Characters in 11/22/63

“So you can’t help me?” “Whattaya, kiddin? Sure I can. Silent Mike McEachern’s always happy to help fill a customer’s electronic needs. But it’ll cost.” “I’d be willing to pay quite a bit. It could save me even more when I get that cheating bitch into divorce court.” “Uh-huh.

“There’s a guy in Dallas who’d be happy to take that kind of action. Name’s Akiva Roth. Operates out of Faith Financial on Greenville Ave. Took over the biz from his father five or six years ago.” He lowered his voice. “Word is, he’s mobbed up.”

A Pronghorn wasn’t quite as good as a Fatburger, but it wasn’t bad, and the fries were just the way I like them: crispy, salty, and a little overdone. Al turned out to be Al Stevens, a skinny middle-aged guy who looked nothing like Al Templeton.

(The Father was paired with Pope John XXIII—the latter not local, but revered by Al Templeton, who called himself “a good Catlick.”) The picture Al took that day showed Harry Dunning with a big smile on his face.

The place was quiet, that was the important thing, and the sidewalk was deserted. Even Mrs. Alberta Hitchinson, the walker-equipped neighborhood sentry, wasn’t in evidence. I descended from the porch in my limping sidesaddle fashion, started down the walk, turned as if I’d forgotten something, and peered under the steps.

Mimi Corcoran really did run Denholm Consolidated High School, and it was she who coaxed me into taking over the junior-senior play when Alfie Norton, the math teacher who had been doing it for years, was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and moved to Houston for treatments.

Who was your mother?” “Andrea Robertson,” I say, picking the name at random. Andrea was my best pupil in period two American Lit. “Sure, I remember her.” His vague smile says he doesn’t. “I don’t suppose you still have any of those old records, do you?” “God, no. Long gone.

A twelve-year-old girl named Carolyn Poulin was hunting with her father across the river, in the part of Durham that’s called Bowie Hill. Around two o’clock that afternoon—it was a Saturday—a hunter from Durham named Andrew Cullum shot at a deer in that same section of the woods.

“Bought it from Arlene Hadley over Durham after her husband died. If there was one thing Bill Hadley knew, it was how to take care of a car . . . but you won’t know them because you’re not from around here, are you?” “No. Wisconsin. George Amberson.”

The ten-year-old boy who stopped to pee before going out trick-or-treating came back from the bathroom in time to see his drunken, roaring father split the head of Arthur “Tugga” Dunning as Tugga tried to crawl into the kitchen.

Most Americans concurred. Wallace’s approval ratings were high, but there was at least one fellow who did not approve. His name was Arthur Bremer, and on May fifteenth, 1972, he shot Wallace dead as Wallace campaigned for reelection at a shopping mall in Laurel, Maryland. “With what kind of gun?”

Chaz shook his head and picked another Pickin’. “If Benny Vollander had ever known Frankie Dunning was gonna own half the place by the time that Korea shit was over, he probably would have had a brain hemorrhage. Good thing we can’t see the future, isn’t it?”

All ships of any kind bound for Cuba, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, will be turned back.” “Christ Jesus!” said a man in a cowboy hat. “What does he think the Russkies are goan do about that?” “Shut up, Bill,” the bartender said.

By then it wasn’t our problem. Maine voted to become a part of Canada, and President Clinton was happy to say good riddance.” “Bill Clinton’s president?” “Gosh, no. He was a shoo-in for the ’04 nomination, but he died of a heart attack at the convention. His wife stepped in.

Bill Gavery was putting out fresh loaves of bread under cheesecloth in front of the bakery. From a passing car Jan and Dean were singing that in Surf City there were two girls for every boy. “Will I like it, Jake? In your place?” “I hope so, hon.”

If there was one thing Bill Hadley knew, it was how to take care of a car . . . but you won’t know them because you’re not from around here, are you?” “No. Wisconsin. George Amberson.” I held out my hand. He shook his head, smiling a little.

He laughed. “Groovy, Jackson. Go pick yourself a winner.” I picked the same leather valise. Then I went across the street and bought the Sunliner again. This time I bargained harder and got it for three hundred. When the dickering was done, Bill Titus sent me over to his daughter.

I thought, sometimes you just meet a friendly guy, that’s all, and let it go at that. Certainly I had no idea that a man named Bill Turcotte had put Frati up to it. Bill Turcotte, aka No Suspenders.

Birdie Jamieson, the school janitor, fired a blank cartridge. Some woman in the audience gave a little scream. That sort of reaction is usually followed by nervous laughter, but tonight there was only the sound of people weeping in their seats. Otherwise, silence. It went on for ten seconds.

And how is it you’re not there this afternoon?” He wasn’t there, Lee said, because he wanted to be here. Simple as that. He’d just punched out and walked away. “What can they do about it? I’m the best damn photoprint technician ole Bobby Stovall’s got, and he knows it.

Let us in! We know Lee! Lee! LEE OSWALD!” He registered the name and crossed the lobby in a maddeningly slow amble. “I didn’t know that scrawny l’il sumbitch had any friends,” Bonnie Ray Williams said as he opened the door, then stepped aside as we rushed inside.

I turned to him, very slowly. “What are you talking about?” “I didn’t believe him, so I tried it myself,” the Coach said. Then, with mounting indignation: “I heard Boof Redford tellin one of the freshmen that my balls were bigger than my brains!” “Really,” I said.

As members of the faculty in a farming and ranching area, we had seen worse ourselves—Britta Carlson, for instance, who had been badly burned in a housefire, or Duffy Hendrickson, who had a left hand that looked like a hoof after a chainfall holding a truck motor slipped in his …

The knock came again. It’s the Jimla. This thought was very clear, very certain. Sadie put her cigarette in the ashtray, gathered the sheet around her, and ran to the bathroom without a word. The door shut behind her. “Who is it?” I asked. “It’s Mr. Yorrity, sir—Bud Yorrity?”

