Beaming Sonny Home Read Free Page B

come banging on my door with the news.” Rita offered her a cigarette. Marlene helped herself to one, too. They lit up. Smoke rose into the air. It looked to Mattie like some church ritual, with incense and all, a ceremony of sorts. And in a way, it was. Her daughters had always been at their best when Sonny was at his worst. No wedding, no funeral, no high school graduation had ever given them pleasure such as they got from their brother’s wrongdoings.
    â€œIt ain’t done me a bit of good to have quit smoking five years ago,” Mattie said, “with the three of you puffing away like chimneys here in my house. That’s what they call secondhand smoke.” Marlene had turned her empty Coke can into an ashtray and now all three daughters were batting their cigarettes against the small opening. And it hadn’t helped to hide all her ashtrays either. She was forever emptying soggy cigarette butts out of pop cans, thanks to one or all of her daughters. But the girls were too excited to care about secondhand smoke, not when there was firsthand smoke on the television screen. Mattie tried to think of Sonny. Who could she call this time? Even if her husband, Lester, was still alive, which he wasn’t, thank God, he had never seen anything worth helping out in Sonny. Not like Mattie did. When Lester died, five years earlier, Mattie had decided she wanted to live as long as she could, now that she was single again. And so she had given up her beloved Salem Menthols. How could she have known her big, grown daughters would go on ahead and kill her with secondhand smoke? She had four hundred dollars in her savings account. She would get Marlene to drive her to Watertown and she would withdraw it. Marlene had the smallest mouth of the three girls. It was big , but it was still the smallest . The last time Sonny had needed money in a hurry, Marlene had driven Mattie down to the bank, and as far as Mattie could tell, Marlene had kept quiet about the whole thing.
    â€œWhat’s the story?” Gracie was asking. “What in the world is he up to?” Mattie stared at the television screen. The picture had become a commercial for some kind of deodorant. The room grew bluish-gray with cigarette smoke. Mattie closed her eyes.
    â€œNobody has any idea what’s going on inside his head,” said Rita. She dropped her cigarette into the Coke can and it sizzled loudly. “According to the police chief, they’re trying to set up communication with him.”
    â€œWell, good luck to them,” said Marlene, “if they’re hoping to find out what’s going on in Sonny Gifford’s head.” Thunder exploded in the distance and Mattie heard the grackles rise up outside in a great cluster of wings and clucking sounds. She tried to think reasonably. Had she brought in those sheets and pillowcases? They would be drenched in no time. Now the television screen was filled with actors who were afraid to lift their arms because they hadn’t used Sure deodorant. Mattie studied them carefully, wondering what they had done with Sonny and the pin-striped trailer.
    â€œDon’t this latest stunt take the sponge cake?” Rita asked again.

2
    That was how Mattie Gifford received the news that her only boy, Sonny Gifford, had taken two hostages and was holed up with them in a trailer, down in Bangor, Maine, five hours south of Mattagash. It was later that day, on the regular Channel 4 News program at six o’clock, that more information was disclosed about the hostage incident. It was announced at the beginning of the show that a phone conversation with Sonny Gifford, who had been inside the trailer for over two hours, at Marigold Drive Trailer Park, would be aired for the first time. Then the station had gone to a commercial.
    â€œThat’s what they call a teaser ,” Gracie said. She was doing her sit-ups in Mattie’s living room, in front of the television set, because