11/22/63: A Novel

We put her suitcase in the Chevrolet. If we stopped Oswald (and weren’t arrested), we could get her Beetle later and she could drive it back to Jodie, where it would look normal and at home in her driveway. If things didn’t go well-if we failed, or succeeded only to find ourselves on the hook for Lee’s murder-we’d simply have to run for it. We could run faster, farther, and more anonymously in a V-8 Chevy than in a Volkswagen Beetle.

She saw the gun when I put it into the inside pocket of my sport coat and said, “No. Outside pocket.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Where I can get at it if you all at once get tired and decide to take a nap.”

We went down the walk, Sadie hitching her purse over her shoulder. Rain had been forecast, but it looked to me as if the prognosticators would have to take a penalty card on that one. The sky was clearing.

Before Sadie could get in on the passenger side, a voice from behind me spoke up. “That your girlfriend, mister?”

I turned. It was the jump-rope girl with the acne. Only it wasn’t acne, it wasn’t rubella, and I didn’t have to ask why she wasn’t in school. She had chicken pox. “Yes, she is.”

“She’s purty. Except for the”-she made a gik sound that was, in a grotesque way, sort of charming-“on her face.”

Sadie smiled. My appreciation for her sheer guts continued to go up… and it never went down. “What’s your name, honey?”

“Sadie,” the jump-rope girl said. “Sadie Van Owen. What’s yours?”

“Well, you’re not going to believe this, but my name’s Sadie, too.”

The kid eyed her with a mistrustful cynicism that was all Mercedes Street Riot Grrrl. “No, it’s not!”

“It really is. Sadie Dunhill.” She turned to me. “That’s quite a coincidence, wouldn’t you say, George?”

I wouldn’t, actually, and I didn’t have time to discuss it. “Need to ask you something, Miss Sadie Van Owen. You know where the buses stop on Winscott Road, don’t you?”

“Sure.” She rolled her eyes as if to ask how dumb do you think I am? “Say, have you two had the chicken pox?”

Sadie nodded.

“Me, too,” I said, “so we’re okay on that score. Do you know which bus goes into downtown Dallas?”

“The Number Three.”

“And how often does the Three run?”

“I think every half hour, but it might be every fifteen minutes. Why you want the bus when you got a car? When you got two cars?”

I could tell by Big Sadie’s expression that she was wondering the same thing. “I’ve got my reasons. And by the way, my old man drives a submarine.”

Sadie Van Owen cracked a huge smile. “You know that one?”

“Known it for years,” I said. “Get in, Sadie. We need to roll.”

I checked my new watch. It was twenty minutes to nine.

3

“Tell me why you’re interested in the buses,” Sadie said.

“First tell me how you found me.”

“When I got to Eden Fallows and you were gone, I burned the note as you asked, then checked with the old guy next door.”

“Mr. Kenopensky.”

“Yes. He didn’t know anything. By then the therapist lady was sitting on your steps. She wasn’t happy to find you gone. She said she’d traded with Doreen so Doreen could see Kennedy today.”

The Winscott Road bus stop was ahead. I slowed to see if there was a schedule inside the little shelter next to the post, but no. I pulled into a parking space a hundred yards ahead of the stop.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking out an insurance policy. If a bus doesn’t come by nine, we’ll go on. Finish your story.”

“I called the hotels in downtown Dallas, but nobody even wanted to talk to me. They’re all so busy. I called Deke next, and he called the police. Told them he had reliable information that someone was going to shoot the president.”

I’d been watching for the bus in my rearview mirror, but now I looked at Sadie in shock. Yet I felt reluctant admiration for Deke. I had no idea how much of what Sadie had told him he actually believed, but he’d gone way out on a limb, just the same. “What happened? Did he give his name?”

“He never got the chance. They hung up on him. I think that’s when I really started to believe you about how the past protects itself. And that’s what all this is to you, isn’t it? Just a living history book.”

“Not anymore.”

Here came a lumbering bus, green over yellow. The sign in the destination window read 3 MAIN STREET DALLAS 3. It stopped and the doors at the front and back flapped open on their accordion hinges. Two or three people got on, but there was no way they were going to find seats; when the bus rolled slowly past us, I saw that all of them were full. I glimpsed a woman with a row of Kennedy buttons pinned to her hat. She waved at me gaily, and although our eyes met for only a second, I could feel her excitement, delight, and anticipation.

I dropped the Chevy into gear and followed the bus. On the back, partially obscured by belching brown exhaust, a radiantly smiling Clairol girl proclaimed that if she only had one life, she wanted to live it as a blonde. Sadie waved her hand theatrically. “Uck! Drop back! It stinks!”