Grassy Knoll. And Im close to positive it was all Oswald. The conspiracy theories were all pretty crazy to begin with, and most of them have been disproved over the years. The idea that the shooter wasnt Oswald at all, but someone who looked like him, for instance. The body was exhumed in 1981 and DNA tested. It was him, all right. The poisonous little fuck. He paused, then added: I met him, you know.
I stared at him. Bullshit!
Oh yes. He spoke to me. This was in Fort Worth. He and Marinahis wife, she was Russianwere visiting Oswalds brother in Fort Worth. If Lee ever loved anybody, it was his brother Bobby. I was standing outside the picket fence around Bobby Oswalds yard, leaning against a phone pole, smoking a cigarette and pretending to read the paper. My heart was hammering what felt like two hundred beats a minute. Lee and Marina came out together. She was carrying their daughter, June. Just a mite of a thing, less than a year old. The kid was asleep. Ozzie was wearing khaki pants and a button-down Ivy League shirt that was all frayed around the collar. The slacks had a sharp crease, but they were dirty. Hed given up his Marine cut, but his hair would still have been way too short to grab. Marinaholy Christ, what a knockout! Dark hair, bright blue eyes, flawless skin. She looks like a goddam movie star. If you do this, youll see for yourself. She said something to him in Russian as they came down the walk. He said something back. He was smiling when he said it, but then he pushed her. She almost fell over. The kid woke up and started to cry. All this time, Oswald kept smiling.
You saw this. You actually did. You saw him. In spite of my own trip back in time, I was at least half-convinced that this had to be either a delusion or an outright lie.
I did. She came out through the gate and walked past me with her head down, holding the baby against her breasts. Like I wasnt there. But he walked right up to me, close enough for me to smell the Old Spice he was wearing to try and cover up the smell of his sweat. There were blackheads all over his nose. You could tell looking at his clothesand his shoes, which were scuffed and busted down at the backsthat he didnt have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of, but when you looked in his face, you knew that didnt matter. Not to him, it didnt. He thought he was a big deal.
Al considered briefly, then shook his head.
No, I take that back. He knew he was a big deal. It was just a matter of waiting for the rest of the world to catch up on that. So there he is, in my facechoking distance, and dont think the idea didnt cross my mind
Why didnt you? Or just cut to the chase and shoot him?
In front of his wife and baby? Could you do that, Jake?
I didnt have to consider it for long. Guess not.
Me either. I had other reasons, too. One of them was an aversion to state prison or the electric chair. We were out on the street, remember.
Ah.
Ah is right. He still had that little smile on his face when he walked up to me. Arrogant and prissy, both at the same time. Hes wearing that smile in just about every photograph anybody ever took of him. Hes wearing it in the Dallas police station after they arrested him for killing the president and a motor patrolman who happened to cross his path when he was trying to get away. He says to me, What are you looking at, sir? I say Nothing, buddy. And he says, Then mind your beeswax.
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Marina was waiting for him maybe twenty feet down the sidewalk, trying to soothe the baby back to sleep. It was hotter than hell that day, but she was wearing a kerchief over her hair, the way lots of European women do back then. He went to her and grabbed her elbowlike a cop instead of her husbandand says, Pokhoda! Pokhoda! Walk, walk. She said something to him, maybe asking if hed carry the baby for awhile. Thats my guess, anyway. But he just pushed her away and said, Pokhoda, cyka! Walk, bitch. She did. They went off down toward the bus stop. And that was it.
You speak Russian?
No, but I have a good ear and a computer. Back here I do, anyway.
You saw him other times?
Only from a distance. By then I was getting real sick. He grinned. Theres no Texas barbecue as good as Fort Worth barbecue, and I couldnt eat it. Its a cruel world, sometimes. I went to a doctor, got a diagnosis I could have made myself by then, and came back to the twenty-first century. Basically, there was nothing more to see, anyway. Just a skinny little wife-abuser waiting to be famous.
He leaned forward.
You know what the man who changed American history was like? He was the kind of kid who throws stones at other kids and then runs away. By the time he joined the Marinesto be like his brother Bobby, he idolized Bobbyhed lived in almost two dozen different places, from New Orleans to New York City. He had big ideas and couldnt understand why people wouldnt listen to them. He was mad about that, furious, but he never lost that pissy, prissy little smile of his. Do you know what William Manchester called him?
