11/22/63

by Stephen King

  She glared at me for a moment, then looked down and began stroking her hair against the bad side of her face. "What if it was? Does that make it wrong?"

  "Jeez, let me think. You're talking about a life-lesson from the woman whose biggest concern after finding out her daughter had been mutilated and almost killed was her church affiliation."

  "It's demeaning," she said in a low voice. "Throwing yourself on the mercy of the town is demeaning."

  "You didn't feel that way when it was Bobbi Jill."

  "You're hounding me, Jake. Please don't do that."

  I sat down beside her and took her hand. She pulled it away. I took it again. This time she let me hold it.

  "I know this isn't easy for you, honey. But there's a time to take as well as a time to give. I don't know if that one's in the Book of Ecclesiastes, but it's true, just the same. Your health insurance is a joke. Dr. Ellerton's giving us a break on his fee--"

  "I never asked--"

  "Hush, Sadie. Please. It's called pro bono work and he wants to do it. But there are other surgeons involved here. The bills for your surgeries are going to be enormous, and my resources will only stretch so far."

  "I almost wish he'd killed me," she whispered.

  "Don't you ever say that." She shrank from the anger in my voice, and the tears started. She could only cry from one eye now. "Hon, people want to do this for you. Let them. I know your mother lives in your head--almost everyone's mother does, I guess--but you can't let her have her way on this one."

  "Those doctors can't fix it, anyway. It'll never be the way it was. Ellerton told me so."

  "They can fix a lot of it." Which sounded marginally better than they can fix some of it.

  She sighed. "You're braver than I am, Jake."

  "You're plenty brave. Will you do this?"

  "The Sadie Dunhill Charity Show. My mother would shit a brick if she found out."

  "All the more reason, I'd say. We'll send her some stills."

  That made her smile, but only for a moment. She lit a cigarette with fingers that trembled slightly, then began to smooth the hair against the side of her face again. "Would I have to be there? Let them see what their dollars are buying? Sort of like an American Berkshire pig on the auction block?"

  "Of course not. Although I doubt if anyone would faint. Most folks around here have seen worse." As members of the faculty in a farming and ranching area, we had seen worse ourselves--Britta Carlson, for instance, who had been badly burned in a housefire, or Duffy Hendrickson, who had a left hand that looked like a hoof after a chainfall holding a truck motor slipped in his father's garage.

  "I'm not ready for that kind of inspection. I don't think I ever will be."

  I hoped with all my heart that didn't turn out to be true. The crazy people of the world--the Johnny Claytons, the Lee Harvey Oswalds--shouldn't get to win. If God won't make it better after they do have their shitty little victories, then ordinary people have to. They have to try, at least. But this wasn't the time to sermonize on the subject.

  "Would it help if I said Dr. Ellerton himself has agreed to take part in the show?"

  She momentarily forgot about her hair and stared at me. "What?"

  "He wants to be the back end of Bertha." Bertha the Dancing Pony was a canvas creation of the kids in the Art Department. She wandered around during several of the skits, but her big number was a tail-waggling jig to Gene Autry's "Back in the Saddle Again." (The tail was controlled with a string pulled by the rear half of Team Bertha.) Country folk, not generally noted for their sophisticated senses of humor, found her hilarious.

  Sadie began to laugh. I could see it hurt her, but she couldn't help it. She fell back against the couch, one palm pressed to the center of her forehead as if to keep her brains from exploding. "All right!" she said when she could finally talk again. "I'll let you do it just to see that." Then she glared at me. "But I'll see it during the dress rehearsal. You're not getting me up onstage where everybody can stare at me and whisper 'Oh look at that poor girl.' Have we got that straight?"

  "We absolutely do," I said, and kissed her. That was one hurdle. The next would be convincing Dallas's premier plastic surgeon to come to Jodie in the July heat and prance around beneath the back half of a thirty-pound canvas costume. Because I hadn't actually asked him.

  That turned out to be no problem; Ellerton lit up like a kid when I put the idea to him. "I even have practical experience," he said. "My wife's been telling me that I'm a perfect horse's ass for years now."

