Hearts In Atlantis (69 page)

Sully remembered standing in the street and looking at the new lieutenant's pale, exhausted, confused face. He remembered thinking,
He can't do it. Whatever needs to be done to stop this before it really gets going, he can't do it
. But then Dieffenbaker got it together and gave Sly Slocum the nod. Slocum didn't hesitate a moment. Slocum, standing there in the street beside an overturned kitchen chair with chrome legs and a red seat, had shouldered his rifle, sighted in, and blown Ralph Clemson's head clean off. Pagano, standing nearby and
gaping at Malenfant, hardly seemed aware that he had been splattered pretty much from head to toe. Clemson fell dead in the street and that stopped the party. Game over, baby.

•   •   •

These days Dieffenbaker had a substantial golf-gut and wore bifocals. Also, he'd lost most of his hair. Sully was amazed at this, because Deef had had a pretty full head of it five years ago, at the unit's reunion on the Jersey shore. That was the last time, Sully had vowed to himself, that he would party with those guys. They didn't get better. They didn't fuckin mellow. Each reunion was more like the cast of
Seinfeld
on a really mean batch of crank.

“Want to come outside and have a smoke?” the new lieutenant asked. “Or did you give that up when everyone else did?”

“Gave it up like everyone else, that's affirmative.” They had been standing a little to the left of the coffin by then so the rest of the mourners could get a look and then get past them. Talking in low tones, the taped music rolling easily over their voices, the draggy salvation soundtrack. The current tune was “The Old Rugged Cross,” Sully believed.

He said, “I think Pags would've preferred—”

“ ‘Goin' Up the Country' or ‘Let's Work Together,' ” Dieffenbaker finished, grinning.

Sully grinned back. It was one of those unexpected moments, like a brief sunny break in a day-long spell of rain, when it was okay to remember something—one of those moments when you were, amazingly, almost glad you had been there. “Or maybe ‘Boom Boom,' that one by The Animals,” he said.

“Remember Sly Slocum telling Pags he'd stuff that harmonica up his ass if Pags didn't give it a rest?”

Sully had nodded, still grinning. “Said if he shoved it up there far enough, Pags could play ‘Red River Valley' when he farted.” He had glanced fondly back at the coffin, as if expecting Pagano would also be grinning at the memory. Pagano wasn't. Pagano was just lying there with makeup on his face. Pagano had gotten over. “Tell you what—I'll come outside and watch
you
smoke.”

“Done deal.” Dieffenbaker, who had once given the okay for one of his soldiers to kill another of his soldiers, had started up the chapel's side aisle, his bald head lighting up with mixed colors as he passed beneath each stained-glass window. Limping after him—he had been limping over half his life now and never noticed anymore—came John Sullivan, Gold Star Chevrolet dealer.

•   •   •

The traffic on I-95 slowed to a crawl and then came to a complete stop, except for the occasional forward twitch in one of the lanes. On the radio ? and The Mysterians had given way to Sly and the Family Stone—“Dance to the Music.” Fuckin Slocum would have been seat-bopping for sure, seat-bopping to the max. Sully put the Caprice demonstrator in Park and tapped in time on the steering wheel.

As the song began to wind down he looked to his right and there was old
mamasan
in the shotgun seat, not seat-bopping but just sitting there with her yellow hands folded in her lap and her crazy-bright sneakers, those Chuck Taylor knockoffs, planted on the disposable plastic floormat with
SULLIVAN CHEVROLET APPRECIATES YOUR BUSINESS
printed on it.

“Hello, you old bitch,” Sully said, pleased rather than disturbed. When was the last time she'd shown her face? The Tacklins' New Year's Eve party, perhaps, the last time Sully had gotten really drunk. “Why weren't you at Pags's funeral? The new lieutenant asked after you.”

She made no reply, but hey, when did she ever? She only sat there with her hands folded and her black eyes on him, a Halloween vision in green and orange and red. Old
mamasan
was like no ghost in a Hollywood movie, though; you couldn't see through her, she never changed her shape, never faded away. She wore a woven piece of twine on one scrawny yellow wrist like a junior-high-school kid's friendship bracelet. And although you could see every twist of the twine and every wrinkle on her ancient face, you couldn't smell her and the one time Sully tried to touch her she had disappeared on him. She was a ghost and his head was the haunted house she lived in. Only every now and then (usually without pain and always without warning), his head would vomit her out where he had to look at her.

