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People was top of the pops; occasionally dropping to one knee to pull some weeds, then springing up
again and walking on.
Carolyn Poulin in the woods with her dad, soon to be crippled.
Carolyn Poulin in the woods with her dad, soon to walk into an ordinary smalltown adolescence.
Where had she been on that time-stream, I wondered, when the radio and TV bulletins announced
that the thirty-fifth President of the United States had been shot in Dallas?
John Kennedy can live. You can save him, Jake.
And would that really make things better? There were no guarantees.
I felt like a man trying to fight his way out of a nylon stocking.
I closed my eyes and saw pages flying off a calendar—the kind of corny transition they used in old
movies. I saw them flying out my bedroom window like birds.
One more thought came before I dropped off: the dopey sophomore with the even dopier straggle
of goatee on his chin, grinning and muttering, Hoptoad Harry, hoppin down the av-a-new. And Harry
stopping me when I went to call the kid on it. Nah, don’t bother, he’d said. I’m used to it.
Then I was gone, down for the count.
3
I woke up to early light and twittering birdsong, pawing at my face, sure I had cried just before
waking. I’d had a dream, and although I couldn’t remember what it was, it must have been a very sad
one, because I have never been what you’d call a crying man.
Dry cheeks. No tears.
I turned my head on the pillow to look at the clock on the nightstand and saw it lacked just two
minutes of 6:00 A.M. Given the quality of the light, it was going to be a beautiful June morning, and
school was out. The first day of summer vacation is usually as happy for teachers as it is for students,
but I felt sad. Sad. And not just because I had a tough decision to make.
Halfway to the shower, three words popped into my mind: Kowabunga, Buffalo Bob!
I stopped, naked and looking at my own wide-eyed reflection in the mirror over the dresser. Now I
remembered the dream, and it was no wonder I’d awoken feeling sad. I’d dreamed I was in the
teachers’ room, reading Adult English themes while down the hall in the gymnasium, another high
school basketball game wound down toward another final buzzer. My wife was just out of rehab. I was
hoping that she’d be home when I got there and I wouldn’t have to spend an hour on the phone before
locating her and fishing her out of some local waterhole.
In the dream, I had shifted Harry Dunning’s essay to the top of the pile and begun to read: It wasnt
a day but a night. The night that change my life was the night my father murdirt my mother and two brothers.
. . .
That had gotten my full attention, and in a hurry. Well, it would get anybody’s, wouldn’t it? But
my eyes had only begun to sting when I got to the part about what he’d been wearing. The outfit
made perfect sense, too. When kids went out on that special fall night, carrying empty bags they
hoped to bring back filled with sweet swag, their costumes always reflected the current craze. Five
years ago, it seemed that every second boy who showed up at my door was wearing Harry Potter
eyeglasses and a lightning-bolt-scar decal on his forehead. On my own maiden voyage as a candybeggar,
many moons ago, I’d gone clanking down the sidewalk (with my mother trailing ten feet
behind me, at my urgent request) dressed as a snowtrooper from The Empire Strikes Back. So was it
surprising that Harry Dunning had been wearing buckskin?
“Kowabunga, Buffalo Bob,” I told my reflection, and suddenly ran for my study. I don’t keep all