13
I couldn’t sleep that night. I’d start to drift, then see Ray Mack Johnson’s sweat-oily, complacent face as he blamed two thousand years of slavery, murder, and exploitation on some teenage kid eyeballing his father’s gearshift. I’d jerk awake, settle back, drift… and see the little man with the unzipped fly sticking the muzzle ofhis hideout gun in his ear.Is this what you want, Linda?One final burst of petulance before the big sleep. And I’d start awake again. Next time it was men in a black sedan throwing a gasoline bomb through the front window of my place on Sunset Point: Eduardo Gutierrez attempting to get rid of his Yanqui from Yankeeland. Why? Because he didn’t like to lose big, that was all. For him, that was enough.
Finally I gave up and sat down by the window, where the hotel air-conditioner was rattling gamely away. In Maine the night would be crisp enough to start bringing color to the trees, but here in Dallas it was still seventy-five at two-thirty in the morning. And humid.
“Dallas, Derry,” I said as I looked down into the silent ditch of Commerce Street. The brick cube of the Book Depository wasn’t visible, but it was close by. Walking distance.
“Derry, Dallas.”
Each name comprised of two syllables that broke on the double letter like a stick of kindling over a bent knee. I couldn’t stay here. Another thirty months in Big D would send me crazy. How long would it be before I started seeing graffiti like I WILL KILL MY MOTHER SOON? Or glimpsed a juju Jesus floating down the Trinity River? Fort Worth might be better, but Fort Worth was still too close.
Why do I have to stay in either?
This thought came to me shortly after 3:00A.M., and with the force of a revelation. I had a fine car—a car I’d sort of fallen in love with, to tell you the truth—and there was no shortage of good fast roads in central Texas, many of them recently built. By the turn of the twenty-first century, they would probably be choked with traffic, but in 1960 they were almost eerily deserted. There were speed limits, but they weren’t enforced. In Texas, even the state cops were believers in the gospel of put the pedal to the metal and let er bellow.
I could move out from beneath the suffocating shadow I felt over this city. I could find a place that was smaller and lessdaunting, a place that didn’t feel so filled with hate and violence. In broad daylight I could tell myself I was imagining those things, but not in the ditch of the morning. There were undoubtedly good people in Dallas, thousands upon thousands of them, the great majority, but that underchord was there, and sometimes it broke out. As it had outside the Desert Rose.
Bevvie-from-the-levee had said thatIn Derry I think the bad times are over.I wasn’t convinced about Derry, and I felt the same way about Dallas, even with its worst day still over three years away.
“I’ll commute,” I said. “George wants a nice quiet place to work on his book, but since the book is about a city—ahauntedcity—he really has to commute, doesn’t he? To get material.”
It was no wonder it took me almost two months to think of this; life’s simplest answers are often the easiest to overlook. I went back to bed and fell asleep almost at once.
14
The next day I drove south out of Dallas on Highway 77. An hour and a half took me into Denholm County. I turned west onto State Road 109 mostly because I liked the billboard marking the intersection. It showcased a heroic young football player wearing a gold helmet, black jersey, and gold leggings. DENHOLM LIONS, the billboard proclaimed. 3-TIME DISTRICT CHAMPS! STATE CHAMPIONSHIP BOUND IN 1960! “WE’VE GOT JIM POWER!”
Whatever that is,I thought. But of course every high school has its secret signs and signals; it’s what makes kids feel like they’re on the inside.
Five miles up Highway 109, I came to the town of Jodie. POP. 1280, the sign said. WELCOME, STRANGER! Halfway up the wide, tree-lined Main Street I saw a little restaurant with a sign in the window reading BEST SHAKES, FRIES, AND BURGERS IN ALL OF TEXAS! It was called Al’s Diner.
Of course it was.
I parked in one of the slant spaces out front, went in, and ordered the Pronghorn Special, which turned out to be a double cheeseburger with barbecue sauce. It came with Mesquite Fries and a Rodeo Thickshake—your choice of vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry. A Pronghorn wasn’t quite as good as a Fatburger, but it wasn’t bad, and the fries were just the way I like them: crispy, salty, and a little overdone.
Al turned out to be Al Stevens, a skinny middle-aged guy who looked nothing like Al Templeton. He had a rockabilly hairdo, a gray-streaked bandido mustache, a thick Texas drawl, and a paper hat worn jauntily cocked over one eye. When I asked him if there was much to rent in the town of Jodie, he laughed and said, “Take your pick. But when it comes to jobs, this ain’t exactly a center of commerce. Ranchland, mostly, and you’ll pardon me sayin, but you don’t look like the cowboy type.”
“I’m not,” I said. “Actually, I’m more the book-writing type.”
“Get out! Anything I might have read?”
“Not yet,” I said. “I’m still trying. I’ve got about half of a novel written, and a couple of publishers have shown some interest. I’m looking for a quiet place to finish.”
“Well, Jodie’s quiet, all right.” Al rolled his eyes. “When it comes to quiet, I reckon we could take out a patent. Only gets noisy on Friday nights.”
“Football?”
“Yessir, whole town goes. Halftime comes, they all roar like lions, then give out with the Jim Yell. You can hear em two miles away. It’s pretty comical.”
“Who’s Jim?”
“LaDue, the quarterback. We’ve had us some good teams, but ain’t never been a QB like LaDue on a Denholm team. And he’s only a junior. People been talkin ’bout the state championship. That seems a tad optimistic to me, with those big Dallas schools just up the road, but a little hope never hurt anybody, that’s what I reckon.”
“Football aside, how’s the school?”
“It’s real fine. Lot of people were doubtful about this consolidation thing at first—I was one of em—but it’s turned out to be a good thing. They got over seven hunnerd this year. Some of em bus in an hour or more, but they don’t seem to mind. Probably saves em chores at home. Is your book about high school kids?Blackboard Junglekind of thing? Because there ain’t no gangs or anything out here. Out here kids still mind their manners.”
“Nothing like that. I’ve got savings, but I wouldn’t mind stretching what I’ve got with some substitute work. I can’t teach full-time and still write.”
