Beaming Sonny Home (19 page)

“I can't believe this,” said Marlene. “They're letting him have another conference?”

“That's because he's still calling the shots,” Rita prophesied. “But wait until he turns them women loose. I daresay this is Sonny Gifford's last press conference.” Gracie threw a pillow from off the sofa at Rita and it bounced off the top of Rita's head. But she didn't seem to notice this. Rita was accustomed to having pillows thrown at her head during made-for-TV movies and family functions of all kinds.

“Park your lips, Rita,” said Gracie. Sonny had used one of his famous long pauses while he pondered the answer to Donna's question, the camera lingering on his face while it waited.

“I intend to spend some quality time with my dog,” Sonny finally told her. “Whoever said a man's best friend is his dog must've been married at least once in his lifetime.” This said, Sonny produced his explosive grin. The crowd roared with approval. It was good to see Sonny's face again, without the window screen hampering his fine features. Funny how a camera adored Sonny Gifford, lit up all his best intentions. Mattie had never seen a picture of herself, in all her sixty-six years, that she felt comfortable with. Sonny had inherited his friendship with the camera from Lester's side.

“In that case,” said Marlene, “I hope they allow dogs in prison, 'cause that's where that brother of mine is headed.” Then another question flew into the air that Sonny seemed to like. He pointed at someone in the crowd and then cupped his ear, asking for a repeat.

“Donnie Henderson says you're the inventor of the Le Mans Birth Method, Sonny,” the reporter's voice cried out. Mattie couldn't see where the question came from. A male voice. Maybe that thin-faced, thin-haired man. “Could you tell us what the Le Mans Method is?” Sonny shook his head, a look of great fondness on his face, as if he might be remembering Donnie. He and Donald R. Henderson had been such good friends, burning up their childhood years in pursuit of baseball and mischief, which developed, later, into
girls
and mischief.

“Oh please, God,” Rita wailed. “Don't let him tell that story and embarrass the daylights out of me on television!” Sonny stood on the porch now, his left hand still holding the long-haired woman's arm, the reporters waiting, the fans waiting, all of America
waiting.

“Now, that there,” said Sonny, “is a scientific secret and Mr. Donnie Henderson should know better than to think I'd reveal it here on TV.”

“Thank you, Jesus,” said Rita. Mattie was having a hard time telling reporters from the well-wishers who had been mobbing the trailer park, folks cheering Sonny onward. They seemed now to be one and the same. No one was asking important questions. Mattie longed for that tight-faced—what Sonny called tight-assed—woman who had kept things on a serious keel. But she was nowhere to be seen. And then a new actor materialized, a debut moment as the dog, Humphrey, made his appearance on the end of a leash held by a policeman. Mattie could feel the crowd's delirium all the way from Bangor, could see them rising to the occasion.
Humphrey
is
here. Humphrey is here.

“There's the dog!” shouted Marlene.

“A German shepherd,” said Steven. Mattie nodded. Sonny had always loved German shepherds, had owned three or four of them in his lifetime. The German shepherd seemed caught up in the ruckus. He pulled back on his leash, straining to run, but the policeman held him as best he could, calming him down with a friendly pat.

What happened next seemed to Mattie to occur in slow motion, as if maybe the television had delayed the action so that no one would miss anything, no viewer out in Washington State, where Sonny's cousin William lived, or down in deserty New Mexico, where his aunt Frieda, Lester's sister, had hidden for most of her life after marrying that air force man and abandoning Mattagash, or down in Connecticut, where Theresa Something-Polish was still carrying her torch for Sonny. It only took a few seconds, but time kindly slowed itself down so that Mattie and others could watch it all unfold. Seconds.

“I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the Bangor Police Department for their patience,” Sonny announced.

“Who does he think this is?” Rita asked. “A politician?” But before Sonny could say anything else, before he could dole out more of what the papers called his “soft voice and folksy mannerisms,” his dog suddenly heard his master's voice for the first time in days. At least that's what it looked like, for Humphrey went crazy, jumping into the air, twisting his body, fighting to get free of the leash.