  2

  The last hurdle turned out to be the venue. In mid-June, right around the time Lee was getting kicked off a dock in New Orleans for trying to hand out his pro-Castro leaflets to the sailors of the USS Wasp, Deke came by Sadie's house. He kissed her on her good cheek (she averted the bad side of her face when anyone came to visit) and asked me if I'd like to step out for a cold beer.

  "Go on," Sadie said. "I'll be fine."

  Deke drove us to a dubiously air-conditioned tinroof called the Prairie Chicken, nine miles west of town. It was midafternoon, the place empty except for two solitary drinkers at the bar, the jukebox dark. Deke handed me a dollar. "I'll buy, you fetch. How's that for a deal?"

  I went to the bar and collared two Buckhorns.

  "If I'd known you were going to bring back Buckies, I would have gone myself," Deke said. "Man, this stuff is horse-piss."

  "I happen to like it," I said. "Anyway, I thought you did your drinking at home. 'The asshole quotient in the local bars is a little too high for my taste,' I believe you said."

  "I don't want a damn beer, anyway." Now that we were away from Sadie, I could see that he was steaming mad. "What I want to do is punch Fred Miller in the face and kick Jessica Caltrop's narra and no doubt lace-trimmed ass."

  I knew the names and faces, although, having been just a humble wage-slave, I had never actually conversed with either of them. Miller and Caltrop were two-thirds of the Denholm County Schoolboard.

  "Don't stop there," I said. "As long as you're in a bloodthirsty mood, tell me what you want to do to Dwight Rawson. Isn't he the other one?"

  "It's Rawlings," Deke said moodily, "and I'll give him a pass. He voted on our side."

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "They won't let us use the school gym for the Jamboree. Even though it's the middle of summer we're talking about and it's just standing there vacant."

  "Are you kidding?" Sadie had told me that certain elements of the town might take against her, and I hadn't believed her. Silly old Jake Epping, still clinging to his science-fiction fantasies of the twenty-first century.

  "Son, I only wish I were. They cited fire-insurance concerns. I pointed out that they didn't have any insurance concerns when it was a benefit for a student who'd been in an accident, and the Caltrop woman--dried-up old kitty that she is--said, 'Oh yes, Deke, but that was during the school year.'

  "They've got concerns, all right, mostly about how a member of the faculty got her face cut open by the crazy man she was married to. They're afraid it'll get mentioned in the paper or, God forbid, on one of the Dallas TV stations."

  "How can it matter?" I asked. "He . . . Christ, Deke, he wasn't even from here! He was from Georgia!"

  "That dudn't matter to them. What matters to them is that he died here, and they're afraid it'll reflect badly on the school. On the town. And on them."

  I heard myself bleating, not a noble sound coming from a man in the prime of life, but I couldn't help it. "That makes no sense at all!"

  "They'd fire her if they could, just to get rid of the embarrassment. Since they can't, they're hoping she'll quit before the kids have to look at what Clayton did to her face. Goddam smalltown bullshit hypocrisy at its best, my boy. When he was in his twenties, Fred Miller used to rip and roar in the Nuevo Laredo whorehouses twice a month. More, if he could get an advance on his allowance from his daddy. And I have it on damn good authority that when Jessica Caltrop was plain Jessie Trapp
from Sweetwater Ranch, she got real fat when she was sixteen and real thin again about nine months later. I've a mind to tell them that my memory's even longer than their blue goddam noses, and I could embarrass them plenty if I wanted to. I wouldn't even have to work at it that hard."

  "They can't really blame Sadie for her ex-husband's craziness . . . can they?"

  "Grow up, George. Sometimes you act like you were born in a barn. Or some country where folks actually think straight. To them it's about sex. To folks like Fred and Jessica it's always about sex. They probably think Alfalfa and Spanky on The Little Rascals spend their spare time diddling Darla out behind the barn while Buckwheat cheers em on. And when something like this happens, it's the woman's fault. They wouldn't come right out and say so, but in their hearts they believe men are beasts and women who can't gentle em, well, be it on their own heads, son, be it on their own heads. I won't let em get away with this."

  "You'll have to," I said. "If you don't, the ruckus might get back to Sadie. And she's fragile now. This might tip her over completely."

  "Yeah," he said. He rummaged his pipe out of his breast pocket. "Yeah, I know that. I'm just blowin off steam. Ellie talked to the folks who run the Grange Hall just yesterday. They're happy to let us put on the show there, and it seats fifty more people. Because of the balcony, you know."

