11/22/63 by Stephen King
I kissed Sadie twice--dry lips and moist forehead. Then I drove back to West Neely Street, where I spread out the items I'd bought at the costume and novelty shop. I worked slowly and carefully in front of the bathroom mirror, referring often to the directions and wishing Sadie were here to help me.
I wasn't worried that de Mohrenschildt would take a look at me and say haven't I seen you before; what I wanted to make sure of was that he wouldn't recognize "John Lennon" later on. Depending on how believable he was, I might have to come back on him. If so, I'd want to take him by surprise.
I glued on the mustache first. It was a bushy one, making me look like an outlaw in a John Ford western. Next came the makeup, which I used on my face and hands to give myself a rancher's tan. There were horn-rimmed specs with plain glass lenses. I had briefly considered dying my hair, but that would have created a parallel with John Clayton that I couldn't have faced. Instead I yanked on a San Antonio Bullets baseball cap. When I was finished, I hardly recognized myself in the mirror.
"Nobody gets hurt unless it absolutely has to happen," I told the stranger in the mirror. "And never by mistake. Have we got that straight?"
The stranger nodded, but the eyes behind the fake glasses were cool.
The last thing I did before leaving was to take my revolver from the closet shelf and shove it in my pocket.
4
I got to the deserted parking lot at the end of Mercedes Street twenty minutes early, but de Mohrenschildt was already there, his gaudy Cadillac butted up against the brick backside of the Montgomery Ward warehouse. That meant he was anxious. Excellent.
I looked around, almost expecting to see the jump-rope girls, but of course they were in for the night--possibly sleeping and dreaming of Charlie Chaplin touring France, just to watch the ladies dance.
I parked near de Mohrenschildt's yacht, rolled down my window, stuck out my left hand, and curled the index finger in a beckoning gesture. For a moment de Mohrenschildt sat where he was, as if unsure. Then he got out. The bigtime strut wasn't in evidence. He looked frightened and furtive. That was also excellent. In one hand he held a file folder. From the flat look of it, there wasn't much inside. I hoped it wasn't just a prop. If it was, we were going to dance, and it wouldn't be the Lindy Hop.
He opened the door, leaned in, and said, "Look, you're not going to shoot me or anything, are you?"
"Nope," I said, hoping I sounded bored. "If I was from the FBI you might have to worry about that, but I'm not and you know I'm not. You've done business with us before." I hoped to God Al's notes were right about that.
"Is this car bugged? Are you?"
"If you're careful about what you say, you won't have anything to worry about, will you? Now get in."
He got in and shut the door. "About those leases--"
"You can discuss those another time, with other people. Oil isn't my specialty. My specialty is dealing with people who behave indiscreetly, and your relationship with Oswald has been very indiscreet."
"I was curious, that's all. Here's a man who manages to defect to Russia, then re-defect to the United States. He's a semi-educated hillbilly, but he's surprisingly crafty. Also . . ." He cleared his throat. "I have a friend who wants to fuck his wife."
"We know about that," I said, thinking of Bouhe--just another George in a seemingly endless parade of them. How happy I would be to escape the echo chamber of the past. "My sole interest is making sure you had nothing to do with that botched Walker hit."
"Look at this. I took it from my wife's scrapbook."
He opened the folder, removed the single page of newsprint it contained, and passed it over. I turned on the Chevy's domelight, hoping my tan wouldn't look like the makeup it was. On the other hand, who cared? It would strike de Mohrenschildt as just one more bit of cloak-and-dagger spookery.
The sheet was from the April 12 Morning News. I knew the feature; AROUND TOWN was probably read a lot more closely by most Dallas-ites than the world and national news. There were lots of names in boldface type and lots of pix showing men and women in evening dress. De Mohrenschildt had used red ink to circle a squib halfway down. In the accompanying photo, George and Jeanne were unmistakable. He was in a tux and flashing a grin that seemed to show as many teeth as there are keys on a piano. Jeanne was displaying an amazing amount of cleavage, which the third person at the table appeared to be inspecting closely. All three held up champagne glasses.
"This is Friday's paper," I said. "The Walker shooting was on Wednesday."
"These Around Town items are always two days old. Because they're about nightlife, dig? Besides . . . don't just look at the picture, read it, man. It's right there in black and white!"
I checked, but I knew he was telling the truth as soon as I saw the other man's name in the newspaper's hotcha-hotcha boldface type. The harmonic echo was as loud as a guitar amp set on reverb.
Local oil rajah George de Mohrenschildt and wife Jeanne lifted a glass (or maybe it was a dozen!) at the Carousel Club on Wednesday night, celebrating the scrump-tiddly-uptious lady's birthday. 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!
"The champagne was rotgut and I had a hangover until three the next afternoon, but it was worth it if you're satisfied."
I was. I was also fascinated. "How well do you know this guy Ruby?"
De Mohrenschildt sniffed--all his baronial snobbery expressed in a single quick inhale through flared nostrils. "Not well, and don't want to. He's a crazy little Jew who buys the police free drinks so they'll look the other way when he uses his fists. Which he likes to do. One day his temper will get him in trouble. Jeanne likes the strippers. They get her hot." He shrugged, as if to say who could understand women. "Now are you--" He looked down, saw the gun in my fist, and stopped talking. His eyes widened. His tongue came out and licked his lips. It made a peculiar wet slupping sound as he drew it back into his mouth.
