by Stephen King
“That dudn’t matter to them. What matters to them is that he died here, and they’re afraid it’ll reflect badly on the school. On the town. And on them.”
I heard myself bleating, not a noble sound coming from a man in the prime of life, but I couldn’t help it. “That makes no sense at all!”
“They’d fire her if they could, just to get rid of the embarrassment. Since they can’t, they’re hoping she’ll quit before the kids have to look at what Clayton did to her face. Goddam smalltown bullshit hypocrisy at its best, my boy. When he was in his twenties, Fred Miller used to rip and roar in the Nuevo Laredo whorehouses twice a month. More, if he could get an advance on his allowance from his daddy. And I have it on damn good authority that when Jessica Caltrop was plain Jessie Trapp from Sweetwater Ranch, she got real fat when she was sixteen and real thin again about nine months later. I’ve a mind to tell them that my memory’s even longer than their blue goddam noses, and I could embarrass them plenty if I wanted to. I wouldn’t even have to work at it that hard.”
“They can’t really blame Sadie for her ex-husband’s craziness … can they?”
“Grow up, George. Sometimes you act like you were born in a barn. Or some country where folks actually think straight. To them it’s about sex. To folks like Fred and Jessica it’s always about sex. They probably think Alfalfa and Spanky on The Little Rascals spend their spare time diddling Darla out behind the barn while Buckwheat cheers em on. And when something like this happens, it’s the woman’s fault. They wouldn’t come right out and say so, but in their hearts they believe men are beasts and women who can’t gentle em, well, be it on their own heads, son, be it on their own heads. I won’t let em get away with this.”
“You’ll have to,” I said. “If you don’t, the ruckus might get back to Sadie. And she’s fragile now. This might tip her over completely.”
“Yeah,” he said. He rummaged his pipe out of his breast pocket. “Yeah, I know that. I’m just blowin off steam. Ellie talked to the folks who run the Grange Hall just yesterday. They’re happy to let us put on the show there, and it seats fifty more people. Because of the balcony, you know.”
“Well there,” I said, relieved. “Cooler heads prevail.”
“Only one problem. They’re asking four hundred for both nights. If I come up with two hundred, can you come up with the other two? You won’t be getting it back from the receipts, you know. That’s all earmarked for Sadie’s medical work.”
I knew very well about the cost of Sadie’s medical work; I had already paid three hundred dollars to cover the part of her hospital stay that her shitepoke insurance wouldn’t stand good for. In spite of Ellerton’s good offices, the other expenses would mount up rapidly. As for me, I wasn’t scraping financial bottom quite yet, but I could see it.
“George? What do you say?”
“Fifty-fifty,” I agreed.
“Then drink up your shitty beer. I want to get back to town.”
3
On our way out of that sad excuse for a drinking establishment, a poster propped in the window caught my eye. At the top:
SEE THE FIGHT OF THE CENTURY ON CLOSED CIRCUIT TV!
LIVE FROM MADISON SQUARE GARDEN!
DALLAS’S OWN TOM “THE HAMMER” CASE VS. DICK TIGER!
DALLAS AUDITORIUM
THURSDAY AUG. 29
ADVANCE TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE
Below were side-by-side photos of two bare-chested beefcakes with their gloved fists held up in the accepted fashion. One was young and unmarked. The other guy looked a lot older, and as if he’d had his nose broken a few times. The names were what stopped me, though. I knew them from somewhere.
“Don’t even think about it,” Deke said, shaking his head. “You’d get more sport out of watching a dogfight between a pit bull and a cocker spaniel. An old cocker spaniel.”
“Really?”
“Tommy Case always had a ton of heart, but now it’s a forty-year-old heart in a forty-year-old body. He got him a beergut and he can hardly move at all. Tiger’s young and fast. He’ll be a champ in a couple of years if the matchmakers don’t slip up. In the meantime, they feed him walking tank-jobs like Case to keep him in trim.”
It sounded to me like Rocky Balboa against Apollo Creed, but why not? Sometimes life imitates art.
Deke said, “TV you pay to watch in an auditorium. Boy-howdy, what next?”
“The wave of the future, I guess,” I said.
