CHAPTER 21

1

The Oswalds became my upstairs neighbors on March 2, 1963. They hand-carried their possessions, mostly in liquor store cartons, from the crumbling brick box on Elsbeth Street. Soon the wheels of the little Japanese tape recorder were turning on a regular basis, but mostly I listened in with the earphones. That way the conversations upstairs were normal instead of slowed down, but of course I couldn’t understand much of it, anyway.

The week after the Oswalds moved into their new digs, I visited one of the pawnshops on Greenville Avenue to buy a gun. The first revolver the pawnbroker showed me was the same Colt .

38 model I’d bought in Derry.

“This is excellent pertection against muggers n home-breakers,” the pawnbroker said. “Dead accurate up to twenty yards.”

“Fifteen,” I said. “I heard fifteen.”

The pawnie raised his eyebrows. “Okay, say fifteen. Anyone stupid enough—”

—to try mugging me out of my cash is going to be a lot closer than that, that’s how the pitch goes.

“—to brace you is gonna be in at close quarters, so what do you say?” My first impulse, just to break that sense of chiming but slightly discordant harmony was to tell him I wanted something else, maybe a .45, but breaking the harmony might be a bad idea. Who knew? What I did know was that the .38 I’d bought in Derry had done the job.

“How much?”

“Let you have it for twelve.”

That was two dollars more than I’d paid in Derry, but of course that had been four and a half years ago. Adjusting for inflation, twelve seemed about right. I told him to add a box of bullets and he had a deal.

When the broker saw me putting the gun and the ammo in the briefcase I’d brought along for that purpose, he said, “Why don’t you let me sell you a holster, son? You don’t sound like you’re from around here and you probably don’t know, but you c’n carry legal in Texas, no permit needed if you don’t have a felony record. You got a felony record?”

“No, but I don’t expect to be mugged in broad daylight.”

The broker offered a dark smile. “On Greenville Avenue you can never tell what’s gonna happen. Man blew his own head off just a block and a half from here a few years ago.”

“Really?”

“Yessir, outside a bar called the Desert Rose. Over a woman, accourse. Don’t that figure?”

“I guess,” I said. “Although sometimes it’s politics.”

“Nah, nah, at the bottom it’s always a woman, son.”

I’d found a parking space four blocks west of the pawnshop, and in order to get back to my new (new to me, anyway) car, I had to pass Faith Financial, where I’d laid my bet on the Miracle Pirates in the fall of 1960. The sharpie who’d paid off my twelve hundred was standing out front, having a smoke. He was wearing his green eyeshade. His eyes passed over me, but seemingly without interest or recognition.

2

That was on a Friday afternoon, and I drove straight from Greenville Avenue to Kileen, where Sadie met me at the Candlewood Bungalows. We spent the night, as was our habit that winter. The next day she drove back to Jodie, where I joined her on Sunday for church. After the benediction, during the part where we shook hands with the people all around us, saying “Peace be with you,” my thoughts turned—not comfortably—to the gun now stowed in the trunk of my car.

Over the Sunday noon meal, Sadie asked: “How much longer? Until you do what you have to do?”

“If everything goes the way I hope, not much more than a month.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

I scrubbed my hands through my hair and went to the window. “Then I don’t know.

Anything else on your mind?”

“Yes,” she said calmly. “There’s cherry cobbler for afters. Would you like whipped cream on yours?”

“Very much,” I said. “I love you, honey.”

“You better,” she said, getting up to fetch dessert. “Because I’m kind of out on a limb here.” I stayed at the window. A car came rolling slowly down the street—an oldie but a goodie, as the jocks on K-Life said—and I felt that harmonic chime again. But I was always feeling it now, and sometimes it meant nothing. One of Christy’s AA slogans came to my mind: FEAR, standing for false evidence appearing real.

This time a click of association came, though. The car was a white-over-red Plymouth Fury, like the one I’d seen in the parking lot of the Worumbo mill, not far from the drying shed where the rabbit-hole into 1958 came out. I remembered touching the trunk to make sure it was real. This one had an Arkansas plate instead of a Maine one, but still . . . that chime. That harmonic chime.

Sometimes I felt that if I knew what that chime meant, I’d know everything. Probably stupid, but true.

The Yellow Card Man knew, I thought. He knew and it killed him.

My latest harmonic signaled left, turned at the stop sign, and disappeared toward Main Street.

“Come eat dessert, you,” Sadie said from behind me, and I jumped.

The AAs say FEAR stands for something else, as well: Fuck everything and run.

3

When I got back to Neely Street that night, I put on the earphones and listened to the latest recording. I expected nothing but Russian, but this time I got English as well. And splashing sounds.

Marina: (Speaks Russian.)

Lee: “I can’t, Mama, I’m in the tub with Junie!”

(More splashing, and laughter—Lee’s and the baby’s high chortle.) Lee: “Mama, we got water on the floor! Junie splash! Bad girl!” Marina: “Mop it up! I beezy! Beezy! ” (But she is also laughing.) Lee: “I can’t, you want the baby to . . .” (Russian.)

Marina: (Speaks Russian—scolding and laughing at the same time.) (More splashing. Marina is humming some pop song from KLIF. It sounds sweet.) Lee: “Mama, bring us our toys!”

Marina: “Da, da, always you must have the toys.”

(Splashing, loud. The door to the bathroom must be all the way open now.) Marina: (Speaks Russian.)

Lee (pouty little boy’s voice): “Mama, you forgot our rubber ball.” (Big splash—the baby screams with delight.)

Marina: “There, all toys for preence and preencessa.”

(Laughter from all three—their joy turns me cold.)

Lee: “Mama, bring us a (Russian word). We have water on our ear.” Marina (laughing): “Oh my God, what next?”

I lay awake a long time that night, thinking of the three of them. Happy for once, and why not? 214 West Neely wasn’t much, but it was still a step up. Maybe they were even sleeping in the same bed, June for once happy instead of scared to death.