The Day Kennedy Was Shot

by Jim Bishop

  5 p.m.

  Darkness was stronger than light. There was a faint roar to the city, a sound which seemed to emanate from within the ear. The pigeons were in repose on the roof. Their claws made scratching polyphonics, mixed with cooing and the reshuffling of feathers as jealous males met. They could hear the contrapuntal click of the Hertz clock snapping the minutes like matchsticks. There were whistles, too, but these were irregular sounds from the street. In front of the Texas School Book Depository, young men in metal helmets addressed themselves to pedestrians with whistles.

  The confluence of Elm, Main, and Commerce at Dealey Plaza made a traffic sink. It was slow this evening. Dallas was fascinated by it. Some people jumped on the macadam and said, “This is where he was shot.” Students romped on the grass. Elders looked up at the Depository windows and saw the lights wink off one at a time. A police car parked on the grass squawked the tinny dialogue of assassination.

  Deputy Chief N. T. Fisher, was leaving Love Field for police headquarters. It had been a bad, bad day. “Has there been any developments that you can tell me on the suspect that shot the officer,” he asked the dispatcher. “Was there any connections with the shooting of the President?” “At this time,” the dispatcher said, “it is my understanding that he is the same person. He is in custody.” Fisher said: “Ten four. Thank you.” “That’s not official,” the dispatcher said. “That’s just the rumor up here. . . .” The dispatcher returned in a moment. “Four . . . hold the presidential cars at the location. 508 is en route to print them.” Fisher was sure that there would be no fingerprinting of the presidential cars. “As far as I know,” he said, “these cars were loaded on an Army transport. I don’t know whether they are still there or not. I’ll check.” It didn’t take long. “For your information,” Fisher said, “they have been loaded and left on the other transport.”

  A postal employee at the terminal annex was sorting mail, scanning and skipping it into bins. He kept muttering, “Oswald” to himself. He had seen the name or had heard it. “Oswald.” It wasn’t common. The envelopes flicked into air and managed to drop into the proper bins. He kept thinking about the name and the shocking murder and suddenly, without trying, he remembered.

  He had rented a post office box to a man named Oswald. That was where he had heard the name. He got the list of owners of boxes. The card was found. Three weeks ago a man who had called himself Lee H. Oswald had rented Box 6225. The business of the applicant, as signed on the back of the card, was “Fair Play for Cuba Committee, Chairman.” The post office clerk took the card to his supervisor, who called the postmaster. They examined 6225. There wasn’t much in it, but what there was was suspicious: a Russian magazine addressed to Lee H. Oswald.

  No one seemed to know who had charge of the assassination investigation, so the postmaster called the Secret Service, the Dallas police, the FBI, and the sheriff. Then they posted an unobtrusive guard over 6225 to see if an accomplice might come in and claim the magazine. The clerk returned to sorting letters, satisfied that he had a pretty good memory.

  Seth Kantor had a superior memory. He was using it under adverse circumstances while trying to find a place on the third floor to stand still. Of the out-of-town reporters, Mr. Kantor was the one who knew Dallas, Fort Worth, and Lee Harvey Oswald. Well, not precisely. He had not met Oswald, but he knew him. Kantor had some of the jadedness of the effete big-time reporter, but it wasn’t so long ago that he had been a young and energetic innocent on the Fort Worth Press.

  He had read about a United States marine who had defected to Russia. One day—was it in 1960?—the boy’s mother had come to the Fort Worth Press. The paper had agreed to pay for a phone call to her son in Moscow. Kent Biffle had arranged a three-way hookup between the son, the mother in her apartment, and himself at the city desk of the Fort Worth Press. Everyone had been disappointed. Biffle had trouble getting the overseas operator in New York. Then he had to go on to Europe and from there to Moscow. Operators were cutting in and out of the line, and the minutes dissolved into hours.

  Seth Kantor had watched Biffle from the other side of the city desk. When the call had finally gone through, the Press operator rang Mrs. Oswald at home, and she picked up the phone and gushed her love at her wayward boy and told him how nice the Fort Worth Press people had been to arrange the three-way call. Oswald hung up. He wasted no time telling his mother that he loved her, or missed her, or would write to her. She had been willing to forget that he had obtained an early discharge from the Marine Corps as a “hardship” case because his mother was ill and he was her sole support. He had come home and left at once for Russia without telling her anything. In truth, the only contact he wanted with his mother was to remind her that she owed him some money.

