Don't listen to my sicko brother, Emma Lee," Mary Anne said. "How are y'all doing tonight?"
"You look nice tonight, Emma Lee," Ben said.
"I'm doing fine tonight, Mary Anne. I guess you're eaten up with jealousy seeing another woman out with the man you love."
"It's killing me, Sammy."
"Try not to be a total fool, Samuel," Emma Lee said. "And thank you, Ben."
"Would you and Mary Anne like to go to the movie with us?"
"No, thanks," Mary Anne said.
"C'mon, Mary Anne, let's go," Ben said.
"No, I have some reading to do."
"She's almost finished one of the Dead Sea Scrolls and she hates to put it down now that she's at the good part," Ben explained.
"Why don't you come, Ben?" Sammy said.
"Naw, I'm going to stay here and torment my sister. I just have a couple of more months to do that."
"You are both more than welcome to accompany Samuel and me to the theater," Emma Lee said in her strangely formal manner. It was incongruous to hear her starched Puritan voice and see her holding hands with Sammy at the same time.
"Not tonight, Emma Lee. Maybe some other time. But before you go, come up to my room and I'll get you that book I promised you," Mary Anne said, rising from the hammock and walking toward the front door.
When the girls had disappeared from sight, Sammy pointed to his car parked in the driveway.
"See that automobile right there."
"No, where?" Ben joked.