by Stephen King
Hosty stubbed out his cigarette hard enough to send up a fountain of sparks. Some landed on the back of his hand, but he didn't seem to feel them. "That's a fucking lie!"
"I know," I said. "And I'll tell it with a straight face. If you force me to. Has the idea of getting rid of me come up yet, Hosty?"
"Spare me the comic-book stuff. We don't kill people."
"Tell it to the Diem brothers over in Vietnam."
He was looking at me the way a man might look at a seemingly inoffensive mouse that had suddenly bitten. And with big teeth. "How do you know America had anything to do with the Diem brothers? According to what I read in the papers, our hands are clean."
"Let's not get off the subject. The thing is, right now I'm too popular to kill. Or am I wrong?"
"No one wants to kill you, Amberson. And no one wants to poke holes in your story." He barked an unamused laugh. "If we started doing that, the whole thing would unravel. That's how thin it is."
"'Romance at short notice was her specialty,'" I said.
"Huh?"
"H. H. Munro. Also known as Saki. The story is called 'The Open Window.' Look it up. When it comes to the art of creating bullshit on the spur of the moment, it's very instructive."
He scanned me, his shrewd little eyes worried. "I don't understand you at all. That concerns me." In the west, out toward Midland where the oil wells thump without surcease and the gas flares dim the stars, more thunder rumbled.
"What do you want from me?" I asked.
"I think that when we trace you back a little farther from Derren or Derry or whatever it is, we're going to find . . . nothing. As if you stepped right out of thin air."
This was so close to the truth it nearly took my breath away.
"What we want is for you to go back to the nowhere you came from. The scandal-press will gin up the usual nasty speculations and conspiracy theories, but we can guarantee you that you'll come out of this looking pretty good. If you even care about such things, that is. Marina Oswald will support your story right down the line."
"You've already spoken to her, I take it."
"You take it right. She knows she'll be deported if she doesn't play ball. The gentlemen of the press haven't had a very good look at you; the photos that show up in tomorrow's papers are going to be little more than blurs."
I knew he was right. I had been exposed to the cameras only on that one quick walk down the hall to Chief Curry's office, and Fritz and Hosty, both big men, had had me under the arms, blocking the best photo sightlines. Also, I'd had my head down because the lights were so bright. There were plenty of pictures of me in Jodie--even a portrait shot in the yearbook from the year I'd taught there full-time--but in this era before JPEGs or even faxes, it would be Tuesday or Wednesday of next week before they could be found and published.
"Here's a story for you," Hosty said. "You like stories, don't you? Things like this 'Open Window'?"
"I'm an English teacher. I love stories."
"This fellow, George Amberson, is so stunned with grief over the loss of his girlfriend--"
"Fiancee."
"Fiancee, right, even better. He's so grief-stricken that he ditches the whole works and simply disappears. Wants nothing to do with publicity, free champagne, medals from the president, or ticker-tape parades. He just wants to get away and mourn his loss in privacy. That's the kind of story Americans like. They see it on TV all the time. Instead of 'The Open Window,' it's called 'The Modest Hero.' And there's this FBI agent who's willing to back up every word, and even read a statement that you left behind. How does that sound?"
It sounded like manna from heaven, but I held onto my poker face. "You must be awfully sure I can disappear."
"We are."
"And you really mean it when you tell me I won't be disappearing to the bottom of the Trinity River, as per the director's orders?"
"Nothing like that." He smiled. It was meant to be reassuring, but it made me think of an old line from my teenage years: Don't worry, you won't get pregnant, I had the mumps when I was fourteen.
"Because I might have left a little insurance, Agent Hosty."
One eyelid twitched. It was the only sign the idea distressed him. "We think you can disappear because we believe . . . let's just say you could call on assistance, once you were clear of Dallas."
"No press conference?"
"That's the last thing we want."
He opened his briefcase again. From it he took a yellow legal pad. He passed it over to me, along with a pen from his breast pocket. "Write me a letter, Amberson. It'll be Fritz and me who'll find it tomorrow morning when we come to pick you up, but you can head it 'To Whom It May Concern.' Make it good. Make it genius. You can do that, can't you?"
