11/22/63: A Novel (13 page)

I stared at the cash. “Money comes back. It stays, no matter how many times you use the rabbit-hole.” We’d been over this point, but I was still trying to get it through my head.

“Yeah, although it’s still back there, too—complete reset, remember?”

“Isn’t that a paradox?”

He looked at me, haggard, patience wearing thin. “I don’t know. Asking questions that don’t have answers is a waste of time, and I don’t have much.”

“Sorry, sorry. What else have you got in there?”

“Not much. But the beauty of it is that you don’t need much. It was a very different time, Jake. You can read about it in the history books, but you can’t really understand it until you’ve lived there for awhile.” He passed me a Social Security card. The number was 005-52-0223. The name was George T. Amberson. Al took a pen out of the box and handed it to me. “Sign it.”

I took the pen, which was a promotional giveaway. Written on the barrel was TRUST YOUR CAR TO THE MAN WHO WEARS THE STAR
TEXACO
. Feeling a little like Daniel Webster
making his pact with the devil, I signed the card. When I tried to give it back to him, he shook his head.

The next item was George T. Amberson’s Maine driver’s license, which stated I was six feet five, blue eyes, brown hair, weight one-ninety. I had been born on April 22, 1923, and lived at 19 Bluebird Lane in Sabattus, which happened to be my 2011 address.

“Six-five about right?” Al asked. “I had to guess.”

“Close enough.” I signed the driver’s license, which was your basic piece of cardboard. Color: Bureaucratic Beige. “No photo?”

“State of Maine’s years away on that, buddy. The other forty-eight, too.”

“Forty-
eight
?”

“Hawaii won’t be a state until next year.”

“Oh.” I felt a little out of breath, as if someone had just punched me in the gut. “So . . . you get stopped for speeding, and the cop just assumes you are who this card claims you are?”

“Why not? If you say something about a terrorist attack in 1958, people are gonna think you’re talking about teenagers tipping cows. Sign these, too.”

He handed me a Hertz Courtesy Card, a Cities Service gas card, a Diners Club card, and an American Express card. The Amex was celluloid, the Diners Club cardboard. George Amberson’s name was on them. Typed, not printed.

“You can get a genuine plastic Amex card next year, if you want.”

I smiled. “No checkbook?”

“I coulda got you one, but what good would it do you? Any paperwork I filled out on George Amberson’s behalf would be lost in the next reset. Also any cash I put into the account.”

“Oh.” I felt like a dummy. “Right.”

“Don’t get down on yourself, all this is still new to you. You’ll want to start an account, though. I’d suggest no more than a thousand. Keep most of the dough in cash, and where you can grab it.”

“In case I have to come back in a hurry.”

“Right. And the credit cards are just identity-backers. The
actual accounts I opened to get them are going to be wiped out when you go back through. They might come in handy, though—you can never tell.”

“Does George get his mail at Nineteen Bluebird Lane?”

“In 1958, Bluebird Lane’s just an address on a Sabattus plat map, buddy. The development where you live hasn’t been built yet. If anybody asks you about that, just say it’s a business thing. They’ll buy it. Business is like a god in ’58—everybody worships it but nobody understands it. Here.”

He tossed me a gorgeous man’s wallet. I gaped at it. “Is this
ostrich
?”

“I wanted you to look prosperous,” Al said. “Find some pictures to put in it along with your identification. I got you some other odds and ends, too. More ballpoint pens, one a fad item with a combination letter-opener and ruler on the end. A Scripto mechanical pencil. A pocket protector. In ’58 they’re considered necessary, not nerdy. A Bulova watch on a Speidel chrome expansion band—all the cool cats will dig that one, daddy. You can sort the rest out for yourself.” He coughed long and hard, wincing. When he stopped, sweat was standing out on his face in large drops.

“Al, when did you put all this together?”

