11/22/63 Part 40

I thought of the way everyone said Vince drove-as if there were no tomorrow. Now there wasn't. Not for him. "He's dead, Sadie."

Her mouth dropped open. "He can't be! He's only eighteen years old!"

"I know."

The sheet fell free of her relaxing arms and puddled around her feet. She put her hands over her face.

14.

My revised version of Twelve Angry Men was canceled. What took its place was Death of a Student, a play in three acts: the viewing at the funeral parlor, the service at Grace Methodist Church, the graveside service at West Hill Cemetery. This mournful show was attended by the whole town, or near enough to make no difference.

The parents and Vince's stunned kid sister starred at the viewing, sitting in folding chairs beside the coffin. When I approached them with Sadie at my side, Mrs. Knowles rose and put her arms around me. I was almost overwhelmed by the odors of White Shoulders perfume and Yodora antiperspirant.

"You changed his life," she whispered in my ear. "He told me so. For the first time he made his grades, because he wanted to act."

"Mrs. Knowles, I'm so, so sorry," I said. Then a terrible thought crossed my mind and I hugged her tighter, as if hugging could make it go away: Maybe it's the b.u.t.terfly effect. Maybe Vince is dead because I came to Jodie.

The coffin was flanked by photomontages of Vince's too-brief life. On an easel in front of it, all by itself, was a picture of him in his Of Mice and Men costume and that battered old felt hat from props. His ratty, intelligent face peered out from beneath. Vince really hadn't been much of an actor, but that photo caught him wearing an absolutely perfect wisea.s.s smile. Sadie began to sob, and I knew why. Life turns on a dime. Sometimes toward us, but more often it spins away, flirting and flashing as it goes: so long, honey, it was good while it lasted, wasn't it?

And Jodie was good-good for me. In Derry I was an outsider, but Jodie was home. Here's home: the smell of the sage and the way the hills flush orange with Indian blanket in the summer. The faint taste of tobacco on Sadie's tongue and the squeak of the oiled wood floorboards in my homeroom. Ellie Dockerty caring enough to send us a message in the middle of the night, perhaps so we could get back to town undiscovered, probably just so we'd know. The nearly suffocating mixture of perfume and deodorant as Mrs. Knowles hugged me. Mike putting his arm-the one not buried in a cast-around me at the cemetery, then pressing his face against my shoulder until he could get himself under control again. The ugly red slash on Bobbi Jill's face is home, too, and thinking that unless she had plastic surgery (which her family could not afford), it would leave a scar that would remind her for the rest of her life of how she had seen a boy from just down the road dead at the side of the road, his head mostly torn off his shoulders. Home is the black armband that Sadie wore, that I wore, that the whole faculty wore for a week after. And Al Stevens posting Vince's photo in the window of his diner. And Jimmy LaDue's tears as he stood up in front of the whole school and dedicated the undefeated season to Vince Knowles.

Other things, too. People saying howdy on the street, people giving me a wave from their cars, Al Stevens taking Sadie and me to the table at the back that he had started calling "our table," playing cribbage on Friday afternoons in the teachers' room with Danny Laverty for a penny a point, arguing with elderly Miss Mayer about who gave the better newscast, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, or Walter Cronkite. My street, my shotgun house, getting used to using a typewriter again. Having a best girl and getting S&H Green Stamps with my groceries and real b.u.t.ter on my movie popcorn.

Home is watching the moon rise over the open, sleeping land and having someone you can call to the window, so you can look together. Home is where you dance with others, and dancing is life.

15.

The Year of Our Lord 1961 was winding down. On a drizzly day about two weeks before Christmas, I came into my house after school, once more bundled into my rawhide ranch coat, and heard the phone ringing.

"This is Ivy Templeton," a woman said. "You prob'ly don't even remember me, do you?"

"I remember you very well, Miz Templeton."

"I dunno why I even bothered to call, that G.o.ddam ten bucks is long since spent. Just somethin about you stuck in my head. Rosette, too. She calls you 'the man who cotched my ball.'"

"You're moving out, Miz Templeton?"

"That's one hunderd percent G.o.ddam right. My mama's comin up from Mozelle tomorrow in the truck."

"Don't you have a car? Or did it break down?"

"Car's runnin okay for a junker, but Harry ain't goan be ridin in it. Or drivin it ever again. He was workin one of those G.o.ddam Manpower jobs last month. Fell in a ditch and a gravel truck run over him while it was backin up. Broke his spine."

