Hearts in Atlantis(161)

'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 f**k? Who gave a f**k 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 f**kin 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.'

Tucking 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 had 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 ca, 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 f**kin 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?'