  "Well there," I said, relieved. "Cooler heads prevail."

  "Only one problem. They're asking four hundred for both nights. If I come up with two hundred, can you come up with the other two? You won't be getting it back from the receipts, you know. That's all earmarked for Sadie's medical work."

  I knew very well about the cost of Sadie's medical work; I had already paid three hundred dollars to cover the part of her hospital stay that her shitepoke insurance wouldn't stand good for. In spite of Ellerton's good offices, the other expenses would mount up rapidly. As for me, I wasn't scraping financial bottom quite yet, but I could see it.

  "George? What do you say?"

  "Fifty-fifty," I agreed.

  "Then drink up your shitty beer. I want to get back to town."

  3

  On our way out of that sad excuse for a drinking establishment, a poster propped in the window caught my eye. At the top:

  SEE THE FIGHT OF THE CENTURY ON CLOSED CIRCUIT TV!

  LIVE FROM MADISON SQUARE GARDEN!

  DALLAS'S OWN TOM "THE HAMMER" CASE VS. DICK TIGER!

  DALLAS AUDITORIUM

  THURSDAY AUG. 29

  ADVANCE TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE

  Below were side-by-side photos of two bare-chested beefcakes with their gloved fists held up in the accepted fashion. One was young and unmarked. The other guy looked a lot older, and as if he'd had his nose broken a few times. The names were what stopped me, though. I knew them from somewhere.

  "Don't even think about it," Deke said, shaking his head. "You'd get more sport out of watching a dogfight between a pit bull and a cocker spaniel. An old cocker spaniel."

  "Really?"

  "Tommy Case always had a ton of heart, but now it's a forty-year-old heart in a forty-year-old body. He got him a beergut and he can hardly move at all. Tiger's young and fast. He'll be a champ in a couple of years if the matchmakers don't slip up. In the meantime, they feed him walking tank-jobs like Case to keep him in trim."

  It sounded to me like Rocky Balboa against Apollo Creed, but why not? Sometimes life imitates art.

  Deke said, "TV you pay to watch in an auditorium. Boy-howdy, what next?"

  "The wave of the future, I guess," I said.

  "And it'll probably sell out--in Dallas, at least--but that doesn't change the fact that Tom Case is the wave of the past. Tiger'll slice him like coldcuts. Sure you're okay with this Grange thing, George?"

  "Absolutely."

  4

  That was a strange June. On one hand, I was delighted to be rehearsing with the troupe that had put on the original Jamboree. It was deja vu of the best kind. On the other hand, I found myself wondering, with greater and greater frequency, if I had ever intended to strike Lee Harvey Oswald from history's equation in the first place. I couldn't believe I lacked the guts to do it--I had already killed one bad man, and in cold blood--but it was an undeniable fact that I'd had Oswald in my sights and let him go. I told myself it was the uncertainty principle, and not the fact of his family, but I kept seeing Marina smiling and holding her hands out in front of her belly. I kept wondering if he might not be a patsy, after all. I reminded myself he'd be back in October. And then, of course, I asked myself how that would change things. His wife would still be pregnant and the window of uncertainty would still be open.

  Meanwhile, there was Sadie's slow recovery to preside over, there were bills to pay, there were insurance forms to fill out (the bureaucracy every bit as infuriating in 1963 as in 2011), and those rehearsals. Dr. Ellerton could only show up for one of them, but he was a quick study and hoofed his half of Bertha the Dancing Pony with charming brio. After the run-through, he told me he wanted to bring another surgeon on board, a facial specialist from Mass General. I told him--with a sinking heart--that another surgeon sounded like a grand idea.

  "Can you afford it?" he asked. "Mark Anderson ain't cheap."

  "We'll manage," I said.

  I invited Sadie to rehearsals when the show dates grew close. She refused gently but firmly in spite of her earlier promise to come to at least one dress rehearsal. She rarely left the house, and when she did, it was only to go into the backyard garden. She hadn't been to the school--or in town--since the night John Clayton cut her face and then his own throat.

