Camelot

by Caryl Rivers

  “I saw him. I saw the gun. If I had been just a second faster. A second. Oh, God, why wasn’t I faster? A second faster.”

  “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t do it, Mary.”

  “He had so much ahead of him. He was so talented, so good. That he could be snuffed out by that piece of scum, by that crazy man.”

  The man who shot Don was a man who lived alone, who was described by his neighbors as quiet and polite. In his house the police found material from racist groups, hate-filled ravings.

  “He had so much ahead of him, Jay. It isn’t fair.”

  “No, it isn’t. But who said life was fair?”

  “I keep thinking, did we help it happen? Could that sick, twisted man have read something I wrote and it stuck in his craw? Something Don said? Could I be partly to blame?”

  “You know the answer to that.”

  She nodded. “I guess I do. It was his battle, he picked it. He knew the risks. Still —”

  “He was doing what he had to do. And so were you. And he won, Mary. The council backed down. He beat them.”

  “Oh yes, there’s going to be a couple hundred units of housing, and maybe they’ll name one after him. Maybe they’ll even put his name on a plaque. And in ten years, twenty years? People will see his name and wonder who he was. They won’t even remember!”

  “At least he died for something. How many people get killed every day for no reason? Step off a curb and get hit by a truck, that’s all she wrote.”

  “We killed him, this stupid country of ours. Because we hate so much. We have to get rid of the hate. If we don’t, we’ll never be a decent country. We have to stop it.”

  “Well,” he said, “that’s not so easy.”

  “He said to me that if the rules were wrong, you had to change them, no matter what the cost. But the cost was too high. Oh, damn it, Jay. If only I had been a second faster, just a second —”

  “No, no,” he said, and he held her and they both cried until there were no more tears in them.

  “We’re getting out of here, Mary. Two more weeks and we’ll be in New York. I want to get out of here.”

  “So do I. Oh, so do I,” she said.

  Jay got a beer out of the refrigerator, and he looked around at the familiar surroundings. It seemed like home, in a strange way, this shabby apartment. It had been his first job — his first real job; the Army didn’t count. The paper had given him space, let him take chances and make mistakes, let him grow. He had grown, no question about that. He was a neophyte when he came, good but raw. But now it was time to go. He had probably stayed too long as it was, because it was so comfortable here. And after all those pictures, thousands of them, they would remember him for only one. “Broderick, isn’t he the one that took that picture?” He hated the idea that they would remember him for that picture.

  He heard a sound in the living room, and he said, “Sam? That you, Sambo?”

  There was no answer, so he pulled out the drawer to find a church key to open the can. He made two holes in the top of the can and then turned around. When he did, he saw Harry Springer standing in the kitchen doorway, five feet away. Harry held a revolver, pointed straight at his chest.

  He froze. He looked incredulously at Harry, at the gun. Harry’s face held an expression he could not read. The blue eyes were glittering. Jay thought, at first, it was from drink, but he realized in an instant that it was not from liquor but from pain. Harry was standing perfectly still, and the hand that held the gun did not tremble.

  Jay thought with surprising calm, I’m going to die, but still he could not move.

  “You had no right,” Harry said, his tone almost conversational. “No right.”

  Jay stared at him. His mental processes, it seemed, had slowed to a crawl. He thought he had been standing there for hours, with the gun pointed at him. He said the only thing he could think of to say: “I love her.”

  Something moved in Harry’s face, and he raised the gun. Jay instinctively hunched his shoulders and held his hands out in front of him, crying, “No!”

  There was an explosion, and Jay closed his eyes, waiting for the pain of the impact. There was a shattering sound two feet from his head. Wood splintered, dishes tumbled; a sharp pain flared near his right ear. He reached up, felt the blood. Then he pulled a splinter from the flesh of his earlobe and looked at it, dumbfounded.

  He looked at the door to the kitchen. Harry Springer was gone. There was another explosion, so loud that the house seemed to rock with it. Jay stood still for an instant, not comprehending. Then he ran to the living room. Harry Springer lay crumpled on the floor. Jay walked over and knelt beside him. There was a small red hole in his temple, on the right side. Jay turned him, gently.

  Then he saw it. There was a hole the size of a fist in the back of Harry’s head. Part of his head had literally been blown away by a tremendous force.

  He thought he heard himself give out a choked cry, but he never knew if he really made a sound when he discovered that pieces of Harry’s brain were leaking into his hands.

  He ran into the bathroom and stuck his hands under the water. Time had slowed down again. He watched as the small pieces of reddish gray tissue clung, then moved, finally circled the bowl and disappeared down the drain. He watched them, transfixed.

  I should do something, he thought, but still he could not move. He let the water run over his hands until they turned bright red from the cold.

  He heard a door slam, footsteps.

  “Jay?” It was Sam’s voice. Then silence. “Oh, my God! Jay, where are you?”

  Jay walked to the door of the bathroom and leaned against the doorjamb. He looked at Sam, who seemed a long way off. He felt he was moving through deep water, that everything was slow and strange.

  “Jay, what happened?”

  “It’s Harry Springer.”

  “Harry Springer? Mary’s husband?”

