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CITIZEN OF THE CENTURY (2012)
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I imagine the Home of the Famous Fatburger is gone now, replaced by an L.L. Bean Express, but I
don’t know for sure; that’s something I’ve never bothered to check on the internet. All I know is that
it was still there when I got back from all my adventures. And the world around it, too.
So far, at least.
I don’t know about the Bean Express because that was my last day in Lisbon Falls. I went back to
my house in Sabattus, caught up on my sleep, then packed two suitcases and my cat and drove south. I
stopped for gas in a small Massachusetts town called Westborough, and decided it looked good
enough for a man with no particular prospects and no expectations from life.
I stayed that first night in the Westborough Hampton Inn. There was Wi-Fi. I got on the net—my
heart beating so hard it sent dots flashing across my field of vision—and called up the Dallas Morning
News website. After punching in my credit card number (a process that took several retries because of
my shaking fingers), I was able to access the archives. The story about an unknown assailant taking a
shot at Edwin Walker was there on April 11 of 1963, but nothing about Sadie on April 12. Nothing
the following week, or the week after that. I kept hunting.
I found the story I was looking for in the issue for April 30.
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MENTAL PATIENT SLASHES EX-WIFE, COMMITS SUICIDE
By Ernie Calvert
(JODIE) 77-year-old Deacon “Deke” Simmons and Denholm Consolidated
School District Principal Ellen Dockerty arrived too late on Sunday night to save
Sadie Dunhill from being seriously hurt, but things could have been much worse
for the popular 28-year-old school librarian.
According to Douglas Reems, the Jodie town constable, “If Deke and Ellie
hadn’t arrived when they did, Miss Dunhill almost certainly would have been
killed.”
The two educators had come with a tuna casserole and a bread pudding. Neither
wanted to talk about their heroic intervention. Simmons would only say, “I wish
we’d gotten there sooner.”
According to Constable Reems, Simmons overpowered the much younger John
Clayton, of Savannah, Georgia, after Miss Dockerty threw the casserole at him,
distracting him. Simmons wrestled away a small revolver. Clayton then produced
the knife with which he had cut his ex-wife’s face and used it to slash his own
throat. Simmons and Miss Dockerty tried to stop the bleeding to no avail. Clayton
was pronounced dead at the scene.
Miss Dockerty told Constable Reems that Clayton may have been stalking his