11/22/63 Кинг Стивен

“When I got to Eden Fallows and you were gone, I burned the note as you asked, then checked with the old guy next door.”

“Mr. Kenopensky.”

“Yes. He didn’t know anything. By then the therapist lady was sitting on your steps. She wasn’t happy to find you gone. She said she’d traded with Doreen so Doreen could see Kennedy today.”

The Winscott Road bus stop was ahead. I slowed to see if there was a schedule inside the little shelter next to the post, but no. I pulled into a parking space a hundred yards ahead of the stop.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking out an insurance policy. If a bus doesn’t come by nine, we’ll go on. Finish your story.”

“I called the hotels in downtown Dallas, but nobody even wanted to talk to me. They’re all so busy. I called Deke next, and he called the police. Told them he had reliable information that someone was going to shoot the president.”

I’d been watching for the bus in my rearview mirror, but now I looked at Sadie in shock. Yet I felt reluctant admiration for Deke. I had no idea how much of what Sadie had told him he actually believed, but he’d gone way out on a limb, just the same. “What happened? Did he give his name?”

“He never got the chance. They hung up on him. I think that’s when I really started to believe you about how the past protects itself. And that’s what all this is to you, isn’t it? Just a living history book.”

“Not anymore.”

Here came a lumbering bus, green over yellow. The sign in the destination window read 3 MAIN STREET DALLAS 3. It stopped and the doors at the front and back flapped open on their accordion hinges. Two or three people got on, but there was no way they were going to find seats; when the bus rolled slowly past us, I saw that all of them were full. I glimpsed a woman with a row of Kennedy buttons pinned to her hat. She waved at me gaily, and although our eyes met for only a second, I could feel her excitement, delight, and anticipation.

I dropped the Chevy into gear and followed the bus. On the back, partially obscured by belching brown exhaust, a radiantly smiling Clairol girl proclaimed that if she only had one life, she wanted to live it as a blonde. Sadie waved her hand theatrically. “Uck! Drop back! It stinks!”

“That’s quite a criticism, coming from a pack-a-day chick,” I said, but she was right, the diesel stench was nasty. I fell back. There was no need to tailgate now that I knew Sadie Jump-Rope had been right about the number. She’d probably been right about the interval, too. The buses might run every half hour on ordinary days, but this was no ordinary day.

“I did some more crying, because I thought you were gone for sure. I was scared for you, but I hated you, too.”

I could understand that and still feel I’d done the right thing, so it seemed best to say nothing.

“I called Deke again. He asked me if you’d ever said anything about having another bolt-hole, maybe in Dallas but probably in Fort Worth. I said I didn’t remember you saying anything specific. He said it probably would have been while you were in the hospital, and all confused. He told me to think hard. As if I wasn’t. I went back to Mr. Kenopensky on the chance you might have said something to him. By then it was almost suppertime, and getting dark. He said no, but right about then his son came by with a pot roast dinner and invited me to eat with them. Mr. K got talking—he has all kinds of stories about the old days—”

“I know.” Up ahead, the bus turned east on Vickery Boulevard. I signaled and followed it but stayed far enough back so we didn’t have to eat the diesel. “I’ve heard at least three dozen. Blood-on-the-saddle stuff.”

“Listening to him was the best thing I could have done, because I stopped racking my brains for awhile, and sometimes when you relax, things let go and float to the surface of your mind. While I was walking back to your little apartment, I suddenly remembered you saying you lived for awhile on Cadillac Street. Only you knew that wasn’t quite right.”

“Oh my God. I forgot all about that.”

“It was my last chance. I called Deke again. He didn’t have any detailed city maps, but he knew there were some at the school library. He drove down—probably coughing his head off, he’s still pretty sick—got them, and called me from the office. He found a Ford Avenue in Dallas, and a Chrysler Park, and several Dodge Streets. But none of them had the feel of a Cadillac, if you know what I mean. Then he found Mercedes Street in Fort Worth. I wanted to go right away, but he told me I’d have a much better chance of spotting you or your car if I waited until morning.”

