Thus by far the greatest legacy Lee carried out of the Walker attempt was the conviction that he was invulnerable, that he stood at the center of a magic circle swathed in a cloak of immunity. It was a feeling that fitted dangerously with the feeling he already had that he was special, that he had particular prerogatives. He and he alone was entitled to that that was forbidden to everybody else.
— Interlude —
Why, after the failure of his attempt on General Walker, did Lee choose to go to New Orleans? It was the one place where he had resources—relatives who might shelter him and help him pick up the threads of his life. For Lee going to New Orleans was not like going some place new. It was the city where he was born and in which he had spent seven of his twenty-three years, more than in any other place. He had memories there.
Lee had lived in New Orleans until he was four, staying by turns with his mother, with his good-natured aunt Lillian Murret and her family, and in a children’s home with his brothers. At fourteen he had come to live there again, after an unhappy year and a half in New York, during which he had barely escaped being sent to a home for delinquent children. New Orleans had been a refuge to him then, and it was to be a refuge to him now.
The two and a half years Lee had spent there as a teenager—January 1954 to June 1956—when he was fourteen to sixteen years old, were filled with portents for his future. It was there he became interested in a cause, Marxism; there he began to visit the public library and read Das Kapital and other Communist books; and there he spoke for the first and only time about shooting a president of the United States. Indeed, during the summer that lay ahead of him, the summer of 1963, it was as if everything that happened to Lee had already happened before. He was a little like an actor on a stage, walking through a part he had already played.
But of course it was not the same. Lee was a man now, not a boy of sixteen. His cause this time was to be Cuba, not a vague, impersonal Marxism. And if he thought about killing anybody now, it would be as a volunteer for Fidel Castro, shooting up the American invader. The summer of 1963 was to be Lee’s time of peaceful political action, the time in which he came closer than ever in his life before to creating a serious, nonviolent, political identity for himself. By picketing, handing out leaflets, debating on the radio, Lee tried everything he could think of to change American policy toward Cuba. To him it was part of something bigger. He wanted to make a dent in the complacent American society he saw around him and change it peacefully from below.
Still, one gets the feeling of repetition. Shortly before his seventeenth birthday, from Fort Worth Lee had written the Young People’s Socialist League in New York to ask if there was a local YPSL chapter he could join. Now, during the summer of 1963, he was to engage in correspondence with three left-wing political organizations in New York and try to found his own chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Even when he left New Orleans for the last time, it was like a repetition of something he had done before: on September 19, 1959, he had embarked from New Orleans for the USSR. Almost exactly four years later, on September 25, 1963, he was to leave New Orleans again, this time trying to reach Cuba via Mexico City.
Lee’s memories of his adolescent years in New Orleans contained both good and bad. There had been the Friday night seafood suppers at his aunt Lillian’s—evenings he had loved and looked forward to. But there had also been fights: a fight with some white boys for riding in the black part of a segregated bus, and a couple of fights with the boys at Beauregard Junior High where Lee attended eighth and ninth grades. The boys at the school were a rough lot, and Lee got into fights because “he didn’t make friends,” and “he wasn’t going to take anything from anybody.”1
But Lee did make a friend or two in New Orleans. One was Edward Voebel, who patched him up in the restroom after his second fight at Beauregard. Voebel, a gentle boy who loved his piano lessons, occasionally dropped by the apartment Lee and his mother shared at 126 Exchange Place. Lee and Voebel would go downstairs to the pool hall just below the apartment, shoot a few games of pool, and spend some time throwing darts. Afterward they would walk along the riverfront.
