11/22/63

by Stephen King

  "I know it," Lee said. It was his default position.

  De Mohrenschildt leaped from the couch and began to pace around the new playpen. "Do you think Kennedy and his Irish cabal will let that billboard stand? That lighthouse, flashing its message of hope?"

  "I sort of like Kennedy," Lee said, as if embarrassed to admit it. "In spite of the Bay of Pigs. That was Eisenhower's plan, you know."

  "Most of the GSA likes President Kennedy. Do you know what I mean by the GSA? I can assure you that the rabid she-weasel who wrote Atlas Shrugged knows. Great Stupid America, that's what I mean. The citizens of the USA will live happy and die content if they have a refrigerator that makes ice, two cars in their garage, and 77 Sunset Strip on their boob tubes. Great Stupid America loves Kennedy's smile. Oh yes. Yes indeed. He has a wonderful smile, I admit it. But did not Shakespeare say a man can smile, and smile, and be a villain? Do you know that Kennedy has okayed a CIA plan to assassinate Castro? Yes! They've already tried--and failed, thank God--three or four times. I have this from my oil contacts in Haiti and the DR, Lee, and it's good information."

  Lee expressed dismay.

  "But Fidel has a strong friend in Russia," de Mohrenschildt went on, still pacing. "It isn't the Russia of Lenin's dreams--or yours, or mine--but they may have their own reasons for standing with Fidel if America tries another invasion. And mark my words: Kennedy is apt to try it, and soon. He'll listen to LeMay. He'll listen to Dulles and Angleton of the CIA. All he needs is the right pretext and then he'll go in, just to show the world he's got balls."

  They went on talking about Cuba. When the Cadillac returned, the rear seat was full of groceries--enough for a month, it looked like.

  "Shit," Lee said. "They're back."

  "And we are glad to see them," de Mohrenschildt said pleasantly.

  "Stay for dinner," Lee said. "Rina's not much of a cook, but--"

  "I must go. My wife is waiting anxiously for my report, and I'll give her a good one! I'll bring her next time, shall I?"

  "Yeah, sure."

  They went to the door. Marina was talking with Bouhe and Orlov as the two men lifted cartons of canned goods from the trunk. But she wasn't just talking; she was flirting a little, too. Bouhe looked ready to fall on his knees.

  On the porch, Lee said something about the FBI. De Mohrenschildt asked him how many times. Lee held up three fingers. "One agent called Fain. He came twice. Another named Hosty."

  "Look them right in the eye and answer their questions!" de Mohrenschildt said. "You have nothing to fear, Lee, not just because you are innocent, but because you are in the right!"

  The others were looking at him now . . . and not just them. The jump-rope girls had appeared, standing in the rut that served as a sidewalk on our block of Mercedes Street. De Mohrenschildt had an audience, and was declaiming to it.

  "You are ideologically dedicated, young Mr. Oswald, so of course they come. The Hoover Gang! For all we know, they're watching now, perhaps from down the block, perhaps from that house right across the street!"

  De Mohrenschildt stabbed his finger at my drawn drapes. Lee turned to look. I stood still in the shadows, glad I'd put down the sound-enhancing Tupperware bowl, even though it was now coated with black tape.

  "I know who they are. Haven't they and their CIA first cousins been to visit me on many occasions, trying to browbeat me into informing on my Russian and South American friends? After the war, didn't they call me a closet Nazi? Haven't they claimed I hired the tonton macoute to beat and torture my competitors for oil leases in Haiti? Didn't they accuse me of bribing Papa Doc and paying for the Trujillo assassination? Yes, yes, all of that and more!"

  The jump-rope girls were staring at him with their mouths open. So was Marina. Once he got going, George de Mohrenschildt swept everything before him.

  "Be courageous, Lee! When they come, stand forward! Show them this!" He grasped his shirt and tore it open. Buttons popped off and clattered to the porch. The jump-rope girls gasped, too shocked to giggle. Unlike most American men of that time, de Mohrenschildt wore no undershirt. His skin was the color of oiled mahogany. Fatty breasts hung on old muscle. He pounded his right fist above his left nipple. "Tell them 'Here is my heart, and my heart is pure, and my heart belongs to my cause!' Tell them 'Even if Hoover rips my heart out of me, it will still beat, and a thousand other hearts will beat in time! Then ten thousand! Then a hundred thousand! Then a million!'"

