Top Down

by Jim Lehrer

  Off we went through the front door of Union Station and within minutes found the perfect place—a bench in a small park between the station’s circular driveway and the Capitol Building three blocks away. Being outside took some of the pressure off my smoking. Even on the few occasions when I stayed put to light up a cigarette, I made sure none of the smoke ever got in her face.

  I decided to steer the conversation toward ways that I might help her help her father. Yes, I’d witnessed Van Walters’s decision to remove the bubble top and I wouldn’t deny it, but maybe I could persuade her God really did it. Before I could get into any of that, Marti asked about me. Now she was interested in that biographical small talk we’d missed before.

  I kept it brief. I always tried to remember the advice from a college reporting class that reporters should not talk to news sources about themselves. Stay on subject—them.

  I told Marti that I’d grown up in Kansas, the son of a small daily newspaper editor and his wife who was—I believed then and still do now—the smartest person in town. She ran the library board and the school board and most everything around that mattered. She and my dad had met as students at Kansas State University, but Dad had encouraged me from very early on to go to the University of Missouri, which was known for its excellent journalism school.

  “There was a draft, of course, so I knew that no matter what I wanted to do in the long run, I was going to have to go into the service first,” I told Marti, who seemed reasonably interested. “I chose a marine officers’ program and was commissioned the day I graduated from MU.”

  “Why the marines?” Marti asked.

  “Well, my uncle was a marine in World War Two. Won the Silver Star. And he always said to me, ‘Whatever you do, you should always try to do it with the best’—and the best meant the marines. So it was done.”

  “Did you go to Vietnam?” I could tell by the way she asked that having done so might not have been the best thing to do—in her opinion. The war in Vietnam was still going on as we spoke.

  “No, I was lucky,” I reported truthfully. “I was a platoon commander in the Far East but the war hadn’t really started for the U.S. by the time my active-duty commitment ended.”

  “Good,” she said.

  I couldn’t tell what she meant by that. I wasn’t sure if she was making a statement on the war itself or on the good fortune of my having escaped without having to serve in combat. But I asked her no follow-up questions, choosing to leave any talk of Vietnam for another day.

  I wrapped up my mini bio by telling Marti I got my first job at The Dallas Tribune in 1962 through a contact of my dad’s. She seemed almost happy when I told her that my real ambition was to eventually spend my life writing fiction—short stories, novels, maybe even a play or two. Maybe live in Paris. My dreams were mostly about winning prizes for novels, not news stories.

  “You’re not married, are you?” she asked.

  The question, coming from this attractive young woman—kid—caught me off guard. “No, no. Not yet.”

  “Been close?”

  “Sure.”

  “How close?”

  “Well, I met somebody in Dallas right after I got out of the marines and went to work at the Tribune. She was a seventh-grade English teacher—love at first sight, all of that. I proposed to her in two weeks and she said yes. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Then two weeks after that she changed her mind—and that has been that.”

  “Why did she change her mind?”

  “She was accepted to graduate school—University of Michigan. She asked if I would go with her. I said nope. No good newspapers in Ann Arbor that I knew of …”

  “I’ve already been accepted to go on to Penn for a master’s next year,” Marti said.

  “So you won’t have to dump your boyfriend—good for you.”

  “I don’t have a boyfriend. At least, not one I would want to live my whole life with.”

  “What’s the problem with the guy you’re dating?”

  “We’re in different worlds.”

  I waited for a second explanatory sentence. It took a while, and all she finally said was, “Let’s say he’s more of a doer than a reader and leave it at that.”

  “Have there been others who …”

  “Hey, enough, please,” she said. “I’ve only lived twenty years so far.”

  She had a point. And that pretty much ended our biographical small talk.

  We came back around to her father. She wanted me to go with her and speak with her father about my exact memories of Love Field and the bubble top. I was willing to help—honestly, sincerely.

