Windowpane

By Steve Perry

There is magic in the music that Flint McClelland makes -- literally.

Twenty years after the Summer of Love, Flint travels the world, searching for enspelled items that might bring back the spirit of the Sixties. There are powerful and evil forces set against him, and nothing is quite as it seems as Flint seeks the people and curios he needs to restart the Age of Aquarius.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Perry
• Release date: Sep 20, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452368405

Book preview

Windowpane

by

Steve Perry

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2010 - Steve Perry

DEDICATION:

For Dianne, of course.

And for John Fahey and

The Singing Bridge of Memphis.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

In the telling of this story, there are many people in many places who helped — they know who they are and have no need to see themselves listed here, but I am going to do it anyway — this book would not have been possible without them. My thanks especially to: Greg Napoleon; Sensei Edgeware; Pat and Shelly Ritterman; Trigunavate Geranium; Jay River; Fred Mohican; Jim and Carolyn Delgado; Vince Kohler; Ray Auel; Judy Bauman; John DeCamp; Michael Reaves; and, of course the loving constants — Dianne, Dal and Stephani. How I got here was with your help. Thank you.

There are a few real places in this novel you may recognize, as well as some locations that never existed before I put them here. I will be especially honored if you feel as if you know any of the characters who people these pages, for all of them are made up, and have no lives save those I created for them herein.

—SP

Front Quote:

The judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy.

—Jung

PART ONE

BRINGING IN THE SHEAVES

ONE

1988

Flint sat cross-legged on the sidewalk playing Amazing Grace on his platinum flute.

The crowd gathered before the flutist as if under a spell, as if drawn into the sound by hypnagogic waves they could not resist. Flint called to them as the legendary piper had once called the children, and those who had even the smallest bit of child still alive within their souls, no matter their ages, no matter the insulation, could not pass by unaffected.

Flint could barely read music. He still had to work at naming each note when he saw it on paper, but that didn't matter, for what he had instead was magic.

He resisted the smile that tried to form within the embouchure of lips and flute. Even magic was hard pressed to make up for lousy technique. The absolutely pure tones of Albert Cooper's platinum instrument helped, of course. Cooper was a master flute smith and his machineries would go a long, long way to make even a novice sound better. Flint had a certain basic skill, but he knew that the music came through him, that he was merely an instrument being played by some higher power just as he controlled and played upon the flute, and that was what drew the listeners. Not his voice, but the voice of a god.

In the early Oregon sunlight that sought to warm the outdoor Saturday Market in Portland this cool June morning, they came to listen to the bittersweetness of Flint's music, lured by a power they could not name, wrapped in an invisible and binding web of sound. The music would not let them be.

An old brown Stetson sat on the sidewalk next to the flute case, brim up, empty. Behind that, the blue nylon Back Trails backpack on its scratched and battered aluminum frame was propped against the brick wall, the backpack that held Flint's clothes, his sleeping bag, and most precious of all, part of the sixties. No one made any move to put money into the hat, but then, they seldom did while he was playing. As long as the music held them with its gentle hands, they didn't think about things like money. They didn't worry about the Russians or their jobs or what grades their children were making in school or the dent that asshole in the parking lot put in the Toyota's door. Mostly, they didn't think at all. They just listened, and were woven into the sound; they became part of the tapestry of the morning and it was fine place to be, a fine place. After he stopped, there would be time for other things; but here, in the moment, he caught them in his spell, and for the span of the music he gave them a break, he gave them respite, he gave them peace. That was the point.

A dozen people stood there when he unwound the final note of the song. The bell-like sound hovered in the air and faded slowly, its synergistic vibrato diminishing so it seemed to continue as a resonating overtone even after it was gone.

