11/22/63

My plan was no plan at all, really; I’d just follow the trail Al had already blazed. I’d drive to Durham early in the day, park near the fallen tree, struggle with it, then pretend to have a heart attack when Cullum came along and pitched in. But after locating Cullum’s house, I happened to stop for a cold drink at Brownie’s Store half a mile away, and saw a poster in the window that gave me an idea. It was crazy, but sort of interesting.

The poster was headed ANDROSCOGGIN COUNTY CRIBBAGE TOURNAMENT RESULTS. There followed a list of about fifty names. The tourney winner, from West Minot, had scored ten thousand “pegs,” whatever they were. The runner-up had scored ninety-five hundred. In third place, with 8,722 pegs — the name had been circled in red, which was what drew my attention in the first place — was Andy Cullum.

Coincidences happen, but I’ve come to believe they are actually quite rare. Something is at work, okay? Somewhere in the universe (or behind it), a great machine is ticking and turning its fabulous gears.

The next day, I drove back to Cullum’s house just shy of five in the afternoon. I parked behind his Ford woody station wagon and went to the door.

A pleasant-faced woman wearing a ruffled apron and holding a baby in the crook of her arm opened to my knock, and I knew just looking at her that I was doing the right thing. Because Carolyn Poulin wasn’t going to be the only victim on the fifteenth of November, just the one who’d end up in a wheelchair.

“Yes?”

“My name’s George Amberson, ma’am.” I tipped my hat to her. “I wonder if I could speak to your husband.”

Sure I could. He’d already come up behind her and put an arm around her shoulders. A young guy, not yet thirty, now wearing an expression of pleasant inquiry. His baby reached for his face, and when Cullum kissed the kid’s fingers, she laughed. Cullum extended his hand to me, and I shook it.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Amberson?”

I held up the cribbage board. “I noticed at Brownie’s that you’re quite the player. So I have a proposal for you.”

Mrs. Cullum looked alarmed. “My husband and I are Methodists, Mr. Amberson. The tournaments are just for fun. He won a trophy, and I’m happy to polish it for him so it looks good on the mantel, but if you want to play cards for money, you’ve come to the wrong household.” She smiled. I could see it cost her an effort, but it was still a good one. I liked her. I liked both of them.

“She’s right.” Cullum sounded regretful but firm. “I used to play penny-a-peg back when I was working in the woods, but that was before I met Marnie.”

“I’d be crazy to play you for money,” I said, “because I don’t play at all. But I want to learn.”

“In that case, come on in,” he said. “I’ll be happy to teach you. Won’t take but fifteen minutes, and it’s an hour yet before we eat our dinner. Shoot a pickle, if you can add to fifteen and count to thirty-one, you can play cribbage.”

“I’m sure there’s more to it than a little counting and adding, or you wouldn’t have placed third in the Androscoggin Tournament,” I said. “And I actually want a little more than to just learn the rules. I want to buy a day of your time. November the fifteenth, to be exact. From ten in the morning until four in the afternoon, let’s say.”

Now his wife began to look scared. She was holding the baby close to her chest.

“For those six hours of your time, I’ll pay you two hundred dollars.”

Cullum frowned. “What’s your game, mister?”

“I’m hoping to make it cribbage.” That, however, wasn’t going to be enough. I saw it on their faces. “Look, I’m not going to try and kid you that there isn’t more to it, but if I tried to explain, you’d think I was crazy.”

“I think that already,” Marnie Cullum said. “Send him on his way, Andy.”

I turned to her. “It’s nothing bad, it’s nothing illegal, it’s not a scam, and it’s not dangerous. I take my oath on it.” But I was starting to think it wasn’t going to work, oath or no oath. It had been a bad idea. Cullum would be doubly suspicious when he met me near the Friends’ Meeting House on the afternoon of the fifteenth.

But I kept pushing. It was a thing I’d learned to do in Derry.

“It’s just cribbage,” I said. “You teach me the game, we play for a few hours, I give you two hundred bucks, and we all part friends. What do you say?”

“Where are you from, Mr. Amberson?”

“Upstate in Derry, most recently. I’m in commercial real estate. Right now I’m vacationing on Sebago Lake before heading back down south. Do you want some names? References, so to speak?” I smiled. “People who’ll tell you I’m not nuts?”

“He goes out in the woods on Saturdays during hunting season,” Mrs. Cullum said. “It’s the only chance he gets, because he works all week and when he gets home it’s so close to dark it doesn’t even pay to load a gun.”