"Am I satisfied? Was that what you were going to ask?" I prodded him with the gun barrel and took considerable pleasure in his gasp. Killing changes a man, I tell you, it coarsens him, but in my defense, if there was ever a man who deserved a salutary scare, it was this one. Marguerite was partially responsible for what her youngest son had become, and there was plenty of responsibility for Lee himself--all those half-formed dreams of glory--but de Mohrenschildt had played a part. And was it some complicated plot hatched deep in the bowels of the CIA? No. Slumming simply amused him. So did the rage and disappointment baking up from the plugged oven of Lee's disturbed personality.
"Please," de Mohrenschildt whispered.
"I'm satisfied. But listen to me, you windbag: you're never going to meet with Lee Oswald again. You're never going to talk to him on the phone. You're never going to mention a word of this conversation to his wife, to his mother, to George Bouhe, to any of the other emigres. Do you understand that?"
"Yes. Absolutely. I was growing bored with him, anyway."
"Not half as bored as I am with you. If I find out you've talked to Lee, I'll kill you. Capisce?"
"Yes. And the leases . . . ?"
"Someone will be in touch. Now get the fuck out of my car."
He did so, posthaste. When he was behind the wheel of the Caddy, I reached out again with my left hand. Instead of beckoning, this time I used my index finger to point at Mercedes Street. He went.
I sat where I was a little while longer, looking at the clipping, which he in his haste had forgotten to take with him. The de Mohrenschildts and Jack Ruby, glasses raised. Was it a signpost pointing toward a conspiracy, after all? The tin-hat crew who believed in things like shooters popping up from sewers and Oswald doppelgangers probably would have thought so, but I knew better. It was just another harmonic. This was the Land of Ago, where everything echoed.
I felt I h
5
I was allowed to spring Sadie from the hospital on the morning of August seventh. She was quiet on the ride back to Jodie. I could tell she was still in considerable pain, but she rested a companionable hand on my thigh for most of the drive. When we turned off Highway 77 at the big Denholm Lions billboard, she said: "I'm going back to school in September."
"Sure?"
"Yes. If I could stand up in front of the whole town at the Grange, I guess I can manage it in front of a bunch of kids in the school library. Besides, I have a feeling we're going to need the money. Unless you have some source of income I don't know about, you've got to be almost broke. Thanks to me."
"I should have some money coming in at the end of the month."
"The fight?"
I nodded.
"Good. And I'll only have to listen to the whispers and the giggles for a little while, anyway. Because when you go, I'm going with you." She paused. "If it's still what you want."
"Sadie, it's all I want."
We turned onto Main Street. 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.
"Will I like it, Jake? In your place?"
"I hope so, hon."
"Is it very different?"
I smiled. "People pay more for gasoline and have more buttons to push. Otherwise, it's about the same."
6
That hot August was as close to a honeymoon as we ever managed, and it was sweet. Any pretense that I was rooming with Deke Simmons pretty well went out the window, although I still kept my car in his driveway at night.
Sadie recovered quickly from the latest insult to her flesh, and although her eye sagged and her cheek was still scarred and deeply hollowed where Clayton had cut through to the inside of her mouth, there was visible improvement. Ellerton and his crew had done a good job with what they had.
We read books sitting side by side on her couch, with her fan blowing back our hair--The Group for her, Jude the Obscure for me. We had backyard picnics in the shade of her prized Chinese Pistache tree and drank gallons of iced coffee. Sadie began to cut back on the smokes again. We watched Rawhide and Ben Casey and Route 66. One night she tuned in The New Adventures of Ellery Queen, but I asked her to change the channel. I didn't like mysteries, I said.
Before bed, I carefully smoothed ointment on her wounded face, and once we were in bed . . . it was good. Leave it at that.
One day outside the grocery store, I ran into that upstanding schoolboard member Jessica Caltrop. She said she would like to speak to me for a moment on what she called "a delicate subject."
"What might that be, Miz Caltrop?" I asked. "Because I've got ice cream in here, and I'd like to get home with it before it melts."
She gave me a chilly smile that could have kept my French vanilla firm for hours. "Would home be on Bee Tree Lane, Mr. Amberson? With the unfortunate Miss Dunhill?"
"And that would be your business how?"
The smile froze a little more deeply. "As a member of the schoolboard, I have to make sure that the morality of our faculty is spotless. If you and Miss Dunhill are living together, that is a matter of grave concern to me. Teenagers are impressionable. They imitate what they see in their elders."
"You think? After fifteen years or so in the classroom, I would have said they observe adult behavior and then run the other way as fast as they can."
"I'm sure we could have an illuminating discussion on how you view teenage psychology, Mr. Amberson, but that's not why I asked to speak to you, uncomfortable as I find it." She didn't look a bit uncomfortable. "If you are living in sin with Miss Dunhill--"
"Sin," I said. "Now there's an interesting word. Jesus said that he without it was free to cast the first stone. Or she, I suppose. Are you without it, Miz Caltrop?"
