The Death of Santini

by Pat Conroy

  In the middle of dinner, my mother reached over and squeezed my hand, then said to her husband, “John, I told you I’d raised a son who’d always fight for his mother.” She was looking at me with a sublime glance that suggested adoration. She had obviously forgiven me for not testifying in her divorce case.

  The following morning Freddie was already drinking a cup of coffee in my mom’s kitchen when I made my way downstairs.

  “My father called me at seven o’clock in the morning,” Freddie told me.

  “What did you two lovebirds have to say to each other?” I asked.

  “He’s mad as hell at you and thinks you insulted our whole family,” said Fred.

  “Did you explain to your loving pa that you and your brother Charles were not even aware a party was going on?”

  “No, I didn’t tell him that,” Freddie admitted.

  “Why not?”

  “He scares the shit out of me just like your old man scares you,” Freddie said, and then added, “Pardon my French, Peg.”

  My mother was lapping up this conversation and gestured with her hand to let Freddie know there was no offense taken.

  “Your son got me into some bad trouble last night, Peg, by not going to my brother’s party,” Freddie said. “Dad blames it all on me. He’s demanding Pat meet him for drinks at his mansion on Bay Street.”

  “He demands?” I asked.

  “Don’t make this hard for me, Conroy,” Freddie said. “I’ve got to produce you at his house at six. I may have to hog-tie you or handcuff you or put a gun to your head, but I’ve got to get you in his den.”

  My mother had a bemused, mischievous smile on her face and suggested to Freddie, “I know Pat better than you do, Freddie.”

  “Then how do I talk some sense into him? He’s so goddamn stubborn,” Freddie said.

  “Yes, but he’s also very nice,” my mom said. “I suggest you ask Pat to help you get out of a tough position. Tell him you need his help—that it would really help you with your relationship with your father, Big John.”

  “It’ll really help me with my daddy, Conroy,” he said to me.

  “See you at six,” I said to Freddie.

  Ever since I had arrived in Beaufort in 1961, I had developed a curious attraction for the Trask family’s domination of all aspects of small-town life. This type of powerful clan is well chronicled by Southern writers, with William Faulkner leading the way. The Trasks and the Snopeses seem interchangeable to me, and the rise of the Trasks took place out of a hardworking farming family from Wilmington, North Carolina. Big John and Beanie Trask led a migration south to Beaufort County, where they grew wealthy harvesting vast fields of cucumbers as well as the most admirable tomatoes grown in the South. The amazing success of those mouthwatering tomatoes put the whole family in mansions. To me, they’ve always been the most fascinating family in town. Like many such families, they seem to like everyone in town except one another.

  At six o’clock sharp, I rang the front doorbell at the Trask mansion on Bay Street, and Freddie answered.

  “You know we only use the back door,” Freddie said.

  “I wanted to see the Beaufort River at high tide,” I explained.

  “You already pissed him off,” Freddie said. “You should’ve knocked in back.”

  We passed through the house to the well-appointed den in the back. Freddie’s mother, Flora, was sitting with his wife, Louise, in straight-backed chairs against the wall. After I greeted and kissed them both, I looked up and saw Big John staring at me with curiosity.

  He motioned for me to join him behind a fortlike embankment of leather sofas and chairs. I looked over my shoulder and poor Freddie had taken his position on a ladder-back chair against the wall next to his wife and mother.

  Big John first chose the strategy of staring at me with a smirk, but after The Citadel, I could outstare any man who wished to test me. Then Big John pulled back, leaned over, and handed me a cigar.

  “That’s contraband, boy, but that’s what Big John smokes.” He handed me a bottle of bourbon and said, “This bottle is Rebel Yell. I got me a whole bottle of my own. It’s the nectar of the South, boy. Pour you a glass and make yourself right at home. I always treat my guests like they were kings in my house.”

