11/22/63: A Novel (34 page)

“It’s probably not my business, but the only place you should
be going is back to bed. Or to a doctor. You’re as pale as a ghost.”

“It’s just a migraine. I’ll be okay. Let’s look in the trunk. I want to check the spare.”

We checked the spare. Flat.

I followed him to the Texaco through what had become a light, steady drizzle. The cars we passed had their headlights on, and even with the sunglasses, each pair seemed to bore holes through my brain. Baker unlocked the service bay and tried to blow up my spare. No go. It hissed air from half a dozen cracks almost as fine as pores in human skin.

“Huh,” he said. “Never seen that before. Tire must be defective.”

“Put another one on the rim,” I said.

I went around to the back of the station while he did it. I couldn’t stand the sound of the compressor. I leaned against the cinderblock and turned my face up, letting cold mist fall on my hot skin.
One step at a time,
I told myself.
One step at a time.

When I tried to pay Randy Baker for the tire, he shook his head. “You already give me half a week’s pay. I’d be a dog to take more. I’m just worried you’ll run off the road, or something. Is it really that important?”

“Sick relative.”

“You’re sick yourself, man.”

I couldn’t deny it.

I drove out of town on Route 7, slowing to look both ways at every intersection whether I had the right of way or not. This turned out to be an excellent idea, because a fully loaded gravel truck blew through a red at the intersection of 7 and the Old Derry Road. If I hadn’t come to an almost complete stop in spite of a green light, my Ford would have been demolished. With me turned to hamburger
inside it. I laid on my horn in spite of the pain in my head, but the driver paid no attention. He looked like a zombie behind the wheel.

I’ll never be able to do this,
I thought. But if I couldn’t stop Frank Dunning, how could I even hope to stop Oswald? Why go to Texas at all?

That wasn’t what kept me moving, though. It was the thought of Tugga that did that. Not to mention the other three kids. I had saved them once. If I didn’t save them again, how could I escape the sure knowledge that I had participated in murdering them, just by triggering another reset?

I approached the Derry Drive-In, and turned into the gravel drive leading to the shuttered box office. The drive was lined with decorative fir trees. I parked behind them, turned off the engine, and tried to get out of the car. I couldn’t. The door wouldn’t open. I slammed my shoulder against it a couple of times, and when it still wouldn’t open, I saw the lock was pushed down even though this was long before the era of self-locking cars, and I hadn’t pushed it down myself. I pulled on it. It wouldn’t come up. I wiggled it. It wouldn’t come up. I unrolled my window, leaned out, and managed to use my key on the door lock below the chrome thumb-button on the outside handle. This time the lock popped up. I got out, then reached in for the souvenir pillow.

Resistance to change is proportional to how much the future might be altered by any given act,
I had told Al in my best school-lecture voice, and it was true. But I’d had no idea of the personal cost. Now I did.

I walked slowly up Route 7, my collar raised against the rain and my hat pulled low over my ears. When cars came—they were infrequent—I faded back into the trees that lined my side of the road. I think that once or twice I put my hands on the sides of my head to make sure it wasn’t swelling. It
felt
like it was.

At last, the trees pulled back. They were replaced by a rock wall. Beyond the wall were manicured rolling hills dotted with headstones and monuments. I had come to Longview Cemetery. I
breasted a hill, and there was the flower stand on the other side of the road. It was shuttered and dark. Weekends would ordinarily be busy visiting-the-dead-relatives days, but in weather like this, business would be slow, and I supposed the old lady who ran the place was sleeping in a little bit. She would open later, though. I had seen that for myself.

I climbed the wall, expecting it to give way beneath me, but it didn’t. And once I was actually in Longview, a wonderful thing happened: the headache began to abate. I sat on a gravestone beneath an overhanging elm tree, closed my eyes, and checked the pain level. What had been a screaming 10—maybe even turned up to 11, like a Spinal Tap amplifier—had gone back to 8.

“I think I broke through, Al,” I said. “I think I might be on the other side.”

Still, I moved carefully, alert for more tricks—falling trees, graverobbing thugs, maybe even a flaming meteor. There was nothing. By the time I reached the side-by-side graves marked ALTHEA PIERCE DUNNING and JAMES ALLEN DUNNING, the pain in my head was down to a 5.

