11/22/63

I put my head between my knees and drew a series of deep slow breaths, as I’d learned in the Red Cross course I’d taken to get a lifeguard certification back in college. At first I kept seeing Tugga Dunning’s head as it exploded under the smashing downward force of the hammer, and that made the faintness worse. Then I thought of Harry, who had been splashed with his brother’s blood but was otherwise unhurt. And Ellen, who wasn’t deep in a coma from which she would never emerge. And Troy. And Doris. Her badly broken arm might hurt her for the rest of her life, but at least she was going to have a life.

“I did it, Al,” I whispered.

But what had I done in 2011? What had I done to 2011? Those were questions that still had to be answered. If something terrible had happened because of the butterfly effect, I could always go back and erase it… unless, in changing the course of the Dunning family’s lives, I had somehow changed the course of Al Templeton’s as well. Suppose the diner was no longer where I’d left it? Suppose it turned out he’d never moved it from Auburn? Or never opened a diner at all? It didn’t seem likely… but here I was, sitting on a 1958 curb with blood oozing out of my 1958 haircut, and how likely was that?

I rose to my feet, staggered, then got moving. To my right, down Witcham Street, I could see the flash and strobe of blue lights. A crowd had gathered on the corner of Kossuth, but their backs were to me. The church where I’d left my car was just across the street. The Sunliner was alone in the parking lot now, but it looked okay; no Halloween pranksters had let the air out of my tires. Then I saw a yellow square under one of the windshield wipers. My thoughts flashed to the Yellow Card Man, and my gut tightened. I snatched it, then exhaled a sigh of relief when I read what was written there: JOIN YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS FOR WORSHIP THIS SUNDAY AT 9 AM NEWCOMERS ALWAYS WELCOME! REMEMBER, “LIFE IS THE QUESTION, JESUS IS THE ANSWER.”

“I thought hard drugs were the answer, and I could sure use some right now,” I muttered, and unlocked the driver’s door. I thought of the paper bag I’d left behind the garage of the house on Wyemore Lane. The cops investigating the area were apt to discover it. Inside they’d find a few candybars, a mostly empty bottle of Kaopectate… and a stack of what amounted to adult diapers.

I wondered what they’d make of that.

But not too much.

16

By the time I reached the turnpike, my head was aching fiercely, but even if this hadn’t been before the era of twenty-four-hour convenience stores, I’m not sure I would have dared to stop; my shirt was stiff with drying blood on the lefthand side. At least I’d remembered to fill the gas tank.

Once I tried exploring the gash on my head with the tips of my fingers and was rewarded with a blaze of pain that persuaded me not to make a second attempt.

I did stop at the rest area outside of Augusta. By then it was past ten o’clock and the place was deserted. I turned on the dome light and checked my pupils in the rearview mirror. They looked the same size, which was a relief. There was a snacks vending machine outside the men’s privy, where ten cents bought me a cream-stuffed chocolate whoopie pie. I gobbled it as I drove, and my headache abated somewhat.

It was after midnight when I got to Lisbon Falls. Main Street was dark, but both the Worumbo and U.S. Gypsum mills were running full tilt, huffing and chuffing, throwing their stinks into the air and spilling their acid wastes into the river. The clusters of shining lights made them look like spaceships. I parked the Sunliner outside the Kennebec Fruit, where it would stay until someone peeked inside and saw the spots of blood on the seat, driver’s door, and steering wheel. Then the police would be called. I supposed they’d dust the Ford for fingerprints. It was possible they’d match prints found on a certain.38 Police Special at a murder scene in Derry. The name George Amberson might emerge in Derry and then down here in the Falls. But if the rabbit-hole was still where I’d left it, George was going to leave no trail to follow, and the fingerprints belonged to a man who wasn’t going to be born for another eighteen years.

I opened the trunk, took out the briefcase, and decided to leave everything else. For all I knew, it might end up being sold at the Jolly White Elephant, the secondhand store not far from Titus Chevron. I crossed the street toward the mill’s dragon-breath, a shat-HOOSH, shat-HOOSH that would continue around the clock until Reagan-era free trade rendered pricey American textiles obsolete.