  As he took a puff from his Cuban cigar and a swallow of Rebel Yell, I got to study his face at my leisure. The handsomeness of Big John Trask was slowly undermined by the chalk quarries of age; signs of dissipation clustered around the dark folds near his eyes, and the skin around the jawline was sallow and sunburned at the same time. He had the eyes of a cottonmouth snake. He carried meanness in his eyes and menace in his ample frame.

  “Do you know who I am in this town, Conroy?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Trask. I think I do.”

  “You call me Big John like all my friends do,” he boomed. “No, do you know how big I am in this town? How really big I am?”

  “Yes, sir, I think I do, Big John,” I replied.

  “I’m the biggest thing in this town. The richest, the smartest, the meanest son of a bitch this town’s ever seen. You hear that music coming from the speakers? I am the music of radio station WBEU. Russian sailors on the high seas listen to Big John’s music when they piss offshore. You don’t believe that, Conroy? I’ll prove to you I am this music.”

  He grabbed a phone like a six-gun and began dialing. When the phone was answered, he said, “Boy, this is Big John. Are you crazy? Big John Trask! I own this radio station. I own you. Oh, you’re the new boy? Okay, that’s all right. Right now, I want you to interrupt this program with an announcement: ‘Mr. John Trask is entertaining the writer Pat Conroy over at Big John’s Bay Street mansion. Mr. Conroy is the author of The Great Santini, which is being filmed in Beaufort.’ Now go ahead, boy. Put it on air right now or I’ll fire your sorry ass.”

  The disk jockey’s voice immediately filled the room: “Mr. John Trask is entertaining the writer Pat Conroy over at Big John’s Bay Street mansion.”

  When the deejay finished, Big John affixed me with his steady gaze again and said, “Does that prove to you I own that station?”

  “No, that doesn’t prove a thing,” I teased. “You could’ve bribed that kid with a hundred bucks.”

  Again, the savage leap for the phone and Big John, agitated, said, “Boy, Big John again. You play Big John’s three favorite songs right now so Conroy’ll believe I am WBEU.”

  In this surreal atmosphere I had the feeling I was a bit player in a Southern Gothic play written by Samuel Beckett. Big John’s three favorite songs were played one after another without a disturbing word of interference from the flummoxed disk jockey. The first song was “Dixie.”

  Big John leaped to his feet, put his right hand over his heart, and tears came to his eyes as he listened to the anthem to the lost cause.

  “You don’t stand for ‘Dixie,’ boy?” Big John yelled at me.

  “No, sir. I stand up for ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ ”

  “That’s heresy, boy!”

  “I was raised by a Marine, sir,” I said.

  But “Dixie” soon ended with a merciful flourish and was replaced by “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” which had a transformational effect on Big John Trask. He began crying at the first line and was sobbing by the time the song had ended.

  “That’s the way I feel, Conroy. I’ve been at the top of the heap so long that I don’t even remember what the bottom looked like. I’ve been the top dog since I got to this town. But I’m lonely. Goddamn, a man as important as me gets lonely. It’s me by myself—richer than shit, but lonesome.”

  “Must be agony, Big John,” I said.

  By then, the third song in Big John’s sacred trilogy made its way over the airway and he went through another metamorphosis before my eyes. When he heard Jimmy Dean reciting “The Ballad of Big John,” he straightened up, dried his tears, and assumed a hero’s posture as he heard about the fictional Big John, powerful and mythic, saving a hund
red miners by holding up a broken shaft after a cave-in at a coal mine.

  “That’s me, Conroy! That’s who I am—a man so tough that he looks to save everyone but himself. I’ve always been the bravest son of a bitch in whatever room I’ve entered. What do you say about that?”

  “Sounds good to me, Big John,” I said.

  The music stopped and Big John’s mouth changed, sharpened into a grimace of cunning and meanness. His eyes took on a sneaky look, as though he were looking at me as some rodent who’d become his next meal. I took a sip of bourbon and awaited his strike. It came swift and certain.

  “Conroy, I want to know why you insulted my son John and his wife by not showing up at their party last night. We had the whole movie crew out there, as well as the biggest movers and shakers in town. The party was for you, so why didn’t you show up?” Big John demanded.