She gripped my arm. Her hand was cold.

“Longest night of my life, you troublesome man. I hardly slept a wink.”

“I made up for you, although I didn’t finally go under until the wee hours. If you hadn’t come, I might have slept right through the damn assassination.”

How dismal would that be for an ending?

“Mercedes goes on for blocks. I drove and drove. Then I could see the end, at the parking lot of some big building that looks like the back of a department store.”

“Close. It’s a Montgomery Ward warehouse.”

“And still no sign of you. I can’t tell you how downhearted I was. Then…” She grinned. It was radiant in spite of the scar. “Then I saw that red Chevy with the silly tailfins that look like a woman’s eyebrows. Bright as a neon sign. I shouted and pounded the dashboard of my little Beetle until my hand was sore. And now here I a—”

There was a low, crunching bang from the right front of the Chevy and suddenly we were veering at a lamppost. There was a series of hard thuds from beneath the car. I spun the wheel. It was sickeningly loose in my hands, but I got just enough steerage to avoid hitting the post head-on. Instead, Sadie’s side scraped it, creating a ghastly metal-on-metal screee. Her door bowed inward and I yanked her toward me on the bench seat. We came to a stop with the hood hanging over the sidewalk and the car listing to the right. That wasn’t just a flat tire, I thought. That was a mortal fucking injury.

Sadie looked at me, stunned. I laughed. As previously noted, sometimes there’s just nothing else you can do.

“Welcome to the past, Sadie,” I said. “This is how we live here.”

4

She couldn’t get out on her side; it was going to take a crowbar to pry the passenger door open. She slid the rest of the way across the seat and got out on mine. A few people were watching, not many.

“Gee, what happened?” a woman pushing a baby carriage asked.

That was obvious once I got around to the front of the car. The right front wheel had snapped off. It lay twenty feet behind us at the end of a curving trench in the asphalt. The jagged axle-stub gleamed in the sun.

“Busted wheel,” I told the woman with the baby carriage.

“Oh, law,” she said.

“What do we do?” Sadie asked in a low voice.

“We took out an insurance policy; now we file a claim. Nearest bus stop.”

“My suitcase—”

Yes, I thought, and Al’s notebook. My manuscripts—the shitty novel that doesn’t matter and the memoir that does. Plus my available cash. I glanced at my watch. Quarter past nine. At the Texas Hotel, Jackie would be dressing in her pink suit. After another hour or so of politics, the motorcade would be on the move to Carswell Air Force Base, where the big plane was parked. Given the distance between Fort Worth and Dallas, the pilots would barely have time to put their wheels up.

I tried to think.

“Would you like to use my phone to call someone?” the woman with the baby carriage asked. “My house is right up the street.” She scanned us, picking up on my limp and Sadie’s scar. “Are you hurt?”

“We’re fine,” I said. I took Sadie’s arm. “Would you call a service station and ask them to tow it? I know it’s a lot to ask, but we’re in a terrible hurry.”

“I told him that front end was wobbly,” Sadie said. She was pouring on the Georgia drawl. “Thank goodness we weren’t on the highway.” Ha-way.

“There’s an Esso about two blocks up.” She pointed north. “I guess I could stroll the baby over there…”

“Oh, that would be a lifesaver, ma’am,” Sadie said. She opened her purse, removed her wallet, and took out a twenty. “Give them this on account. Sorry to ask you like this, but if I don’t see Kennedy, I will just dah.” That made the baby carriage woman smile.

“Goodness, that much would pay for two tows. If you have some paper in your purse, I could scribble a receipt—”

“That’s okay,” I said. “We trust you. But maybe I’ll put a note under the wiper.”

Sadie was looking at me questioningly… but she was also holding out a pen and little pad with a cross-eyed cartoon kid on the cover. SKOOL DAZE, it said below his loopy grin. DEAR OLE GOLDEN SNOOZE DAZE.

