Marina and Lee

by Priscilla Johnson McMillan

  “To remember Papa by sometime.”

  — 24 —

  Walker

  Things at last came to a head at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall. One day during a slack moment John Graef had noticed that Lee was reading the Russian humor magazine, Krokodil. “I wouldn’t bring anything like that down here again,” Graef warned him quietly, “because some people might not take kindly to your reading anything like that.”1 Graef had also noticed that Lee’s appearance was going downhill markedly. He used to dress well for work, but now he was wearing nothing but a white T-shirt with his slacks. Nor had the quality of his work improved. Lee worked fast, everyone agreed on that, and he tried almost desperately to work well. But in the course of a normal day, many more of his jobs than average had to be done over because they failed to meet company standards. Graef hated to fire any trainee, but, he said, “I reached the opinion that he would never be the kind of employee I was looking for, giving him every chance.”2

  Graef did not have his own office, so he spoke to Lee in the most deserted spot he could find, a place in the darkroom where he could lower his voice and break the news without embarrassing Lee. He told him that business was pretty slow, “ ‘but the point is that you haven’t been turning the work out like you should. There has been friction with other people and so on’ … I told him, ‘I think you tried to do the work, but I just don’t think you have the qualities for doing the work that we need.’ ”

  Graef recalled that Lee made no outburst, no protest. “He took this the whole time looking at the floor, I believe, and after I was through he said, ‘Well, thank you.’ And he turned around and walked off.”3

  The date of this conversation must have been Monday, April 1, for on the top of his time sheet that day, Lee wrote: “Please note new mailing add. P.O. Box 2915.”4 Until almost the very end, the company had had no address for Lee but that of Gary Taylor, the one he had been using when he found the job six months before.

  Lee worked at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall the rest of that week, through April 6. He did not tell Marina he had been fired. He kept to himself his disappointment at losing the only job he had ever really liked. His failure had almost certainly been caused by the emotional troubles that became apparent in mid-January. Those troubles must have made it exceedingly taxing for him to do precise work requiring concentration. And they destroyed his capacity to get along with the other men. For example, he had become unable to tolerate the presence of anybody near him in the close confines of the darkroom. It was a vicious circle, for Lee’s frustration and sense of failure on the job, which are vividly described by everyone who worked with him, must have made his emotional trouble worse. Next there was his indecision in February about whether and when to kill Walker, and the accompanying torment that nearly erupted in murderous violence at home. Then in March, with his mind made up and his energies released, he took on a crushing schedule—long hours at work, constant checking at the post office, typing classes, and late hours at night while he painstakingly prepared his documents and his plan of attack. Graef said later that Lee took the news more quietly than most men would have; the subdued response was typical of him.

  Lee’s timing was uncanny. Somehow he managed to be fired between the date when he received notice that his weapons had arrived and the date when Walker was expected back.5 This coincidence, together with Lee’s own behavior, gives rise to doubt as to what it was he wanted most. In March he had written confidently to his brother Robert that he had become “adept” in his work and was expecting a raise. Yet he flaunted a Russian newspaper, which contributed greatly to his being fired. And when, after he was fired, his colleague Dennis Ofstein gave him the names of other printing plants where he might look for work, Lee merely laughed his wry laugh and said that if he failed to find anything else, he could always go back to Russia.6

  The truth appears to be that Lee, even now, needed a final push to go through with his plan to shoot Walker. The arrival of his guns was a portent, but by itself it was not enough. By maneuvering matters, or helping maneuver them, in such a way that he was fired, Lee handed himself a part of the “trigger” he required. All his life he had responded to being hurt, or rejected, by whirling around and hurting someone else. The firing was a catalyst—it would help galvanize him into making his characteristic response. And the rest of the push he needed would be supplied by the return of the Evil Man himself.

  Marina, meanwhile, had found a friend, her first since she had given up her Russians. She was an American named Ruth Hyde Paine.