“Senior year? Jim in the pocket? Me, Hank Alvarez, Chip Wiggins, and Carl Crockett on the line? We’re going to State, and that gold ball’s going into the trophy case.” “I like your attitude.” “Are you going to do a play this fall, Mr. Amberson?” “That’s the plan.” “Good. Great.

“Think she went out for some air, champ,” Carl Jacoby said. He was one of the high school’s four shop teachers, and probably the best, but I wouldn’t have let him within two hundred yards of a power tool that night. I checked the smokers clustered under the fire escape.

He knows he can’t have you dead, because Carlos told him no, and Carlos is the one guy he listens to, even now. But if he sees you fucked up . . . aw, but you ain’t fucked up enough quite yet. Fuck him up some more, Carmo.

I could smell it on im but I didn’t pay attention. Now look at me, sick and dying. And it’s this guy’s fault. He’s a ghoul or a devil, or sumshit.’ Crazy, you know? Toys in the attic.” I said nothing. “Carmo, I don’t think my friend Georgie’s listening.

“I wanted to thank you on behalf of our children, who were able to say goodnight to their mother and dad on the phone tonight.” Carolyn and John-John. They’d never crossed my mind until that moment. “Mrs. Kennedy, you’re more than welcome.”

I would have gone all the way into early 1959 if necessary, but I found what I was looking for on November fifteenth of ’58. A twelve-year-old girl named Carolyn Poulin was hunting with her father across the river, in the part of Durham that’s called Bowie Hill.

I looked around and saw a small man with slicked-back hair, a round face, and lively black eyes. He looked like a cheerful chipmunk. He grinned at me and stuck out a child-sized hand. On his forearm, a bare-breasted mermaid flapped her flippy tail and winked one eye. “Charles Frati.

The whole thing went up in a matter of minutes. Chief Durand thinks it was kids who were out drinking and carousing. There are so many bad apples now. It’s because they’re afraid of the Bomb, that’s what my husband says.” So. “George? Are you still there?” “Yes,” I said.

“Senior year? Jim in the pocket? Me, Hank Alvarez, Chip Wiggins, and Carl Crockett on the line? We’re going to State, and that gold ball’s going into the trophy case.” “I like your attitude.” “Are you going to do a play this fall, Mr. Amberson?” “That’s the plan.” “Good. Great.

But if you’ve gotten any feel for my character at all, based on that day’s extraordinary events, you’ll know that I wanted to be convinced. Christy Epping had become Christy Thompson (boy meets girl on the AA campus, remember?), and I was a man on his own.

If he looked hard enough, he could see it. The stage lensed slowly to full dark, Cindy McComas for once running the lights perfectly. Birdie Jamieson, the school janitor, fired a blank cartridge. Some woman in the audience gave a little scream.

He didn’t have the world’s greatest sense of humor (almost none might have been closer to the mark), but he seemed to adore her. Her parents adored him. Claire Dunhill was especially crazy about Johnny Clayton. And, of course, he was taller than Sadie, even when she was in heels.

Because she got enough of him turning ugly when he drank.” “Yeah, that’s what he told you, and that’s what most people in town believe—what Chazzy believes, for all I know—but I know better. Clara n me was always close.

Hanoi became a radioactive cloud on August ninth, 1969, twenty-four years to the day after Harry Truman dropped Fat Man on Nagasaki. Vice President Curtis LeMay took personal charge of the mission. In a speech to the nation, Wallace called it God’s will. Most Americans concurred.

Perhaps we could come back to my place for dessert. I have poundcake, if you’d like a slice. Sadie “What are you laughing about, Amberson?” Danny Laverty asked. He was correcting themes with a hollow-eyed intensity that suggested hangover. “Tell me, I could use a giggle.” “Nah,” I said.

And bingo. No picture and no special mention, but she was listed right between David Platt and Stephanie Routhier.” “Just another kid marching to ‘Pomp and Circumstance,’ right?” “Right. Then I plugged her name into the Enterprise’s search function, and got some hits after 1964. Not many, three or four.

“So do I.” Like the man said, a little hope never hurt anybody. 16 That evening I returned to Al’s Diner and introduced myself to the principal of Denholm Consolidated and his librarian lady-friend. They invited me to join them. Deke Simmons was tall, bald, and sixtyish.

3 On our way out of that sad excuse for a drinking establishment, a poster propped in the window caught my eye. At the top: SEE THE FIGHT OF THE CENTURY ON CLOSED CIRCUIT TV! LIVE FROM MADISON SQUARE GARDEN! DALLAS’S OWN TOM “THE HAMMER” CASE VS. DICK TIGER!

Down the road. Happy trails to you, until we meet again.” “The father of this boy, Dorsey . . . he didn’t kill any of the others?” “Naw, he was alibi’d up. I guess he was the kid’s stepfather, now that I think about it. Dicky Macklin.

Gavin Borman was that kind of guy. At Don Haggarty’s annual April Fool’s keg-party, he had whined to me about “putting ideas in that big galoot’s head.” I told him he was certainly welcome to his opinion; like assholes, everybody had one.

The night’s DJ and master of ceremonies was Donald Bellingham, a sophomore. He arrived with a totally ginchy record collection in not one but two Samsonite suitcases. With my permission (Sadie just looked bewildered), he hooked up his Webcor phonograph and his dad’s preamp to the school’s PA system.

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.

But since I could hardly tell her what we’d been doing, I kept my mouth shut and prepared to take my scolding like a man. “We had an important matter to discuss,” Al said. “Okay? Got it?” “Just the same—” He opened the car door. “Help me inside, Doris.

The war was goin full steam by then and he could have had his pick of the ladies—he has that charm, you know, and most of the competition was overseas, anyway—but he settled on Doris McKinney. Lovely girl she was.” “And still is, I’m sure.” “Absolutely, cuz.

11 Al Stevens had hired a girl I knew from Business English, and I was touched by the way she lit up when she saw who was sitting with Ellie and Deke. “Mr. Amberson! Wow, it’s great to see you! How’re you doing?” “Fine, Dorrie,” I said. “Well, order big.