A lot was riding on that note, but there was no time to think about the wording. I jotted rapidly and folded it under the wiper blade. A moment later we were around the corner and gone.

5

“Jake? Are you okay?”

“Fine. You?”

“I got bumped by the door and I’ll probably have a bruise on my shoulder, but otherwise, yes. If we’d hit that post, I probably wouldn’t have been. You, either. Who was the note for?”

“Whoever tows the Chevy.” And I hoped to God Mr. Whoever would do as the note asked. “We’ll worry about that part when we come back.”

If we came back.

The next bus pole was halfway up the block. Three black women, two white women, and a Hispanic man were standing by the post, a racial mixture so balanced it looked like a casting call for Law and Order SVU. We joined them. I sat on the bench inside the shelter next to a sixth woman, an African-American lady whose heroic proportions were packed into a white rayon uniform that practically screamed Well-to-do White Folks’ Housekeeper. On her bosom she wore a button that read ALL THE WAY WITH JFK IN ’64.

“Bad leg, sir?” she asked me.

“Yes.” I had four packets of headache powder in the pocket of my sport coat. I reached past the gun, got two of them, tore off the tops, and poured them into my mouth.

“Taking them that way will box your kidneys around,” she said.

“I know. But I’ve got to keep this leg going long enough to see the president.”

She broke into a large smile. “Don’t I hear that.”

Sadie was standing on the curb and looking anxiously back down the street for a Number Three.

“Buses runnin slow today,” the housekeeper said, “but one be along directly. No way I’m missin Kennedy, nuh-uh!”

Nine-thirty came and still no bus, but the ache in my knee was down to a dull throb. God bless Goody’s Powder.

Sadie came over. “Jake, maybe we ought to—”

“Here come a Three,” the housekeeper said, and rose to her feet. She was an awesome lady, dark as ebony, taller than Sadie by at least an inch, hair plank-straight and gleaming. “How-eee, I’m gonna get me a place right there in Dealey Plaza. Got samidges in my bag. And will he hear me when I yell?”

“I bet he will,” I said.

She laughed. “You better believe he will! Him and Jackie both!”

The bus was full, but the folks from the bus stop crammed on anyway. Sadie and I were the last, and the driver, who looked as harried as a stockbroker on Black Friday, held out his palm. “No more! I’m full! Got em crammed in like sardines! Wait for the next one!”

Sadie threw me an agonized look, but before I could say anything, the large lady stepped in on our behalf. “Nuh-uh, you let em on. The man he got a bum leg, and the lady got her own problems, as you can well see. Also, she skinny and he skinnier. You let em on or I’m gonna put you off and drive this bus myself. I can do it, too. I learned on my daddy’s Bulldog.”

The bus driver looked at her looming over him, then rolled his eyes and beckoned us aboard. When I reached for coins to stick in the fare-box, he covered it with a meaty palm. “Never mind the damn fare, just get behind the white line. If you can.” He shook his head. “Why they didn’t put on a dozen extra buses today I don’t know.” He yanked the chrome handle. The doors flopped shut fore and aft. The air brakes let go with a chuff and we were rolling, slow but sure.

My angel wasn’t done. She began hectoring a couple of working guys, one black and one white, seated behind the driver with their dinnerbuckets in their laps. “Get on up and give your seats to this lady and gentleman, now! Can’t you see he’s got a bad pin? And he’s still goin to see Kennedy!”

“Ma’am, that’s all right,” I said.

She took no notice. “Get up, now, was you raised in a woodshed?”

They got up, elbowing their way into the choked throng in the aisle. The black workingman gave the housekeeper a dirty look. “Nineteen sixty-three and I’m still givin the white man my seat.”

“Oh, boo-hoo,” his white friend said.

The black guy did a double take at my face. I don’t know what he saw, but he pointed at the now-vacant seats. “Sit down before you fall down, Jackson.”

