11/22/63: A Novel (93 page)

“Lady, you crazy,” the Studebaker cowboy said.

“You want fifty dollars or not? Just take us to Dallas.”

The man squinted at the bill, as oblivious of the swerving, honking cars as Sadie herself. He took off his hat, slapped it against the chinos hanging from his chickenbone hips, then put it back on his head, once more pulling it down until the brim rode the tops of his jug ears. “Lady, that ain’t a fifty, that’s a tenspot.”

“I’ve got the rest in my billfold.”

“Then why don’t I just take it?” He grabbed at her big handbag and got one strap. I stepped off the curb, but I thought he’d have it and be gone before I could reach her. And if I
did
reach her, he’d probably beat me stupid. Skinny as he was, he still outweighed me. And he had two good arms.

Sadie held on. Pulled in opposite directions, the bag gaped open like an agonized mouth. She reached inside with her free hand and came out with a butcher knife that looked familiar. She swiped at him with it and opened his forearm. The cut began above his wrist and ended at the dirty crease on the inside of his elbow. He screamed in pain and surprise, let go of the strap, and stepped back, staring at her. “You crazy bitch, you cut me!”

He lunged for the open door of his car, which was still trying to beat itself to death. Sadie stepped forward and slashed the air in front of his face. Her hair had fallen in her eyes. Her lips were a grim line. Blood from the Studebaker cowboy’s wounded arm pattered to the pavement. Cars continued to flow past. Incredibly, I heard someone yell,
“Give him the business, lady!”

The Studebaker cowboy retreated toward the sidewalk, his eyes never leaving the knife. Without looking at me, Sadie said: “Over to you, Jake.”

For a second I didn’t understand, then remembered the .38. I took it out of my pocket and pointed at him. “See this, Tex? It’s loaded.”

“You’re as crazy as she is.” He was holding his arm against his chest now, branding his tee-shirt with blood. Sadie hurried around to the Studebaker’s passenger side and opened the door. She looked at
me over the roof and made an impatient cranking gesture with one hand. I wouldn’t have believed I could love her more, but in that moment I saw I was wrong.

“You should have either taken the money or kept driving,” I said. “Now let me see how you run. Do it immediately or I’ll put a bullet in your leg so you can’t do it at all.”

“You’re one fuckin bastard,” he said.

“Yes, I am. And you’re one fucking thief who will soon be sporting a bullet hole.” I cocked the gun. The Studebaker cowboy didn’t test me. He turned and hustled west on Hines with his head hunched and his arm cradled, cursing and spilling a blood-trail.

“Don’t stop till you get to Love!” I shouted after him. “It’s three miles the way you’re going! Say hello to the president!”

“Get in, Jake. Get us out of here before the police come.”

I slid in behind the wheel of the Studebaker, grimacing as my swollen knee protested. It was a standard shift, which meant using my bad leg on the clutch. I ran the seat back as far as it would go, hearing the litter of trash in back crunch and crackle, then got rolling.

“That knife,” I said. “Is it—?”

“The one Johnny cut me with, yes. Sheriff Jones returned it after the inquest. He thought it was mine and he was probably right. But not from my place on Bee Tree. I’m almost positive Johnny brought it with him from our house in Savannah. I’ve been carrying it in my bag ever since. Because I wanted something to protect myself with, just in case . . .” Her eyes filled. “And this is an in-case, isn’t it? This is an in-case if there ever was one.”

“Put it back in your purse.” I stabbed the clutch, which was horribly stiff, and managed to get the Studebaker into second. The car smelled like a chicken coop that hadn’t been cleaned in roughly ten years.

“It’ll get blood on everything inside.”

“Put it back anyway. You can’t walk around waving a knife, especially when the president’s coming to town. Honey, that was beyond brave.”

She put the knife away, then began wiping her eyes with her fisted hands, like a little girl who’s scraped her knees. “What time is it?”

“Ten of eleven. Kennedy lands at Love Field in forty minutes.”

“Everything’s against us,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

I glanced at her and said, “Now you understand.”