  They had met at a party on February 22 given by Everett Glover, a chemist at Socony Mobil Oil in Dallas and a tennis-playing friend of the de Mohrenschildts.7 Glover knew that Marina was badly treated by her husband and was in need of a friend with whom she could speak Russian. He invited six or eight guests to the party, among them Ruth and Michael Paine, who were in a madrigal-singing group with him. Michael was unable to come, but Ruth attended the party. Most of the evening she chatted with Marina in her halting Russian while Lee held forth on his experiences in the Soviet Union. Ruth was studying Russian and hoped to teach it. If Marina needed a friend who spoke Russian, Ruth did, too.

  Ruth drove to Neely Street to visit Marina twice during the first half of March, and the two women took their children to the park. June Oswald was one year old, and Ruth’s two children were two and three years old. The two mothers talked while their children played together. Ruth’s spoken Russian was hesitant, and Marina’s English was almost nonexistent. Still, Marina, frank as always, managed to convey the worst of her troubles: she was pregnant again and ashamed to let the Russians, who were her only friends in Dallas, know it; her husband wanted to send her back to Russia, a sort of divorce without a divorce, and Marina did not want to go. Ruth, who at thirty-one was ten years Marina’s senior, felt that this girl did indeed need a friend. On her third visit, toward the end of March, she picked up June and Marina and drove them to her house in Irving, Texas, a suburb on the other side of town. Marina enjoyed the outing hugely.

  Ruth and Michael Paine invited the Oswalds to supper at their home on Tuesday, April 2, and undertook to arrange transportation. Michael Paine was a research engineer at Bell Helicopter Corporation, on the road between Dallas and Fort Worth. He left work sometime after five that afternoon and drove to Oak Cliff. He found the apartment on Neely Street and arrived just before seven o’clock.8

  Marina was not yet ready. She had not packed the baby’s diapers, bottles, and toys and could not decide what to take. Michael welcomed the delay. He had heard about Lee’s experiences in the Soviet Union and was glad of a chance to talk to him before the evening got under way. He was curious to find out what made Lee “tick.” But from the outset Michael was upset by the scene before him: Lee Oswald ordering his frail-looking wife around (in Russian) like a drill instructor, telling her in a loud, harsh voice what to pack but doing nothing to help. He sat on the sofa talking to Michael, interrupting himself only to bark out a new order. “Here is a little fellow who certainly insists on wearing the pants,” Michael thought. And he considered Lee’s treatment of Marina “outrageous.”

  Nevertheless, Michael said later that their conversation was “the most fruitful half-hour” he and Lee ever spent.9 Lee was as frank as he had it in him to be. Why, Michael asked, had he gone to Russia? Lee said he hated exploitation, adding with an edge in his voice that the company that employed him—a printing and engraving plant—earned a lot more from his labor than it ever paid back to him. He did not mention that he had just been fired.

  Michael noted that Lee’s voice was laced with scorn for both Russia and America. In Russia, he said, you could not choose your job or where you were going to live; why, you could not even own a rifle unless you belonged to a club that was really a paramilitary organization. Lee clearly adored rifles.

  Marina had now packed, the car was bursting with baby things, and they were off to Irving. On the way, Marina recalls, Lee was shy, and Michael did most of the ta
lking. Once they were at dinner, however, the feeling crept over Michael once again that Lee’s treatment of his wife was “medieval torture.” Marina caught snatches of the conversation, and Lee had to translate the rest, which he did with an air of supreme annoyance, as if it were an imposition. So perfunctory were his interpolations that Michael did not trust them and wished that Ruth were translating instead. She might not be as fluent as Lee, but she would be at pains to give a full account. Michael was appalled that Marina had no way of communicating with anyone except through Lee and was dependent on him for everything she knew. “Take that away,” Michael thought a trifle grimly, “and he will lose his power over her.”

  Lee was scrupulously polite to Ruth. He asked where she had learned Russian and whether she had found it hard, adding that he was delighted that Marina now had a friend with whom she could speak her own language.

