11/22/63: A Novel

Her gaze shifted away from me and she busied herself lighting a cigarette. Watching her take too long tamping it on the coffee table and then fiddling with her matches, I realized a dispiriting thing: Sadie was also having her doubts. I’d predicted a peaceful end to the Missile Crisis, I had known Dick Tiger was going down in the fifth.. . but she still had her doubts. And I didn’t blame her. If our positions had been reversed, I would have been having mine.

Then she brightened. “But I’ve got a heck of a good stand-in, and I bet you can guess who.”

I smiled. “Is it…” I couldn’t get the name. I could see him-the weathered, suntanned face, the cowboy hat, the string tie-but that Tuesday morning I couldn’t even get close. My head started to ache in the back, where it had hit the baseboard-but what baseboard, in what house? It was so abysmally fucked up not to know.

Kennedy’s coming in ten days and I can’t even remember that old guy’s fucking name.

“Try, Jake.”

“I am, ” I said. “I am, Sadie!”

“Wait a sec. I’ve got an idea.”

She laid her smoldering cigarette in one of the ashtray grooves, got up, went out the front door, closed it behind her. Then she opened it and spoke in a voice that was comically gruff and deep, saying what the old guy said each time he came to visit: “How you doin today, son? Takin any nourishment?”

“Deke,” I said. “Deke Simmons. He was married to Miz Mimi, but she died in Mexico. We had a memorial assembly for her.”

The headache was gone. Just like that.

Sadie clapped her hands and ran to me. I got a long and lovely kiss.

“See?” she said when she drew back. “You can do this. It’s still not too late. What’s his name, Jake? What’s the crazy bugger’s name?”

But I couldn’t remember.

On November sixteenth, the Times Herald published the Kennedy motorcade route. It would start at Love Field and end at the Trade Mart, where he would speak to the Dallas Citizens Council and their invited guests. The nominal purpose of his speech was to salute the Graduate Research Center and congratulate Dallas on its economic progress over the last decade, but the Times Herald was happy to inform those who didn’t already know that the real reason was pure politics. Texas had gone for Kennedy in 1960, but ’64 was looking shaky in spite of having a good old Johnson City boy on the ticket. Cynics still called the vice president “Landslide Lyndon,” a reference to his 1948 Senate bid, a decidedly hinky affair he won by eighty-seven votes. That was ancient history, but the nickname’s longevity said a lot about the mixed feelings Texans had about him. Kennedy’s job-and Jackie’s, of course-was to help Landslide Lyndon and Texas governor John Connally fire up the faithful.

“Look at this,” Sadie said, tracing a fingertip along the route. “Blocks and blocks of Main Street. Then Houston Street. There are high buildings all along that part. Is the man going to be on Main Street? He just about has to be, don’t you think?”

I hardly listened, because I’d seen something else. “Look, Sadie, the motorcade’s going to go along Turtle Creek Boulevard!”

Her eyes blazed. “Is that where it’s going to happen?”

I shook my head doubtfully. Probably not, but I knew something about Turtle Creek Boulevard, and it had to do with the man I’d come to stop. As I considered this, something floated to the surface.

“He was going to hide the rifle and come back for it later.”

“Hide it where?”

“It doesn’t matter, because that part already happened. That part’s the past.” I put my hands over my face because the light in the room was suddenly too bright.

“Stop thinking about it now,” she said, and snatched the newspaper story away. “Relax, or you’ll get one of your headaches and need one of those pills. They make you all sloppy.”

“Yes,” I said. “I know.”

“You need coffee. Strong coffee.”

She went into the kitchen to make it. When she came back, I was snoring. I slept for almost three hours, and might have remained in the Land of Nod even longer, but she shook me awake. “What’s the last thing you remember about coming to Dallas?”

“I don’t remember it.”

“Where did you stay? A hotel? A motor court? A rented room?”

For a moment I had a hazy memory of a courtyard and many windows. A doorman? Maybe. Then it was gone. The headache was cranking up again.

“I don’t know. All I remember is crossing the state line on Highway 20 and seeing a sign for barbecue. And that was miles from Dallas.”

“I know, but we don’t have to go that far, because if you were on 20, you stayed on 20.” She glanced at her watch. “It’s too late today, but tomorrow we’re going for a Sunday drive.”

“It probably won’t work.” But I felt a flicker of hope, just the same.