They blinked, came back to themselves, and wondered how somebody could play something so beautiful it made you want to cry. Flint could see it in their faces, as he had seen in thousands of other faces over the years. That white-haired man of sixty would wonder about him: Who was he, that he could do this? The small woman with the sad eyes might ask herself: Why was he sitting on a street corner, his back to a warehouse wall, playing street music? He should be in a concert hall somewhere, or making records, or something! Others of them would have stirrings of such questions. They would know, somehow, that something unusual was transpiring here, even if they could not put a name to it. And in such a place, with the MAX light rail train rattling past on the street behind them, with the bustle of a modern city surrounding this small pocket of grace.

Flint lowered the flute and smiled at the faces, in sympathy with their problem reconciling what they saw with what they had heard. He was forty and almost looked it, short-haired and clean-shaven, smile lines burned deep by years of wind and sun and rain, hair bleached dishwater blond by the same weather. He wore a faded work shirt, the pale blue of it matching the also-faded denim of his jeans and very nearly his eyes, and his running shoes had lived many miles. Not shabby, not quite, and there was that about him that would seem familiar to at least some of them. Maybe they had done windowpane at Woodstock, or maybe they had eaten magic mushrooms in Boulder; or maybe they had seen the Summer of Love in San Francisco. They were all old enough to remember the sixties — most of those who stopped to listen to his songs usually were. They had once been brothers and sisters, but now they were faded by time like his clothes. The music somehow took them back; it took them back, and it restored their colors.

Somebody moved toward the hat, and dropped a folded bill into it. Others followed. Their words fluttered into the hat with the money.

Thanks, son, the white-haired man said.

That was really beautiful, mister, the sad-eyed woman said.

Will you play something else? That from another listener.

He didn't look at the hat. There was no need. There was always money after he played, sometimes more, sometimes less, but always enough. He was self-programmed, he knew, to break even, and he knew also he would find in the hat what he needed. He always did.

The dozen watchers stood back respectfully, waiting. No one turned and walked away, and Flint knew if he continued to play others would come. In the cold and hi-tech world of the eighties, magic was hard to find, and if you happened upon it, and if you could recognize it, it was not easy to let it go. Science had laid its iron stamp on wonder, pressing it flat under the weight of facts and theory, and the fire of belief was very nearly extinguished, the life of it almost smothered.

But only almost. The Logician's knives were keen and pointed, but the sharpest of blades slides through water and damages it not at all. Even science has limits.

He raised the flute, and was rewarded by sighs and smiles. He didn't have the license the market people wanted their street musicians to have, but that didn't matter. He had magic instead, and nobody would tell him to move along. Nobody ever did.

He inhaled deeply, created the embouchure again, and blew into Albert Cooper's marvelous instrument. He gave them Greensleeves. Later, he would give them Hey, Jude, and Hide Your Love Away, and Bridge Over Troubled Water, and maybe Blowin' in the Wind. Some of the songs were a stretch for a flute, it had only so much range, but he could manage.

Like science, the flute had limits, but — there were no ordinary limits to magic.

Noon, and the summer now lay over Portland in earnest, heat waves rising from the concrete and buildings, lifting and wrinkling the air, climbing toward the sun in the clean azure sky. A breeze blew from the river and under the Burnside Bridge, where most of the market's stalls stood in hard but warm shade. The wind was gentle and welcome, and it ruffled hammered brass wind chimes and stirred knotted jute wall hangings and cooled the free-form jewelers and artists and carvers of bone and wood. Tie-dyed T-shirts waved in the breeze, and the folk who populated the market on this warm Sunday could have been transported by time machines from the counterculture of twenty years ago, long-haired and tanned, in colorful cotton shirts and pants and skirts and handmade sandals, bedecked in beads and copper and good karma. Revenants of a time past they were, gathered together here anachronistically, but their energies were concentrated and potent under this particular bridge and on this particular day.

Flint tucked his hat and flute case into his backpack and shouldered the solid weight of it. The padded straps slid into the imaginary grooves on his back and shoulders, settling the pack into its accustomed place, becoming as much a part of him as his own lean flesh.