"Sure," I said. "Romance at short notice is my specialty."
He grinned without humor and picked up the champagne bottle. "Maybe I'll try a little of this while you're romancing. None for you, after all. You're going to have a busy night. Miles to go before you sleep, and all that."
10
I wrote carefully, but it didn't take long. In a case like this (not that there had ever in the whole history of the world been a case exactly like this), I thought shorter was better. I kept Hosty's Modest Hero idea foremost in my mind. I was very glad that I'd had a chance to sleep for a few hours. Such rest as I'd managed had been shot through with baleful dreams, but my head was relatively clear.
By the time I finished, Hosty was on his third glass of bubbly. He had taken a number of items from his briefcase and placed them on the coffee table. I handed him the pad and he began reading over what I'd written. Outside the thunder rumbled again, and lightning briefly lit the night sky, but I thought the storm was still distant.
While he read, I examined the stuff on the coffee table. There was my Timex, the one item that for some reason hadn't been returned with the rest of my personal effects when we left the cop-shop. There was a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles. I picked them up and tried them on. The lenses were plain glass. There was a key with a hollow barrel instead of notches. An envelope containing what looked like about a thousand bucks in used twenties and fifties. A hairnet. And a white uniform in two pieces--pants and tunic. The cotton cloth looked as thin as Hosty had claimed my story to be.
"This letter's good," Hosty said, putting the pad down. "You come across kind of sad, like Richard Kimball on The Fugitive. You watch that one?"
I'd seen the movie version with Tommy Lee Jones, but this hardly seemed the time to bring it up. "No."
"You'll be a fugitive, all right, but only from the press and an American public that's going to want to know all about you, from what kind of juice you drink in the morning to the waist size of your skivvies. You're a human interest story, Amberson, but you're not police business. You didn't shoot your girlfriend; you didn't even shoot Oswald."
"I tried. If I hadn't missed, she'd still be alive."
"I wouldn't blame yourself too much on that score. That's a big room up there, and a .38 doesn't have much accuracy from a distance."
True. You had to get within fifteen yards. So I had been told, and more than once. But I didn't say so. I thought my brief acquaintanship with Special Agent James Hosty was almost over. Basically I couldn't wait.
"You're clean. All you need to do is to get to someplace where your people can pick you up and fly you away to spook neverland. Can you manage that?"
Neverland in my case was a rabbit-hole that would transport me forty-eight years into the future. Assuming the rabbit-hole was still there.
"I believe I'll be okay."
"You better be, because if you try to hurt us, it'll come back on you double. Mr. Hoover . . . let's just say that the director is not a forgiving man."
"Tell me how I'm getting out of the hotel."
"You'll put on those kitchen whites, the glasses, and the hairnet. The key runs the service elevator. It'll take you to B-1. You walk straight through the kitchen and out the back door. With me so far?
"
"Yes."
"There'll be a Bureau car waiting for you. Get in the backseat. You don't talk to the driver. This ain't no limousine service. Off you go to the bus station. Your driver can offer you one of three tickets: Tampa at eleven-forty, Little Rock at eleven-fifty, or Albuquerque at twenty past midnight. I don't want to know which one. All you need to know is that's where our association ends. Your responsibility to stay out of sight becomes all your own. And whoever it is you work for, of course."
"Of course."
The telephone rang. "If it's some smartass reporter who found a way to ring through, get rid of him," Hosty said. "And if you say a word about me being here, I'll cut your throat."
I thought he was joking about that, but wasn't entirely sure. I picked up the phone. "I don't know who this is, but I'm pretty tired right now, so--"
The breathy voice on the other end said she wouldn't keep me long. To Hosty I mouthed Jackie Kennedy. He nodded and poured a little more of my champagne. I turned away, as if by presenting Hosty with my back I could keep him from overhearing the conversation.
"Mrs. Kennedy, you really didn't have to call," I said, "but I'm honored to hear from you, just the same."
"I wanted to thank you for what you did," she said. "I know that my husband has already thanked you on our behalf, but . . . Mr. Amberson . . ." The first lady began to cry. "I wanted to thank you on behalf of our children, who were able to say goodnight to their mother and dad on the phone tonight."