I looked around and saw a mausoleum with a familiar name engraved on the pink granite: TRACKER. I went to it and tried the iron gate. In 2011 it would have been locked, but this was 1958 and it swung open easily . . . although with a horror-movie squall of rusty hinges.

I went inside, kicking my way through a drift of old brittle leaves. There was a stone meditation bench running up the center of the vault; on either side were stone storage lockers for Trackers going all the way back to 1831. According to the copper plate on the front of that earliest one, the bones of Monsieur Jean Paul Traiche lay within.

I closed my eyes.

Lay down on the meditation bench and dozed.

Slept.

When I woke up it was close to noon. I went to the front door of the Tracker vault to wait for Dunning . . . just as Oswald, five
years from now, would no doubt wait for the Kennedy motorcade in his shooter’s blind on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.

My headache was gone.

Dunning’s Pontiac appeared around the same time Red Schoendienst was scoring that day’s winning run for the Milwaukee Braves. Dunning parked on the closest feeder lane, got out, turned up his collar, then bent back in to get the flower baskets. He walked down the hill to his parents’ graves carrying one in each hand.

Now that the time had come, I was pretty much okay. I had gotten on the other side of whatever had been trying to hold me back. The souvenir pillow was under my coat. My hand was inside. The wet grass muffled my footsteps. There was no sun to cast my shadow. He didn’t know I was behind him until I spoke his name. Then he turned around.

“When I’m visiting my folks, I don’t like company,” he said. “Who the hell are you, anyway? And what’s that?” He was looking at the pillow, which I had taken out. I was wearing it like a glove.

I chose to answer the first question only. “My name’s Jake Epping. I came out here to ask you a question.”

“So ask and then leave me alone.” Rain was dripping off the brim of his hat. Mine, too.

“What’s the most important thing in life, Dunning?”

“What?”

“To a man, I mean.”

“What are you, wacky? What’s with the pillow, anyway?”

“Humor me. Answer the question.”

He shrugged. “His family, I suppose.”

“I think so, too,” I said, and pulled the trigger twice. The first report was a muffled thump, like hitting a rug with a carpet beater. The second was a little louder. I thought the pillow might catch on fire—I saw that in
Godfather 2
—but it only smoldered a little.
Dunning fell over, crushing the basket of flowers he’d placed on his father’s grave. I knelt beside him, my knee squelching up water from the wet earth, placed the torn end of the pillow against his temple, and fired again. Just to make sure.

I dragged him into the Tracker mausoleum and dropped the scorched pillow on his face. When I left, a couple of cars were driving slowly through the cemetery, and a few people were standing under umbrellas at gravesites, but nobody was paying any attention to me. I walked without haste toward the rock wall, pausing every now and then to look at a grave or monument. Once I was screened by trees, I jogged back to my Ford. When I heard cars coming, I slipped into the woods. On one of those retreats, I buried the gun under a foot of earth and leaves. The Sunliner was waiting undisturbed where I’d left it, and it started on the first crank. I drove back to my apartment and listened to the end of the baseball game. I cried a little, I think. Those were tears of relief, not remorse. No matter what happened to me, the Dunning family was safe.

I slept like a baby that night.

There was plenty about the World Series in Monday’s Derry
Daily News,
including a nice pic of Schoendienst sliding home with the winning run after a Tony Kubek error. According to Red Barber’s column, the Bronx Bombers were finished. “Stick a fork in em,” he opined. “The Yanks are dead, long live the Yanks.”

Nothing about Frank Dunning to start Derry’s workweek, but he was front-page material in Tuesday’s paper, along with a photo
that showed him grinning with the-ladies-love-me good cheer. His devilish George Clooney twinkle was all present and accounted for.

BUSINESSMAN FOUND MURDERED IN LOCAL CEMETERY
Dunning Was Prominent in Many Charity Drives

According to the Derry Chief of Police, the department was following up all sorts of good leads and an arrest was expected soon. Reached by phone, Doris Dunning declared herself to be “shocked and devastated.” There was no mention of the fact that she and the decedent had been living apart. Various friends and co-workers at the Center Street Market expressed similar shock. Everyone seemed in agreement that Frank Dunning had been an absolutely terrific guy, and no one could guess why someone would want to shoot him.

