The Great Santini: Chapters 17–22

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 It had been replaced by a nylon, light-weight flight jacket that was bled of glamour or romance.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.

Hicks began shooting bullets into the chest of the recruit, firing in a calm synchronized salvo that had a violent harmony to it.

But his pallbearers did not lose a step as they hustled to the Dempster-Dumpster, opened the steel door, and hurled the man toward the fetid dark interior where cans rattled and a bottle broke.

The smile was an incongruity on such a formidable man.

Colonel, that platoon you just saw will win almost every award for excellence when they graduate from this island as full-fledged Marines; they’ll also be tough enough to hold off half the Russian army.

The letter was passed with such palpable nonchalance and unconcern that Ben knew that the letter was very important indeed.

His brown hair was combed into a moderately high pompadour and had the slick appearance that came with the overly ambitious application of Wild Root Cream Oil.

In the far corner, he saw Bull and Colonel Hedgepath watching him, enjoying his uncertainty, his callowness.

Ben noticed that other Marines were beginning to watch their table as the word of the neophyte drinker spread around the bar.

Bull knew there was no real reason for Varney to address the squadron; he wanted to be a part of the grand panoply of what could be the first day of a war.

He rose into a capitulating dark and could see the glimmering lights of Ravenel on his right; in the east the sun was being born in a perishable orange that caught the fuselage of Bull’s F-8 in a moment of gold.

He rose into a capitulating dark and could see the glimmering lights of Ravenel on his right; in the east the sun was being born in a perishable orange that caught the fuselage of Bull’s F-8 in a moment of gold.

Too impatient to endure a long range diet, he went on radical diets that seemed like preludes to famine. But no matter how stringent the effort, the thicknesses of middle age were encircling him and threatening to overwhelm the athlete’s body, the Marine’s body of which he was so proud.

It was not that he looked fat; he did not. But there is a harsh message in the veracity of collars and photographs.

Arrangements of carnations and chrysanthemums sweetened the air, commingling with the perfume of the wives and the sweat of the first dancers, and made something in the vast room seem primal and libidinously manifest.

The women of the pilots, in long elegant dresses, clung to their husbands, guiding them around the room to make sure the proper courtesies were paid, to ensure that the fine obeisances and homages were proffered to those high ranking officers and their ladies who were in positions to make or break careers.

The women of the pilots, in long elegant dresses, clung to their husbands, guiding them around the room to make sure the proper courtesies were paid, to ensure that the fine obeisances and homages were proffered to those high ranking officers and their ladies who were in positions to make or break careers.

Afterward, they returned to the long tables where each squadron sat beneath the squadron emblem, pouring drinks, laughing, the spirit of the evening inoculating them slowly.

"We will sing our version of the Marine Corpse HYMN. This version was written by Mary Anne Meecham, the charming daughter of that modest, self-effacing, painfully shy fighter pilot, Bull Meecham, that wonderful little man who calls himself ‘The Great Santini’..."

It gave him a feeling of camaraderie with those outcasts who had come to this gymnasium hoping to find their identity and feed on the secret bread of glory that had been denied them, who had felt isolated and banished from the main flow of student life for so long.

The bleachers swarmed with youth unanchored, unpraised, and convulsed with the dreams of gangly boys and fat boys who wanted to be a part of something with a desperation that was almost palpable and alive.

Coaches were all the same: they had ineffable powers of memory when you made a horse’s ass out of yourself.

Then this creature of the strange walk turned into something ethereal, flowing. The dancer in him was loosed.

He looked like a linebacker, would always look like one, and if his head were mounted on a trophy wall along with cape water buffalo and sable antelopes, people would look at it and say, “That’s a nice linebacker you have there.”

Lyle raced for the basket in an awkward spring, Jim Don with him every step, slowing him down with a furtive forearm shiver to Lyle’s chest.

“Tonight,” Lillian continued, “we ask your intercession when Ben Meecham plays West Charleston High School. Help him score a lot of points, play good, strong defense, and thread the needle with his passes. But most of all, help him to be a good sport, to hold his head high, and to make the Meecham family proud. We love you, Mary, and we love your Son.”

He then broke into a low, primordial litany.

He took a long swig on the R.C., then continued his harangue.

He remembered that he was in the land of the hardshell, the barren hardscrabble of the spirit where the sign of the cross conjured up rich images in lands that had been totally immersed in the waters of a hard-assed Christ.

The game that night had affected him strangely and in some barely articulated way Bull had garnered some ineluctable insight into the nature of fathers and sons, a recondite lesson in the passage of blood from one generation to another.

The game that night had affected him strangely and in some barely articulated way Bull had garnered some ineluctable insight into the nature of fathers and sons, a recondite lesson in the passage of blood from one generation to another.

Mr. Loring had a vulnerable, rubicund face with eyebrows arched into constant and natural inquisitiveness.

Learning was an abstraction that took place beneath the stares and approbation of the Catholic S.S. that had goose-stepped through the classrooms of his youth.

His opening words to the class at the beginning of the year had been, “I am a man of strange parts,” and he had then set out on an erratic odyssey and with a demonic single-mindedness to prove it.

Extra credit was the bullion he used to bribe the indolent scholar.

Extra credit was the bullion he used to bribe the indolent scholar.

For every book read Mr. Loring ladled out an indeterminate amount of extra credit, making some arcane notation in his grade book that in theory counted for something during those critical nights when he evaluated the performance of each student.

At first Ben was appalled by the lack of respect for the man and by the man’s ability to disregard the stockpiled vitriol stacked on him by his students.

He had seen Jim Don Cooper almost fight Art the Fart after practice one day when Art made a disparaging remark about Mr. Loring.

But soon, through talking to Sammy and Emma Lee, he learned that Ogden Loring was a genuine property, a bona fide character, an heirloom, and for ten years his reputation had incubated throughout the town, had been passed on from brother to brother, sister to sister, and it was part of the glory and the gold of high school, the dross and the pyrite of high school, to pass through the doors of Ogden Loring’s class on the way to life.

It was a simple matter of choice, predilection, and a passing grade.

“Because you are verbal cretins,” Mr. Loring shouted, "and because I have tyrannically and arbitrarily decreed it, and because you will not graduate if you don’t.”

“I feel grievous when I ruminate about your idiosyncrasies, Loring,” Pinkie called out proudly.

“I feel grievous when I ruminate about your idiosyncrasies, Loring,” Pinkie called out proudly.