delighted me, the ease with which the wordsappeared, with me as some involuntary instrument taking dictation from the stars. In that chapter, I put the Great Santini into his warplane, where he flew from Key West back to his home base in South Carolina. In the middle of the flight, his fire warning lights flickered on, and Bull Meecham fought to get his plane safely back in its hangar. He aborted his first landing when he saw the lights of family homes beneath him. He changed direction and his A-6 disappeared from the radar screen forever. They found the remains the next day. No one has ever loved writing his father’s funeral scene more than I did. I relished every word of it.
Then, in the last two hours of this epiphanic night, I began an almost hallucinatory scene involving the God that eighteen-year-old Ben would pray to about his guilt-ridden relief over the death of his own father. I began creating that God from the spirits of different characters I had made up during the course of writing the novel. This part surprised me, because I’d not planned for this. I had wanted the novel to end with a trip, the way military families always rotate through bases. I needed the Meechams to set off on the highway toward Atlanta—the son now driving the family away from the town, just as the father drove the family into town at the beginning of the book. What in the hell was God doing there? But it felt right, so I went with it. Then I felt the surge, the rush of adrenaline, when I’m coming onto something larger than myself. I had Ben Meecham pray to this God he had just created out of his own imagination:
And can one boy who has said ten thousand times in secret monologues, “I hate you. I hate you,” as his father passed him, can this boy approach this singing God and can he look into the eye of God and confess this sin and have that God say to him in the thunder of perfect truth that the boy has not come to him to talk about his hatred of his father, but has come to talk about mysteries that only gods can translate. Can there be a translation by this God all strong and embarrassed, all awkward and kind? Can he smile as he says it? How wonderful the smile of God as he talks to a boy, and the translation of a boy screaming, “I hate you. I hate you,” to his father who can’thear him would be simple for such a God. Simple, direct, and transferable to all men, all women, all people of all nations of the earth.
But Ben already knew the translation and he let God off with a smile, let him go back to his song, and back to his flowers on River Street. In the secret eye behind his eyes, in Ben’s true empire, he heard and saw and knew.
And for the flight-jacketed boy on the road to Atlanta, he filled up for the first time, he filled up even though he knew the hatred would return, but for now, he filled up as if he would burst. Ben Meechum filled up on the road to Atlanta with the love of his father, with the love of Santini.
When I finished this last line, I fell apart and wept for a long time. For several months, I believe that Barbara—acting on behalf of our children—could have had me committed to a mental institution, because I had traveled too far into the great wound that is my family. Instead of granting me a portion of strength and satisfaction, the novel felt like a bloodletting, an auto-da-fé, or a crown of thorns. Inchoately, I could feel it killing me from the inside out, making me desperate, suicidal, emptied out. Though I thought I had written a good book, I had pulled the pin of a hand grenade, then thrown my entire body over it, knowing it would kill me without harming anyone else. For six months I walked around Atlanta, bedbug crazy and tortured by anxiety and nightmares. At the end of the six months, I found a therapist, Dr. Marion O’Neill, who came in to save me. By this time, the book was in full production and would come out in the spring of 1976. Still, I had warned no one about its content or
Then, in the last two hours of this epiphanic night, I began an almost hallucinatory scene involving the God that eighteen-year-old Ben would pray to about his guilt-ridden relief over the death of his own father. I began creating that God from the spirits of different characters I had made up during the course of writing the novel. This part surprised me, because I’d not planned for this. I had wanted the novel to end with a trip, the way military families always rotate through bases. I needed the Meechams to set off on the highway toward Atlanta—the son now driving the family away from the town, just as the father drove the family into town at the beginning of the book. What in the hell was God doing there? But it felt right, so I went with it. Then I felt the surge, the rush of adrenaline, when I’m coming onto something larger than myself. I had Ben Meecham pray to this God he had just created out of his own imagination:
And can one boy who has said ten thousand times in secret monologues, “I hate you. I hate you,” as his father passed him, can this boy approach this singing God and can he look into the eye of God and confess this sin and have that God say to him in the thunder of perfect truth that the boy has not come to him to talk about his hatred of his father, but has come to talk about mysteries that only gods can translate. Can there be a translation by this God all strong and embarrassed, all awkward and kind? Can he smile as he says it? How wonderful the smile of God as he talks to a boy, and the translation of a boy screaming, “I hate you. I hate you,” to his father who can’thear him would be simple for such a God. Simple, direct, and transferable to all men, all women, all people of all nations of the earth.
But Ben already knew the translation and he let God off with a smile, let him go back to his song, and back to his flowers on River Street. In the secret eye behind his eyes, in Ben’s true empire, he heard and saw and knew.
And for the flight-jacketed boy on the road to Atlanta, he filled up for the first time, he filled up even though he knew the hatred would return, but for now, he filled up as if he would burst. Ben Meechum filled up on the road to Atlanta with the love of his father, with the love of Santini.
When I finished this last line, I fell apart and wept for a long time. For several months, I believe that Barbara—acting on behalf of our children—could have had me committed to a mental institution, because I had traveled too far into the great wound that is my family. Instead of granting me a portion of strength and satisfaction, the novel felt like a bloodletting, an auto-da-fé, or a crown of thorns. Inchoately, I could feel it killing me from the inside out, making me desperate, suicidal, emptied out. Though I thought I had written a good book, I had pulled the pin of a hand grenade, then thrown my entire body over it, knowing it would kill me without harming anyone else. For six months I walked around Atlanta, bedbug crazy and tortured by anxiety and nightmares. At the end of the six months, I found a therapist, Dr. Marion O’Neill, who came in to save me. By this time, the book was in full production and would come out in the spring of 1976. Still, I had warned no one about its content or
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