Tony Tracker was especially outraged (possibly because the corpse had been found in the family body-bank). “For this guy, they ought to bring back the death penalty,” he said.

On Wednesday, the eighth of October, the Yankees squeezed out a two-to-one win over the Braves at County Stadium; on Thursday they broke a two-two tie in the eighth, scoring four runs and closing the Series out. On Friday, I went back to the Mermaid Pawn & Loan, expecting to be met there by Mrs. Grump and Mr. Gloom. The large lady more than lived up to my expectations—she curled her lip when she saw me and shouted, “Chazzy! Mr. Moneybags is here!” Then she shoved through the curtained-off doorway and out of my life.

Frati came out wearing the same chipmunk grin I’d first encountered in The Lamplighter, on my previous trip into Derry’s colorful past. In one hand he was holding a well-stuffed envelope with G. AMBERSON printed on the front.

“There you are, cuz,” he said, “big as life and twice as handsome. And here’s your loot. Feel free to count it.”

“I trust you,” I said, and put the envelope in my pocket. “You’re mighty cheery for a fellow who just forked over three large.”

“I won’t deny that you cut into this year’s Fall Classic take,” he said. “
Seriously
cut into it, although I still made a few bucks. I always do. But I’m mostly in the game because it’s a whattayacallit,
public service. People are gonna bet, people are always gonna bet, and I give em a prompt payoff when a payoff’s due. Also, I like taking bets. It’s a kind of hobby with me. And do you know when I like it best?”

“No.”

“When someone like you comes along, a real stampeder who bucks the odds and comes through. That restores my faith in the random nature of the universe.”

I wondered how random he’d think it was if he could see Al Templeton’s cheat sheet.

“Your wife’s view doesn’t appear to be so, um, catholic.”

He laughed, and his small black eyes sparkled. Win, lose, or draw, the little man with the mermaid on his arm flat-out enjoyed life. I admired that. “Oh, Marjorie. When some sad sack comes in here with his wife’s engagement ring and a sob story, she turns into a pile of goo. But on the sports-book stuff, she’s a different lady. That she takes personal.”

“You love her a lot, don’t you, Mr. Frati?”

“Like the moon and the stars, cuz. Like the moon and the stars.”

Marjorie had been reading that day’s paper, and it was still on the glass-topped counter containing the rings and things. The headline read HUNT FOR MYSTERY KILLER GOES ON AS FRANK DUNNING IS LAID TO REST.

“What do you reckon
that
was about?” I asked.

“Dunno, but I’ll tell you something.” He leaned forward, and the smile was gone. “He wasn’t the saint the local rag is makin him out to be. I could tell you stories, cuz.”

“Go ahead. I’ve got all day.”

The smile reappeared. “Nah. In Derry, we keep ourselves to ourselves.”

“So I’ve noticed,” I said.

I wanted to go back to Kossuth Street. I knew the cops might be watching the Dunning house to see if anyone showed an unusual interest in the family, but the desire was very strong, just the same. It wasn’t Harry I wanted to see; it was his little sister. There were things I wanted to tell her.

That she should go out trick-or-treating on Halloween no matter how sad she felt about her daddy.

That she’d be the prettiest, most magical Indian princess anyone had ever seen, and would come home with a mountain of candy.

That she had at least fifty-three long and busy years ahead of her, and probably many more.

Most of all that someday her brother Harry was going to want to put on a uniform and go for a soldier and she must do her very, very, very best to talk him out of it.

Only kids forget. Every teacher knows this.

And they think they’re going to live forever.

It was time to leave Derry, but I had one final little chore to take care of before I went. I waited until Monday. That afternoon, the thirteenth of October, I threw my valise into the Sunliner’s trunk, then sat behind the wheel long enough to scribble a brief note. I tucked it into an envelope, sealed it, and printed the recipient’s name on the front.

I drove down to the Low Town, parked, and walked into the Sleepy Silver Dollar. It was empty except for Pete the bartender, as I had expected. He was washing glasses and watching
Love of Life
on the boob tube. He turned to me reluctantly, keeping one eye on John and Marsha, or whatever their names were.