Carolyn and John-John. They'd never crossed my mind until that moment.
"Mrs. Kennedy, you're more than welcome."
"I understand the young woman who died was to become your wife."
"That's right."
"You must be heartbroken. Please accept my condolences--they aren't enough, I know that, but they are all I have to offer."
"Thank you."
"If I could change it . . . if in any way I could turn back the clock . . ."
No, I thought. That's my job, Miz Jackie.
"I understand. Thank you."
We talked a little longer. This call was much more difficult than the one with Kennedy at the police station. Partly because that one had felt like a dream and this one didn't, but mostly I think it was the residual fear I heard in Jacqueline Kennedy's voice. She truly seemed to understand what a narrow escape they'd had. I'd gotten no sense of that from the man himself. He seemed to believe he was providentially lucky, blessed, maybe even immortal. Toward the end of the conversation I remember asking her to make sure her husband quit riding in open cars for the duration of his presidency.
She said I could count on that, then thanked me one more time. I told her she was welcome one more time, then hung up the phone. When I turned around, I saw I had the room to myself. At some point while I'd been talking to Jacqueline Kennedy, Hosty had left. All that remained of him were two butts in the ashtray, a half-finished glass of champagne, and another scribbled note, lying beside the yellow legal pad with my to-whom-it-may-concern letter on it.
Get rid of the bug before you go into the bus station, it read. And below that: Good luck, Amberson. Very sorry for your loss. H.
Maybe he was, but sorry is cheap, isn't it? Sorry is so cheap.
11
I put on my kitchen potboy disguise and rode down to B-1 in an elevator that smelled like chicken soup, barbecue sauce, and Jack Daniel's. When the doors opened, I walked briskly through the steamy, fragrant kitchen. I don't think anyone so much as looked at me.
I came out in an alley where a couple of winos were picking through a trash bin. They didn't look at me, either, although they glanced up when sheet lightning momentarily brightened the sky. A nondescript Ford sedan was idling at the mouth of the alley. I got into the backseat and off we went. The man behind the wheel said only one thing before pulling up to the Greyhound station: "Looks like rain."
He offered me the three tickets like a poor man's poker hand. I took the one for Little Rock. I had about an hour. I went into the gift shop and bought a cheap suitcase. If all went well, I'd eventually have something to put in it. I wouldn't need much; I had all sorts of clothes at my house in Sabattus, and although that particular domicile was almost fifty years in the future, I hoped to be there in less than a week. A paradox Einstein could love, and it never crossed my tired, grieving mind that--given the butterfly effect--it almost certainly would no longer be mine. If it was there at all.
I also bought a newspaper, an extra edition of the Slimes Herald. There was a single photo, maybe snapped by a professional, more likely by some lucky bystander. It showed Kennedy bent over the woman I'd been talking to not long ago, the woman who'd had no bloodstains on her pink suit when she'd finally taken it off this evening.
John F. Kennedy shields his wife with his body as the presidential limo speeds away from what was nearly a national catastrophe, the caption read. Above this was a headline in thirty-six-point type. There was room, because it was only one word:
SAVED!
I turned to page 2 and was confronted with another picture. This one was of Sadie, looking impossibly young and impossibly beautiful. She was smiling. I have my whole life ahead of me, the smile said.
Sitting in one of the slatted wooden chairs while late-night travelers surged around me and babies cried and servicemen with duffels laughed and businessmen got shines and the overhead speakers announced arrivals and departures, I carefully folded the newsprint around the borders of that picture so I could remove it from the page without tearing her face. When that much was accomplished, I looked at it for a long time, then folded it into my wallet. The rest of the paper I threw away. There was nothing in it I wanted to read.
Boarding for the bus to Little Rock was called at eleven-twenty, and I joined the crowd clustering around the proper door. Other than wearing the fake glasses, I made no attempt to hide my face, but no one looked at me with any particular interest; I was just one more cell in the bloodstream of Transit America, no more important than any other.
I changed your lives today, I thought as I watched those present at the turning of the day, but there was no triumph or wonder in the idea; it seemed to have no emotional charge at all, either positive or negative.
