"What night?" Only it came out whu-nigh, because my lips had gone numb. It felt as if someone had put a mask over my face. One lined with snow.
"Harry said it was his good angel. I think you"re him. So where were you?"
Now she was the one who sounded unclear, because she"d begun crying.
"Ma"am . . . Ellen . . . you"re not making any sen-"
"I took him to the airport after he got his orders and his leave was over. He was going to Nam, and I told him to watch his a.s.s. He said, "Don"t worry, Sis, I"ve got a guardian angel to watch out for me, remember?" So where were you on the sixth of February in 1968, Mr. Angel? Where were you when my brother died at Khe Sanh? Where were you then, you son of a b.i.t.c.h?"
She said something else, but I don"t know what it was. By then she was crying too hard. I hung up the phone. I went into the bathroom. I got into the bathtub, pulled the curtain, and put my head between my knees so I was looking at the rubber mat with the yellow daisies on it. Then I screamed. Once. Twice. Three times. And here is the worst: I didn"t just wish Al had never spoken to me about his G.o.dd.a.m.ned rabbit-hole. It went farther than that. I wished him dead.
9.
I got a bad feeling when I pulled into his driveway and saw the house was entirely dark. It got worse when I tried the door and found it unlocked.
"Al?"
Nothing.
I found a light switch and flipped it. The main living area had the sterile neatness of rooms that are cleaned regularly but no longer much used. The walls were covered with framed photographs. Almost all were of people I didn"t know-Al"s relatives, I a.s.sumed-but I recognized the couple in the one hanging over the couch: John and Jacqueline Kennedy. They were at the seash.o.r.e, probably Hyannis Port, and had their arms around each other. There was a smell of Glade in the air, not quite masking the sickroom smell coming from deeper in the house. Somewhere, very low, The Temptations were singing "My Girl." Sunshine on a cloudy day, and all of that.
"Al? You here?"
Where else? Studio Nine in Portland, dancing disco and trying to pick up college girls? I knew better. I had made a wish, and sometimes wishes are granted.
I fumbled for the kitchen switches, found them, and flooded the room with enough fluorescent light to take out an appendix by. On the table was a plastic medicine-caddy, the kind that holds a week"s worth of pills. Most of those caddies are small enough to fit into a pocket or purse, but this one was almost as big as an encyclopedia. Next to it was a message scribbled on a piece of Ziggy notepaper: If you forget your 8-o"clockies, I"LL KILL YOU!!!! Doris.
"My Girl" finished and "Just My Imagination" started. I followed the music into the sickroom stench. Al was in bed. He looked relatively peaceful. At the end, a single tear had trickled from the outer corner of each closed eye. The tracks were still wet enough to gleam. The multidisc CD player was on the night table to his left. There was a note on the table, too, with a pill bottle on top to hold it down. It wouldn"t have served as much of a paperweight in even a light draft, because it was empty. I looked at the label: OxyContin, twenty milligrams. I picked up the note.
Sorry, buddy, couldn"t wait. Too much pain. You have the key to the diner and you know what to do. Don"t kid yourself that you can try again, either, because too much can happen. Do it right the first time. Maybe you"re mad at me for getting you into this. I would be, in your shoes. But don"t back down. Please don"t do that. Tin box is under the bed. There"s another $500 or so inside that I saved back.
It"s on you, buddy. About 2 hours after Doris finds me in the morning, the landlord will probably padlock the diner, so it has to be tonight. Save him, okay? Save Kennedy and everything changes.
Please.
Al You b.a.s.t.a.r.d, I thought. You knew I might have second thoughts, and this is how you took care of them, right?
Sure I"d had second thoughts. But thoughts are not choices. If he"d had the idea I might back out, he was wrong. Stop Oswald? Sure. But Oswald was strictly secondary at that point, part of a misty future. A funny way to put it when you were thinking about 1963, but completely accurate. It was the Dunning family that was on my mind.
Arthur, also known as Tugga: I could still save him. Harry, too.
Kennedy might have changed his mind, Al had said. He"d been speaking of Vietnam.
Even if Kennedy didn"t change his mind and pull out, would Harry be in the exact same place at the exact same time on February 6, 1968? I didn"t think so.
"Okay," I said. "Okay." I bent over Al and kissed his cheek. I could taste the faint saltiness of that last tear. "Sleep well, buddy."
10.
Back at my place, I inventoried the contents of my Lord Buxton briefcase and fancy-Dan ostrich wallet. I had Al"s exhaustive notes on Oswald"s movements after he mustered out of the Marines on September 11, 1959. My ID was still all present and accounted for. My cash situation was better than I"d expected; with the extra money Al had saved back, added to what I already had, my net worth was still over five thousand dollars.