He turned away from the pull of the market. It was hard to leave whenever he found a place like this. It seemed so obvious that he would find what he searched for here, amidst the trappings of his time. Too obvious — jeans patched with peace symbols and the music of the Dead playing from a boom box in the background were only superficial signs, and while they might hold the truth or some part of it, such a thing was not a given. Fashion always co-opted the cutting edge, and long hair never did a hippie make, any more than combat fatigues guaranteed an ex-solider.

So he walked away, up to Third, and turned south. He felt the pull from the market, but it was not the real call. When he heard the real song, he had always been certain. So far.

Somewhere, not far ahead, 1963 waited for him.

For those who thought time a river that flowed in one direction, 1963 was back that way, twenty-five years and more, and less accessible than leaping up and trying to catch the moon in your hands. The past was dead and gone, forever; there was no way to go back.

But for Flint McClelland, there was a way.

No airlines scheduled flights there; no trains rolled on tired steel rails into the days of the past; nor did commuter bees frantically hurrying in their glass and metal chariots on endless freeways ever see the exit marked This Way Back. Neither ship nor rocket nor any machine born of man's brain could of itself take you there, but there was a way.

Faith. Hope. Desire. Magic. Taken and blended properly, they could become a gestalt, a synergy, a reality. Those impossible things that science refused to credit in its self-declared omnipotence might still be, given the proper workings of that which science wished would go away: Faith. Hope. Desire. Magic.

Flint had lived with the knowledge that it could be done for ten years. At first, he'd seriously considered checking himself into a mental hospital. Maybe, he'd thought, maybe he'd fried his brain with too many psychedelics after all. True, he'd never had a flashback, not once, and he was not given to seeing or hearing or even smelling things that were not there. And when it happened, it had been years after he was married, with children, working in a job in the real world, the old days little more than fond memories, so it had been a jolt, sure as hell.

Even now, he had only a few answers and a lot more questions, and his certainty extended only a short distance ahead of him. At times, he felt no more than a few steps away from madness and as if he were sprinting toward it at top speed. Sometimes the tai chi helped; sometimes, it did not. But when he was sure he was truly around the bend, that perhaps his elevator had broken a cable and he was plummeting into gibbering fantasy, the weight of his experience usually overcame the fear. The signs of the Logician were too potent to be ignored; the pieces he had gathered worked; there was the Old Man, the flute, the storm, and lightning, all too much to be dismissed as fantasy, too much for coincidence to stretch and hold within its smug and laughing grip. No, he might not be totally sane, but neither was he altogether crazed.

The pull increased. There, just ahead on his left, was a bookstore. Brown letters against a faded yellow brick wall named the place as Cameron’s. It looked like a dozen other such places he had passed on his journey in as many cities around the country, a musty store that sold used books and magazines and odds and ends, a nice place to visit, but nothing special. Only this one was special, because somewhere inside Cameron's Books, on the corner of S. W. Third and Stark, in Portland, Oregon, the year 1963 was waiting to be recovered. Hidden somewhere inside a place with windows outlined in faded pink and a red and green sign that advertised the Chinese restaurant next door, magic waited.

Smiling, Flint walked inside.

TWO

THE HEALER

In the dim recesses of Cameron's Books, Edith Lincoln searched for the garish trade paperback she had seen only once, more than twenty years ago. She didn't really believe she would ever find it again, but she had never stopped looking.

Every so often she would take the bus from her little house in Northeast Portland, her can of Mace held ready in her windbreaker pocket until she got back to civilization downtown, to spend an hour or two shopping in the bookstores. Powell's was the biggest, one of the largest in the entire country, a whole city block, but there were others. Cameron's was much smaller, but they had a stranger stock, and you never knew. She had left her name at all of the stores, to call if it came in, but a lot of books came and went, and it was hard to keep track of them all, especially the used ones. Sometimes they bought boxes from estate sales, not having any idea of what all they got until they started sorting them out. It might be in bad shape and it might get tossed out as unusable. Better she should check and make sure herself.

