End of Days

by James L. Swanson

  Oswald’s morning conversation with Frazier offers a clue that Lee had decided by no later than ten A.M. on Thursday, November 21, to assassinate President Kennedy. And the fact that he did not bring his revolver to work that morning is persuasive evidence that he had not decided by the night of Wednesday, November 20, to commit the murder. If he had, he might have brought the pistol to work the next morning and hidden it overnight in the Book Depository. So Thursday morning was Oswald’s last chance to carry the revolver from his rooming house and sneak it into the Depository. He could not go to his Dallas rooming house on Thursday evening to get it—that night he needed to drive with Wesley Frazier to Irving to get the rifle from Mrs. Paine’s garage.

  Lee also wanted to see the babies and Marina one last time. There was something he wanted to ask her.

  ABOUT TEN minutes before Lee Oswald’s workday at the Depository ended, Air Force One touched down in Houston at about four thirty P.M. There was another enthusiastic reception committee, another three-dozen gorgeous yellow roses for Jackie, another eager, straining crowd held back by a railing. The Kennedys worked the line, reaching over the top and shaking hands as they walked.

  Several women grabbed both of Jackie’s hands simultaneously, making it seem as if they might lift her off the ground and pull her over the railing. She called out to Congressman Albert Thomas, whom JFK would honor that night at a huge dinner. “Don’t leave me!” Jackie pleaded. “Don’t get too far away.” Thomas and some of the other dignitaries rescued her and escorted her toward the car.

  In Houston, she and the president would not ride in their Lincoln limousine. It had been flown ahead to Dallas for the big, forty-five-minute motorcade that would happen there tomorrow. About 175,000 people had turned out for the Houston motorcade. When the Kennedys arrived at the Rice Hotel, they retired to their suite.

  WHEN LEE Oswald showed up at Ruth Paine’s home in Irving, Marina was surprised, and not too happy, to see her quarrelsome, violent husband. She showed her anger by refusing to speak to him. “He was upset over the fact that I would not answer him. He tried to start a conversation several times, but I wouldn’t answer.”

  Then Mrs. Paine came home after shopping for groceries. She was not pleased to find him at her home on a day he was not supposed to be there. Marina was exasperated because she had discovered that Lee was living under an alias at the Beckley Street rooming house. Recently, when she had telephoned there to speak to him, she was told that no one by the name of Lee Oswald lived there. Marina thought all this mystery and secrecy was too much. It reminded her of his behavior when he had attempted to assassinate General Walker. She had demanded that her husband explain why he was using a false name again.

  Oswald’s visit was a pretext to go into the garage and retrieve his Mannlicher-Carcano. He planned to spend Thursday night in Irving and then on Friday morning bring it to work. Perhaps the sight of his attractive young wife, his two-year-old daughter, and his newborn baby girl softened his murderous heart. Maybe he would not kill President Kennedy the next day after all. He spoke kind words uncharacteristic of a killer.

  Lee told Marina he loved her and asked her to move back to Dallas and live with him there. “He suggested that we rent an apartment [there]. He said that he was tired of living alone.” She said no. He said he would rent a nice apartment for them and the children where they could begin their lives anew. She refused. Then she tested him. “I told him to buy me a new washing machine.”

  It was hard for her to keep up with the laundry for two small children. When he agreed to do it, she rebuffed him and said she didn’t want it after all. Marina told him it would be better if he spent the money on something else, for himself.

  If Oswald was not reconsidering killing Kennedy, he would have had no reason to find a better apartment or purchase a washing machine.

  Like a lot of married couples that day, the Oswalds discussed President Kennedy’s forthcoming trip to Dallas. Marina wanted to see JFK and Jackie. “I asked Lee whether he knew where the president would speak, and I told him that I would very much like to hear him and see him. I asked how this could be done.”

