11/22/63: A Novel (58 page)

“Her residency requirement will be fulfilled by the end of the month, but she’s decided to stay out there until the end of summer vacation. She says the tips are very good.”

“Did you ask her for a picture of her soon-to-be ex-husband?”

“Just before she left. She said she has none. She believes her parents have several, but she refused to write them about it. Said they’d never given up on the marriage, and it would give them false hope. She also said she believed you were overreacting.
Wildly
overreacting was the phrase she used.”

That sounded like my Sadie.
Only she wasn’t mine anymore. Now she was just
hey waitress, bring us another round . . . and bend a little lower this time.
Every man has a jealous-bone, and mine was twanging hard on the morning of July fifth.

“George? I have no doubt she still cares for you, and it might not be too late to clear this mess up.”

I thought of Lee Oswald, who wouldn’t make his attempt on General Edwin Walker’s life for another nine months. “It’s too early,” I said.

“I beg pardon?”

“Nothing. It’s good to talk to you, Miz Ellie, but pretty soon the operator’s going to come on the line asking for more money, and I’m all out of quarters.”

“I don’t suppose you could get down this way for a burger and a shake, could you? At the diner? If so, I’ll invite Deke Simmons to join us. He asks about you almost every day.”

The thought of going back to Jodie and seeing my friends from the high school was probably the only thing that could have cheered me up that morning. “Absolutely. Would this evening be too soon? Say five o’clock?”

“It’s perfect. We country mice eat early.”

“Fine. I’ll be there. My treat.”

“I’ll match you for it.”

Al Stevens had hired a girl I knew from Business English, and I was touched by the way she lit up when she saw who was sitting with Ellie and Deke. “Mr. Amberson! Wow, it’s great to see you! How’re you doing?”

“Fine, Dorrie,” I said.

“Well, order
big.
You’ve lost weight.”

“It’s true,” Ellie said. “You need a good taking-care-of.”

Deke’s Mexican tan was gone, which told me he was spending most of his retirement indoors,
and whatever weight I’d lost, he’d found. He shook my hand with a hard grip and told me how good it was to see me. There was no artifice in the man. Or in Ellie Dockerty, for that matter. Leaving this place for Mercedes Street, where they celebrated the Fourth by blowing up chickens, began to seem increasingly mad to me, no matter what I knew about the future. I certainly hoped Kennedy was worth it.

We ate hamburgers, french fries sizzling with grease, and apple pie à la mode. We talked about who was doing what, and had a laugh over Danny Laverty, who was finally writing his long-bruited book. Ellie said that according to Danny’s wife, the first chapter was titled “I Enter the Fray.”

Toward the end of the meal, as Deke stuffed his pipe with Prince Albert, Ellie lifted a tote she had stored under the table and produced a large book, which she passed above the greasy remains of our meal. “Page eighty-nine. And push back from that unsightly puddle of ketchup, if you please. This is strictly on loan, and I want to send it back in the same condition I received it.”

It was a yearbook called
Tiger Tails,
and had come from a school a lot more fancy-schmancy than DCHS.
Tiger Tails
was bound in leather instead of cloth, the pages were thick and glossy, and the ad section at the back was easily a hundred pages thick. The institution it memorialized—
exalted
might be a better word—was Longacre Day School in Savannah. I thumbed through the uniformly vanilla senior section and thought there might be a black face or two there by the year 1990. Maybe.

“Holy joe,” I said. “Sadie must have taken a pretty good whack in the wallet when she came to Jodie from here.”

“I believe she was very anxious to get away,” Deke said quietly. “And I’m sure she had her reasons.”

I turned to page eighty-nine. It was headed LONGACRE SCIENCE DEPARTMENT. There was a corny group shot of four teachers in white lab coats holding bubbling beakers—paging Dr. Jekyll—and below it were four studio shots. John Clayton didn’t look a bit like Lee Oswald, but he had the same sort of pleasantly forgettable face, and his lips were dimpled
at the corners by the same suggestion of a smile. Was that the ghost of amusement or barely hidden contempt? Hell, maybe it was just the best the obsessive-compulsive bastard could do when the photographer told him to say cheese. The only distinguishing features were hollows at the temples, which almost matched the dimples at the corners of his mouth. The photo wasn’t color, but his eyes were light enough to make me pretty sure they were either blue or gray.

