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She survived Clayton. It would be best, I told myself, to let my knowledge of Sadie end there.
5
It might have, had I not gotten a transfer student in my AP English class. In April of 2012, this was;
it might even have been on April 10, the forty-ninth anniversary of the attempted Edwin Walker
assassination. Her name was Erin Tolliver, and her family had moved to Westborough from Kileen,
Texas.
That was a name I knew well. Kileen, where I had bought rubbers from a druggist with a nastily
knowing smile. Don’t do anything against the law, son, he’d advised me. Kileen, where Sadie and I had
shared a great many sweet nights at the Candlewood Bungalows.
Kileen, which had had a newspaper called The Weekly Gazette.
During her second week of classes—by then my new AP student had made several new girlfriends,
had fascinated several boys, and was settling in nicely—I asked Erin if The Weekly Gazette still
published. Her face lit up. “You’ve been to Kileen, Mr. Epping?”
“I was there a long time ago,” I said—a statement that wouldn’t have caused a lie detector needle
to budge even slightly.
“It’s still there. Mama used to say she only got it to wrap the fish in.”
“Does it still run the ‘Jodie Doin’s’ column?”
“It runs a ‘Doin’s’ column for every little town south of Dallas,” Erin said, giggling. “I bet you
could find it on the net if you really wanted to, Mr. Epping. Everything’s on the net.”
She was absolutely right about that, and I held out for exactly one week. Sometimes the knothole is
just too tempting.
6
My intention was simple: I would go to the archive (assuming The Weekly Gazette had one) and search
for Sadie’s name. It was against my better judgment, but Erin Tolliver had inadvertently stirred up
feelings that had begun to settle, and I knew I wouldn’t rest easy again until I checked. As it turned
out, the archive was unnecessary. I found what I was looking for not in the ‘Jodie Doin’s’ column but
on the first page of the current issue.
JODIE PICKS “CITIZEN OF THE CENTURY” FOR JULY CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION, the headline read. And the
picture below the headline . . . she was eighty now, but some faces you don’t forget. The photographer
might have suggested that she turn her head so the left side was hidden, but Sadie faced the camera
head-on. And why not? It was an old scar now, the wound inflicted by a man many years in his grave. I
thought it lent character to her face, but of course, I was prejudiced. To the loving eye, even smallpox
scars are beautiful.
In late June, after school was out, I packed a suitcase and once again headed for Texas.
7
Dusk of a summer night in the town of Jodie, Texas. It’s a little bigger than it was in 1963, but not
much. There’s a box factory in the part of town where Sadie Dunhill once lived on Bee Tree Lane. The