No. I didnt even know who William Manchester was.
A wretched waif. Manchester was talking about all the conspiracy theories that bloomed in the aftermath of the assassination and after Oswald himself was shot and killed. I mean, you know that, right?
Of course, I said, a little annoyed. A guy named Jack Ruby did it. But given the holes in my knowledge Id already demonstrated, I suppose he had a right to wonder.
Manchester said that if you put the murdered president on one side of a scale and Oswaldthe wretched waifon the other, it didnt balance. No way did it balance. If you wanted to give Kennedys death some meaning, youd have to add something heavier. Which explains the proliferation of conspiracy theories. Like the Mafia did itCarlos Marcello ordered the hit. Or the KGB did it. Or Castro, to get back at the CIA for trying to load him up with poison cigars. There are people to this day who believe Lyndon Johnson did it so he could be president. But in the end Al shook his head. It was almost certainly Oswald. Youve heard of Occams Razor, havent you?
It was nice to know something for sure. Its a basic truism sometimes known as the law of parsimony. All other things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the right one. So why didnt you kill him when he wasnt on the street with his wife and kid? You were a Marine, too. When you knew how sick you were, why didnt you just kill the little motherfucker yourself?
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Because being ninety-five percent sure isnt a hundred. Because, shithead or not, he was a family man. Because after he was arrested, Oswald said he was a patsy and I wanted to be sure he was lying. I dont think anybody can ever be a hundred percent sure of anything in this wicked world, but I wanted to get up to ninety-eight. I had no intention of waiting until November twenty-second and then stopping him at the Texas School Book Depository, thoughthat would have been cutting it way too fine, for one big reason Ill have to tell you about.
His eyes no longer looked so bright, and the lines on his face were deepening again. I was scared by how shallow his reserves of strength had become.
Ive written all this stuff down. I want you to read it. Actually, I want you to cram like a bastard. Look on top of the TV, buddy. Would you do that? He gave me a tired smile and added, I got my sittin-britches on.
It was a thick blue notebook. The price stamped on the paper cover was twenty-five cents. The brand was foreign to me. Whats Kresges?
The department store chain now known as Kmart. Never mind whats on the cover, just pay attention to whats inside. Its an Oswald timeline, plus all the evidence piled up against him which you dont really have to read if you take me up on this, because youre going to stop the little weasel in April of 1963, over half a year before Kennedy comes to Dallas.
Why April?
Because thats when somebody tried to kill General Edwin Walker only he wasnt a general anymore by then. He got cashiered in 1961, by JFK himself. General Eddie was handing out segregationist literature to his troops and ordering them to read the stuff.
It was Oswald who tried to shoot him?
Thats what you need to make sure of. Same rifle, no doubt about that, ballistics proved it. I was waiting to see him take the shot. I could afford not to interfere, because that time Oswald missed. The bullet deflected off the wood strip in the middle of Walkers kitchen window. Not much, but just enough. The bullet literally parted his hair and flying wood splinters from the munting cut his arm a little. That was his only wound. I wont say the man deserved to dievery few men are evil enough to deserve being shot from ambushbut I would have traded Walker for Kennedy any day of the week.
I paid little attention to that last. I was thumbing through Als Oswald Book, page after page of closely written notes. They were completely legible at the beginning, less so toward the end. The last few pages were the scrawls of a very sick man. I snapped
the cover closed and said, If you could confirm that Oswald was the shooter in the General Walker attempt, that would have settled your doubts?
Yes. I needed to make sure hes capable of doing it. Ozzies a bad man, Jakewhat people back in 58 call a lousebut beating on your wife and keeping her a virtual prisoner because she doesnt speak the language dont justify murder. And something else. Even if I hadnt come down with the big C, I knew I might not get another chance to make it right if I killed Oswald and someone else shot the president anyway. By the time a mans in his sixties, hes pretty much off the warranty, if you see what I mean.
Would it have to be killing? Couldnt you just I dont know frame him for something?
Maybe, but by then I was sick. I dont know if I could have done it even if I was well. On the whole it seemed simpler to just end him, once I was sure. Like swatting a wasp before it can sting you.
I was quiet, thinking. The clock on the wall said ten-thirty. Al had opened the conversation by saying hed be good to go until midnight, but I only had to look at him to know that had been wildly optimistic.
