Dunning Was Prominent in Many Charity Drives 3 страница

I didn’t like Dallas. No sir, no ma’am, no way. I hadn’t liked it from the moment I checked into the Adolphus and saw the restaurant maître d’ gripping a cringing young waiter by the arm and shouting into his face. Nevertheless, my business was here, and here I would stay. That was what I thought then.

On the twenty-second of September, I finally found a place that looked livable. It was on Blackwell Street in North Dallas, a detached garage that had been converted into a pretty nice duplex apartment. Greatest advantage: air-conditioning. Greatest disadvantage: the owner-landlord, Ray Mack Johnson, was a racist who shared with me that if I took the place, it would be wise to stay away from nearby Greenville Avenue, where there were a lot of mixed-race jukejoints and coons with the kind of knives he called “switchers.”

“I got ary thing in the world against niggers,” he told me. “Nosir. It was God who cursed them to their position, not me. You know that, don’t you?”

“I guess I missed that part of the Bible.”

He squinted suspiciously. “What are you, Methodist?”

“Yes,” I said. It seemed a lot safer than saying I was, denominationally speaking, nothing.

“You need to get in the Baptist way of churching, son. Ours welcomes newcomers. You take this place, and maybe some Sunday you can come with me n my wife.”

“Maybe so,” I agreed, reminding myself to be in a coma that Sunday. Possibly dead.

Mr. Johnson, meanwhile, had returned to his original scripture.

“You see, Noah got drunk this one time on the Ark, and he was a-layin on his bed, naked as a jaybird. Two of his sons wouldn’t look at him, they just turned the other way and put a blanket over him. I don’t know, it might’ve been a sheet. But Ham—he was the coon of the family—looked on his father in his nakedness, and God cursed him and all his race to be hewers of wood and drawers of water. So there it is. That’s what’s behind it. Genesis, chapter nine. You go on and look it up, Mr. Amberson.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, telling myself that I had to go someplace, I couldn’t afford to stay at the Adolphus indefinitely. Telling myself I could live with a little racism, that I wouldn’t melt. Telling myself it was the temper of the times, and it was probably the same just about everywhere. Only I didn’t quite believe it. “I’ll think it over and let you know in a day or two, Mr. Johnson.”

“You don’t want to wait too long, son. This place will go fast. You have a blessed day, now.”

The blessed day was another scorcher, and apartment-hunting was thirsty work. After leaving Ray Mack Johnson’s learned company, I felt in need of a beer. I decided to get one on Greenville Avenue. If Mr. Johnson discouraged the neighborhood, I thought I ought to check it out.

He was correct on two counts: the street was integrated (more or less), and it was rough. It was also lively. I parked and strolled, savoring the carny atmosphere. I passed almost two dozen bars, a few second-run movie houses (COME IN IT’S “KOOL” INSIDE, read the banners flapping from the marquees in a hot, oil-smelling Texas wind), and a striptease joint where a streetside barker yelled “Girls, girls, girls, best burley-q in the whole damn world! Best burley-q you’ve ever seen! These ladies shave, if you know what I mean!” I also passed three or four check-cashing-and-quickie-loan storefronts. Standing bold as brass in front of one—Faith Financial, Where Trust Is Our Watchword—was a chalkboard with THE DAILY LINE printed at the top and FOR AMUSEMENT ONLY at the bottom. Men in straw hats and suspenders (a look only dedicated punters can pull off) were standing around it, discussing the posted odds. Some had racing forms; some had the Morning News sports section.

For amusement only, I thought. Yeah, right. For a moment I thought of my beachfront shack burning in the night, the flames pulled high into the starry black by the wind off the Gulf. Amusement had its drawbacks, especially when it came to betting.

Music and the smell of beer wafted out of open doorways. I heard Jerry Lee Lewis singing “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” from one juke and Ferlin Husky emoting “Wings of a Dove” from the one next door. I was propositioned by four hookers and a sidewalk vendor who was selling hubcaps, rhinestone-glittery straight razors, and Lone Star State flags embossed with the words DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS. Try translating that one into Latin.

