Stephen King - 11-22-63

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Copyright 2011 by Stephen King

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First Scribner hardcover edition November 2011

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Image credits: pages ix, 7, 351 (left), and 575: Getty; page 97: courtesy of the Lisbon
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page 351 (right): courtesy of Steven Meyers and Bob Rowen.

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For Zelda

Hey, honey, welcome to the party.

It is virtually not assimilable to our reason that a small lonely man felled a giant in the midst of his limousines, his legions, his throng, and his security. If such a nonentity destroyed the leader of the most powerful nation on earth, then a world of disproportion engulfs us, and we live in a universe that is absurd.

Norman Mailer

If there is love, smallpox scars are as pretty as dimples.

Japanese proverb

Dancing is life.

11/22/63

I have never been what youd call a crying man.

My ex-wife said that my nonexistent emotional gradient was the main reason she was leaving me (as if the guy she met in her AA meetings was beside the point). Christy said she supposed she could forgive me not crying at her fathers funeral; I had only known him for six years and couldnt understand what a wonderful, giving man he had been (a Mustang convertible as a high school graduation present, for instance). But then, when I didnt cry at my own parents funeralsthey died just two years apart, Dad of stomach cancer and Mom of a thunderclap heart attack while walking on a Florida beachshe began to understand the nonexistent gradient thing. I was unable to feel my feelings, in AA-speak.

I have never seen you shed tears, she said, speaking in the flat tones people use when they are expressing the absolute final deal-breaker in a relationship. Even when you told me I had to go to rehab or you were leaving. This conversation happened about six weeks before she packed her things, drove them across town, and moved in with Mel Thompson. Boy meets girl on the AA campusthats another saying they have in those meetings.

I didnt cry when I saw her off. I didnt cry when I went back inside the little house with the great big mortgage, either. The house where no baby had come, or now ever would. I just lay down on the bed that now belonged to me alone, and put my arm over my eyes, and mourned.

Tearlessly.

But Im not emotionally blocked. Christy was wrong about that. One day when I was nine, my mother met me at the door when I came home from school. She told me my collie, Rags, had been struck and killed by a truck that hadnt even bothered to stop. I didnt cry when we buried him, although my dad told me nobody would think less of me if I did, but I cried when she told me. Partly because it was my first experience of death; mostly because it had been my responsibility to make sure he was safely penned up in our backyard.

And I cried when Moms doctor called me and told me what had happened that day on the beach. Im sorry, but there was no chance, he said. Sometimes its very sudden, and doctors tend to see that as a blessing.

Christy wasnt thereshe had to stay late at school that day and meet with a mother who had questions about her sons last report cardbut I cried, all right. I went into our little laundry room and took a dirty sheet out of the basket and cried into that. Not for long, but the tears came. I could have told her about them later, but I didnt see the point, partly because she would have thought I was pity-fishing (thats not an AA term, but maybe it should be), and partly because I dont think the ability to bust out bawling pretty much on cue should be a requirement for successful marriage.

I never saw my dad cry at all, now that I think about it; at his most emotional, he might fetch a heavy sigh or grunt out a few reluctant chucklesno breast-beating or belly-laughs for William Epping. He was the strong silent type, and for the most part, my mother was the same. So maybe the not-crying-easily thing is genetic. But blocked? Unable to feel my feelings? No, I have never been those things.

Other than when I got the news about Mom, I can only remember one other time when I cried as an adult, and that was when I read the story of the janitors father. I was sitting alone in the teachers room at Lisbon High School, working my way through a stack of themes that my Adult English class had written. Down the hall I could hear the thud of basketballs, the blare of the time-out horn, and the shouts of the crowd as the sports-beasts fought: Lisbon Greyhounds versus Jay Tigers.