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I took his glass and mine out to the kitchen, rinsed them, and put them in the dish drainer. It felt like there was a tornado funnel behind my forehead. Instead of cows and fenceposts and scraps of paper, what it was sucking up and spinning around were names: Lee Oswald, Bobby Oswald, Marina Oswald, Edwin Walker, Fred Hampton, Patty Hearst. There were bright acronyms in that whirl, too, circling like chrome hood ornaments ripped off luxury cars: JFK, RFK, MLK, SLA. The cyclone even had a sound, two Russian words spoken over and over again in a flat Southern drawl: pokhoda, cyka.
Walk, bitch.
5
How long have I got to decide? I asked.
Not long. The diner goes at the end of the month. I talked to a lawyer about buying some more timetying them up in a suit, or somethingbut he wasnt hopeful. Ever seen a sign in a furniture store saying LOST OUR LEASE, EVERYTHING MUST GO?
Sure.
Nine cases out of ten thats just sales-pitch bullshit, but this is the tenth case. And Im not talking about some discount dollar store bumping to get in, Im talking about Beans, and when it comes to Maine retail, L.L. Bean is the biggest ape in the jungle. Come July first, the diners gone like Enron. But that isnt the big thing. By July first, I might be gone. I could catch a cold and be dead of pneumonia in three days. I could have a heart attack or a stroke. Or I could kill myself with these damn OxyContin pills by accident. The visiting nurse who comes in asks me every day if Im being careful not to exceed the dosage, and I am careful, but I can see shes still worried shell walk in some morning and find me dead, probably because I got stoned and lost count. Plus the pills inhibit respiration, and my lungs are shot. On top of all that, Ive lost a lot of weight.
Really? I hadnt noticed.
Nobody loves a smartass, buddywhen you get to be my age, youll know. In any case, I want you to take this as well as the notebook. He held out a key. Its to the diner. If you should call me tomorrow and hear from the nurse that I passed away in the night, youll have to move fast. Always assuming you decide to move at all, that is.
Al, youre not planning
Just trying to be careful. Because this matters, Jake. As far as Im concerned, it matters more than anything else. If you ever wanted to change the world, this is your chance. Save Kennedy, save his brother. Save Martin Luther King. Stop the race riots. Stop Vietnam, maybe. He leaned forward. Get rid of one wretched waif, buddy, and you could save millions of lives.
Its a hell of a sales pitch, I said, but I dont need the key. When the sun comes up tomorrow, youll still be on the big blue bus.
Ninety-five percent probability. But thats not good enough. Take the goddam key.
I took the goddam key and put it in my pocket. Ill let you get some rest.
One more thing before you go. I need to tell you about Carolyn Poulin and Andy Cullum. Sit down again, Jake. Thisll take a few minutes.
I stayed on my feet. Uh-uh. Youre used up. You need to sleep.
Ill sleep when Im dead. Sit down.
6
After discovering what he called the rabbit-hole, Al said, he was at first content to use it to buy supplies, make a few bets with a bookie he found in Lewiston, and build up his stash of fifties cash. He also took the occasional midweek holiday on Sebago Lake, which was teeming with fish that were tasty and perfectly safe to eat. People worried about fallout from A-bomb tests, he said, but fears of getting mercury poisoning from tainted fish were still in the future. He called these jaunts (usually Tuesdays and Wednesdays, but he would sometimes stay all the way to Friday) his minivacations. The weather was always good (because it was always the same weather) and the fishing was always terrific (he probably caught at least some of the same fish over and over).
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I know exactly how you feel about all this, Jake, because I was pretty much in shock those first few years. You want to know whats a mind-blower? Going down those stairs at the height of a January noreaster and coming out in that bright September sunshine. Shirtsleeve weather, am I right?
I nodded and told him to go on. The little bit of color that had been in his cheeks when I came in was all gone, and he was coughing steadily again.
But if you give a man some time, he can get used to anything, and when the shock finally started to wear off, I started to think Id found that old rabbit-hole for a reason. Thats when I started to think about Kennedy. But your question reared its ugly head: can you change the past? I wasnt concerned about the consequencesat least not to start withbut only about whether or not it could be done at all. On one of my Sebago trips, I took out my knife and carved AL T. FROM 2007 on a tree near the cabin where I stayed. When I got back here, I jumped in my car and drove on over to Sebago Lake. The cabins where I stayed are gone; theres a tourist hotel there now. But the tree is still there. So was what I carved into it. Old and smooth, but still there: AL T. FROM 2007. So I knew it could be done. Then I started thinking about the butterfly effect.