  Lee did not tell Marina that she could go to Love Field to watch the president’s plane land. He did not tell her that she could catch the motorcade as it crawled through downtown Dallas. And he did not reveal what he already knew—what he was already counting on—that the president’s motorcade would pass through Dealey Plaza, turn onto Elm Street, and drive right past the Texas School Book Depository, where he had worked for the past six weeks, and that she could meet her husband outside and see the president there. No, to Marina he pleaded ignorance. “He said he didn’t know how to do that,” she recalled, “and didn’t enlarge any further on that subject.”

  Marina did not know that Lee knew exactly where to find President Kennedy. Nor could she know that her treatment of him tonight would help him decide to follow through with his plans to see the president tomorrow.

  “I was angry,” Marina said about that night. “He was not angry—he was upset. I was angry.” Lee told her that he was lonely because he had not been to visit her the previous weekend. Ruth Paine had planned a family event, and she did not want him there. “He said that he wanted to make his peace with me.” Marina saw that “he tried very hard to please me. He spent quite a lot of time putting away diapers and played with the children on the street.” But Marina would not give in. Perhaps, she wondered later, whether she had been too hard on him.

  WHILE THE Oswalds were bickering about their family life, John and Jacqueline Kennedy rested in Houston’s Rice Hotel and dressed for the evening. The president put on a fresh shirt and suit. He liked to look good, and he was in the habit of changing clothes several times a day, even when home at the White House. His personal valet, George Thomas, was with him on the Texas trip and took care of all of his wardrobe needs. Jackie dressed in a black velvet suit. Her dark hair and the dark fabric framed her pale face and seemed to make her skin glow. Then she fastened on a pearl necklace and diamond earrings.

  Now, dressed for the big dinner they would attend that night, the president of the United States and his wife sat down together in their hotel suite and dined alone. It was impossible for any president to eat a meal in peace at a political dinner. So many people wanted to talk to him that he never had a moment even to raise a fork or spoon to his mouth, let alone chew the food.

  So the Kennedys ate their own dinner before the public one. They did not know it, but this was to be their last private dinner together. So this was John Kennedy’s last gaze across the private dinner table at a beautiful young woman, the mother of his two children, dressed in understated but gorgeous elegance, practicing in her head the speech she would deliver in Spanish that night in the hotel ballroom, to the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC).

  John Kennedy could not have known it, but that night another man having his last dinner with his wife was still planning to bring his rifle to work tomorrow.

  After the First Couple finished their meal, Lyndon Johnson visited their suite for an animated private talk about the political rivalries and bruised egos that existed among Texas elected officials and were causing some ill will on this trip. Jackie went to another room to practice her speech, but she could hear loud voices on the other side of the door. She thought the two men were arguing, but they were not.

  When Johnson left, Jackie came out to see her husband. Jack told her that he and the vice president had not had a fight. Oh no, Jack assured her. Then, apropos of nothing, Jackie said she could not stand Texas governor John Connally.

  “Why did you say that?”

  “I [couldn’t] stand him all day. He’s just one of those men—oh, I don’t know. I just can’t bear him sitting there saying all these great things about himself. And he seems to be needling you all day.”

  The president gave his wife a brilliant piece of advice that revealed what an astute political psychologist he was. “You mustn’t say you dis
like him, Jackie. If you say it, you’ll begin thinking it, and it will prejudice how you act toward him the next day.”

  Kennedy explained. “He’s been cozying up to a lot of Texas businessmen who weren’t for him before. What he was really saying in the car was that he’s going to run ahead of me in Texas [in the next election]. Well, that’s all right. Let him. But for heaven’s sake don’t get a thing on him, because that’s what I came down here to heal. I’m trying to start by getting two people in the same car. If they start hating, nobody will ride with anybody.”

  The Kennedys went downstairs for the LULAC reception. After the president’s remarks, he said to the crowd, “In order that my words will be even clearer to you, I am going to ask my wife to say a few words to you also.” Jackie gave her little talk in Spanish, the crowd loved her, and when she finished they yelled “Olé!” A fugitive piece of lost but recently discovered amateur film footage taken that night with a home movie camera, without sound, shows how excited the audience was.

