11/22/63: A Novel

by Stephen King

  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 émigrés. 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 doppelgängers 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 had closed Al Templeton’s window of uncertainty to the merest draft. Oswald was going to return to Dallas on the third of October. According to Al’s notes, he would get hired as a common laborer at the Texas School Book Depository in the middle of October. Except that wasn’t going to happen, because sometime between the third and the sixteenth, I was going to end his miserable, dangerous life.

  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, señor.”

  “The sooner the better, then.”

  8

  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.

  “I know what that is,” she said. “There’s a Ray Bradbury story about it.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s called ‘A Sound of Thunder.’ It’s very beautiful and very disturbing. But Jake—Johnny was crazy long before you came on the scene. I left him long before you came on the scene. And if you hadn’t come along, some other man might have. I’m sure he wouldn’t have been as nice as you, but I wouldn’t have known that, would I? Time is a tree with many branches.”

  “What do you want to know about the guy, Sadie?”

  “Mostly why you don’t just call the police—anonymously, of course—and report him.”

  I pulled a stem of grass to chew while I thought about that. The first thing to cross my mind was something de Mohrenschildt had said in the Montgomery Ward parking lot: He’s a semi-educated hillbilly, but he’s surprisingly crafty.

  It was a good assessment. Lee had escaped Russia when he was tired of it; he would also be crafty enough to escape the Book Depository after shooting the president in spite of the almost immediate police and Secret Service response. Of course it was a quick response; plenty of people were going to see exactly where the shots came from.

  Lee would be questioned at gunpoint in the second-floor break room even before the speeding motorcade delivered the dying president to Parkland Hospital. The cop who did the questioning would recall later that the young man had been reasonable and persuasive. Once foreman Roy Truly vouched for him as an employee, the cop would let Ozzie Rabbit go and then hurry upstairs to seek the source of the gunshots. It was possible to believe that, if not for his encounter with Patrolman Tippit, Lee might not have been captured for days or weeks.

  “Sadie, the Dallas cops are going to shock the world with their incompetence. I’d be nuts to trust them. They might not even act on an anonymous tip.”

  “But why? Why wouldn’t they?”

  “Right now because the guy’s not even in Texas, and he doesn’t mean to come back. He’s planning to defect to Cuba.”

  “Cuba? Why in the world Cuba?”

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter, because it’s not going to work. He’s going to return to Dallas, but not with any plan to kill the president. He doesn’t even know Kennedy’s coming to Dallas. Kennedy himself doesn’t know, because the trip hasn’t been scheduled yet.”

  “But you know.”

  “Yes.”

  “Because in the time you come from, all this is in the history books.”

  “The broad strokes, yes. I got the specifics from the friend who sent me here. I’ll tell you the whole story someday when this is over, but not now. Not while the machine with all those teeth is still running full tilt. The important thing is this: if the police question the guy at any point before mid-November, he’s going to sound completely innocent, because he is innocent.” Another of those vast cloud-shadows rolled over us, temporarily dropping the temperature by ten degrees or so. “For al
l I know, he may not have made up his mind entirely until the moment he pulled the trigger.”

  “You speak as if it’s already happened,” she marveled.

  “In my world, it has.”

  “What’s important about mid-November?”

  “On the sixteenth, the Morning News is going to tell Dallas about Kennedy’s motorcade down Main Street. L— the guy will read that and realize the cars will go right past the place where he’s working. He’s probably going to think it’s a message from God. Or maybe the ghost of Karl Marx.”

  “Where’s he going to work?”

  I shook my head again. That wasn’t safe for her to know. Of course, none of this was safe. Yet (I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating) what a relief to tell at least some of it to another person.

  “If the police talked to him, they might at least frighten him out of doing it.”

  She was right, but what a horrifying risk. I’d already taken a smaller one by talking to de Mohrenschildt, but de Mohrenschildt wanted those oil leases. Also, I’d done more than frighten him—I’d scared the living bejesus out of him. I thought he’d keep mum. Lee, on the other hand …

  I took Sadie’s hand. “Right now I can predict where this man’s going the same way I could predict where a train is going to go, because it can’t leave the tracks. Once I step in, once I meddle, all bets are off.”

  “If you talked to him yourself?”

  A truly nightmarish image came into my mind. I saw Lee telling the cops, The idea was put into my head by a man named George Amberson. If it hadn’t been for him, I never would have thought of it.

  “I don’t think that would work, either.”

  In a small voice, she asked: “Will you have to kill him?”

  I didn’t answer. Which was an answer in itself, of course.

  “And you really know this is going to happen.”

  “Yes.”

  “The way you know Tom Case is going to win that fight on the twenty-ninth.”

  “Yes.”

  “Even though everybody who knows boxing says Tiger’s going to murder him.”