I sat next to the window. Sadie murmured her thanks and sat beside me. The bus lumbered along like an old elephant that can still reach a gallop if given enough time. The housekeeper hovered protectively next to us, holding a strap and swaying her hips on the turns. There was a lot of her to sway. I looked at my watch again. The hands seemed to be leaping toward 10:00 A.M.; soon they would leap past it.

Sadie leaned close to me, her hair tickling my cheek and neck. “Where are we going, and what are we going to do when we get there?”

I wanted to turn toward her, but kept my eyes front instead, looking for trouble. Looking for the next punch. We were on West Division Street now, which was also Highway 180. Soon we’d be in Arlington, future home of George W. Bush’s Texas Rangers. If all went well, we’d reach the Dallas city limits by ten-thirty, two hours before Oswald chambered the first round into his damned Italian rifle. Only, when you’re trying to change the past, things rarely go well.

“Just follow my lead,” I said. “And don’t relax.”

6

We passed south of Irving, where Lee’s wife was now recuperating from the birth of her second child only a month ago. Traffic was slow and smelly. Half the passengers on our packed bus were smoking. Outside (where the air was presumably a little clearer), the streets were choked with inbound traffic. We saw one car with WE LOVE YOU JACKIE soaped on the back window, and another with GET OUT OF TEXAS YOU COMMIE RAT in the same location. The bus lurched and swayed. Larger and larger clusters of people stood at the stops; they shook their fists when our packed bus refused to even slow.

At quarter past ten we got on Harry Hines Boulevard and passed a sign pointing the way to Love Field. The accident occurred three minutes after that. I had been hoping it wouldn’t happen, but I had been watching for it and waiting for it, and when the dump truck drove through the stoplight at the intersection of Hines and Inwood Avenue, I was at least halfway prepared. I’d seen one like it before, on my way to Longview Cemetery in Derry.

I grabbed Sadie’s neck and pushed her head toward her lap. “Down!”

A second later we were thrown against the partition between the driver’s seat and the passenger area. Glass broke. Metal screamed. The standees shot forward in a yelling clot of waving limbs, handbags, and dislodged for-best hats. The white workingman who’d said Boo-hoo was bent double over the fare machine that stood at the head of the aisle. The large housekeeper simply disappeared, buried under a human avalanche.

Sadie’s nose was bleeding and there was a puffy bruise rising like bread dough under her right eye. The driver was sprawled sideways behind the wheel. The wide front window was shattered and the forward view of the street was gone, replaced by rust-flowered metal. I could read ALLAS PUBLIC WOR. The stench of the hot asphalt the truck had been carrying was thick.

I turned Sadie toward me. “Are you all right? Is your head clear?”

“I’m okay, just shaken up. If you hadn’t shouted when you did, I wouldn’t have been.”

There were moans and cries of pain from the pile-up at the front of the bus. A man with a broken arm disengaged himself from the scrum and shook the driver, who rolled out of his seat. There was a wedge of glass protruding from the center of his forehead.

“Ah, Christ!” the man with the broken arm said. “I think he’s fuckin dead!”

Sadie got to the guy who’d hit the fare post and helped him back to where we’d been sitting. He was white-faced and groaning. I guessed that he’d been leading with his balls when he hit the post; it was just the right height. His black friend helped me get the housekeeper to her feet, but if she hadn’t been fully conscious and able to help us out, I don’t think we could have done much. That was three hundred pounds of female on the hoof. She was bleeding freely from the temple, and that particular uniform was never going to be of further use to her. I asked if she was okay.

“I think so, but I fetched my head one hell of a wallop. Lawsy!”

Behind us, the bus was in an uproar. Pretty soon there was going to be a stampede. I stood in front of Sadie and got her to put her arms around my waist. Given the shape of my knee, I probably should have been holding onto her, but instinct is instinct.