Theres a newspaper in The Falls back then, the Lisbon Weekly Enterprise, and the library scanned all their microfilm into the computer in 05. Speeds things up a lot. I was looking for an accident in the fall or early winter of 1958. A certain kind of accident. I would have gone all the way into early 1959 if necessary, but I found what I was looking for on November fifteenth of 58. A twelve-year-old girl named Carolyn Poulin was hunting with her father across the river, in the part of Durham thats called Bowie Hill. Around two oclock that afternoonit was a Saturdaya hunter from Durham named Andrew Cullum shot at a deer in that same section of the woods. He missed the deer, hit the girl. Even though she was a quarter of a mile away, he hit the girl. I think about that, you know. When Oswald shot at General Walker, the range was less than a hundred yards. But the bullet clipped the wood sash in the middle of a window and he missed. The bullet that paralyzed the Poulin girl traveled over four hundred yardsmuch farther than the shot that killed Kennedyand missed every tree trunk and branch along the way. If it had even clipped a twig, it almost surely would have missed her. So sure, I think about it.
That was the first time the phrase life turns on a dime crossed my mind. It wasnt the last. Al grabbed another maxi pad, coughed, spat, tossed it in the wastebasket. Then he drew in the closest thing to a deep breath he could manage, and labored on. I didnt try to stop him. I was fascinated all over again.
I plugged her name into the Enterprises search database and found a few more stories about her. She graduated from Lisbon High School in 1965a year behind the rest of her class, but she made itand went to the University of Maine. Business major. Became an accountant. She lives in Gray, less than ten miles from Sebago Lake, where I used to go on my minivacations, and she still works as a freelance. Want to guess who one of her biggest clients is?
I shook my head.
John Crafts, right here in The Falls. Squiggy Wheaton, one of the salesmen, is a regular customer at the diner, and when he told me one day that they were doing their annual inventory and the numbers lady was there going over the books, I made it my business to roll on up and get an eyes-on. Shes sixty-five now, and you know how some women that age can be really beautiful?
Yes, I said. I was thinking of Christys mother, who didnt fully come into her looks until she was in her fifties.
Carolyn Poulin is that way. Her face is a classic, the kind a painter from two or three hundred years ago would love, and shes got snow white hair that she wears long, down her back.
Sounds like youre in love, Al.
He had enough strength left to shoot me the bird.
Shes in great physical shape, toowell, youd almost expect that, wouldnt you, an unmarried woman hauling herself in and out of a wheelchair every day and getting in and out of the specially equipped van she drives. Not to mention in and out of bed, in and out of the shower, all the rest. And she doesSquiggy says shes completely self-sufficient. I was impressed.
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So you decided to save her. As a test case.
I went back down the rabbit-hole, only this time I stayed in the Sebago cabin over two months. Told the owner Id come into some money when my uncle died. You ought to remember that, buddythe rich uncle thing is tried and true. Everybody believes it because everybody wants one. So comes the day: November fifteenth, 1958. I dont mess with the Poulins. Given my idea about stopping Oswald, Im much more interested in Cullum, the shooter. Id researched him, too, and found out he lived about a mile from Bowie Hill, near the old Durham grange hall. I thought Id get there before he left for the woods. Didnt quite work out that way.
I left my cabin on Sebago really early, which was a good thing for me, because I wasnt a mile down the road before the Hertz car I was driving came up with a flat shoe. I took out the spare, put it on, and although it looked absolutely fine, I hadnt gone another mile before that one went flat, too.
I hitched a ride to the Esso station in Naples, where the guy in the service bay told me he had too damn much work to come out and put a new tire on a Hertz Chevrolet. I think he was pissed about missing the Saturday hunting. A twenty-dollar tip changed his mind, but I never got into Durham until past noon. I took the old Runaround Pond Road because thats the quickest way to go, and guess what? The bridge over Chuckle Brook had fallen into the goddam water. Big red and white sawhorses; smudgepots; big orange sign reading ROAD CLOSED. By then I had a pretty good idea of what was going on, and I had a sinking feeling that I wasnt going to be able to do what Id set out that morning to do. Keep in mind that I left at eight A.M., just to be on the safe side, and it took me over four hours to get eighteen miles. But I didnt give up. I went around by Methodist Church Road instead, hammering that rent-a-dent for all it was worth, pulling up this long rooster-tail of dust behind meall the roads out that way are dirt back then.