That troubling sense of déjà vu was very strong, that feeling that things were wrong here just as they had been wrong before. Which was crazy—I’d never been on Greenville Avenue in my life—but it was also undeniable, a thing of the heart rather than the head. All at once I decided I didn’t want a beer. And I didn’t want to rent Mr. Johnson’s converted garage, either, no matter how good the air-conditioning was.

I had just passed a watering hole called the Desert Rose, where the Rock-Ola was blasting Muddy Waters. As I turned to start back to where my car was parked, a man came flying out the door. He stumbled and went sprawling on the sidewalk. There was a burst of laughter from the bar’s dark interior. A woman yelled, “And don’t come back, you dickless wonder!” This produced more (and heartier) laughter.

The ejected patron was bleeding from the nose—which was bent severely to one side—and also from a scrape that ran down the left side of his face from temple to jawline. His eyes were huge and shocked. His untucked shirt flapped almost to his knees as he grabbed a lamppost and pulled himself to his feet. Once on them, he glared around at everything, seeing nothing.

I took a step or two toward him, but before I could get there, one of the women who’d asked me if I’d like a date came swaying up on stiletto heels. Only she wasn’t a woman, not really. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen, with large dark eyes and smooth coffee-colored skin. She was smiling, but not in a mean way, and when the man with the bloody face staggered, she took his arm. “Easy, sweetheart,” she said. “You need to settle down before you—”

He raked up the hanging tails of his shirt. The pearl-handled grip of a pistol—much smaller than the one I’d bought at Machen’s Sporting Goods, really not much more than a toy—lay against the pale fat hanging over the beltless waistband of his gabardine slacks. His fly was half-unzipped and I could see boxer shorts with red racing cars on them. I remember that. He pulled the gun, pressed the muzzle against the streetwalker’s midriff, and pulled the trigger. There was a stupid little pop, the sound of a ladyfinger firecracker going off in a tin can, no more than that. The woman screamed and sat down on the sidewalk with her hands laced over her belly.

“You shot me!” She sounded more outraged than hurt, but blood had begun to spill through her fingers. “You shot me, you pissant bugger, why did you shoot me?”

He took no notice, only yanked open the door of the Desert Rose. I was still standing where I’d been when he shot the pretty young hooker, partly because I was frozen by shock, but mostly because all of this happened in a matter of seconds. Longer than it would take Oswald to kill the President of the United States, maybe, but not much.

“Is this what you want, Linda?” he shouted. “If this is what you want, I’ll give you what you want!”

He put the muzzle of the gun into his ear and pulled the trigger.

I folded my handkerchief and pressed it gently over the hole in the young girl’s red dress. I don’t know how badly she was hurt, but she was lively enough to produce a steady stream of colorful phrases she had probably not learned from her mother (on the other hand, who knows). And when one man in the gathering crowd moved a little too close to suit her, she snarled: “Quit lookin up my dress, you nosy bastard. For that you pay.”

“This pore ole sumbitch here is dead as can be,” someone remarked. He was kneeling beside the man who had been thrown out of the Desert Rose. A woman began to shriek.

Approaching sirens: they were shrieking, too. I noticed one of the other ladies who had approached me during my stroll down Greenville Avenue, a redhead in capri pants. I beckoned to her. She touched her chest in a who, me? gesture, and I nodded. Yes, you. “Hold this handkerchief on the wound,” I told her. “Try to stop the bleeding. I’ve got to go.”

She gave me a wise little smile. “Don’t want to hang around for the cops?”

“Not really. I don’t know any of these people. I was just passing by.”

The redhead knelt by the bleeding, cursing girl on the sidewalk, and pressed down on the sodden handkerchief. “Honey,” she said, “aren’t we all.”

I couldn’t sleep that night. I’d start to drift, then see Ray Mack Johnson’s sweat-oily, complacent face as he blamed two thousand years of slavery, murder, and exploitation on some teenage kid eyeballing his father’s gearshift. I’d jerk awake, settle back, drift… and see the little man with the unzipped fly sticking the muzzle of his hideout gun in his ear. Is this what you want, Linda? One final burst of petulance before the big sleep. And I’d start awake again. Next time it was men in a black sedan throwing a gasoline bomb through the front window of my place on Sunset Point: Eduardo Gutierrez attempting to get rid of his Yanqui from Yankeeland. Why? Because he didn’t like to lose big, that was all. For him, that was enough.