  From the Rice Hotel ballroom, the Kennedys drove to the Houston Coliseum for the huge dinner honoring Congressman Thomas. Tonight the president made no attempt at soaring oratory. Instead he gave more of a bread-and-butter talk designed to flatter local interests and leaders, especially the honoree. But he slipped in an eloquent passage from the Bible. Indeed, it was so fine that it seemed out of place in what was otherwise a pedestrian effort. It sounded prophetic: “Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions. Where there is no vision, the people perish.”

  The Kennedys left the Coliseum at a little after nine thirty P.M. and drove to the airport.

  At 11:07 P.M., Air Force One landed at Carswell Air Force Base, outside Fort Worth.

  Air Force One had closed the distance in geography and time that separated John F. Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald.

  LEE WATCHED television for a while and then went to bed before Marina and turned off the light. But when Marina joined him, she sensed that he was still awake, only pretending to be asleep. And when she, in a gesture of intimacy in the darkness of the night, extended her leg to touch his, he kicked it away.

  And now, as the night lengthened on November 21, 1963, he had failed in love. If Marina had told him this evening that she loved him, that he was a good man, that she and their daughters would live together again—then tomorrow Lee might look for a new apartment for his family instead of carrying a long package of “curtain rods” to work. But tonight, without her approval, he was helpless, alone, and drifting toward oblivion. It was Oswald’s habit to copy sentimental Russian-language poetry into journals. Perhaps it was to please Marina. Some evidence suggests that she read some of them and annotated a few of the pages in her own hand. Or maybe Lee just wanted to practice his Russian comprehension and handwriting. From the hundreds of lines he copied into his commonplace books, one phrase leaps out. It reads as though he was describing himself on the night of November 21, 1963. “Not everyone can understand his own life. . . . Life is boring, empty and uninteresting.”

  Tomorrow he would change that.

  This was the last night he would spend with his wife.

  NEAR MIDNIGHT on Thursday, November 21, John Kennedy prepared to turn out the lights in his bedroom in Fort Worth’s Hotel Texas. He was tired. In one day, he had flown from Washington, D.C., to San Antonio, Texas; had driven in a motorcade; had given a speech to twenty thousand people; had toured a hospital; had flown from San Antonio to Houston; had spoken at a reception; had spoken at a major political dinner; and had flown from Houston to Forth Worth, where Air Force One had landed at 11:07 P.M. In Washington time, it was already past midnight. Then he had been driven to the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth, where he found himself now. It was a grueling schedule, typical of a presidential campaign.

  Tomorrow, on November 22, the president faced another tough schedule, which included informal remarks on the street outside his hotel; a breakfast and talk at the hotel; the flight to Dallas; the long motorcade from Love Field to the Trade Mart for a big political lunch and speech; then back to the airport for the flight to Austin, another motorcade, and another speech at a major Democratic dinner that evening.

  Kennedy was in full campaign mode. In late summer and fall of 1960, he had spent weeks just like this on the campaign trail. This trip to Texas was a dress rehearsal for next year, and it had proven what an asset Jackie was going to be during his second presidential campaign in the fall of 1964.

  He wanted her to know that.

  “You were great today,” he told Jackie. “How do you feel?”

  “Oh, gosh,” she said, “I’m exhausted.”

  He told her she did not have to get up early. “Don’t get up with me. I’ve got to speak in the square downstairs before breakfast, but stay in bed. Just be at that breakfast at nine-fifteen.”

  They did not know that this was the last night they would spend together.

  SOMETIME THAT night, after John and Jackie Kennedy had gone to sleep—no one knows exactly when—Lee Oswald slipped into Mrs. Paine’s garage, turned on the light, and lifted up the blanket and its deadly contents. The Mannlicher-Carcano was still there. Tonight, in addition to his rifle, Lee also needed ammunition. He had depleted his supply during target practice. All he had left in his possession were four bullets. These would have to be enough. He disassembled the weapon, removing the barrel from the stock, and slipped the shorter pieces into a bag he had made at the Book Depository with brown paper and tape.