  As Kantor recalled, the call ended abruptly. As he leaned against a partition in the busy third-floor corridor, looking at the anxiety-swept faces of his confreres, he remembered this phone call. The reporter had gone on to a better position, and he had picked up a newspaper a year ago which stated that Lee Harvey Oswald was due home at Fort Worth with a Russian bride. Kantor worked in Washington. He had clipped that story and made a note that if Lee Harvy Oswald ever came to Washington Mr. Kantor would try to interview him.

  Today the reporter had been part of the motorcade in his own Fort Worth and Dallas. It had been exciting, almost emotional seeing old friends and a best man at one’s wedding at a crossroads. It was not a time, considering the familiar faces and streets, the places where a man had once found stories worth space in a newspaper, to think of a defector who had been home over a year. And now Lee Harvey Oswald was once more the story, a bigger and more catastrophic one than anyone might dream. For the first time, among the craning heads, the lights and the shouts, Seth Kantor saw the sullen face, the bruised eyes, the manacled wrists, and he wondered what warped mechanism ticked in that head.

  The big-time reporters worked the running story hard. They took notes on everything, even journalistic rumors, and they fired questions at policemen all day and all night. They had “leg men” out in the city picking up material on the Texas School Book Depository; the scores of witnesses who had gone through Sheriff Decker’s office; the Irving angle with Mrs. Oswald and Mrs. Paine; the bits and pieces from Jack Price at Parkland Hospital; Governor John Connally’s condition; the reaction of Dallas. There were men in Washington covering parts of the story, and there were others at American embassies in Europe picking up bits and pieces to add to the whole. The men on the morning sheets had to keep writing fresh material marked “Add Kennedy.” Those on the afternoon papers had time, and they inundated the file rooms and “morgues” of the Dallas Times Herald and Dallas News asking for the professional courtesy of a free look at old clippings and pictures on Lee Harvey Oswald.

  The story had a stunning beginning but no end. The words were dropped into the huge maw of public curiosity, were masticated, and the maw opened for more. City editors were on the phones asking for copy. They suggested fresh angles, some of which were worthless. When they had exploited the death of John Fitzgerald Kennedy to the fullest, the world was aware of it, and the only way to keep the story alive was to keep fresh material coming in on Oswald. If Oswald was the assassin, then the story centered on the Who? What? When? Where? and Why? of the Book Depository order clerk. Reporters were urged to keep on the necks of the police. The cops must be reasonably certain that they had the right man—or didn’t—and a good reporter would keep badgering the officers or else run the risk of having one of them “leak” the story to a local favorite.

  The story had too many parts. It was impossible to fit together all the small pieces which make a large and dismal mosaic. At the moment the reporters were racing up and down the hall with a rumor that Oswald would soon be coming down from the jail for another session with Captain Will Fritz. At Love Field, no reporter saw an agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation board an airliner for Washington. He carried a small box and put it on his lap as he fastened his
seat belt. In it were two pieces of the President’s skull found inside the car and one found beside the curb at Elm Street.

  On the fifth floor, a guard came into the maximum security alley with a plate. He handed it to Oswald along with a cup. The plate had beans and stewed meat and boiled potatoes. On the side of the plate were two buttered pieces of bread. The prisoner took the cup of steaming coffee. He looked at the plate. The guard said it was dinner. There would be nothing more until morning. Two meals a day in jail. Oswald said he wasn’t hungry.

  The guards told him to finish the coffee. He was going to get his clothes back in a few minutes.

  The plane was always awkward on the ground. It came back up the taxiway slowly, whining and rocking. President Johnson had read his short statement to Smith and Roberts and had put it into a pocket in his jacket. He had issued an order for a ramp to be brought to the plane. The order stated that the Secret Service men aboard would carry the body of President Kennedy down the ramp. The casket would be followed by Mrs. Kennedy on the arm of President Johnson.

