17

The following week I made a mistake. I should have known better; making another major wager should have been the last thing on my mind after all that had happened to me. You’ll say I should have been more on my guard.

I did understand the risk, but I was worried about money. I had come to Texas with something less than sixteen thousand dollars. Some was the remainder of Al’s stake-money, but most of it was the result of two very large bets, one placed in Derry and one in Tampa. But staying at the Adolphus for seven weeks or so had eaten up over a thousand; getting settled in a new town would easily cost another four or five hundred. Food, rent, and utilities aside, I was going to need a lot more clothes—and better ones—if I was going to look respectable in a classroom. I’d be based in Jodie for two and a half years before I could conclude my business with Lee Harvey Oswald.

Fourteen thousand dollars or so wasn’t going to cut it. The substitute teaching salary? Fifteen dollars and fifty cents a day. Yeehaw.

Okay, maybe I could have scraped through on fourteen grand, plus thirty and sometimes even fifty bucks a week as a sub. But I’d have to stay healthy and not have any accidents, and I couldn’t bank on that. Because the past is sly as well as obdurate. It fights back. And yes, maybe there was an element of greed involved, too. If so, it was based less on the love of money than on the intoxicating knowledge that I could beat the usually unbeatable house whenever I wanted to.

I think now: If Al had researched the stock market as thoroughly as who won all those baseball games, football games, and horse races . . .

But he didn’t.

I think now: If Freddy Quinlan hadn’t mentioned that the World Series was shaping up to be a doozy . . .

But he did.

And I went back to Greenville Avenue.

I told myself that all those straw-hatted punters I’d seen standing out in front of Faith Financial (Where Trust Is Our Watchword) would be betting the Series, and some of them would be laying down serious cash. I told myself that I’d be one among many, and a middling bet from Mr.

George Amberson—who’d claim to be living in a nice converted-garage duplex on Blackwell Street right here in Dallas, should anyone inquire—would attract no attention. Hell, I told myself, the guys running Faith Financial probably don’t know Señor Eduardo Gutierrez of Tampa from Adam. Or from Noah’s son, Ham, for that matter.

Oh, I told myself lots of things, and they all boiled down to the same two things: that it was perfectly safe, and that it was perfectly reasonable to want more money even though I currently had enough to live on. Dumb. But stupidity is one of two things we see most clearly in retrospect. The other is missed chances.

18

On September twenty-eighth, a week before the Series was scheduled to start, I walked into Faith Financial and—after some dancing—put down six hundred dollars on the Pittsburgh Pirates to beat the Yankees in seven. I accepted two-to-one odds, which was outrageous considering how heavily favored the Yankees were. On the day after Bill Mazeroski hit his unlikely ninth-inning home run to seal the deal for the Buckos, I drove back to Dallas and Greenville Avenue. I think that if Faith Financial had been deserted, I would have turned around and driven right back to Jodie . . .

or maybe that’s just what I tell myself now. I don’t know for sure.

What I do know is there was a queue of bettors waiting to collect, and I joined it. That group was a Martin Luther King dream come true: fifty percent black, fifty percent white, a hundred percent happy. Most guys came out with nothing but a few fives or maybe a double sawbuck or two, but I saw several who were counting C-notes. An armed robber who had chosen that day to hit Faith Financial would have done well, indeed.

The money-man was a stocky fellow wearing a green eyeshade. He asked me the standard first question (“Are you a cop? If you are, you have to show me your ID”), and when I answered in the negative, he asked for my name and a look at my driver’s license. It was a brand-new one, which I had received by registered mail the week before; finally a piece of Texas identification to add to my collection. And I was careful to hold my thumb over the Jodie address.

He paid me my twelve hundred. I stuffed it in my pocket and walked quickly to my car.

When I was back on Highway 77, with Dallas falling behind and Jodie growing closer with every turn of the wheels, I finally relaxed.

Stupid me.

19

We’re going to take another leap forward in time (narratives also contain rabbit-holes, when you stop to think of it), but I need to recount one more thing from 1960, first.

Fort Worth. November sixteenth, 1960. Kennedy the president-elect for a little over a week.

The corner of Ballinger and West Seventh. The day was cold and overcast. Cars puffed white exhaust. The weatherman on KLIF (“All the hits, all the time”) was forecasting rain that might thicken to sleet by midnight, so be careful on the highways, all you rockers and rollers.

I was bundled into a rawhide ranch coat; a felt cap with flaps was jammed down over my ears. I was sitting on a bench in front of the Texas Cattle Raisers’ Association, looking down West Seventh. I had been there for almost an hour, and I didn’t think the young man would visit with his mother much longer than that; according to Al Templeton’s notes, all three of her boys had gotten away from her as soon as they possibly could. What I was hoping was that she might come out of her apartment building with him. She was recently back in the area after several months in Waco, where she had been working as a ladies’ home companion.

My patience was rewarded. The door of the Rotary Apartments opened and a skinny man who bore an eerie resemblance to Lee Harvey Oswald came out. He held the door for a woman in a tartan car coat and blocky white nurse’s shoes. She was only shoulder-high to him, but solidly built.

Her graying hair was scrooped back from a prematurely lined face. She wore a red kerchief.

Matching lipstick outlined a small mouth that looked dissatisfied and pugnacious—the mouth of a woman who believes the world is against her and has had plenty of evidence over the years to prove it. Lee Oswald’s elder brother went quickly down the concrete path. The woman scurried after and grabbed the back of his topcoat. He turned to her on the sidewalk. They appeared to argue, but the woman did most of the talking. She shook her finger in his face. No way I could tell what she was scolding him about; I was a prudent block and a half away. Then he started toward the corner of West Seventh and Summit Avenue, as I had expected. He had come by bus, and that was where the nearest stop was.

The woman stood where she was for a moment, as if undecided. Come on, Mama, I thought, you’re not going to let him get away that easily, are you? He’s just half a block down the street. Lee had to go all the way to Russia to get away from that wagging finger.

She went after him, and as they neared the corner, she raised her voice and I heard her clearly. “Stop, Robert, don’t walk so fast, I’m not done with you!” He looked over his shoulder but kept walking. She caught up to him at the bus stop and tugged on his sleeve until he looked at her. The finger resumed its tick-tock wagging. I caught isolated phrases: you promised, and gave you everything and—I think— who are you to judge me. I couldn’t see Oswald’s face because his back was to me, but his slumped shoulders said plenty. I doubted if this was the first time Mama had followed him down the street, jabbering away the whole time, oblivious of spectators. She spread a hand above the shelf of her bosom, that timeless Mom-gesture that says Behold me, ye thankless child.