“He thinks they're hurting Sonny!” Mattie cried out. Sonny's other dogs were the same way. He used to show their devotion off to his friends. “Just pretend you're hitting me,” Sonny would urge Donnie Henderson. And the dogs would bare their teeth at the sight of Donnie's raised hand, would go crazy to protect their beloved owner. “He thinks them hostages are hurting Sonny!” Mattie cried again. And then Humphrey pulled away from the policeman who was trying frantically to hold him, pulled away and bounded toward Sonny and the two women. The crowd broke into screams. A loud eruption of chaos. Frenzy on the loose. Mattie realized that Sonny must have seen the dog coming, for he pushed his hostages aside so that Humphrey would see he was unharmed. But it was too much action for too few seconds. Too many pictures for brains under stress to process. As Sonny flung the women away so that he could grab Humphrey up into his arms, one of the policemen panicked. Mattie didn't see which one, for there was too much commotion. She didn't even hear the gun firing, for the crowd was thunderous.

Instead, she stood paralyzed before the television's face, stood peering at the ruination of her son. The bullet hole between his eyes looked like the mark of Cain, except that Sonny wouldn't hurt nobody, much less kill his brother. He didn't even have a brother. He just had those awful sisters. Mattie watched as the two women hostages knelt beside Sonny's body. They reminded her of women she'd seen before, women in the lumber camps who'd lost a husband beneath a fallen pine. Women she'd seen on TV during the Vietnam War, who wept over the mangled bodies of their children. Women who'd lost their brothers, sons, even themselves somewhere on the bumpy road through life. The two women wailed. Mattie saw them throw their throats back, like coyotes. They wailed for her lost son, her dead boy. In other days, other times, they'd have been allowed to dress the dead body, carry it home, mourn for it in private, the way everybody in Mattagash used to do before they built that funeral home in St. Leonard. But not these women. People who knew them, anxious relatives and friends, rushed in and pulled them both away.

“He didn't have a gun,” Robbie was saying now. “He didn't have a single thing in his hands.” With the rest of the family staring in shock at the television screen, Mattie moved away from the set. She could stand it no longer. Strangers were there with her child and she was in Mattagash, wringing her hands as though they were mops. She heard Rita sobbing and wondered why. And then Marlene followed suit, Marlene, the middle daughter who seemed to have no identity, who always had to do everything Rita did, even when they were children. Marlene and Rita, shrieking now like hyenas. Willard had dropped his magazine and was standing in front of the set, staring down at the commotion taking place in Bangor. In the breeze coming from Mattie's little portable fan, which sat on top of the television, Willard's green hairs were waving like blades of grass, and, crazily, Mattie thought of her cemetery plot in the Catholic graveyard, down by that clutch of pine trees near the old meadow, a slice of land lying next to Lester's slice. “Looks like you both got a piece of the American pie,” Sonny had said the day he drove Mattie out there so she could plant a red geranium on Lester's grave. Sonny had been unable to finish reading the words on his father's tombstone.
Beloved
Husband, Beloved Father. His earthly toils are over. His heavenly rest begun.
Instead, he walked along the meadow's edge, kicking his boot at invisible rocks, until Mattie finished. “Because I got nothing to say to him,” he told Mattie later, when she asked why. Now, with Sonny himself lying dead in Bangor, Maine, Mattie pushed Robbie's arms away, for they were encircling her, taking her breath.

“It's okay, honey,” Mattie's voice said, an impersonal voice, a voice like the one on the telephone earlier.
You're his mother, you say?
“I just need to be alone for a bit.” She squeezed Robbie's hand and then let it go. Gracie was now reaching up for Robbie, stretching out her arms. Her ponytail had gone slack.

“Oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord,” Gracie was saying.

In the kitchen Mattie leaned against the sink and tried to breathe. What should be done now? What steps should be taken? Where was Henry? Henry would know. He couldn't sell whores in a lumber camp, but he'd know what to do in a mess like this. A knock suddenly rattled the screen on the back door. Mattie tried to gather her thoughts. Was it one of those ghost knocks? A spirit beating on the window to let you know someone has passed over? She'd known about such things since she was a little girl. Hadn't the wind beat its fists at her own window the night her mother died? Another knock, this one sounding more human than the last. Mattie stood, straightened her hair as best she could, and then felt silly.
Fixing
her
hair, and Sonny just dead!
The girls were still all pasted about the television set. There wouldn't be any more
teasers
, that was one thing for certain. Her hand shaking, Mattie opened the back door and saw Elmer Fennelson standing there, hat in his hands. Of course, it would be Elmer. Elmer always came to the back door like some railroad bum, some runaway slave. Poor Elmer. Not wishing to make any more racket in the world, any more fuss, than was necessary.
Hanging
back.

