Hearts in Atlantis(168)

'What about you, Deef? Do you have an old lady? I don't mean your girlfriend, I mean an old lady. A mamasan.'

'Hey man, don't call me Deef. Nobody calls me that now. I never liked it.'

'Do you have one?'

'Ronnie Malenfant's my mamasan,' Dieffenbaker said. 'Sometimes I see him. Not the way you said you see yours, like she's really there, but memory's real too, isn't it?'

'Yeah.'

Dieffenbaker shook his head slowly. 'If memory was all. You know? If memory was a//.'

Sully sat silent. In the chapel the organ was now playing something that didn't sound like a hymn but just music. The recessional, he thought they called it. A musical way of telling the mourners to get lost. Get back, Jo-Jo. Your mama's waitin.

Dieffenbaker said: 'There's memory and then there's what you actually see in your mind. Like when you read a book by a really good author and he describes a room and you see that room. I'll be mowing the lawn or sitting at our conference table listening to a presentation or reading a story to my grandson before putting him in bed or maybe even smooching with Mary on the sofa, and boom, there's Malenfant, goddam little acne-head with that wavy hair. Remember how his hair used to wave?'

'Yeah.'

'Ronnie Malenfant, always talking about the f**kin this and the f**kin that and the f**kin other thing. Ethnic jokes for every occasion. And the poke. You remember that?'

'Sure. Little leather poke he wore on his belt. He kept his cards in it. Two decks of Bikes. "Hey, we're goin Bitch-huntin, boys! Nickel a point! Who's up for it?" And out they'd come.'

'Yeah. You remember. Remember. But I see him, Sully, right down to the whiteheads on his chin. I hear him, I can smell the f**king dope he smoked . . . but mostly I see him, how he knocked her over and she was lying there on the ground, still shaking her fists at him, still running her mouth - '

'Stop it.'

' - and I couldn't believe it was going to happen. At first I don't think Malenfant could believe it, either. He just jabbed the bayonet at her a couple of times to begin with, pricking her with the tip of it like the whole thing was a goof . . . but then he went and did it, he stuck it to her. Fuckin A, Sully; I mean f**k-in-A. She screamed and started jerking all around and he had his feet, remember, on either side of her, and the rest of them were running, Ralph Glemson and Mims and I don't know who else. I always hated that little f**k Clemson, even worse than Malenfant because at least Ronnie wasn't sneaky, with him what you saw was what you got. Clemson was crazy and sneaky. I was scared to death, Sully, scared to f**king death. I knew I was supposed to put a stop to it, but I was afraid they'd scrag me if I tried, all of them, all of you, because at that precise moment there was all you guys and then there was me. Shearman . . . nothing against him, he went into that clearing where the copters came down like there was no tomorrow, but in that 'ville . . . I looked at him and there was nothing there.'

'He saved my life later on, when we got ambushed,' Sully said quietly.

'I know he did. Picked you up and carried you like f**king Superman. He had it in the clearing, he got it back on the trail but in between, in the Ville . . . nothing. In the 'ville it was down to me. It was like I was the only grownup, only I didn't feel like a grownup.'

Sully didn't bother telling him to stop again. Dieffenbaker meant to have his say. Nothing short of a punch in the mouth would stop him from having it.

'You remember how she screamed when he stuck it in? That old lady? And Malenfant standing over her and running his mouth, slopehead this and gook that and slant the other thing. Thank God for Slocum. He looked at me and that made me do something . . . except all I did was tell him to shoot.'

No, Sully thought, you didn't even do that, Deef. You just nodded your head. If you're in court they don't let you get away with shit like that', they make you speak out loud. They make you state it for the record.

'I think Slocum saved our souls that day,' Dieffenbaker said. 'You knew he offed himself, didn't you? Yeah. In '86.'

'I thought it was a car accident.'

'If driving into a bridge abutment at seventy miles an hour on a clear evening is an accident, it was an accident.'

'What about Malenfant? Any idea?'

'Well, he never came to any of the reunions, of course, but he was alive the last I knew. Andy Brannigan saw him in southern California.'

'Hedgehog saw him?'

'Yeah, Hedgehog. You know where it was?'

'No, 'course not.'

'It's going to kill you, Sully-John, it's going to blow your mind. Brannigan's in Alcoholics Anonymous. It's his religion. He says it saved his life, and I suppose it did. He used to drink fiercer than any of us, maybe fiercer than all of us put together. So now he's addicted to AA instead of tequila. He goes to about a dozen meetings a week, he's a GSR - don't ask me, it's some sort of political position in the group - he mans a hotline telephone. And every year he goes to the National Convention. Five years or so ago the drunks got together in San Diego. Fifty thousand alkies all standing in the San Diego Convention Center, chanting the Serenity Prayer. Can you picture it?'

'Sort of,' Sully said.

'Fucking Brannigan looks to his left and who does he see but Ronnie Malenfant. He can hardly believe it, but it's Malenfant, all right. After the big meeting, he grabs Malenfant and the two of them go out for a drink.' Dieffenbaker paused. 'Alcoholics do that too, I guess. Lemonades and Cokes and such. And Malenfant tells Hedgehog he's almost two years clean and sober, he's found a higher power he chooses to call God, he's had a rebirth, everything is five by f**king five, he's living life on life's terms, he's letting go and letting God, all that stuff they talk. And Brannigan, he can't help it. He asks Malenfant if he's taken the Fifth Step, which is confessing the stuff you've done wrong and becoming entirely ready to make amends. Malenfant doesn't bat an eyelash, just says he took the Fifth a year ago and he feels a lot better.'