“We need to let these people off the bus,” I told the black workingman. “Run the handle.”

He tried, but it wouldn’t move. “Jammed!”

I thought that was bullshit; I thought the past was holding it shut. I couldn’t help him yank, either. I only had one good arm. The housekeeper—one side of her uniform now soaked with blood—pushed past me, almost knocking me off my feet. I felt Sadie’s arms jerk loose, but then she took hold again. The housekeeper’s hat had come askew, and the gauze of the veil was beaded with blood. The effect was grotesquely decorative, like tiny hollyberries. She reset the hat at the proper angle, then laid hold of the chrome doorhandle with the black workingman. “I’m gonna count three, then we gonna pull this sucker,” she told him. “You ready?”

He nodded.

“One… two… three!”

They yanked… or rather she did, and hard enough to split her dress open beneath one arm. The doors flopped open. From behind us came weak cheers.

“Thank y—” Sadie began, but then I was moving.

“Quick. Before we get trampled. Don’t let go of me.” We were the first ones off the bus. I turned Sadie toward Dallas. “Let’s go.”

“Jake, those people need help!”

“And I’m sure it’s on the way. Don’t look back. Look ahead, because that’s where the next trouble will come from.”

“How much trouble? How much more?”

“All the past can throw at us,” I said.

7

It took us twenty minutes to make four blocks from where our Number Three bus had come to grief. I could feel my knee swelling. It pulsed with each beat of my heart. We came to a bench and Sadie told me to sit down.

“There’s no time.”

“Sit, mister.” She gave me an unexpected push and I flopped onto the bench, which had an ad for a local funeral parlor on the back. Sadie nodded briskly, as a woman may when a troublesome chore has been accomplished, then stepped into Harry Hines Boulevard, opening her purse as she did so and rummaging in it. The throbbing in my knee was temporarily suspended as my heart climbed into my throat and stopped.

A car swerved around her, honking. It missed her by less than a foot. The driver shook his fist as he continued down the block, then popped up his middle finger for good measure. When I yelled at her to come back, she didn’t even look in my direction. She took out her wallet as the cars whiffed past, blowing her hair back from her scarred face. She was as cool as a spring morning. She got what she wanted, dropped the wallet back into her purse, then held a greenback high over her head. She looked like a high school cheerleader at a pep rally.

“Fifty dollars!” she shouted. “Fifty dollars for a ride into Dallas! Main Street! Main Street! Gotta see Kennedy! Fifty dollars!”

That isn’t going to work, I thought. The only thing that’s going to happen is she’s going to get run over by the obdurate pa—

A rusty Studebaker screamed to a stop in front of her. The engine bashed and clanged. There was an empty socket where one of the headlamps should have been. A man in baggy pants and a strap-style tee-shirt got out. On his head (and pulled all the way down to his ears) was a green felt cowboy hat with an Indian feather in the band. He was grinning. The grin showcased at least six missing teeth. I took one look and thought, Here comes trouble.

“Lady, you crazy,” the Studebaker cowboy said.

“You want fifty dollars or not? Just take us to Dallas.”

The man squinted at the bill, as oblivious of the swerving, honking cars as Sadie herself. He took off his hat, slapped it against the chinos hanging from his chickenbone hips, then put it back on his head, once more pulling it down until the brim rode the tops of his jug ears. “Lady, that ain’t a fifty, that’s a tenspot.”

“I’ve got the rest in my billfold.”

“Then why don’t I just take it?” He grabbed at her big handbag and got one strap. I stepped off the curb, but I thought he’d have it and be gone before I could reach her. And if I did reach her, he’d probably beat me stupid. Skinny as he was, he still outweighed me. And he had two good arms.

Sadie held on. Pulled in opposite directions, the bag gaped open like an agonized mouth. She reached inside with her free hand and came out with a butcher knife that looked familiar. She swiped at him with it and opened his forearm. The cut began above his wrist and ended at the dirty crease on the inside of his elbow. He screamed in pain and surprise, let go of the strap, and stepped back, staring at her. “You crazy bitch, you cut me!”