She didn't change. She never went bald or got gallstones or needed bifocals. She didn't die as Clemson and Pags and Packer and the guys in the crashed helicopters had died (even the two they had taken from the clearing covered in foam like snowmen had died, they were too badly burned to live and it had all been for nothing). She didn't disappear as Carol had done, either. No, old
mamasan
continued to pop in for the occasional visit, and she hadn't changed a bit since the days when “Instant Karma” was a top-ten hit. She had to die once, that was true, had to lie there in the
mud while Malenfant first drove his bayonet into her belly and then announced his intention of removing her head, but since then she had been absolutely cruisin.

“Where you been, darlin?” If anyone in another car happened to look over (his Caprice was surrounded on all four sides now, boxed in) and saw his lips moving, they'd just assume he was singing along with the radio. Even if they thought anything else, who gave a fuck? Who gave a fuck what any of them thought? He had seen things,
terrible
things, not the least of them a roll of his own intestines lying in the bloody mat of his pubic hair, and if he sometimes saw this old ghost (and talked to her), so fuckin what? Whose business was it but his own?

Sully looked up the road, trying to spy what had plugged the traffic (he couldn't, you never could, you just had to wait and creep forward a little when the guy in front of you crept forward), and then looked back. Sometimes when he did that she was gone. Not this time; this time she had just changed her clothes. The red sneaks were the same but now she was wearing a nurse's uniform: white nylon pants, white blouse (with a small gold watch pinned to it, what a nice touch), white cap with a little black stripe. Her hands were still folded in her lap, though, and she was still looking at him.

“Where you been, Mama? I missed you. I know that's weird but it's true. Mama, you been on my mind. You should have seen the new lieutenant. Really, it's amazing. He's entered the solar sex-panel phase. Totally bald on top, I mean
shiny
.”

Old
mamasan
said nothing. Sully wasn't surprised.

•   •   •

There was an alley beside the funeral parlor with a green-painted bench placed against one side. At either end of the bench was a butt-studded bucket of sand. Dieffenbaker sat beside one of the buckets, stuck a cigarette in his mouth (it was a Dunhill, Sully observed, pretty impressive), then offered the pack to Sully.

“No, I really quit.”

“Excellent.” Dieffenbaker lit up with a Zippo, and Sully realized an odd thing: he had never seen anyone who'd been in Vietnam light his cigarette with matches or those disposable butane lighters; Nam vets all seemed to carry Zippos. Of course that couldn't really be true. Could it?

“You've still got quite a limp on you,” Dieffenbaker said.

“Yeah.”

“On the whole, I'd call it an improvement. The last time I saw you it was almost a lurch. Especially after you got a couple of drinks down the hatch.”

“You still go to the reunions? Do they still
have
them, the picnics and shit?”

“I think they still have them, but I haven't been in three years. Got too depressing.”

“Yeah. The ones who don't have cancer are raving alcoholics. The ones who have managed to kick the booze are on Prozac.”

“You noticed.”

“Fucking yeah I noticed.”

“I guess I'm not surprised. You were never the smartest guy in the world, Sully-John, but you were a perceptive son of a bitch. Even back then.
Anyway, you nailed it—booze, cancer, and depression, those're the main problems, it seems like. Oh, and teeth. I never met a Vietnam vet who wasn't having the veriest shitpull with his teeth . . . if he has any left, that is. What about you, Sully? How's the old toofers?”

Sully, who'd had six out since Vietnam (plus root canals almost beyond numbering), wiggled his hand from side to side in a
comme ci, comme ça
gesture.

“And the other problem?” Dieffenbaker asked. “How's that?”

“Depends,” Sully said.

“On what?”

“On what I described as my problem. We were at three of those fuckin reunion picnics together—”

“Four. There was also at least one I went to that you didn't. The year after the one on the Jersey shore? That was the one where Andy Hackermeyer said he was going to kill himself by jumping from the top of the Statue of Liberty.”

“Did he ever do it?”

Dieffenbaker dragged deeply on his cigarette and gave Sully what was still a Lieutenant Look. Even after all these years he could muster that up. Sort of amazing. “If he'd done it, you would have read about it in the
Post
. Don't you read the
Post
?”

