11/22/63

by Stephen King

  I still had three minutes.

  Or maybe just two and a half.

  I attacked the stairs between the second and third floor, ignoring the pain in my knee, forcing myself upward like a marathoner near the end of a long race. Which, of course, I was.

  From below us, I could hear Bonnie Ray yelling something that had crazy man and say Leela goan shoot in it.

  Until I was halfway up the flight to the third floor, I could feel Sadie beating on my back like a rider urging a horse to go faster, but then she fell back a little. I heard her gasping for air and thought, too many cigarettes, darlin. My knee didn't hurt anymore; the pain had been temporarily buried in a surge of adrenaline. I kept my left leg as straight as I could, letting the crutch do the work.

  Around the bend. Up to the fourth floor. Now I was gasping, too, and the stairs looked steeper. Like a mountain. The cradle-rest at the top of the beggar's crutch was slimy with sweat. My head pounded; my ears rang with the sound of the cheering crowd below. The eye of my imagination opened wide and I could see the approaching motorcade: the security car, then the presidential limo with the Harley-Davidson DPD motorcycles flanking it, the cops on them wearing white chin-strapped helmets and sunglasses.

  Around another corner. The crutch skidding, then steadying. Up again. The crutch thudding. Now I could smell sweet sawdust from the sixth-floor renovations: workmen replacing the old plank boards with new ones. Not on Lee's side, though. Lee had the southeast side to himself.

  I reached the fifth-floor landing and made the last turn, my mouth open to scoop in air, my shirt a drenched rag against my heaving chest. Stinging sweat ran into my eyes and I blinked it away.

  Three book cartons stamped ROADS TO EVERYWHERE and 4th AND 5th GRADE READERS blocked the stairs to the sixth floor. I stood on my right leg and slammed the foot of the crutch into one of them, sending it spinning. Behind me I could hear Sadie, now between the fourth and fifth floors. So I had been right to keep the gun, it seemed, although who really knew? Judging from my own experience, knowing you are the one with the primary responsibility to change the future makes you run faster.

  I squeezed through the gap I created. To do so I had to put my full weight on my left leg for a second. It gave a howl of pain. I groaned and grabbed at the railing to keep from spilling forward onto the stairs. Looked at my watch. It said twelve twenty-eight, but what if it was slow? The crowd was roaring.

  "Jake . . . for God's sake hurry . . ." Sadie, still on the stairs to the fifth-floor landing.

  I started up the last flight, and the sound of the crowd began to drain away into a great silence. By the time I reached the top, there was nothing but the rasp of my breath and the burning hammerstrokes of my overtaxed heart.

  14

  The sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository was a shadowy square dotted with islands of stacked book cartons. The overhead lights were burning where the floor was being replaced. They were off on the side where Lee Harvey Oswald planned to make history in one hundred seconds or less. Seven windows overlooked Elm Street, the five in the middle large and semicircular, the ones on the ends square. The sixth floor was gloomy around the stairhead but filled with hazy light in the area overlooking Elm Street. Thanks to the floating sawdust from the floor project, the sunbeams slanting in through the windows looked thick enough to cut. The beam falling through the window at the southeast corner, however, had been blocked off by a stacked barricade of book cartons. The sniper's nest was all the way across the floor from me, on a diagonal that ran from northwest to southeast.

  Behind the barricade, in the sunlight, a man with a gun stood at the window. He was stooped, peering out. The window was open. A light breeze was ruffling his hair and the collar of his shirt. He began to raise the rifle.

  I broke into a shambling run, slaloming around the stacked cartons, digging in my coat pocket for the .38.

  "Lee!" I shouted. "Stop, you son of a bitch!"

  He turned his head and looked at me, eyes wide, mouth hung open. For a moment he was just Lee--the guy who had laughed and played with Junie in the bath, the one who sometimes hugged his wife and kissed her upturned face--and then his thin and somehow prissy mouth wrinkled into a snarl that showed his upper teeth. When that happened, he changed into something monstrous. I doubt you believe that, but I swear it's true. He stopped being a man and became the daemonic ghost that would haunt America from this day on, perverting its power and spoiling its every good intent.