  Jay nodded.

  “Is he dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t, you didn’t —”

  “No. He shot himself.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  Jay shook his head. He stood, looking at Harry. The ooze from Harry’s head wound was staining the carpet.

  Sam walked over to Jay. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What happened?”

  “I was in the kitchen. He came in. He had the gun pointed at me. He said, ‘You had no right.’”

  “Did he shoot at you? What happened in the kitchen? It’s a mess.”

  “Yes. No, not at me. He only — he was so close, he couldn’t have missed.”

  “But he did.”

  “Then he went out to the living room. I heard the shot. I came out and found him. There.”

  “Jay, shouldn’t you call the police right away?”

  Jay, thought about that. It seemed correct. There must be an answer to Sam’s question.

  “I was in the bathroom.” Jay looked at his hands. “His — his — oh, my God, Sam, pieces of his head fell out in my hands!”

  His legs suddenly buckled under him, and he would have fallen if Sam had not grabbed him. He clutched at the side of the door, and Sam steadied him.

  “Sit down, Jay. You’re shaking all over.”

  “Mary,” he said. “How am I going to tell Mary?”

  “Stay there. Don’t move. Don’t do anything until the police get here.”

  Sam went to the phone and dialed. Jay sat in silence, looking at the body of Harry Springer. The crimson stain on the frayed brown rug was getting larger.

  “The landlord is going to be pissed,” Jay said. Then he laughed, and there was a touch of hysteria in his laugh. “The rug, Sam, the fucking rug. I’m worrying about the goddamn rug.”

  Sam walked over and put his hand on Jay’s shoulder. “Take it easy, Jay. Let’s wait for the police.”

  Later, a police lieutenant question
ed him.

  “You don’t think he fired at you?”

  “No. He must have moved his hand at the last minute. He could have killed me, easy.”

  “You didn’t see him fire the fatal shot?”

  “No, I was in the kitchen. I ran out and found him.”

  ‘What did you do then?”

  “I, uh, I tried to turn him over, to see if he was still alive.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  “I could see he was dead. I saw the hole.”

  “What did you do next?”

  “I went in the bathroom.”

  “Why?”

  “There was some — stuff — from his head. It got all over my hands.”

  To Sam he said, ‘That was when you came in?”

  ‘Yes.”

  “You knew the deceased, Mr. Broderick?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have any idea why he might want to kill you? Or himself?”

  “Well, he — I know he was turned down for a bank loan.”

  “What does that have to do with you?”

  “Nothing, exactly —”

  “Then why would he want to kill you?”

  “He —” Jay looked at Sam.

  Sam said, ‘He was the husband of one of the reporters at the paper. But they had been separated for nearly a year.”

  “I see. Mr. Broderick, was there a relationship between you and the wife of the deceased?”

  “She was getting a divorce.”

  “You were having sexual relations with her.”

  “We were going to be married. Right after the divorce.”

  “You were having relations with her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you touch the gun?”

  “Did I? No, I didn’t touch it.”

  “Was there any kind of altercation between you and Mr. Springer?”

  “No. I just saw him standing there with the gun, that’s all.”

  “Did you say anything to him?”

  “Yes. I did.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I love her,” Jay said, quietly. “I love her.”

  The ambulance came, and the body was lifted onto a stretcher, covered up and taken away. Jay went into the kitchen to get a drink of water, but he heard one of the medics say to the other, “Same old thing. One guy fucking another guy’s wife.”

  The policeman said to him, “You weren’t planning on being out of town in the next few days, were you, Mr. Broderick?”

  “No. No, I’ll be here.”

  Jay sat in the armchair, staring at the crimson stain on the rug.

  “Come on, Jay, we’ve got to tell her.”

  “Sam, what do I say? What do I say?”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “First Don, now this? Sam, how can I tell her this?”

  “Come on, Jay.”

  “He’s Karen’s father.”

  “We’ve got to do it, Jay. It’s getting late.”

  “You’re right,” he said, getting up slowly and walking towards the door. “You’re right, it’s getting late.”

  The goddamned deer, he thought as he combed his hair, patting down an errant wisp that wouldn’t stay in place. This time, when Lyndon suggested that they go out and blast Bambi, he was going to say no.

  His first visit to the LBJ Ranch had been eight days after the election, and he had been sensitive to Lyndon’s eagerness to help, to be important. At first he had demurred when Lyndon suggested a dawn hunt, but Lyndon, who desperately wanted to be a good host, pressed him, and he reluctantly agreed.

  Hunting wild animals with a high-powered rifle was not his idea of sport; it was too one-sided. Put a man with a knife alone in the woods with a lion, that might be a challenge. He simply could not understand what kind of a thrill men got from killing animals who could not fight back. It violated his sense of fair play.

  He climbed into one of Lyndon’s white Cadillacs — not exactly Hemingway, he thought ruefully — and they zipped off to a corner of the ranch where deer were known to feed. He hoped maybe they’d stay away that day, but no such luck. He picked up the rifle, pressed his cheek to the barrel and aimed. At that moment, the deer turned and looked directly at him, its brown eyes wide, large and lovely.

