Oswald's Tale

by Norman Mailer

  MR. STERN. It sounds like you can still hear the shots.

  MR. SORRELS. I will hear them forever—it is something I cannot wipe from my mind ever.14

  Equally was it engraved upon the memory of Lady Bird Johnson:

  It all began so beautifully. After a drizzle in the morning the sun came out bright and beautiful. We were going into Dallas . . . The streets were lined with people—lots and lots of people—the children all smiling; placards, confetti; people waving from windows . . .

  Then . . . suddenly there was a sharp loud report—a shot . . . Then a moment and two more shots in rapid succession. There had been such a gala air that I thought it must be firecrackers or some sort of celebration . . . I heard over the radio system “Let’s get out of here,” and our Secret Service man who was with us, [Rufus] Youngblood, I believe it was, vaulted over the front seat on top of Lyndon, threw him to the floor, and said, “Get down.”

  Senator Yarborough and I ducked our heads. The car accelerated terrifically fast—faster and faster . . . 15

  A motorcycle officer, Marrion Baker, would tell the Warren Commission of the immediate experiences of other motorcycle officers flanking the open convertible that held the Kennedys and the Connallys:

  MR. BELIN. All right. [This officer] was on the front and to the left of the President’s car?

  MR. BAKER. Yes, sir; that is right.

  MR. BELIN. What did he say to you about blood or something?

  MR. BAKER. . . . he said the first shot he couldn’t figure out where it came from. He turned his head backward, reflex, you know, and then he turned back and the second shot came off, and then the third shot is when the blood and everything hit his helmet and his windshield.

  MR. BELIN. Did it hit the inside or the outside of his windshield, did he say?

  MR. BAKER. . . . Now, as far as the inside or the outside of the windshield, I don’t know about that. But it was all on the right-hand side of his helmet.

  MR. BELIN. Of his helmet?

  MR. BAKER. On his uniform also.16

  Baker will be the first policeman to enter the Book Depository building, and there he will encounter Oswald.

  First, however, let us take him back to Main Street, where he is trundling along on his motorcycle a number of vehicles back from the President:

  MR. BAKER. As we approached the corner there of Main and Houston we were making a right turn, and [a] strong wind hit me and I almost lost my balance.

  MR. BELIN. How fast would you estimate the speed of your motorcycle, if you know?

  MR. BAKER. . . . we were creeping along real slowly.

  MR. BELIN. . . . Now, tell us what happened after you turned onto Houston Street.

  MR. BAKER. As I got myself straightened up there, I guess it took me some 20, 30 feet, something like that, and it was about that time that I heard those shots come out . . . It hit me all at once it was a rifle shot because I had just got back from deer hunting and [so] it sounded to me like it was a high-powered rifle.

  MR. BELIN. All right . . . what did you do and what did you see?

  MR. BAKER. . . . I immediately kind of looked up, and I had a feeling it came from the building . . . in front of me . . . this Book Depository Building [because] as I was looking, all these pigeons began to fly up . . . and start flying around . . .

  MR. BELIN. . . . After the third shot, then, what did you do?

  MR. BAKER. Well, I revved that motorcycle up and I went down to the corner which would be approximately 180 to 200 feet from the point where . . . we heard the shots . . . You see, it looked to me like there were maybe 500 or 600 people in this area here [who] started running, you know, every direction, just trying to get back out of the way . . .

  MR. BELIN. You then ran into the building, is that correct?

  MR. BAKER. That is correct, sir.

  MR. BELIN. What did you see and what did you do as you ran into the building?

  MR. BAKER. As I entered this building . . . I just spoke out and asked where the stairs or elevator was, and this man, Mr. Truly, spoke up and said, it seems to me like he says, “I am a building manager. Follow me, officer, and I will show you.” So . . . we kind of all ran, not real fast but, you know, a good trot, to the back of the building . . . and he was trying to get that service elevator . . . He hollered for it, said, “Bring that elevator down here.”

  MR. BELIN. How many times did he holler, to the best of your recollection?

