11/22/63 Part 86

2.

It was a different desk clerk, but she gave me the same room. Of course she did. The rate was a little higher and the old TV had been replaced by a newer one, but the same sign was propped against the rabbit ears on top: DO NOT USE "TINFOIL!" The reception was still s.h.i.tty. There was no news, only soap operas.

I turned it off. I put the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door. I drew the curtains. Then I stripped and crawled into bed, where-aside from a dreamlike stumble to the bathroom to relieve my bladder-I slept for twelve hours. When I woke up, it was the middle of the night, the power was off, and a strong northwest wind was blowing outside. A brilliant crescent moon rode high in the sky. I got the extra blanket from the closet and slept for another five hours.

When I woke up, dawn lit the Tamarack Motor Court with the clear hues and shadows of a National Geographic photograph. There was frost on the cars pulled up in front of a scattering of units, and I could see my breath. I tried the phone, expecting nothing, but a young man in the office answered promptly, although he sounded as if he were still half-asleep. Sure, he said, the phones were fine and he'd be happy to call me a taxi-where did I want to go?

Lisbon Falls, I told him. Corner of Main Street and the Old Lewiston Road.

"The Fruit?" he asked.

I'd been away so long that for a moment it seemed like a total non sequitur. Then it clicked. "That's right. The Kennebec Fruit."

Going home, I told myself. G.o.d help me, I'm going home.

Only that was wrong-2011 wasn't home, and I would only be staying there a short time-a.s.suming, that was, I could get there at all. Perhaps only minutes. Jodie was home now. Or would be, once Sadie arrived there. Sadie the virgin. Sadie with her long legs and long hair and her propensity to trip over anything that might be in the way . . . only at the critical moment, I was the one who had taken the fall.

Sadie, with her unmarked face.

She was home.

3.

That morning's taxi driver was a solidly built woman in her fifties, bundled into an old black parka and wearing a Red Sox hat instead of one with a badge reading LICENSED LIVERY. As we turned left onto 196, in the direction of The Falls, she said: "D'ja hear the news? I bet you didn't-the power's off up this way, ennit?"

"What news is that?" I asked, although a dreadful certainty had already stolen into my bones: Kennedy was dead. I didn't know if it had been an accident, a heart attack, or an a.s.sa.s.sination after all, but he was dead. The past was obdurate and Kennedy was dead.

"Earthquake in Los Angeles." She p.r.o.nounced it Las Angle-ees. "People been sayin for years that California was just gonna drop off into the ocean, and it seems like maybe they're gonna turn out to be right." She shook her head. "I ain't gonna say it's because of the loose way they live-those movie stars and all-but I'm a pretty good Baptist, and I ain't gonna say it's not."

We were pa.s.sing the Lisbon Drive-In now. CLOSED FOR THE SEASON, the marquee read. SEE YOU WITH LOTS MORE IN '64!

"How bad was it?"

"They're saying seven thousand dead, but when you hear a number like that, you know it'll go higher. Most of the d.a.m.n bridges fell down, the freeways are in pieces, and there's fires everywhere. Seems like the part of town where the Negroes live has pretty much burnt flat. Warts! Ain't that a h.e.l.l of a name for a part of a town? I mean, even one where black folks live? Warts! Huh!"

I didn't reply. I was thinking of Rags, the puppy we'd had when I was nine, and still living in Wisconsin. I was allowed to play with him in the backyard on school mornings until the bus came. I was teaching him to sit, fetch, roll over, stuff like that, and he was learning-smart puppy! I loved him a lot.

When the bus came, I was supposed to close the backyard gate before I ran to get on board. Rags always lay down on the kitchen stoop. My mother would call him in and feed him breakfast after she got back from taking my dad to the local train station. I always remembered to close the gate-or at least, I don't remember ever forgetting to do it-but one day when I came home from school, my mother told me Rags was dead. He'd been in the street and a delivery truck had run him down. She never reproached me with her mouth, not once, but she reproached me with her eyes. Because she had loved Rags, too.

"I closed him in like always," I said through my tears, and-as I say-I believe that I did. Maybe because I always had. That evening my dad and I buried him in the backyard. Probably not legal, Dad said, but I won't tell if you won't.

I lay awake for a long, long time that night, haunted by what I couldn't remember and terrified of what I might have done. Not to mention guilty. That guilt lingered a long time, a year or more. If I could have remembered for sure, one way or the other, I'm positive it would have left me more quickly. But I couldn't. Had I shut the gate, or hadn't I? Again and again I cast my mind to my puppy's final morning and could remember nothing clearly except heaving his rawhide strip and yelling, "Fetch, Rags, fetch!"

It was like that on my taxi ride to The Falls. First I tried to tell myself that there always had been an earthquake in late November of 1963. It was just one of those factoids-like the attempted a.s.sa.s.sination of Edwin Walker-that I had missed. As I'd told Al Templeton I majored in English, not history.

It wouldn't wash. If an earthquake like that had happened in the America I'd lived in before going down the rabbit-hole, I would have known. There were far bigger disasters-the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 killed over two hundred thousand-but seven thousand was a big number for America, more than twice as many fatalities as had occurred on 9/11.