There was hamburger in the meat drawer of my refrigerator. I cooked up some of it and put it in Elmore"s dish. I stroked him as he ate. "If I don"t come back, go next door to the Ritters"," I said. "They"ll take care of you."
Elmore took no notice of this, of course, but I knew he"d do it if I wasn"t there to feed him. Cats are survivors. I picked up the briefcase, went to the door, and fought off a brief but strong urge to run into my bedroom and hide under the covers. Would my cat and my house even be here when I came back, if I succeeded in what I was setting out to do? And if they were, would they still belong to me? No way of telling. Want to know something funny? Even people capable of living in the past don"t really know what the future holds.
"Hey, Ozzie," I said softly. "I"m coming for you, you f.u.c.k."
I closed the door and went out.
11.
The diner was weird without Al, because it felt as if Al was still there-his ghost, I mean. The faces on his Town Wall of Celebrity seemed to stare down at me, asking what I was doing here, telling me I didn"t belong here, exhorting me to leave well enough alone before I snapped the universe"s mainspring. There was something particularly unsettling about the picture of Al and Mike Michaud, hanging where the photo of Harry and me belonged.
I went into the pantry and began to take small, shuffling steps forward. Pretend you"re trying to find the top of a staircase with the lights out, Al had said. Close your eyes, buddy, it"s easier that way.
I did. Two steps down, I heard that pressure-equalizing pop deep in my ears. Warmth hit my skin; sunlight shone through my closed eyelids; I heard the shat-HOOSH, shat-HOOSH of the weaving flats. It was September 9, 1958, two minutes before noon. Tugga Dunning was alive again, and Mrs. Dunning"s arm had not yet been broken. Not far from here, at t.i.tus Chevron, a nifty red Ford Sunliner convertible was waiting for me.
But first, there was the former Yellow Card Man to deal with. This time he was going to get the dollar he requested, because I had neglected to put a fifty-cent piece in my pocket. I ducked under the chain and paused long enough to put a dollar bill in my right front pants pocket.
That was where it stayed, because when I came around the corner of the drying shed, I found the Yellow Card Man sprawled on the concrete with his eyes open and a pool of blood spreading around his head. His throat was slashed from ear to ear. In one hand was the jagged shard of green wine bottle he had used to do the job. In the other he held his card, the one that supposedly had something to do with it being double-money day at the greenfront. The card that had once been yellow, then orange, was now dead black.
CHAPTER 10.
1.
I crossed the employee parking lot for the third time, not quite running. I once more rapped on the trunk of the white-over-red Plymouth Fury as I went by. For good luck, I guess. In the weeks, months, and years to come, I was going to need all the good luck I could get.
This time I didn"t visit the Kennebec Fruit, and I had no intention of shopping for clothes or a car. Tomorrow or the next day would do for that, but today might be a bad day to be a stranger in The Falls. Very shortly someone was going to find a dead body in the millyard, and a stranger might be questioned. George Amberson"s ID wouldn"t stand up to that, especially when his driver"s license was for a house on Bluebird Lane that hadn"t been built yet.
I made it to the millworkers" bus stop outside the parking lot just as the bus with LEWISTON EXPRESS in its destination window came snoring along. I got on and handed over the dollar bill I"d meant to give to the Yellow Card Man. The driver clicked a handful of silver out of the chrome change-maker he wore on his belt. I dropped fifteen cents into the fare box and made my way down the swaying aisle to a seat near the back, behind two pimply sailors-probably from the Brunswick Naval Air Station-who were talking about the girls they hoped to see at a strip joint called the Holly. Their conversation was punctuated by an exchange of hefty shoulder-punches and a great deal of snorkeling laughter.
I watched Route 196 unroll almost without seeing it. I kept thinking about the dead man. And the card, which was now dead black. I"d wanted to put distance between myself and that troubling corpse as quickly as possible, but I had paused long enough to touch the card. It wasn"t cardboard, as I had first a.s.sumed. Not plastic, either. Celluloid, maybe . . . except it hadn"t exactly felt like that, either. What it felt like was dead skin-the kind you might pare off a callus. There had been no writing on it, at least none that I could see.
Al had a.s.sumed the Yellow Card Man was just a wet-brain who"d been driven crazy by an unlucky combination of booze and proximity to the rabbit-hole. I hadn"t questioned that until the card turned orange. Now I more than questioned it; I flat-out didn"t believe it. What was he, anyway?
Dead, that"s what he is. And that"s all he is. So let it go. You"ve got a lot to do.
When we pa.s.sed the Lisbon Drive-In, I yanked the stop-cord. The driver pulled over at the next white-painted telephone pole.
"Have a nice day," I told him as he pulled the lever that flopped the doors open.
"Ain"t nothin nice about this run except a cold beer at quittin time," he said, and lit a cigarette.