  Orlov put down the box of canned goods he was holding so he could offer a round of light satiric applause. Marina's cheeks were flaming with color. Lee's face was the most interesting one. Like Paul of Tarsus on the Damascus Road, he'd had a revelation.

  The blindness had dropped from his eyes.

  3

  De Mohrenschildt's preaching and shirt-ripping antics--not so very different from the tent-show shenanigans of the right-wing evangelists he reviled--were deeply troubling to me. I had hoped that if I could listen in on a heart-to-heart between the two men, it might go a long way toward eliminating de Mohrenschildt as a real factor in the Walker attempt, and hence the Kennedy assassination. I'd gotten the heart-to-heart, but it made things worse instead of better.

  One thing seemed clear: it was time to bid Mercedes Street a not-so-fond adieu. I had rented the ground-floor apartment at 214 West Neely. On the twenty-fourth of September, I packed up my aging Ford Sunliner with my few clothes, my books, and my typewriter, and moved them to Dallas.

  The two fat ladies had left behind a sickroom-stenchy pigsty. I did the cleanup myself, thanking God that Al's rabbit-hole emerged in a time when aerosol air-freshener was available. I bought a portable TV at a yard sale and plunked it down on the kitchen counter next to the stove (which I thought of as the Repository of Antique Grease). As I swept, washed, scrubbed, and sprayed, I watched crime shows like The Untouchables and sitcoms like Car 54, Where Are You? When the thumps and shouts of the kids upstairs quit for the night, I turned in and slept like the dead. There were no dreams.

  I held onto my place on Mercedes Street, but didn't see much at 2703. Sometimes Marina popped June into a stroller (another gift from her elderly admirer, Mr. Bouhe) and rolled her up to the warehouse parking lot and back again. In the afternoons, after school let out, the jump-rope girls often accompanied them. Marina even jumped herself a couple of times, chanting in Russian. The sight of her mother pogoing up and down with that great cloud of dark hair flying made the baby laugh. The jump-rope girls laughed, too. Marina didn't mind. She talked a lot with them, and never looked irritated when they giggled and corrected her. She looked pleased, in fact. Lee didn't want her to learn English, but she was learning it anyway. Good for her.

  On October 2, 1962, I woke to eerie silence in my Neely Street apartment: no running feet overhead, no young mother yelling at the older two to get ready for school. They had moved out in the middle of the night.

  I went upstairs and tried my key on their door. It didn't work, but the lock was of the spring variety and I popped it easily with a coathanger. I spied an empty bookcase in the living room. I drilled a small hole in the floor, plugged in the second bugged lamp, and fed the tapwire through the hole and into my downstairs apartment. Then I moved the bookcase over it.

  The bug worked fine, but the reels of the cunning little Japanese tape recorder only turned when prospective tenants came to look at the apartment and happened to try the lamp. There were lookers, but no takers. Until the Oswalds moved in, I had the Neely Street address entirely to myself. After the bumptious carnival that was Mercedes Street, that was a relief, although I kind of missed the jump-rope girls. They were my Greek chorus.

  4

  I slept in my Dallas apartment at night and watched Marina stroll the baby in Fort Worth by day. While I was so occupied, another sixties watershed moment was approaching, but I ignored it. I was preoccupied with the Oswalds, who were undergoing another domestic spasm.

  Lee came home early from work one day during the second week of October. Marin
a was out walking June. They spoke at the foot of the driveway across the street. Near the end of the conversation, Marina spoke in English. "Vut is lay-doff mean?"

  He explained in Russian. Marina spread her hands in a what-can-you-do gesture, and hugged him. Lee kissed her cheek, then took the baby out of the stroller. June laughed as he held her high over his head, her hands reaching down to tug at his hair. They went inside together. Happy little family, bearing up under temporary adversity.

  That lasted until five in the afternoon. I was getting ready to drive back to Neely Street when I spied Marguerite Oswald approaching from the bus stop on Winscott Road.

  Here comes trouble, I thought, and how right I was.