The book, Spiritual Healing of the Ancient Tibetans, might well have existed nowhere anymore, save in her memory. She had seen it at a store in San Francisco, in the Haight, before Sharla was born. It had called to her then, but being piss-poor broke with nothing more than half a joint of bad weed and two quarters in her purse, she sure couldn't afford to buy anything. She was not above stealing it; the Establishment could afford one crummy book if it could afford all those tanks and bombs. She would have swiped it in a New York second, except that the slobbering, straight clerk up front was so intent on watching her breasts bob braless under the halter she wore there was no way to do it without being seen, even if she'd had a place to hide it. Her purse was too small, her cutoff jean shorts too tight, and the halter barely hid her, much less having any chance of disguising a book. She figured she'd come back for it later, when that woman she knew might be staffing the counter, but it hadn't worked out. Arkansas had called, Bill had gotten her pregnant, and somehow, she never made it back to town until Sharla was in high school, more than fifteen years later.

Time had not been kind to her memories. By then, the store was gone, a parking lot in its place, and the images of what it had been would not jibe with what it had become. Somebody had warped the reality; and it made no sense to see that place which had been part of her life so changed. No sense at all. She felt violated, as if something of hers had been stolen.

Now, Sharla was almost grown and in college, down at Berkeley. Bill, rot in hell, killed himself by ramming his car into the side of a hill in Colorado. And Edith? Her friends still called her the mannish Eddie, she was forty-two, still working the night shift at St. Stephen's after ten years, senior LPN in both age and time on the job, and her life was slowly running widdershins down the drain.

And the book? Nobody had ever heard of it. She didn't remember the author, and nobody could find it under the title she recalled or anything remotely close to it. A woman who worked at Powell's had told her there were a lot of small presses in the Bay Area during the sixties, putting out one holy writ or another, then going belly up after a few months or even weeks. Some of them printed a thousand or maybe only five hundred copies of some of their stuff, and were the book she wanted one of those, well, good luck, honey.

She didn't believe she was going to find it, but she kept looking. It was a peg that kept her past from going away, a tangible reminder of another reality that mostly seemed like a dream these days. Somewhere, on one of those pages, inside those purple covers, she had read a phrase that had stayed with her through all the time since.

If you love enough, you can make people well.

She had been young and full of herself and as idealistic as the rest of the fools on the streets, and that one had struck home. In those days, they were going to make the whole world well. The Age of Aquarius was starting to blossom, and it would flower, and when it did, the world was going to be different. So when they decided to move to the commune in Arkansas — a disaster none of them could see coming — that phrase had shaped her life. In Little Rock, while everybody was working, trying to raise money for sixty acres of forested hillside they wanted to turn into paradise on Earth, Eddie though about what she could add to the commune. There weren't enough women and all the guys would stick their dicks into a knothole in a tree if they thought it might have a squirrel in it, but she didn't plan to spend all her time on her back — or any variation of it. As she was almost seven months pregnant, that wasn't too hard to avoid at the moment, but the baby would come out soon and there'd be plenty of volunteers to fill the hole afterward. She was idealistic about some things, but after her time on the streets, she had no illusions about what most men wanted, hippies or straights, black or white, young or old. The ones she knew had most of their brains dangling below their navels, and that wasn't saying much.

So she found herself enrolling in Vo-Tech school, and through some fluke, getting accepted for the Licensed Practical Nurse program the following term. The course ran about a year in order to get the hours you needed to sit for the state exams, and the extended family was willing to watch the baby so she could go. She would be the family's healer, and with nine guys swinging hammers and saws, she figured she would have a chance to use some medical training pretty quick, plus she could deliver the other women's babies, when any of them were ready. It made a lot of sense, and she very much liked the idea of being able to make sick people well. She sure couldn't cook worth shit. She didn't mind pulling weeds in the garden, but she'd never had a green thumb, and bugs and dirt were definitely not groovy.

