11/22/63 Part 21

PART 3.

LIVING IN.

THE PAST.

CHAPTER 9.

1.

I would have said I was beyond surprise by then, but what I saw just to Al's left dropped my jaw: a cigarette smoldering in an ashtray. I reached past him and stubbed it out. "Do you want to cough up whatever working lung tissue you've got left?"

He didn't respond to that. I'm not sure he even heard it. He was staring at me, wide-eyed. "Jesus G.o.d, Jake-who scalped you?"

"No one. Let's get out of here before I strangle on your secondhand smoke." But that was empty scolding. During the weeks I'd spent in Derry, I'd gotten used to the smell of burning cigarettes. Soon I'd be picking up the habit myself, if I didn't watch out.

"You are scalped," he said. "You just don't know it. There's a piece of your hair hanging down behind your ear, and . . . how much did you bleed, anyway? A quart? And who did it to you?"

"A, less than a quart. B, Frank Dunning. If that takes care of your questions, now I've got one. You said you were going to pray. Why were you smoking instead?"

"Because I was nervous. And because it doesn't matter now. The horse is out of the barn."

I could hardly argue on that score.

2.

Al made his way slowly behind the counter, where he opened a cabinet and took out a plastic box with a red cross on it. I sat on one of the stools and looked at the clock. It had been quarter to eight when Al unlocked the door and led us into the diner. Probably five of when I went down the rabbit-hole and emerged in Wonderland circa 1958. Al claimed every trip took exactly two minutes, and the clock on the wall seemed to bear that out. I'd spent fifty-two days in 1958, but here it was 7:59 in the morning.

Al was a.s.sembling gauze, tape, disinfectant. "Bend down here so I can see it," he said. "Put your chin right on the counter."

"You can skip the hydrogen peroxide. It happened four hours ago, and it's clotted. See?"

"Better safe than sorry," he said, then set the top of my head on fire.

"Ahhh!"

"Hurts, don't it? Because it's still open. You want some 1958 sawbones treating you for an infected scalp before you head down to Big D? Believe me, buddy, you don't. Hold still. I have to snip some hair or the tape won't hold. Thank G.o.d you kept it short."

Clip-clip-clip. Then he added to the pain-insult to injury, as they say-by pressing gauze to the laceration and taping it down.

"You can take the gauze off in a day or two, but you'll want to keep your hat over it until then. Gonna look a little mangy up top there for awhile, but if the hair doesn't grow back, you can always comb it over. Want some aspirin?"

"Yes. And a cup of coffee. Can you rustle that?" Although coffee would only help for a little while. What I needed was sleep.

"I can." He flicked the switch on the Bunn-o-Matic, then began rummaging in the first aid kit again. "You look like you've lost some weight."

You should talk, I thought. "I've been sick. Caught a twenty-four-hour-" That was where I stopped.

"Jake, what's wrong?"

I was looking at Al's framed photographs. When I'd gone down the rabbit-hole, there had been a picture of Harry Dunning and me up there. We were smiling and holding up Harry's GED diploma for the camera.

It was gone.

3.

"Jake? Buddy? What is it?"

I took the aspirin he'd put on the counter, stuck them in my mouth, dry-swallowed. Then I got up and walked slowly over to the Wall of Celebrity. I felt like a man made of gla.s.s. Where the picture of Harry and me had hung for the last two years, there was now one of Al shaking hands with Mike Michaud, the U.S. Representative from Maine's Second District. Michaud must have been running for re-election, because Al was wearing two b.u.t.tons on his cook's ap.r.o.n. One said MICHAUD FOR CONGRESS. The other said LISBON LUVS MIKE. The honorable Representative was wearing a bright orange Moxie tee-shirt and holding up a dripping Fatburger for the camera.

I lifted the photo from its hook. "How long has this been here?"

He looked at it, frowning. "I've never seen that picture in my life. G.o.d knows I supported Michaud in his last two runs-h.e.l.l, I support any Democrat who ain't been caught s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g his campaign aides-and I met him at a rally in double-oh-eight, but that was in Castle Rock. He's never been in the diner."

"Apparently he has been. That's your counter, isn't it?"

He took the picture in hands now so scrawny they were little more than talons, and held it close to his face. "Yuh," he said. "It sure is."

"So there is a b.u.t.terfly effect. This photo's proof."

He looked at it fixedly, smiling a little. In wonder, I think. Or maybe awe. Then he handed it back to me and went behind the counter to pour the coffee.

"Al? You still remember Harry, don't you? Harry Dunning?"

"Of course I do. Isn't he why you went to Derry and almost got your head knocked off?"