It was to his friend Voebel that Lee, the proud but dissatisfied possessor of a plastic .45, confided his plan to break into a store on Rampart Street, using a glass cutter he had, and steal a real pistol that he had spotted in the window. Voebel accompanied Lee to the store, went inside to case it with him, then quietly talked him out of his scheme on the ground that the glass cutter would set off the burglar alarm. Voebel found Lee easy to dissuade.2
Another friend, Palmer McBride, with whom Lee worked as a messenger in a dental lab after quitting high school, remembered a threat that he made. They were listening to classical music when Lee announced that “he would like to kill President Eisenhower because he was exploiting the working class.” McBride recalled afterward that Lee did not seem to be speaking “in jest.”3 Lee also suggested to McBride that they join the Communist Party together to take advantage of its “social functions.”4
And a boy called William Wulf, then president of the New Orleans Amateur Astronomy Association, was engaged in only his second conversation with Lee when Lee came right out and said “he was looking for a Communist cell in town to join but he couldn’t find any … he couldn’t find any that would show interest in him as a Communist.” The two boys got to arguing, with Lee “hollering” about Communism in a “loudmouthed” and “boisterous” way.5 Wulf’s father, a refugee from Germany who was touchy in political matters, overheard them. He took Lee by the arm and politely ordered him out of the house.
“We were sixteen,” Wulf remembered later, and Lee “was quite violent for communism.” Then Wulf gave the epitaph, not only for Lee at sixteen, but for Lee during the summer of 1963 and indeed throughout his life. “He seemed to me a boy that was looking for something to belong to.” But, Wulf concluded, “I don’t think anybody was looking for him to belong to them.”6
Boy or man, it can at least be said that Lee was looking for truth. There is something touching in the fact that this man, for whom it was a struggle, because of his reading disability and his limited education, even to write at all, should have spent scores of hours in lonely written dialogue with himself over what a good society ought to be.
It may be, as Marina once said, that it was nothing but fame Lee was after. It may be that when he looked up from his books, it was not human beings he saw around him, but only an abstract vision of humanity. It may be that, struggling with the devils inside and pasting them onto politics, it was not others he was trying to help, only himself. And it may be that it was not truth he was seeking, only personal salvation. It may be that Lee was only an egotist after all.
But his ideals say something in his favor. He had lived in two great opposing social systems and tried to make sense of them. He believed that the perfect society would combine the best features of both. He thought that government ought to take care of people, give them medicine and education, guarantee their civil liberties and put an end to racial discrimination. And he believed in disarmament among nations.
It says something for Lee that the ideals he cherished were good ones, and that, had they been carried into practice, they would have meant a better life for others. Unlike the Nazis’, Lee’s was not an ideology of power. He opposed the supremacy of any racial or ethnic group over any other. He favored the weak over the strong. It was a better world he was after, and he had a generous vision.
And if at the end he failed, if the undertow of his old, angry, tumultuous self overwhelmed him one last time and swept him under, who is to deny that he made at least this attempt to carry his vision peacefully into practice?
New Orleans, in the summer of 1963, was the place where he made his last try.
PART FOUR
New Orleans, Mexico City, Dallas, 1963
— 26 —
Brief Separation
On the morning of Wednesday, April 24, Ruth Paine drove from Irving to Dallas
and arrived on Neely Street with her two children, ready for another outing with the Oswalds, something like their picnic a few days before.1 She was surprised to find the three of them, Lee, Marina, and little June, perched on a mountain of luggage.
The Oswalds explained that they had decided to move to New Orleans. Lee was going ahead to look for work, while Marina and the baby would stay on Neely Street, keeping only a minimum of possessions and waiting until Lee could send for them.
Lee asked Ruth to take him to the bus terminal. She agreed, and all six of them, children and grown-ups, crowded into Ruth’s station wagon around Lee’s gear. They drove to the Continental Trailways terminal, where Lee went inside to check his bags and buy two tickets, one for him to use that night and one for Marina when she came to join him.
Ruth sat in the station wagon gathering her thoughts. It would be hard for Marina on Neely Street without a telephone, knowing only a few words of English and with no easy way of reaching Lee. And the bus trip to New Orleans would be an ordeal. It was twelve or thirteen hours long, and Marina was pregnant. She would have a small child in tow, and although Lee was plainly carrying everything he could, she would still have clothing, dishes, a playpen, a stroller, and a crib to get on board.
