by Stephen King
I looked around at the living room with its moldering rug, cracked plaster, and one brokedown easy chair. "No problem there," I said.
I sat back down and tried to tune in to the ghosts again: Lee and Marina, Marguerite and de Mohrenschildt. I fell into one of my abrupt sleeps instead. When I woke up, I thought the chanting I heard must be from a fading dream.
"Charlie Chaplin went to FRANCE! Just to see the ladies DANCE!"
It was still there when I opened my eyes. I went to the window and looked out. The jump-rope girls were a little taller and older, but it was them, all right, the Terrible Trio. The one in the middle was spotty, although she looked at least four years too young for adolescent acne. Maybe it was rubella.
"Salute to the Cap'n!"
"Salute to the Queen," I muttered, and went into the bathroom to wash my face. The water that belched out of the tap was rusty, but cold enough to wake me the rest of the way up. I had replaced my broken watch with a cheap Timex and saw it was two-thirty. I wasn't hungry, but I needed to eat something, so I drove down to Mr. Lee's Bar-B-Q. On the way back, I stopped at a drugstore for another box of headache powders. I also bought a couple of John D. MacDonald paperbacks.
The jump-rope girls were gone. Mercedes Street, ordinarily raucous, was strangely silent. Like a play before the curtain goes up on the last act, I thought. I went in to eat my meal, but although the ribs were tangy and tender, I ended up throwing most of them away.
18
I tried to sleep in the main bedroom, but in there the ghosts of Lee and Marina were too lively. Shortly before midnight, I relocated to the smaller bedroom. 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.
"I love you, honey," I said, and fell asleep.
19
11/21/63 (Thursday)
I didn't want breakfast any more than I'd wanted dinner the night before, but by 11:00 A.M. I needed coffee desperately. A gallon or so seemed about right. I grabbed one of my new paperbacks--Slam the Big Door, it was called--and drove to the Happy Egg on Braddock Highway. The TV behind the counter was on, and I watched a news story about Kennedy's impending arrival in San Antonio, where he was to be greeted by Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson. Also to join the party: Governor John Connally and his wife, Nellie.
Over footage of Kennedy and his wife walking across the tarmac of Andrews Air Force base in Washington, heading for the blue-and-white presidential plane, a correspondent who sounded like she might soon pee in her underwear talked about Jackie's new "soft" hairdo, set off by a "jaunty black beret," and the smooth lines of her "belted two-piece shirt-dress, by her favorite designer, Oleg Cassini." Cassini might indeed be her favorite designer, but I knew Mrs. Kennedy had another outfit packed away on the plane. The designer of that one was Coco Chanel. It was pink wool, accessorized by a black collar. And of course there was a pink pillbox hat to top it off. The suit would go well with the roses she'd be handed at Love Field, not so well with the blood which would splatter the skirt and her stockings and shoes.
20
I went back to Mercedes Street and read my paperbacks. I waited for the obdurate past to swat me like a troublesome fly--for the roof to fall in or a sinkhole to open and drop 2703 deep into the ground. I cleaned my .38, loaded it, then unloaded it and cleaned it again. I almost hoped I would disappear into one of my sudden sleeps--it would at least pass the time--but that didn't happen. The minutes dragged by, turning reluctantly into a stack of hours, each one bringing Kennedy that much closer to the intersection of Houston and Elm.
No sudden sleeps today, I thought. That will happen tomorrow. When the critical moment comes, I'll just drop into unconsciousness. The next time I open my eyes, the deed will have been done and the past will have protected itself.
It could happen. I knew it could. If it did, I'd have a decision to make: find Sadie and marry her, or go back and start all over again. Thinking about it, I found there was really no decision to be made. I didn't have the strength to go back and start over. One way or another, this was it. The trapper's last shot.
That night, the Kennedys, Johnsons, and Connallys ate dinner in Houston, at an event put on by the League of Latin American Citzens. The cuisine was Argentinian: ensalada rusa and the stew known as guiso. Jackie made the after-dinner speech--in Spanish. I ate takeout burgers and fries . . . or tried to. After a few bites, that meal also went into the garbage can out back.
I had finished both of the MacDonald novels. I thought about getting my own unfinished book out of the trunk of my car, but the idea of reading it was sickening. I ended up just sitting in the half-busted armchair until it was dark outside. 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. By its glow I could see the Crayola girls in their green jumpers. I knew I was in for the sort of night that would make the long day I had just passed seem short; I'd lie here wide awake, my feet hanging over the end of the bed almost to the floor, until the first light of November twenty-second came filtering in through the window.
It was long. I was tortured by what-ifs, should-have-beens, and thoughts of Sadie. Those were the worst. The missing her and wanting her went so deep it felt like physical sickness. At some point, probably long after midnight (I'd given up looking at my watch; the slow movement of the hands was too depressing), I fell into a sleep that was dreamless and profound. God knows how long I would have slept the next morning if I hadn't been awakened. Someone was shaking me gently.
"Come on, Jake. Open your eyes."