  “I can give you two explanations. When you and Mrs. Trask were raising your sons, you should’ve taught them to have better manners. I came down for the party yesterday and found my mother crying at the kitchen table. It seems your son had forgotten to invite my mother or her husband to his party. I ran over to your son Freddie’s house, and it seems like Junior also neglected to invite Freddie or Louise to his party. Fred and I’ve been friends for ten years, so it doesn’t help my mood to find my mother crying and one of my best friends humiliated over a party at your son’s house. So I skipped your son’s party for his carelessness. And I’ll never think of it again.”

  “That true, Freddie?” Big John demanded.

  “Yes, Daddy,” Freddie admitted.

  Turning back to me, Big John said, “You’re just like Big John, Conroy—the spitting image of me. I’d’a done the same damn thing. And you’ve accomplished some things. You’ve made your way in the world. Freddie over there has never done shit and never will. You made your way in Hollywood. That’s really something. I admire you, boy.”

  “Thanks, Big John,” I said, springing to my feet. “I got to get back over to my mama’s.”

  As we were filing out the back door, Big John grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back into the den.

  “Conroy, before you go, you gotta tell me one thing. We’re talking man-to-man here. I’ve made a ton of money, a millionaire many times over. But I hear Hollywood is a much bigger cat. I hear they dream in billions, not millions—so I’m dying to know. How much money are you making out of all this?”

  I breathed deeply and told him, “I can’t discuss exact figures here, Big John. But let me tell you this—I could buy you, could write you a check tonight that could make you the happiest man on earth.”

  He squealed with pleasure. “You’re just like Big John, Conroy! Just like Big John. You’ve got my killer instinct.”

  • • •

  I had learned much about the etiquette of a writer visiting the set of a movie being made from his or her book. The rule was a simple one—they don’t want you there. They don’t want your opinions aired on either their screenplays or the scenes you’re allowed to watch them film. During the filming of Conrack, Jon Voight had avoided me as though I’d contracted a rare form of leprosy, and brought his discomfort to the set. It seemed odd to me then, but I learned the reason why when Christopher Dickey wrote a brilliant memoir about his father, James Dickey, in Summer of Deliverance. I was in Mr. Dickey’s poetry workshop when Deliverance was filmed in the North Carolina mountains. James Dickey was a supernova among Southern literary personalities, and it seemed like he spent every moment on the set. Burt Reynolds and Jon Voight did not come away with grand-hearted memories of my favorite poet; therefore Voight reacted to me as though I were the second monstrous incarnation of a Southern writer in his life.

  The set of The Great Santini seemed a happy one, however, and Lewis John Carlino ran a disciplined corps of actors and extras while Charles Pratt kept the production on time and on budget. The looming problem was one of diplomacy and infinite tact. My father still wanted to visit the set, and Mom was still adamantly opposed to the visit, no matter how artful or skillful our arguments were. Over a dinner at her house, I tried again to make her see the wisdom of generosity over bitterness and how it would be good for the well-being of all her children for some kind of truce to be signed. “Besides,” I said to my mom, “it’s Dad’s story, too. He lived it as much as any of us did.”

  “And he was the man who ruined it all,” she said.

  “I agree, Mom. No one agrees more. But we’re all getting older and we’ve got to figure out how to make something work out of this blown-up family. We’ve got to learn how to build something out of the ruins.”

  “I agree with you, Pat,” John Egan said, a military set to his handsome face. “Peggy, it’s time to put this behind us. There’ll be more marriages and funerals coming up. Your family needs your help.”

  “I’ll get Dad in and out of town, Mom,” I said. “You won’t even know he was here.”

  “I’ll take Peg to Charleston instead,” Dr. Egan said, sealing the deal. “We’ll have dinner, then spend the night at the Mills Hyatt House.” I shook John’s hand, kissed Mom, and was out the door in a flash.

  On the following day, Dad drove down from Atlanta as frisky as a parakeet that he was going to visit the set at long last. Charles Pratt embraced my father warmly and said that my dad embodied all the virtues he admired as a man. “My God,” I whispered to Dad, “an American fascist.”

