Part 2 (1/2)
But Ben had watched his mother change as the day approached for his father to return from his year's journey overseas. It was a universal law in military families that mothers could not maintain the strict discipline enforced by fathers to whom discipline was a religion and a way of life. When the military man left for a year, the whole family relaxed in a collective, yet unvoiced sigh. For a year, there was a looseness, a freedom from tension, a time when martial law was suspended. Though a manless house was an uncompleted home, and though the father was keenly missed, there was a laxity and fragile vigor that could not survive his homecoming.
Lillian Meecham was not a disciplinarian, but as the day of her husband's return neared, she knew instinctively that she had to harden into a vestigial imitation of her husband, so his arrival would not be too much of a shock to her children. His hand had traditionally been very heavy when he returned from overseas, so intent was he on reestablis.h.i.+ng codes of discipline and ensuring that the children marched to his harsher cadences. For the last month she had been preparing them. She conducted unannounced inspections, yelled frequently, scolded often, and had even slapped Matthew when he argued about one of her directives. Tension flowed like a black-water creek through the family as the day of Colonel Meecham's arrival neared. The change of command ceremony took place the moment his plane arrived at Smythe Field. Lillian Meecham would hand the household over to her husband without a single word pa.s.sing between them.
Mary Anne had a very different face from her mother's. Her face was wise, freckled, and touchingly vulnerable. Thick gla.s.ses diminished somewhat its natural prettiness. The gaudy frames of the gla.s.ses were cheap, drawing attention to features that needed no heavy emphasis. She was much shorter than her mother and seemed chunky and ungainly in comparison. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were large and full, but she dressed in loose-fitting tentlike clothes so as not to draw attention to herself. Because of the thick gla.s.ses, her eyes had a bloated appearance as though they were both trapped in a goldfish bowl. Her eyes were precisely the same blue as her mother's, but they nursed a wisdom and hurt strange to find in so young a girl. She opened a compact as she walked along and dabbed at several faded freckles. Never in her life had she liked the stories told by mirrors.
The wind picked up, died, and picked up again. It was a wind that offered no relief from the heat, but it caught Lillian's hair and pushed it softly back, an auburn s.h.i.+ning pennant, a surrogate windsock, revealing a long, elegant neck.
”Mom looks beautiful today, doesn't she?” Ben said without looking at his sister.
Mary Anne frowned and said, ”Yeah, Oedipus. She always looks beautiful. What else is new?”
”She must have spent a lot of time dolling up for Dad.”
”About two weeks I'd say. She had her hair done, her nails done, her eyes done, and her clothes done. The only thing wrong is she couldn't have her children done.”
”Do you think she's excited about Dad coming home?”
”Yes,” Mary Anne answered. ”She loves the creep. Like all of us, she's afraid of him. But also like all of us, she loves him. I read all of his letters to her. They're full of disgusting s.e.xual references. It's very sicko-s.e.xual.”
”You read Dad's letters?” Ben said, amazed. ”Mom would kill you if she knew that.”
”It's my duty to keep informed. I will tell you one lewd, but fascinating piece of information. He refers to his p.e.n.i.s as Mr. Cannon and her v.a.g.i.n.a as Miss Nancy. Isn't that lovely? It made me want to puke.”
”I would advise you, dear sister, not to slip up and call Dad Mr. Cannon sometime. And I would never refer to Miss Nancy under any circ.u.mstances. But what the h.e.l.l, I bet it's hard for a husband and wife to be separated for a whole year. I know it gets lonely for Mom, but G.o.d knows we need these breaks from Dad once in a while. I've got one year left with the big fellow before I'm home free.”
”Dad is the most interesting person I've ever met,” Mary Anne said thoughtfully.
”The fist prints on my jaw can attest to that.”
”I don't mean that. He's hard to figure out. He loves his family, more than anything in the world except the Marine Corps, yet none of us ever have a real conversation with him.”
”Well, it's been a good year without him. I've loved being at Mamaw's.”
”Anything would be a good year compared to the one before he left for Europe.”
”It was definitely not a banner year. But that's over. Mom says he's changed a lot since he's been gone. He's evidently missed us a lot.”
”I've missed him too, kind of.”
”So have I,” Ben said with difficulty. ”Kind of.” Then suddenly he said, ”I hear a plane.”
Far off, the quiet percussion of an approaching plane resonated over the field. Ben and Mary Anne sprinted the remaining distance to where their mother stood with Matthew and Karen. Ben ran backward trying to catch the first glimpse of the plane, watching for the sharp reflection of sunlight off a wing or c.o.c.kpit window, but still he could not see it. The buzz of the plane seemed to fill the whole sky and came from no one source. It grew louder, more defined. When they finally reached Mrs. Meecham, she was smiling.