Next I asked myself how what I'd done in Dallas could possibly have caused what this st.u.r.dy woman claimed had happened in LA. The only answer I could come up with was the b.u.t.terfly effect, but how could it kick into gear so soon? No way. Absolutely not. There was no conceivable chain of cause and effect between the two events.

And still a deep part of my mind whispered, You did this. You caused Rags's death by either leaving the backyard gate open or not closing it firmly enough to latch . . . and you caused this. You and Al spouted a lot of n.o.ble talk about saving thousands of lives in Vietnam, but this is your first real contribution to the New History: seven thousand dead in LA.

It simply couldn't be. Even if it was. . . .

There's no downside, Al had said. If things turn to s.h.i.t, you just take it all back. Easy as erasing a dirty word off a chalkb- "Mister?" my driver said. "We're here." She turned to look at me curiously. "We've been here for almost three minutes. Little early for shopping, though. Are you sure this is where you want to be?"

I only knew this was where I had to be. I paid what was on the meter, added a generous tip (it was the FBI's money, after all), wished her a nice day, and got out.

4.

Lisbon Falls was as stinky as ever, but at least the power was on; the blinker at the intersection was flashing as it swung in the northwest wind. The Kennebec Fruit was dark, the front window still empty of the apples, oranges, and bananas that would be displayed there later on. The sign hanging in the door of the greenfront read WILL OPEN AT 10 A.M. A few cars moved on Main Street and a few pedestrians scuttled along with their collars turned up. Across the street, however, the Worumbo mill was fully operational. I could hear the shat-HOOSH, shat-HOOSH of the weaving flats even from where I was standing. Then I heard something else: someone was calling me, although not by either of my names.

"Jimla! Hey, Jimla!"

I turned toward the mill, thinking: He's back. The Yellow Card Man is back from the dead, just like President Kennedy.

Only it wasn't the Yellow Card Man any more than the taxi driver who'd picked me up at the bus station was the same one who'd taken me from Lisbon Falls to the Tamarack Motor Court in 1958. Except the two drivers were almost the same, because the past harmonizes, and the man across the street was similar to the one who'd asked me for a buck because it was double-money day at the greenfront. He was a lot younger than the Yellow Card Man, and his black overcoat was newer and cleaner . . . but it was almost the same coat.

"Jimla! Over here!" He beckoned. The wind flapped the hem of the overcoat; it made the sign to his left swing on its chain the way the blinker was swinging on its wire. I could still read it, though: NO ADMITTANCE BEYOND THIS POINT UNTIL SEWER PIPE IS REPAIRED.

Five years, I thought, and that pesky sewer pipe's still busted.

"Jimla! Don't make me come over there and get you!"

He probably could; his suicidal predecessor had been able to make it all the way to the greenfront. But I felt sure that if I went limping down the Old Lewiston Road fast enough, this new version would be out of luck. He might be able to follow me to the Red & White Supermarket, where Al had bought his meat, but if I made it as far as t.i.tus Chevron, or the Jolly White Elephant, I could turn around and thumb my nose at him. He was stuck near the rabbit-hole. If he hadn't been, I would have seen him in Dallas. I knew it as surely as I knew that gravity keeps folks from floating into outer s.p.a.ce.

As if to confirm this, he called, "Jimla, please!" The desperation I saw in his face was like the wind: thin but somehow relentless.

I looked both ways for traffic, saw none, and crossed the street to where he stood. As I approached, I saw two other differences. Like his predecessor, he was wearing a fedora, but it was clean instead of filthy. And as with his predecessor, a colored card was poking up from the hatband like an old-fashioned reporter's press pa.s.s. Only this one wasn't yellow, or orange, or black.

It was green.

5.

"Thank G.o.d," he said. He took one of my hands in both of his and squeezed it. The flesh of his palms was almost as cold as the air. I pulled back from him, but gently. I sensed no danger about him, only that thin and insistent desperation. Although that in itself might be dangerous; it might be as keen as the blade of the knife John Clayton had used on Sadie's face.

"Who are you?" I asked. "And why do you call me Jimla? Jim LaDue is a long way from here, mister."

"I don't know who Jim LaDue is," the Green Card Man said. "I've stayed away from your string as much as-"

He stopped. His face contorted. The sides of his hands rose to his temples and pressed there, as if to hold his brains in. But it was the card stuck in the band of his hat that captured most of my attention. The color wasn't entirely fixed. For a moment it swirled and swam, reminding me of the screensaver that takes over my computer after it's been idle for fifteen minutes or so. The green swirled into a pale canary yellow. Then, as he slowly lowered his hands, it returned to green. But maybe not as bright a green as when I'd first noticed it.

"I've stayed away from your string as much as possible," the man in the black overcoat said, "but it hasn't been entirely possible. Besides, there are so many strings now. Thanks to you and your friend the cook, there's so much c.r.a.p."