I turned the book toward my friends. “See these indents on the sides of his head? Is that just a natural formation, like a hooked nose or a chin-dimple?”

They said “No” at exactly the same time. It was sort of comical.

“They’re forceps marks,” Deke said. “Made when some doc finally got tired of waiting and dragged him out of his mama. They usually go away, but not always. If his hair wasn’t thinning on the sides, you wouldn’t see them at all, would you?”

“And he hasn’t been around, asking about Sadie?” I asked.

“No.” They said it in unison again. Ellen added, “No one’s been asking after her. Except for you, George. You damned fool.” She smiled as people do when it’s a joke, but not really.

I looked at my watch and said, “I’ve kept you folks long enough. I’ll be heading on back.”

“Want to take a stroll down to the football field before you go?” Deke asked. “Coach Borman said to bring you by, if I got a chance. He’s got them practicing already, of course.”

“In the cool of the evening, at least,” Ellie said, getting up. “Thank God for small favors. Remember when the Hastings boy got a heatstroke three years ago, Deke? And how they thought it was a heart attack at first?”

“I can’t imagine why he’d want to see me,” I said. “I turned one of his prize defensemen to the dark side of the universe.” I lowered my voice and whispered hoarsely,
“Theater arts!”

Deke smiled. “Yeah, but you saved another one from maybe getting red-shirted at ’Bama. Or at least that’s what Borman thinks. Because, my son, that’s what Jim LaDue told him.”

At first I didn’t have any idea what he was talking
about. Then I remembered the Sadie Hawkins, and grinned. “All I did was catch three of them passing a bottle of rotgut. I threw it over the fence.”

Deke had stopped smiling. “One of those boys was Vince Knowles. Did you know he was drunk when he rolled that truck of his?”

“No.” But it didn’t surprise me. Cars and booze have always been a popular and sometimes lethal high school cocktail.

“Yessir. That, combined with whatever you said to those boys at the dance, got LaDue to swear off drinking.”

“What
did
you say?” Ellie asked. She was fumbling her wallet out of her purse, but I was too lost in the memory of that night to argue with her about the check.
Do not fuck up your futures:
that was what I’d said. And Jim LaDue, he of the lazy I’ve-got-the-world-on-a-string smile, had actually taken it to heart. We never know which lives we influence, or when, or why. Not until the future eats the present, anyway. We know when it’s too late.

“I don’t remember,” I said.

Ellie trotted off to pay the check.

I said, “Tell Miz Dockerty to keep an eye out for the man in that picture, Deke. You too. He may not come around, I’m starting to think I could’ve been wrong about that, but he might. And he’s not wrapped too tightly.”

Deke promised he would.

I almost didn’t walk over to the football field. Jodie was particularly beautiful in the slanting light of that early July evening and I think part of me wanted to get my ass back to Fort Worth before I lost the will to go there. I wonder how much would have changed if I had skipped that little side trip? Maybe nothing. Maybe a lot.

Coach was running a final two or three plays with the special teams kids while the rest of the players
sat on the bench with their helmets off and sweat trickling down their faces.
“Red two, red two!”
Coach shouted. He saw Deke and me and lifted a spread hand:
five minutes.
Then he turned back to the small and weary squad still on the field.
“One more time! Let’s see you make that daring leap from no-ass to poor-ass, what do you say?”

I looked across the field and saw a guy in a sport coat loud enough to scream. He was trotting up and down the sidelines with earphones on his head and what looked like a salad bowl in his hands. His glasses reminded me of someone. At first I couldn’t make the connection, then I did: he looked a little like Silent Mike McEachern. My own personal Mr. Wizard.

“Who’s that?” I asked Deke.

Deke squinted. “Damn if I know.”

Coach clapped his hands and told his kids to shower up. He walked over to the bleachers and clapped me on the back. “Howza goin, Shakespeare?”

“Pretty good,” I said, smiling gamely.

“Shakespeare, kick in the rear, that’s what we used to say when we were kids.” He laughed heartily.

“
We
used to say Coach, Coach, step on a roach.”

Coach Borman looked puzzled. “Really?”

“Nah, just goofin witcha.” And sort of wishing I’d acted on my first impulse and scooted out of town after supper. “How does the team look?”