More than twenty years later, she was a lot less idealistic and a lot more cynical, but she still liked the idea of healing. Too bad she couldn't have gotten it together to go all the way, to become a doctor —

Eddie looked up, and saw a tall and lean man dressed in faded blues pointing at the backpack he wore.

Behind the counter, the clerk said, Well, the boss likes us to keep bags and things up here. You know.

I'm not going to steal anything, the man in blue said. You can search the pack when I get ready to leave, no problem. Here.

Eddie saw the man hand the clerk what looked like a thick sheaf of money.

Security deposit, the man said.

Jesus, Mister, there must be a thousand dollars here.

The man shrugged. I have some things in the pack that are more valuable to me, he said. Sentimental value, mostly, and not worth stealing, but I'd hate to lose them. I'd rather keep them close to hand.

I guess anybody who is willing to let me hold this much money isn't likely to need to steal a book. Go ahead.

The man turned, and Eddie got a good look at his face. He had nice wrinkles around the eyes. About her age, she guessed, plus or minus a year, maybe. Tan. Healthy-looking, sun-bleached hair. Probably he'd get skin cancer if he didn't start using a sun block or wearing a hat or something. He was fair under the tan.

She turned away so as not to be caught staring, but she saw a hint of a smile from him that showed her he had seen her check him out. And he returned the look, too; she could feel his gaze upon her when she moved back to the rack and began looking at the books again. Well. She wasn't ugly, she did laps at the hospital PT pool four or five times a week, a mile at a time, so her muscles were firm and not flabby, even though she had a few pounds on her five-six frame she could do without. On the hips and butt, naturally, but the pants weren't too tight, and it didn't show all that much. There was still less gray hair than black, and it hung down almost to the middle of her back when she let it, as she had done this morning. Her own skin was pale these days from working inside, but it was clear and clean and not too worn. So, go ahead and look, Sunshine. I earned it.

The man moved the other way, though, into the back room where they kept the vintage magazines. She watched him go into the room, and he seemed almost to be sleepwalking, or as if he heard some kind of faint sound and he was trying to pinpoint its location. It reminded her of a puppy she'd once had, trying to track a tree frog on the commune from the croaking the thing made. The puppy's ears would perk up, and he'd turn his head from side to side, trying to narrow his focus on the noise.

She moved over a hair so she could see him better. The magazines were stored in tall shelves, and man squatted down and began to pull some of them partially out. Looked like back issues of Life. His fingers were long and slender like a surgeon's. He began to shuffle through the magazines. Something about the way he moved kept Eddie from looking away, kept her watching him. She had never met him before; she was pretty good with faces, but there was something about him that was familiar.

After a moment, he came up with a magazine in his hands. She couldn't see the front cover, but there was an ad on the back, a blonde with bright red lipstick lounging in front of a beach, the sea in the background. The blonde looked at a dark-haired man, and each of them held a cigarette. The blonde's dress rode up to mid-thigh, and she smiled at the man. A pair of cigarette packages were superimposed in front of the happy couple. Newports, with the funny-looking boomerang logo. Did they still make those? From the woman's hair and dress, the picture was from sometime in the late fifties or early sixties. Here, kids. Have a cancer stick and you'll get laid.

It was the look on Sunshine's face that made her catch her breath, though. This tall man in faded jeans and cotton work shirt looked as though he had just found God, or some substantial proof that such a being existed. It was the smile of a saint, more real than any on the statues that stood in the halls of St. Stephen's, and there were more than a few of them at the hospital.

Without noticing she had done it, Eddie took three or four steps until she found herself standing practically next to the man

What is it? she said.

She was amazed at her own action. She never spoke to strangers anymore, and she hadn't picked up a man since that one-night-stand in the bar when Sharla was nine and visiting her grandmother. She'd had dates, men from work she had known, but no more unknowns, and certainly no intention to do so in this day of Mr. Goodbar and his new best buddy, AIDS.

