Chapter 31 #3
Actually it had been ’76, but there was no way I could tell him that without discussing the five missing years that had fallen down the rabbit-hole, like Alice into Wonderland. “Close enough,” I said. “That photo was taken at the house on Kossuth Street.” Spoken the Derry way: Cossut.
I tapped Ellen, who was standing to the left of her mother, thinking of the grown-up version I’d spoken to on the phone—call that one Ellen 2.0. Also thinking—it was inevitable—of Ellen Dockerty, the harmonic version I’d known in Jodie.
“Can’t tell from this, but she was a little carrot-top, wasn’t she? A pint-sized Lucille Ball.”
Harry said nothing, only gaped.
“Did she go into comedy? Or something else? Radio or TV?”
“She does a DJ show on Province of Maine CBC,” he said faintly. “But how…”
“Here’s Troy… and Arthur, also known as Tugga… and here’s you, with your mother’s arm around you.” I smiled. “Just the way God planned it.” If only it could stay that way. If only.
“I… you…”
“Your father was murdered, wasn’t he?”
“Yes.” The cannula had come askew in his nose and he pushed it straight, his hand moving slowly, like the hand of a man who is dreaming with his eyes open.
“He was shot to death in Longview Cemetery while he was putting flowers on his parents’ graves.
Only a few months after this picture was taken.
The police arrested a man named Bill Turcotte for it—”
Ow. I hadn’t seen that one coming.
“—but he had a solid alibi and eventually they had to let him go. The killer was never caught.” He took one of my hands. “Mister… son… Jake… this is crazy, but… were you the one who killed my father?”
“Don’t be silly.” I took the picture and hung it back on the wall. “I wasn’t born until 1971, remember?”
5
I walked slowly down Main Street, back to the ruined mill and the abandoned Quik-Flash convenience store that stood in front of it.
I walked with my head down, not looking for No Nose and Moon Man and the rest of that happy band.
I thought if they were still anywhere in the vicinity, they’d give me a wide berth.
They thought I was crazy. Probably I was.
We’re all mad here was what the Cheshire Cat told Alice. Then he disappeared. Except for the grin, that is. As I recall, the grin stayed awhile.
I understood more now. Not everything, I doubt if even the Card Men understand everything (and after they’ve spent awhile on duty, they understand almost nothing), but that still didn’t help me with the decision I had to make.
As I ducked under the chain, something exploded far in the distance. It didn’t make me jump. I imagined there were a lot of explosions now. When people begin to lose hope, there’s bound to be explosions.
I entered the bathroom at the back of the convenience store and almost tripped over my sheepskin jacket. I kicked it aside—I wouldn’t be needing it where I was going—and walked slowly over to the piled boxes that looked so much like Lee’s sniper’s nest.
Goddam harmonies.
I moved enough of them so I could get into the corner, then carefully restacked them behind me.
I moved forward step by small step, once again thinking of how a man or woman feels for the top of a staircase in utter darkness.
But there was no step this time, only that queer doubling.
I moved forward, watched my lower body shimmer, then closed my eyes.
Another step. And another. Now I felt warmth on my legs. Two more steps and sunlight turned the black behind my eyelids to red. I took one more step and heard the pop inside my head. When that cleared, I heard the shat-HOOSH, shat-HOOSH of the weaving flats.
I opened my eyes. The stink of the dirty abandoned restroom had been replaced by the stink of a textile mill operating full bore in a year when the Environmental Protection Agency did not exist. There was cracked cement under my feet instead of peeling linoleum.
To my left were the big metal bins filled with fabric remnants and covered with burlap.
To my right was the drying shed. It was eleven fifty-eight on the morning of September ninth, 1958.
Harry Dunning was once more a little boy.
Carolyn Poulin was in period five at LHS, perhaps listening to the teacher, perhaps daydreaming about some boy or how she would go hunting with her father in a couple of months.
Sadie Dunhill, not yet married to Mr. Have Broom Will Travel, was living in Georgia.