Ruth had been worried about Marina almost from the moment they met.2 She felt that Marina was lonely, troubled, and in need of a friend. She started worrying a good deal more after one of their outings in March, when Marina confided that Lee meant to send her back to Russia and she did not want to go. Marina had not mentioned it since, and Ruth was mystified as to where the Oswalds’ marriage stood. But both she and Michael felt that it was “cruel” of Lee not to let Marina learn English. They were appalled that she might have to go back to Russia against her will. It had occurred to them that they might be able to offer her an alternative if the need became acute. As Michael was to put it later: “I thought out of the largesse of this country it should be possible for her to stay here if she wanted to.… She struck me as a somewhat apolitical person and yet true, just, and conscientious, so it was agreeable to me to look forward to financing her stay until she could make her own way here.”3
Ruth had already done more than just think about helping out. Fearful that she might offend and that, with her limited Russian, she might not be able to find the proper words in conversation, she had sat down on April 7, taken out her English-Russian dictionary and, with enormous effort, written a letter to Marina. In it she suggested that if things became too difficult between her and Lee and they were not able to work out their problems, then she and June would be welcome to stay at the Paines’ for as long as they needed.4 Ruth placed one condition on her offer: that she be able to speak to Lee directly about it and that Marina’s acceptance be agreeable to him. She had talked to Michael about her offer, but the fact is that Ruth was willing and able to make it because Michael was not living at home, there was an extra room, and she was lonely.
Ruth did not mail the letter. To come between the Oswalds was the last thing she wanted to do. But now, as she sat in the car, it occurred to her that she might be able to help during the days just ahead. Having summoned up language to write the letter, she realized that she had the words at her command to make her invitation in Russian, so that Marina, as well as Lee, would understand.
When Lee returned to the car, Ruth made her suggestion. Instead of going back to Neely Street, why didn’t Marina and June stay with her in Irving? As soon as Lee sent for them, she would drive them to New Orleans.
Lee did not hesitate. It is not even clear that he consulted Marina. He accepted, strode back into the terminal, redeemed Marina’s ticket, returned to the car, and handed Marina part of her fare to use as spending money. He did not offer to contribute to groceries or other costs of the suddenly expanded Paine household.
As they were driving back to Neely Street to pack up Marina’s and the baby’s possessions, Lee asked Ruth if she would stop for a moment at the central post office. Ruth noticed as he emerged that he was carrying a stack of magazines.5 Lee had not closed his post office box; he merely cleared out what was in it. The “magazines” Ruth noticed may have included the fifty leaflets that the Fair Play for Cuba Committee had mailed on April 19 from New York.
When they got back to the apartment, Lee began to load the baby things into Ruth’s car—the playpen, the crib, the stroller. He packed up a box of dishes and laid Marina’s and the baby’s clothing loosely over them. Since the suitcases were going with him, Marina had at most an overnight bag.
The helter-skelter nature of his packing differed sharply from the careful job he had done the night before. Then, he gave everything the most sedulous attention and refused to let Marina help. It wasn’t woman’s work, he said. He had traveled more and had more practice. The result was that Marina forgot about the rifle. She forgot to ask what he was going to do with it—leave it with her or take it to New Orleans? But Marina was not as worried as she had been. Lee was calmer than she had seen him in months. He was subdued, even downcast, over their separation and the uncertainty ahead. Marina’s fears that he might try to shoot someone had subsided. She felt that his agreement to move signified a renunciation of violence—as, in a way, it did.
