The Great Santini Read Online Free PDF Page B

being on this earth. Don't you go talking nonsense."
    "It is nonsense. But I'll cry if I goddam feel like crying."
    "That's the spirit."
    "Let me kiss my grandchildren."
    She leaned through the window.
    "Good-bye, Mamaw," Ben said to his grandmother as she kissed him on the mouth. "I love you."
    "I love you too, Benjy," she said, crying softly. "You listen to your daddy, Ben. Just do what he says, and you won't get into trouble. All of you children do that. You hear Mamaw."
    "Sure, Mamaw," Ben said. "If we don't listen to him, Dad has a good way of getting your attention. He knocks out a few of your teeth."
    "Hush, boy. You talk like a fool," she snapped. "It's a child's job to adapt to a parent. You have a strict father and you have to adapt quickly."
    "Or else you're not going to have a tooth left in your head," Mary Anne whispered to her brother.
    The act of moving was in progress now, set in motion by an alarm clock, and the family that had moved four times in four years, traveling in summer nights, past bleached-out, sun-dried towns, moving along southern highways through the shrill, eternal symphonies of southern insects, humming old tunes and sleeping as the car rolled through the vast wildernesses and untransmissible nights: this family was tied to the image of the automobile; it was the signet of their private mythology. So often had they moved, shuffled on a chess board by colonels in the Pentagon, that it had become ritual; they moved through it all mindlessly, relying on spirit and experience, and with the knowledge that it was all the same, that the air bases were interchangeable, that mobility was the only necessary ingredient in the composition of a military family. The Meechams were middle class migrants, and all of them were a part of a profession whose most severe punishment was rootlessness and whose sweetest gift was a freedom granted by highways and a vision of America where nothing was permanent and everything possible.
    Colonel Meecham appeared on the front porch. He wore his flight jacket and gazed down the hill at the station wagon where his children jockeyed for position in the back seat. He felt good. Energy burned off him like a light. On the road, he was alive, vibrant, moving. It didn't afford the freedom of a jet plane flying through a clear sky, but a highway offered something almost as profound, an entry into the secret regions of the earth where towns with foreign, unrecallable names were violated once, then forgotten for all time. Yes, he felt good; everything was ready. The operation was proceeding flawlessly. In a loud voice that swept through the sleeping neighborhood, he called to his family," Stand by for a fighter pilot. "Then he strode to the car, his arms swinging like an untroubled monarch.
    As the pilot neared them, Lillian turned to the children in the back seat for last minute instructions.
    "Now remember what I told you. Don't do anything to upset your father. He's easily upset on trips," she said in a soft voice.
    "I've already talked to them, Lillian," Mamaw said. "They'll be good."
    Colonel Meecham entered the car. He arranged the things on the dashboard very carefully. On his far left, he stacked three road maps. Beside the maps was a box of Tampa Nugget cigars, blunt. On top of the cigars was a pair of aviator's sunglasses. Then, putting his hand into the pocket of his flight jacket, he pulled out a .22 pistol from it and laid the gun gingerly beside the cigar box. The appearance of the weapon caused a stir among his children behind him. It was the first time he had ever openly carried a weapon on a trip. The barrel of the pistol pointed at the squinting plastic statue of Jesus that was centered on the dashboard.
    "Why are you carrying a gun, honey?" Lillian asked her husband.
    "Is it loaded and ready to kill?" Matt asked breathlessly from the back.
    "It's not loaded, sportsfans," the Colonel answered," but it's there. You never can tell what you might meet on the road these