"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 b.u.m 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 d.a.m.n 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 d.a.m.ned 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sengers 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 cl.u.s.ters 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 pa.s.sed 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 part.i.tion between the driver"s seat and the pa.s.senger area. Gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s protruding from the center of his forehead.
"Ah, Christ!" the man with the broken arm said. "I think he"s f.u.c.kin 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 b.a.l.l.s 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 h.e.l.l 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 bulls.h.i.t; 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 ch.o.r.e 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 b.i.t.c.h, 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 pa.s.senger 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 f.u.c.kin b.a.s.t.a.r.d," he said.
"Yes, I am. And you"re one f.u.c.king thief who will soon be sporting a bullet hole." I c.o.c.ked 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 h.e.l.lo 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 sc.r.a.ped 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 a.s.sault 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.