Okay, so Im seeing cars and trucks parked off to the sides or at the start of woods roads every here and there, and Im also seeing hunters walking with their guns broken open over their arms. Every single one of them lifted his hand to mefolks are friendlier in 58, theres no doubt about that. I waved back, too, but what I was really waiting for was another flat. Or a blowout. That would probably have sent me right off the road and into the ditch, because I was doing sixty at least. I remember one of the hunters patting the air with his hands, the way you do when youre telling someone to slow down, but I paid no attention.
I flew up Bowie Hill, and just past the old Friends Meeting House, I spied a pickemup parked by the graveyard. POULIN CONSTRUCTION AND CARPENTRY painted on the door. Truck empty. Poulin and his girl in the woods, maybe sitting in a clearing somewhere, eating their lunch and talking the way fathers and daughters do. Or at least how I imagine they do, never having had one myself
Another long fit of coughing, which ended with a terrible wet gagging sound.
Ah shit, dont that hurt, he groaned.
Al, you need to stop.
He shook his head and wiped a slick of blood off his lower lip with the heel of his palm. What I need is to get this out, so shut up and let me do it.
I gave the truck a good long stare, still rolling at sixty or so all the while, and when I looked back at the road, I saw there was a tree down across it. I stopped just in time to keep from crashing into it. It wasnt a big tree, and before the cancer went to work on me, I was pretty strong. Also, I was mad as hell. I got out and started wrestling with it. While I was doing thatalso cussing my head offa car came along from the other direction. Man gets out, wearing an orange hunting vest. I dont know for sure if its my man or notthe Enterprise never printed his picturebut he looks like the right age.
He says, Let me help you with that, oldtimer.
Thank you very much, I says, and holds out my hand. Bill Laidlaw.
He shakes it and says, Andy Cullum. So it was him. Given all the trouble Id had getting to Durham, I could hardly believe it. I felt like Id won the lottery. We grabbed the tree, and between us we got it shifted. When it was, I sat down on the road and grabbed my chest. He asked me if I was okay. Well, I dont know, I says. I never had a heart attack, but this sure feels like one. Which is why Mr. Andy Cullum never got any hunting done on that November afternoon, Jake, and why he never shot any little girl, either. He was busy taking poor old Bill Laidlaw up to Central Maine General in Lewiston.
You did it? You actually did it?
Bet your ass. I told em at the hospital that Id had a big old hero for lunchwhats called an Italian sandwich back thenand the diagnosis was acute indigestion. I paid twenty-five dollars in cash and they sprung me. Cullum waited around and took me back to my Hertz car, hows that for neighborly? I returned home to 2011 that very night only of course I came back only two minutes after I left. Shit like thatll give you jet-lag without ever getting on a plane.
My first stop was the town library, where I looked up the story of the 1965 high school graduation again. Before, thered been a photo of Carolyn Poulin to go with it. The principal back thenEarl Higgins, hes long since gone to his rewardwas bending over to hand her her diploma as she sat in her wheelchair, all dressed up in her cap and gown. The caption underneath said, Carolyn Poulin reaches a major goal on her long road to recovery.
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 graduatethere were only a hundred or soand Carolyn Poulin wasnt among em. So I checked the graduation story from 64, which was the year she would have graduated if she hadnt 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 Enterprises search function, and got some hits after 1964. Not many, three or four. About what youd 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 dont know which way is right, maybe both in a town outside of Albany, New York.
Married? Kids?
Dont think so. In the picture, shes holding up the winning daylily and there are no rings on her left hand. I know what youre 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 shed 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 Im telling you, Jake, is that you can change the past, but its 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 doesnt want to be changed?
Something doesnt want it to be changed, Im 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, wouldnt 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 wouldnt 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 trips 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 Rabbitthats what his fellow Marines called himisnt even in America. Hes 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 didnt 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 wont bother recapping
Was the bridge still out in Durham?
Dont know, buddy, I didnt even try going that way. A person who doesnt 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 Im 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.
