by Don DeLillo
Ferrie was pink-faced, nearly shouting. Lee gave a direction to turn left. Ferrie gripped the steering wheel hard.
“You see what this means. How it shows what you’ve got to do. We didn’t arrange your job in that building or set up the motorcade route. We don’t have that kind of reach or power. There’s something else that’s generating this event. A pattern outside experience. Something that jerks you out of the spin of history. I think you’ve had it backwards all this time. You wanted to enter history. Wrong approach, Leon. What you really want is out. Get out. Jump out. Find your place and your name on another level.”
Lee directed him to Houston Street, where they parked in front of the Old Court House, facing south, their backs to the Book Depository, which was a block and a half away. Ferrie wiped spit from the corners of his mouth. He seemed out of breath. Lee sat calmly looking out the window.
“It’s been waiting to happen, Leon.”
“I have to be at work at eight.”
“That building’s been sitting there waiting for Kennedy and Oswald to converge on it.”
“Just out of curiosity. How did you find out where I live? The Feebees don’t know. They know where I work.”
“They know where you work. That’s how we know. We followed you from work last night. We’re more interested in you than they are. Listen. I sat in the car outside your rooming house half the night. I was afraid to come see you. Now that it’s going to happen, I’m scared half to death. I’ve got fear running through my system. Look at what we’re doing. The chaos? The fucking anguish we’ll cause? We’ll give everybody cancer. I sat in the car. I was afraid to face you. I thought, What are we doing to poor Leon? I thought, Poor Leon’s seen that item in the paper. Harwood to Main. Main to Houston. Houston to Elm. Like a scary nursery rhyme. He’s going to kneel in that window and do it. And I’m one of the ones. I’m the agitator. I’m the fool that’s responsible.”
Lee took a stick of gum out of his pocket and broke it in half. He offered a piece to Ferrie, who slapped it out of his hand.
“Where’s the rifle?”
“In a garage in a suburb, where Marina’s staying.”
“They drive you to Galveston when it’s done. I meet you there. This way we’re one city removed from the scene. There’s a plane all set in Galveston. We fly to Yucatán. A place called Mérida. They drive you across the peninsula. They put you on a boat to Havana. They want you in Havana. It suits their purposes just as it suits yours. The boat’s all set. They’ll give you a name and documents.” Ferrie looked at him sadly. “Or there’s more to it. Something we don’t know about. Like they kill us both in Yucatán.”
Lee gave a little laugh, expelling air from his nose. Then he turned to look at the clock attached to the Hertz sign on the roof of the Book Depository. He got out of the car and walked down the street.
Just after lunch hour he went past Roy Truly’s office on the first floor. Mr. Truly, the man who’d hired him, was talking to one of the textbook salesmen. Lee saw the salesman hand Mr. Truly a rifle. Two or three other men stood in the doorway commenting. Lee walked over. There were two rifles the salesman said he’d just bought. He had a .22 for his son for Christmas. And a deer rifle that Mr. Truly was inspecting. The fellows commented from the doorway. Lee watched the salesman box up the .22 and then he walked over to the elevator and hit six. He wasn’t surprised to see rifles in the building. How could he be surprised? It was all about him. Everything that happened was him.
Thursday. T. J. Mackey stood in front of the County Records Building. He crossed the street to the triangle lawn between Main and Elm. He looked toward the railroad tracks above the triple underpass. Then he jogged across Elm and stood on the sloped lawn in front of the colonnade. He walked up toward the stockade fence that set off the parking lot. He stood facing Elm. He walked back toward the sign for Stemmons Freeway. Cars, everywhere, dashing. He looked at the sky and wiped his mouth.
Later he sat in a dark Ford on the downtown fringe, unwrapping a sandwich. This was an area of old packing houses with train tracks partly paved over and sides of buildings showing brick and mortar exposed by the demolition of adjacent structures. Every usable space was set aside for parking—alleyways, dusty lots, old loading zones. There was a clinging midday silence, a remoteness that Mackey found odd, a block and a half from the crowds and traffic.
He watched Oswald approach uncertainly.
He was sure Oswald wanted to be the lone gunman. This is how it is with solitaries, with men who plan eternally toward some total moment. Easy enough to make him believe it. But he would also have to make sure Oswald didn’t fire until the limousine was moving away from him toward the triple underpass. T-Jay wanted a crossfire. If Oswald misses, his second shooter is in prime position; he has the car almost head-on. T-Jay did not trust Oswald to make the shot. This was the kid who missed General Walker at a hundred and twenty feet—a stationary man in a well-lighted room. And the Mannlicher is an old, crude and unreliable weapon. If he fires and misses while the car is still on Houston Street, coming at him, with no clear shot for the second gunman, then we all walk away with nothing. As a shooter, Oswald was redundant, strictly backup. His role was to provide artifacts of historical interest, a traceable weapon, all the cuttings and hoardings of his Cuban career.
T-Jay saw him spot the car, tilting his chin slightly. He walked over and got in, carrying a sandwich and a half-pint carton of milk.
“How’s the new baby?”
“Fine. Doing real well.”