Lee Harvey Oswald was in the South China Sea with his Marine unit.
And John F. Kennedy was the junior senator from Massachusetts, dreaming presidential dreams.
I was back.
6
I walked to the chain and ducked under it.
On the other side I stood perfectly still for a moment, rehearsing what I was going to do.
Then I walked to the end of the drying shed.
Around the corner, leaning against it, was the Green Card Man.
Only Zack Lang’s card was no longer green.
It had turned a muddy ocher shade, halfway between green and yellow.
His out-of-season overcoat was dusty, and his formerly snappy fedora had a battered, somehow defeated look.
His cheeks, previously clean-shaven, were now stubbled…
and some of that stubble was white. His eyes were bloodshot.
He wasn’t on the booze yet—at least I couldn’t smell any—but I thought he might be soon.
The greenfront was, after all, within his small circle of operation, and holding all those time-strings in your head has to hurt.
Multiple pasts were bad enough, but when you added multiple futures?
Anyone would turn to drink, if drink were available.
I had spent an hour in 2011. Maybe a little more. How long had it been for him? I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know.
“Thank God,” he said… just as he had before. But when he once more reached to take my hand in both of his, I drew back. His nails were now long and black with dirt. The fingers shook. They were the hands—and the coat, and the hat, and the card in the brim of the hat—of a wino-in-waiting.
“You know what you have to do,” he said.
“I know what you want me to do.”
“Want has nothing to do with it. You have to go back one last time. If all is well, you’ll come out in the diner.
Soon it will be taken away, and when that happens, the bubble that has caused all this madness will burst. It’s a miracle that it’s stayed as long as it has. You have to close the circle.”
He reached for me again. This time I did more than draw back; I turned and ran for the parking lot.
He sprinted after me. Because of my bad knee, it was closer than it would have been otherwise.
I could hear him right behind me as I passed the Plymouth Fury that was the double of the car I’d seen and dismissed one night in the courtyard of the Candlewood Bungalows.
Then I was at the intersection of Main and the Old Lewiston Road.
On the other side, the eternal rockabilly rebel stood with one boot cocked against the siding of the Fruit.
I ran across the train tracks, afraid that my bad leg would betray me on the cinders, but Lang was the one who stumbled and fell.
I heard him cry out—a desperate, lonely caw—and felt an instant of pity for him.
Hard duty, the man had. But I didn’t let pity slow me down. The imperatives of love are cruel.
The Lewiston Express bus was coming. I lurched across the intersection and the bus driver blared his horn at me.
I thought of another bus, crowded with people who were going to see the president.
And the president’s lady, of course, the one in the pink suit.
Roses laid between them on the seat. Not yellow but red.
“Jimla, come back!”
That was right. I was the Jimla after all, the monster in Rosette Templeton’s bad dream.
I limped past the Kennebec Fruit, well ahead of the Ocher Card Man now.
This was a race I was going to win. I was Jake Epping, high school teacher; I was George Amberson, aspiring novelist; I was the Jimla, who was endangering the whole world with every step he took.
Yet I ran on.
I thought of Sadie, tall and cool and beautiful, and I ran on. Sadie who was accident-prone and was going to stumble over a bad man named John Clayton. On him she would bruise more than her shins. The world well lost for love—was that Dryden or Pope?
I stopped by Titus Chevron, panting. Across the street, the beatnik proprietor of the Jolly White Elephant was smoking his pipe and watching me. The Ocher Card Man stood at the mouth of the alley behind the Kennebec Fruit. It was apparently as far as he could go in that direction.
He held out his hands to me, which was bad. Then he fell on his knees and clasped his hands in front of him, which was ever so much worse. “Please don’t do this! You must know the cost!”
I knew it and still hurried on. A telephone booth stood at the intersection just beyond St. Joseph’s Church. I shut myself inside it, consulted the phone book, and dropped a dime.
When the cab came, the driver was smoking Luckies and his radio was tuned to WJAB.
History repeats itself.