  If I let it.

  The noise of the crowd rushed in again, thousands of people applauding and cheering and yelling their brains out. I heard them and Lee did, too. He knew what it meant: now or never. He whirled back to the window and socked the rifle's butt-plate against his shoulder.

  I had the pistol, the same one I'd used to kill Frank Dunning. Not just like it; in that moment it was the same gun. I thought so then and I think so now. The hammer tried to catch in the pocket-lining but I dragged the .38 out, hearing cloth rip as I did so.

  I fired. My shot went high and only exploded splinters from the top of the window frame, but it was enough to save John Kennedy's life. Oswald jerked at the sound of the report, and the 160-grain slug from the Mannlicher-Carcano went high, shattering a window in the county courthouse.

  There were screams and bewildered shouts from below us. Lee turned toward me again, his face a mask of rage, hate, and disappointment. He raised his rifle again, and this time it wouldn't be the President of the United States he'd be aiming at. He worked the bolt--clack-clack--and I fired at him again. Although I was three-quarters of the way across the room, less than twenty-five feet away, I missed again. I saw the side of his shirt twitch, but that was all.

  My crutch struck a stack of boxes. I tottered to the left, flailing with my gun-hand for balance, but there was no chance of that. For just a moment I thought of how, on the day I'd met her, Sadie had literally fallen into my arms. I knew what was going to happen. History doesn't repeat itself, but it harmonizes, and what it usually makes is the devil's music. This time I was the one who stumbled, and that was the crucial difference.

  I could no longer hear her on the stairs . . . but I could still hear her rapid footfalls.

  "Sadie, down!" I shouted, but it was lost in the bark of Oswald's rifle.

  I heard the bullet pass above me. I heard her cry out.

  Then there was more gunfire, this time from outside. The presidential limo had taken off, driving toward the Triple Underpass at breakneck speed, the two couples inside ducking and holding onto each other. But the security car had pulled up on the far side of Elm Street near Dealey Plaza. The cops on the motorcycles had stopped in the middle of the street, and at least four dozen people were acting as spotters, pointing up at the sixth-floor window, where a skinny man in a blue shirt was clearly visible.

  I heard a patter of thumps, a sound like hailstones striking mud. Those were the bullets that missed the window and hit the bricks above or on either side. Many didn't miss. I saw Lee's shirt billow out as if a wind had started to blow inside it--a red one that tore holes in the fabric: one above the right nipple, one at the sternum, a third where his navel would be. A fourth tore his neck open. He danced like a doll in the hazy, sawdusty light, and that terrible snarl never left his face. He wasn't a man at the end, I tell you; he was something else. Whatever gets into us when we listen to our worst angels.

  A bullet spanged one of the overhead lights, shattered the bulb, and set it to swaying. Then a bullet tore off the top of the would-be assassin's head, just as one of Lee's had torn off the top of Kennedy's in the world I'd come from. He collapsed onto his barricade of boxes, sending them tumbling to the floor.

  Shouts from below. Someone yelling "Man down, I saw him go down!"

  Running, ascending footfalls. I sent the .38 spinning toward Lee's body. I had just enough presence of mind to know that I would be badly beaten, perhaps even killed by the men coming up the stairs if they found me with a gun in my hand. I start
ed to get up, but my knee would no longer hold me. That was probably just as well. I might not have been visible from Elm Street, but if I was, they'd open fire on me. So I crawled to where Sadie lay, supporting my weight on my hands and dragging my left leg behind me like an anchor.

  The front of her blouse was soaked with blood, but I could see the hole. It was dead-center in her chest, just above the slope of her breasts. More blood poured from her mouth. She was choking on it. I got my arms under her and lifted her. Her eyes never left mine. They were brilliant in the hazy gloom.

  "Jake," she rasped.

  "No, honey, don't talk."

  She took no notice, though--when had she ever? "Jake, the president!"