  “A real American, son,” Dad whispered back. “You’ve always had a little trouble with the concept.”

  Duvall seemed to take real delight in meeting my father, and I could see in the scene I watched being filmed that he was closing in on a love affair with his character. The tension on the set was rising as some new disaster would overwhelm the discordant Meecham family.

  As Bull grew more violent, Lewis John Carlino invited Dad and me to watch the scene between the furious father and the overwhelmed son. When I had first written this scene in the house on Hancock Street, I thought I had never written anything with such primal derangement—it seemed to emanate from an evil place inside me. In words and action, I tried to explain all the despair I brought to the hatred of my father during my long childhood. It took a single backyard basketball game, played on a makeshift court with the Beaufort River behind it, to have Bull Meecham ruin the small segment left of his son’s unsuccessful boyhood. I had a hundred examples to choose from—Dad used to start games out when I was in ninth and tenth grade where he would slap my cheeks hard enough to bring tears spilling down my cheeks. But then I got stronger and faster and I wouldn’t quit, so he developed the habit of throwing the ball into my forehead, then driving by me. Then I became really fast and my ball handing was as good as any in the state, so I wrote about challenging him to a duel in the backyard of the new house—a magnificent house that hid the family in residence there.

  In the game I beat my father fair and square, and I began to walk off the court, but my father could never admit defeat in front of his wife, his family, or anyone. So he grabbed that basketball and he began bouncing it off the back of that boy’s head—over and over again, taunting Ben that he’d always been his favorite little girl, his favorite little pussy, that he was going to buy him a Barbie doll for being such a good little girl. I could have used a thousand scenes from my childhood, but the theme was always humiliation and a shame that could never be removed or washed away. It’s that indelible shame I feel today as I write some of the same words I wrote more than thirty-six years ago. The fear is the same—the self-loathing, the suicide wishes the same—the waking up screaming in the middle of the night will always be the same.

  Then, in the yard of Tidalholm, in Beaufort, my father and I found ourselves seated in director’s chairs in a place of high honor as we watched the actors perform their wizardry and magic. Robert Duvall and Michael O’Keefe came out as though they knew they were about to live through one of the best days of their lives. All the suppressed anger a father and a son could hide from each
other in every excruciating moment of the basketball game with the taunting that was good-natured at first, but turned savage as the game built. The kids on the sideline tried to shout support for their brother, but they could feel the resentment of the father building up like steam in a kettle.

  It was Blythe Danner who saw the danger waters about to break. When the game was over and she hugged her son after his first victory over Santini, it was she who spotted the incurable wreckage that had built up on the foundations of her family. She declared her son the winner and got a basketball in her face for her troubles. But the father refused to accept his loss. For his courage, his father bounced a basketball off his son’s head in a long march from the court to his bedroom. In that courageous march Ben Meecham earned his wings in his father’s squadron and began to prove himself a worthy son of his warriorlike elder.

  I sat there breathless in that yard when that seminal scene was filmed. My father hadn’t moved since the actors had gone to work. Everyone who had witnessed the coming apart of the Meecham family sat there drained and exhausted. Even the wisteria seemed capable of collapse. What was it? I kept asking. What was it I had just seen with my own eyes play out in a town that I had taken for a home?

  Then I had it, and my soul filled with gratitude. It was art. I had watched art being created and made and honored. It was a dazzling thing to behold.

  It was so powerful in its purity and its sheer honesty that it shook me, terrified me. But it changed me. That is what art always does. It always changes you and that change stays with you for a lifetime. The magnificent cast caught with rare perfection how quickly the Conroy family dynamic could explode, grow in anarchy and acuity, until all of us were lost in our own lunatic roles of trying to defuse the chaos that had swallowed us up in an abyss we couldn’t avoid. These actors had captured the madness of our family and had done it by blending the powerful magic they carried with them in their belief in the genius of their own art. My father and I never spoke of watching that scene, but it did much to change our relationship as father and son.