11/22/63: A Novel (40 page)

That evening I returned to Al’s Diner and introduced myself to the principal of Denholm Consolidated and his librarian lady-friend. They invited me to join them.

Deke Simmons was tall, bald, and sixtyish. Mimi Corcoran was bespectacled and tanned. The blue eyes behind her bifocals were sharp, looking me up and down for clues. She walked with the aid of a cane, handling it with the careless (almost contemptuous) dexterity of long use. Both of them, I was amused to see, were carrying Denholm pennants and wearing gold buttons that read WE’VE GOT JIM POWER! It was Friday night in Texas.

Simmons asked me how I was liking Jodie (a lot), how long I’d been in Dallas (since August), and if I enjoyed high school football (yes indeed). The closest he got to anything substantive was asking me if I felt confident in my ability to make kids “mind.” Because, he said, a lot of substitutes had a problem with that.

“These young teachers send em to us in the office like we didn’t have anything better to do,” he said, and then chomped his Pronghorn Burger.

“Sauce, Deke,” Mimi said, and he obediently wiped the corner of his mouth with a paper napkin from the dispenser.

She, meanwhile, was continuing her inventory of me: sport coat, tie, haircut. The shoes she’d taken a good look at as I crossed to their booth. “Do you have references, Mr. Amberson?”

“Yes, ma’am, I did quite a bit of substitute teaching in Sarasota County.”

“And in Maine?”

“Not so much there, although I taught for three years in Wisconsin on a regular basis before quitting to work full-time on my book. Or as much full-time as my finances would allow.” I
did
have a reference from St. Vincent’s High School, in Madison. It was a good reference; I had written it myself. Of course, if anyone checked back, I’d be hung. Deke Simmons wouldn’t do it, but sharp-eyed Mimi with the leathery cowboy skin might.

“And what is your novel about?”

This might also hang me, but I decided to be honest. As honest as possible, anyway, given my peculiar circumstances. “A series of murders, and their effect on the community where they happen.”

“Oh my goodness,” Deke said.

She tapped his wrist. “Hush. Go on, Mr. Amberson.”

“My original setting was a fictional Maine city—I called it Dawson—but then I decided it might be more realistic if I set it in an
actual
city. A bigger one. I thought Tampa, at first, but it was wrong, somehow—”

She waved Tampa away. “Too pastel. Too many tourists. You were looking for something a little more insular, I suspect.”

A very sharp lady. She knew more about my book than I did.

“That’s right. So I decided to try Dallas. I think it’s the right place, but . . .”

“But you wouldn’t want to live there?”

“Exactly.”

“I see.” She picked at her piece of deep-fried fish. Deke was looking at her with a mildly poleaxed expression. Whatever it was he wanted as he went cantering down the backstretch of life, she appeared to have it. Not so strange; everybody loves somebody sometime, as Dean Martin would so wisely point out. But not for another few years. “And when you’re not writing, what do you like to read, Mr. Amberson?”

“Oh, just about everything.”

“Have you read
The Catcher in the Rye
?”

Uh-oh,
I thought.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She looked impatient at this. “Oh, call me Mimi. Even the kids call me Mimi, although I insist they put a Miz with it for propriety’s sake. What do you think of Mr. Salinger’s cri de coeur?”

Lie, or tell the truth? But it wasn’t a serious question. This woman would read a lie the way I could read . . . well . . . an IMPEACH EARL WARREN billboard.

“I think it says a lot about how lousy the fifties were, and a lot about how good the sixties can be. If the Holden Caulfields of America don’t lose their outrage, that is. And their courage.”

“Um. Hum.” Picking plenty at her fish, but not eating any that I could see. No wonder she looked like you could staple a string to
the back of her dress and fly her like a kite. “Do you believe it should be in the school library?”

I sighed, thinking how much I would have enjoyed living and teaching part-time in the town of Jodie, Texas. “Actually, ma’am—Mimi—I do. Although I believe it should be checked out only to certain students, and at the librarian’s discretion.”

“The librarian’s? Not the parents’?”

“No, ma’am. That’s a slippery slope.”

Mimi Corcoran burst into a wide smile and turned to her beau. “Deke, this fellow doesn’t belong on the substitute list. He should be full-time.”

