Disclaimer: These are not my characters and I make no profit from them.

More kind beta-work from Owl, many thanks.

Author's Note: If you live in the U.S. and are over the age of, say, about 52, you've undoubtedly had some version of this conversation, probably more than once. It usually begins, "I remember where I was when . . ."

It's one of those events we hold in common, though sometimes not as in common as we think—

Twenty

by L.M. Lewis

November, 1983

It had been a week since they'd gotten "Death Ray" Thomas packed up and shipped out, with his legal affairs under control. The spare cot in the gatehouse had returned to storage, and things were back to normal, pretty much, on the Lone Ranger's spread.

Sarah was still at her sister's. They were surviving fairly well on their own, mostly by virtue of Mark having picked up the slack. It helped that he liked to eat, and eating seemed closely linked to being able to do things in the kitchen, though he'd never had a kitchen like this before to do things in. In fact, the one at Gull's Way was larger than the entirety of many places he'd lived in previously. Also, there was always stuff in the fridge—and when there wasn't, Hardcastle would send him out, equipped with a few twenties and a list, to get more.

That's where he'd just come from, the grocery store, dispatched to fetch steaks for dinner and a myriad of the other necessities, including some things they both liked but Sarah would have frowned on. He'd beat the morning rush, and on his return he saw that Hardcastle was still working his way through the day's paper.

"Doesn't seem like twenty years," the judge said, as though he'd been holding that thought for a while, maybe through several articles.

"Twenty years since what?" Mark asked distractedly, as he sorted through the freezer section, trying to determine what could go to make room for the cherry chocolate chip and the banana surprise.

He finally settled on a bag of Brussels sprouts and was turning to dump that in the waste can, when he caught the expression of disbelief on Hardcastle's face.

"Okay," he asked, "what'd I miss?"

"Kennedy getting shot, it looks like," the judge said with disbelief.

"Huh?"

"It was twenty years ago today, in," he looked down at his watch, "about two hours."

Mark frowned and looked up at the calendar. November twenty-second, though it was easy to be off by a day or so when they were chasing bad guys. But this had been a relatively slow week.

"Yeah," he said, still frowning, "I remember that."

"'Course you were young," Hardcastle admitted, as if to cut him some slack.

"Not that young." Mark finished stowing the ice cream and folded the paper bag while flashing the judge a curious look. "Where were you when it happened?"

"In court."

"Natch."

"I was a rookie—my first term." He closed his eyes for a moment, as if visualizing precisely where he'd been. "Second floor—the old building. The jury'd just retired on an assault beef. One of the other bailiffs came in—Judge Marsten's, if I remember right. He came right up—no asking permission to approach the bench or any of that nonsense. Marsten must've told him to get the word out."

"What did you do?" Mark asked, sitting down in the chair across from his.

"Heck, I had a jury out—I told my bailiff to keep everybody the hell away from the door of that room. It was a pretty straight-forward case but the defense attorney had strung it out for as long as humanly possible. If that jury didn't come up with a verdict in the next half hour, chances were I'd have to spring 'em and we'd be starting from scratch—a retrial. Couldn't expect them to render a fair and impartial decision with an assassination to think about."

"That's it? That's what you were worried about?"

"That was my job—right there and right then. Making sure justice got done in my courtroom. There wasn't anything else I could fix that day."

Mark considered that for a moment and then finally said, "Makes sense, I guess. Did they render a verdict?"

"Twenty-seven minutes and fifteen seconds . . . guilty on four counts. I thanked 'em and got everybody out of there. They were closing the courthouse 'till the following Tuesday."

"I was nine," Mark said quietly. "We were living in Hoboken. That was my one and only semester at Our Lady of Sorrows." He smiled ruefully. "No jokes about the name, huh?"

"That which doesn't kill us makes us strong," Hardcastle intoned.

"You got that straight . . . anyway, I don't want you to think I did this all the time, but I remember I got into a fight out in the schoolyard that day, at lunchtime."

"You fighting?" The judge smiled wryly. "What about?"

