11/22/63

“First, let’s have that drink. I can use one.”

The door opened on a parlor that took up the front half of the house. He told me to whoa, as if I were a horse, and lit a Coleman lantern. By its light I saw furniture of the type that is called “old but serviceable.” There was a beautiful braided rug on the floor. No GED diploma on any of the walls — and of course no framed theme titled “The Day That Changed My Life”—but there were a great many Catholic icons and lots of pictures. It was with no surprise that I recognized some of the people in them. I had met them, after all.

“Lock that behind you, would you?”

I closed us off from the dark and disturbing Lisbon Falls, and ran both bolts.

“Deadbolt, too, if you don’t mind.”

I twisted it and heard a heavy clunk. Harry, meanwhile, was rolling around his parlor and lighting the same sort of long-chimneyed kerosene lamps I vaguely remembered seeing in my gramma Sarie’s house. It was a better light for the room than the Coleman lamp, and when I killed its hot white glow, Harry Dunning nodded approvingly.

“What’s your name, sir? You already know mine.”

“Jake Epping. Don’t suppose that rings any bells with you, does it?”

He considered, then shook his head. “Should it?”

“Probably not.”

He stuck out his hand. It shook slightly with some incipient palsy. “I’ll shake with you, just the same. That could have been nasty.”

I shook his hand gladly. Hello, new friend. Hello, old friend.

“Okay, now that we got that took care of, we can drink with clear consciences. I’ll get us that single malt.” He started for the kitchen, rolling his wheels with arms that were a little shaky but still strong. The chair had a small motor, but either it didn’t work or he was saving the battery. He looked back over his shoulder at me. “Not dangerous, are you? I mean, to me?”

“Not to you, Harry.” I smiled. “I’m your good angel.”

“This is fucking peculiar,” he said. “But these days, what isn’t?”

He went into the kitchen. Soon more light glowed. Homey orange-yellow light. In here, everything seemed homey. But out there… in the world…

Just what in the hell had I done?

2

“What’ll we drink to?” I asked when we had our glasses in hand.

“Better times than these. Will that work for you, Mr. Epping?”

“It works fine. And make it Jake.”

We clinked. Drank. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had anything stronger than Lone Star beer. The whisky was like hot honey.

“No electricity?” I asked, looking around at the lamps. He had turned them all low, presumably to save on oil.

He made a sour face. “Not from around here, are you?”

A question I’d heard before, from Frank Anicetti, at the Fruit. On my very first trip into the past. Then I’d told a lie. I didn’t want to do that now.

“I don’t quite know how to answer that, Harry.”

He shrugged it off. “We’re supposed to get juice three days a week, and this is supposed to be one of the days, but it cut off around six P.M. I believe in Province Electric like I believe in Santa Claus.”

As I considered this, I remembered the stickers on the cars. “How long has Maine been a part of Canada?”

He gave me a how-crazy-are-you look, but I could see he was enjoying this. The strangeness of it and also the there-ness of it. I wondered when he’d last had a real conversation with someone. “Since 2005. Did someone bump you on the head, or something?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.” I went to his wheelchair, dropped on the knee that still bent willingly and without pain, and showed him the place on the back of my head where the hair had never grown back. “I took a bad beating a few months ago—”

“Yuh, I seen you limping when you ran at those kids.”

“—and now there’s lots of things I don’t remember.”

The floor suddenly shook beneath us. The flames in the kerosene lamps trembled. The pictures on the walls rattled, and a two-feet-high plaster Jesus with his arms outstretched took a jittery stroll toward the edge of the mantelpiece. He looked like a guy contemplating suicide, and given the current state of things as I had observed them, I couldn’t blame him.

“Popper,” Harry said matter-of-factly when the shaking stopped. “You remember those, right?”

“No.” I got up, went to the mantelpiece, and pushed Jesus back beside his Holy Mother.

“Thanks. I’ve already lost half the damn disciples off the shelf in my bedroom, and I mourn every one. They were my mom’s. Poppers are earth tremors. We get a lot of em, but most of the big-daddy quakes are in the Midwest or out California way. Europe and China too, of course.”

“People tying up their boats in Idaho, are they?” I was still at the mantelpiece, now looking at the framed pictures.

“Hasn’t got that bad yet, but… you know four of the Japanese islands are gone, right?”

I looked at him with dismay. “No.”