He lunged for the open door of his car, which was still trying to beat itself to death. Sadie stepped forward and slashed the air in front of his face. Her hair had fallen in her eyes. Her lips were a grim line. Blood from the Studebaker cowboy’s wounded arm pattered to the pavement. Cars continued to flow past. Incredibly, I heard someone yell, “Give him the business, lady!”

The Studebaker cowboy retreated toward the sidewalk, his eyes never leaving the knife. Without looking at me, Sadie said: “Over to you, Jake.”

For a second I didn’t understand, then remembered the .38. I took it out of my pocket and pointed at him. “See this, Tex? It’s loaded.”

“You’re as crazy as she is.” He was holding his arm against his chest now, branding his tee-shirt with blood. Sadie hurried around to the Studebaker’s passenger side and opened the door. She looked at me over the roof and made an impatient cranking gesture with one hand. I wouldn’t have believed I could love her more, but in that moment I saw I was wrong.

“You should have either taken the money or kept driving,” I said. “Now let me see how you run. Do it immediately or I’ll put a bullet in your leg so you can’t do it at all.”

“You’re one fuckin bastard,” he said.

“Yes, I am. And you’re one fucking thief who will soon be sporting a bullet hole.” I cocked the gun. The Studebaker cowboy didn’t test me. He turned and hustled west on Hines with his head hunched and his arm cradled, cursing and spilling a blood-trail.

“Don’t stop till you get to Love!” I shouted after him. “It’s three miles the way you’re going! Say hello to the president!”

“Get in, Jake. Get us out of here before the police come.”

I slid in behind the wheel of the Studebaker, grimacing as my swollen knee protested. It was a standard shift, which meant using my bad leg on the clutch. I ran the seat back as far as it would go, hearing the litter of trash in back crunch and crackle, then got rolling.

“That knife,” I said. “Is it—?”

“The one Johnny cut me with, yes. Sheriff Jones returned it after the inquest. He thought it was mine and he was probably right. But not from my place on Bee Tree. I’m almost positive Johnny brought it with him from our house in Savannah. I’ve been carrying it in my bag ever since. Because I wanted something to protect myself with, just in case…” Her eyes filled. “And this is an in-case, isn’t it? This is an in-case if there ever was one.”

“Put it back in your purse.” I stabbed the clutch, which was horribly stiff, and managed to get the Studebaker into second. The car smelled like a chicken coop that hadn’t been cleaned in roughly ten years.

“It’ll get blood on everything inside.”

“Put it back anyway. You can’t walk around waving a knife, especially when the president’s coming to town. Honey, that was beyond brave.”

She put the knife away, then began wiping her eyes with her fisted hands, like a little girl who’s scraped her knees. “What time is it?”

“Ten of eleven. Kennedy lands at Love Field in forty minutes.”

“Everything’s against us,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

I glanced at her and said, “Now you understand.”

8

We made it to North Pearl Street before the Studebaker’s engine blew. Steam boiled up from under the hood. Something metallic clanged to the road. Sadie cried out in frustration, struck her thigh with a balled fist, and used several bad words, but I was almost relieved. At least I wouldn’t have to wrestle with the clutch anymore. I put the column shift in neutral and let the steaming car roll to the side of the street. It came to rest in front of an alley with DO NOT BLOCK painted on the cobbles, but this particular offense seemed minor to me after assault with a deadly weapon and car theft.

I got out and hobbled to the curb, where Sadie was already standing. “What time now?” she asked.

“Eleven-twenty.”

“How far do we have to go?”

“The Texas School Book Depository is on the corner of Houston and Elm. Three miles. Maybe more.” The words were no more than out of my mouth when we heard the roar of jet engines from behind us. We looked up and saw Air Force One on its descent path.

