11/22/63: A Novel Read online

  She gripped my arm. Her hand was cold.

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

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

  How dismal would that be for an ending?

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4

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

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

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

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

  “Oh, law,” she said.

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

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

  “My suitcase—”

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

  I tried to think.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5

  “Jake? Are you okay?”

  “Fine. You?”

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

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

  If we came back.

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

  “Bad leg, sir?” she asked me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “I bet he will,” I said.

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

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

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

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

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

  �
�Ma’am, that’s all right,” I said.

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

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

  “Oh, boo-hoo,” his white friend said.

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

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

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

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

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

  6

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  He nodded.

  “One … two … three!”

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

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

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

  “Jake, those people need help!”

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

  “How much trouble? How much more?”

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

  7

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

  “There’s no time.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “I’ve got the rest in my billfold.”

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

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

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

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

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

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