We made it to North Pearl Street before the Studebaker’s engine blew. Steam boiled up from under the hood. Something metallic clanged to the road. Sadie cried out in frustration, struck her thigh with a balled fist, and used several bad words, but I was almost relieved. At least I wouldn’t have to wrestle with the clutch anymore. I put the column shift in neutral and let the steaming car roll to the side of the street. It came to rest in front of an alley with DO NOT BLOCK painted on the cobbles, but this particular offense seemed minor to me after assault with a deadly weapon and car theft.

I got out and hobbled to the curb, where Sadie was already standing. “What time now?” she asked.

“Eleven-twenty.”

“How far do we have to go?”

“The Texas School Book Depository is on the corner of Houston and Elm. Three miles. Maybe more.” The words were no more than out of my mouth when we heard the roar of jet engines from behind us. We looked up and saw
Air Force One
on its descent path.

Sadie pushed her hair wearily back from her face. “What are we going to do?”

“Right now we’re going to walk,” I said.

“Put your arm around my shoulders. Let me take some of your weight.”

“I don’t need to do that, hon.”

But a block later, I did.

We approached the intersection of North Pearl and Ross Avenue at eleven-thirty, right around the time Kennedy’s 707 would be rolling to a stop near the official greeters . . . including, of course, the woman with the bouquet of red roses. The street corner ahead was dominated by the Cathedral Santuario de Guadalupe. On the steps, below a statue of the saint with her arms outstretched, sat a man with wooden crutches on one side and an enamel kitchen pot on the other. Propped against the pot was a sign reading I AM CRIPPLE UP
BAD
! PLEASE GIVE WHAT YOU CAN BE A GOOD SAMARIAN GOD LOVES YOU.

“Where are
your
crutches, Jake?”

“Back at Eden Fallows, in the bedroom closet.”

“You forgot your
crutches
?”

Women are good at rhetorical questions, aren’t they?

“I haven’t been using them that much lately. For short distances, I’m pretty much okay.” This sounded marginally better than admitting that the main thing on my mind had been getting the hell away from the little rehab cluster before Sadie arrived.

“Well, you could sure use a pair now.”

She ran ahead with enviable fleetness and spoke to the beggar on the church steps. By the time I limped up, she was dickering with him. “A set of crutches like that costs nine dollars, and you want fifty for
one
?”

“I need at least one to get home,” he said reasonably. “And your friend looks like he needs one to get
anywhere.
”

“What about all that God loves you, be a good Samaritan stuff ?”

“Well,” the beggar said, thoughtfully rubbing his whiskery chin, “God
does
love you, but I’m just a poor old cripple fella. If you don’t like my terms, make like the Pharisee and pass by on the other side. That’s what I’d do.”

“I bet you would. What if I just snatched them away, you money-grubbing thing?”

“I guess you could, but then God wouldn’t love you anymore,”
he said, and burst out laughing. It was a remarkably cheerful sound for a man who was crippled up bad. He was doing better in the dental department than the Studebaker cowboy, but not a whole hell of a lot.

“Give him the money,” I said. “I only need one.”

“Oh, I’ll give him the money. I just hate being screwed.”

“Lady, that’s a shame for the male population of planet Earth, if you don’t mind me saying.”

“Watch your mouth,” I said. “That’s my fiancée you’re talking about.” It was eleven-forty now.

The beggar took no notice of me. He was eyeing Sadie’s wallet. “There’s blood on that. Did you cut yourself shaving?”

“Don’t try out for the
Sullivan
show just yet, sweetheart, Alan King you’re not.” Sadie produced the ten she’d flashed at oncoming traffic, plus two twenties. “There,” she said as he took them. “I’m broke. Are you satisfied?”

“You helped a poor crippled man,” the beggar said. “
You’re
the one who ought to be satisfied.”

“Well, I’m not!” Sadie shouted. “And I hope your damn old eyes fall out of your ugly head!”

The beggar gave me a sage guy-to-guy look. “Better get her home, Sunny Jim, I think she’s gonna start on her monthly right t’irectly.”

I put the crutch under my right arm—people who’ve been lucky with their bones think you’d use a single crutch on the injured side, but that’s not the case—and took Sadie’s elbow with my left hand. “Come on. No time.”

As we walked away, Sadie slapped her jeans-clad rump, looked back over her shoulder, and cried: “Kiss it!”

The beggar called: “Bring it back and bend it in my direction, honeylove, that you get for free!”

