11/22/63

A second later we were thrown against the partition between the driver’s seat and the passenger area. Glass broke. Metal screamed. The standees shot forward in a yelling clot of waving limbs, handbags, and dislodged for-best hats. The white workingman who’d said Boo-hoo was bent double over the fare machine that stood at the head of the aisle. The large housekeeper simply disappeared, buried under a human avalanche.

Sadie’s nose was bleeding and there was a puffy bruise rising like bread dough under her right eye. The driver was sprawled sideways behind the wheel. The wide front window was shattered and the forward view of the street was gone, replaced by rust-flowered metal. I could read ALLAS PUBLIC WOR. The stench of the hot asphalt the truck had been carrying was thick.

I turned Sadie toward me. “Are you all right? Is your head clear?”

“I’m okay, just shaken up. If you hadn’t shouted when you did, I wouldn’t have been.”

There were moans and cries of pain from the pile-up at the front of the bus. A man with a broken arm disengaged himself from the scrum and shook the driver, who rolled out of his seat. There was a wedge of glass protruding from the center of his forehead.

“Ah, Christ!” the man with the broken arm said. “I think he’s fuckin dead!”

Sadie got to the guy who’d hit the fare post and helped him back to where we’d been sitting. He was white-faced and groaning. I guessed that he’d been leading with his balls when he hit the post; it was just the right height. His black friend helped me get the housekeeper to her feet, but if she hadn’t been fully conscious and able to help us out, I don’t think we could have done much. That was three hundred pounds of female on the hoof. She was bleeding freely from the temple, and that particular uniform was never going to be of further use to her. I asked if she was okay.

“I think so, but I fetched my head one hell of a wallop. Lawsy!”

Behind us, the bus was in an uproar. Pretty soon there was going to be a stampede. I stood in front of Sadie and got her to put her arms around my waist. Given the shape of my knee, I probably should have been holding onto her, but instinct is instinct.

“We need to let these people off the bus,” I told the black workingman. “Run the handle.”

He tried, but it wouldn’t move. “Jammed!”

I thought that was bullshit; I thought the past was holding it shut. I couldn’t help him yank, either. I only had one good arm. The housekeeper — one side of her uniform now soaked with blood — pushed past me, almost knocking me off my feet. I felt Sadie’s arms jerk loose, but then she took hold again. The housekeeper’s hat had come askew, and the gauze of the veil was beaded with blood. The effect was grotesquely decorative, like tiny hollyberries. She reset the hat at the proper angle, then laid hold of the chrome doorhandle with the black workingman. “I’m gonna count three, then we gonna pull this sucker,” she told him. “You ready?”

He nodded.

“One… two… three!”

They yanked… or rather she did, and hard enough to split her dress open beneath one arm. The doors flopped open. From behind us came weak cheers.

“Thank y—” Sadie began, but then I was moving.

“Quick. Before we get trampled. Don’t let go of me.” We were the first ones off the bus. I turned Sadie toward Dallas. “Let’s go.”

“Jake, those people need help!”

“And I’m sure it’s on the way. Don’t look back. Look ahead, because that’s where the next trouble will come from.”

“How much trouble? How much more?”

“All the past can throw at us,” I said.

7

It took us twenty minutes to make four blocks from where our Number Three bus had come to grief. I could feel my knee swelling. It pulsed with each beat of my heart. We came to a bench and Sadie told me to sit down.

“There’s no time.”

“Sit, mister.” She gave me an unexpected push and I flopped onto the bench, which had an ad for a local funeral parlor on the back. Sadie nodded briskly, as a woman may when a troublesome chore has been accomplished, then stepped into Harry Hines Boulevard, opening her purse as she did so and rummaging in it. The throbbing in my knee was temporarily suspended as my heart climbed into my throat and stopped.

A car swerved around her, honking. It missed her by less than a foot. The driver shook his fist as he continued down the block, then popped up his middle finger for good measure. When I yelled at her to come back, she didn’t even look in my direction. She took out her wallet as the cars whiffed past, blowing her hair back from her scarred face. She was as cool as a spring morning. She got what she wanted, dropped the wallet back into her purse, then held a greenback high over her head. She looked like a high school cheerleader at a pep rally.

“Fifty dollars!” she shouted. “Fifty dollars for a ride into Dallas! Main Street! Main Street! Gotta see Kennedy! Fifty dollars!”