I did as I was told, although when I saw who was sitting beside me on the bed, I was at first positive I was dreaming after all. I had to be. But then I reached out, touched the leg of her faded blue jeans, and felt the fabric under my palm. Her hair was tied up, her face almost devoid of makeup, the disfigurement of her left cheek clear and singular. It was Sadie. She had found me.
CHAPTER 28
1
11/22/63 (Friday)
I sat up and embraced her without even thinking about it. She hugged me back, as hard as she could. Then I kissed her, tasting her reality--the mingled flavors of tobacco and Avon. The lipstick was fainter; in her nervousness, she had nibbled most of it away. I smelled her shampoo, her deodorant, and the oily funk of tension-sweat beneath it. Most of all I touched her: hip and breast and the scarred furrow of her cheek. She was there.
"What time is it?" My trusty Timex had stopped.
"Quarter past eight."
"Are you kidding? It can't be!"
"It is. And I'm not surprised, even if you are. How long has it been since you got anything but the kind of sleep where you just pass out for a couple of hours?"
I was still trying to deal with the idea that Sadie was here, in the Fort Worth house where Lee and Marina had lived. How could it be? In God's name, how? And that wasn't the only thing. Kennedy was also in Fort Worth, at this very minute giving a breakfast speech to the local Chamber of Commerce at the Texas Hotel.
"My suitcase is in my car," she said. "Will we take the Beetle to wherever we're going, or your Chevy? The Beetle might be better. It's easier to park. We may have to pay a lot for a space, even so, if we don't go right now. The scalpers are already out, waving their flags. I saw them."
"Sadie . . ." I shook my head in an effort to clear it and grabbed my shoes. I had thoughts in my head, plenty of them, but they were whirling around like paper in a cyclone, and I couldn't catch a single one.
"I'm here," she said.
Yes. That was the problem. "You can't come with me. It's too dangerous. I thought I explained that, but maybe I wasn't clear enough. When you try to change the past, it bites. It'll tear your
throat out if you give it the chance."
"You were clear. But you can't do this alone. Face reality, Jake. You've put on a few pounds, but you're still a scarecrow. You limp when you walk, and it's a bad limp. You have to stop and rest your knee every two or three hundred steps. What would you do if you had to run?"
I said nothing. I was listening, though. I wound and set my watch as I did it.
"And that's not the worst of it. You--yikes! What are you doing?" I had grabbed her thigh.
"Making sure you're real. I still can't quite believe it." Air Force One was going to touch down at Love Field in a little over three hours. And someone was going to give Jackie Kennedy roses. At her other Texas stops, she'd been given yellow ones, but the Dallas bouquet was going to be red.
"I'm real and I'm here. Listen to me, Jake. The worst thing isn't how badly you're still banged up. The worst thing is the way you have of falling suddenly asleep. Haven't you thought of that?"
I'd thought of it a lot.
"If the past is as malevolent as you say it is, what do you think is going to happen if you do succeed in getting close to the man you're hunting before he can pull the trigger?"
The past wasn't exactly malevolent, that was the wrong word, but I saw what she was saying and had no argument against it.
"You really don't know what you're getting yourself into."
"I absolutely do. And you're forgetting something very important." She took my hands and looked into my eyes. "I'm not just your best girl, Jake . . . if that's what I still am to you--"
"That's exactly why it's so goddam scary having you turn up like this."
"You say a man's going to shoot the president, and I have reason to believe you, based on the other things that you've predicted that have come true. Even Deke's half-persuaded. 'He knew Kennedy was coming before Kennedy knew it,' he said. 'Right down to the day and the hour. And he knew the Missus was coming along for the ride.' But you say it as if you were the only person who cared. You're not. Deke cares. He would have been here if he wasn't still running a fever of a hundred and one. And I care. I didn't vote for him, but I happen to be an American, and that makes him not just the president but my president. Does that sound corny to you?"
"No."
"Good." Her eyes were snapping. "I have no intention of letting some crazy person shoot him, and I have no intention of falling asleep."
"Sadie--"
"Let me finish. We don't have much time, so you need to dig out your ears. Are they dug?"
"Yessum."
"Good. You're not getting rid of me. Let me repeat: not. I'm going. If you won't let me into your Chevy, I'll follow you in my Beetle."
"Jesus Christ," I said, and didn't know if I was cursing or praying.
"If we ever get married, I'll do what you say, as long as you're good to me. I was raised to believe that's a wife's job." (Oh ye child of the sixties, I thought.) "I'm ready to leave everything I know behind and follow you into the future. Because I love you and because I believe that future you talk about is really there. I'll probably never give you another ultimatum, but I'm giving you one now. You do this with me or you don't do it at all."
I thought about this, and carefully. I asked myself if she meant it. The answer was as clear as the scar on her face.
Sadie, meanwhile, was looking at the Crayola Girls. "Who do you suppose drew these? They're actually quite good."
"Rosette did them," I said. "Rosette Templeton. She went back to Mozelle with her mamma after her daddy had an accident."
"And then you moved in?"
"No, across the street. A little family named Oswald moved in here."
"Is that his name, Jake? Oswald?"
"Yes. Lee Oswald."
"Am I coming with you?"
"Do I have a choice?"