  Once again Marguerite avoided the still unrepaired ha-ha step; once more she entered without knocking; fireworks followed immediately. It was a warm evening and the windows were open over there. I didn't bother with the distance mike. Lee and his mother argued at full volume.

  He hadn't been laid off from his job at Leslie Welding after all, it seemed; he had just walked away. The boss called Vada Oswald, looking for him because they were shorthanded, and when he got no help from Robert's wife, he called Marguerite.

  "I lied for you, Lee!" Marguerite shouted. "I said you had the flu! Why do you always make me lie for you?"

  "I don't make you do nothing!" he shouted back. They were standing nose-to-nose in the living room. "I don't make you do nothing, and you do it anyway!"

  "Lee, how are you going to support your family? You need a job!"

  "Oh, I'll get a job! Don't you worry about that, Ma!"

  "Where?"

  "I don't know--"

  "Oh, Lee! How'll you pay the rent?"

  "--but she's got plenty of friends." He jerked a thumb at Marina, who flinched. "They aren't good for much, but they'll be good for that. You need to get out of here, Ma. Go back home. Let me catch my breath."

  Marguerite darted to the playpen. "Where'd this here come from?"

  "The friends I told you about. Half of em's rich and the rest are trying. They like to talk to Rina." Lee sneered. "The older ones like to ogle her tits."

  "Lee!" Shocked voice, but a look on her face that was . . . pleased? Was Mamochka pleased at the fury she heard in her son's voice?

  "Go on, Ma. Give us some peace."

  "Does she understand that men who give things always want things in return? Does she, Lee?"

  "Get the hell out!" Shaking his fists. Almost dancing in his impotent rage.

  Marguerite smiled. "You're upset. Of course you are. I'll come back when you're feeling more in control of yourself. And I'll help. I always want to help."

  Then, abruptly, she rushed at Marina and the baby. It was as if she meant to attack them. She covered June's face with kisses, then strode across the room. At the door, she turned and pointed at the playpen. "Tell her to scrub that down, Lee. People's cast-offs always have germs. If the baby gets sick, you'll never be able to afford the doctor."

  "Ma! Go!"

  "I am just now." Calm as cookies and milk. She twiddled her fingers in a girlish ta-ta gesture, and off she went.

  Marina approached Lee, holding the baby like a shield. They talked. Then they shouted. Family solidarity was gone with the wind; Marguerite had seen to that. Lee took the baby, rocked her in the crook of one arm, then--with absolutely no warning--punched his wife in the face. Marina went down, bleeding from the mouth and nose and crying loudly. Lee looked at her. The baby was also crying. Lee stroked June's fine hair, kissed her cheek, rocked her some more. Marina came back into view, struggling to her feet. Lee kicked her in the side and down she went again. I could see nothing but the cloud of her hair.

  Leave him, I thought, even though I knew she wouldn't. Take the baby and leave him. Go to George Bouhe. Warm his bed if you have to, but get away from that skinny, mother-ridden monster posthaste.

  But it was Lee who left her, at least temporarily. I never saw him on Mercedes Street again.

  5

  It was their first separation. Lee went to Dallas to look for work. I don't know where he stayed. According to Al's notes it was the Y, but that turned out to be wrong. Maybe he found a place in one of the cheap rooming houses downtown. I wasn't concerned. I knew they'd show up together to rent the apartment above me, and for the time being, I'd had enough of him. It was a treat not to have to listen to his slowed-down voice saying I know it a dozen times in every conversation.

  Thanks to George Bouhe, Marina landed on her feet. Not long after Marguerite's visit and Lee's decampment, Bouhe and another man arrived in a Chevy truck and moved her out. When the pickup left 2703 Mercedes, mother and daughter were riding in the bed. The pink suitcase Marina had brought from Russia had been lined with blankets, and June lay fast asleep in this makeshift nest. Marina put a steadying hand on the little girl's chest as the truck started rolling. The jump-rope girls were watching, and Marina waved to them. They waved back.

