The Great Santini by Pat Conroy Read Free Book Online Page A

thou among farters, and smelly is the corpse in the tomb. Cheeses. "Lillian had not been amused and she restricted Mary Anne to the house for two weeks. Since Mary Anne never went anywhere, the punishment did not seem to compensate for the heinousness of the crime. Mary Anne enjoyed shocking Ben about religious matters. Several days before Colonel Meecham returned, Mary Anne claimed to have read that the Vatican was reconsidering its position on Mary's virginity. When Ben fell into the trap, Mary Anne explained with the casualness of a disinterested theologian that St. Joseph had appeared to a shepherd near Padua and claimed that he had gotten it from the Virgin Mary at least twice before Christ was born. Because of these obscene forays into the realm of the supernatural, Ben was positive that his sister was not a favorite in the stern eyes of the Lord. He looked at her across the car, strangely saddened by the deep beauty of her smile. Glancing forward, he shot the finger back to her and smiled.
    The car moved deeper into the Georgia countryside, prayer breaking out of the windows in wavering harmonics spilling into the ditches and moccasin strung creeks of the pine counties outside of Atlanta. A truck pulled suddenly behind the station wagon filling the car with light. St. Christopher, muscled like a weight lifter and crossing a stream of bronze, winked in the sudden light, giving fierce definition to an outsized staff and a Gerber baby Christ. Colonel Meecham disliked the intrusion of other vehicles in his post midnight dashes when he was moving his family to a new home. In the rearview mirror, Ben saw his father's eyes cast a glance of primal defiance at the lights that challenged their aloneness in this desolate stretch of road and at the very instant he heard his mother end a decade of the rosary and begin the first words of the Lord's Prayer, Ben felt the car respond as his father's foot pressed the accelerator. Lying on the mattress he felt as though he were part of the car's engine, that his father was stepping on some vital organ inside of him, that he was the cause of the sudden leap forward as the wind hissed through the back seat knocking some of the clothes and uniforms from the hangers. The truck fell behind them, the lights grew smaller, then disappeared forever in the middle of the third decade of the rosary. Night returned to the car and the foot relented gradually, then relaxed against the accelerator. The car sang with its solitude. Christopher and his enduring spine crossed the stream invisibly again. The wordless words of the rosary continued like the heartbeats of birds.
    Finally, seventy miles outside the city, an hour and fifteen minutes into the heart of the journey, the rosary ended and Colonel Meecham asked rhetorically and unspecifically," Who's on duty first?"
    No voices answered him. Eyes strained almost audibly in the back seat as the brothers and sisters questioned each other wordlessly.
    Finally, Lillian spoke. "You taught them never to volunteer for anything."
    "Why don't you help your poor old husband stay awake, honey?"
    "You taught me never to volunteer for anything too. Besides I'll perish if I don't get a little sleep. Tomorrow's a long day with the movers coming and everything."
    "Ben," Bull cried out to his son in the darkness behind him. "Ben, don't pretend you're asleep already."
    "I was asleep."
    "Get up here. Right behind me. You've got guard duty first."
    "Yes, sir," Ben said, moving lightly over Matthew, and pushing Okra to the back of the car. He rested his arms on the front seat and leaned forward so he could whisper to his father without disturbing the sleep of the others.
    "Well have a little man-to-man talk while the leathernecks get some sack time."
    "Sure, Dad," Ben said hesitantly. "What do you want to talk about?"
    "Let me ask you a question first, sentry. What are the responsibilities of a man on guard duty?"
    "I don't know them all, Dad. I forgot some of them."
    "Yeah,