"This discussion is not about me."
"But we could make it about you. I could make it about you. I could, for instance, start asking around about the woods colt you dropped once upon a time."
She recoiled as if slapped and took two steps back toward the brick wall of the market. I took two steps forward, my grocery bags curled in my arms.
"I find that repulsive and offensive. If you were still teaching, I'd--"
"I'm sure you would, but I'm not, so you need to listen to me very carefully. It's my understanding that you had a kid when you were sixteen and living on Sweetwater Ranch. I don't know if the father was one of your schoolmates, a saddle tramp, or even your own father--"
"You're disgusting!"
True. And sometimes it's such a pleasure.
"I don't care who it was, but I care about Sadie, who's been through more pain and heartache than you've felt in your whole life." Now I had her pinned against the brick wall. She was looking up at me, her eyes bright with terror. In another time and place I could have felt sorry for her. Not now. "If you say one word about Sadie--one word to anybody--I'll make it my business to find out where that kid of yours is now, and I'll spread the word from one end of this town to the other. Do you understand me?"
"Get out of my way! Let me pass!"
"Do you understand me?"
"Yes! Yes!"
"Good." I stepped back. "Live your life, Miz Caltrop. I suspect it's been pretty gray since you were sixteen--busy, though, inspecting other people's dirty laundry does keep a person busy--but you live it. And let us live ours."
She sidled to her left along the brick wall, in the direction of the parking lot behind the market. Her eyes were bulging. They never left me.
I smiled pleasantly. "Before this discussion becomes something that never happened, I want to give you a piece of advice, little lady. It comes straight from my heart. I love her, and you do not want to fuck with a man in love. If you mess in my business--or Sadie's--I will try my best to make you the sorriest bluenose bitch in Texas. That is my sincere promise to you."
She ran for the parking lot. She did it awkwardly, like someone who hasn't moved at a pace faster than a stately walk in a long time. In her brown shin-length skirt, opaque flesh-toned hose, and sensible brown shoes, she was the spirit of the age. Her hair was coming loose from its bun. Once I had no doubt she had worn it down, the way men like to see a woman's hair, but that had been a long time ago.
"And have a nice day!" I called after her.
7
Sadie came into the kitchen while I was putting things away in the icebox. "You were gone a long time. I was starting to worry."
"I got talking. You know how it is in Jodie. Always someone to pass the time of day with."
She smiled. The smile was coming a little more easily now. "You're a sweet guy."
I thanked Sadie and told her she was a sweet gal. I wondered if Caltrop would talk to Fred Miller, the other schoolboard member who saw himself as a guardian of town morality. I didn't think so. It wasn't just that I knew about her youthful indiscretion; I had set out to scare her. It had worked with de Mohrenschildt, and it had worked with her. Scaring people is a dirty job, but somebody has to do it.
Sadie crossed the kitchen and put an arm around me. "What would you say to a weekend at the Candlewood Bungalows before school starts? Just like in the old days? I suppose that's very forward of Sadie, isn't it?"
"Well now, that depends." I took her in my arms. "Are we talking about a dirty weekend?"
She blushed, except for around the scar. The flesh there remained white and shiny. "Absolutely feelthy, senor."
"The sooner the better, then."
&
It wasn't actually a dirty weekend, unless you believe--as the Jessica Caltrops of the world seem to--that lovemaking is dirty. It's true that we spent a lot of it in bed. But we also spent a fair amount outside. Sadie was a tireless walker, and there was a vast open field on the flank of a hill behind the Candlewood. It was rioting with late-summer wildflowers. We spent most of Saturday afternoon there. Sadie could name some of the blooms--Spanish dagger, prickly poppy, something called yucca birdweed--but at others she could only shake her head, then bend over to smell whatever aromas there were to be smelled. We walked hand in hand, with high grass brushing against our jeans and big clouds with fluffed-out tops sailing the high Texas sky. Long shutters of light and shadow slipped across the field. There was a cool breeze that day, and no refinery smell in the air. At the top of the hill we turned and looked back. The bungalows were small and insignificant on the tree-dotted sweep of the prairie. The road was a ribbon.
Sadie sat down, drew her knees to her chest, and clasped her arms around her shins. I sat down beside her.
"I want to ask you something," she said.
"All right."
"It's not about the . . . you know, where you come from . . . that's more than I want to think about just now. It's about the man you came to stop. The one you say is going to kill the president."
I considered this. "Delicate subject, hon. Do you remember me telling you that I'm close to a big machine full of sharp teeth?"
"Yes--"
"I said I wouldn't let you stand next to me while I was fooling with it. I've already said more than I meant to, and probably more than I should have. Because the past doesn't want to be changed. It fights back when you try. And the bigger the potential change, the harder it fights. I don't want you to be hurt."
"I already have been," she said quietly.
"Are you asking if that was my fault?"
"No, honey." She put a hand on my cheek. "No."
"Well, it may have been, at least partially. There's a thing called the butterfly effect--" There were hundreds of them fluttering on the slope before us, as if to illustrate that very fact.