  MR. BAKER. It seemed like he did it twice . . . I said let’s take the stairs . . .

  MR. BELIN. . . . what was your intention at that time?

  MR. BAKER. . . . to go all the way to the top where I thought the shots had come from, to see if I could find something there . . .

  MR. BELIN. And did you go all the way up to the top of the stairs right away?

  MR. BAKER. No, sir, we didn’t . . . As I came out to the second floor there, Mr. Truly was ahead of me and . . . I caught a glimpse of this man walking away . . . about 20 feet away from me in the lunchroom.

  MR. BELIN. What did you do?

  MR. BAKER. I hollered at him at that time and said, “Come here.” He turned and walked straight back to me . . .

  MR. BELIN. He walked back toward you then?

  MR. BAKER. Yes, sir . . .

  MR. BELIN. Was he carrying anything in his hands?

  MR. BAKER. He had nothing at that time.

  MR. BELIN. All right. Were you carrying anything in either of your hands?

  MR. BAKER. Yes, sir; I was . . . I had my revolver out.

  MR. BELIN. When did you take your revolver out?

  MR. BAKER. As I was starting up the stairway . . . I assumed that I was suspicious of everybody because I had my pistol out.

  REPRESENTATIVE BOGGS. Right.

  MR. BAKER. . . . Mr. Truly had come up to my side here, and I turned to Mr. Truly and I says, “Do you know this man? Does he work here?” And he said yes, and I turned immediately and went on out up the stairs . . .

  REPRESENTATIVE BOGGS. When you saw him, was he out of breath, did he appear to have been running or what?

  MR. BAKER. It didn’t appear that to me. He appeared normal, you know.

  REPRESENTATIVE BOGGS. Was he calm and collected?

  MR. BAKER. Yes, sir. He never did say a word or nothing. In fact, he didn’t change his expression one bit.

  MR. BELIN. Did he flinch in any way when you put the gun up to his face?

  MR. BAKER. No, sir . . .

  MR. BELIN. . . . was there any expression after Mr. Truly said he worked there?

  MR. BAKER. At that time I never did look back toward him . . . I turned immediately and run on up.17

  4

  An Afternoon at the Movies

  Innocent or guilty, the average man would be bound to flinch looking into the implacable eye of a pistol barrel. Oswald had to be in a remarkable state at this point, a calm beneath agitation, as if at rest in the vibrationless center of a dream. This, of course, assumes that he was the man who shot at Kennedy from the sixth floor. For some, however, there is no greater evidence of his innocence than that he was so cool. How could a man aim and fire three times at a moving target, see that there was impact, and yet have been able to spring up, hide his gun between other cartons in another end of the room, race silently down four flights of stairs, and be standing there in the lunchroom, unwinded, gazing passively at Officer Baker and his gun? For many critics, this seems impossible unless Oswald was not on the sixth floor when the shooting took place. The only reply if one supposes that he did shoot Kennedy is that he had passed through the mightiest of the psychic barriers—he had killed the king. It was equal psychologically to breaking through the sound barrier. All the controls were reversed. If such a transcendent calm was his state facing into Baker’s gun, it must have lasted for only a little while. In the following minute, he slipped out of the Texas School Book Depository, and this remarkable if short-lived grasp on such powers of control began to come apart. The next time we
see him, and it will be through the eyes of a highly biased witness—his former landlady Mrs. Bledsoe!—he looks demented.

  First, however, we must conceive of the impact of Elm Street and Dealey Plaza upon his senses in that instant he steps outside. If he is the killer, then we know enough about him to understand that he has been living within a spiritual caul all morning, and the voices of others have seemed as far away as echoes heard from the other side of a hill. He has been centered on his mission, balanced on his own heartbeat, living in a sense of dread and expectation so intense that it is beyond agitation. He possesses the kind of inner silence some can know when ultimates are coming to a moment of decision: Will he have the courage to fire his rifle and will he shoot well? Everything else, including the mounting tempo of excitement in the crowds outside the Book Depository, has no more presence for him than the murmur of a passer-by. Stationed within himself, he has now descended to those depths where one waits for final judgment.

