And beat up is what I got. Within seconds he’d twisted my arm up behind my back and slammed my face into the cold mud. He used his knee to pin me there while he wrestled a flailing Maurey into the same position. Then Dothan held us, each with one ear ground into the earth.
Maurey and I faced each other, nose to nose, maybe eight inches apart. Dothan’s hand spread across the side of her head, his nails digging into her cheek. He had me more by the neck. She didn’t make a sound so neither did I. The one eye I could see wasn’t crying anymore. It was hurt. Not the physical hurt I was in or the shame hurt of having your face rubbed in the snow by a horse’s ass. Maurey’s was the kind of hurt you get when you discover what an unfair mess of a world we’re stuck with and how helpless we are to do a damn thing about it.
Or maybe she was just king-hell pissed. I’m always reading twenty minutes of insight into a glance in someone’s eyes.
Sam Callahan came off the ground with a roar. He kicked once and Dothan’s knee bent at an impossible angle. Sam caught him with a left to the liver, a right to the mouth, and an elbow in the solar plexus. Sam picked up a baseball bat and broke it across Dothan’s forehead. Then Sam picked him up and threw him through the glass door.
Florence’s godawful screaming stopped and I felt the sharp weight lifted off my spine. I rolled sideways, coughing, and looked up to see Coach Stebbins holding Dothan by both arms.
Florence had the voice of a raped goat. “They started it. They started it. They jumped on my brother.”
Maurey spit snow. “He was celebrating the fucker who killed Kennedy.”
Stebbins stared at us on the ground, then his eyes traveled the circle of kids, Teddy the Chewer, Chuckette Morris, Kim Schmidt. His jaw looked like he’d been hit, not us. He let Dothan go, then turned and walked back into the school.
That Friday in November must be the most analyzed, beat-to-pulp day in history. The day everything got quiet; the day America lost her virginity, or at least her innocence; the day the fifties ended. More strangers spoke to each other that day than any time before or since.
A lot of newspaper and TV guys made their careers that day. An entire industry has grown around trying to figure out what happened. I hate to think we’ll never know.
I take it as the day I first talked to Maurey, without which I’d be a different deal.
I’ve asked a number of people who were ten, eleven, twelve back in 1963, and most of them recall it as the day the grown-ups cried.
“Come on,” Maurey said.
“Where?” She was standing up, but I still sat in wet snow. I felt somewhat debased by losing the fight. Dothan wasn’t that tough. Maurey’s white skirt was a mess. I imagined the guys got some great panty shots, which was probably a bigger deal to them than the death of a president.
“I can’t be here anymore.”
“That makes sense.”
“We can to go my house and watch the news. I want to know what this is about.”
I glanced at the school. “Think they’ll miss us?”
She held out a hand to help me up. “All the rules are off today, Sam. Nothing we do matters.”
How did she know that? Maurey wasn’t any older than me. She didn’t have any more experience at presidential assassinations. Some people are just born with intuition.
I held on to Maurey’s hand after she pulled me upright. She looked at me sharply.
“You said the rules are off today.”
“Don’t get carried away.” She drew her hand free.
The town seemed asleep as we walked by the triangle. A few trucks sat outside the Esso station and the White Deck, and a parked Buick was running next to Kimball’s Food Market, but we passed no people, not even a dog, and the snow made everything unreal and quiet. The flag twisted around the pole in front of the Forest Service headquarters. I glanced at Maurey a few times, figuring the implications. Was the truce temporary or had a connection been made? A snowflake landed on her cheek and I counted to four before it melted.
“So all Southerners aren’t racist?” she asked.
“Nope.”
“Why do they try to make us think they are?”
“Makes a better story, I guess.”
We stopped at a yellow house with white trim. “Want to make a bet?” Maurey asked.
“You live here?”
“Mom will have heard about the president and it’ll have had no effect on her at all. She’ll be baking cookies and waxing the kitchen floor.”
“My mother’s never baked a cookie in her life.” Waxing floors was too much even to deny.
“I wish my mom hadn’t.”
We found Mrs. Pierce cutting out coupons at a coffee table. She had on a green apron with all these profiled sharp-nosed women on it in silhouette. The dishes were all clean in the drain board. A Santa Claus magnet held a newspaper recipe to the refrigerator. The contrast to Lydia’s kitchen was a hoot.
Mrs. Pierce had the same long, long neck, but on Maurey it was pretty and classy, while on her mom it was mostly strings. And Mrs. Pierce’s eyes were more a faded, washed-out blue.
She smiled at Maurey. “You’re home from school early.”
“They let us out on account of the assassination.”
“I know, isn’t it a shame about Mr. Kennedy.” She bent over a Sunday magazine section and scissored with a precision I wouldn’t waste on a coupon. “I wonder if Petey’s school will let out early too. Let me finish this last one and I’ll make us some hot cocoa.”
My theory is all thirteen-year-olds are embarrassed no end by their mothers. I mean, I thought Mrs. Pierce’s perfect home-maker act was kind of cute, like a Betty Boop cartoon, and cocoa sounded okay. I could use a warm-up after all that snow wallowing. But Maurey’s disdain came across like a paper cut.
“The president is dead, Mom. This isn’t the time for hot cocoa.”
Mrs. Pierce put down her scissors. “It’s always time for cocoa. What happened to your skirt?”
“I fell down.”
After Maurey changed, she and I sat on a couch in the den to watch history unfold on a black-and-white RCA Victor fourteen-inch. I had trouble with juxtaposition. There was the scene—Maurey and me next to each other in a spotless house in the absolute midst of the Wyoming winter—and there was what we watched—muted, frightened faces, people talking slowly. Death and national tragedy.
My stomach hurt. Maurey chewed her lower lip. Her eyes were a dark blue with gray specks. I guess I’d never seen them close up before. When they were loading the casket into the plane, she put her hand on my arm.
A Dallas policeman was killed. No one knew why. A doctor explained entry wounds. Maps were shown, detailing Dealey Plaza and the route to the hospital. Cameras filmed the fence of the Hyannis Port compound while analysts wondered if they would tell John’s grandmother. Somebody interviewed a priest. They made a big deal out of whether the president got last rites before or after he died.
“What do you think happens to people when we die?” Maurey asked.
World’s most personal question and she’s asking it an hour after our first real words. I guess all the rules were off for the day. I thought of about six answers, but they were all either unacceptable, cute, or weird. “I don’t know.”
“Why would God care if someone chants magic words over your body before you die. That’s an awful stupid thing to base eternity on.”
“My grandfather’s Episcopal. I think they go to heaven without it.”
“All sounds like a crock to me.”
When Mrs. Pierce—who introduced herself as Annabel— brought the cocoa, I noticed Maurey didn’t turn it down as unbefitting the occasion. It tasted good, none of that instant jive. This stuff was real and wholesome as life gets—even with a marshmallow half-sunk on top. Maurey held her mug with both hands, blew across the steaming surface, and smiled at the first sip. Down a hallway, I heard a vacuum cleaner kick in.