“And it’ll probably sell out—in Dallas, at least—but that doesn’t change the fact that Tom Case is the wave of the past. Tiger’ll slice him like coldcuts. Sure you’re okay with this Grange thing, George?”
“Absolutely.”
4
That was a strange June. On one hand, I was delighted to be rehearsing with the troupe that had put on the original Jamboree. It was déjà vu of the best kind. On the other hand, I found myself wondering, with greater and greater frequency, if I had ever intended to strike Lee Harvey Oswald from history’s equation in the first place. I couldn’t believe I lacked the guts to do it—I had already killed one bad man, and in cold blood—but it was an undeniable fact that I’d had Oswald in my sights and let him go. I told myself it was the uncertainty principle, and not the fact of his family, but I kept seeing Marina smiling and holding her hands out in front of her belly. I kept wondering if he might not be a patsy, after all. I reminded myself he’d be back in October. And then, of course, I asked myself how that would change things. His wife would still be pregnant and the window of uncertainty would still be open.
Meanwhile, there was Sadie’s slow recovery to preside over, there were bills to pay, there were insurance forms to fill out (the bureaucracy every bit as infuriating in 1963 as in 2011), and those rehearsals. Dr. Ellerton could only show up for one of them, but he was a quick study and hoofed his half of Bertha the Dancing Pony with charming brio. After the run-through, he told me he wanted to bring another surgeon on board, a facial specialist from Mass General. I told him—with a sinking heart—that another surgeon sounded like a grand idea.
“Can you afford it?” he asked. “Mark Anderson ain’t cheap.”
“We’ll manage,” I said.
I invited Sadie to rehearsals when the show dates grew close. She refused gently but firmly in spite of her earlier promise to come to at least one dress rehearsal. She rarely left the house, and when she did, it was only to go into the backyard garden. She hadn’t been to the school—or in town—since the night John Clayton cut her face and then his own throat.
5
I spent the late morning and early afternoon of July twelfth at the Grange Hall, running a final tech rehearsal. Mike Coslaw, who had settled as naturally into the role of producer as he had that of slapstick comedian, told me the Saturday-night show was a sellout and tonight’s was at ninety percent. “We’ll get enough walk-ups to fill the place, Mr. A. Count on it. I just hope me and Bobbi Jill don’t mess up the encore.”
“Bobbi Jill and I, Mike. And you won’t mess up.”
All of that was good. Less good was passing Ellen Dockerty’s car turning out of Bee Tree Lane just as I was turning in, and then finding Sadie sitting by the living room window with tears on her unmarked cheek and a handkerchief in one fisted hand.
“What?” I demanded. “What did she say to you?”
Sadie surprised me by mustering a grin. It was lopsided, but not without a certain gamine charm. “Nothing that wasn’t the truth. Please don’t worry. I’ll make you a sandwich and you can tell me how it went.”
So that was what I did. And I did worry, of course, but I kept my worries to myself. Also my comments on the subject of meddlesome high school principals. That evening at six, Sadie inspected me, reknotted my tie, and then brushed some lint, real or imagined, from the shoulders of my sport coat. “I’d tell you to break a leg, but you might just go and do it.”
She was wearing her old jeans and a smock top that camouflaged—a little, anyway—her weight-loss. I
found myself remembering the pretty dress she’d worn to the original Jodie Jamboree. Pretty dress that night with a pretty girl inside it. That was then. Tonight the girl—still pretty on one side—would be at home when the curtain went up, watching a Route 66 rerun.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Wishing you were going to be there, that’s all.”
I was sorry as soon as it was out, but it was almost okay. Her smile faded, then came back. The way the sun does when it passes behind a cloud that’s only small. “You’ll be there. Which means I will be.” She looked at me with grave timidity from the one eye her Veronica Lake flip left visible. “If you love me, that is.”
“I love you plenty.”
“Yes, I guess you do.” She kissed the corner of my mouth. “And I love you. So don’t break any legs and give everybody my thanks.”
“I will. You’re not afraid to stay here alone?”
“I’ll be okay.” It wasn’t actually an answer to my question, but it was the best she could do for the time being.