  "Safe." I hadn't actually seen him all in one piece as the limo tore away, but I had seen Lee jerk as he fired his only shot at the street, and that was enough for me. And I would have told Sadie he was safe no matter what.

  Her eyes closed, then opened again. The footfalls were very close now, turning from the fifth-floor landing and starting up the final flight. Far below, the crowd was bellowing its excitement and confusion.

  "Jake."

  "What, honey?"

  She smiled. "How we danced!"

  When Bonnie Ray and the others arrived, I was sitting on the floor and holding her. They stampeded past me. How many I don't know. Four, maybe. Or eight. Or a dozen. I didn't bother to look at them. I held her, rocking her head against my chest, letting her blood soak into my shirt. Dead. My Sadie. She had fallen into the machine, after all.

  I have never been a crying man, but almost any man who's lost the woman he loves would, don't you think? Yes. But I didn't.

  Because I knew what had to be done.

  PART 6

  THE GREEN CARD MAN

  CHAPTER 29

  1

  I wasn't exactly arrested, but I was taken into custody and driven to the Dallas police station in a squad car. On the last block of the ride, people--some of them reporters, most of them ordinary citizens--pounded on the windows and peered inside. In a clinical, distant way, I wondered if I would perhaps be dragged from the car and lynched for attempting to murder the president. I didn't care. What concerned me most was my bloodstained shirt. I wanted it off; I also wanted to wear it forever. It was Sadie's blood.

  Neither of the cops in the front seat asked me any questions. I suppose someone had told them not to. If they had asked any, I wouldn't have replied. I was thinking. I could do that because the coldness was creeping over me again. I put it on like a suit of armor. I could fix this. I would fix this. But first I had some talking to do.

  2

  They put me in a room that was as white as ice. There was a table and three hard chairs. I sat in one of them. Outside, telephones rang and a Teletype chattered. People went back and forth talking in loud voices, sometimes shouting, sometimes laughing. The laughter had a hysterical sound. It was how men laugh when they know they've had a narrow escape. Dodged a bullet, so to speak. Perhaps Edwin Walker had laughed like that on the night of April tenth, as he talked to reporters and brushed broken glass from his hair.

  The same two cops who brought me from the Book Depository searched me and took my things. I asked if I could have my last two packets of Goody's. The two cops conferred, then tore them open and poured them out on the table, which was engraved with initials and scarred with cigarette burns. One of them wetted a finger, tasted the powder, and nodded. "Do you want water?"

  "No." I scooped up the powder and poured it into my mouth. It was bitter. That was fine with me.

  One of the cops left. The other asked for my bloody shirt, which I reluctantly took off and handed over. Then I pointed at him. "I know it's evidence, but you treat it with respect. The blood on it came from the woman I loved. That might not mean much to you, but it's also from the woman who helped to stop the murder of President Kennedy, and that should."

  "We only want it for blood-typing."

  "Fine. But it goes on my receipt of personal belongings. I'll want it back."

  "Sure."

  The cop who'd left came back with a plain white undershirt. It looked like the one Oswald had been wearing--or would have been wearing--in the mugshot taken shortly after his arrest at the Texas Theatre.

  3

  I arrived in the little white interview room at twenty past one. About an hour later (I can't say with exactitude because there was no clock and my new Timex had been taken with the rest of my personal effects), the same two uniforms brought me some company. An old acquaintance, in fact: Dr. Malcolm Perry, toting a large black country doctor's medical bag. I regarded him with mild astonishment. He was here at the police station visiting me because he didn't have to be at Parkland Hospital, picking bits of bullet and shards of bone out of John Kennedy's brain. The river of history was already moving into its new course.

  "Hello, Dr. Perry."

  He nodded. "Mr. Amberson." The last time he'd seen me, he'd called me George. If I'd had any doubts about being under suspicion, that would have confirmed them. But I didn't. I'd been there, and I'd known what was about to happen. Bonnie Ray Williams would already have told them as much.

  "I understand you've reinjured that knee."

  "Unfortunately, yes."

