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 fucking 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.’
‘Hot damn,’ Sully said, surprised at the depth of his anger. ‘Old mamasan would certainly be glad to know that Ronnie’s gotten past it. I’ll tell her the next time I see her.’ Not knowing he would see her later that day, of course.
‘You do that.’
They sat without talking much for a little while. Sully asked Dieffenbaker for another cigarette and Dieffenbaker gave him one, also another flick of the old Zippo. From around the corner came tangles of conversation and some low laughter. Pags’s funeral was over. And somewhere in California Ronnie Malenfant was perhaps reading his AA Big Book and getting in touch with that fabled higher power he chose to call God. Maybe Ronnie was also a GSR, whatever the fuck that was. Sully wished Ronnie was dead. Sully wished Ronnie Malenfant had died in a Viet Gong spiderhole, his nose full of sores and the smell of ratshit, bleeding internally and puking up chunks of his own stomach lining. Malenfant with his poke and his cards, Malenfant with his bayonet, Malenfant with his feet planted on either side of the old mamasan in her green pants and orange top and red sneakers.