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the sagebrush days, before electric lights and phones. Warn em off, they come back. Beat em up, they
hit from ambush—first you, then the one they’re really after. Jug em up in county, they sit and wait
to get out. Safest thing to do with crazy men is put em in the penitentiary for a long stretch. Or kill
em.”
“That’s what I think, too.”
“Don’t let him back to spoil the rest of her pretty, if that’s what he aims to do. If you care for her as
much as you seem to, you’ve got a responsibility.”
I certainly did, although Clayton was no longer the problem. I went back to my little modular
apartment, made strong black coffee, and sat down with a legal pad. My plan was a little clearer now,
and I wanted to start fleshing in the details.
I doodled instead. Then fell asleep.
When I woke up it was almost midnight and my cheek ached where it had been pressed against the
checked oilcloth covering the kitchen table. I looked at what was on my pad. I didn’t know if I’d
drawn it before going to sleep or if I had wakened long enough to do it and just couldn’t remember.
It was a gun. Not a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, but a pistol. My pistol. The one I’d tossed beneath
the porch steps at 214 West Neely. It was probably still there. I hoped it was still there.
I was going to need it.
11
11/19/63 (Tuesday)
Sadie called in the morning and said Deke was a little better, but she intended to make him stay
home tomorrow, as well. “Otherwise he’ll just try to come in, and have a setback. But I’ll pack my bag
before I leave for school tomorrow morning and head your way as soon as period six is over.”
Period six ended at ten past one. That meant I’d have to be gone from Eden Fallows by four o’clock
tomorrow afternoon at the latest. If only I knew where. “I look forward to seeing you.”
“You sound all stiff and funny. Are you having one of your headaches?”
“A little one,” I said. It was true.
“Go lie down with a damp cloth over your eyes.”
“I’ll do that.” I had no intention of doing that.
“Have you thought of anything?”
I had, as a matter of fact. I’d thought that taking Lee’s rifle wasn’t enough. And shooting him at
the Paine house was a bad option. Not just because I’d probably be caught, either. Counting Ruth’s
two, there were four kids in that house. I might still have tried it if Lee had been walking from a
nearby bus stop, but he’d be riding with Buell Frazier, the neighbor who’d gotten him the job at Ruth
Paine’s request.
“No,” I said. “Not yet.”
“We’ll think of something. You wait and see.”
12
I drove (still slowly, but with increasing confidence) across town to West Neely, wondering what I’d
do if the ground-floor apartment was occupied. Buy a new gun, I supposed . . . but the .38 Police
Special was the one I wanted, if only because I’d had one just like it in Derry, and that mission had