5432852385743

I shook my head. “Honey, you’ve been here a lot more than you’ve been in Jodie. What’s the status
of your job?”
“Miz Ellie put me on part-time. I’m getting by, and when I go with you . . . if we go . . . I guess I’ll
just have to see what happens.”
Her gaze shifted away from me and she busied herself lighting a cigarette. Watching her take too
long tamping it on the coffee table and then fiddling with her matches, I realized a dispiriting thing:
Sadie was also having her doubts. I’d predicted a peaceful end to the Missile Crisis, I had known Dick
Tiger was going down in the fifth . . . but she still had her doubts. And I didn’t blame her. If our
positions had been reversed, I would have been having mine.
Then she brightened. “But I’ve got a heck of a good stand-in, and I bet you can guess who.”
I smiled. “Is it . . .” I couldn’t get the name. I could see him—the weathered, suntanned face, the
cowboy hat, the string tie—but that Tuesday morning I couldn’t even get close. My head started to
ache in the back, where it had hit the baseboard—but what baseboard, in what house? It was so
abysmally fucked up not to know.
Kennedy’s coming in ten days and I can’t even remember that old guy’s fucking name.
“Try, Jake.”
“I am,” I said. “I am, Sadie!”
“Wait a sec. I’ve got an idea.”
She laid her smoldering cigarette in one of the ashtray grooves, got up, went out the front door,
closed it behind her. Then she opened it and spoke in a voice that was comically gruff and deep, saying
what the old guy said each time he came to visit: “How you doin today, son? Takin any nourishment?”
“Deke,” I said. “Deke Simmons. He was married to Miz Mimi, but she died in Mexico. We had a
memorial assembly for her.”
The headache was gone. Just like that.
Sadie clapped her hands and ran to me. I got a long and lovely kiss.
“See?” she said when she drew back. “You can do this. It’s still not too late. What’s his name, Jake?
What’s the crazy bugger’s name?”
But I couldn’t remember.
On November sixteenth, the Times Herald published the Kennedy motorcade route. It would start
at Love Field and end at the Trade Mart, where he would speak to the Dallas Citizens Council and
their invited guests. The nominal purpose of his speech was to salute the Graduate Research Center
and congratulate Dallas on its economic progress over the last decade, but the Times Herald was happy
to inform those who didn’t already know that the real reason was pure politics. Texas had gone for
Kennedy in 1960, but ’64 was looking shaky in spite of having a good old Johnson City boy on the
ticket. Cynics still called the vice president “Landslide Lyndon,” a reference to his 1948 Senate bid, a
decidedly hinky affair he won by eighty-seven votes. That was ancient history, but the nickname’s
longevity said a lot about the mixed feelings Texans had about him. Kennedy’s job—and Jackie’s, of
course—was to help Landslide Lyndon and Texas governor John Connally fire up the faithful.
“Look at this,” Sadie said, tracing a fingertip along the route. “Blocks and blocks of Main Street.
Then Houston Street. There are high buildings all along that part. Is the man going to be on Main
Street? He just about has to be, don’t you think?”
I hardly listened, because I’d seen something else. “Look, Sadie, the motorcade’s going to go along
Turtle Creek Boulevard!”
Her eyes blazed. “Is that where it’s going to happen?”
I shook my head doubtfully. Probably not, but I knew something about Turtle Creek Boulevard, and
it had to do with the man I’d come to stop. As I considered this, something floated to the surface.
“He was going to hide the rifle and come back for it later.”