Sadie pushed her hair wearily back from her face. “What are we going to do?”

“Right now we’re going to walk,” I said.

“Put your arm around my shoulders. Let me take some of your weight.”

“I don’t need to do that, hon.”

But a block later, I did.

9

We approached the intersection of North Pearl and Ross Avenue at eleven-thirty, right around the time Kennedy’s 707 would be rolling to a stop near the official greeters… including, of course, the woman with the bouquet of red roses. The street corner ahead was dominated by the Cathedral Santuario de Guadalupe. On the steps, below a statue of the saint with her arms outstretched, sat a man with wooden crutches on one side and an enamel kitchen pot on the other. Propped against the pot was a sign reading I AM CRIPPLE UP BAD! PLEASE GIVE WHAT YOU CAN BE A GOOD SAMARIAN GOD LOVES YOU.

“Where are your crutches, Jake?”

“Back at Eden Fallows, in the bedroom closet.”

“You forgot your crutches?”

Women are good at rhetorical questions, aren’t they?

“I haven’t been using them that much lately. For short distances, I’m pretty much okay.” This sounded marginally better than admitting that the main thing on my mind had been getting the hell away from the little rehab cluster before Sadie arrived.

“Well, you could sure use a pair now.”

She ran ahead with enviable fleetness and spoke to the beggar on the church steps. By the time I limped up, she was dickering with him. “A set of crutches like that costs nine dollars, and you want fifty for one?”

“I need at least one to get home,” he said reasonably. “And your friend looks like he needs one to get anywhere.”

“What about all that God loves you, be a good Samaritan stuff?”

“Well,” the beggar said, thoughtfully rubbing his whiskery chin, “God does love you, but I’m just a poor old cripple fella. If you don’t like my terms, make like the Pharisee and pass by on the other side. That’s what I’d do.”

“I bet you would. What if I just snatched them away, you money-grubbing thing?”

“I guess you could, but then God wouldn’t love you anymore,” he said, and burst out laughing. It was a remarkably cheerful sound for a man who was crippled up bad. He was doing better in the dental department than the Studebaker cowboy, but not a whole hell of a lot.

“Give him the money,” I said. “I only need one.”

“Oh, I’ll give him the money. I just hate being screwed.”

“Lady, that’s a shame for the male population of planet Earth, if you don’t mind me saying.”

“Watch your mouth,” I said. “That’s my fiance you’re talking about.” It was eleven-forty now.

The beggar took no notice of me. He was eyeing Sadie’s wallet. “There’s blood on that. Did you cut yourself shaving?”

“Don’t try out for the Sullivan show just yet, sweetheart, Alan King you’re not.” Sadie produced the ten she’d flashed at oncoming traffic, plus two twenties. “There,” she said as he took them. “I’m broke. Are you satisfied?”

“You helped a poor crippled man,” the beggar said. “You’re the one who ought to be satisfied.”

“Well, I’m not!” Sadie shouted. “And I hope your damn old eyes fall out of your ugly head!”

The beggar gave me a sage guy-to-guy look. “Better get her home, Sunny Jim, I think she’s gonna start on her monthly right t’irectly.”

I put the crutch under my right arm—people who’ve been lucky with their bones think you’d use a single crutch on the injured side, but that’s not the case—and took Sadie’s elbow with my left hand. “Come on. No time.”

As we walked away, Sadie slapped her jeans-clad rump, looked back over her shoulder, and cried: “Kiss it!”

The beggar called: “Bring it back and bend it in my direction, honeylove, that you get for free!”

10

We walked down North Pearl… or rather, Sadie walked and I crutched. It was a hundred times better with the crutch, but there was no way we could make the intersection of Houston and Elm before twelve-thirty.

Up ahead was a scaffolding. The sidewalk went beneath it. I steered Sadie across the street.

“Jake, why in the world—”

“Because it’d fall on us. Take my word for it.”

“We need a ride. We really need… Jake? Why are you stopping?”

