11/22/63: A Novel

We turned onto Main Street. Jem Needham was just finishing his rounds in his milk truck. Bill Gavery was putting out fresh loaves of bread under cheesecloth in front of the bakery. From a passing car Jan and Dean were singing that in Surf City there were two girls for every boy.

“Will I like it, Jake? In your place?”

“I hope so, hon.”

“Is it very different?”

I smiled. “People pay more for gasoline and have more buttons to push. Otherwise, it’s about the same.”

6

That hot August was as close to a honeymoon as we ever managed, and it was sweet. Any pretense that I was rooming with Deke Simmons pretty well went out the window, although I still kept my car in his driveway at night.

Sadie recovered quickly from the latest insult to her flesh, and although her eye sagged and her cheek was still scarred and deeply hollowed where Clayton had cut through to the inside of her mouth, there was visible improvement. Ellerton and his crew had done a good job with what they had.

We read books sitting side by side on her couch, with her fan blowing back our hair- The Group for her, Jude the Obscure for me. We had backyard picnics in the shade of her prized Chinese Pistache tree and drank gallons of iced coffee. Sadie began to cut back on the smokes again. We watched Rawhide and Ben Casey and Route 66. One night she tuned in The New Adventures of Ellery Queen, but I asked her to change the channel. I didn’t like mysteries, I said.

Before bed, I carefully smoothed ointment on her wounded face, and once we were in bed… it was good. Leave it at that.

One day outside the grocery store, I ran into that upstanding schoolboard member Jessica Caltrop. She said she would like to speak to me for a moment on what she called “a delicate subject.”

“What might that be, Miz Caltrop?” I asked. “Because I’ve got ice cream in here, and I’d like to get home with it before it melts.”

She gave me a chilly smile that could have kept my French vanilla firm for hours. “Would home be on Bee Tree Lane, Mr. Amberson? With the unfortunate Miss Dunhill?”

“And that would be your business how?”

The smile froze a little more deeply. “As a member of the schoolboard, I have to make sure that the morality of our faculty is spotless. If you and Miss Dunhill are living together, that is a matter of grave concern to me. Teenagers are impressionable. They imitate what they see in their elders.”

“You think? After fifteen years or so in the classroom, I would have said they observe adult behavior and then run the other way as fast as they can.”

“I’m sure we could have an illuminating discussion on how you view teenage psychology, Mr. Amberson, but that’s not why I asked to speak to you, uncomfortable as I find it.” She didn’t look a bit uncomfortable. “If you are living in sin with Miss Dunhill-”

“Sin,” I said. “Now there’s an interesting word. Jesus said that he without it was free to cast the first stone. Or she, I suppose. Are you without it, Miz Caltrop?”

“This discussion is not about me.”

“But we could make it about you. I could make it about you. I could, for instance, start asking around about the woods colt you dropped once upon a time.”

She recoiled as if slapped and took two steps back toward the brick wall of the market. I took two steps forward, my grocery bags curled in my arms.

“I find that repulsive and offensive. If you were still teaching, I’d-”

“I’m sure you would, but I’m not, so you need to listen to me very carefully. It’s my understanding that you had a kid when you were sixteen and living on Sweetwater Ranch. I don’t know if the father was one of your schoolmates, a saddle tramp, or even your own father-”

“You’re disgusting!”

True. And sometimes it’s such a pleasure.

“I don’t care who it was, but I care about Sadie, who’s been through more pain and heartache than you’ve felt in your whole life.” Now I had her pinned against the brick wall. She was looking up at me, her eyes bright with terror. In another time and place I could have felt sorry for her. Not now. “If you say one word about Sadie-one word to anybody-I’ll make it my business to find out where that kid of yours is now, and I’ll spread the word from one end of this town to the other. Do you understand me?”

“Get out of my way! Let me pass!”

“Do you understand me?”

“Yes! Yes! ”

“Good.” I stepped back. “Live your life, Miz Caltrop. I suspect it’s been pretty gray since you were sixteen-busy, though, inspecting other people’s dirty laundry does keep a person busy-but you live it. And let us live ours.”

She sidled to her left along the brick wall, in the direction of the parking lot behind the market. Her eyes were bulging. They never left me.

I smiled pleasantly. “Before this discussion becomes something that never happened, I want to give you a piece of advice, little lady. It comes straight from my heart. I love her, and you do not want to fuck with a man in love. If you mess in my business-or Sadie’s-I will try my best to make you the sorriest bluenose bitch in Texas. That is my sincere promise to you.”