by Adam Braver
It all makes you think of souls. Though you make no claims to belief, seeing that picture of Kennedy suggests that there must be more to the body than hardwiring and chemical messengers that trick the body into being, because even a piece of machinery stripped of its functioning parts still looks like the machine. Perhaps it’s just back to Descartes’ earthen machine. Or Thomas Aquinas’s reconciliation of the eternal soul with Aristotle’s intellective soul. Or maybe it’s all just smoke and mirrors, a hypnotist’s whisper and suggestion that makes you believe that there’s something more than parts and components. Maybe when the body dies, the hypnotist’s fingers are snapped, and we stop barking like dogs, and look around, suddenly recognizing the machinery. Maybe we even laugh a little at ourselves.
The complexity of these fractures and the fragments thus produced tax satisfactory verbal description and are better appreciated in photographs and roentgenograms which are prepared. (Page 4, Pathological Examination Report, 11/22/63)
John Stringer is waiting in the morgue for his subject. FBI and Secret Service agents stand around in civilian clothes. The three doctors in charge—Boswell, Humes, and Finck—also are waiting, silent, reorganizing their tools and equipment over and over. Others start to trickle into the room. Dr. Burkley lingers in between, looking uncertain of his responsibility as an observer. One of Stringer’s students, Floyd Riebe, leans into the corner of the room, clutching a small 35 mm Canon under his arm. He’s here to assist. But mostly it seems as though he’ll observe.
A sign is taped to the wall. Hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succurrere vitae. “This is the place where death rejoices to help those who live.”
Stringer clamps the camera down on the three-wheel tripod. The four-by-five Graphic is heavy as can be. He snaps on the giant flash, thinking this might be the last time he has to use the camera because the commanding officer won’t let him buy any more four-by-five film since he’s agreed to convert the whole operation to 35 mm.
Morgue lighting is always ridiculous, fluorescents and an operating lamp that won’t allow for the most basic exposure. So he has to set up two speed lamps, mounting them on stands with rollers, double-checking the synchronization to make sure they’ll flash with the camera. Maybe that will also change with the upgrade.
The casket is wheeled in and then opened. He watches the hinges. The body is wrapped in hospital sheets inside a body bag. Towels are padded around the head. The room smells rotten, slightly tempered by the sterility of the alcohol and rubber gloves. The civilians step forward a little, out of curiosity, but then step back as quickly. Kennedy’s eyes are wide open. The doctors shut them. But they pop open again.
Stringer returns to setting up his equipment. Somehow he’d been anticipating something more.
X-rays are taken. The machine sounds like rocks and gravel. A construction site.
After about a half hour, Stringer asks, “Are we ready?” He stands back, loading film from the two-pack into the Graphic.
Dr. Boswell asserts his position as chief of pathology at all times. He says he just wants to make sure the X-rays come back clean, that’s all. “Now we can start cutting.”
There is surprisingly little reverence in the room. Maybe it’s shock, or just old-fashioned professionalism. But it seems that nobody is thinking about this in terms of history.
Stringer lines up the camera and shoots down on the body, trying to capture the full length, from head to toe. He pushes himself back farther and farther, until he has the full perspective in the lens. Somewhat satisfied with the angle, he presses the shutter, and the flash from the speed lamps bursts out, freezing everybody for a moment.
Following the doctors’ lead, Stringer starts moving more quickly. Loading up round after round, he hands off the exposed film holders to Riebe or to one of the agents, who drops them in a box earmarked for processing.
He shoots the head. The scalp. Normal. Peeled back. Then the doctors prop Kennedy up, sitting at a ninety-degree angle.
Again, the eyes pop open. A Secret Service agent looks away.
Stringer moves quickly to get the camera in place. Kicking at the lamp rollers. Dragging the tripod. Riebe has retreated to the back of the room. The doctors are looking at Stringer, almost out of breath, hoping he can load the camera quickly, since the body is all weight at this point. He shoots as fast as he can, his only perspective what he sees through the viewfinder. If anybody were to ask him later what he saw, he’d be hard pressed to give an accurate description other than how he remembered the basic composition.
After the body is laid back on the table, Boswell announces that they’ll begin the Y incision. Stringer doesn’t need directions. He’s shot this procedure a hundred times or more over the years. The camera instinctively will follow the pathologist’s scalpel, as if it were the doctor’s eye. Starting at the chest and then cutting down through the waist. Always clean, with almost no blood. While one doctor is sawing open the chest cavity, removing the breastbone and ribs, the other is examining the abdominal cavity. Major organs are cut out, weighed on a grocer’s scale, then set beside a ruler to be photographed before being put in a jar with preservative. They dissect the liver and move on to the lungs, the pancreas, spleen, kidneys, and stomach. And the speed lamps flash for each organ, like a Hollywood premier. Each burst is the only sound in the room.