  5

  I spent the late morning and early afternoon of July twelfth at the Grange Hall, running a final tech rehearsal. Mike Coslaw, who had settled as naturally into the role of producer as he had that of slapstick comedian, told me the Saturday-night show was a sellout and tonight's was at ninety percent. "We'll get enough walk-ups to fill the place, Mr. A. Count on it. I just hope me and Bobbi Jill don't mess up the encore."

  "Bobbi Jill and I, Mike. And you won't mess up."

  All of that was good. Less good was passing Ellen Dockerty's car turning out of Bee Tree Lane just as I was turning in, and then finding Sadie sitting by the living room window with tears on her unmarked cheek and a handkerchief in one fisted hand.

  "What?" I demanded. "What did she say to you?"

  Sadie surprised me by mustering a grin. It was lopsided, but not without a certain gamine charm. "Nothing that wasn't the truth. Please don't worry. I'll make you a sandwich and you can tell me how it went."

  So that was what I did. And I did worry, of course, but I kept my worries to myself. Also my comments on the subject of meddlesome high school principals. That evening at six, Sadie inspected me, reknotted my tie, and then brushed some lint, real or imagined, from the shoulders of my sport coat. "I'd tell you to break a leg, but you might just go and do it."

  She was wearing her old jeans and a smock top that camouflaged--a little, anyway--her weight-loss. I found myself remembering the pretty dress she'd worn to the original Jodie Jamboree. Pretty dress that night with a pretty girl inside it. That was then. Tonight the girl--still pretty on one side--would be at home when the curtain went up, watching a Route 66 rerun.

  "What's wrong?" she asked.

  "Wishing you were going to be there, that's all."

  I was sorry as soon as it was out, but it was almost okay. Her smile faded, then came back. The way the sun does when it passes behind a cloud that's only small. "You'll be there. Which means I will be." She looked at me with grave timidity from the one eye her Veronica Lake flip left visible. "If you love me, that is."

  "I love you plenty."

  "Yes, I guess you do." She kissed the corner of my mouth. "And I love you. So don't break any legs and give everybody my thanks."

  "I will. You're not afraid to stay here alone?"

  "I'll be okay." It wasn't actually an answer to my question, but it was the best she could do for the time bei
ng.

  6

  Mike was right about the walk-ups. We sold out the Friday night performance a full hour in advance of showtime. Donald Bellingham, our stage manager, lowered the houselights at 8:00 P.M. on the dot. I expected to feel a letdown after the nearly sublime original with its pie-throwing finale (which we intended to repeat on Saturday night only, the consensus being that we wanted to clean up the Grange Hall stage--and the first couple of rows--just a single time), but this one was nearly as good. For me the comedy highlight was that goddamned dancing horse. At one point Dr. Ellerton's front-half cohort, a wildly overenthusiastic Coach Borman, almost boogied Bertha right off the stage.

  The audience believed those twenty or thirty seconds of weaving around the footlights was part of the show and heartily applauded the derring-do. I, who knew better, found myself caught in an emotional paradox that will probably never be repeated. I stood in the wings next to a nearly paralytic Donald Bellingham, laughing wildly while my terrified heart fluttered at the very top of my throat.

  The night's harmonic came during the encore. Mike and Bobbi Jill walked to center stage, hand in hand. Bobbi Jill faced the audience and said, "Miz Dunhill means an awful lot to me, because of her kindness and her Christian charity. She helped me when I needed help, and she made me want to learn how to do what we're going to do for you now. We thank you all for coming out tonight and showing your Christian charity. Don't we, Mike?"

  "Yeah," he said. "You guys are the best."

  He looked stage left. I pointed to Donald, who was bent over his record player with the tone arm raised, ready to stick the groove. This time Donald's father was going to know damned well that Donald had borrowed one of his big-band records, because the man was in the audience.

  Glenn Miller, that long-gone bombardier, launched into "In the Mood," and onstage, to rhythmic clapping from the audience, Mike Coslaw and Bobbi Jill Allnut flew into a jet-propelled Lindy far more fervent than any I had ever managed with either Sadie or Christy. It was all youth and joy and enthusiasm, and that made it gorgeous. When I saw Mike squeeze Bobbi Jill's hand, telling her by touch to counterspin and shoot through his legs, I was suddenly back in Derry, watching Bevvie-from-the-levee and Richie-from-the-ditchie.