The man turned to look at her. The beatific smile never faltered. Nineteen sixty-three, he said.

He turned the magazine around so she could see the cover. Upon it was a color portrait, of John Kennedy, chin propped on his left hand, looking upward reflectively. It was a photograph, but it could have been a painting by Norman Rockwell. That clean-cut face, that shock of thick hair, the bright intelligence, God, he had been so young. The last good president, people said, the one who didn't get his chance.

The photo was outlined in black, as was the magazine's title. To the left of the picture, it said: President John F. Kennedy — 1917–1963. In the lower right hand corner was the date — November 29, 1963 — and the price — twenty-five cents. There was nothing else on the stark white cover.

Sad, she said. So long ago.

Sad, yes, but I've got it back, now.

Been looking for this magazine a long time?

No. Not the magazine. The year itself.

She did not understand. What are you talking about?

It's kind of hard to explain. Then, out of the blue, he said, Let me buy you lunch.

Caution finally kicked in. Uh, well, I don't think so, no. She didn't know this man, he could be an ax murderer or a rapist. Already, she was kicking herself mentally for saying anything at all. What on Earth had caused her to speak up that way?

I'm Flint McCelland, he said.

Edith Lincoln. My friends call me Eddie.

Lord! Why had she said that? Where was her fucking brain? She'd just given a total stranger her name. Way to go, girl! Why don't you just give him your address and your house keys while you're at it?

Eddie. He said her name as if tasting it. Is there a good place to eat nearby?

Uh, listen, I — I came to look for a book, I, uh, don't really have time —

What book?

Excuse me?

What's the name of the book?

Startled, she told him. But I don't think they have it.

His eyes seemed to glaze over for a moment. Just a second, he said. He turned and walked back toward the front of the store. Stopped. Backed up and reached for a rack near the side window. Pulled a book from the shelf, and walked back to where she stood. Extended the book toward her. It was a trade paperback, she could see. The cover might have once been a garish purple, but it was faded by water or sun to almost pale lavender. She never would have recognized it on her own.

Spiritual Healing of the Ancient Tibetans.

Oh, no. How could he have done that? How could he find it, the book she'd been searching for half her life, just like that, like it was nothing, like he had known exactly where to lay his hands on it! What was going on here?

He smiled at her. That it?

Y-y-yes. She was shaken, but in this moment, she wasn't afraid of him. Somehow, she felt on a gut level she had nothing to fear from this man. He had found her book for her, how could he be anything but good? Those were feelings she hadn't trusted in a long time; they made no sense, but she trusted them now, despite the cynic in her scrambling to find its feet after that stunt he'd just pulled.

There's a cafŽ just up the street a couple of blocks that's not bad, she said, suddenly making her decision.

I'm sure I'll like it, he said.

Inside the cafe, a small place with only a dozen tables, they ordered cheeseburgers and Cokes. Eddie held onto the book Flint had found, afraid that if she loosened her grip it might somehow vanish. There was a way, too, she was almost sorry she'd found it. Maybe what she remembered wasn't really in it; maybe it had not stood the rigors of time. And now that she had it, that goal was no longer out there. She would have to find a new goal, something else to take the book's place. It was a little scary, that thought.

So, she said, as they waited for the food to arrive, tell me about 1963.

You were there. Don't you remember it?

Oh, yeah. But it's been a long time. More than twenty-five years. I wouldn't know the girl I was then if she passed me on the street, and if we were trapped in an elevator, we wouldn't have shit to talk about.

You would. You haven't changed that much.

You're wrong, Sunshine. I got old and tired and none of it matters much anymore.

It matters. It always matters. If you could remember the intensity of it, if you could tap into it for just a moment, it would all come back and it would be something special again.

She shook her head. You've got to be an ex-hippie.

Not ex.