I closed my eyes and saw the smashed remains of Vince's truck being hauled down Main Street behind the wrecker from Gogie's Sunoco. Blood all over the inside of the cracked windshield. "I'm sorry to hear that, Miz Templeton."

"He goan live but he ain't never goan walk again. He goan sit in a wheelchair and pee in a bag, that's what he goan do. But first he's goan ride down Mozelle in the back of my mama's truck. We'll steal the mattress out'n the bedroom for him to lay on. Be like takin your dog on vacation, won't it?"

She started to cry.

"I'm runnin out on two months' back rent, but that don't confront me none. You know what does confront me, Mr. Puddentane, Ask Me Again and I'll Tell You the Same? I got thirty-five G.o.ddam dollars and that's the end of it. G.o.ddam a.s.shole Harry, if he could've kep his feet I wouldn't be in this fix. I thought I was in one before, but now looka this!"

There was a long, watery snork in my ear.

"You know what? The mailman been givin me the glad eye, and I think for twenty dollars I'd roll him a f.u.c.k on the G.o.ddam livin room floor. If the G.o.ddam neighbors across the street couldn't watch us while we 'us goin at it. Can't very well take him in the bedroom, can I? That's where my brokeback husband is." She rasped out a laugh. "Tell you what, why don't you come on over in your fancy convertible? Take me to a motel sommers. Spend a little extra, get one with a settin-room. Rosette can watch TV and I'll roll you a f.u.c.k. You looked like you 'us doing okay."

I said nothing. I'd just had an idea that was as bright as a flashbulb.

If the G.o.ddam neighbors across the street couldn't watch us goin at it.

There was a man I was supposed to be watching for. Besides Oswald himself, that was. A man whose name also happened to be George, and who was going to become Oswald's only friend.

Don't trust him, Al had written in his notes.

"You there, Mr. Puddentane? No? If not, f.u.c.k you and goodb-"

"Don't hang up, Miz Templeton. Suppose I were to pay your back rent and throw in a hundred bucks on top of that?" It was far more than I needed to pay for what I wanted, but I had it and she needed it.

"Mister, right now I'd do you with my father watchin for two hundred bucks."

"You don't have to do me at all, Miz Templeton. All you have to do is meet me in that parking lot at the end of the street. And bring me something."

16.

It was dark by the time I got to the parking lot of the Montgomery Ward warehouse, and the rain had started to thicken a little, the way it does when it's trying to be sleet. That doesn't happen often in the hill country south of Dallas, but sometimes isn't never. I hoped I could make it back to Jodie without sliding off the road.

Ivy was sitting behind the wheel of a sad old sedan with rusty rocker panels and a cracked rear window. She got into my Ford and immediately leaned toward the heater vent, which was going full blast. She was wearing two flannel shirts instead of a coat, and shivering.

"Feels good. That Chev's colder'n a witch's t.i.t. Heater's bust. You bring the money, Mr. Puddentane?"

I gave her an envelope. She opened it and riffled through some of the twenties that had been sitting on the top shelf of my closet ever since I'd collected on my World Series bet at Faith Financial over a year before. She lifted her substantial bottom off the seat, shoved the envelope into the back pocket of her jeans, then fumbled in the breast pocket of the shirt closer to her body. She brought out a key and slapped it into my hand.

"That do you?"

It did me very well. "It's a dupe, right?"

"Just like you told me. I had it made at the hardware store on McLaren Street. Why you want a key to that glorified s.h.i.thouse? For two hundred, you could rent it for four months."

"I've got my reasons. Tell me about the neighbors across the street. The ones that could watch you and the mailman doing it on the living room floor."

She shifted uneasily and pulled her shirts a little closer across her equally substantial bosom. "I was just jokin about that."

"I know." I didn't, and I didn't care. "I just want to know if the neighbors can really see into your living room."

"Course they can, and I could see into theirs, if they didn't have curtains. Which I woulda bought for our place, could I afford em. When it comes to privacy, we all might as well be livin outside. I s'pose I coulda put up burlap, scavenged it from right over there"-she pointed to the trash bins lined up against the east side of the warehouse-"but it looks so s.l.u.tty."

"The neighbors with the view live at what? Twenty-seven-oh-four?"