”I see it,” she said simply.
”Where?” Ben cried. ”I haven't seen it yet.”
”It's at two o'clock just below that big cloud.”
”I see it. I see it,” Matt shouted.
”There's Daddy's plane,” Karen squealed, jumping up and down in her new ruffled dress and patent leather shoes.
Mary Anne was staring blankly toward the noise. From long experience she knew that the plane was not in her range of vision, nor would it be for several minutes.
”I still don't see the G.o.ddam thing,” Ben whispered to Mary Anne.
”Don't feel like the Lone Ranger,” Mary Anne answered, ”I won't be able to see it until I'm hit by one of the wings.”
”Why don't you turn those gla.s.ses of yours around and use them as binoculars?”
”Very funny.”
”Seriously, I tried that once with your gla.s.ses. For the first time, I saw the rings of Saturn.” Then he shouted suddenly, ”There's the plane. I was looking right at the thing. I must be getting rusty.”
Lillian Meecham gathered her children around her to ch.o.r.eograph the homecoming.
”Stand up straight, Ben and Matt. Shoulders back. Like Marines. Matthew, let me comb your hair. Girls check your makeup, we want to be beautiful for your father. When he gets off the plane, we'll all run to meet him. I'll go first, followed by the girls, then the boys. I'll give him a big juicy. Then the girls will give him big juicys. Boys, you shake his hand firmly. Very firmly, like men. Then say, 'Welcome home, Colonel.' ”
”We better get a chair for the midget to stand on,” Mary Anne teased, ”Matt will end up shaking hands with Dad's bellyb.u.t.ton if we don't give him a lift.”
”You heard her, Mama. You heard her call me a midget.”
”Mary Anne,” Mrs. Meecham called sternly.
”Yes, ma'am,” Mary Anne answered.
”Be a lady.”
The eyes of the air base turned in the direction of the fat-bodied transport plane that was bringing foodstuffs and airplane parts to Smythe Field, and Bull Meecham back to his family. It lowered steadily to the earth, flaps down, nose up, until the wheels screamed along the concrete and a black seam of rubber burned into the runway, marking the final leg on Colonel Meecham's journey home. As the plane taxied toward the operations tower where the family waited, a fuel truck sputtered into life by the hangar and rolled slowly toward the plane.
The door of the plane opened and steps were lowered. A man in uniform appeared in the doorway. He looked out, saw his family, and bellowed out to them with a large, exuberant smile, ”Stand by for a fighter pilot.”
Yes, as they ran to him, that echo from past memories rang in their brains, that pa.s.sword into the turbulent cellular structure of the past, the honeycomb of lost days, of laughter and fury, that told them as they ran to his outstretched arms a simple message: Lt. Col. Bull Meecham, United States Marine Corps, was back from Europe. The father had landed. The Great Santini was home.
Chapter 3.
A month later, on Rosebriar Road in Atlanta, an alarm clock knifed into the darkness of two o'clock in the morning. Bull Meecham was already awake and his hand silenced the alarm almost as soon as it began. His body was alive, vibrant, singing like an electric wire as he dressed in preparation for the trip to Ravenel. He cut on a lamp at a bedside table and shook his wife gently.
He dressed in fatigue pants, a military issue T-s.h.i.+rt, and combat boots. High on his left arm, a tattoo of a red cobra, fanged, coiled, and ready to strike, stood in stark relief to his pale, freckled skin. His hair was cut short in a military burr. His neck was thick, powerful, and cruelly muscled; his arms were long, athletic to the point of being simian, threaded with veins, and covered with reddish hair. Quickly, he did fifty pushups and twenty situps. Then, he jumped up from the floor and began to run in place. He pulled a rosary from the pocket of his fatigues and began to say the first decade of the rosary. The drumming of his feet on the floor echoed throughout the darkened house. Lillian put a pillow over her head and tried to cut out the noise and light, tried to resume sleeping, although she knew it was hopeless. Timing himself precisely, Bull quit running after he had said three decades. He liked the idea of caring for his body at the same time he cared for his soul.
”C'mon, Lillian. Up and at 'em. No goldbricking this morning. We've got two hundred and fifty miles of hard traveling to get done. The movers are going to meet us at the new house at 0900.”
”Say one more rosary, darling. Then I'll be half alive.”
”Get up, trooper. I'll get the kids. I want to be on the road in fifteen minutes.”