Finally I gave up and sat down by the window, where the hotel air-conditioner was rattling gamely away. In Maine the night would be crisp enough to start bringing color to the trees, but here in Dallas it was still seventy-five at two-thirty in the morning. And humid.

“Dallas, Derry,” I said as I looked down into the silent ditch of Commerce Street. The brick cube of the Book Depository wasn’t visible, but it was close by. Walking distance.

“Derry, Dallas.”

Each name comprised of two syllables that broke on the double letter like a stick of kindling over a bent knee. I couldn’t stay here. Another thirty months in Big D would send me crazy. How long would it be before I started seeing graffiti like I WILL KILL MY MOTHER SOON? Or glimpsed a juju Jesus floating down the Trinity River? Fort Worth might be better, but Fort Worth was still too close.

Why do I have to stay in either?

This thought came to me shortly after 3:00 A.M., and with the force of a revelation. I had a fine car—a car I’d sort of fallen in love with, to tell you the truth—and there was no shortage of good fast roads in central Texas, many of them recently built. By the turn of the twenty-first century, they would probably be choked with traffic, but in 1960 they were almost eerily deserted. There were speed limits, but they weren’t enforced. In Texas, even the state cops were believers in the gospel of put the pedal to the metal and let er bellow.

I could move out from beneath the suffocating shadow I felt over this city. I could find a place that was smaller and less daunting, a place that didn’t feel so filled with hate and violence. In broad daylight I could tell myself I was imagining those things, but not in the ditch of the morning. There were undoubtedly good people in Dallas, thousands upon thousands of them, the great majority, but that underchord was there, and sometimes it broke out. As it had outside the Desert Rose.

Bevvie-from-the-levee had said that In Derry I think the bad times are over. I wasn’t convinced about Derry, and I felt the same way about Dallas, even with its worst day still over three years away.

“I’ll commute,” I said. “George wants a nice quiet place to work on his book, but since the book is about a city—a haunted city—he really has to commute, doesn’t he? To get material.”

It was no wonder it took me almost two months to think of this; life’s simplest answers are often the easiest to overlook. I went back to bed and fell asleep almost at once.

The next day I drove south out of Dallas on Highway 77. An hour and a half took me into Denholm County. I turned west onto State Road 109 mostly because I liked the billboard marking the intersection. It showcased a heroic young football player wearing a gold helmet, black jersey, and gold leggings. DENHOLM LIONS, the billboard proclaimed. 3-TIME DISTRICT CHAMPS! STATE CHAMPIONSHIP BOUND IN 1960! “WE’VE GOT JIM POWER!”

Whatever that is, I thought. But of course every high school has its secret signs and signals; it’s what makes kids feel like they’re on the inside.

Five miles up Highway 109, I came to the town of Jodie. POP. 1280, the sign said. WELCOME, STRANGER! Halfway up the wide, tree-lined Main Street I saw a little restaurant with a sign in the window reading BEST SHAKES, FRIES, AND BURGERS IN ALL OF TEXAS! It was called Al’s Diner.

Of course it was.

I parked in one of the slant spaces out front, went in, and ordered the Pronghorn Special, which turned out to be a double cheeseburger with barbecue sauce. It came with Mesquite Fries and a Rodeo Thickshake—your choice of vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry. A Pronghorn wasn’t quite as good as a Fatburger, but it wasn’t bad, and the fries were just the way I like them: crispy, salty, and a little overdone.

Al turned out to be Al Stevens, a skinny middle-aged guy who looked nothing like Al Templeton. He had a rockabilly hairdo, a gray-streaked bandido mustache, a thick Texas drawl, and a paper hat worn jauntily cocked over one eye. When I asked him if there was much to rent in the town of Jodie, he laughed and said, “Take your pick. But when it comes to jobs, this ain’t exactly a center of commerce. Ranchland, mostly, and you’ll pardon me sayin, but you don’t look like the cowboy type.”