  But let’s face it, I also was still thinking this could all eventually lead to a very good—on-the-record—story for me and my newspaper. It was definitely there in my mind. Hey, that’s what we reporters do. I wouldn’t be a real reporter if I didn’t think that way.

  And both of us, having taken a major second breath, continued Marti’s post-assassination story with her doing the telling while I listened and wrote.

  “I KILLED KENNEDY!”

  Marti lay awake the rest of that assassination night hearing those words. Her father’s words, over and over and over. Her eyes wouldn’t close. Neither would her ears. And her mind wouldn’t stop racing. She didn’t move her covers or even get up and go to the bathroom. Not once. She was locked in place in the horror of the day.

  Her little bedside alarm clock—it had the famous blue-and-silver star of the Dallas Cowboys on the face—showed it was barely six o’clock when she heard her father leave through the front door of the house and then a car door opening and closing outside.

  He was gone. Her father, the man who said he alone had done something wrong and killed Kennedy, was gone. Where was he going now? To do what? What more was there for him to do?

  Marti wasn’t crying. She hadn’t cried again since hearing those words from outside her parents’ bedroom door last night. Her tears, along with everything else, had been locked up tight.

  She listened for sounds of her mother out in the hallway but heard nothing until Rosemary finally said to Marti’s closed door, “Honey, there’s no school, remember. I’m going over to the bank just to see if there’s anything that needs to be done. It’s Saturday so I shouldn’t be long.”

  Marti didn’t answer.

  “There’s cereal, you know—Wheaties and Rice Krispies, and plenty of milk, so help yourself,” Rosemary said.

  Less than a minute later Marti heard the front door slamming. Her mother had left without a word about anything more than breakfast cereal! Not another word!

  What about Kennedy? What about what happened yesterday? What about my daddy?

  Miraculously, Marti heard the front door reopen.

  She heard her mother’s footsteps approaching her bedroom. “I know you may have heard a lot of crazy things last night, honey,” Rosemary said. The bedroom door remained closed. Why didn’t her mother open it and come in to talk and hug and comfort her daughter? And why didn’t she try to explain what her father had shouted about blood and Kennedy?

  “He’s just in an awful state, as are all of the agents who were there,” Rosemary said from the hallway. “I bet they all think it was their fault and they are hurting so badly—so, so badly. Your daddy is no different from any of them. That’s all it is. They all think it was their fault. It will go away, though, you’ll see, because it wasn’t their fault. Not your daddy’s or anybody else’s except that crazy communist fool Oswald. What was he doing working at a school book depository building anyhow, that’s what I want to know. Why didn’t the FBI catch him as a communist and lock him away before he did that?” Rosemary sighed. “See you later, honey. Everything’s going to be okay. Daddy’s going to come back okay. You’ll see. We’ll talk tonight, you and me.”

  Marti considered getting out of bed, but before she could make a move the front door slammed again. Rosemary was gone.

  AND THAT NIGHT they only barely talked.

&n
bsp; “What did he mean that he took something off and it was all his fault?” was the only real question Marti asked her mother.

  That exchange came when they finally sat down in the kitchen for a bowl of bean soup with saltine crackers.

  “It was about something that happened with the presidential car, I think,” Rosemary answered. “It was nothing. You’ll see. We’ll all see. He’s just upset like all of the agents … you know, about losing a president. There’s nothing more awful for them. They obsess on it.”

  “I just hate it for Daddy,” Marti said quietly.

  “I know, but put it out of your mind, honey,” Rosemary responded. “You’ll see when he gets back that he’ll be the same Van we know and love.”

  And that was it for talk about the wrenching night they had just gone through.

  Rosemary went on to tell her that the few people at the bank were all still in tears or shock about the assassination.

