11/22/63: A Novel

It wouldn’t wash. If an earthquake like that had happened in the America I’d lived in before going down the rabbit-hole, I would have known. There were far bigger disasters — the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 killed over two hundred thousand — but seven thousand was a big number for America, more than twice as many fatalities as had occurred on 9/11.

Next I asked myself how what I’d done in Dallas could possibly have caused what this sturdy woman claimed had happened in LA. The only answer I could come up with was the butterfly effect, but how could it kick into gear so soon? No way. Absolutely not. There was no conceivable chain of cause and effect between the two events.

And still a deep part of my mind whispered, You did this. You caused Rags’s death by either leaving the backyard gate open or not closing it firmly enough to latch. . and you caused this. You and Al spouted a lot of noble talk about saving thousands of lives in Vietnam, but this is your first real contribution to the New History: seven thousand dead in LA.

It simply couldn’t be. Even if it was. .

There’s no downside, Al had said. If things turn to shit, you just take it all back. Easy as erasing a dirty word off a chalkb—

“Mister?” my driver said. “We’re here.” She turned to look at me curiously. “We’ve been here for almost three minutes. Little early for shopping, though. Are you sure this is where you want to be?”

I only knew this was where I had to be. I paid what was on the meter, added a generous tip (it was the FBI’s money, after all), wished her a nice day, and got out.

4

Lisbon Falls was as stinky as ever, but at least the power was on; the blinker at the intersection was flashing as it swung in the northwest wind. The Kennebec Fruit was dark, the front window still empty of the apples, oranges, and bananas that would be displayed there later on. The sign hanging in the door of the greenfront read WILL OPEN AT 10 A.M. A few cars moved on Main Street and a few pedestrians scuttled along with their collars turned up. Across the street, however, the Worumbo mill was fully operational. I could hear the shat-HOOSH, shat-HOOSH of the weaving flats even from where I was standing. Then I heard something else: someone was calling me, although not by either of my names.

“Jimla! Hey, Jimla!”

I turned toward the mill, thinking: He’s back. The Yellow Card Man is back from the dead, just like President Kennedy.

Only it wasn’t the Yellow Card Man any more than the taxi driver who’d picked me up at the bus station was the same one who’d taken me from Lisbon Falls to the Tamarack Motor Court in 1958. Except the two drivers were almost the same, because the past harmonizes, and the man across the street was similar to the one who’d asked me for a buck because it was double-money day at the greenfront. He was a lot younger than the Yellow Card Man, and his black overcoat was newer and cleaner. . but it was almost the same coat.

“Jimla! Over here!” He beckoned. The wind flapped the hem of the overcoat; it made the sign to his left swing on its chain the way the blinker was swinging on its wire. I could still read it, though: NO ADMITTANCE BEYOND THIS POINT UNTIL SEWER PIPE IS REPAIRED.

Five years, I thought, and that pesky sewer pipe’s still busted.

“Jimla! Don’t make me come over there and get you!”

He probably could; his suicidal predecessor had been able to make it all the way to the greenfront. But I felt sure that if I went limping down the Old Lewiston Road fast enough, this new version would be out of luck. He might be able to follow me to the Red & White Supermarket, where Al had bought his meat, but if I made it as far as Titus Chevron, or the Jolly White Elephant, I could turn around and thumb my nose at him. He was stuck near the rabbit-hole. If he hadn’t been, I would have seen him in Dallas. I knew it as surely as I knew that gravity keeps folks from floating into outer space.

As if to confirm this, he called, “Jimla, please!” The desperation I saw in his face was like the wind: thin but somehow relentless.