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ut you didn’t. Now he’s walling off those memories—the vital ones—because he knows it’s his last
hope of stopping you.”
“How can he? He’s dead.”
Al shook his head. “No, that’s me.”
“Who is he? What is he? And how can he come back to life? He cut his own throat and the card
turned black! I saw it!”
“Dunno, buddy. All I know is that he can’t stop you if you refuse to stop. You have to get at those
memories.”
“Help me, then!” I shouted, and grabbed the hard claw of his hand. “Tell me the guy’s name! Is it
Chapman? Manson? Both of those ring a bell, but neither one seems right. You got me into this, so help
me!”
At that point in the dream Al opens his mouth to do just that, but the Yellow Card Man
intervenes. If we’re on Main Street, he comes out of the greenfront or the Kennebec Fruit. If it’s the
cemetery, he rises from an open grave like a George Romero zombie. If in the diner, the door bursts
open. The card he wears in the hatband of his fedora is so black it looks like a rectangular hole in the
world. He’s dead and decomposing. His ancient overcoat is splotched with mold. His eye-sockets are
writhing balls of worms.
“He can’t tell you nothing because it’s double-money day!” the Yellow Card Man who is now the Black
Card Man screams.
I turn back to Al, only Al has become a skeleton with a cigarette clamped in its teeth, and I wake
up, sweating. I reach for the memories but the memories aren’t there.
Deke brought me the newspaper stories about the impending Kennedy visit, hoping they would
jog something loose. They didn’t. Once, while I was lying on the couch (I was just coming out of one
of my sudden sleeps), I heard the two of them arguing yet again about calling the police. Deke said an
anonymous tip would be disregarded and one that came with a name attached would get all of us in
trouble.
“I don’t care!” Sadie shouted. “I know you think he’s nuts, but what if he’s right? How are you
going to feel if Kennedy goes back to Washington from Dallas in a box?”
“If you bring the police in, they’ll focus on Jake, sweetie. And according to you, he killed a man up
in New England before he came here.”
Sadie, Sadie, I wish you hadn’t told him that.
She stopped arguing, but she didn’t give up. Sometimes she tried to surprise it out of me, the way
you can supposedly surprise someone out of the hiccups. It didn’t work.
“What am I going to do with you?” she asked sadly.
“I don’t know.”
“Try to come at it some other way. Try to sneak up on it.”
“I have. I think the guy was in the Army or the Marines.” I rubbed at the back of my head, where
the ache was starting again. “But it might have been the Navy. Shit, Christy, I don’t know.”
“Sadie, Jake. I’m Sadie.”
“Isn’t that what I said?”
She shook her head and tried to smile.
On the twelfth, the Tuesday after Veterans Day, the Morning News ran a long editorial about the
impending Kennedy visit and what it meant for the city. “Most residents seem ready to welcome the
young and inexperienced president with open arms,” the piece said. “Excitement is running high. Of
course it doesn’t hurt that his pretty and charismatic wife will be along for the ride.”
“More dreams about the Yellow Card Man last night?” Sadie asked when she came in. She’d spent
the holiday in Jodie, mostly to water her houseplants and to “show the flag,” as she put it.