"I don't understand any of this," I said, but that wasn't quite true. I could at least figure out the card this man (and his wet-brain forerunner) carried. They were like the badges worn by people who worked in nuclear power plants. Only instead of measuring radiation, the cards monitored . . . what? Sanity? Green, your bag of marbles was full. Yellow, you'd started to lose them. Orange, call for the men in the white coats. And when your card turned black . . .

The Green Card Man was watching me carefully. From across the street he'd looked no older than thirty. Over here, he looked closer to forty-five. Only, when you got close enough to look into his eyes, he looked older than the ages and not right in the head.

"Are you some kind of guardian? Do you guard the rabbit-hole?"

He smiled . . . or tried to. "That's what your friend called it." From his pocket he took a pack of cigarettes. There was no label on them. That was something I'd never seen before, either here in the Land of Ago or in the Land of Ahead.

"Is this the only one?"

He produced a lighter, cupped it to keep the wind from blowing the flame out, then set fire to the end of his cigarette. The smell was sweet, more like marijuana than tobacco. But it wasn't marijuana. Although he never said, I believe it was something medicinal. Perhaps not so different from my Goody's Headache Powder.

"There are a few. Think of a gla.s.s of ginger ale that's been left out and forgotten."

"Okay . . ."

"After two or three days, almost all the carbonation is gone, but there are still a few bubbles left. What you call the rabbit-hole isn't a hole at all. It's a bubble. As far as guarding . . . no. Not really. It would be nice, but there's very little we could do that wouldn't make things worse. That's the trouble with traveling in time, Jimla."

"My name is Jake."

"Fine. What we do, Jake, is watch. Sometimes we warn. As Kyle tried to warn your friend the cook."

So the crazy guy had a name. A perfectly normal one. Kyle, for G.o.d's sake. It made things worse because it made them more real.

"He never tried to warn Al! All he ever did was ask for a buck to buy cheap wine with!"

The Green Card Man dragged on his cigarette and looked down at the cracked concrete, frowning as if something were written there. Shat-HOOSH, shat-HOOSH said the weaving flats. "He did at first," he said. "In his way. Your friend was too excited by the new world he'd found to pay attention. And by then Kyle was already tottering. It's a . . . how would you put it? An occupational hazard. What we do puts us under enormous mental strain. Do you know why?"

I shook my head.

"Think a minute. How many little explorations and shopping trips did your cook friend make even before he got the idea of going to Dallas to stop Oswald? Fifty? A hundred? Two hundred?"

I tried to remember how long Al's Diner had stood in the mill courtyard and couldn't. "Probably even more than that."

"And what did he tell you? Each trip was the first time?"

"Yes. A complete reset."

He laughed wearily. "Sure he did. People believe what they see. And still, he should have known better. You should have known better. Each trip creates its own string, and when you have enough strings, they always get snarled. Did it ever cross your friend's mind to wonder how he could buy the same meat over and over? Or why things he brought from 1958 never disappeared when he made the next trip?"

"I asked him about that. He didn't know, so he dismissed it."

He started to smile, but it turned into a wince. The green once more started to fade out of the card stuck in his hat. He dragged deep on his sweet-smelling cigarette. The color returned and steadied. "Yeah, ignoring the obvious. It's what we all do. Even after his sanity began to totter, Kyle undoubtedly knew that his trips to yonder liquor store were making his condition worse, but he went on, regardless. I don't blame him; I'm sure the wine eased his pain. Especially toward the end. Things might have been better if he hadn't been able to get to the liquor store-if it was outside the circle-but it wasn't. And really, who can say? There is no blaming here, Jake. No condemnation."

That was good to hear, but only because it meant we could converse about this lunatic subject like halfway rational men. Not that his feelings mattered much to me, either way; I still had to do what I had to do. "What's your name?"

"Zack Lang. From Seattle, originally."

"Seattle when?"

"It's a question with no relevance to the current discussion."

"It hurts you to be here, doesn't it?"

"Yes. My own sanity won't last much longer, if I don't get back. And the residual effects will be with me forever. High suicide rate among our kind, Jake. Very high. Men-and we are men, not aliens or supernatural beings, if that's what you were thinking-aren't made to hold multiple reality-strings in their heads. It's not like using your imagination. It's not like that at all. We have training, of course, but you can still feel it eating into you. Like acid."

"So every trip isn't a complete reset."

"Yes and no. It leaves residue. Every time your cook friend-"

"His name was Al."

"Yes, I suppose I knew that, but my memory has started to break down. It's like Alzheimer's, only it's not Alzheimer's. It's because the brain can't help trying to reconcile all those thin overlays of reality. The strings create multiple images of the future. Some are clear, most are hazy. That's probably why Kyle thought your name was Jimla. He must have heard it along one of the strings."

He didn't hear it, I thought. He saw it on some kind of String-O-Vision. On a billboard in Texas. Maybe even through my eyes.

"You don't know how lucky you are, Jake. For you, time-travel is simple."

Not all that simple, I thought.

"There were paradoxes," I said. "All kinds of them. Weren't there?"

"No, that's the wrong word. It's residue. Didn't I just tell you that?" He honestly didn't seem sure. "It gums up the machine. Eventually a point will come where the machine simply . . . stops."