  After supper Ruth and Marina washed dishes and spoke Russian in the kitchen, while the men sat in the living room and picked up their conversation where they had left off. They discussed Russian and American politics, and when the name of General Walker came up, Michael later remembered, Lee smiled an “inscrutable” smile.10

  When the women rejoined them, Michael tried to include Marina in the conversation. But once again, Michael recalls, Lee kept “slapping her down” and “calling her a fool.” The whole evening left Michael “shocked” and “offended.” He thought that Lee’s behavior toward Marina, his treating her like a vassal and enjoying it, was in cruel contrast with the affection he showed toward his child. Then and there Michael conceived the idea of helping Marina “escape,” of freeing her from “her bondage and servitude to this man.” The idea was uncharacteristic, for Michael Paine was a man who respected privacy above everything. He would not for the world intervene in someone else’s affairs unless goaded by outrage and an inner, irresistible prompting. But so appalling was Lee’s treatment of Marina, so offensive to his notion of human dignity, that a reservoir of charity opened up in him that he would have denied he possessed at all. Still, Michael kept his calm politeness. On the way home in the car, Marina remembers that the two men talked again about politics.

  Lee’s feelings about the evening contrasted sharply with Michael’s. He was elated when he got home. “Look,” he said, “I’ve found you a friend to talk Russian to. You will help her with her Russian and she will help you learn English.” Lee was also pleased that Ruth was the mother of small children. That way neither of the women would have time for “foolish” things. “She will be good for you,” he told Marina. “She’s a fine, upright person and she’ll have a good influence on you. She’ll show you how to be an American mother.”

  “Am I a bad mother, then?” Marina asked.

  “No. I didn’t mean that. But she can tell you better than I can how things are done over here.”

  Lee also liked Michael, who had listened, or so it seemed to him, to his political ideas with respect. As for Marina, she was grateful to her husband for sanctioning this new friendship, for she had nobody else. It was one of the very few times Lee ever mentioned that she might learn English, and that pleased her, too. It did not occur to her that Lee may have been looking forward to a moment, in the not too distant future, when she would need an American friend who spoke Russian. Ruth and Michael Paine fitted very neatly into his plans.11

  Lee had not yet tried out his new weapons. As nearly as can be determined, it was on Wednesday, April 3, the day after the dinner at the Paines’, that he used his rifle for the first time.12 He signed out of work at five, rode the bus home, slipped upstairs to fetch his rifle, and slipped out again without Marina’s hearing him. Moving as rapidly as he could, he walked a half-dozen blocks to the corner of Sixth Street and Beckley Avenue and boarded an inbound bus. He rode a mile and a half, a five- to seven-minute ride, to the intersection of West Commerce Street and Beckley Avenue. He got off the bus and strode quickly down the levee to an uninhabited area 35 feet below called the Trinity River bottom.13 There he practiced with his second-hand Mannlicher-Carcano C2766 and his four-power telescopic sight. He did not have much time, for the sun set at about 6:45 P.M.

  The tasks Lee had to accomplish were these: He had to get the feel of the trigger action of this particular rifle, which was new to him and more powerful than any he had used before; and he had to learn to work the bolt smoothly so as not to disturb the alignment of the barrel. He also had to adjust the sight so that all his shots landed within a fairly small radius. It was the first time he had owned a four-power sight, and he had to get used to it. According to experts, learning to use a telescopic sight is easy (General Walker calls it “very easy”) and a skill that vastly enhances accuracy. It has been estimated that a man of Oswald’s training and experience would be able to adjust to the new rifle and scope, “would be capable of sighting that rifle in well, firing it,” with only ten rounds of practice.14

  Oswald was apparently confident in his ability to handle firearms. Small-game hunting with his brothers in his early years seems to have given him an ease and familiarity with guns. His training in marksmanship in the Marine Corps, at Camp Pendleton, California, was intensive, and he learned to sight, aim, and fire from a variety of positions at targets up to five hundred yards away.