“When I realized I wasn’t going to make it into 1963, I left Texas and came home. I already had you in mind. Divorced, no children, smart, best of all, young. Oh, here, almost forgot. This is the seed everything else grew from. Got the name off a gravestone in the St. Cyril’s boneyard and just wrote an application letter to the Maine Secretary of State.”

He handed me my birth certificate. I ran my fingers over the embossed franking. It had a silky official feel.

When I looked up, I saw he’d put another sheet of paper on the table. It was headed SPORTS 1958–1963. “Don’t lose it. Not only because it’s your meal ticket, but because you’d have a lot of questions
to answer if it fell into the wrong hands. Especially when the picks start to prove out.”

I started to put everything back into the box, and he shook his head. “I’ve got a Lord Buxton briefcase for you in my closet, all nicely battered around the edges.”

“I don’t need it—I’ve got my backpack. It’s in the trunk of my car.”

He looked amused. “Where you’re going, nobody wears backpacks except Boy Scouts, and they only wear them when they’re going on hikes and Camporees. You’ve got a lot to learn, buddy, but if you step careful and don’t take chances, you’ll get there.”

I realized I was really going to do this, and it was going to happen right away, with almost no preparation. I felt like a visitor to the London docks of the seventeenth century who suddenly becomes aware he’s about to be shanghaied.

“But what do I do?” This came out in a near bleat.

He raised his eyebrows—bushy and now as white as the thinning hair on his head. “You save the Dunning family. Isn’t that what we’ve been talking about?”

“I don’t mean that. What do I do when people ask me how I make my
living
? What do I say?”

“Your rich uncle died, remember? Tell them you’re piecing your windfall inheritance out a little at a time, making it last long enough for you to write a book. Isn’t there a frustrated writer inside every English teacher? Or am I wrong about that?”

Actually, he wasn’t.

He sat looking at me—haggard, far too thin, but not without sympathy. Perhaps even pity. At last he said, very softly, “It’s big, isn’t it?”

“It is,” I said. “And Al . . . man . . . I’m just a
little
guy.”

“You could say the same of Oswald. A pipsqueak who shot from ambush. And according to Harry Dunning’s theme, his father’s just a mean drunk with a hammer.”

“He’s not even that anymore. He died of acute stomach poisoning
in Shawshank State Prison. Harry said it was probably bad squeeze. That’s—”

“I know what squeeze is. I saw plenty when I was stationed in the Philippines. Even drank some, to my sorrow. But he’s not dead where you’re going. Oswald, either.”

“Al . . . I know you’re sick, and I know you’re in pain. But can you come down to the diner with me? I . . .” For the first and last time, I used his habitual form of address. “Buddy, I don’t want to start this alone. I’m scared.”

“Wouldn’t miss it.” He hooked a hand under his armpit and stood up with a grimace that rolled his lips back to the gumlines. “You get the briefcase. I’ll get dressed.”

It was quarter to eight when Al unlocked the door of the silver trailer that the Famous Fatburger called home. The glimmering chrome fixtures behind the counter looked ghostly. The stools seemed to whisper
no one will sit on us again.
The big old-fashioned sugar shakers seemed to whisper back
no one will pour from us again—the party’s over.

“Make way for L.L. Bean,” I said.

“That’s right,” Al said. “The fucking march of progress.”

He was out of breath, panting, but didn’t pause to rest. He led me behind the counter and to the pantry door. I followed, switching the briefcase with my new life inside it from one hand to the other. It was the old-fashioned kind, with buckles. If I’d carried it into my homeroom at LHS, most of the kids would have laughed. A few others—those with an emerging sense of style—might have applauded its retro funk.

Al opened the door on the smells of vegetables, spices, coffee. He once more reached past my shoulder to turn on the light. I gazed at the gray linoleum floor the way a man might stare at a
pool that could well be filled with hungry sharks, and when Al tapped me on the shoulder, I jumped.

“Sorry,” he said, “but you ought to take this.” He was holding out a fifty-cent piece. Half a rock. “The Yellow Card Man, remember him?”