  He must still have been in such a state when Officer Baker confronted him.

  Stepping out into Dealey Plaza, therefore, must have been not unlike being hurled through a plate-glass window. Hundreds of people were milling around in disconnected hysteria. Men and women were weeping. Police sirens from every street and avenue in the area were screaming their way toward Dealey Plaza.

  If the act of firing upon Kennedy had taken place as an event staged between himself and his vision of a great and thunderous stroke that would lift him at once from the mediocre to the immortal, this vision would not have included anyone else. Not even the victim.

  Now, however, everybody around him is distraught. It is as if, all alone, he has set off an explosion in a mine-shaft. Then, having climbed to the surface, he has come suddenly upon a crowd of the bereaved. It is a scene alien to him. He hurries down the street away from the Book Depository until, several blocks away, he catches a bus.

  On it is Mrs. Bledsoe, the same landlady who had cheated him of $2 in the first week he was back in Dallas after Mexico:

  MRS. BLEDSOE. . . . Oswald got on. He looks like a maniac. His sleeve was out here [indicating]. His shirt was undone . . . a hole in it, and he was dirty, and I didn’t look at him. I didn’t want to know I even seen him, and I just looked off, and then about that time the motorman said the President had been shot.1

  She may have been recollecting the inner light in Lee’s eye when she told him that he would have to leave her rooming house.

  The bus moves a block and stops. It is jammed in the gridlock around Dealey Plaza. Oswald goes up to the driver, asks for a transfer and gets off, then walks to the Greyhound bus station, where he can pick up a taxi.

  MR. WHALEY. He said, “May I have the cab?”

  I said, “You sure can. Get in.” And instead of opening the back door, he opened the front door, which is allowable there, and got in . . . the front seat. And about that time an old lady, I think she was an old lady, I don’t remember nothing but her sticking her head down past him in the door and said, “Driver, will you call me a cab down here?”

  . . . he opened the door a little bit like he was going to get out and he said, “I will let you have this one,” and she says, “No, the driver can call me one.”

  I didn’t call one because I knew before I could call one, one would come around the block and keep it pretty well covered [so] I asked him where he wanted to go and he said, “500 North Beckley.”

  Well, I started up . . . to that address, and the police cars, the sirens was going, running, crisscrossing everywhere, just a big uproar in that end of town and I said, “What the hell. I wonder what the hell is the uproar?”

  And he never said anything. So I figured he was one of those people that don’t like to talk so I never said any more to him.

  But when I got pretty close to the 500 block at Neches and North Beckley which is the 500 block, he said, “This will do fine,” and I pulled over to the curb right there. He gave me a dollar bill, the trip was 95 cents. He gave me a dollar bill and didn’t say anything, just got out and closed the door and walked around the front of the cab over to the other side of the street. Of course, traffic was moving through there and I put it in gear and moved on . . . 2

  Oswald walked a quick five blocks to his rooming house. Officer Baker, standing inside the Book Depository with his pistol out, must have proved a sufficiently electrifying sight to propel him back to to his rented room for his own revolver.

  MRS. ROBERTS. . . . he came home that Friday in an unusual hurry.

  MR. BALL. And what time was this?

  MRS. ROBERTS. Well, it was after President Kennedy had been shot and I had a friend that said, “Roberts, President Kennedy has been shot,” and I said, “Oh, no.” She said, “Turn on your television,” and I [did] but I couldn’t get the picture and he come in and I just looked up and I said, “Oh, you are in a hurry.” He never said a thing, not nothing. He went on to his room and stayed about 3 or 4 minutes.3

  When he came out, he had changed his windbreaker for another. Perhaps he had intimations that details on what he was wearing that morning had already been given. He did not know it, but a witness in Dealey Plaza, Howard Brennan, who claimed to have exceptionally good vision, had already given a description of a man with a rifle that he saw in a sixth-floor window. The description is general, but can fit Oswald, and it has gone out at 12:45 P.M., fifteen minutes after the three shots were fired, and something like fifteen minutes before Oswald left his rooming house forever.