6
Mike was right about the walk-ups. We sold out the Friday night performance a full hour in advance of showtime. Donald Bellingham, our stage manager, lowered the houselights at 8:00 P.M. on the dot. I expected to feel a letdown after the nearly sublime original with its pie-throwing finale (which we intended to repeat on Saturday night only, the consensus being that we wanted to clean up the Grange Hall stage—and the first couple of rows—just a single time), but this one was nearly as good. For me the comedy highlight was that goddamned dancing horse. At one point Dr. Ellerton’s front-half cohort, a wildly overenthusiastic Coach Borman, almost boogied Bertha right off the stage.
The audience believed those twenty or thirty seconds of weaving around the footlights was part of the show and heartily applauded the derring-do. I, who knew better, found myself caught in an emotional paradox that will probably never be repeated. I stood in the wings next to a nearly paralytic Donald Bellingham, laughing wildly while my terrified heart fluttered at the very top of my throat.
The night’s harmonic came during the encore. Mike and Bobbi Jill walked to center stage, hand in hand. Bobbi Jill faced the audience and said, “Miz Dunhill means an awful lot to me, because of her kindness and her Christian charity. She helped me when I needed help, and she made me want to learn how to do what we’re going to do for you now. We thank you all for coming out tonight and showing your Christian charity. Don’t we, Mike?”
“Yeah,” he said. “You guys are the best.”
He looked stage left. I pointed to Donald, who was bent over his record player with the tone arm raised, ready to stick the groove. This time Donald’s father was going to know damned well that Donald had borrowed one of his big-band records, because the man was in the audience.
Glenn Miller, that long-gone bombardier, launched into “In the Mood,” and onstage, to rhythmic clapping from the audience, Mike Coslaw and Bobbi Jill Allnut flew into a jet-propelled Lindy far more fervent than any I had ever managed with either Sadie or Christy. It was all youth and joy and enthusiasm, and that made it gorgeous. When I saw Mike squeeze Bobbi Jill’s hand, telling her by touch to counterspin and shoot through his legs, I was suddenly back in Derry, watching Bevvie-from-the-levee and Richie-from-the-ditchie.
It’s all of a piece, I thought. It’s an echo so close to perfect you can’t tell which one is the living voice and which is the ghost-voice returning.
For a moment everything was clear, and when that happens you see that the world is barely there at all. Don’t we all secretly know this? It’s a perfectly balanced mechanism of shouts and echoes pretending to be wheels and cogs, a dreamclock chiming beneath a mystery-glass we call life. Behind it? Below it and around it? Chaos, storms. Men with hammers, men with knives, men with guns. Women who twist what they cannot dominate and belittle what they cannot understand. A universe of horror and loss surrounding a single lighted stage where mortals dance in defiance of the dark.
Mike and Bobbi Jill danced in their time, and their time was 1963, that era of crewcuts, console televisions, and homemade garage rock. They danced on a day when President Kennedy promised to sign a nuclear test ban treaty and told reporters he had “no intention of allowing our military forces to be mired in the arcane politics and ancient grudges of southeast Asia.” They danced as Bevvie and Richie had danced, as Sadie and I had danced, and they were beautiful, and I loved them not in spite of their fragility but because of it. I love them still.
They ended perfectly, hands upraised, breathing hard and facing the audience, which rose to its feet. Mike gave them a full forty seconds to pound their hands together (it’s amazing how fast the footlights can transform a humble left tackle into fully fledged pressed ham) and then called for quiet. Eventually, he got it.
“Our director, Mr. George Amberson, wants to say a few words. He put a lot of effort and creativity into this show, so I hope you’ll give him a big hand.”
I walked out to fresh applause. I shook Mike’s hand and gave Bobbi Jill a peck on the cheek. They scampered offstage. I raised my hands for quiet and launched into my carefully rehearsed speech, telling them Sadie couldn’t be here tonight but thanking them all on her behalf. Every public speaker worth his salt knows to concentrate on specific members of the audience, and I focused on a pair in the third row who looked remarkably like Ma and Pa in American Gothic. This was Fred Miller and Jessica Caltrop, the schoolboard members who had denied us use of the school gym on the grounds that Sadie being assaulted by her ex was in bad taste and should be ignored, insofar as possible.
