11/22/63: A Novel

The attention of the wild boys was fixed on the wheelchair-geezer and they didn’t see me cutting toward them on a diagonal-just as I’d cut across the sixth floor of the School Book Depository. My left arm still wasn’t much good, but my right was fine, toned up by three months of physical therapy, first in Parkland and then at Eden Fallows. And I still had some of the accuracy that had made me a varsity third baseman in high school. I pegged the first chunk of concrete from thirty feet away and caught Moon Man in the center of the chest. He screamed with pain and surprise. All the boys-there were five of them-turned toward me. When they did, I saw that their faces were as disfigured as the frightened woman’s had been. The one with the slingshot, young Master Fuck Off, was the worst. There was nothing but a hole where his nose should have been.

I transferred my second chunk of concrete from my left hand to my right, and threw it at the tallest of the boys, who was wearing a huge pair of loose pants with the waistband drawn up nearly to his sternum. He raised a blocking arm. The concrete struck it, knocking the joint he was holding into the street. He took one look at my face, then wheeled and ran. Moon Man followed him. That left three.

“Walk it to em, son!” the old man in the wheelchair shrilled. “They got it coming, by Christ!”

I was sure they did, but they had me outnumbered and my ammo was gone. When you’re dealing with teenagers, the only possible way to win in such a situation is to show no fear, only genuine adult outrage. You just keep coming, and that was what I did. I seized young Master Fuck Off by the front of his ragged tee-shirt with my right hand and snatched the slingshot away from him with the left. He stared at me, wide-eyed, and put up no resistance.

“You chickenshit,” I said, getting my face right up into his… and never mind the nose that wasn’t. He smelled sweaty and pot-smoky and deeply dirty. “How chickenshit do you have to be to go after an old man in a wheelchair?”

“Who are y-”

“Charlie Fucking Chaplin. I went to France just to see the ladies dance. Now get out of here.”

“Give me back my-”

I knew what he wanted and bonked the center of his forehead with it. It started one of his sores trickling and must have hurt like hell, because his eyes filled with tears. This disgusted me and filled me with pity, but I tried to show neither. “You get nothing, chickenshit, except a chance to get out of here before I rip your worthless balls off your no doubt diseased scrote and stuff them into the hole where your nose used to be. One chance. Take it.” I drew in breath, then screamed it out at his face in a spray of noise and spit: “Run!”

I watched them go, feeling shame and exultation in roughly equal parts. The old Jake had been great at quelling rowdy study halls on Friday afternoons before vacations, but that was about as far as his skills went. The new Jake, however, was part George. And George had been through a lot.

From behind me came a heavy bout of coughing. It made me think of Al Templeton. When it stopped, the old man said, “Fella, I would have pissed five years’ worth of kidney rocks just to see those vile dinks take to their heels like that. I don’t know who you are, but I’ve got a little Glenfiddich left in my pantry-the real stuff-and if you push me out of this goddam hole in the road and roll me home, I’ll share it with you.”

The moon had gone in again, but as it came back out through the ragged clouds, I saw his face. He was wearing a long white beard and had a cannula stuffed up his nose, but even after five years, I had no trouble at all recognizing the man who had gotten me into this mess.

“Hello, Harry,” I said.

CHAPTER 31 1

He still lived on Goddard Street. I rolled him up the ramp to the porch, where he produced a fearsome bundle of keys. He needed them. The front door had no less than four locks.

“Do you rent or own?”

“Oh, it’s all mine,” he said. “Such as it is.”

“Good for you.” Before, he had rented.

“You still haven’t told me how you know my name.”

“First, let’s have that drink. I can use one.”

The door opened on a parlor that took up the front half of the house. He told me to whoa, as if I were a horse, and lit a Coleman lantern. By its light I saw furniture of the type that is called “old but serviceable.” There was a beautiful braided rug on the floor. No GED diploma on any of the walls-and of course no framed theme titled “The Day That Changed My Life”-but there were a great many Catholic icons and lots of pictures. It was with no surprise that I recognized some of the people in them. I had met them, after all.

“Lock that behind you, would you?”

I closed us off from the dark and disturbing Lisbon Falls, and ran both bolts.

“Deadbolt, too, if you don’t mind.”