They examine the scalp. Note every defect caused by the bullet. Sample the bits of matter that have hemorrhaged through the fractures. Then without pause, they saw off the top of the head, remove the brain, and preserve it in a fixative for further examination at a later date. A big sewing needle is pulled out to stitch the skull and the trunk with a seam that will look like the side of a baseball.
There’s a collective sigh. Someone says to Stringer, “So you got those all?”
“Of course,” he says. He’s palming a receipt. The Secret Service has taken possession of the films. They’ll handle the developing.
Stringer puts the Graphic away and folds the tripod. Rolling the lights toward him in order to break them down. He glances back at the operating table. Kennedy’s eyes have popped open again, and though they are fixed upward, it seems as though they follow him, creepily, like one of those haunted nineteenth-century portraits.
He looks back down at the receipt, focusing on the name, Kennedy. A wicked little scrawl that seems too impersonal not to be real. Too real, in fact.
Stringer supposes he could fall apart and cry, collapse, become undone, and blame it on the exhaustion of the day. But instead he continues to break down his equipment. Leaving the wing nuts loosened on the speed lamps. Knowing he’ll need to set them all up again in a week or so, when the team reconvenes to finish up with the dissection of the brain.
In addition, it is our opinion that the wound of the skull produced such extensive damage to the brain as to preclude the possibility of the deceased surviving this injury. (Page 6, Pathological Examination Report, 11/22/63)
You look at the picture longer and longer. Wanting to see something. A glimpse. A fraction of something familiar. Maybe if his expression looked a little more shocked. A little more dismayed and terrorized. But he’s just so vacant. Eyes staring up dumbly, the pupils dilated, with a dulled, milky film. And you wonder how he could have absorbed so much shock and trauma and come out like this, almost lamely passive. The pathologists maintain that the body is the record. And from a scientific perspective they’re probably correct. But in the photograph, he’s just a body. It’s only memories that will bring him to life.
In the photograph, he just looks so dead.
The Seventeenth Floor.
On the seventeenth floor of the medical towers at the Bethesda Naval Hospital, they are gathered while the autopsy is being conducted in the morgue below. Jackie. Bobby. Close friends. Aides. Family members. The Secret Service has sealed off the floor. Special phone lines have been set up, with both direct communications to the White House and to the morgue.
Jackie is becoming more and
more anxious. Disoriented. Like a sleepwalker who’s been wakened. Instinctively, she works the room like a hostess. All manners. Automated graces. She appears perfectly natural, as long as her vacant eyes are avoided and her bloodied dress is ignored.
For a moment she pauses to stare out the window. Looking down on the city. It’s dark and it’s late, but not as late as it looks. A few headlights trickle down the streets, distinct and cutting. She can see houses still lit with television sets. Little ghostly glows radiate from each one. She wishes for nothing more than to be in one of those bungalows, sitting on the couch with dessert on her lap yet too upset to eat, watching the television and pitying the misfortune of someone else’s life.
Bobby touches her hand. She startles. “I’ve just spoken with Dr. Burkley downstairs,” he says. “I told him about this procedure. How it’s all taking much too long.”
“What did he say?”
“He says he can’t control the procedure. It’s all law. It’s mandatory. Imagine. He’s telling me about the law.”
She whispers back, “I told you.” In his eyes she sees total devastation. He looks more broken than she feels, which somehow is logical since she’s not feeling much of anything at all, as if her nerves have been surgically removed. Still, seeing him makes her wonder if she’s a little less capable of grief.
Bobby shakes his head. “I don’t see the point of all this.”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe I’ll just go down there myself. Make them stop this nonsense.”
“Maybe you should.”
She watches him slip out the door, mumbling something to the military guard. The suite is filled to capacity. Quiet. People speak in whispers. Still, her head is banging, and she wants to put her hands over her ears. Medications don’t work. One hundred milligrams of Vistaril shot right into the arm by her own doctor has had no effect. She just might explode, if not for manners.
Ben and Tony Bradlee make their way to her. Tony says she’s so sorry, and if there’s anything Jackie needs, they are always there. Ben reaches out for Jackie, but hesitates, noticing the caked blood that dots her forearm.
She looks at him, managing to hold her stare for a moment. They were at the White House earlier. She hopes they don’t bring up the children. She barely can manage as it is. Even the mention will undo her. She needs to be talking. Taking control. Believing there are no ripples beyond this suite. “Do you want to know what happened?” she asks. “Do you want to know?”
Ben stutters a bit. Looks to Tony. Composes himself in politeness. “Of course,” he says. “Of course.”
She begins, “It was out of nowhere,” but then stops herself. Her tone deepens. If only for a split second, she sounds completely lucid. “This is all off the record. You know that. All off the record.”
Ben nods, looking a little hurt. But these things have to be said, even among friends. “I don’t know,” she begins. “The weather wasn’t what anybody expected. And maybe we should’ve been thinking the worst, but we weren’t . . . Excuse me for a moment.”
She’s barely down Elm Street before the first interruption. Kenny with something from the White House. The Bradlees wait patiently until she picks up the story again. Then it’s Larry breaking in about funeral arrangements. McNamara with the burial site. Her aides trying to get her to change her clothes.