I got on the bus and sat near the back. There were a lot of guys in uniform ahead of me, probably bound for Little Rock Air Force Base. If not for what we'd done today, some of them would have died in Vietnam. Others would have come home maimed. And now? Who knew?
The bus pulled out. When we left Dallas, the thunder was louder and the lightning brighter, but there was still no rain. By the time we reached Sulphur Springs, the threatening storm was behind us and the stars were out in their tens of thousands, brilliant as ice chips and twice as cold. I looked at them for awhile, then leaned back, shut my eyes, and listened to the Big Dog's tires eating up Interstate 30.
Sadie, the tires sang. Sadie, Sadie, Sadie.
At last, sometime after two in the morning, I slept.
12
In Little Rock I bought a ticket on the noon bus to Pittsburgh, with a single stop in Indianapolis. I had breakfast in the depot diner, near an old fellow who ate with a portable radio in front of him on the table. It was large and covered with shiny dials. The major story was still the attempted assassination, of course . . . and Sadie. Sadie was big, big news. She was to be given a state funeral, followed by interment at Arlington National Cemetery. There was speculation that JFK himself would deliver the eulogy. In related developments, Miss Dunhill's fiance, George Amberson, also of Jodie, Texas, had been scheduled to appear before the press at 10:00 A.M., but that had been pushed back to late afternoon--no reason given. Hosty was providing me all the room to run that he possibly could. Good for me. Him, too, of course. And his precious director.
"The president and his heroic saviors aren't the only news coming out of Texas this morning," the old duffer's radio said, and I paused with a cup of black coffee suspended halfway between the saucer and my lips. There was a s
our tingle in my mouth that I'd come to recognize. A psychologist might have termed it presque vu--the sense people sometimes get that something amazing is about to happen--but my name for it was much more humble: a harmony.
"At the height of a thunderstorm shortly after one A.M., a freak tornado touched down in Fort Worth, destroying a Montgomery Ward warehouse and a dozen homes. Two people are known dead, and four are missing."
That two of the houses were 2703 and 2706 Mercedes Street, I had no doubt; an angry wind had erased them like a bad equation.
CHAPTER 30
1
I stepped off my final Greyhound at the Minot Avenue station in Auburn, Maine, at a little past noon on the twenty-sixth of November. After more than eighty hours of almost nonstop riding, relieved only by short intervals of sleep, I felt like a figment of my own imagination. It was cold. God was clearing His throat and spitting casual snow from a dirty gray sky. I had bought some jeans and a couple of blue chambray workshirts to replace the kitchen-whites, but such clothes weren't nearly enough. I had forgotten the Maine weather during my time in Texas, but my body remembered in a hurry and started to shiver. I made Louie's for Men my first stop, where I found a sheepskin-lined coat in my size and took it to the clerk.
He put down his copy of the Lewiston Sun to wait on me, and I saw my picture--yes, the one from the DCHS yearbook--on the front page. WHERE IS GEORGE AMBERSON? the headline demanded. The clerk rang up the sale and scribbled me a receipt. I tapped my picture. "What in the world do you suppose is up with that guy?"
The clerk looked at me and shrugged. "He doesn't want the publicity and I don't blame him. I love my wife a whole darn bunch, and if she died sudden, I wouldn't want people taking my picture for the papers or putting my weepy mug on TV. Would you?"
"No," I said, "I guess not."
"If I were that guy, I wouldn't come up for air until 1970. Let the ruckus die down. How about a nice cap to go with that coat? I got some flannel ones that just came in yesterday. The earflaps are good and thick."
So I bought a cap to go with my new coat. Then I limped the two blocks back to the bus station, swinging my suitcase at the end of my good arm. Part of me wanted to go to Lisbon Falls right that minute and make sure the rabbit-hole was still there. But if it was, I'd use it, I wouldn't be able to resist, and after five years in the Land of Ago, the rational part of me knew I wasn't ready for the full-on assault of what had become, in my mind, the Land of Ahead. I needed some rest first. Real rest, not dozing in a bus seat while little kids wailed and tipsy men laughed.