“Mimi—”

“I know, no vacancy in the English Department. But if he sticks around, maybe he can step in after that idiot Phil Bateman retires.”

“Meems, that is very indiscreet.”

“Yes,” she said, and actually dropped me a wink. “Also very true. Send Deke your references from Florida, Mr. Amberson. They should do nicely. Better yet, bring them in yourself, next week. The school year has started. No sense in losing time.”

“Call me George,” I said.

“Yes, indeed,” she said. She pushed her plate away. “Deke, this is
terrible.
Why do we eat here?”

“Because I like the burgers and you like Al’s strawberry shortcake.”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “The strawberry shortcake. Bring it on. Mr. Amberson, can you stay for the football game?”

“Not tonight,” I said. “I’ve got to get back to Dallas. Maybe next week’s game. If you think you can use me.”

“If Mimi likes you, I like you,” Deke Simmons said. “I can’t guarantee you a day every week, but some weeks there’ll be two or even three. It will all average out.”

“I’m sure it will.”

“The substitute salary isn’t much, I’m afraid—”

“I know that, sir. I’m just looking for a way to supplement my income.”

“That
Catcher
book will never be in our library,” Deke said with
a regretful side-glance at his purse-lipped paramour. “Schoolboard won’t have it. Mimi knows that.” Another big bite of his Prongburger.

“Times change,” Mimi Corcoran said, pointing first to the napkin dispenser and then to the side of his mouth. “Deke. Sauce.”

The following week I made a mistake. I should have known better; making another major wager should have been the last thing on my mind after all that had happened to me. You’ll say I should have been more on my guard.

I
did
understand the risk, but I was worried about money. I had come to Texas with something less than sixteen thousand dollars. Some was the remainder of Al’s stake-money, but most of it was the result of two very large bets, one placed in Derry and one in Tampa. But staying at the Adolphus for seven weeks or so had eaten up over a thousand; getting settled in a new town would easily cost another four or five hundred. Food, rent, and utilities aside, I was going to need a lot more clothes—and better ones—if I was going to look respectable in a classroom. I’d be based in Jodie for two and a half years before I could conclude my business with Lee Harvey Oswald. Fourteen thousand dollars or so wasn’t going to cut it. The substitute teaching salary? Fifteen dollars and fifty cents a day. Yeehaw.

Okay, maybe I
could
have scraped through on fourteen grand, plus thirty and sometimes even fifty bucks a week as a sub. But I’d have to stay healthy and not have any accidents, and I couldn’t bank on that. Because the past is sly as well as obdurate. It fights back. And yes, maybe there was an element of greed involved, too. If so, it was based less on the love of money than on the intoxicating knowledge that I could beat the usually unbeatable house whenever I wanted to.

I think now:
If Al had researched the stock market as thoroughly as who won all those baseball games, football games, and horse races . . .

But he didn’t.

I think now:
If Freddy Quinlan hadn’t mentioned that the World Series was shaping up to be a doozy . . .

But he did.

And I went back to Greenville Avenue.

I told myself that all those straw-hatted punters I’d seen standing out in front of Faith Financial (Where Trust Is Our Watchword) would be betting the Series, and some of them would be laying down serious cash. I told myself that I’d be one among many, and a middling bet from Mr. George Amberson—who’d claim to be living in a nice converted-garage duplex on Blackwell Street right here in Dallas, should anyone inquire—would attract no attention. Hell, I told myself, the guys running Faith Financial probably don’t know Señor Eduardo Gutierrez of Tampa from Adam. Or from Noah’s son, Ham, for that matter.

Oh, I told myself lots of things, and they all boiled down to the same two things: that it was perfectly safe, and that it was perfectly reasonable to want more money even though I currently had enough to live on. Dumb. But stupidity is one of two things we see most clearly in retrospect. The other is missed chances.

On September twenty-eighth, a week before the Series was scheduled to start, I walked into Faith Financial and—after some dancing—put down six hundred dollars on the Pittsburgh Pirates to beat the Yankees in seven. I accepted two-to-one odds, which was outrageous considering how heavily favored the Yankees were. On the day after Bill Mazeroski hit his unlikely ninth-inning home run to seal the deal for the Buckos, I drove back to Dallas and Greenville Avenue. I think that if Faith Financial had been deserted, I would have turned around and driven right
back
to Jodie . . . or maybe that’s just what I tell myself now. I don’t know for sure.

