11/22/63: A Novel

I made my way down the ramp and limped over. “Mr. K? All right?”

For a moment he didn’t answer or even move, and I was sure he was dead. Then he looked up and smiled. “Just listenin to my music, son. They play swing at night on KMAT, and it really takes me back. I could lindy and bunny-hop like nobody’s biz back in the old days, though you’d never know to look at me now. Ain’t the moon purty?”

It was bigtime purty. We looked at it awhile without speaking, and I thought about the job I had to do. Maybe I didn’t know where Lee was staying tonight, but I knew where his rifle was: Ruth Paine’s garage, wrapped in a blanket. Suppose I went there and took it? I might not even have to break in. This was the Land of Ago, where folks in the hinterlands often didn’t lock their houses, let alone their garages.

Only what if Al was wrong? He’d been wrong about the stash-point before the Walker attempt, after all. Even if it was there. .

“What’re you thinkin about, son?” Mr. Kenopensky asked. “You got a misery look. Not girl trouble, I hope.”

“No.” At least not yet. “Do you give advice?”

“Yessir, I do. It’s the one thing old coots are good for when they can’t swing a rope or ride a line no more.”

“Suppose you knew a man was going to do a bad thing. That his heart was absolutely set on it. If you stopped a man like that once — talked him out of it, say — do you think he’d try it again, or does that moment pass forever?”

“Hard to say. Are you maybe thinking whoever scarred your young lady’s face is going to come back and try to finish the job?”

“Something like that.”

“Crazy fella.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.”

“Sane men will often take a hint,” Mr. Kenopensky said. “Crazy men rarely do. Saw it often back in the sagebrush days, before electric lights and phones. Warn em off, they come back. Beat em up, they hit from ambush — first you, then the one they’re really after. Jug em up in county, they sit and wait to get out. Safest thing to do with crazy men is put em in the penitentiary for a long stretch. Or kill em.”

“That’s what I think, too.”

“Don’t let him back to spoil the rest of her pretty, if that’s what he aims to do. If you care for her as much as you seem to, you’ve got a responsibility.”

I certainly did, although Clayton was no longer the problem. I went back to my little modular apartment, made strong black coffee, and sat down with a legal pad. My plan was a little clearer now, and I wanted to start fleshing in the details.

I doodled instead. Then fell asleep.

When I woke up it was almost midnight and my cheek ached where it had been pressed against the checked oilcloth covering the kitchen table. I looked at what was on my pad. I didn’t know if I’d drawn it before going to sleep or if I had wakened long enough to do it and just couldn’t remember.

It was a gun. Not a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, but a pistol. My pistol. The one I’d tossed beneath the porch steps at 214 West Neely. It was probably still there. I hoped it was still there.

I was going to need it.

11

11/19/63 (Tuesday)

Sadie called in the morning and said Deke was a little better, but she intended to make him stay home tomorrow, as well. “Otherwise he’ll just try to come in, and have a setback. But I’ll pack my bag before I leave for school tomorrow morning and head your way as soon as period six is over.”

Period six ended at ten past one. That meant I’d have to be gone from Eden Fallows by four o’clock tomorrow afternoon at the latest. If only I knew where. “I look forward to seeing you.”

“You sound all stiff and funny. Are you having one of your headaches?”

“A little one,” I said. It was true.

“Go lie down with a damp cloth over your eyes.”

“I’ll do that.” I had no intention of doing that.

“Have you thought of anything?”

I had, as a matter of fact. I’d thought that taking Lee’s rifle wasn’t enough. And shooting him at the Paine house was a bad option. Not just because I’d probably be caught, either. Counting Ruth’s two, there were four kids in that house. I might still have tried it if Lee had been walking from a nearby bus stop, but he’d be riding with Buell Frazier, the neighbor who’d gotten him the job at Ruth Paine’s request.

“No,” I said. “Not yet.”

“We’ll think of something. You wait and see.”

12

I drove (still slowly, but with increasing confidence) across town to West Neely, wondering what I’d do if the ground-floor apartment was occupied. Buy a new gun, I supposed. . but the.38 Police Special was the one I wanted, if only because I’d had one just like it in Derry, and that mission had been a success.