“He’s going to be coming at you for one street length, swinging out of Main and coming at you down Houston,” T-Jay said. “You don’t take him then. This is not the time. It’s an easy shot, the easiest we could possibly expect, but they’ll be looking right at you. There’s a pilot car, there’s about fifteen cops on motorcycles, there’s a Secret Service car with eight men, four of them hanging off the running boards. They’re all clustered around the President’s limousine and they’re all looking your way. Once the shot is off, they’ll know exactly where it came from. That building will be flooded with police. I strongly recommend. I can’t be too emphatic. Wait. You wait for them to turn down Elm and head toward the underpass and the freeway. It’s not a hard shot. You aim at the mass, the center portion of his body or whatever part of his body is visible through the scope. Wait. You wait for him to veer away from you down Elm. Then you wait for him to clear the oak tree. He has to clear that tree. I estimate the first shot at less than two hundred feet. After that, depends on how fast the driver reacts. I figure the sound will ricochet toward the underpass. They won’t be certain of the source. You’re behind them now, which makes it harder for them to pick you out of the landscape. You gain extra seconds. Maybe ten extra seconds to get downstairs. It could make the difference. Wait. Be sure to wait. Don’t even show yourself in that window until the car reaches the oak tree. Then wait for it to clear the tree.”
The plan had one thing going for it that Win Everett’s levels and refinements could not have supplied. Luck. T-Jay watched Oswald peel the lettuce off the bread and eat it separately.
“Once you’re on the street, get out of the area fast. Jefferson Boulevard, not far from your rooming house. Go to West Jefferson, north side of the street, number 231. It’s a movie house with a Spanish-type façade. It’ll be open. They open the doors at twelve-forty-five. You go in, take a seat, watch the movie. We’ll have you in Galveston by nightfall and out of the country by dawn.”
Mackey crumpled the sandwich paper and threw it out the window. He took four cartridges out of his pocket. He jiggled them in his fist and let them drop into Oswald’s lunch bag.
“I don’t see any way you’ll need more than four rounds.”
“There won’t be time.”
“Trust your hands.”
“I’ve worked the bolt a thousand times.”
“What’s the baby’s name?”
“My wife named her Audrey, after Audrey Hepburn in War
and Peace. Tolstoy. But her middle name is Rachel. We call her Rachel.”
“You’re going to love this operation,” T-Jay said.
He watched Oswald walk out of the alleyway onto Griffin Street and then head southwest, back to work.
The main thing is Kennedy dead.
The next thing is Oswald dead.
Once Oswald’s leftist sympathies are exposed, the authorities will conclude, will want to conclude, that Castro agents recruited him, used him, killed him.
Guy Banister would alert the FBI to the Hidell alias.
David Ferrie would spend a lonely night in Galveston.
Marina and Lee were in the backyard of the Paine house, pushing kids on the swings in turn, Sylvia and Chris and Junie and a neighbor’s little girl and boy. It was dark but the kids didn’t want to go inside. Two swings, two parents to push them.
“But you still haven’t said what you’re doing here on a Thursday.”
“I miss my girls,” he said.
“Without even calling.”
“If you come to Dallas to live.”
“No.”
“Then I won’t have to call. Everything will change. I can’t live in that room too much longer.”
“The children are better off here.”
“Do you know the size of that room?”
“Ruth is still happy to have us stay.”
“Papa thinks you don’t love him.”
They took two kids off the swings, put two more on. Marina was still angry at Lee for not telling her that he was using a false name. She found out when Ruth called the rooming house and asked for Lee Oswald. She wanted this foolish business to end. All these comedies. First one thing, then another.
The kids screamed, “Higher.”
“I’ll buy you a washing machine,” he said.
“We might be better with a car.”
“I’m saving the best I can. First we need to get an apartment.”
“No.”
“If you come to Dallas to live.”
“No.”
“The girls want to be with their daddy.”
“Who will I talk to all day? Here I can talk to Ruth. Ruth is a big help to me.”
“A balcony like Minsk,” he said.
At dinner Ruth asked that the three of them hold hands around the table. She explained this was how Quakers say grace. Each person is supposed to recite a silent prayer, although it was clear to Marina that Lee’s silence was not the prayerful kind.
When Marina was cleaning up in the kitchen, Ruth came in and said in a slightly puzzled way that someone had left the light on in the garage. They said it was probably Lee looking for a sweater among his belongings. Most of the things they owned were in boxes in Ruth’s garage.
In the bedroom Marina took off her clothes. Lee sat in a chair, dressed except for his shoes and socks. Getting ready for bed, the same as anyone, here in this American place.
“Everything will change.”
“No.”
“But first we have to live together.”
“I don’t see any reason to hurry.”
“If you come to Dallas to live.”
“The children play outside here. Ruth is here.”
“I have a little saved.”
“I don’t want my baby sucking nervous milk.”
“Our own furniture for a change.”
She stood naked on the far side of the bed. She reached around to the chair for her nightdress. He was watching her. She thought he was going to say something. She put the nightdress over her head and rolled back the bedcovers. Ordinary in every way, simple moments adding up, with rain falling on the lawn.