Four sentences in, I was interrupted by gasps of surprise. This was followed by applause—isolated at first but quickly growing to a storm. The audience took to its feet again. I had no idea what they were applauding for until I felt a light, tentative hand grip my arm above the elbow. I turned to see Sadie standing beside me in her red dress. She had put her hair up and secured it with a glittery clip. Her face—both sides of it—was completely visible. I was shocked to discover that, once fully revealed, the residual damage wasn’t as awful as I had feared. There might be some sort of universal truth there, but I was too stunned to suss it out. Sure, that deep, ragged hollow and the fading hash marks of the stitches were hard to look at. So was the slack flesh and her unnaturally wide left eye, which no longer quite blinked in tandem with the right one.
But she was smiling that charming one-sided smile, and in my eyes, that made her Helen of Troy. I hugged her, and she hugged me back, laughing and crying. Beneath the dress, her whole body was thrumming like a high-tension wire. When we faced the audience again, everyone was up and cheering except for Miller and Caltrop. Who looked around, saw they were the only ones still on their fannies, and reluctantly joined the others.
“Thank you,” Sadie said when they quieted. “Thank you all from the very bottom of my heart. Special thanks to Ellen Dockerty, who told me that if I didn’t come here and look y’all in the eye, I’d regret it for the rest of my life. And most thanks of all to …”
The minutest of hesitations. I’m sure the audience didn’t notice it, which made me the only one who knew how close Sadie had come to telling five hundred people my actual name.
“… to George Amberson. I love you, George.”
Which brought down the house, of course. In dark times when even the sages are uncertain, declarations of love always do.
7
Ellen took Sadie—who was exhausted—home at ten-thirty. Mike and I turned out the Grange Hall lights at midnight and stepped into the alley. “Gonna come to the after-party, Mr. A? Al said he’d keep the diner open until two, and he brought in a couple of kegs. He’s not licensed for it, but I don’t think anyone’ll arrest him.”
“Not me,” I said. “I’m beat. I’ll see you tomorrow night, Mike.”
I drove to Deke’s before going home. He was sitting on his front porch in his pajamas, smoking a final pipe.
“Pretty special night,” he sa
id.
“Yes.”
“That young woman showed guts. A country mile of em.”
“She did.”
“Are you going to do right by her, son?”
“I’m going to try.”
He nodded. “She deserves that, after the last one. And you’re doing okay so far.” He glanced toward my Chevy. “You could probably take your car tonight and park right out front. After tonight, I don’t think anyone in town’d bat an eye.”
He might have been right, but I decided better safe than sorry and hoofed it, just as I had on so many other nights. I needed the time to let my own emotions settle. I kept seeing her in the glow of the footlights. The red dress. The graceful curve of her neck. The smooth cheek … and the ragged one.
When I got to Bee Tree Lane and let myself in, the hide-a-bed was in its hiding state. I stood looking at this, puzzled, not sure what to make of it. Then Sadie called my name—my real one—from the bedroom. Very softly.
The lamp was on, casting a soft light across her bare shoulders and one side of her face. Her eyes were luminous and grave. “I think this is where you belong,” she said. “I want you to be here. Do you?”
I took off my clothes and got in beside her. Her hand moved beneath the sheets, found me, and caressed me. “Are you hungry? Because I have poundcake if you are.”
“Oh, Sadie, I’m starving.”
“Then turn out the light.”
8
That night in Sadie’s bed was the best of my life—not because it closed the door on John Clayton, but because it opened the door on us again.
When we finished making love, I fell into the first deep sleep I’d had in months. I awoke at eight in the morning. The sun was fully up, the Angels were singing “My Boyfriend’s Back” on the radio in the kitchen, and I could smell frying bacon. Soon she would call me to the table, but not yet. Not just yet.
I put my hands behind my head and looked at the ceiling, mildly stunned at how stupid—how almost willfully blind—I’d been since the day I’d allowed Lee to get on the bus to New Orleans without doing anything to stop him. Did I need to know if George de Mohrenschildt had had more to do with the attempt on Edwin Walker than just goading an unstable little man into trying it? Well, there was actually quite a simple way to determine that, wasn’t there?