  "Let's have a look."

  He tried to pull up my left pants leg and couldn't. The joint was too swollen. When he produced a pair of scissors, both cops stepped forward and drew their guns, keeping them pointed at the floor with their fingers outside the trigger guards. Dr. Perry looked at them with mild astonishment, then cut the leg of my pants up the seam. He looked, he touched, he produced a hypodermic needle and drew off fluid. I gritted my teeth and waited for it to be over. Then he rummaged in his bag, came out with an elastic bandage, and wrapped the knee tightly. That provided some relief.

  "I can give you something for the pain, if these officers don't object."

  They didn't, but I did. The most crucial hour of my life--and Sadie's--was dead ahead. I didn't want dope clouding my brain when it rolled around.

  "Do you have any Goody's Headache Powder?"

  Perry wrinkled his nose as if he had smelled something bad. "I have Bayer Aspirin and Emprin. The Emprin's a bit stronger."

  "Give me that, then. And Dr. Perry?"

  He looked up from his bag.

  "Sadie and I didn't do anything wrong. She gave her life for her country . . . and I would have given mine for her. I just didn't get the chance."

  "If so, let me be the first to thank you. On behalf of the whole country."

  "The president. Where is he now? Do you know?"

  Dr. Perry looked at the cops, eyebrows raised in a question. They looked at each other, then one of them said, "He's gone on to Austin, to give a dinner speech, just like he was scheduled to do. I don't know if that makes him crazy-brave or just stupid."

  Maybe, I thought, Air Force One was going to crash, killing Kennedy and everyone else on board. Maybe he was going to have a heart attack or a fatal stroke. Maybe some other chickenshit bravo was going to blow his handsome head off. Did the obdurate past work against the things changed as well as against the change-agent? I didn't know. Nor much care. I had done my part. What happened to Kennedy from this point on was out of my hands.

  "I heard on the radio that Jackie isn't with him," Perry said quietly. "He sent her on ahead to the vice president's ranch in Johnson City. He'll join her there for the weekend as planned. If what you say is true, George--"

  "I think that's enough, doc," one of the cops said. It certainly was for me; to Mal Perry I was George again.

  Dr. Perry--who had his share of doctor's arrogance--ignored him. "If what you say is true, then I see a trip to Washington in your future. And very likely a medal ceremony in the Rose Garden."

  After he departed, I was left alone again. Only not really; Sadie was there, too. How we danced, she'd said just before she passed from this world. I could close my eyes and see her in line with the other girls, shaking her shoulders and d
oing the Madison. In this memory she was laughing, her hair was flying, and her face was perfect. 2011 surgical techniques could do a lot to fix what John Clayton had done to that face, but I thought I had an even better technique. If I got a chance to use it, that was.

  4

  I was allowed to baste in my own painful juices for two hours before the door of the interview room opened again. Two men came in. The one with the basset-hound face beneath a white Stetson hat introduced himself as Captain Will Fritz of the Dallas Police. He had a briefcase--but not my briefcase, so that was all right.

  The other guy had heavy jowls, a drinker's complexion, and short dark hair that gleamed with hair tonic. His eyes were sharp, inquisitive, and a little worried. From the inside pocket of his suit coat he produced an ID folder and flipped it open. "James Hosty, Mr. Amberson. Federal Bureau of Investigation."

  You have good reason to look worried, I thought. You were the man in charge of monitoring Lee, weren't you, Agent Hosty?

  Will Fritz said, "Like to ask you a few questions, Mr. Amberson."

  "Yes," I said. "And I'd like to get out of here. People who save the President of the United States generally don't get treated like criminals."

  "Now, now," Agent Hosty said. "We sent you a doc, didn't we? And not just any doc; your doc."

  "Ask your questions," I said.

  And got ready to dance.

  5

  Fritz opened his briefcase and brought out a plastic bag with an evidence tag taped to it. Inside it was my .38. "We found this lying against the barricade of boxes Oswald set up, Mr. Amberson. Was it his, do you think?"