I stopped because life is a song and the past harmonizes. Usually those harmonies meant nothing (so I thought then), but every once in awhile the intrepid visitor to the Land of Ago can put one to use. I prayed with all my heart that this was one of those times.

Parked at the corner of North Pearl and San Jacinto was a 1954 Ford Sunliner convertible. Mine had been red and this one was midnight blue, but still… maybe…

I hurried to it and tried the passenger door. Locked. Of course. Sometimes you caught a break, but outright freebies? Never.

“Are you going to jump the ignition?”

I had no idea how to do that, and suspected it was probably harder than they made it look on Bourbon Street Beat. But I knew how to raise my crutch and slam the armpit cradle repeatedly against the window until it broke into a crack-glaze and sagged inward. No one looked at us, because there was no one on the sidewalk. All the action was to the southeast. From there we could hear the surf-roar of the crowd now gathering on Main Street in anticipation of President Kennedy’s arrival.

The Saf-T-Glas sagged. I reversed the crutch and used the rubber-tipped end to push it inward. One of us would have to sit in the back. If this worked, that was. While in Derry, I’d had a copy made of the Sunliner’s ignition key and taped it to the bottom of the glove compartment, underneath the paperwork. Maybe this guy had done the same. Maybe this particular harmony extended that far. It was a thin chance… but the chance of Sadie finding me on Mercedes Street had been thin enough to read a newspaper through, and that one had panned out. I thumbed the chrome button on this Sunliner’s glove compartment and began to feel around inside.

Harmonize, you son of a bitch. Please harmonize. Give me a little help just this once.

“Jake? Why would you think—”

My fingers happened on something and I brought out a tin Sucrets box. When I opened it I found not one key, but four. I didn’t know what the other three might open, but I had no doubt about the one I wanted. I could have found it in the dark, just by its shape.

Man, I loved that car.

“Bingo,” I said, and almost fell over when she hugged me. “You drive, honey. I’ll sit in back and rest my knee.”

11

I knew better than to try Main Street; it would be blocked off with sawhorses and police cars. “Take Pacific as far as you can. After that, use the side streets. Just keep the crowd-noise on your left and I think you’ll be okay.”

“How much time do we have?”

“Half an hour.” It was actually twenty-five minutes, but I thought half an hour sounded more comforting. Besides, I didn’t want her to try any stunt driving and risk an accident. We still had time—theoretically, at least—but one more wreck and we were finished.

She didn’t try any stunts, but she did drive fearlessly. We came to a downed tree blocking one of the streets (of course we did), and she bumped up over the curb, driving along the sidewalk to get past it. We made it as far as the intersection of North Record Street and Havermill. There we could go no farther, because the last two blocks of Havermill—right up to the point where it intersected Elm—no longer existed. It had become a parking lot. A man holding an orange flag waved us forward.

“Fi’ bucks,” he said. “Just a two-minute walk to Main Street, you folks got plenny a time.” Although he cast a doubtful eye at my crutch when he said it.

“I really am broke,” Sadie said. “I wasn’t lying about that.”

I pulled out my wallet and gave the man a five. “Put it behind the Chrysler,” he said. “Pull up nice and tight.”

Sadie tossed him the keys. “You pull it up nice and tight. Come on, honey.”

“Hey, not that way!” the car-park guy yelled. “That way’s Elm! You want to go over to Main! That’s the way he’s coming!”

“We know what we’re doing!” Sadiecalled. I hoped she was right. We made our way through the packed cars, Sadie in the lead. I twisted and flailed with my crutch, trying to avoid jutting outside mirrors and keep up with her. Now I could hear locomotives and clanging freight cars in the trainyard behind the Book Depository.

“Jake, we’re leaving a trail a mile wide.”

“I know. I’ve got a plan.” A gigantic overstatement, but it sounded good.

We came out on Elm, and I pointed at the building across the street two blocks down. “There. That’s where he is.”