What I
do
know is there was a queue of bettors waiting to collect,
and I joined it. That group was a Martin Luther King dream come true: fifty percent black, fifty percent white, a hundred percent happy. Most guys came out with nothing but a few fives or maybe a double sawbuck or two, but I saw several who were counting C-notes. An armed robber who had chosen that day to hit Faith Financial would have done well, indeed.

The money-man was a stocky fellow wearing a green eyeshade. He asked me the standard first question (“Are you a cop? If you are, you have to show me your ID”), and when I answered in the negative, he asked for my name and a look at my driver’s license. It was a brand-new one, which I had received by registered mail the week before; finally a piece of Texas identification to add to my collection. And I was careful to hold my thumb over the Jodie address.

He paid me my twelve hundred. I stuffed it in my pocket and walked quickly to my car. When I was back on Highway 77, with Dallas falling behind and Jodie growing closer with every turn of the wheels, I finally relaxed.

Stupid me.

We’re going to take another leap forward in time (narratives also contain rabbit-holes, when you stop to think of it), but I need to recount one more thing from 1960, first.

Fort Worth. November sixteenth, 1960. Kennedy the president-elect for a little over a week. The corner of Ballinger and West Seventh. The day was cold and overcast. Cars puffed white exhaust. The weatherman on KLIF (“All the hits, all the time”) was forecasting rain that might thicken to sleet by midnight, so be careful on the highways, all you rockers and rollers.

I was bundled into a rawhide ranch coat; a felt cap with flaps
was jammed down over my ears. I was sitting on a bench in front of the Texas Cattle Raisers’ Association, looking down West Seventh. I had been there for almost an hour, and I didn’t think the young man would visit with his mother much longer than that; according to Al Templeton’s notes, all three of her boys had gotten away from her as soon as they possibly could. What I was hoping was that she might come out of her apartment building with him. She was recently back in the area after several months in Waco, where she had been working as a ladies’ home companion.

My patience was rewarded. The door of the Rotary Apartments opened and a skinny man who bore an eerie resemblance to Lee Harvey Oswald came out. He held the door for a woman in a tartan car coat and blocky white nurse’s shoes. She was only shoulder-high to him, but solidly built. Her graying hair was scrooped back from a prematurely lined face. She wore a red kerchief. Matching lipstick outlined a small mouth that looked dissatisfied and pugnacious—the mouth of a woman who believes the world is against her and has had plenty of evidence over the years to prove it. Lee Oswald’s elder brother went quickly down the concrete path. The woman scurried after and grabbed the back of his topcoat. He turned to her on the sidewalk. They appeared to argue, but the woman did most of the talking. She shook her finger in his face. No way I could tell what she was scolding him about; I was a prudent block and a half away. Then he started toward the corner of West Seventh and Summit Avenue, as I had expected. He had come by bus, and that was where the nearest stop was.

The woman stood where she was for a moment, as if undecided.
Come on, Mama,
I thought,
you’re not going to let him get away that easily, are you? He’s just half a block down the street. Lee had to go all the way to Russia to get away from that wagging finger.

She went after him, and as they neared the corner, she raised her voice and I heard her clearly. “
Stop,
Robert, don’t walk so fast, I’m not done with you!”

He looked over his shoulder but kept walking. She caught up
to him at the bus stop and tugged on his sleeve until he looked at her. The finger resumed its tick-tock wagging. I caught isolated phrases:
you promised,
and
gave you everything
and—I think—
who are you to judge me.
I couldn’t see Oswald’s face because his back was to me, but his slumped shoulders said plenty. I doubted if this was the first time Mama had followed him down the street, jabbering away the whole time, oblivious of spectators. She spread a hand above the shelf of her bosom, that timeless Mom-gesture that says
Behold me, ye thankless child.

Oswald dug into his back pocket, produced his wallet, and gave her a bill. She stuffed it in her purse without looking at it and started back toward the Rotary Apartments. Then she thought of something else and turned to him once more. I heard her clearly. Raised to shout across the fifteen or twenty yards now between them, that reedy voice was like fingernails drawn down a slate blackboard.