Hearts In Atlantis

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 Con-vention 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 Ron-nie 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 Hedge- hog 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 fuck-ing 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 Dief-fenbaker 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 Malen-fant had died in a Viet Cong 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 sneak-ers.

“Why were we in Vietnam to begin with?” Sully asked. “Not to get all philosophical or anything, but have you ever figured that out?”

“Who said ‘He who does not learn from the past is condemned to repeat it’?”

“Richard Dawson, the host of Family Feud.”

“Fuck you, Sullivan.”

“I don’t know who said it. Does it matter?”

“Fuckin yeah,” Dieffenbaker said. “Because we never got out. We never got out of the green. Our generation died there.”

“That sounds a little—”

“A little what? A little pretentious? You bet. A little silly? You bet. A little self-regarding? Yes sir. But that’s us. That’s us all over. What have we done since Nam, Sully? Those of us who went, those of us who marched and protested, those of us who just sat home watching the Dallas Cowboys and drinking beer and farting into the sofa cushions?”

Color was seeping into the new lieutenant’s cheeks. He had the look of a man who has found his hobby-horse and is now climbing on, helpless to do anything but ride. He held up his hands and began popping fingers the way Sully had when talking about the legacies of the Vietnam experience.

“Well, let’s see. We’re the generation that invented Super Mario Brothers, the ATV, laser missile-guidance systems, and crack cocaine. We discovered Richard Simmons, Scott Peck, and Martha Stewart Living. Our idea of a major lifestyle change is buying a dog. The girls who burned their bras now buy their lingerie from Victoria’s Secret and the boys who fucked fearlessly for peace are now fat guys who sit in front of their computer screens late at night, pulling their pud-dings while they look at pictures of naked eighteen-year-olds on the Internet. That’s us, brother, we like to watch. Movies, video games, live car-chase footage, fistfights on The Jerry Springer Show, Mark McGwire, World Federation Wrestling, impeachment hearings, we don’t care, we just like to watch. But there was a time . . . don’t laugh, but there was a time when it was really all in our hands. Do you know that?”

Sully nodded, thinking of Carol. Not the version of her sitting on the sofa with him and her wine-smelling mother, not the one flipping the peace sign at the camera while the blood ran down the side of her face, either— that one was already too late and too crazy, you could see it in her smile, read it in the sign, where screaming words forbade all discussion. Rather he thought of Carol on the day her mother had taken all of them to Savin Rock. His friend Bobby had won some money from a three-card monte dealer that day and Carol had worn her blue bathing suit on the beach and sometimes she’d give Bobby that look, the one that said he was killing her and death was sweet. It had been in their hands then; he was quite sure of it. But kids lose everything, kids have slippery fingers and holes in their pockets and they lose everything.