11/22/63: A Novel

Mostly I was just plain freaked. Not mentally tottering, I think a human mind that’s moderately well-adjusted can absorb a lot of strangeness before it actually totters, but freaked, yes. I kept thinking about the ladies in their long dresses and hats, ladies who would be embarrassed to show so much as the edge of a bra strap in public. And the taste of that root beer. How full it had been.

Directly across the street was a modest storefront with MAINE STATE LIQUOR STORE printed in raised letters over the small show window. And yes, the facade was a light green. Inside I could just make out my pal from the drying shed. His long black coat hung from his coathanger shoulders; he had taken off his hat and his hair stood out around his head like that of a cartoon nebbish who has just inserted Finger A in Electric Socket B. He was gesticulating at the clerk with both hands, and I could see his precious yellow card in one. I felt certain that Al Templeton’s half a rock was in the other. The clerk, who was wearing a short white tunic that looked quite a bit like the one the Moxie Doc wore in the annual parade, looked singularly unimpressed.

I walked to the corner, waited on traffic, and crossed back to the Worumbo side of the Old Lewiston Road. A couple of men were pushing a dolly loaded with bales of cloth across the courtyard, smoking and laughing. I wondered if they had any idea what the combination of cigarette smoke and mill pollution was doing to their innards, and supposed not. Probably that was a blessing, although it was more a question for a philosophy teacher than for a guy who earned his daily bread exposing sixteen-year-olds to the wonders of Shakespeare, Steinbeck, and Shirley Jackson.

When they had entered the mill, rolling their dolly between the rusty metal jaws of doors three stories high, I crossed back to the chain with the NO ADMITTANCE BEYOND THIS POINT sign hanging from it. I told myself not to walk too fast, and not to peer all around me-not to do anything that would attract attention-but it was hard. Now that I was almost back to where I came in, the urge to hurry was almost irresistible. My mouth was dry, and the big root beer I’d drunk roiled in my stomach. What if I couldn’t get back? What if the marker I’d dropped was gone? What if it was still there, but the stairs weren’t?

Easy, I told myself. Easy.

I couldn’t resist one quick survey before ducking under the chain, but the courtyard was entirely mine. Somewhere distant, like a sound heard in a dream, I could again hear that low diesel wuff-chuff. It called to mind another line from another song: This train has got the disappearing railroad blues.

I walked down the green flank of the drying shed, heart beating hard and high up in my chest. The torn scrap of paper with the chunk of concrete on top of it was still there; so far so good. I kicked at it gently, thinking Please God let this work, please God let me get back.

The toe of my shoe kicked the chunk of concrete-I saw it go skittering away-but it also thumped to a dead stop against the step. Those things were mutually exclusive, but they both happened. I took one more look around, even though no one in the courtyard could see me in this narrow lane unless they happened to be passing directly in front of it at one end or the other. No one was.

I went up one step. My foot could feel it, even though my eyes told me I was still standing on the cracked paving of the courtyard. The root beer took another warning lurch in my stomach. I closed my eyes and that was a little better. I took the second step, then the third. They were shallow, those steps. When I took the fourth one, the summer heat disappeared from the back of my neck and the dark behind my eyelids became deeper. I tried to take the fifth step, only there was no fifth step. I bumped my head on the low pantry ceiling instead. A hand grasped my forearm and I almost screamed.

“Relax,” Al said. “Relax, Jake. You’re back.”

7

He offered me a cup of coffee, but I shook my head. My stomach was still sudsing. He poured himself one, and we went back to the booth where we had begun this madman’s journey. My wallet, cell phone, and money were piled in the middle of the table. Al sat down with a gasp of pain and relief. He looked a little less drawn and a little more relaxed.

“So,” he said. “You went and you came back. What do you think?”

“Al, I don’t know what to think. I’m rocked right down to my foundations. You found this by accident?”

“Totally. Less than a month after I got myself set up here. I must have still had Pine Street dust on the heels of my shoes. The first time, I actually fell down those stairs, like Alice into the rabbit-hole. I thought I’d gone insane.”

I could imagine. I’d had at least some preparation, poor though it had been. And really, was there any adequate way to prepare a person for a trip back in time?

“How long was I gone?”