So was the keyboard, which sounded like it desperately wanted to be an accordion. And suddenly it clicked. The kid was Doug Sahm, and not so many years from now he would have hits of his own: “She’s About a Mover” for one, “Mendocino” for another.

It was Sadie. I waited for him to ask if it wouldn’t be better to turn this over to the police, but of course he knew better. Doug Reems, the Jodie constable, had poor eyesight, wore a brace on one leg, and was even older than Deke.

Mike jumped up and shook my hand. From Bobbi Jill I got a good strong hug. “How bad is it?” she asked. “I mean”—she rubbed the tips of her fingers over her own fading scar—“can it be fixed?” “I don’t know.” “Have you talked to Dr. Ellerton?” Mike asked.

As members of the faculty in a farming and ranching area, we had seen worse ourselves—Britta Carlson, for instance, who had been badly burned in a housefire, or Duffy Hendrickson, who had a left hand that looked like a hoof after a chainfall holding a truck motor slipped in his …

Public opinion began to swing heavily against JFK. A month after the fall of Saigon, Martin Luther King was assassinated in Chicago. The assassin turned out to be a rogue FBI agent named Dwight Holly. Before being killed himself, he claimed to have carried out the hit on Hoover’s orders.

Miller and Caltrop were two-thirds of the Denholm County Schoolboard. “Don’t stop there,” I said. “As long as you’re in a bloodthirsty mood, tell me what you want to do to Dwight Rawson. Isn’t he the other one?” “It’s Rawlings,” Deke said moodily, “and I’ll give him a pass.

Other “celebrities” represented included the late Albert Dunton, founder of Dunton Jewelry; Earl Higgins, a former LHS principal; John Crafts, founder of John Crafts Auto Sales; and, of course, Father Bandy of St. Cyril’s.

The tone of the article touched my heart: simple concern for a missing (and possibly injured) man’s whereabouts. Gregory Dusen, my Hometown Trust banker, described me as “a well-spoken and polite fellow.” Eddie Baumer, proprietor of Baumer’s Barber Shop, said essentially the same thing.

I walked slowly back toward town, jogging two blocks out of my way to keep clear of Edna Price’s establishment, where those in residence gathered on the porch after supper just like folks in one of those Ray Bradbury stories about bucolic Greentown, Illinois.

By committing suicide, Al had taken away the scholar’s greatest weakness: calling hesitation research. 3 I made occasional trips to Tampa, where discreet questioning led me to a bookmaker named Eduardo Gutierrez. Once he was sure I wasn’t a cop, he was delighted to take my action.

“Why April?” “Because that’s when somebody tried to kill General Edwin Walker . . . only he wasn’t a general anymore by then. He got cashiered in 1961, by JFK himself. General Eddie was handing out segregationist literature to his troops and ordering them to read the stuff.”

I spent them thinking about Lee, now working as a photoprint trainee at a Dallas graphic arts company called Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall. Or about Marina, who had taken up temporary residence with a newly divorced woman named Elena Hall.

I pulled on a tee-shirt, and went to the door. Coach Borman was standing there with Ellen Dockerty, the former head of the Home Ec Department and DCHS’s acting principal for the coming year; to no one’s surprise, Deke had tendered his resignation on the same day Mimi tendered hers.

“Ellen!” the woman called. “Get off that thing before you fall off! Come in and get a cookie.” Ellen Dunning dismounted, dropped her bike on its side in the driveway, and ran into the house, bugling: “Sing-sang, I saw the whole gang!” at the top of her considerable lungs.

In 2011, it had been in the bowl for only an hour and a half. “Eat that, Elmore,” I said. “There are cats starving in China who’d love a bowl of Friskies Choice Cuts.” Elmore gave me the look that one deserved and oiled out through the cat door.

Her name was Erin Tolliver, and her family had moved to Westborough from Kileen, Texas. That was a name I knew well. Kileen, where I had bought rubbers from a druggist with a nastily knowing smile. Don’t do anything against the law, son, he’d advised me.

2 MENTAL PATIENT SLASHES EX-WIFE, COMMITS SUICIDE By Ernie Calvert (JODIE) 77-year-old Deacon “Deke” Simmons and Denholm Consolidated School District Principal Ellen Dockerty arrived too late on Sunday night to save Sadie Dunhill from being seriously hurt, but things could have been much worse for the popular 28-year-old school librarian.

After the benediction (spoken by Father Bandy, who rarely missed an LHS function), I made my way through the milling friends and relatives to where Harry was standing alone in his billowy black gown, holding his diploma in one hand and his rented mortarboard in the other.

His dark hair was cropped close, not quite a crewcut. His resemblance to the man who had served me was unmistakable, and I realized that this was my Frank Anicetti. The guy who had lopped the head of foam off my root beer was his father.

Probably not the best way to start a rescue mission. I thought of the Kennebec Fruit and how good that root beer had been; I could see the gasp of vapor from the ice cream freezer as Frank Anicetti Senior pulled out the big mug.

HOME-STYLE CUTS. And, at the bottom: FRANK DUNNING, HEAD BUTCHER. Sometimes life coughs up coincidences no writer of fiction would dare copy. It was Frank Dunning who was making the ladies laugh. The resemblance to the janitor who had taken my GED English course was close enough to be eerie.

I might want to teach again, and at least two members of the schoolboard are already cheesed off at me.” “You could try Frank Frati, over in Fort Worth. He runs a pawnshop.” Scronk went the chair as he leaned forward to get a better look at my face.

It made me think about how Sadie and I couldn’t quite equal our first performance on the dance floor, despite our best efforts. Deke seemed completely absorbed in the TV as he said, “Besides, Ratty Sylvester has expressed an interest in the junior-senior. He’s talking about Arsenic and Old Lace.

“I don’t want a damn beer, anyway.” Now that we were away from Sadie, I could see that he was steaming mad. “What I want to do is punch Fred Miller in the face and kick Jessica Caltrop’s narra and no doubt lace-trimmed ass.”

