11/22/63: A Novel

“The president and his heroic saviors aren’t the only news coming out of Texas this morning,” the old duffer’s radio said, and I paused with a cup of black coffee suspended halfway between the saucer and my lips. There was a sour tingle in my mouth that I’d come to recognize. A psychologist might have termed it presque vu—the sense people sometimes get that something amazing is about to happen — but my name for it was much more humble: a harmony.

“At the height of a thunderstorm shortly after one A.M., a freak tornado touched down in Fort Worth, destroying a Montgomery Ward warehouse and a dozen homes. Two people are known dead, and four are missing.”

That two of the houses were 2703 and 2706 Mercedes Street, I had no doubt; an angry wind had erased them like a bad equation.

CHAPTER 30

1

I stepped off my final Greyhound at the Minot Avenue station in Auburn, Maine, at a little past noon on the twenty-sixth of November. After more than eighty hours of almost nonstop riding, relieved only by short intervals of sleep, I felt like a figment of my own imagination. It was cold. God was clearing His throat and spitting casual snow from a dirty gray sky. I had bought some jeans and a couple of blue chambray workshirts to replace the kitchen-whites, but such clothes weren’t nearly enough. I had forgotten the Maine weather during my time in Texas, but my body remembered in a hurry and started to shiver. I made Louie’s for Men my first stop, where I found a sheepskin-lined coat in my size and took it to the clerk.

He put down his copy of the Lewiston Sun to wait on me, and I saw my picture — yes, the one from the DCHS yearbook — on the front page. WHERE IS GEORGE AMBERSON? the headline demanded. The clerk rang up the sale and scribbled me a receipt. I tapped my picture. “What in the world do you suppose is up with that guy?”

The clerk looked at me and shrugged. “He doesn’t want the publicity and I don’t blame him. I love my wife a whole darn bunch, and if she died sudden, I wouldn’t want people taking my picture for the papers or putting my weepy mug on TV. Would you?”

“No,” I said, “I guess not.”

“If I were that guy, I wouldn’t come up for air until 1970. Let the ruckus die down. How about a nice cap to go with that coat? I got some flannel ones that just came in yesterday. The earflaps are good and thick.”

So I bought a cap to go with my new coat. Then I limped the two blocks back to the bus station, swinging my suitcase at the end of my good arm. Part of me wanted to go to Lisbon Falls right that minute and make sure the rabbit-hole was still there. But if it was, I’d use it, I wouldn’t be able to resist, and after five years in the Land of Ago, the rational part of me knew I wasn’t ready for the full-on assault of what had become, in my mind, the Land of Ahead. I needed some rest first. Real rest, not dozing in a bus seat while little kids wailed and tipsy men laughed.

There were four or five taxis parked at the curb, in snow that was now swirling instead of just spitting. I got into the first one, relishing the warm breath from the heater. The cabbie turned around, a fat guy with a badge reading LICENSED LIVERY on his battered cap. He was a complete stranger to me, but I knew that when he turned on the radio, it would be tuned to WJAB out of Portland, and when he dragged his ciggies out of his breast pocket, they would be Lucky Strikes. What goes around comes around.

“Where to, chief?”

I told him to take me to the Tamarack Motor Court, out on 196.

“You got it.”

He turned on the radio and got the Miracles, singing “Mickey’s Monkey.”

“These modern dances!” he grunted, grabbing his smokes. “They don’t do nothing but teach the kids how to bump n wiggle.”

“Dancing is life,” I said.

2

It was a different desk clerk, but she gave me the same room. Of course she did. The rate was a little higher and the old TV had been replaced by a newer one, but the same sign was propped against the rabbit ears on top: DO NOT USE “TINFOIL!” The reception was still shitty. There was no news, only soap operas.

I turned it off. I put the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door. I drew the curtains. Then I stripped and crawled into bed, where — aside from a dreamlike stumble to the bathroom to relieve my bladder — I slept for twelve hours. When I woke up, it was the middle of the night, the power was off, and a strong northwest wind was blowing outside. A brilliant crescent moon rode high in the sky. I got the extra blanket from the closet and slept for another five hours.