Sully took a drag on the Dunhill and looked at Dieffenbaker. The truth was that he never had considered such a thing. He dealt with two loan officers who were the right age, but they never talked about it. Of course, neither did he. Next time I see them, he thought, /’// have to ask if they carry Zippos. You know, be subtle.
‘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 fuckin this and the fuckin that and the fuckin 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 fucking 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 fuck-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 fuck 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 fucking 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 fucking 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.’