A few seconds later I was standing on the gravel shoulder of the highway with my briefcase dangling from my left hand, watching the bus lumber off toward Lewiston, trailing a cloud of exhaust. On the back was an ad-card showing a housewife who held a gleaming pot in one hand and an S.O.S. Magic Scouring Pad in the other. Her huge blue eyes and toothy red-lipsticked grin suggested a woman who might be only minutes away from a catastrophic mental breakdown.
The sky was cloudless. Crickets sang in the high gra.s.s. Somewhere a cow lowed. With the diesel stink of the bus whisked away by a light breeze, the air smelled sweet and fresh and new. I started trudging the quarter mile or so to the Tamarack Motor Court. Just a short walk, but before I got to my destination, two people pulled over and asked me if I wanted a ride. I thanked them and said I was fine. And I was. By the time I reached the Tamarack I was whistling.
September of "58, United States of America.
Yellow Card Man or no Yellow Card Man, it was good to be back.
2.
I spent the rest of that day in my room, going over Al"s Oswald notes for the umpteenth time, this time paying special attention to the two pages at the end marked CONCLUSIONS ON HOW TO PROCEDE. Trying to watch the TV, which essentially got just one channel, was an exercise in absurdity, so when dusk came I ambled down to the drive-in and paid a special walk-in price of thirty cents. There were folding chairs set up in front of the snackbar. I bought a bag of popcorn plus a tasty cinnamon-flavored soft drink called Pepsol, and watched The Long, Hot Summer with several other walk-ins, mostly elderly people who knew each other and chatted companionably. The air had turned chilly by the time Vertigo started, and I had no jacket. I walked back to the motor court and slept soundly.
The next morning I took the bus back to Lisbon Falls (no cabs; I considered myself on a budget, at least for the time being), and made the Jolly White Elephant my first stop. It was early, and still cool, so the beatnik was inside, sitting on a ratty couch and reading Argosy.
"Hi, neighbor," he said.
"Hi yourself. I guess you sell suitcases?"
"Oh, I got a few in stock. No more"n two-three hundred. Walk all the way to the back-"
"And look on the right," I said.
"That"s right. Have you been here before?"
"We"ve all been here before," I said. "This thing is bigger than pro football."
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 d.i.c.kering was done, Bill t.i.tus sent me over to his daughter.
"You don"t sound like you"re from around here," she said.
"Wisconsin originally, but I"ve been in Maine for quite awhile. Business."
"Guess you weren"t around The Falls yesterday, huh?" When I said I hadn"t been, she popped her gum and said: "You missed some excitement. They found an old boozer dead outside the drying shed over at the mill." She lowered her voice. "Suicide. Cut his own throat with a piece of gla.s.s. Can you imagine?"
"That"s awful," I said, tucking the Sunliner"s bill of sale into my wallet. I bounced the car keys on my palm. "Local guy?"
"Nope, and no ID. He probably came down from The County in a boxcar, that"s what my dad says. 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. Then he must have went over to the millyard to drink up whatever he had left, and when it was gone, he broke the bottle and cut his throat with one of the pieces." She repeated: "Can you imagine?"
I skipped the haircut, and I skipped the bank, too, but I once more bought clothes at Mason"s Menswear.
"You must like that shade of blue," the clerk commented, and held up the shirt on top of my pile. "Same color as the one you"re wearing."
In fact it was the shirt I was wearing, but I didn"t say so. It would only have confused us both.
3.
I drove up the Mile-A-Minute Highway that Thursday afternoon. This time I didn"t need to buy a hat when I got to Derry, because I"d remembered to add a nice summer straw to the purchases I made at Mason"s. I registered at the Derry Town House, had a meal in the dining room, then went into the bar and ordered a beer from Fred Toomey. On this go-round I made no effort to engage him in conversation.
The following day I rented my old apartment on Harris Avenue, and far from keeping me awake, the sound of the descending planes actually lulled me to sleep. The day after that, I went down to Machen"s Sporting Goods and told the clerk I was interested in buying a handgun because I was in the real estate business and blah blah blah. The clerk brought out my .38 Police Special and once more told me it was a fine piece of protection. I bought it and put it in my briefcase. I thought about walking out Kansas Street to the little picnic area so I could watch Richie-from-the-ditchie and Bevvie-from-the-levee practice their Jump Street moves, then realized I"d missed them. I wished I"d thought to check the late November issues of the Daily News during my brief return to 2011; I could have found out if they"d won their talent show.
I made it a habit to drop into The Lamplighter for an early-evening beer, before the place started to fill up. Sometimes I ordered Lobster Pickin"s. I never saw Frank Dunning there, nor wanted to. I had another reason for making The Lamplighter a regular stop. 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.