11/22/63: A Novel

Mr. Jake George Puddentane Epping-Amberson spent seven weeks in Parkland before being moved to a rehab center-a little housing complex for sick people-on the north side of Dallas. During those seven weeks I was on IV antibiotics for the infection that had set up shop where my spleen used to be. The splint on my broken arm was replaced with a long cast, which also filled up with names I didn’t know. Shortly before moving to Eden Fallows, the rehab center, I graduated to a short cast on my arm. Around that same time, a physical therapist began to torture my knee back to something resembling mobility. I was told I screamed a lot, but I don’t remember.

Malcolm Perry and the rest of the Parkland staff saved my life, I have no doubt about that. They also gave me an unintended and unwelcome gift that lasted well into my time at Eden Fallows. This was a secondary infection caused by the antibiotics being pumped into my system to beat the primary one. I have hazy memories of vomiting and of spending what seemed like whole days with my ass on a bedpan. I remember thinking at one point I have to go to the Derry Drug and see Mr. Keene. I need Kaopectate. But who was Mr. Keene, and where was Derry?

They let me out of the hospital when I began to hold food down again, but I’d been at Eden Fallows almost two weeks before the diarrhea stopped. By then it was nearing the end of October. Sadie (usually I remembered her name; sometimes it slipped my mind) brought me a paper jack-o’-lantern. This memory is very clear, because I screamed when I saw it. They were the screams of someone who has forgotten something vitally important.

“What?” she asked me. “What is it, honey? What’s wrong? Is it Kennedy? Something about Kennedy?”

“He’s going to kill them all with a hammer!” I shouted at her. “On Halloween night! I have to stop him!”

“Who?” She took my waving hands, her face frightened. “Stop who?”

But I couldn’t remember, and I fell asleep. I slept a lot, and not just because of the slowly healing head injury. I was exhausted, little more than a ghost of my former self. On the day of the beating, I had weighed one hundred and eighty-five pounds. By the time I was released from the hospital and installed in Eden Fallows, I weighed a hundred and thirty-eight.

That was the outside life of Jake Epping, a man who had been beaten badly, then nearly died in the hospital. My inside life was blackness, voices, and flashes of understanding that were like lightning: they blinded me with their brilliance and were gone again before I could get more than glimpses of the landscape by their light. I was mostly lost, but every now and then I found myself.

Found myself hellishly hot, and a woman was feeding me ice chips that tasted heavenly cool. This was THE WOMAN WITH THE SCAR, who was sometimes Sadie.

Found myself on the commode in the corner of the room with no idea how I’d gotten there, unloosing what felt like gallons of watery burning shit, my side itching and throbbing, my knee bellowing. I remember wishing someone would kill me.

Found myself trying to get out of bed, because I had to do something terribly important. It seemed to me that the whole world was depending on me to do this thing. THE MAN WITH THE COWBOY HAT was there. He caught me and helped me back into bed before I fell on the floor. “Not yet, son,” he said. “You’re nowhere near strong enough.”

Found myself talking-or trying to talk-to a pair of uniformed policemen who had come to ask questions about the beating I’d taken. One of them had a name tag that said TIPPIT. I tried to tell him he was in danger. I tried to tell him to remember the fifth of November. It was the right month but the wrong day. I couldn’t remember the actual date and began to thump at my stupid head in frustration. The cops looked at each other, puzzled. NOT-TIPPIT called for a nurse. The nurse came with a doctor, the doctor gave me a shot, and I floated away.

Found myself listening to Sadie as she read to me, first Jude the Obscure, then Tess of the D’Urbervilles. I knew those stories, and listening to them again was comforting. At one point during Tess, I remembered something.

“I made Tessica Caltrop leave us alone.”

Sadie looked up. “Do you mean Jessica? Jessica Caltrop? You did? How? Do you remember?”

But I didn’t. It was gone.

Found myself looking at Sadie as she stood at my little window, staring out at the rain and crying.

But mostly I was lost.

THE MAN WITH THE COWBOY HAT was Deke, but once I thought he was my grandfather, and that scared me very badly, because Grampy Epping was dead, and-

Epping, that was my name. Hold onto it, I told myself, but at first I couldn’t.