  6

  I found George de Mohrenschildt's address in the Dallas White Pages and followed him several times. I was curious about whom he might meet, although if it were a CIA man, a minion of the Lansky Mob, or some other possible conspirator, I doubt I would have known it. All I can say is that he met no one that seemed suspicious to me. He went to work; he went to the Dallas Country Club, where he played tennis or swam with his wife; they went out to a couple of strip clubs. He didn't bother the dancers, but had a penchant for fondling his wife's boobs and butt in public. She didn't seem to mind.

  On two occasions he met with Lee. Once it was at de Mohrenschildt's favorite strip club. Lee seemed uncomfortable with the milieu, and they didn't stay long. The second time they had lunch in a Browder Street coffee shop. There they remained until almost two in the afternoon, talking over endless cups of coffee. Lee started to get up, reconsidered, and ordered something else. The waitress brought him a piece of pie, and he handed her something, which she put in her apron pocket after a cursory glance. Instead of following when they left, I approached the waitress and asked if I could see what the young man had given her.

  "You c'n have it," she said, and gave me a sheet of yellow paper with black tabloid letters at the top: HANDS OFF CUBA! It urged "interested persons" to join the Dallas-Fort Worth branch of this fine organization. DON'T LET UNCLE SAM DUPE YOU! WRITE TO PO BOX 1919 FOR DETAILS OF FUTURE MEETINGS.

  "What did they talk about?" I asked.

  "Are you a cop?"

  "No, I tip better than the cops," I said, and handed her a five-dollar bill.

  "That stuff," she said, and pointed at the flyer, which Oswald had undoubtedly printed off at his new place of employment. "Cuba. Like I give a shit."

  But on the night of October twenty-second, less than a week later, President Kennedy was also talking about Cuba. And then everybody gave a shit.

  7

  It's a blues truism that you never miss your water until the well runs dry, but until the fall of 1962, I didn't realize that also applied to the patter of little feet shaking your ceiling. With the family from upstairs gone, 214 West Neely took on a creepy haunted-house vibe. I missed Sadie, and began to worry about her almost obsessively. On second thought, you can strike the almost. Ellie Dockerty and Deke Simmons didn't take my concern about her husband seriously. Sadie herself didn't take it seriously; for all I knew, she thought I was trying to scare her about John Clayton in order to keep her from pushing me entirely out of her life. None of them knew that, if you removed the Sadie part, her name was only a syllable away from Doris Dunning. None of them knew about the harmonic effect, which I seemed to be creating myself, just by my presence in the Land of Ago. That being the case, who would be to blame if something happened to Sadie?

  The bad dreams started to come back. The Jimla dreams.

  I quit keeping tabs on George de Mohrenschildt and started taking long walks that began in the afternoon and didn't finish up back at West Neely Street until nine or even ten o'clock at night. I spent them thinking about Lee, no
w working as a photoprint trainee at a Dallas graphic arts company called Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall. Or about Marina, who had taken up temporary residence with a newly divorced woman named Elena Hall. The Hall woman worked for George Bouhe's dentist, and it was the dentist who had been behind the wheel of the pickup on the day Marina and June moved out of the dump on Mercedes Street.

  Mostly what I thought about was Sadie. And Sadie. And Sadie.

  On one of those strolls, feeling thirsty as well as depressed, I stopped into a neighborhood watering hole called the Ivy Room and ordered a beer. The jukebox was off and the patrons were unusually silent. When the waitress put my beer in front of me and immediately turned to face the TV over the bar, I realized that everyone was watching the man I had come to save. He was pale and grave. There were dark circles under his eyes.

  "To halt this offensive buildup, a strict quarantine of all offensive equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated. All ships of any kind bound for Cuba, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, will be turned back."

  "Christ Jesus!" said a man in a cowboy hat. "What does he think the Russkies are goan do about that?"

  "Shut up, Bill," the bartender said. "We need to hear this."

  "It shall be the policy of this nation," Kennedy went on, "to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union."

  A woman at the end of the bar moaned and clutched her stomach. The man beside her put an arm around her, and she put her head on his shoulder.

  What I saw on Kennedy's face was fright and determination in equal measure. What I also saw was life--a total engagement with the job at hand. He was exactly thirteen months from his date with the assassin's bullet.

  "As a necessary military precaution, I have reinforced our base at Guantanamo and evacuated today the dependents of our personnel there."