A moment before the shots are about to be fired, Bobby comes back into the room and apologizes to the Bradlees. He needs to talk with Jackie. Pulling her to the side, he looks flustered, eyes darting, his hands balled into fists. Although his voice remains steady, he can barely speak. “I don’t know what’s going on down there,” he says. “They’re just going and going. It’s as though those doctors don’t know the difference between a forensic autopsy and a regular hospital pathological autopsy.” He uses the medical terms awkwardly, as though he’s just learned them.
“You’re the attorney general.”
“Jackie, they don’t care what we have to say.”
“Maybe I should call, Bobby. Do you think I should call down there?”
“They’re not listening.”
“I can call.”
“No one listens. I’ve never seen anything so . . .”
They pause. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the Bradlees still standing, looking unsure if they should wait for her to return with the end of the story. She tries to nod, or to give some gesture that indicates she’s finished. It’s probably better to keep the story in the middle.
Bobby says he’s worried a pathological autopsy will bring up other things. And she asks, “Other things?” and he says, “Yes. You know.”
She looks at him quizzically.
“His health. All the medications. We don’t need that.”
“No, we don’t need that.”
“People have worked too hard to distort his image as it is, and we certainly don’t need to help them. That’s what I’m trying to tell those doctors. Especially Burkley. You don’t need to go into his glands. Don’t need to list all the medications. You just need to understand the patterns of the wounds.”
“Maybe I should try, Bobby.”
“I’m telling you, they don’t listen. They don’t care what they reveal.”
She doesn’t push it, because although she understands the implications, and that there will be handfuls of people poring over the reports in order to find something to tear down Jack’s image and reveal him as some kind of weakened poseur, that’s really not the most distressing thing. It is the pure and simple fact that three men are dissecting Jack’s body. And that he lies prone on a table, fully exposed, his organs being weighed, as bureaucrats make notes about him as though he were a specimen.
“I don’t know what to do, Bobby.”
“Maybe I’ll go down there again.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“That’s not a good idea. Believe me.”
“There are none.”
“None what?”
“Good ideas.”
Bobby stops himself. His leg is trembling. He breathes so hard through his nose that it whistles, and though he looks at her when he talks, he can’t seem to hold eye contact very long. “I’ll call first,” he says. With that, his voice buckles, and she can see his words literally swallowed, sickening his stomach. “I’ll call,” he says. “I’ll let you know what I hear from the call.”
She looks back again to the Bradlees, but they are now sitting on folding chairs, a little slumped, shaking their heads in conversation with Larry O’Brien. She takes the opportunity to go back to the window and look out over the cityscape.
A wood thrush wings by, alone and oddly confused by the altitude. She watches it circle down toward land, settling on a naked tree, bending the edge of the bough slightly and riding it with the breeze. The bird is motionless but still manages to bounce the tree. And she starts thinking about an obscure fact she’d once read about the Australian apostle bird, so named because it travels in groups of twelve—like the twelve apostles of Christ. This story told of three baby apostle birds that found themselves on the ground for some reason, stunned in helplessness, while the safety of their nest waited about forty feet above them. Then a whole caboodle of grown-up apostle birds surrounded the three babies, pushing at them, trying to get them to fly, encouraging them to get back to the nest. Two of the babies tried and tried, and soon enough they were off and flying. But the third couldn’t get it. For three days the group of adults came back, trying to cajole the last baby bird into flying. On the third day, when it must have become clear that the bird just didn’t understand or was refusing for some unknown reason, the adults lifted into the air in resigned grace and defeat, and then, in perfect precision, fell in unison on the third baby and killed him.
The Memory of the Lens: Part Two.
Floyd Riebe hadn’t heard of John Stringer before studying with him at the Naval Medical School. But once he was there, Floyd learned that Stringer had one of the best reputations
in the business as a medical photographer. Floyd, a hospital corpsman, joined Stringer’s class in March, and by November he was eager to graduate. He’d already witnessed three or four autopsies, helping out as an assistant. Watching how to set the lighting. To move with the doctors. He liked the precision of the work. The accuracy it commanded. In a matter of months he could strike out on his own. Get rid of those giant four-by-five Graphic cameras that seemed rooted to another era, and rely on the quicker, more modern Canon 35 mm.
On November 22, Floyd was on evening duty when a Washington Post reporter called, trying to broker a deal for prints or negatives. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Floyd said. “Prints and negatives for what?”
“The autopsy,” the reporter replied. “You know it’s going to be at Bethesda. I’m just looking for an exclusive. Everybody wants answers. Help me out here.”
“Well, this is news to me. But even if . . .”
“It’s in the public interest. I’d really appreciate whatever you . . .”
“I’m sorry. I just don’t know what to tell you.”
Floyd went back to the television, looking for the latest updates. Along with everyone else, he’d been watching the news all day long. That was as close to knowing anything there was to know.