"Twenty-seven-oh-six. It used to be Slider Burnett n his fambly, but they moved out just after Halloween. He was a subst.i.tute rodeo clown, do you believe it? Who knew there was such a job? Now it's some fella named Hazzard and his two kids and I think his mother. Rosette won't play with the kids, says they're dirty. Which is a newsflash comin from that little pigpen. Ole grammy tries to talk and it comes out all mush. Side of her face won't move. Dunno what help she can be to him, draggin around like she does. If I get like that, just shoot me. Eeee, doggies!" She shook her head. "Tell you one thing, they won't be there long. No one stays on 'Cedes Street. Got a cigarette? I had to give em up. When you can't afford a quarter for f.a.gs, that's when you know for sure you're on your G.o.ddam uppers."

"I don't smoke."

She shrugged. "What the h.e.l.l. I can afford my own now, can't I? I'm G.o.ddam rich. You ain't married, are you?"

"No."

"Got a girlfriend, though. I can smell perfume on this side of the car. The nice stuff."

That made me smile. "Yes, I've got a girlfriend."

"Good for you. Does she know you're sneakin around the south side of Fort Worth after dark, doin funny business?"

I said nothing, but sometimes that's answer enough.

"Nev' mind. That's between you n her. I'm warm now, so I'll go on back. If it's still rainy n cold like this tomorrow, I don't know what we're goan do about Harry in the back of my ma's truck." She looked at me, smiling. "When I was a kid I used to think I was gonna grow up to be Kim Novak. Now Rosette, she thinks she's goan replace Darlene on the Mouseketeers. Hidey-f.u.c.kin-ho."

She started to open the door and I said, "Wait."

I raked the c.r.a.p out of my pockets-Life Savers, Kleenex, a book of matches Sadie had tucked in there, notes for a freshman English test I meant to give before the Christmas break-and then gave her the ranch coat. "Take this."

"I ain't takin your G.o.ddam coat!" She looked shocked.

"I've got another one at home." I didn't, but I could buy one, and that was more than she could do.

"What'm I gonna tell Harry? That I found it under a G.o.ddam cabbage leaf ?"

I grinned. "Tell him you rolled the mailman a f.u.c.k and bought it with the proceeds. What's he going to do, chase you down the driveway and beat you up?"

She laughed, a harsh rainbird caw that was strangely charming. And took the coat.

"Regards to Rosette," I said. "Tell her I'll see her in her dreams."

She stopped smiling. "I hope not, mister. That one she had about you was a nightmare. Bout screamed the house down, she did. Woke me out of a dead sleep at two in the morning. She said the man who cotched her ball had a monster in the backseat of his car, and she was afraid it would eat her up. Scared the life out of me, she did, screamin like that."

"Did the monster have a name?" Of course it did.

"She said it was a jimla. Prob'ly meant a jinny, like in those stories about Aladdin and the Seven Veils. Anyway, I gotta go. You take care of yourself."

"You too, Ivy. Merry Christmas."

She cawed her rainbird laugh again. "Almost forgot about that. You have one, too. Don't forget to give your girl a present."

She trotted to her old car with my coat-her coat, now-thrown over her shoulders. I never saw her again.

17.

The rain only froze on the bridges, and I knew from my other life-the one in New England-to be careful on those, but it was still a long drive back to Jodie. I had no more than put the water on for a cup of tea when the phone rang. This time it was Sadie.

"I've been trying to get you since suppertime to ask you about Coach Borman's Christmas Eve bash. It starts at three. I'll go if you want to take me, because then we can get away early. Say we've got dinner reservations at The Saddle, or something. I need to RSVP, though."

I saw my own invitation lying next to my typewriter, and felt a little twinge of guilt. It had been there for three days, and I hadn't even opened it.

"Do you want to go?" I asked.

"I wouldn't mind making an appearance." There was a pause. "Where have you been all this time?"

"Fort Worth." I almost added, Christmas shopping. But I didn't. The only thing I'd bought in Fort Worth was some information. And a housekey.

"Were you shopping?"

Again I had to fight not to lie. "I . . . Sadie, I really can't say."

There was a long, long pause. I found myself wishing I smoked. Probably I had developed a contact addiction. G.o.d knew I was smoking by proxy all day, every day. The teachers' room was a constant blue haze.

"Is it a woman, George? Another woman? Or am I being nosy?"

Well, there was Ivy, but that wasn't the kind of woman she was talking about.