  Later that night, probably not until long after midnight, Lee Harvey Oswald drifted off to sleep.

  CHAPTER 4

  “A BRIGHT PINK SUIT”

  The Kennedys were staying in suite 850 of Fort Worth’s Hotel Texas. The president had just been handed a copy of the November 22 edition of the Dallas Morning News, and he was irate. It contained a full-page ad about his visit. At first glance, its boldface headline, WELCOME MR. KENNEDY TO DALLAS, seemed to be a friendly greeting. But the ad was bordered in black, the way a newspaper might announce a tragedy or a death. As the president read further, he saw a long list of complaints attacking him and his administration. The ad demanded that Kennedy answer twelve defamatory questions that accused him of being soft on Communism and unpatriotic. “Why is Latin America turning either anti-American or Communistic, or both, despite increased U.S. foreign aid, State Department policy, and your own Ivy-Tower pronouncements?” it began. Then the ad claimed that “Thousands of Cubans” had been imprisoned, starved, and persecuted as a result of Kennedy’s policies. The ad even accused the president of selling food—“wheat and corn”—to communist enemies engaged in killing American soldiers in South Viet Nam. Attorney General Robert Kennedy did not escape attack. “Why have you ordered or permitted your brother Bobby . . . to go soft on Communists, fellow-travelers, and ultra-leftists in America, while permitting him to persecute loyal Americans who criticize you, your administration, and your leadership?”

  “We demand answers,” the ad concluded, “and we want them now.”

  The charges incensed JFK. Was this the kind of welcome he should expect when he flew from Fort Worth to Dallas later this morning?

  There was more. Unbeknownst to Kennedy, last night in Dallas someone had printed several thousand leaflets headlined WANTED FOR TREASON. The handbill resembled an Old West–style reward poster with front and side mug shots of the “criminal” on the loose—in this case the thirty-fifth president of the United States. To ease tensions, the Dallas police chief had already gone on television to ask his fellow citizens to receive the president with respect.

  Kennedy warned his wife, “We’re heading into nut country today. But Jackie,” he added, “if somebody wants to shoot me from a window with a rifle, nobody can stop it, so why worry about it?”

  Kenneth O’Donnell—JFK’s longtime aide and a trusted member of the “Irish Mafia” trio that had guided his political career for years, and who was with the president in Texas that morning—agreed with that sentiment.
“The President took a fatalistic attitude about the possibility of being assassinated by a fanatic, regarding such a danger as being part of his job, and often talked about how easy it would be for somebody to shoot him with a rifle from a high building.”

  Then JFK said an eerie thing to his wife. He reminded her of their harried, late-night arrival at the hotel. There were a lot of people pressing near them, and some of them had gotten too close for JFK’s comfort. “You know,” he told Jackie, “last night would have been a hell of a night to assassinate a president. There was the rain, and the night, and we were all getting jostled. Suppose a man had a pistol in a briefcase and melted away into the crowd?”

  The president had already survived one assassination attempt. In 1960, when he was president-elect, a madman had plotted to blow him up with a bomb in Palm Beach, Florida. But that plot had been thwarted.

  Perhaps JFK recalled a letter he wrote in 1959, the year before the election. Kennedy replied to a man who wrote to him about the “thought-provoking . . . historical curiosity” that since 1840 every man who entered the White House in a year ending in zero had not lived to leave the White House alive. JFK replied that “the future will necessarily answer” what his fate will be if he should have “the privilege of occupying the White House.”

  John Kennedy was a fatalist who lived with a sense of detachment and ironic humor. He had an intuition that he might not live a long life. One of his favorite poems was one written by a fellow Harvard graduate, Alan Seeger, who had been killed in the First World War. “I have a rendezvous with death,” Seeger had prophesied. Kennedy often asked Jackie to read the poem aloud to him.