“Gee, sir, that’s way too much!” “I always pay a surcharge for good conversation.” Actually, the surcharge was for a friendly face. The conversation had been disquieting. “Well, thanks!” He beamed, then stuck out his hand. “I never introduced myself. Fred Toomey.” “Nice to meet you, Fred. I’m George Amberson.”

There was an elm-shaded backyard, a garage for the Sunliner . . . and central air-conditioning. The rent was reasonable, given the amenities. Freddy Quinlan was the agent’s name. He was curious about me—I think the Maine license plate on my car struck him as exotic—but not unduly so.

So he was reduced to calling his best lineman Clark Gable. There are guys who can’t rid themselves of the idea that acting is for girls and queers who sort of wish they were girls. Gavin Borman was that kind of guy.

I was pretty sure his name was George Bouhe (yes, another George, the past harmonizes in all sorts of ways), and although he was pushing sixty, I had an idea he was seriously crushing on Marina.

That man’s name was George de Mohrenschildt, and I wanted very much to hear what he and Oswald had to say to each other. There was an old bureau on the side of the main room that was closest to the kitchen.

Chicago went up in flames. So did a dozen other American cities. George Wallace was elected president. By then the earthquakes had begun in earnest. Wallace couldn’t do anything about those, so he settled for firebombing Chicago into submission. That, Harry said, was in June of 1969.

As I was musing on the difference between offensive and defensive writing, the intercom on the wall cleared its throat. “Is Mr. Epping in the west wing teachers’ room? You by any chance still there, Jake?” I got up, thumbed the button, and said: “Still here, Gloria. For my sins.

Simple as that. He’d just punched out and walked away. “What can they do about it? I’m the best damn photoprint technician ole Bobby Stovall’s got, and he knows it. The foreman, his name is (I couldn’t make it out—Graff? Grafe?) says ‘Quit trying to play labor organizer, Lee.’

Harry, meanwhile, was rolling around his parlor and lighting the same sort of long-chimneyed kerosene lamps I vaguely remembered seeing in my gramma Sarie’s house. It was a better light for the room than the Coleman lamp, and when I killed its hot white glow, Harry Dunning nodded approvingly.

But mostly I was lost. THE MAN WITH THE COWBOY HAT was Deke, but once I thought he was my grandfather, and that scared me very badly, because Grampy Epping was dead, and— Epping, that was my name. Hold onto it, I told myself, but at first I couldn’t.

I still had her by at least three inches, but other than Coach Borman and Greg Underwood of the History Department, I was probably the only man at the party who did. And Greg was a beanpole. Sadie had, in the argot of the day, a really good built.

“Fine. I’m at Drexel eight four-seven-seven-seven.” I had no idea what he was talking about until he slid a business card through the window. Gregory Dusen, Assistant Manager, was engraved on it, and DRexel 8-4777. Lorraine got my checks and a faux alligator checkbook to put them in.

Coach snorted. “Think his name is Hale Duff. Or maybe it’s Cale. New sports guy at the Big Damn.” He was talking about KDAM, Denholm County’s one radio station, a teensy sundowner that ran farm reports in the morning, country music in the afternoons, and rock after school let out.

“I just want a .22 so I can plink rats at the dump like my friend Hank.” “You make pennies selling their newspapers; they make dollars selling your sweat, and the sweat of a million boys like you. The free market isn’t free. You need to educate yourself, son.

“Senior year? Jim in the pocket? Me, Hank Alvarez, Chip Wiggins, and Carl Crockett on the line? We’re going to State, and that gold ball’s going into the trophy case.” “I like your attitude.” “Are you going to do a play this fall, Mr. Amberson?” “That’s the plan.” “Good. Great.

My mama’s comin up from Mozelle tomorrow in the truck.” “Don’t you have a car? Or did it break down?” “Car’s runnin okay for a junker, but Harry ain’t goan be ridin in it. Or drivin it ever again. He was workin one of those goddam Manpower jobs last month.

… CHAPTER 1 1 Harry Dunning graduated with flying colors. I went to the little GED ceremony in the LHS gym, at his invitation. He really had no one else, and I was happy to do it. After the benediction (spoken by Father Bandy, who rarely missed an LHS function), I …

Then the phone began to ring on the other end. “Hello, Nokomis Public Library.” It was Hattie Wilkerson’s voice, but that sweet old lady sounded like she was stuck in a very large steel barrel. “Hello, Mrs. Wilkerson—” “Hello? Hello? Do you hear me? Drat long distance!” “Hattie?”

Because sometimes men do that, and a man who’s done it once will not hesitate to—” “Miz Ellie, may I go back to the library now? I’ve left a student in charge, and while Helen’s very responsible, I don’t like to leave them too—” “Go, go.”

That won’t happen, I told myself. I won’t let it happen. Like Hillary Clinton said in 2008, I’m in it to win it. Except, of course, she had lost.

Wallace couldn’t do anything about those, so he settled for firebombing Chicago into submission. That, Harry said, was in June of 1969. A year later, President Wallace offered Ho Chi Minh an ultimatum: make Saigon a free city like Berlin or see Hanoi become a dead one, like Hiroshima.

This was where I began to lose the thread. Where the thought I have to put this right, put this right, put this right began to hammer in my head like a gong. Hubert Humphrey became president in ’72. The earthquakes worsened. The world suicide rate skyrocketed.

“He said you was a ghost,” the widow told me. “He said he could see right through you. Accourse he was as crazy as a shithouse mouse. Last three years, ever since he had his stroke and they put him on that peebag. Me n Ida’s goin back to Oklahoma.”

“Here, take a buck. Live a little. And don’t forget.” “I won’t.” “No, you don’t want to. Because if you forgot, I might just be apt to find my way to your husband and tattle. This is important business, Missus. To me it is. What’s your name, anyway?” “Ivy Templeton.”

“Is that a bet in regular talk?” she asked. “Are you a cop?” I asked. “Yes,” she said, bringing a Tiparillo out of one dress pocket and lighting it with a Zippo. “I’m J. Edgar Hoover, my son.” “Well, Mr. Hoover, you got me. I’m talking about a bet.”