  In December 1956, at the end of his training, Oswald was tested and scored 212—two points above the minimum for “sharpshooter” on a scale of expertise ranging in ascending order from “marksman” to “sharpshooter” to “expert.” By civilian standards he was an excellent shot. Two and a half years later, in May 1959, on another range where the details of weather, light, quality of rifle, and ammunition are not known, Oswald scored 191, only one point over the minimum for “marksman.” But those test results would establish him, by civilian standards, “as a good to excellent shot.” Moreover, he now had a four-power telescopic sight, which would more than compensate for a lack of recent practice.

  On Friday, April 5, two days after his first practice session with his new rifle, Lee signed out of work at 5:05 and arrived home just as Marina was about to take the baby for a walk. Out of breath, Lee announced that he would like to join them; go on ahead, he said, and he would catch up with them. Marina pushed the baby slowly in her stroller, and Lee caught up with them before they had walked two blocks. He was moving even more rapidly than usual, and Marina could not help noticing that he was carrying his rifle, clumsily wrapped in his green Marine Corps raincoat.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “Target practice,” he replied and asked her to walk him to the bus stop.

  Marina was angry and disappointed. As often happened between them, he had promised her something, then yanked it away, in this case the pleasure of a walk. When they came within sight of the bus stop, she burst into open reproach.

  “Instead of coming with us, you go someplace to shoot.”

  “It’s none of your business. I’m going anyway!” He caught a glimpse of the bus over his shoulder and started sprinting.

  “Don’t bother to come home at all,” she shouted after him. “I won’t be waiting for you. I hope the police catch you there.”

  As the bus flashed by, she saw a sign in front: “Love Field.” But by the time she got to the bus stop, Lee had leaped aboard and was gone.

  Lee was too secretive to show his face on a rifle range, and there is no evidence that he did so at any time following his return from Russia. So anomalous was he, however, that he was perfectly capable of climbing onto a crowded bus carrying a rifle poorly concealed in his raincoat. It was about nine o’clock when Lee returned home. He said he had been practicing, and Marina told him to watch out for the police. He said that where he had been, there was no one around to hear him practice.15

  Marina had said that she watched Lee clean the rifle three to five times that week. The first time was March 31, the day she took his photograph, when he cleaned the rifle “on the sofa” although he did not fire it that day. Thus it is possible that the
evenings of Wednesday, April 3, and Friday, April 5, are the only occasions Lee ever practiced firing the Mannlicher-Carcano. However, Saturday was his last day at work, and he may have practiced on Sunday, April 7. Marina could not have seen him clean the rifle after that—Lee did not have it at home.

  Marina detested the rifle. She dreaded it and found its presence in the apartment distasteful. Terrified lest it go off, she never went near it, never touched it or moved it no matter where it might be. Compulsive housekeeper though she was, she did her cleaning in a careful circle all around it. Yet she did not ask any questions. Lee had said he was going hunting, and it made sense to her that he might go target-shooting first.

  Sometime that first week of April, on Thursday or Friday, the 4th or 5th, Jeanne de Mohrenschildt came to call. George was away in New York, and Jeanne, anticipating that they would soon be leaving Dallas for good, had already quit her job. She had free time during the day and the use of George’s convertible, and she paid her first visit to Marina on Neely Street. Somehow as she was showing Jeanne around, Marina was drawn, not to Lee’s “office” but to a clothes closet where he was keeping his rifle.

  “Look at that!” Marina said. “We have barely enough to eat and my crazy husband goes and buys a rifle.” She told Jeanne that Lee had been practicing with it.

  Jeanne’s father had been a gun collector, and she knew her way around rifles. Instantly, she spotted something that meant nothing at all to Marina: Lee’s gun had a telescopic sight. She said nothing to Marina, but she filed the fact away in her mind; when George got back from New York, she seems to have told him that poor as the Oswalds were, Lee had bought a rifle with a scope and had been practicing.16

  Marina’s worst worry that week had nothing to do with the rifle or with her husband’s target practice. She was upset because he was talking in his sleep again—the first time in six weeks. She did as he had told her and woke him each time he started talking. But during those last days of March and early in April, she sometimes had to wake him twice a night. She was beginning to be afraid that he was ill.