“I’m not,” I said. “Actually, I’m more the book-writing type.”

“Get out! Anything I might have read?”

“Not yet,” I said. “I’m still trying. I’ve got about half of a novel written, and a couple of publishers have shown some interest. I’m looking for a quiet place to finish.”

“Well, Jodie’s quiet, all right.” Al rolled his eyes. “When it comes to quiet, I reckon we could take out a patent. Only gets noisy on Friday nights.”

“Football?”

“Yessir, whole town goes. Halftime comes, they all roar like lions, then give out with the Jim Yell. You can hear em two miles away. It’s pretty comical.”

“Who’s Jim?”

“LaDue, the quarterback. We’ve had us some good teams, but ain’t never been a QB like LaDue on a Denholm team. And he’s only a junior. People been talkin ’bout the state championship. That seems a tad optimistic to me, with those big Dallas schools just up the road, but a little hope never hurt anybody, that’s what I reckon.”

“Football aside, how’s the school?”

“It’s real fine. Lot of people were doubtful about this consolidation thing at first—I was one of em—but it’s turned out to be a good thing. They got over seven hunnerd this year. Some of em bus in an hour or more, but they don’t seem to mind. Probably saves em chores at home. Is your book about high school kids? Blackboard Jungle kind of thing? Because there ain’t no gangs or anything out here. Out here kids still mind their manners.”

“Nothing like that. I’ve got savings, but I wouldn’t mind stretching what I’ve got with some substitute work. I can’t teach full-time and still write.”

“Course not,” he said respectfully.

“My degree’s from Oklahoma, but…” I shrugged to show Oklahoma wasn’t in Texas’s league, but a man could hope.

“Well, you ought to talk to Deke Simmons. He’s the principal. Comes in for dinner most evenins. His wife died a couple of years back.”

“Sorry to hear that,” I said.

“We all were. He’s a nice man. Most people are in these parts, Mr.—?”

“Amberson. George Amberson.”

“Well, George, we’re pretty sleepy, except on Friday nights, but you could do worse. Might could even learn to roar like a lion at halftime.”

“Maybe I could,” I said.

“You come on back around six. That’s usually the time Deke comes in.” He put his arms on the counter and leaned over them. “Want a tip?”

“Sure.”

“He’ll probably have his lady-friend with him. Miss Corcoran, the librarian up to the school. He’s kinda been sparkin her since last Christmas or so. I’ve heard that Mimi Corcoran’s the one who really runs Denholm Consolidated, because she runs him. If you impress her, I reckon you’re in like Flynn.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.

Weeks of apartment-hunting in Dallas had netted me exactly one possible, which turned out to be owned by a man I didn’t want to rent from. It took me three hours in Jodie to find a place that looked fine. Not an apartment, but a tidy little five-room shotgun house. It was for sale, the real estate agent told me, but the couple who owned it would be willing to rent to the right party. There was an elm-shaded backyard, a garage for the Sunliner… and central air-conditioning. The rent was reasonable, given the amenities.

Freddy Quinlan was the agent’s name. He was curious about me—I think the Maine license plate on my car struck him as exotic—but not unduly so. Best of all, I felt I was out from under the shadow that had lain over me in Dallas, Derry, and Sunset Point, where my last long-term rental now lay in ashes.

“Well?” Quinlan asked. “What do you think?”

“I want it, but I can’t give you a yes or no this afternoon. I have to see a fellow first. I don’t suppose you’ll be open tomorrow, will you?”

“Yessir, I will. Saturdays I’m open until noon. Then I go home and watch the Game of the Week on TV. Looks like it could be a heck of a Series this year.”

“Yes,” I said. “It certainly does.”

Quinlan extended his hand. “It was nice meeting you, Mr. Amberson. I bet you’d like Jodie. We’re good people around here. Hope it works out for you.”

I shook with him. “So do I.”

Like the man said, a little hope never hurt anybody.

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.