How old? The lovebirds weren’t telling, but to us she doesn’t look a day over twenty-three (skidoo!). They were hosted by the Carousel’s jovial panjandrum Jack Ruby, who sent over a bottle o’ bubbly and then joined them for a toast. Happy birthday, Jeanne, and long may you wave!

I actually started to get up. As I did, I happened to look at the cover of the Time I’d bought at the newsstand. Jacqueline Kennedy was on the cover. She was smiling, radiant, wearing a sleeveless dress with a V-neck. THE PRESIDENT’S LADY DRESSES FOR SUMMER, the caption read.

I don’t know if there’s a God or not—for Jake Epping, the jury’s still out on that one—but when I went to bed that night, I was pretty sure I’d done my best. All I could do now was get some sleep and hope my best was enough.

10/18/63: O turns 24. Ruth and Marina give him a surprise party. O thanks them. Cries. 10/20/63: 2nd daughter born: Audrey Rachel. Ruth takes Marina to hosp (Parkland) while O works. Rifle stored in Paine garage, wrapped in blanket. O repeatedly visited by FBI agent James Hosty. Stokes his paranoia.

“I know,” I said, and left. 2 Mercedes Street. Late May. “Welder, are you?” I was standing on the porch of 2706 with the landlord, a fine American named Mr. Jay Baker. He was stocky, with a huge gut he called the house that Shiner built.

Feeling there was safety in numbers, I joined them. Someone—almost certainly Bouhe—had sent George and Jeanne de Mohrenschildt to get the rest of Marina’s things. Bouhe probably figured they were the only ones who’d be able to get in without physical restraints being imposed on Lee.

If all went well, I’d soon be heading for Texas, and I wanted to build up my personal treasury before I went. I made friends with Jeff the bartender, and one evening toward the end of September, he brought up a subject I’d been planning to raise myself.

Jem Needham was just finishing his rounds in his milk truck. Bill Gavery was putting out fresh loaves of bread under cheesecloth in front of the bakery. From a passing car Jan and Dean were singing that in Surf City there were two girls for every boy.

Toward the end of our marathon session, I won my first game. Three games later, at just a few minutes past four, I actually skunked him, and laughed with delight. Baby Jenna laughed right along with me, then leaned forward from her highchair and gave my hair a companionable tug.

“I don’t want a damn beer, anyway.” Now that we were away from Sadie, I could see that he was steaming mad. “What I want to do is punch Fred Miller in the face and kick Jessica Caltrop’s narra and no doubt lace-trimmed ass.”

“Okay, Mike. Make me understand.” “Everybody on the team’s makin fun of me, Mr. Amberson. Coach started callin me Clark Gable—this was at the Lion Pride Spring Picnic—and now everybody’s doin it. Even Jimmy’s doin it.” Meaning Jim LaDue, the team’s hot-rod quarterback and Mike’s best friend.

“If you’re thinking twenties-style flapper stuff, I can get Jo Peet to run up the costumes.” Jo was the new head of the Home Ec Department, having succeeded to the position when Ellen Dockerty was confirmed as principal. “That’s great.”

I was no longer surprised by it, but if I told you I ever got used to that eerie chiming of events, I’d be lying. “Yes.” Her tone was flat. “Him. John Clayton of the Savannah Claytons. And estranged is just the right word, because he’s a very strange man.”

8 Five minutes after concluding my surreal conversation with John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Hosty and Fritz were hustling me down the back stairs and into the garage where Oswald would have been shot by Jack Ruby. Then it had been crowded in anticipation of the assassin’s transfer to the county jail.

“I wanted to thank you on behalf of our children, who were able to say goodnight to their mother and dad on the phone tonight.” Carolyn and John-John. They’d never crossed my mind until that moment. “Mrs. Kennedy, you’re more than welcome.”

Dicky Macklin. Johnny Keeson at the desk—he probably checked you in—told me he used to come in here and drink sometimes, until he got banned for trying to pick up a stewardess and getting nasty when she told him to go peddle his papers.

Then I went into the little bedroom where Rosette Templeton and June Oswald had slept. I lay down with my shoes off and my clothes on, using the cushion from the living room chair as a pillow. I’d left the door open and the light in the living room burning.

This one invited me to call Specialist Keith Haney and discuss financing. I had no intention of doing that, but I parked my Sunliner in the newly asphalted driveway (someone was going all-out to sell this one) and walked into the backyard, head up, shoulders back, big as Billy-be-damned.

“Fine. What we do, Jake, is watch. Sometimes we warn. As Kyle tried to warn your friend the cook.” So the crazy guy had a name. A perfectly normal one. Kyle, for God’s sake. It made things worse because it made them more real. “He never tried to warn Al!

She exclaimed with pleasure when she saw Bouhe, and thanked him for the playpen and what she called, in her stilted English, the “child’s playings.” Bouhe introduced the skinny man as Lawrence Orlov—Colonel Lawrence Orlov, if you please—and de Mohrenschildt as “a friend of the Russian community.”

Which made him Lee Harvey Oswald’s uncle. 4 One day in the spring of 1959 (there is spring in Florida; the natives told me it sometimes lasts as long as a week), I opened my mailbox and discovered a call-card from the Nokomis Public Library.

This time it was Junior who tipped a wink in my direction. “Frank?” one of the ladies called in a yoo-hoo voice. “Are these oranges fresh?” “As fresh as your smile, Leola,” he replied, and the ladies tee-hee’d. I’m not trying to be cute here; they actually tee-hee’d.

“I suppose so. It’s the Sanfords next door, and Lila Sanford is this month’s student librarian.” And I was pretty sure that Lila’s father was on the schoolboard, but I didn’t say so. Sadie was glowing, and there was no need to spoil that.

Longer than it would take Oswald to kill the President of the United States, maybe, but not much. “Is this what you want, Linda?” he shouted. “If this is what you want, I’ll give you what you want!”