“Aw, they good boys, they goan try hard, but it won’t be the same without Jimmy. Did you see the new billboard out there where 109 splits off from Highway 77?” Only he said it
seb’ny-seb’n.

“Too used to it to notice, I guess.”

“Well, have a look on the way out, podna. Boosters done it up right. Jimmy’s mama ’bout cried when she saw it. I understand I owe you a vote a thanks for gettin that young man to swear off the drinkin.” He removed his cap with the big
C
on it, armed sweat from his forehead, put it back on, and sighed
heavily. “Probably owe that fuckin nummie Vince Knowles a vote a thanks, too, but puttin him on my prayer list is the best I can do.”

I recalled that Coach was a Baptist of the hard-shell variety. In addition to prayer lists, he probably believed all that shit about Noah’s sons.

“No thanks necessary,” I said. “Just doing my job.”

He looked at me keenly. “You ought to still be doing it, not jerking off over some book. Sorry if that’s too blunt, but it’s how I feel.”

“That’s all right.” It was. I liked him better for saying it. In another world, he might even have been right. I pointed across the field, where the Silent Mike look-alike was packing his salad bowl into a steel case. His earphones were still hanging around his neck. “Who’s that, Coach?”

Coach snorted. “Think his name is Hale Duff. Or maybe it’s Cale. New sports guy at the Big Damn.” He was talking about KDAM, Denholm County’s one radio station, a teensy sundowner that ran farm reports in the morning, country music in the afternoons, and rock after school let out. The kids enjoyed the station breaks as much as the music; there would be an explosion followed by an old cowboy type saying, “K-DAM!
That
was a big ’un!” In the Land of Ago, this is considered the height of risqué wit.

“What’s that contraption of his, Coach?” Deke asked. “Do you know?”

“I know, all right,” Coach said, “and if he thinks I’m gonna let him use it during a game broadcast, he’s out of his sneaker. Think I want ever’one who’s got a radio hearin me call my boys a bunch of goddam pussies when they can’t deny the rush on third and short?”

I turned to him, very slowly. “What are you talking about?”

“I didn’t believe him, so I tried it myself,” the Coach said. Then, with mounting indignation: “I heard Boof Redford tellin one of the freshmen that my balls were bigger than my brains!”

“Really,” I said. My heartbeat had picked up appreciably.

“Duffer there said he built it in his
goddam garage,” Coach grumbled. “Said when it’s turned up to full gain, you can hear a cat fart on the next block.
That’s
bullshit, accourse, but Redford was on the other side of the field when I heard him make his smart remark.”

The sports guy, who looked all of twenty-four, picked up his steel equipment case and waved with his free hand. Coach waved back, then muttered under his breath, “The gameday I let him on my field with
that
thing will be the day I put a Kennedy sticker on my fucking Dodge.”

It was almost dark when I got to the intersection of 77 and 109, but a bloated orange moon was rising in the east, and it was good enough to see the billboard. It was Jim LaDue, smiling with his football helmet in one hand, a pigskin in the other, and a lock of black hair tumbled heroically over his forehead. Above the picture, in star-spangled letters, was CONGRATULATIONS TO JIM LADUE, ALL-STATE QUARTERBACK 1960 AND 1961! GOOD LUCK AT ALABAMA! WE WILL NEVER FORGET YOU!

And below, in red letters that seemed to scream:

“JIMLA!”

Two days later, I walked into Satellite Electronics and waited while my host sold an iPod-sized transistor to a gum-chewing kid. When he was out the door (already pressing the little radio’s earpiece into place), Silent Mike turned to me. “Why, it’s my old pal Doe. How can I help you today?” Then, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper: “More bugged lamps?”

“Not today,” I said. “Tell me, have you ever heard of something called an omnidirectional microphone?”

His lips parted over his teeth in
a smile. “My friend,” he said, “you have once more come to the right place.”

I got a phone put in, and the first
person I called was Ellen Dockerty, who was happy to give me Sadie’s Reno address. “I have the telephone number of the rooming house where she’s staying, too,” Ellen said. “If you want it.”

Of course I did, but if I had it, I would eventually give in to temptation and call. Something told me that would be a mistake.

“Just the address will be fine.”