We walked down North Pearl . . . or rather, Sadie walked and I crutched. It was a hundred times better with the crutch, but there was no way we could make the intersection of Houston and Elm before twelve-thirty.

Up ahead was a scaffolding. The sidewalk went beneath it. I steered Sadie across the street.

“Jake, why in the
world
—”

“Because it’d fall on us. Take my word for it.”

“We need a ride. We
really
need . . . Jake? Why are you stopping?”

I stopped because life is a song and the past harmonizes. Usually those harmonies meant nothing (so I thought then), but every once in awhile the intrepid visitor to the Land of Ago can put one to use. I prayed with all my heart that this was one of those times.

Parked at the corner of North Pearl and San Jacinto was a 1954 Ford Sunliner convertible. Mine had been red and this one was midnight blue, but still . . . maybe . . .

I hurried to it and tried the passenger door. Locked. Of course. Sometimes you caught a break, but outright freebies? Never.

“Are you going to jump the ignition?”

I had no idea how to do that, and suspected it was probably harder than they made it look on
Bourbon Street Beat
. But I knew how to raise my crutch and slam the armpit cradle repeatedly against the window until it broke into a crack-glaze and sagged inward. No one looked at us, because there was no one on the sidewalk. All the action was to the southeast. From there we could hear the surf-roar of the crowd now gathering on Main Street in anticipation of President Kennedy’s arrival.

The Saf-T-Glas sagged. I reversed the crutch and used the rubber-tipped end to push it inward. One of us would have to sit in the back. If this worked, that was. While in Derry, I’d had a copy made of the Sunliner’s ignition key and taped it to the
bottom of the glove compartment, underneath the paperwork. Maybe this guy had done the same. Maybe this particular harmony extended that far. It was a thin chance . . . but the chance of Sadie finding me on Mercedes Street had been thin enough to read a newspaper through, and that one had panned out. I thumbed the chrome button on this Sunliner’s glove compartment and began to feel around inside.

Harmonize, you son of a bitch. Please harmonize. Give me a little help just this once.

“Jake? Why would you think—”

My fingers happened on something and I brought out a tin Sucrets box. When I opened it I found not one key, but four. I didn’t know what the other three might open, but I had no doubt about the one I wanted. I could have found it in the dark, just by its shape.

Man, I loved that car.

“Bingo,” I said, and almost fell over when she hugged me. “You drive, honey. I’ll sit in back and rest my knee.”

I knew better than to try Main Street; it would be blocked off with sawhorses and police cars. “Take Pacific as far as you can. After that, use the side streets. Just keep the crowd-noise on your left and I think you’ll be okay.”

“How much time do we have?”

“Half an hour.” It was actually twenty-five minutes, but I thought half an hour sounded more comforting. Besides, I didn’t want her to try any stunt driving and risk an accident. We still had time—theoretically, at least—but one more wreck and we were finished.

She didn’t try any stunts, but she did drive fearlessly. We came to a downed tree blocking one of the streets (of course we did), and she bumped up over the curb, driving along the sidewalk to
get past it. We made it as far as the intersection of North Record Street and Havermill. There we could go no farther, because the last two blocks of Havermill—right up to the point where it intersected Elm—no longer existed. It had become a parking lot. A man holding an orange flag waved us forward.

“Fi’ bucks,” he said. “Just a two-minute walk to Main Street, you folks got plenny a time.” Although he cast a doubtful eye at my crutch when he said it.

“I really am broke,” Sadie said. “I wasn’t lying about that.”

I pulled out my wallet and gave the man a five. “Put it behind the Chrysler,” he said. “Pull up nice and tight.”

Sadie tossed him the keys. “
You
pull it up nice and tight. Come on, honey.”

“Hey, not that way!” the car-park guy yelled. “That way’s Elm! You want to go over to Main! That’s the way he’s coming!”

“We know what we’re doing!” Sadie called. I hoped she was right. We made our way through the packed cars, Sadie in the lead. I twisted and flailed with my crutch, trying to avoid jutting outside mirrors and keep up with her. Now I could hear locomotives and clanging freight cars in the trainyard behind the Book Depository.

“Jake, we’re leaving a trail a mile wide.”

“I know. I’ve got a plan.” A gigantic overstatement, but it sounded good.

We came out on Elm, and I pointed at the building across the street two blocks down. “There. That’s where he is.”