11/22/63

But before she can finish, Donald Bellingham comes in through eight tall loudspeakers, right on cue: “Okay, Jodie, here’s a blast from the past, a platter that really matters, only the best and by request!”

Then it comes, that smooth brass intro from a long-gone band:

Bah-dah-dah… bah-dah-da-dee-dum…

“Oh my God, ‘In the Mood,’” Sadie says. “I used to lindy to this one.”

I hold out my hand. “Come on. Let’s do the thing.”

She laughs, shaking her head. “My swing-dancing days are far behind me, I’m afraid, Mr. Amberson.”

“But you’re not too old to waltz. As Donald used to say in the old days, ‘Out of your seats and on your feets.’ And call me George. Please.”

In the street, couples are jitterbugging. A few of them are even trying to lindy-hop, but none of them can swing it the way Sadie and I could swing it, back in the day. Not even close.

She takes my hand like a woman in a dream. She is in a dream, and so am I. Like all sweet dreams, it will be brief… but brevity makes sweetness, doesn’t it? Yes, I think so. Because when the time is gone, you can never get it back.

Party lights hang over the street, yellow and red and green. Sadie stumbles over someone’s chair, but I’m ready for this and catch her easily by the arm.

“Sorry, clumsy,” she says.

“You always were, Sadie. One of your more endearing traits.”

Before she can ask about that, I slip my arm around her waist. She slips hers around mine, still looking up at me. The lights skate across her cheeks and shine in her eyes. We clasp hands, fingers folding together naturally, and for me the years fall away like a coat that’s too heavy and too tight. In that moment I hope one thing above all others: that she was not too busy to find at least one good man, one who disposed of John Clayton’s fucking broom once and for all.

She speaks in a voice almost too low to be heard over the music, but I hear her — I always did. “Who are you, George?”

“Someone you knew in another life, honey.”

Then the music takes us, the music rolls away the years, and we dance.

January 2, 2009–December 18, 2010

Sarasota, Florida

Lovell, Maine

Afterword

Almost half a century has passed since John Kennedy was murdered in Dallas, but two questions linger: Was Lee Oswald really the trigger-man, and if so, did he act alone? Nothing I’ve written in 11/22/63 will provide answers to those questions, because time-travel is just an interesting make-believe. But if you, like me, are curious about why those questions still remain, I think I can give you a satisfactory two-word response: Karen Carlin. Not just a footnote to history, but a footnote to a footnote. And yet…

Jack Ruby owned a Dallas strip joint called the Carousel Club. Carlin, whose nom du burlesque was Little Lynn, danced there. On the night following the assassination, Ruby received a call from Miss Carlin, who was twenty-five dollars short on the December rent and desperately needed a loan to keep from being turned out into the street. Would he help?

Jack Ruby, who had other things on his mind, gave her the rough side of his tongue (in truth, it was the only side Dallas’s Sparky Jack seemed to have). He was appalled that the president he revered had been killed in his home city, and he spoke repeatedly to friends and relatives about how terrible this was for Mrs. Kennedy and her children. Ruby was heartsick at the thought of Jackie having to return to Dallas for Oswald’s trial. The widow would become a national spectacle, he said. Her grief would be used to sell tabloids.

Unless, of course, Lee Oswald came down with a bad case of the deads.

Everybody at the Dallas Police Department had at least a nodding acquaintance with Jack. He and his “wife”—that was what he called his little dachsund, Sheba — were frequent visitors at DPD. He handed out free passes to his clubs, and when cops showed up there, he bought them free drinks. So no one took any particular notice of him when he turned up at the station on Saturday, November twenty-third. When Oswald was paraded before the press, proclaiming his innocence and displaying a black eye, Ruby was there. He had a gun (yes, another.38, this one a Colt Cobra), and he fully intended to shoot Oswald with it. But the room was crowded; Ruby was shunted to the back; then Oswald was gone.

So Jack Ruby gave up.

Late Sunday morning, he went to the Western Union office a block or so from the DPD and sent “Little Lynn” a money order for twenty-five dollars. Then he wandered down to the cop-shop. He assumed that Oswald had already been transferred to the Dallas County Jail, and was surprised to see a crowd gathered in front of the police station. There were reporters, news vans, and your ordinary gawkers. The transfer hadn’t occurred on schedule.