She smiled and put her hand on my face. Until I saw that relieved smile, I had no idea of how frightened she must have been when she shook me awake. "No, honey," she said. "Not that I can see. That's why they call it an ultimatum."
2
We put her suitcase in the Chevrolet. If we stopped Oswald (and weren't arrested), we could get her Beetle later and she could drive it back to Jodie, where it would look normal and at home in her driveway. If things didn't go well--if we failed, or succeeded only to find ourselves on the hook for Lee's murder--we'd simply have to run for it. We could run faster, farther, and more anonymously in a V-8 Chevy than in a Volkswagen Beetle.
She saw the gun when I put it into the inside pocket of my sport coat and said, "No. Outside pocket."
I raised my eyebrows.
"Where I can get at it if you all at once get tired and decide to take a nap."
We went down the walk, Sadie hitching her purse over her shoulder. Rain had been forecast, but it looked to me as if the prognosticators would have to take a penalty card on that one. The sky was clearing.
Before Sadie could get in on the passenger side, a voice from behind me spoke up. "That your girlfriend, mister?"
I turned. It was the jump-rope girl with the acne. Only it wasn't acne, it wasn't rubella, and I didn't have to ask why she wasn't in school. She had chicken pox. "Yes, she is."
"She's purty. Except for the"--she made a gik sound that was, in a grotesque way, sort of charming--"on her face."
Sadie smiled. My appreciation for her sheer guts continued to go up . . . and it never went down. "What's your name, honey?"
"Sadie," the jump-rope girl said. "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 say, George?"
I wouldn't, actually, and I didn't have time to discuss it. "Need to ask you something, Miss Sadie Van Owen. You know where the buses stop on Winscott Road, don't you?"
"Sure." She rolled her eyes as if to ask how dumb do you think I am? "Say, have you two had the chicken pox?"
Sadie nodded.
"Me, too," I said, "so we're okay on that score. Do you know which bus goes into downtown Dallas?"
"The Number Three."
"And how often does the Three run?"
"I think every half hour, but it might be every fifteen minutes. Why you want the bus when you got a car? When you got two cars?"
I could tell by Big Sadie's expression that she was wondering the same thing. "I've got my reasons. And by the way, my old man drives a submarine."
Sadie Van Owen cracked a huge smile. "You know that one?"
"Known it for years," I said. "Get in, Sadie. We need to roll."
I checked my new watch. It was twenty minutes to nine.
3
"Tell me why you're interested in the buses," Sadie said.
"First tell me how you found me."
"When I got to Eden Fallows and you were gone, I burned the note as you asked, then checked with the old guy next door."
"Mr. Kenopensky."
"Yes. He didn't know anything. By then the therapist lady was sitting on your steps. 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. I pulled into a parking space a hundred yards ahead of the stop.
"What are you doing?"
"Taking out an insurance policy. If a bus doesn't come by nine, we'll go on. Finish your story."
"I called the hotels in downtown Dallas, but nobody even wanted to talk to me. They're all so busy. I called Deke next, and he called the police. Told them he had reliable information that someone was going to shoot the president."
I'd been watching for the bus in my rearview mirror, but now I looked at Sadie in shock. Yet I felt reluctant admiration for Deke. I had no idea how much of what Sadie had told him he actually
believed, but he'd gone way out on a limb, just the same. "What happened? Did he give his name?"
"He never got the chance. They hung up on him. I think that's when I really started to believe you about how the past protects itself. And that's what all this is to you, isn't it? Just a living history book."
"Not anymore."
Here came a lumbering bus, green over yellow. The sign in the destination window read 3 MAIN STREET DALLAS 3. It stopped and the doors at the front and back flapped open on their accordion hinges. Two or three people got on, but there was no way they were going to find seats; when the bus rolled slowly past us, I saw that all of them were full. I glimpsed a woman with a row of Kennedy buttons pinned to her hat. She waved at me gaily, and although our eyes met for only a second, I could feel her excitement, delight, and anticipation.
I dropped the Chevy into gear and followed the bus. On the back, partially obscured by belching brown exhaust, a radiantly smiling Clairol girl proclaimed that if she only had one life, she wanted to live it as a blonde. Sadie waved her hand theatrically. "Uck! Drop back! It stinks!"
"That's quite a criticism, coming from a pack-a-day chick," I said, but she was right, the diesel stench was nasty. I fell back. There was no need to tailgate now that I knew Sadie Jump-Rope had been right about the number. She'd probably been right about the interval, too. The buses might run every half hour on ordinary days, but this was no ordinary day.
"I did some more crying, because I thought you were gone for sure. I was scared for you, but I hated you, too."
I could understand that and still feel I'd done the right thing, so it seemed best to say nothing.
"I called Deke again. He asked me if you'd ever said anything about having another bolt-hole, maybe in Dallas but probably in Fort Worth. I said I didn't remember you saying anything specific. He said it probably would have been while you were in the hospital, and all confused. He told me to think hard. As if I wasn't. I went back to Mr. Kenopensky on the chance you might have said something to him. By then it was almost suppertime, and getting dark. He said no, but right about then his son came by with a pot roast dinner and invited me to eat with them. Mr. K got talking--he has all kinds of stories about the old days--"