  From Howard Brennan’s deposition to the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department: . . . I had seen him before the President’s car arrived. He was just sitting up there looking down apparently waiting . . . to see the President. I did not notice anything unusual about this man. He was a white man in his early 30s, slender, nice looking, slender and would weigh about 167 to 175 pounds. He had on light colored clothing but definitely not a suit. I proceeded to watch the President’s car as it turned left at the corner [and] I then saw this man I have described in the window and he was taking aim with a high-powered rifle . . . Then this man let the gun down to his side and stepped down out of sight. He did not seem to be in any hurry . . . 4

  Nobody saw Oswald in the ten minutes between his departure from the rooming house and his arrival at the corner of Tenth Street and Dalton, a trip of ten or twelve blocks along residential streets of small houses. Near the intersection of Tenth and Dalton, however, Oswald—or a man who fit his general description (there were witnesses with enough disagreement over identification to offer opportunities to a defense lawyer)—was stopped by Officer J. D. Tippit, who had been cruising by slowly in a police car. Presumably, Tippit had heard the description of the suspect. It had been broadcast four times on police radio since 12:45 P.M. Now, the man he had stopped was obeying Tippit’s order to place his hands on the right front window of the police car, or so witnesses later described it. Officer Tippit got out slowly from his side of the car, his pistol still in its holster, and started to go around the front of his car, but he was then shot four times and killed by that man who had had his hands up properly on the right front window but took them off long enough to pull out a revolver and shoot. The man was heard by one witness to say, “Poor dumb cop,” as he ran off. He was emptying his spent cartridges even as he ran.

  There is a good deal of evidence that it was Oswald who shot Tippit, but since the approach of this work is not legal, technical, or evidentiary but novelistic—that is, we are trying to understand Oswald—let us judge that if he killed Kennedy, then it is well within the range of our expectations of him that he would be frantic enough after seeing that pistol in his face, descending into Dealey Plaza, and fleeing to his rooming house and out again to be, yes, frantic enough to kill Tippit as well. If, however, he did not shoot at Kennedy, then small but confusing details in this second murder take on much more prominence. For if Oswald was innocent of shooting Kennedy, why would he have fired at Tippit?

  In any event, a man who most cert
ainly is Oswald is walking west on Jefferson Street, a few blocks away, just a few minutes later. John Calvin Brewer, the young manager of a shoe store on Jefferson Street, notices that this man now ducks into the long entryway between the shoe store’s twin front windows just as some police cars go screaming by toward the scene of the Tippit murder. As they do, the stranger puts his back to the street so the police won’t see his face, but the store manager decides that the fellow looks “scared” and “messed up,” and indeed, as soon as the police are out of sight, Brewer sees the man sneak into the Texas Theatre a few doors down without paying, so Brewer goes up to the cashier, informs her, and she calls the police.5

  What comes next is a concise description offered by the one-volume Warren Commission Report:

  Patrol cars bearing at least 15 officers converged on the Texas Theatre. Patrolman M. N. McDonald, with Patrolmen R. Hawkins, T. A. Hutson, and C. T. Walker, entered the theatre from the rear. Other policemen entered the front door and searched the balcony. Detective Paul L. Bentley rushed to the balcony and told the projectionist to turn up the house lights. Brewer met McDonald and the other policemen at the alley exit door, stepped out onto the stage with them and pointed out the man who had come into the theatre without paying. The man was Oswald. He was sitting alone in the rear of the main floor of the theatre near the right center aisle. About six or seven people were seated on the theatre’s main floor and an equal number in the balcony.

  McDonald first searched two men in the center of the main floor, about 10 rows from the front. He walked out of the row up the right center aisle. When he reached the row where the suspect was sitting, McDonald stopped abruptly and told the man to get on his feet. Oswald rose from his seat, bringing up both hands. As McDonald started to search Oswald’s waist for a gun, he heard him say, “Well, it’s all over now.” Oswald then struck McDonald between the eyes with his left fist.6