  They were all watching him. If he backed down now, Lyndon would have a dandy story to tell, and the vice president was very good at stories. He squeezed the trigger, and the deer staggered and fell to the ground. He walked quickly away.

  But the memory of that creature in his sights, staring directly at him, haunted him. He couldn’t shake off the image. He had told his wife about it, wondering again at the sport of slaughtering a helpless animal.

  That would have been bad enough, but as he looked out his window one day, there was Lyndon, loping along with that cowboy stride of his across the South Lawn, carrying the mounted head with full antlers under his arm. He took a look at the grotesque object, feigned polite interest and blanched when Lyndon suggested it be hung on the wall of the Oval Office. He imagined what his children would think. “Look, kids, Daddy shot the shit out of Bambi, and there he is, up on the wall.”

  He thanked the vice president and thought the matter closed, but Lyndon kept bringing up the goddamned deer until it became a sore point between them. So finally he had the damn thing hung in the Fish Room, where he wouldn’t have to see it often. Lyndon was genuinely pleased.

  This time, no hunting, but he told his wife he did want to ride. They had ridden together through the fields of Newport the summer they got engaged, and he had surprised her by galloping his horse at breakneck speeds across the wild, grassy fields. She was a superb horsewoman herself, and she said she thought he would look quite handsome in a Stetson, and that pleased him. An Irish cowboy! That would be a new one.

  This trip to Texas was about mending fences. The state’s Democrats were splitting apart because of a feud between the governor, John Connolly, and Sen. Ralph Yarborough. He had to get the matter patched up, because Texas was a key part of his reelection strategy. To his surprise, Jacqueline volunteered to come with him on the trip. She had long avoided politics, but now she seemed to be moving more into the orbit of his life — which was politics, much of it. She had been greeted in San Antonio and Houston like a movie star, with people shrieking her name. “Oh, Jack,” she said, “campaigning is so easy when you’re president. I can go anywhere with you this year.” And she had promised, California in two weeks.

  Now, in Fort Worth, he finished dressing quickly and went downstairs, to see that a crowd outside the hotel was waiting for him. He was in a fine mood, even climbed up on a flatbed truck to do a little cheerleading off the cuff for the Democrats. A man in the crowd called out, “Where’s Jackie!” and he pointed up to the eighth-floor window of the hotel. “Mrs. Kennedy is organizing herself,” he said with a grin. “It takes her a little longer, but, of course, she looks better than we do when she does it.”

  Climbing down from the truck, he went back to the hotel for a formal breakfast meeting with Fort Worth Democrats, another crowd eager for her to appear. She made her entrance through the kitchen, and as the doors opened, she was greeted by sheer pandemonium: 2,000 Texans cheering lustily, standing on chairs to get a better view. He saw the alarm in her face, and he waved to her, smiling. Her eyes caught his, and she smiled back, and she walked towards him with her hand outstretched. He took her hand, and the crowd kept cheering. He felt a throb of admiration for her. She was not only elegant, she was a trouper. Together, he thought, they were really together now. The Chicago Sun Times said that morning that Jacqueline Kennedy may have tipped the balance and cemented the state’s electoral votes for her husband. He smiled at her again, and she smiled back, a triumphant smile.

  But back in the hotel room, his mood changed as he leafed through the pages of The Dallas Morning News. There was a full-page ad accusing him of treason — making secret agreements w
ith the U.S. Communist party.

  He read every word, then handed the paper to his wife. He had difficulty comprehending the people on the far right lunatic fringe. What on earth made them so batty! “Can you imagine a paper doing a thing like that!” he asked her. “Oh, you know, we’re heading into nut country today.”

  He walked to the window, the skies were still dreary, and a fine mist filled the air. He turned and walked back to the center of the room. Thinking of the unruly crowd scene the night before, he said, “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 his briefcase.”

  He turned his right hand into a pistol, his thumb the hammer, and he jerked his thumb twice to illustrate the hammer’s motion. “Then he could have dropped the gun and the briefcase” — he dropped his hand and whirled around like a gunfighter— “and melted away in the crowd.”

  His wife shook her head. She understood well the dramatic streak in her husband. It was his way of dealing with the ugly things that had been said in the ad. None of it was real to her. She peered out the window. It was still misting, and the cloud-draped sky was dark. There would be a forty-five minute drive in an open car, and she’d just as soon it kept raining. She looked out the window again. They’d all be looking at her, and she didn’t want to be a mess. She didn’t want to let down the side, after all.

  “Oh,” she said, looking out at the sky. “I want the bubbletop.”

  They lowered Harry Springer into the still-warm earth on a fall day that was fair and crisp, under a cloudless blue sky. They all came to bid him farewell — the ones who wouldn’t give him a job and the ones who wouldn’t give him a loan. They were there.

  Jay stood on a hill opposite the cemetery and watched them. “Dominus vobiscum. Et cum spiritu tuo,” he said. “God grant you peace, Harry.”

  What had gone on in Harry’s brain that night? he wondered. What impulse had traveled from synapse to synapse that made him move the gun at the last minute? When he said, “I love her,” was it then Harry had known that he had really lost it all, that there was nothing left?