"For him and the rest of his family, yes."

"And did you save them?"

"All but one. His father got Tugga before we could stop him."

"Who's we?"

"I'll tell you everything, but first I'm going home to bed."

"Buddy, we don't have a whole lot of time."

"I know that," I said, thinking All I have to do is look at you, Al. "But I'm dead for sleep. For me, it's one-thirty in the morning, and I've had . . ."-my mouth opened in a huge yawn-". . . had quite a night."

"All right." He brought coffee-a full cup for me, black, half a cup for him, liberally dosed with cream. "Tell me what you can while you drink this."

"First, explain to me how you can remember Harry if he was never a janitor at LHS and never bought a Fatburger from you in his whole life. Second, explain to me why you don't remember Mike Michaud visiting the diner when that picture says he did."

"You don't know for a fact that Harry Dunning's not still in town," Al said. "In fact, you don't know for sure he's not still janitoring at Lisbon High."

"It'd be a h.e.l.l of a coincidence if he was. I changed the past big-time, Al-with some help from a guy named Bill Turcotte. Harry wouldn't have gone to live with his aunt and uncle in Haven, because his mother didn't die. Neither did his brother Troy or his sister, Ellen. And Dunning never got near Harry himself with that hammer of his. If Harry still lives in The Falls after all those changes, I'd be the most surprised guy on earth."

"There's a way to check," Al said. "I've got a laptop computer in my office. Come on back." He led the way, coughing and holding onto things. I carried my cup of coffee with me; he left his behind.

Office was far too grand a name for the closet-sized cubbyhole off the kitchen. It was hardly big enough for both of us. The walls were papered with memos, permits, and health directives from both the state of Maine and the feds. If the people who pa.s.sed on rumors and gossip about the Famous Catburger had seen all that paperwork-which included a Cla.s.s A Certification of Cleanliness following the last inspection by the State of Maine Restaurant Commission-they might have been forced to rethink their position.

Harry's MacBook sat on the sort of desk I remember using in the third grade. He collapsed into a chair of about the same size with a grunt of pain and relief. "High school's got a website, doesn't it?"

"Sure."

While we waited for the laptop to boot, I wondered how many emails had piled up during my fifty-two-day absence. Then I remembered I'd actually been gone only two minutes. Silly me. "I think I'm losing it, Al," I said.

"I know the feeling. Just hang on, buddy, you'll-wait, here we go. Let's see. Courses . . . summer schedule . . . faculty . . . administration . . . custodial staff."

"Hit it," I said.

He ma.s.saged the touch pad, muttered, nodded, clicked on something, then stared into the computer screen like a swami consulting his crystal ball.

"Well? Don't keep me hanging."

He turned the laptop so I could look. LHS CUSTODIAL STAFF, it said. THE BEST IN MAINE! There was a photograph of two men and a woman standing at center court in the gymnasium. They were all smiling. They were all wearing Lisbon Greyhounds sweatshirts. None of them was Harry Dunning.

4.

"You remember him in his life as a janitor and as your student because you're the one who went down the rabbit-hole," Al said. We were back in the diner again, sitting in one of the booths. "I remember him either because I've used the rabbit-hole myself or just because I'm near it." He considered. "That's probably it. A kind of radiation. The Yellow Card Man's also near it, only on the other side, and he feels it, too. You've seen him, so you know."

"He's the Orange Card Man now."

"What are you talking about?"

I yawned again. "If I tried to tell you now, I'd make a total mess of everything. I want to drive you home, then go home myself. I'm going to get something to eat, because I'm hungry as a bear-"

"I'll scramble you up some eggs," he said. He started to rise, then sat back down with a thump and began to cough. Each inhale was a hacking wheeze that shook his whole body. Something rattled in his throat like a playing card in the spokes of a bicycle wheel.

I put my hand on his arm. "What you'll do is go back home, take some dope, and rest. Sleep if you can. I know I can. Eight hours. I'll set the alarm."

He stopped coughing, but I could still hear that playing card rattling in his throat. "Sleep. The good kind. I remember that. I envy you, buddy."

"I'll be back at your place by seven tonight. No, let's say eight. That'll give me a chance to check a few things on the internet."

"And if everything looks jake?" He smiled faintly at this pun . . . which I, of course, had heard at least a thousand times.

"Then I'll go back again tomorrow and get ready to do the deed."

"No," he said. "You're going to undo the deed." He squeezed my hand. His fingers were thin, but there was still strength in his grip. "That's what this is all about. Finding Oswald, undoing his f.u.c.kery, and wiping that self-satisfied smirk off his face."

5.