Hearts In Atlantis

“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 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 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 shoot-ing 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. T hinking 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 Malen-fant 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.”