Ruth, Marina, and the children set off for Irving about four in the afternoon, leaving Lee behind in the apartment. Once again, just as when he moved from Fort Worth to Dallas, he had found someone to take care of Marina and June while he got settled in a new city. Ruth had been expected that day, and Lee knew that she would agree to drive him and his baggage to the bus station. Her last-minute offer to take Marina to Irving came as a convenient surprise; but Lee, in confronting Ruth with his helpless wife and child, must at least have been counting on her to watch out for them on Neely Street. He had, as usual, taken her help for granted. He stayed only a few hours in the Neely Street apartment after Marina and Ruth left, then boarded an evening bus for New Orleans.
Early the next morning, April 25, Mrs. Lillian Murret’s telephone rang at 757 French Street, New Orleans.
“Hello, Aunt Lillian.”
“Who is this?”
“Lee.”
“Lee?” She was very much surprised.
“Yes,” was the laconic answer.
“When did you last get out? When did you get back? What are you doing?” The last Mrs. Murret had heard of her prodigal nephew, he had defected to the USSR with considerable publicity, to the great embarrassment of them all. They thought that what he had done was reprehensible, and they supposed that they would never be seeing him again.
“Well, I’m glad you got back,” Mrs. Murret said.
Lee asked his aunt if she could put him up for a while, and she agreed. When he arrived at the house, “he was very poorly dressed,” Mrs. Murret said later. He had no jacket, just a sport shirt, “and a very poorly pair of pants.”
“Lee,” she said, “you don’t look too presentable. I am going to buy you some clothes.” No, no, he protested. He had everything he needed. He had checked his luggage at the bus terminal.6
Lee was overjoyed by his reception. He had written the Murrets from Russia but had not had an answer. They were extremely conservative, they disapproved of his going to Russia, and he was afraid they might not welcome him to New Orleans. Anticipating this, Lee had confided to Marina that he suspected the Murrets lived beyond what his uncle’s earnings would support. Lillian’s husband, Charles Ferdinand, or “Dutz,” Murret, as he had been known since his prizefight days, was a steamship clerk, and Lee thought that his uncle might be engaged in some other activity on the side, like bookmaking. There is no evidence that this was so, but that was Lee’s way of accounting for their discomfiture at his going to Russia and the possibility that they might not be glad to see him. He thought they did not want to do anything that might bring attention to them. By confiding his suspicions to Marina, Lee had covered in advance his own embarrassment in case they refused to help him.
Lillian Murret had taken care of Lee
both as a child and as a teenager, and if her own children had been jealous of him, they had never once shown it. The Murrets were a close-knit Catholic family, and the children were raised to be kind. They considered Lee different from other children and felt sorry for him. But Mrs. Murret says that they “loved Lee.… They have always loved him.”7
Only two of the five Murret children were at home now—John, or “Bogie,” four years older than Lee, who had attended Loyola and St. Louis Universities, had been a professional basketball player, and was working as a salesman for E. R. Squibb and Company; and Marilyn, Lee’s favorite cousin. Marilyn was a schoolteacher, tall, thin, and thirty-five, with straight dark hair. Marilyn shared Lee’s love of travel. She had spent three and a half years roaming the world on tramp steamers and had taught in places as far away as Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. She liked Lee, Lee liked her, and they were pleased to see each other again.
It was six or seven years since Dutz had seen Lee. “He looked older,” he recalled, “but he hadn’t changed too much.”8 But in Bogie’s view Lee had changed. He seemed really intelligent. Bogie thought Lee had grown intellectually, especially in his vocabulary, although he realized that Lee purposely picked his words to impress people. Still, Bogie says, “he was impressive.”9 As for Marilyn, she had noticed even as a child that Lee would read an encyclopedia where anybody else would read a novel. She conceded that he was not outgoing, that he would be liked by some and “hated” by others, but she had always respected him precisely because he was “different.” He was “refined,” he loved nature, he liked to “sit in the park and meditate.”10 And so once again, the whole Murret family was ready to help Lee if they could. Lee, as usual, stood on his pride, appeared to ask nothing, acting as if he did not want help and yet, as usual, accepting it.
Marina and Lee Page 48