He looked like that old-time Cuban bandleader, Xavier Cugat. “Thanks, but I’ve got a fair amount of business to transact.” I lowered my voice. “Real estate closing. Or so I hope.” “Good luck,” he said, lowering his own to the same confidential pitch. “Lorraine will fix you up with checks.

Boring. My honors kids were juniors—Mac Steadman, the department head, awarded the seniors to himself—but they wrote like little old men and little old ladies, all pursey-mouthed and ooo, don’t slip on that icy patch, Mildred.

The doctor who treated me there was Malcolm Perry, who would later treat both John F. Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald as they lay dying. With me he had better luck, although it was a close thing.

Her name is Marcia Guay. She’ll help you out. Although they probably stored them in the basement, which is not where they ought to be. It’s damp, and I shouldn’t be surprised if there are mice. If you have any trouble—any trouble at all—you come back and see me.”

I somehow think the answer would have been yes, because the past harmonizes with itself. Dutz Murret’s wife was Marguerite Oswald’s sister. Which made him Lee Harvey Oswald’s uncle.

If she could do anything, she said, if anyone in the hotel could do anything, all I had to do was call, her name was Marie, she would do anything to thank me. “You could start by putting through a call to Jodie,” I said, and gave her Deke’s number.

I thought of them sometimes when I heard Lee and Marina Oswald screaming at each other in their low-end apartments . . . or saw them, on at least one occasion, carry their animus out onto the street. The past harmonizes; it also tries to balance, and mostly succeeds.

I admired that. “Oh, Marjorie. When some sad sack comes in here with his wife’s engagement ring and a sob story, she turns into a pile of goo. But on the sports-book stuff, she’s a different lady. That she takes personal.” “You love her a lot, don’t you, Mr. Frati?”

After the run-through, he told me he wanted to bring another surgeon on board, a facial specialist from Mass General. I told him—with a sinking heart—that another surgeon sounded like a grand idea. “Can you afford it?” he asked. “Mark Anderson ain’t cheap.” “We’ll manage,” I said.

I saw it on their faces. “Look, I’m not going to try and kid you that there isn’t more to it, but if I tried to explain, you’d think I was crazy.” “I think that already,” Marnie Cullum said. “Send him on his way, Andy.” I turned to her.

Public opinion began to swing heavily against JFK. A month after the fall of Saigon, Martin Luther King was assassinated in Chicago. The assassin turned out to be a rogue FBI agent named Dwight Holly. Before being killed himself, he claimed to have carried out the hit on Hoover’s orders.

Mattie Shaw and Mike’s girlfriend, Bobbi Jill, did most of the work, and they were justifiably proud. I wondered if they still would be seven or eight years from now, when the first wave of women’s libbers started burning their bras and demonstrating for full reproductive rights.

“Even when you told me I had to go to rehab or you were leaving.” This conversation happened about six weeks before she packed her things, drove them across town, and moved in with Mel Thompson. “Boy meets girl on the AA campus”—that’s another saying they have in those meetings.

We used our keys, and Link carried the box into one of the cubicles for me. He set it on a tiny wedge of desk just big enough to hold it, then pointed to the button on the wall. “Just ring for Melvin when you’ve finished. He’ll assist you.”

I should remember it. It was when I stopped living in the past and just starting living. I opened the door and Michael Coslaw stood there. He was weeping. “I can’t, Mr. Amberson,” he said. “I just can’t.” “Well, come in, Mike,” I said. “Let’s talk about it.”

Where the picture of Harry and me had hung for the last two years, there was now one of Al shaking hands with Mike Michaud, the U.S. Representative from Maine’s Second District. Michaud must have been running for re-election, because Al was wearing two buttons on his cook’s apron.

“Yeah? Then maybe you’d think it’s a little funny that she never wrote me after her n Mikey got settled somewhere. Not so much as a postcard. Me, I think it’s a lot more than funny. Because she woulda. She knew how I felt about her.

“Want a tip?” “Sure.” “He’ll probably have his lady-friend with him. Miss Corcoran, the librarian up to the school. He’s kinda been sparkin her since last Christmas or so. I’ve heard that Mimi Corcoran’s the one who really runs Denholm Consolidated, because she runs him.

… for a penny a point, arguing with elderly Miss Mayer about who gave the better newscast, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, or Walter Cronkite. My street, my shotgun house, getting used to using a typewriter again. Having a best girl and getting S&H Green Stamps with my groceries and real …

For the apple picking over in Castle Rock, maybe. Mr. Cady—he’s the clerk at the greenfront—told my dad the guy came in yesterday morning and tried to buy a pint, but he was drunk and smelly, so Mr. Cady kicked him out.

The last two to exit were Mr. Currie, the manager, and Dunning. They shook hands and parted, Currie going up the alley between the market and the shoe store next to it, probably to get his car, and Dunning to the bus stop.

Twenty-seven-oh-four?” “Twenty-seven-oh-six. It used to be Slider Burnett n his fambly, but they moved out just after Halloween. He was a substitute rodeo clown, do you believe it? Who knew there was such a job? Now it’s some fella named Hazzard and his two kids and I think his mother.

Perry said that was still eight months away, maybe even a year—but I limped down the ramp as fast as I could. “Wait, Sadie, wait a minute!” Mr. Kenopensky was sitting next door in his wheelchair, bundled up in a jacket and holding his battery-powered Motorola in his lap.

About that Shirley Jackson story.” “Yes, sir?” Sir, yet. And nothing sarcastic about it. I was deciding that 1958 had been a pretty good year. Aside from the stench of the mill and the cigarette smoke, that was. “There’s nothing to get.” “No? That’s not what Mr. Marchant says.”

I had no doubt that the man who answered with a laconic “Yowp, this is Merritt” was the same guy who had rented 2703 to Lee and Marina. I could still see his Stetson hat and gaudy stitched boots. I told him what I wanted, and he laughed in disbelief.

“Fifty-four cents a pound. I go in every week. Or I did until my latest adventure, which took me a long way from The Falls. I trade with Mr. Warren, the butcher. If I ask him for ten pounds of ground chuck, he says, ‘Coming right up.’