She looked at him. Where's the beard? The long hair? The bellbottoms and love beads and purple granny glasses and fringed moccasins? She smiled. Or were you just a weekend hippie?

Trappings, he said. The costume didn't make you a hippie, that was never what it was all about.

You’re not planning on slipping a tab of acid into my coffee are you?

He leaned back in his chair. Oh, wow, man, that'd be far-fucking-out!

She laughed. The cadence was perfect. Sunshine had been there, too, no doubt.

You have a nice laugh, he said. And you have something else you haven't let out in a long time."

Yeah? What's that?

"Your self. The real you. The girl who can remember where she was the exact moment she first heard that Kennedy was shot.

Eddie shook her head. I used to remember. It's faded.

I can give it back to you, Eddie. He tapped the magazine, inside the plastic bag.

She shrugged. Looking at the assassination pictures in Dallas won't do it.

No. You don’t have to look at the pictures. Here. Just hold it.

She looked at him.

He held the magazine out to her. Go ahead.

Something in his look frightened her, and at the same time, compelled her. You're serious about this.

Take it and see what you used to be, Eddie. Get back what you lost.

Hesitantly, she reached out for the magazine.

It was Friday afternoon. Her clothes smelled like French fry grease, and she was walking to her one o'clock English class from her job at the Dairy Queen when Bill Travers nearly ran over her. She dropped that fat anthology, the one with the moldy green covers.

Hey!

I'm sorry, Edith. It's — it's just so goddamned wrong!

She bent to retrieve the book. What are you talking about?

The President. Didn't you hear?

The radio at work was broke —

He's dead. Somebody shot Kennedy. In Texas.

Her heart felt as if it had been shoved up into her throat. Dead? Oh, no! What about Jackie? And the children? Carolyn and little Jon-Jon?

No, they were all right. The Governor of Texas was shot, too, but Jackie was okay.

Bill ran off, lost in his own world, and Edith stared after him. How could something like this happen?

Numbly, Edith walked to her class. In Orchard Hall, students milled back and forth, and the building was abuzz with talk of it. At the entrance to her freshman English class, a knot of people stood staring at the door. Pinned to the wood with a coppery thumbtack was a sheet of yellow legal paper. Professor Scranton had scrawled on the sheet in dark pencil, the sharp angular letters like knife slashes. No class today, it said. Go home and pray.

It was cold outside, gray and damply chilly, and her pink wool sweater was not enough to keep her from shivering. Edith wandered toward the quadrangle, feeling shocked.

Behind her, a male voice said, Served him right, the nigger-lover, and laughed.

She turned in time to see a football player who'd taken her roommate Sally out a couple of times catch a punch in the teeth from a thin boy with thick horn-rimmed glasses. The football player went down, and the thin boy stayed with him, slamming his fists into the bigger boy's face. And all the while, the thin boy yelled, You sonofabitch, you goddamned sonofabitch! He was crying. She could see the tears streaming down his face.

The football player was much larger and stronger than the boy in glasses, but he could not stand against the rage.

People gathered and pulled the attacker off the football player. Edith had never seen anything like it.

If they had shot her father, or the fathers of anybody she met that afternoon on that college campus in Indiana, the effect could not have been more personal. How could it happen? How could they have killed Kennedy?

Edith had not been active in politics. She was interested in getting a job as a teacher, or finding a wonderful husband and raising children, but she knew that Kennedy was a great man, and that something awful had happened. Her own tears began as she sat on the edge of the fountain, watching the pigeons coo and walk around the sidewalks, their tiny brains unaware of what a tragedy had just occurred. It was a black, black day for America.

Eddie blinked away the tears. One of them fell upon the plastic bag covering the magazine she held. She looked across the table at the man who called himself Flint McCelland

Oh, God.

He took the magazine gently from her and set it upon the table.

"God, I — I was there! It seemed so real!"

"It was real, Eddie. It was the peak moment of that year. The focus for all of us who were old enough to