  The President looked around as the plane waddled toward the big circle of light and he wondered where everyone had gone. The cabin, except for a few of his staff, was empty. Mrs. Johnson sat gazing out the window at the darkness. In the back of the plane, Kenneth O’Donnell issued his orders. They too were explicit. As soon as the aircraft stopped, he wanted the Kennedy group to crowd the rear doorway. They and the Secret Service men would take the body out of this exit, down a forklift. President Johnson was not a party to this plan.

  Mr. Johnson felt that the symbol of unity was important. As the new President, he should stand behind his fallen chieftain, and he should offer his widow the protection of his person. To the contrary, the Kennedy people felt that this was boorish and overbearing. The plane was still in motion when they formed an unbreakable clot at the rear exit. They knew what was expected of them. In the group were David Powers, Lawrence O’Brien, Ken O’Donnell, General McHugh, Mrs. Evelyn Lincoln, Mrs. Kennedy and her secretary, Pamela Turnure. Flanking them were the Secret Service men.

  When the President came down the aisle, an engine was still idling and he found his progress blocked. A male voice from somewhere said: “It’s all right. We’ll take care of this end.” He recognized the humiliation. The plane stopped and he walked back to the presidential cabin slowly, to join his wife. He was about to take the arm of Mrs. Johnson when he saw his Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy, running from the front of the plane to the back. Sadly, the President stuck his hand out and said: “Bob!” The Attorney General ignored the hand and kept running toward the aft section.

  It was evident that Kennedy understood the situation. He ran so that he would not have to pause and recognize the new President. He made it down the aisle of the front cabin, squirming past the people who stood in the aisles, opened the door to the private cabin, and ran straight through. At the human knot, people stepped aside so that Jacqueline could fall into Robert’s arms.

  The communications shack passed a final message to Roy Kellerman from Secret Service headquarters ordering him to accompany the dead President to Bethesda Hospital. Colonel Swindal looked down on the small dark pools of people. Air Force One, in the glare of lights, was a dead moth. An honor guard of service men followed the Attorney General up the front ramp. They were there to carry the casket. The silence at Andrews Air Force Base was so deep that, when Colonel Swindal and his first officer, Lieutenant Colonel Lewis Hanson, hurried down the ramp, the sound of their feet on the metal-tipped steps beat an irregular tattoo into the darkness outside the pool of light.

  Merriman Smith and Charles Roberts, one with a typewriter under his arm, hurried off the plane and stood under the giant wing, looking aft. In the silence there was disbelief. The men of lofty station who were there; the television cameramen in the darkness; the friends, the officers, the strangers of rank, the ambassadors, could not believe that Caesar was dead. They had heard the radio; they had seen the story on television; the late afternoon papers carried mourning rules under the headline: KENNEDY ASSASSINATED. And yet the human mind rejects the image of catastrophe as the eyes hunt for irrevocable truth. The slender face of Secretary of Defense Robert J. McNamara stood almost alone, the eyes watching the rear hatch behind the frozen light caught by his glasses. The breeze caught the wavy hair of the Chief Justice of the United States, Earl Warren, and he studied the aircraft as though, legally, he entertained a reasonable doubt.

  The forklift, on small yellow wheels, circumnavigated the plane and pulled up at the port hatch aft. The operator placed it snugly and then pulled the small elevator upward. It was at least three feet short. Inside someone was opening the hatch lug and the door swung backward and away. The unseen eyes from the darkness looked. They saw a group of people squeezed together in the doorway, and five Secret Service men, stooping and pushing, shoved the edge of the casket into the doorway. It was caught in the light, and everyone below knew that John F. Kennedy was truly dead. He was gone and they would never see him again, never see him step out of a crowd with hand outstretched, never hear the flat, twangy Boston wit, see the square pearly teeth as the head rocked back in laughter, never again see that stabbing left index finger as it punctuated his argumentative shouts above the roar of a crowd.

  He was dead. He was gone. And there was something that each man had forgotten to say to him. It was not a moment for tears. There was a succession of swallowing and an unspoken accusation in three thousand hearts: “What did you expect?” Whatever the expectation of magic, it was over and the unseen eyes began to focus on the woman in the doorway with the slab of dark hair down over one eye. Her expression had the shock of a little girl who has just heard the colored balloon break. She still held the string.