On Monday the seventeenth of November, I saw the first whirling flurries of snow, and took them as a sign. I packed up, drove down to Sebago Village, and found Mr. Winchell drinking coffee and eating doughnuts at the Lakeside Restaurant (in 1958, folks eat a lot of doughnuts).

Dunning sent Mrs. Levesque happily on her way, and as I passed out of hearing, he was turning his attention to a Mrs. Bowie. Who would, I was sure, be equally happy to receive it. He’s a nice man. Always joking around and stuff.

… the school’s main office—and would have to pay Mrs. Coleridge for the long-distance when she was done. Besides keeping the DCHS exchequer, Mrs. Coleridge had long ears. I told her no, no new memories, but I was going to take a nap and hope something would be there when I …

I doubt if she noticed the white-over-red Plymouth Fury parked at the curb a little way down the block. Across the street, four or five houses down, Mrs. Holloway was washing her car (a Renault Dauphine that the rest of the neighbors eyed with suspicion).

… of planes landing at Derry Airport, was a bit overpriced at sixty-five dollars a month, but agreed to it because Mrs. Joplin, the landlady, was willing to overlook Mr. Amberson’s lack of references. It helped that he could offer three months’ rent in cash. She nevertheless insisted on copying the …

The parents and Vince’s stunned kid sister starred at the viewing, sitting in folding chairs beside the coffin. When I approached them with Sadie at my side, Mrs. Knowles rose and put her arms around me. I was almost overwhelmed by the odors of White Shoulders perfume and Yodora antiperspirant.

“There you are, Mrs. Levesque, one pound of German bologna, sliced thin.” He leaned confidentially over the counter, close enough so that Mrs. Levesque (and the other ladies) would be able to whiff on the entrancing aroma of his cologne. Was it Aqua Velva, Fred Toomey’s brand? I thought not.

I’m still on the party line, it’s all I can afford until I get a better job, and that Sykes woman from downstairs is on it all the time, I spoke to her, I gave her a real piece of my mind, ‘Mrs. Sykes,’ I said—” A man passed her.

‘Says it’ll be ready by five.’ I’ve heard that fifty times, at least. Not that I always go into the Fruit when I go back, but when I do, I hear it. Then the ladies come in to pick over the fruit. Mrs. Symonds and her friends.

“I beg your pardon, Ellie?” “Nina Wallingford was the one who brought it to my attention.” Nina was the district nurse. She put tens of thousands of miles on her Ford Ranch Wagon each school year circling Denholm County’s eight schools, three of them still of the one-or two-room variety.

On the sidewalk, Norma Whitten was making her slow way down toward the mailbox on the corner, using a pair of wooden sticks more like ski poles than crutches. She turned and waved to us, trying to lift the frozen side of her face into a smile.

She’d be forty now, and my nephew’d be twenty-one. Old enough to fuckin vote. And you want to tell me she’d never write a single line to the brother who kep Nosey Royce from stickin his wrinkled old meat inside her back when we was kids?

It was also something else for Lee to resent. She was tutoring a rich kid twice a week while he was stuck putting together screen doors. The morning I observed Marina smoking on the porch, Paul Gregory, good-looking and about Marina’s age, pulled up in a brand-new Buick.

Paul McCartney was blinded. The Mideast went up in flames shortly thereafter. Russia collapsed. Some group—probably exiled Russian hard-line fanatics—began selling nuclear weapons to terrorist groups, including The Base. “By 1994,” Harry said in his dry voice, “the oil fields over there were so much black glass.

I heard a click in his throat as he swallowed. “Mr. Turcotte? Are you all right?” “How do you know my name?” And then, without waiting for an answer: “It was Pete, wasn’t it? The bartender in the Sleepy. He told you.” “Yes. Now I’ve got a question for you.

Peter Gregory was the first link in the chain that would lead George de Mohrenschildt to Mercedes Street. Like de Mohrenschildt, Gregory was a Russian expat in the petroleum biz. He was originally from Siberia, and taught Russian one night a week at the Fort Worth Library.

Mimi Corcoran burst into a wide smile and turned to her beau. “Deke, this fellow doesn’t belong on the substitute list. He should be full-time.” “Mimi—” “I know, no vacancy in the English Department. But if he sticks around, maybe he can step in after that idiot Phil Bateman retires.”

Tearlessly. But I’m not emotionally blocked. Christy was wrong about that. One day when I was nine, my mother met me at the door when I came home from school. She told me my collie, Rags, had been struck and killed by a truck that hadn’t even bothered to stop.

While the pump-jockey filled the tank and washed the Sunliner’s windshield, I wandered into the garage bay, found a mechanic by the name of Randy Baker on duty, and did a little dickering with him. Baker was puzzled, but agreeable to my proposal. Twenty dollars changed hands.

Greatest disadvantage: the owner-landlord, Ray Mack Johnson, was a racist who shared with me that if I took the place, it would be wise to stay away from nearby Greenville Avenue, where there were a lot of mixed-race jukejoints and coons with the kind of knives he called “switchers.”

There’s nothing private about the United States Census. You march right over there and tell the city clerk that Regina Starrett sent you. Her name is Marcia Guay. She’ll help you out. Although they probably stored them in the basement, which is not where they ought to be.

10 The nurse with the fullback shoulders and the watch pinned to her bosom was Rhonda McGinley, and on the eighteenth of April she insisted on pushing Sadie’s wheelchair not only to the elevator but all the way out to the curb, where Deke waited with the passenger door of …

I drove back to Neely Street and had a moment of severe panic when I couldn’t find the goddam key to the box. Relax, I told myself. It’s in your pocket somewhere, and even if it isn’t, your new pal Richard Link will be happy to give you a duplicate.

ROBERT “ROBBIE” JENKINS, DALLAS’S WHITE KNIGHT! According to the papers, Jenkins was that for sure, a right-winger who saw eye-to-eye with Walker and Walker’s spiritual advisor, Billy James Hargis. Robbie Jenkins stood for states’ rights, separate-but-equal schools, and reinstituting the Missile Crisis blockade around Cuba.