“Where've you been?” Mattie asked. She could feel tears filling her eyes, turning the world all watery. Elmer seemed to be trembling. Had he already heard of Sonny and come to comfort her? No, he couldn't have. Sonny had just now died. Even if Elmer had jumped into his old pickup, Skunk on his heels, it would've taken him more than five minutes to get to Mattie's house.

“I been camping out, over on the hardwood ridge behind my house,” Elmer said quietly. “Me and Skunk, we been camping out without telling a soul.” He waited. Mattie held the door ajar with one hand, not knowing what else to do, what to say. She could hear the racket of her daughters and grandchildren behind her.

“Camping?” Mattie asked vaguely.

“Camping and doing a parcel of thinking,” Elmer said. He shifted his long, thin frame from one foot to another, twirled his cap. “But I see you got company.”

“Thinking?” Mattie asked.

“Well, what I come to ask you is this,” Elmer said finally. He cleared his throat. Mattie tried to understand what was happening, what her good friend Elmer was working toward, but all she could think of was Sonny. It occurred to her that she might faint, like that day in church when she married Lester Gifford. Elmer had been there to catch her that day, too.

“I know we're both older than two old hound dogs,” Elmer said. He looked off toward where Mattie's garden usually lay. “But I was wondering if you might consider the idea of you and me getting married.” Mattie couldn't respond. She tried to remember why these kinds of big things in life usually don't happen at once: a child's death going hand in hand with a proposal of marriage. That wasn't the way it was usually done, was it?

“Married?” Mattie asked.

“We could live in the house of your choice,” said Elmer, “although I've grown real partial to mine.” Mattie stepped out onto the back porch and let the screen door close behind her.

“Elmer,” she said. “They shot my boy. They just shot Sonny down on television, like he was some kind of outlaw. They just put a bullet into his head. My boy is dead, Elmer.” Then she went back into her house and closed the door.

With her daughters still stunned before the television, jolted by death, dazed and astonished, saying nothing for the first time in years, Mattie pulled a chair away from the kitchen table and sank down into it. Funny, but the pattern on the tablecloth, with the tiny rose flowers and wispy green leaves, seemed large suddenly, important in some way. Everything seemed to be a clue to the hereafter, now that one of her own had gone there, was
on
his
way
there
, since Mattie had no idea how long it took a soul to depart its earthly woes. She wondered if Sonny would be stopping by Mattagash, Maine, on his way out, maybe to see if Mattie's teeth were really soaking, pick up his Rico Petrocelli baseball and his
Best of Ricky Nelson
CD. Now, Mattie remembered,
remembered
wildly
, for it seemed that her mind was reeling with this new information, this new intimacy with death, that Ricky Nelson was also dead. Killed in a plane crash. She hoped that he knew how much Sonny admired him and, maybe, would be there to help her boy in some small way, with any kindness. For Sonny needed
kindness
, that was all. Kindness and attention, and it seemed to Mattie that folks on the other side would be kind to one another, and especially to a newcomer. She should probably wait in Sonny's room, she was thinking, since that's where he kept his CDs, and his cherished baseball and those awful playing cards of naked girls. Mattie hoped, in case Sonny
did
stop by, that he wouldn't take the cards with him. Then she remembered that ghosts don't pack their personal belongings before they go. Ghosts don't get that kind of head start, the way businessmen and stewardesses and such folks do. Sometimes, Mattie had read, this is what keeps ghosts locked to the earth, that sweet burning need for something they loved and gave up too soon. Considering all that, Mattie decided that maybe Sonny Gifford would still be hovering in Bangor, hoping to get one last look at that Sheila woman he had loved and married and lost, maybe hoping to touch her stringy hair one more time, smell the dried sweat of her skin, hear her breath coming at him while she slept. Sonny would be in Bangor, chasing the woman he loved, no doubt about it.