“Was it still there?”

“The story about the graduation was, you bet. Graduation day always makes the front page in smalltown newspapers, you know that, buddy. But after I came back from ’58, the picture was of a boy with a half-assed Beatle haircut standing at the podium and the caption said, Valedictorian Trevor “Buddy” Briggs speaks to graduation assemblage. They listed every graduate—there were only a hundred or so—and Carolyn Poulin wasn’t among em. So I checked the graduation story from ’64, which was the year she would have graduated if she hadn’t been busy getting better from being shot in the spine. And bingo. No picture and no special mention, but she was listed right between David Platt and Stephanie Routhier.”

“Just another kid marching to ‘Pomp and Circumstance,’ right?”

“Right. Then I plugged her name into the Enterprise’s search function, and got some hits after 1964. Not many, three or four. About what you’d expect for an ordinary woman living an ordinary life. She went to the University of Maine, majored in business administration, then went to grad school in New Hampshire. I found one more story, from 1979, not long before the Enterprise folded. FORMER LISBON RESIDENT STUDENT WINS NATIONAL DAYLILY

COMPETITION, it said. There was a picture of her, standing on her own two good legs, with the winning lily. She lives . . . lived . . . I don’t know which way is right, maybe both . . . in a town outside of Albany, New York.”

“Married? Kids?”

“Don’t think so. In the picture, she’s holding up the winning daylily and there are no rings on her left hand. I know what you’re thinking, not much that changed except for being able to walk.

But who can really tell? She was living in a different place and influenced the lives of who knows how many different people. Ones she never would have known if Cullum had shot her and she’d stayed in The Falls. See what I mean?”

What I saw was it was really impossible to tell, one way or another, but I agreed with him, because I wanted to finish with this before he collapsed. And I intended to see him safely into his bed before I left.

“What I’m telling you, Jake, is that you can change the past, but it’s not as easy as you might think. That morning I felt like a man trying to fight his way out of a nylon stocking. It would give a little, then snap back just as tight as before. Finally, though, I managed to rip it open.”

“Why would it be hard? Because the past doesn’t want to be changed?”

“Something doesn’t want it to be changed, I’m pretty sure of that. But it can be. If you take the resistance into account, it can be.” Al was looking at me, eyes bright in his haggard face. “All in all, the story of Carolyn Poulin ends with ‘And she lived happily ever after,’ wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes.”

“Look inside the back cover of the notebook I gave you, buddy, and you might change your mind. Little something I printed out today.”

I did as he asked and found a cardboard pocket. For storing things like office memos and business cards, I assumed. A single sheet of paper was folded into it. I took it out, opened it up, and looked for a long time. It was a computer printout of page 1 of the Weekly Lisbon Enterprise. The date below the masthead was June 18, 1965. The headline read: LHS CLASS OF ’65 GOES

FORTH IN TEARS, LAUGHTER. In the photograph, a bald man (his mortarboard tucked under his arm so it wouldn’t tumble off his head) was bending over a smiling girl in a wheelchair. He was holding one side of her diploma; she was holding the other. Carolyn Poulin reaches a major goal on her long road to recovery, the caption read.

I looked up at Al, confused. “If you changed the future and saved her, how can you have this?”

“Every trip’s a reset, buddy. Remember?”

“Oh my God. When you went back to stop Oswald, everything you did to save Poulin got erased.”

“Yes . . . and no.”

“What do you mean, yes and no?”

“The trip back to save Kennedy was going to be the last trip, but I was in no hurry to get down to Texas. Why would I be? In September of 1958, Ozzie Rabbit—that’s what his fellow Marines called him—isn’t even in America. He’s steaming gaily around the South Pacific with his unit, keeping Japan and Formosa safe for democracy. So I went back to the Shadyside Cabins in Sebago and hung out there until November fifteenth. Again. But when it rolled around, I left even earlier in the morning, which was a good fucking call on my part, because I didn’t just have a couple of flat tires that time. My goddam rental Chevy threw a rod. Ended up paying the service station guy in Naples sixty bucks to use his car for the day, and left him my Marine Corps ring as extra security.

Had some other adventures, which I won’t bother recapping—”

“Was the bridge still out in Durham?”

“Don’t know, buddy, I didn’t even try going that way. A person who doesn’t learn from the past is an idiot, in my estimation. One thing I learned was which way Andrew Cullum would be coming, and I wasted no time getting there. The tree was down across the road, just like before, and when he came along, I was wrestling with it, just like before. Pretty soon I’m having chest pains, just like before. We played out the whole comedy, Carolyn Poulin had her Saturday in the woods with her dad, and a couple of weeks later I said yahoo and got on a train for Texas.”

“Then how can I still have this picture of her graduating in a wheelchair?”

“Because every trip down the rabbit-hole’s a reset.” Then Al just looked at me, to see if I got it. After a minute, I did.

“I—?”

“That’s right, buddy. You bought yourself a dime root beer this afternoon. You also put Carolyn Poulin back in a wheelchair.”

CHAPTER 4

1

Al let me help him into his bedroom, and even muttered “Thanks, buddy” when I knelt to unlace his shoes and pull them off. He only balked when I offered to help him into the bathroom.

“Making the world a better place is important, but so is being able to get to the john under your own power.”

“Just as long as you’re sure you can make it.”

“I’m sure I can tonight, and I’ll worry about tomorrow tomorrow. Go home, Jake. Start reading the notebook—there’s a lot there. Sleep on it. Come see me in the morning and tell me what you decided. I’ll still be here.”

“Ninety-five percent probability?”

“At least ninety-seven. On the whole, I’m feeling pretty chipper. I wasn’t sure I’d even get this far with you. Just telling it—and having you believe it—is a load off my mind.” I wasn’t sure I did believe it, even after my adventure that afternoon, but I didn’t say so. I told him goodnight, reminded him not to lose count of his pills (“Yeah, yeah”), and left. I stood outside looking at the gnome with his Lone Star flag for a minute before going down the walk to my car.