The rain had begun to fall now, but she paid it no mind. She drew in breath and raised her voice to something just short of a scream. “I need to hear from my good boy, you hear?” Robert Oswald bolted up the steps and into the bus without replying.

Now there was dead silence from the audience. “A girl you all know, one of the leading lights of our student body, was badly scarred in that accident. Mr. Amberson and Miss Dunhill have arranged for Roberta Jillian Allnut to have facial reconstructive surgery this June, in Dallas.

“Yes, but I’m unhappy. And I’m very confused.” She hesitated, then said: “I was working at Harrah’s, you probably know that. As a cocktail waitress. And I met somebody.” “Oh?” (Oh, shit.) “Yes. A very nice man. Charming. A gentleman. Just shy of forty. His name is Roger Beaton.

In 1976, Humphrey lost to Ronald Reagan in a coast-to-coast landslide; The Hump couldn’t hold even his native state of Minnesota. Two thousand committed mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana. In November of 1979, Iranian students overran the American embassy in Tehran and took not sixty-six hostages but over two hundred.

Rosette Templeton’s Crayola girls were still on the walls, and I somehow found their identical jumpers (Forest Green must have been Rosette’s favorite crayon) and big black shoes comforting. I thought those girls would make Sadie smile, especially the one wearing the Miss America crown.

There was no paperwork and no waiting period. I didn’t even have to give my current address. Oswald had wrapped his gun in a blanket and hidden it in the garage of the house where his wife was staying with a woman named Ruth Paine.

That if I said half a prayer before and half a prayer during, everything would be fine. During was as close as she could come to the word intercourse. I tried to talk to my friend Ruthie about it, but only once.

I remembered the day I had spoken to Frank Dunning’s wife, pretending to be a real estate speculator with an interest in the West Side Rec. She’d been twenty years older than Sadie Doris Clayton, née Dunhill, but both women had blue eyes, exquisite skin, and fine, full-breasted figures.

… “Sadie Van Owen. What’s yours?” “Well, you’re not going to believe this, but my name’s Sadie, too.” The kid eyed her with a mistrustful cynicism that was all Mercedes Street Riot Grrrl. “No, it’s not!” “It really is. Sadie Dunhill.” She turned to me. “That’s quite a coincidence, wouldn’t you …

I guess I could even stand to lose Curley’s Wife—” “I wish Sandy was a little better,” Mike said. “She’s pretty as hell, but if she ever hits her mark, it’s an accident.” I allowed myself a cautious inward smile.

“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.

Twenty-seven-oh-four?” “Twenty-seven-oh-six. It used to be Slider Burnett n his fambly, but they moved out just after Halloween. He was a substitute rodeo clown, do you believe it? Who knew there was such a job? Now it’s some fella named Hazzard and his two kids and I think his mother.

Squiggy Wheaton, one of the salesmen, is a regular customer at the diner, and when he told me one day that they were doing their annual inventory and ‘the numbers lady’ was there going over the books, I made it my business to roll on up and get an eyes-on.

Two years ago the marshal was LHS principal Stella Langley, and she’ll never live it down. During the festival, the Kennebec Fruit Company comes alive and does excellent business, mostly provided by bemused tourists on their way to the western Maine resort areas.

And bingo. No picture and no special mention, but she was listed right between David Platt and Stephanie Routhier.” “Just another kid marching to ‘Pomp and Circumstance,’ right?” “Right. Then I plugged her name into the Enterprise’s search function, and got some hits after 1964. Not many, three or four.

Deke said, “TV you pay to watch in an auditorium. Boy-howdy, what next?” “The wave of the future, I guess,” I said. “And it’ll probably sell out—in Dallas, at least—but that doesn’t change the fact that Tom Case is the wave of the past. Tiger’ll slice him like coldcuts.

But after I came back from ’58, the picture was of a boy with a half-assed Beatle haircut standing at the podium and the caption said, Valedictorian Trevor “Buddy” Briggs speaks to graduation assemblage. They listed every graduate—there were only a hundred or so—and Carolyn Poulin wasn’t among em.

I tried the sports pages, and read about the weekend’s big upcoming football game: Derry Tigers versus Bangor Rams. Troy Dunning was fifteen, according to the janitor’s essay. A fifteen-year-old could easily be a part of the team, although probably not a starter.

He hadn’t been laid off from his job at Leslie Welding after all, it seemed; he had just walked away. The boss called Vada Oswald, looking for him because they were shorthanded, and when he got no help from Robert’s wife, he called Marguerite. “I lied for you, Lee!”

“She’s pretty as hell, but if she ever hits her mark, it’s an accident.” I allowed myself a cautious inward smile. I was starting to think this was going to be all right. “What I couldn’t stand—what the show couldn’t stand—is to lose you or Vince Knowles.”

“I’d like to discuss a rather large sports-oriented business proposition with Mr. Frati.” “Yeah? Is that a bet when it’s at home with its feet up?” “Are you a cop?” “Yeah, I’m Chief Curry of the Dallas Police. Can’t you tell from the glasses and the jowls?”

Fritz: “Did your savings include money you won from bookies?” Me: “I’m going to take the Fifth on that one.” At this, Will Fritz actually laughed. Hosty: “So you met Oswald and became friendly with him.” “Relatively friendly. You don’t become close buddies with crazy people. At least I don’t.”

I never saw my dad cry at all, now that I think about it; at his most emotional, he might fetch a heavy sigh or grunt out a few reluctant chuckles—no breast-beating or belly-laughs for William Epping.

I ran a finger across my throat. Al smiled. “Yeah, gettin off on one of those sidetracks, I know, but at least this one’s part of the story. “I could have kept beating my head against the wall on Pine Street, but Yvonne Templeton didn’t raise any fools.

“What’s your name?” “Zack Lang. From Seattle, originally.” “Seattle when?” “It’s a question with no relevance to the current discussion.” “It hurts you to be here, doesn’t it?” “Yes. My own sanity won’t last much longer, if I don’t get back. And the residual effects will be with me forever.