  A few men jumped down on the lift. They pulled on the forward handles. Others, at the rear, pushed. The honor guard found itself caught in the rites of the warrior. The Secret Service wanted to carry the man. So did Larry O’Brien and Ken O’Donnell and David Powers and General McHugh. Everybody could not find room around the casket. The men pushed each other. The heavy bronze instrument teetered off the edge of the plane and began to wobble in air. Out of the darkness the sibilant voices of the television commentators could be heard. The Attorney General watched the bronze rock in air, saw the men on the lift catch and steady it, and he dropped nimbly onto the platform with his brother. With arms outstretched, he reached up for his sister-in-law.

  She crouched and dropped and Kennedy held her. The big iridescent lens of the cameras caught the scene, saw the pink burled suit, the stains of blood, the twisted right stocking. In a trice, the nation knew. The horrifying picture of the gleaming bronze casket and the handsome young widow and the blood was mirrored in seventy million homes. The guilt was upon them and their children. Dinner stopped. Plates were pushed away. The picture on the screen would never be scrubbed off. It was there and scores of millions of people would date their lives with this day. Things happened before this time or after.

  “Will you come with us?” Mrs. Kennedy whispered to her brother-in-law. He nodded. She knew he would. Admiral Burkley was the last to jump on the small platform. It began the slow slide to the bottom. The Bethesda ambulance had backed up, and, before it left, Robert Kennedy wanted to hear the wishes of his sister-in-law in regards to the funeral, and he wanted to use a Secret Service beep phone to speak quickly to Sargent Shriver at the White House.

  He walked her slowly toward the ambulance. He took her arm and bent and whispered and nodded at the responses. She was in the full glare of the lights and her head was down. Faces were in requiem all around her, but they knew that this was no time for greetings or even condolences. McNamara stood at attention. Acting Secretary of State George Ball followed her with his eyes. Postmaster John Gronouski could not bear to watch. Franklin Roosevelt, Jr., had witnessed similar scenes. Senator Hubert Humphrey may have been the only man who wept. His eyes were red holes. Senator Mike Mansfield kept his teeth clench
ed. Everett Dirksen hunched his great head into his topcoat collar and turned away. McGeorge Bundy, the bright mentality behind the self-effacing features, seemed nailed to a place on the concrete.

  Under the wing, Swindal and Hanson stood at salute. The tall, slender chief of protocol, Mr. Angier Biddle Duke, approached Mrs. Kennedy. He coughed and she looked up. “How can I serve you?” he said. She knew. “Find out how Lincoln was buried,” she said. Mr. Duke turned away. He had an assignment. He would require researchers and admission to the Library of Congress, which was closed, and a long night of labor to find out exactly how Lincoln was buried.

  In silence, she walked to the ambulance and reached for a door handle. It was the wrong one. Mrs. Kennedy did not want to sit up front. She would remain at her husband’s side. For a moment, she was indecisive. Then Robert Kennedy approached and opened the rear door. They stooped and climbed inside. At the rear, the honor guard, the Secret Service, and Kennedy friends carried the casket and slid it in. General Godfrey McHugh hopped in with it.

  Roy Kellerman was in charge. He waved William Greer, who had driven the death car, into the driver’s seat. Kellerman sat next to him. Agent Paul Landis squeezed in on the right side. Admiral Burkley said he had told Mrs. Kennedy that he would stay with the body until it was returned to the White House. Kellerman waved the doctor into the front seat and he sat on the lap of Landis. Standing beside the ambulance were the cardiologist, the nurse, and driver sent hours ago by Captain Canada of Bethesda in case President Johnson sustained a heart attack. They were told that there was no room for them.

  The car started to move forward. Mrs. Kennedy and General McHugh sat on one side of the casket. Opposite, leaning across the bronze to speak, sat the Attorney General. The lights of the base flickered by, lighting up the mourners and plunging them back into darkness. Directly behind, Secret Service Agent Clint Hill had requisitioned an automobile. He was driving Dr. John Walsh, Mrs. Kennedy’s physician. A third car carried the O’Donnell group. Behind that were some women in a fourth car and the forgotten man. This was George Thomas, the president’s valet. For almost three years, he had worked hard on the third floor, pressing fresh suits most of the day for the President’s several changes. He would not need that ironing board anymore nor the iron. George Thomas sat silently among the women, wondering what was to become of him.