“Religiously.”

Dieffenbaker nodded. “Vietnam vets all have trouble with their teeth and they all read the
Post
. If they're in the
Post
's fallout area, that is. What do you suppose they do if they're not?”

“Listen to Paul Harvey,” Sully said promptly, and Dieffenbaker laughed.

Sully was remembering Hack, who'd also been there the day of the helicopters and the 'ville and the ambush. Blond kid with an infectious laugh. Had a picture of his girlfriend laminated so it wouldn't rot in the damp and then wore it around his neck on a little silver chain. Hackermeyer had been right next to Sully when they came into the 'ville and the shooting started. Both of them watching as the old
mamasan
came running out of her hooch with her hands raised, jabbering six licks to the dozen, jabbering at Malenfant and Clemson and Peasley and Mims and the other ones who were shooting the place up. Mims had put a round through a little boy's calf, maybe by accident. The boy was lying in the dirt outside one of the shitty little shacks, screaming. Old
mamasan
decided Malenfant was the one in charge—why not? Malenfant was the one doing all the yelling—and ran up to him, still waving her hands in the air. Sully could have told her that was a bad mistake, old Mr. Card-Shark had had himself a morning and a half, they all had, but Sully never opened his mouth. He and Hack stood there watching as Malenfant raised the butt of his rifle and drove it down into her face, knocking her flat and stopping her jabber. Willie Shearman had been standing twenty yards or so away, Willie Shearman from the old home town, one of the Catholic boys he and Bobby had been sort of scared of, and there was nothing readable on Willie's face. Willie Baseball, some of his men called him, and always affectionately.

“So what about your problem, Sully-John?”

Sully came back from the 'ville in Dong Ha to the alley beside the funeral parlor in New York . . . but
slowly. Some memories were like the Tar-Baby in that old story about Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit; you got stuck on them. “I guess it all depends. What problem did I say I had?”

“You said you got your balls blown off when they hit us outside the 'ville. You said it was God punishing you for not stopping Malenfant before he went all dinky-dau and killed the old lady.”

Dinky-dau didn't begin to cover it, Malenfant standing with his legs planted on either side of the old lady, bringing the bayonet down and still running his mouth the whole time. When the blood started to come out it made her orange top look like tie-dye.

“I exaggerated a trifle,” Sully said, “as drunks tend to do. Part of the old scrotal sack is still present and accounted for and sometimes the pump still turns on. Especially since Viagra. God bless that shit.”

“Have you quit the booze as well as the cigarettes?”

“I take the occasional beer,” Sully said.

“Prozac?”

“Not yet.”

“Divorced?”

Sully nodded. “You?”

“Twice. Thinking about taking the plunge again, though. Mary Theresa Charlton, how sweet she is. Third time lucky, that's my motto.”

“You know something, Loot?” Sully asked. “We've uncovered some clear legacies of the Vietnam experience here.” He popped up a finger. “Vietnam vets get cancer, usually of the lung or the brain, but other places, too.”

“Like Pags. Pags was the pancreas, wasn't it?”

“Right.”

“All that cancer's because of the Orange,” Dieffenbaker
said. “Nobody can prove it but we all know it. Agent Orange, the gift that keeps on giving.”

Sully popped up a second finger—yer fuckfinger, Ronnie Malenfant would undoubtedly have called it. “Vietnam vets get depressed, get drunk at parties, threaten to jump off national landmarks.” Out with the third finger. “Vietnam vets have bad teeth.” Pinky finger. “Vietnam vets get divorced.”

Sully had paused at that point, vaguely hearing canned organ music coming through a partially opened window, looking at his four popped fingers and then at the thumb still tucked against his palm. Vets were drug addicts. Vets were bad loan risks, by and large; any bank officer would tell you so (in the years when Sully had been getting the dealership up and running a number of bankers had told
him
so). Vets maxed out their credit cards, got thrown out of gambling casinos, wept over songs by George Strait and Patty Loveless, knifed each other over shuffleboard bowling games in bars, bought muscle cars on credit and then wrecked them, beat their wives, beat their kids, beat their fuckin
dogs
, and probably cut themselves shaving more often than people who had never been closer to the green than
Apocalypse Now
or that fucking piece of shit
The Deer Hunter
.