"The usual," Mark muttered. "And I got punched in the nose and bled all over my shirt. We wore white shirts and blue ties. Clip-ons. The shirt was toast."

"How 'bout the other guy?"

"Jimmy Pestacoulli, the little weasel. He used to steal people's milk money. I hear he got a job back in Jersey a few years back, working for a state senator."

"It's funny how it works out for weasels sometimes."

"Yeah, well, he got indicted last year on vote fraud."

"You keep track of all your old chums like that?"

"No," Mark admitted, "I just remembered that one, on account of what happened after the fight. I ran off, see? Couldn't go back in when the bell rang—bloody shirt and all. So, I took it off, the shirt—my t-shirt wasn't too bad. Snitched some ice from out back of a fish store, got the bleeding to stop. You know—"

"The usual."

"Yeah." Mark frowned. "'Course that didn't really solve anything. The shirt was still toast and the tie, too. There wasn't anything I could do about that. And I'd ditched school." He grimaced. "I suppose this is going to sound stupid—"

"Try me."

"Well, shirts cost money, which my mom didn't have much of. I went down to the park, kinda hid out, trying to figure out what I could do to fix things. I found a water fountain and got the shirt wet, which made a mess. Some lady walked by while I was doing it. I thought it was all over—she'd call a cop or something—a kid ditching school doing his laundry in a drinking fountain, but she barely looked at me. She was upset about something but it wasn't me."

"So, what did you finally do?"

"I gave up on the shirt. It was pretty hopeless right from the start. I finally decided I'd have to leave home."

"No other way out, huh?"

"Messed-up shirt, the nuns out looking for me—what else was I suppose to do?"

Hardcastle nodded.

"But I thought I'd better go back, first, at least leave my mom a note, ya know?"

Another nod. "At least."

"And she was working two jobs—an office thing in the daytime and then an evening-shift waitressing. I knew she wouldn't be home . . . so I headed there. Kept my head down, tried to look like I wasn't in any trouble. School was probably almost out by then, I figured. Anyway, there was hardly anyone on the street, which was kinda weird, but I was too worried about what I was gonna say in the note."

"I imagine. No forwarding address, even."

"I was serious."

"Yep, I remember nine—everything's serious."

Mark nodded glumly. "Anyway, I sneak up the back stairs, take the key out, stick it in the lock and—"

"The door started opening before you even turned the knob."

"Yeah. My mom was there. I found out later they'd closed the office and sent everyone home. She takes one look at me—blood on the neck of my t-shirt and the rest of the mess balled up under my arm—and she turns ghost-white. I had to get her a chair and a glass of water and she still hadn't said a word. She didn't start talking for about a minute and then all she kept doing was asking me if I was all right—not what happened or anything."

"You didn't make anything up?"

Mark shook his head. "No, I told her the truth . . . well, most of the truth. I didn't tell her what Jimmy had called me. You don't say stuff like that to your mom."

Hardcastle must've had a suspicion what the incendiary word had been. No, you didn't say that in front of your mother.

"She took the shirt and put it somewhere, like she couldn't stand to look at it right then. She told me what had happened to the president. We didn't have a TV, so eventually, after she'd cleaned my face up, we went down to the appliance store and stood out in front of the window with everyone else, watching the news."

"And the ditching?"

"The nuns had sent everyone home right after the kids got back inside from lunch. It was a little crazy that day; no one even missed me. That was Friday; by Tuesday, when school started up again, my nose was pretty much back to normal."

"And the shirt?"

"Toast, like I said. Even my mom couldn't fix some things . . . but it didn't matter much. I was out of that school a month later. She'd lost the waitressing job and we couldn't afford it."

"Did you learn anything from all that?" Hardcastle asked mildly

"Just that sometimes your problems aren't as big as you think they are. How 'bout you?"

"I dunno." The judge pondered that one briefly. "Maybe that you keep working on the little stuff, even when the big stuff is going to hell in a hand-basket, because that's all you can do sometimes. Right?"

"Right," Mark said, getting up again slowly. "Twenty years, huh?" He shook his head. "Seems like yesterday."