  She listened, murmuring responses to her mother, but what Marti noticed most was the smell of liquor on her mother’s breath no more than five hours after she’d left for the bank. Rosemary had clearly tried to hide the smell with mints but this didn’t do the job, especially when they sat close at the dinner table over their soup. Marti knew that both her mother and father had an occasional drink of beer or, in her dad’s case, scotch when they went out, but there was none around the house. And Marti had no idea that either of them ever had a drink of anything alcoholic during the daytime.

  Where had her mother gone and what had she drunk? Had she been alone or with somebody else? But those were questions to be asked another day.

  And yet, amid all the questions, the thing that stoked Marti’s anger was that, though five years later they would remain unasked, she had been left alone by her own mother at one of the most volatile and dramatic moments in history—and their lives. She was as upset as she was hurt and didn’t know how to express those feelings. All she really wanted was for her mother to hug her long and hard and talk about everything—not just the occasional small exchanges about food, homework, and schedules.

  But she was only fifteen and she didn’t know how to ask for what she needed.

  IT WAS SEVEN thirty at night about three days later. Marti was in the den doing some English grammar homework when, suddenly, there he stood in the front door hallway. Marti fought off her first impulse—to yell for joy and fling herself at her father.

  Instead, she slowly stood up, gave a shy half wave.

  Her mother, though, moved to him in a flash, and Marti, brushing aside her hesitation, joined Rosemary in wrapping themselves around their father-husband and holding on tight.

  “Good to see you, good to see you,” Van Walters said.

  His voice was quiet, almost completely without inflection. And he seemed to be only barely touching his wife and daughter. They were doing all of the holding tight.

  As they walked together to the kitchen, Marti noticed a disturbing difference in her dad. Everything, from the skin on his face to his shoulders, his walk, and his general posture, was slumping. Van Walters never slumped. He always stood up straight. His posture was always perfect. Secret Service perfect.

  And Marti noticed something else strange. Her dad made no mention of the Cowboys, not even the game against the Browns in Cleveland that Sunday following the assassination. Marti had tuned in to watch it on television and heard the play-by-play announcers talk about how this was a game nobody wanted to play, how the Cleveland fans were yelling awful things to the Cowboy players because they represented Dallas, “the city of hate that killed Kennedy.” Some fools were even screaming that they should change the team name to “The Assassins.”

  Dandy Don Meredith had started the game, throwing two interceptions and fumbling once in the 27–17 loss to the Browns. Little Eddie LeBaron threw only five passes, all of them incomplete.

  What made the game even harder to watch were the constant network news interruptions. Marti saw the Kennedy casket, covered in the American flag, being taken by horse-drawn caisson from the White House to the Capitol. Then there were breaking developments about some nightclub owner named Jack Ruby having shot Lee Harvey Oswald that morning in the basement of the Dallas police station.

  “Wasn’t that something the way Dandy played against the Browns, Daddy?” Marti said to her father as they moved toward the kitchen. She was going to bring it up even if he didn’t. The Cowboys were an important thing between them.

  Rosemary raced ahead, chattering about throwing together a soup and maybe some sandwiches.

  “I’m very, very tired,” said Van Walters, ignoring Marti’s Cowboy question with a distancing shrug.

  He turned around and headed to his bedroom, having said nothing more. Marti had so many other questions, too. Where had he been and what had he been doing the last five days? Had he even seen the Cowboys game on television? What about all of the Kennedy funeral and the rest of the mourning? Did he watch any of that? Maybe by himself in a hotel room? At a Secret Service office in Dallas or somewhere else? Fort Worth, Houston?

  Marti was suddenly sad all over again—and very scared. Maybe he really did do something that killed Kennedy? It was a terrible, terrible thought. But she couldn’t help herself. It seemed that something monumentally horrible must have taken him over and now possessed him. Like in one of those horror movies she no longer watched because they gave her nightmares.

  Her mother, tears dropping slowly over her cheeks, silently followed Van to the bedroom.

  Marti went to the closed door. She listened for a couple of minutes or so before realizing that there was nothing to overhear.