“Sure I do.” Actually I’d forgotten all about him. My heart was beating hard enough to make my eyeballs feel like they were pulsing in their sockets. My tongue tasted like an old piece of carpet, and when he handed me the coin, I almost dropped it.

He gave me a final critical look. “The jeans are okay for now, but you ought to stop at Mason’s Menswear on upper Main Street and get some slacks before you head north. Pendletons or khaki twill is fine for everyday. Ban-Lon for dress.”

“Ban-Lon?”

“Just ask, they’ll know. You’ll also need to get some dress shirts. Eventually a suit. Also some ties and a tie clip. Buy yourself a hat, too.
Not
a baseball cap, a nice summer straw.”

There were tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. This frightened me more thoroughly than anything he’d said.

“Al? What’s wrong?”

“I’m just scared, same as you are. No need for an emotional parting scene, though. If you’re coming back, you’ll be here in two minutes no matter how long you stay in ’58. Just time enough for me to start the coffeemaker. If it works out, we’ll have a nice cup together, and you can tell me all about it.”

If. What a big word.

“You could say a prayer, too. There’d be time for that, wouldn’t there?”

“Sure. I’ll be praying that it goes nice and smooth. Don’t get so dazed by where you are that you forget you’re dealing with a dangerous man. More dangerous than Oswald, maybe.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“Okay. Keep your mouth shut as much as you can until you pick up the lingo and the feel of the place. Go slow. Don’t make waves.”

I tried to smile, but I’m not sure I made it. The briefcase felt very heavy, as if it were filled with rocks instead of money and bogus ID. I thought I might faint. And yet, God help me, part of me still wanted to go. Couldn’t
wait
to go. I wanted to see the USA in my Chevrolet; America was asking me to call.

Al held out his thin and trembling hand. “Good luck, Jake. God bless.”

“George, you mean.”

“George, right. Now get going. As they say back then, it’s time for you to split the scene.”

I turned and walked slowly into the pantry, moving like a man trying to locate the top of a staircase with the lights out.

On my third step, I found it.

I walked along the side of the drying shed, just like before. I ducked under the chain with the
NO ADMITTANCE BEYOND THIS POINT
sign hanging from it, just like before. I walked around the corner of the big green-painted cube of a building just like before, and then something smacked into me. I’m not particularly heavy for my height, but I’ve got some meat on my bones—“You won’t blow away in a high wind,” my father used to say—and still the Yellow Card Man almost knocked me over. It was like being attacked by a black overcoat full of flapping birds. He was yelling something, but I was too startled (not scared, exactly, it was all too quick for that) to have any idea what it was.

I pushed him away and he stumbled back against the drying shed with his coat swirling around his legs. There was a bonk sound when the back of his head struck the metal, and his filthy fedora tumbled to the ground. He followed it down, not in a tumble but in a kind of accordion collapse. I was sorry for what I’d done even before my heart had a chance to settle into a more normal rhythm, and sorrier still when he picked up his hat and began brushing at it with one dirty hand. The hat was never going to be clean again, and, in all probability, neither was he.

“Are you okay?” I asked, but when I bent down to touch his shoulder, he went scuttering away from me along the side of the shed,
pushing with his hands and sliding on his butt. I’d say he looked like a crippled spider, but he didn’t. He looked like what he was: a wino with a brain that was damp going on wet. A man who might be as close to death as Al Templeton was, because in this fifty-plus-years-ago America there were probably no charity-supported shelters or rehabs for guys like him. The VA might take him if he’d ever worn the uniform, but who would take him to the VA? Nobody, probably, although someone—a mill foreman would be the most likely—might call the cops on him. They’d put him in the drunk tank for twenty-four or forty-eight hours. If he didn’t die of DT-induced convulsions while he was in there, they’d turn him loose to start the next cycle. I found myself wishing my ex-wife was here—she could find an AA meeting and take him to it. Only Christy wouldn’t be born for another twenty-one years.