11/22/63

I nodded as if I agreed, then pushed the bills to Marnie, who snatched them up. “Thank you, Mr. Amberson.” She looked reproachfully at her husband, then back at me. “We can really use this.”

“Good.” I got up and stretched, hearing my spine crackle. Somewhere — five miles from here, maybe seven — Carolyn Poulin and her father were getting back into a pickemup with POULIN CONSTRUCTION AND CARPENTRY painted on the door. Maybe they’d gotten a deer, maybe not. Either way, I was sure they’d had a nice afternoon in the woods, talking about whatever fathers and daughters talk about, and good for them.

“Stay for supper, George,” Marnie said. “I’ve got beans and hot-dogs.”

So I stayed, and afterward we watched the news on the Cullums’ little table-model TV. There had been a hunting accident in New Hampshire, but none in Maine. I allowed myself to be talked into a second dish of Marnie’s apple cobbler, although I was full to bursting, then stood and thanked them very much for their hospitality.

Andy Cullum put out his hand. “Next time we play for free, all right?”

“You bet.” There was going to be no next time, and I think he knew that.

His wife did, too, it turned out. She caught up to me just before I got into my car. She had swaddled a blanket around the baby and put a little hat on her head, but Marnie had no coat on herself. I could see her breath, and she was shivering.

“Mrs. Cullum, you should go in before you catch your death of c—”

“What did you save him from?”

“I beg pardon?”

“I know that’s why you came. I prayed on it while you and Andy were out there on the porch. God sent me an answer, but not the whole answer. What did you save him from?”

I put my hands on her shivering shoulders and looked into her eyes. “Marnie… if God had wanted you to know that part, He would have told you.”

Abruptly she put her arms around me and hugged me. Surprised, I hugged her back. Baby Jenna, caught in between, goggled up at us.

“Whatever it was, thank you,” Marnie whispered in my ear. Her warm breath gave me goosebumps.

“Go inside, hon. Before you freeze.”

The front door opened. Andy was standing there, holding a can of beer. “Marnie? Marn?”

She stepped back. Her eyes were wide and dark. “God brought us a guardian angel,” she said. “I won’t speak of this, but I’ll hold it. And ponder it in my heart.” Then she hurried up the walk to where her husband was waiting.

Angel. It was the second time I’d heard that, and I pondered the word in my own heart, both that night while I lay in my cabin, waiting for sleep, and the next day as I drifted my canoe across still Sunday waters under a cold blue tilting-to-winter sky.

Guardian angel.

On Monday the seventeenth of November, I saw the first whirling flurries of snow, and took them as a sign. I packed up, drove down to Sebago Village, and found Mr. Winchell drinking coffee and eating doughnuts at the Lakeside Restaurant (in 1958, folks eat a lot of doughnuts). I gave him my keys and told him I’d had a wonderful, restorative time. His face lit up.

“That’s good, Mr. Amberson. That’s just how it’s s’posed to be. You’re paid until the end of the month. Give me an address where I can send you a refund for your last two weeks, and I’ll put a check in the mail.”

“I won’t be entirely sure where I’m going until the brass in the home office makes up its corporate mind,” I said, “but I’ll be sure to write you.” Time-travelers lie a lot.

He held out his hand. “Been a pleasure having you.”

I shook it. “The pleasure was all mine.”

I got in my car and drove south. That night I registered at Boston’s Parker House, and checked out the infamous Combat Zone. After the weeks of peace on Sebago, the neon jangled my eyes and the surging crowds of night prowlers — mostly young, mostly male, many wearing uniforms — made me feel both agoraphobic and homesick for those peaceful nights in western Maine, when the few stores closed at six and traffic dried up at ten.

I spent the following night at the Hotel Harrington, in D.C. Three days later I was on the west coast of Florida.

CHAPTER 12

1