  THE NEXT MORNING her father was already gone by the time she got up and dressed for school. All her mother said, almost in passing, was, “Your dad has to work so the two of us will just scrape something together for Thanksgiving tomorrow. He also thinks it’s not going to work out for us to go to Albany and Kinderhook for Christmas this year,” she added.

  “What’s he going to be doing tomorrow and Christmas—aren’t they holidays even for the Secret Service?” Marti asked her mother, too afraid of the answer to look at her.

  “Taking statements and things,” Rosemary replied, almost absently. “You know, working on the assassination—I guess.”

  MARTI TOLD ME it was time to go. She had to catch a train back to Philadelphia. She was talked out and tired, it seemed, as was the sunshine. I, too, was running out of listening and remembering steam.

  We walked together back into the once grand Washington Union Station. The majestic structure made famous by presidents had slowly become dilapidated. Congress had recently passed multimillion-dollar legislation to transform it from a train station into some kind of national Constitution center, but railroad fans and history advocates were up in arms over the proposal so no work had begun. There were holes in the high ceilings, gaps in the walls, and signs and smells of neglect and decay throughout the cavernous building.

  Marti and I spoke vaguely about continuing our conversation soon in Philadelphia. She was anxious to get me to see her father, to try to help him come to his senses about the bubble top.

  “Could you come to Philadelphia tomorrow?” Marti asked suddenly while we waited in line at the ticket counter.

  “Sure,” I said, without hesitating.

  She gave me her number and a few minutes later at the platform gate to her train we said a completely touchless good-bye, not even a handshake.

  I left the station and jogged to my car, which was parked on a street nearby, drove as fast as I could to my apartment in Foggy Bottom, and sat down at my typewriter.

  I spent the rest of the evening typing every single word from my notes and memory, taking no time to use capitalization or punctuation. All care for spelling went out the window. I did not want to lose one word if I could help it.

  BY THE TIME I got to the bureau office in the National Press Club building the next morning, I had made a decision.

  I went stra
ight to Bernie Shapiro, the Tribune’s bureau chief. “It’s off the record for now but, I tell you, I am on to a really great story,” I said.

  I had worked for Bernie in Dallas when he was assistant managing editor. Two years ago he had finally taken up the offer to run the Washington bureau, having decided with his with his wife that their three daughters were old enough to enjoy and benefit from living among the sites and sights of the nation’s capital. He had been very involved in selecting me for my job in the six-person bureau. Bernie and I had hit it off, most particularly in cooperating on assassination stories.

  “As you know, Young Jack, off-the-record stories do not appear in newspapers—ours included,” Bernie said.

  “Well, I’m pretty sure I can eventually get it on the record,” I said.

  “You’re pretty sure? What is the story, Young Jack?” I didn’t particularly enjoy Bernie’s “Young Jack” name for me, but he was the boss.

  I waited for the magic words from Bernie. “Just between us, of course,” he said. “I won’t tell a soul, not even one in Dallas.”

  So I told Bernie the story—in one long lead-only sentence.

  “The Secret Service agent who ordered the bubble top removed from the Kennedy limo is seriously ill from a mental breakdown he’s had over the guilt of what he did and he may not make it.”

  “That’s crazy,” Bernie said. “But it sounds like one helluva story.”

  “Exactly,” I replied. Bernie had blessed me. And I was thrilled. “I need to go to Philadelphia this afternoon and I need expense money for the trip—maybe even to spend the night.”

  “Okay, okay. You got it. Philadelphia? Is that where the sick agent is?”

  I put a finger to my lips. No more information now—though I couldn’t have answered it anyhow because I had no idea where Van Walters was.

  The lunch-hour rush, if there had been one at the small café near the Penn campus, was finished by the time I arrived from the Philadelphia train station just after two o’clock. There were a handful of student-looking types spread out and about the place, which had the casual look and feel of every college hangout I had ever frequented. It even had the familiar mixed aroma of paper and books, strong coffee, and cheap food.