11/22/63

There were glow-in-the-dark hands on the watch Al had given me, and I watched with horror and resignation as the long hand moved down toward the bottom of the dial, then started up once more. Twenty-five minutes until the start of The New Adventures of Ellery Queen. Then twenty. Then fifteen. I tried to talk to him and he told me to shut up. He kept rubbing his chest, only stopping long enough to take his cigarettes from his breast pocket.

“Oh, that’s a good idea,” I said. “That’ll help your heart a lot.”

“Put a sock in it.”

He stuck the bayonet in the gravel behind the garage and lit his cigarette with a battered Zippo. In the momentary flicker of flame, I saw sweat running down his cheeks, even though the night was chilly. His eyes seemed to have receded into their sockets, making his face look like a skull. He sucked in smoke, coughed it out. His thin body shook, but the gun remained steady. Pointed at my chest. Overhead, the stars were out. It was now ten of eight. How far along had Ellery Queen been when Dunning arrived? Harry’s theme hadn’t said, but I was guessing not long. There was no school tomorrow, but Doris Dunning still wouldn’t want seven-year-old Ellen out much later than ten, even if she was with Tugga and Harry.

Five minutes of eight.

And suddenly an idea occurred to me. It had the clarity of undisputed truth, and I spoke while it was still bright.

“You chickenshit.”

“What?” He straightened as if he’d been goosed.

“You heard me.” I mimicked him. “‘Nobody messes with Frankie Dunning but me. He’s mine.’ You’ve been telling yourself that for twenty years, haven’t you? And you haven’t messed with him yet.”

“I told you to shut up.”

“Hell, twenty-two! You didn’t mess with him when he went after Chaz Frati, either, did you? You ran away like a little girl and got the football players.”

“There was six of em!”

“Sure, but Dunning’s been on his own plenty of times since, and you haven’t even put a banana peel down on the sidewalk and hoped he’d slip on it. You’re a chickenshit coward, Turcotte. Hiding over here like a rabbit in a hole.”

“Shut up!”

“Telling yourself some bullshit about how seeing him in prison would be the best revenge, so you don’t have to face the fact—”

“Shut up!”

“—that you’re a nutless wonder who’s let his sister’s murderer walk around free for over twenty years—”

“I’m warning you!” He cocked the revolver’s hammer.

I thumped the middle of my chest. “Go on. Do it. Everybody’ll hear the shot, the police will come, Dunning’ll see the ruckus and turn right around, and you’ll be the one in Shawshank. I bet they got a mill there, too. You can work in it for a nickel an hour instead of a buck-twenty. Only you’ll like that, because you won’t have to try and explain to yourself why you just stood by all those years. If your sister was alive, she’d spit on y—”

He thrust the gun forward, meaning to press the muzzle against my chest, and stumbled on his own damn bayonet. I batted the pistol aside with the back of my hand and it went off. The bullet must have gone into the ground less than an inch from my leg, because a little spray of stones struck my pants. I grabbed the gun and pointed it at him, ready to shoot if he made the slightest move to grab the fallen bayonet.

What he did was slump against the garage wall. Now both hands were plastered over the left side of his chest, and he was making a low gagging sound.

Somewhere not too far away — on Kossuth, not Wyemore — a man bellowed: “Fun’s fun, you kids, but one more cherry bomb and I’m calling the cops! A word to the wise!”

I let out my breath. Turcotte was letting his out as well, but in hitching gasps. The gagging sounds continued as he slid down the side of the garage and sprawled on the gravel. I took the bayonet, considered putting it in my belt, and decided I’d only gash my leg with it when I pushed through the hedge: the past hard at work, trying to stop me. I hucked it into the dark yard instead, and heard a low clunk as it hit something. Maybe the side of the YOUR POOCH BELONGS HERE doghouse.

“Ambulance,” Turcotte croaked. His eyes gleamed with what might have been tears. “Please, Amberson. Hurts bad.”

Ambulance. Good idea. And here’s something hilarious. I’d been in Derry — in 1958—for almost two months, but I still plunged my hand into my right front pants pocket, where I always kept my cell phone when I wasn’t wearing a sport coat. My fingers found nothing there but some change and the keys to the Sunliner.

“Sorry, Turcotte. You were born in the wrong era for instant rescue.”

“What?”

According to the Bulova, The New Adventures of Ellery Queen was now being telecast to a waiting America. “Tough it out,” I said, and shoved through the hedge, the hand not holding the gun raised to protect my eyes from the stiff, raking branches.

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