“Just before she left. She said she has none. She believes her parents have several, but she refused to write them about it. Said they’d never given up on the marriage, and it would give them false hope. She also said she believed you were overreacting. Wildly overreacting was the phrase she used.”

That sounded like my Sadie. Only she wasn’t mine anymore. Now she was just hey waitress, bring us another round . . . and bend a little lower this time. Every man has a jealous-bone, and mine was twanging hard on the morning of July fifth.

“George? I have no doubt she still cares for you, and it might not be too late to clear this mess up.”

I thought of Lee Oswald, who wouldn’t make his attempt on General Edwin Walker’s life for another nine months. “It’s too early,” I said.

“I beg pardon?”

“Nothing. It’s good to talk to you, Miz Ellie, but pretty soon the operator’s going to come on the line asking for more money, and I’m all out of quarters.”

“I don’t suppose you could get down this way for a burger and a shake, could you? At the diner? If so, I’ll invite Deke Simmons to join us. He asks about you almost every day.” The thought of going back to Jodie and seeing my friends from the high school was probably the only thing that could have cheered me up that morning. “Absolutely. Would this evening be too soon? Say five o’clock?”

“It’s perfect. We country mice eat early.”

“Fine. I’ll be there. My treat.”

“I’ll match you for it.”

11

Al Stevens had hired a girl I knew from Business English, and I was touched by the way she lit up when she saw who was sitting with Ellie and Deke. “Mr. Amberson! Wow, it’s great to see you! How’re you doing?”

“Fine, Dorrie,” I said.

“Well, order big. You’ve lost weight.”

“It’s true,” Ellie said. “You need a good taking-care-of.” Deke’s Mexican tan was gone, which told me he was spending most of his retirement indoors, and whatever weight I’d lost, he’d found. He shook my hand with a hard grip and told me how good it was to see me. There was no artifice in the man. Or in Ellie Dockerty, for that matter.

Leaving this place for Mercedes Street, where they celebrated the Fourth by blowing up chickens, began to seem increasingly mad to me, no matter what I knew about the future. I certainly hoped Kennedy was worth it.

We ate hamburgers, french fries sizzling with grease, and apple pie à la mode. We talked about who was doing what, and had a laugh over Danny Laverty, who was finally writing his long-bruited book. Ellie said that according to Danny’s wife, the first chapter was titled “I Enter the Fray.”

Toward the end of the meal, as Deke stuffed his pipe with Prince Albert, Ellie lifted a tote she had stored under the table and produced a large book, which she passed above the greasy remains of our meal. “Page eighty-nine. And push back from that unsightly puddle of ketchup, if you please. This is strictly on loan, and I want to send it back in the same condition I received it.” It was a yearbook called Tiger Tails, and had come from a school a lot more fancy-schmancy than DCHS. Tiger Tails was bound in leather instead of cloth, the pages were thick and glossy, and the ad section at the back was easily a hundred pages thick. The institution it memorialized— exalted might be a better word—was Longacre Day School in Savannah. I thumbed through the uniformly vanilla senior section and thought there might be a black face or two there by the year 1990. Maybe.

“Holy joe,” I said. “Sadie must have taken a pretty good whack in the wallet when she came to Jodie from here.”

“I believe she was very anxious to get away,” Deke said quietly. “And I’m sure she had her reasons.”

I turned to page eighty-nine. It was headed LONGACRE SCIENCE DEPARTMENT. There was a corny group shot of four teachers in white lab coats holding bubbling beakers—paging Dr.

Jekyll—and below it were four studio shots. John Clayton didn’t look a bit like Lee Oswald, but he had the same sort of pleasantly forgettable face, and his lips were dimpled at the corners by the same suggestion of a smile. Was that the ghost of amusement or barely hidden contempt? Hell, maybe it was just the best the obsessive-compulsive bastard could do when the photographer told him to say cheese. The only distinguishing features were hollows at the temples, which almost matched the dimples at the corners of his mouth. The photo wasn’t color, but his eyes were light enough to make me pretty sure they were either blue or gray.

I turned the book toward my friends. “See these indents on the sides of his head? Is that just a natural formation, like a hooked nose or a chin-dimple?” They said “No” at exactly the same time. It was sort of comical.

“They’re forceps marks,” Deke said. “Made when some doc finally got tired of waiting and dragged him out of his mama. They usually go away, but not always. If his hair wasn’t thinning on the sides, you wouldn’t see them at all, would you?”

“And he hasn’t been around, asking about Sadie?” I asked.

“No.” They said it in unison again. Ellen added, “No one’s been asking after her. Except for you, George. You damned fool.” She smiled as people do when it’s a joke, but not really.

I looked at my watch and said, “I’ve kept you folks long enough. I’ll be heading on back.”

“Want to take a stroll down to the football field before you go?” Deke asked. “Coach Borman said to bring you by, if I got a chance. He’s got them practicing already, of course.”

“In the cool of the evening, at least,” Ellie said, getting up. “Thank God for small favors.

Remember when the Hastings boy got a heatstroke three years ago, Deke? And how they thought it was a heart attack at first?”

“I can’t imagine why he’d want to see me,” I said. “I turned one of his prize defensemen to the dark side of the universe.” I lowered my voice and whispered hoarsely, “Theater arts!” Deke smiled. “Yeah, but you saved another one from maybe getting red-shirted at ’Bama. Or at least that’s what Borman thinks. Because, my son, that’s what Jim LaDue told him.” At first I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about. Then I remembered the Sadie Hawkins, and grinned. “All I did was catch three of them passing a bottle of rotgut. I threw it over the fence.”

Deke had stopped smiling. “One of those boys was Vince Knowles. Did you know he was drunk when he rolled that truck of his?”

“No.” But it didn’t surprise me. Cars and booze have always been a popular and sometimes lethal high school cocktail.

“Yessir. That, combined with whatever you said to those boys at the dance, got LaDue to swear off drinking.”

“What did you say?” Ellie asked. She was fumbling her wallet out of her purse, but I was too lost in the memory of that night to argue with her about the check. Do not fuck up your futures: that was what I’d said. And Jim LaDue, he of the lazy I’ve-got-the-world-on-a-string smile, had actually taken it to heart. We never know which lives we influence, or when, or why. Not until the future eats the present, anyway. We know when it’s too late.