11/22/63

“Don’t get down on yourself, all this is still new to you. You’ll want to start an account, though. I’d suggest no more than a thousand. Keep most of the dough in cash, and where you can grab it.”

“In case I have to come back in a hurry.”

“Right. And the credit cards are just identity-backers. The actual accounts I opened to get them are going to be wiped out when you go back through. They might come in handy, though — you can never tell.”

“Does George get his mail at Nineteen Bluebird Lane?”

“In 1958, Bluebird Lane’s just an address on a Sabattus plat map, buddy. The development where you live hasn’t been built yet. If anybody asks you about that, just say it’s a business thing. They’ll buy it. Business is like a god in ’58—everybody worships it but nobody understands it. Here.”

He tossed me a gorgeous man’s wallet. I gaped at it. “Is this ostrich?”

“I wanted you to look prosperous,” Al said. “Find some pictures to put in it along with your identification. I got you some other odds and ends, too. More ballpoint pens, one a fad item with a combination letter-opener and ruler on the end. A Scripto mechanical pencil. A pocket protector. In ’58 they’re considered necessary, not nerdy. A Bulova watch on a Speidel chrome expansion band — all the cool cats will dig that one, daddy. You can sort the rest out for yourself.” He coughed long and hard, wincing. When he stopped, sweat was standing out on his face in large drops.

“Al, when did you put all this together?”

“When I realized I wasn’t going to make it into 1963, I left Texas and came home. I already had you in mind. Divorced, no children, smart, best of all, young. Oh, here, almost forgot. This is the seed everything else grew from. Got the name off a gravestone in the St. Cyril’s boneyard and just wrote an application letter to the Maine Secretary of State.”

He handed me my birth certificate. I ran my fingers over the embossed franking. It had a silky official feel.

When I looked up, I saw he’d put another sheet of paper on the table. It was headed SPORTS 1958–1963. “Don’t lose it. Not only because it’s your meal ticket, but because you’d have a lot of questions to answer if it fell into the wrong hands. Especially when the picks start to prove out.”

I started to put everything back into the box, and he shook his head. “I’ve got a Lord Buxton briefcase for you in my closet, all nicely battered around the edges.”

“I don’t need it — I’ve got my backpack. It’s in the trunk of my car.”

He looked amused. “Where you’re going, nobody wears backpacks except Boy Scouts, and they only wear them when they’re going on hikes and Camporees. You’ve got a lot to learn, buddy, but if you step careful and don’t take chances, you’ll get there.”

I realized I was really going to do this, and it was going to happen right away, with almost no preparation. I felt like a visitor to the London docks of the seventeenth century who suddenly becomes aware he’s about to be shanghaied.

“But what do I do?” This came out in a near bleat.

He raised his eyebrows — bushy and now as white as the thinning hair on his head. “You save the Dunning family. Isn’t that what we’ve been talking about?”

“I don’t mean that. What do I do when people ask me how I make my living? What do I say?”

“Your rich uncle died, remember? Tell them you’re piecing your windfall inheritance out a little at a time, making it last long enough for you to write a book. Isn’t there a frustrated writer inside every English teacher? Or am I wrong about that?”

Actually, he wasn’t.

He sat looking at me — haggard, far too thin, but not without sympathy. Perhaps even pity. At last he said, very softly, “It’s big, isn’t it?”

“It is,” I said. “And Al… man… I’m just a little guy.”

“You could say the same of Oswald. A pipsqueak who shot from ambush. And according to Harry Dunning’s theme, his father’s just a mean drunk with a hammer.”

“He’s not even that anymore. He died of acute stomach poisoning in Shawshank State Prison. Harry said it was probably bad squeeze. That’s—”

“I know what squeeze is. I saw plenty when I was stationed in the Philippines. Even drank some, to my sorrow. But he’s not dead where you’re going. Oswald, either.”

“Al… I know you’re sick, and I know you’re in pain. But can you come down to the diner with me? I…” For the first and last time, I used his habitual form of address. “Buddy, I don’t want to start this alone. I’m scared.”

“Wouldn’t miss it.” He hooked a hand under his armpit and stood up with a grimace that rolled his lips back to the gumlines. “You get the briefcase. I’ll get dressed.”

8

It was quarter to eight when Al unlocked the door of the silver trailer that the Famous Fatburger called home. The glimmering chrome fixtures behind the counter looked ghostly. The stools seemed to whisper no one will sit on us again. The big old-fashioned sugar shakers seemed to whisper back no one will pour from us again — the party’s over.