In the morning, early, he was gone. She found money in little bunches on top of the bureau and she counted it up, amazed. One hundred and seventy dollars. She was sure it was everything he had.
Three times he’d asked her to live with him in Dallas. Three times she’d said no. She stood by the bureau thinking. It was a well-known pattern, things that happen in threes. There was a certain dark power to the number three. She’d noticed all her life how it meant bad luck.
22 November
At the airport they were standing on baggage carts and clinging to light posts. They were draped over the chain-link fence, people in raincoats, waving flags, hanging off the sign for Gate 28. Skies were clear now and the 707 swung massively to a stop on the tarmac. They came running from their cars. They stood at the edge of the crowd, jumping up and down. Children rode the shoulders of gangly men. There was a mood rising from the packed bodies, an eager spirit of assent. Members of the welcoming party edged into place at the foot of the ramp, fussing with their clothes and hair. The aft door opened and the First Lady appeared in a glow of rosebud pink, suit and hat to match, followed by the President. A sound, an awe worked through the crowd, a recognition, ringing in the air. People called out together, faces caught in some stage of surprise resembling dazzled pain. “Here” or “Jack” or “Look.” The President fingered his lapel, gave a little jacket-adjusting shrug and walked down the ramp. The sound was a small roar now, a wonder. They shook the fence. They came running from the terminal building, handbags and cameras bouncing. There were cameras everywhere, held aloft, a rustling of bladed shutters, with homemade signs poking through the mass.
Welcome Jack and Jackie to Big D.
After the handshakes and salutes, Jack Kennedy walked away from his security, sidestepping puddles, and went to the fence. He reached a hand into the ranks and they surged forward, looking at each other to match reactions. He moved along the fence, handsome and tanned, smiling famously into the wall of open mouths. He looked like himself, like photographs, a helmsman squinting in the sea-glare, white teeth shining. There was only a trace of the cortisone bloat that sometimes affected his face—cortisone for his Addison’s disease, a back brace for his degenerating discs. They came over the fence, surrounding him, so many people and hands. The white smile brightened. He wanted everyone to know he was not afraid.
The Lincoln was deep blue, an iridescent peacock gleam, with an American flag and a presidential standard attached to the front fenders. Two Secret Service men in front, Governor Connally and his wife in the jumpseats, the Kennedys in the rear. The Lincoln moved out behind an unmarked pilot car and five motorcycles manned by white-helmeted city cops showing traditional blank faces. Stretching half a mile behind came the miscellaneous train of rented convertibles, station wagons, touring sedans, Secret Service follow-up cars, communications cars, buses, motorcycles, spare Chevys, Lyndon, Lady Bird, congressmen, aides, wives, men with Nikons, Rolliflexes, newsreel cameras, radiophones, automatic rifles, shotguns, service revolvers and the codes for launching a nuclear strike.
The Lincoln seemed to glow. Sunlight flashed from the fenders and hood, made the upholstery shine. The Governor waved his tan Stetson and the flags snapped and the First Lady held roses in the crook of her arm. The burnished surface of the car mirrored scenes along the road. Not that there was much to collect in the landscape at hand. Airport isolation. Horizontal buildings with graveled rooftops. Billboards showing sizzling steaks. Random spectators, brave-looking, waving, in these mournful spaces. And a man standing alone at the side of the road holding up a copy of the Morning News opened to the page that had everybody talking. Welcome Mr. Kennedy to Dallas. An ad placed by a group called the American Fact-Finding Committee. Grievances, accusations, jingo fantasia—not so remarkable, really, even in a major newspaper, except that the text was bordered in black. Nicely ominous. Jack Kennedy had seen the ad earlier and now, with towered downtown Dallas in the visible distance, he turned and said softly to Jacqueline, “We’re heading into nut country now.”
Still, it was important to be seen in an open car without a bubbletop, without agents on the running boards. Here he was among them in a time of deep division, the country pulled two ways, each army raging and Jack having hold of both. Were there forebodings? For weeks he’d carried a scrap of paper with scribbled lin
es of some bloody Shakespearean ruin. They whirl asunder and dismember me. Still, it was important for the car to move very slowly, give the crowds a chance to see him. Maximum exposure as the admen say, and who wants a president with a pigeon’s heart?
And there were friendly crowds ahead. The strays on the outskirts, stick figures, gave way to larger groups, to gatherings. They appeared at intersections. They stood on bumpers in stalled traffic and cried, “Jack-eeee.” Signs, flags, surging numbers, people fifteen deep, crowds growing out over the curbstone, craning for a look at the brilliant limousine. The cops astride their Harleys trimmed the ragged edges. There were people backed against building walls who could not see the limousine but only figures gliding by, spirits of the bright air, dreamlike and serene. The crush was massive down near Harwood. It was a multitude, a storm force. The motorcycles rumbled constantly, an excitement in the sound, a power, and the President waved and smiled and whispered, “Thank you.”
Advise keep crowds behind barricades. They are getting in the street here.
Street by street the crowd began to understand why it was here. The message jumped the open space from one press of bodies to the next. A contagion had brought them here, some mystery of common impulse, hundreds of thousands come from so many histories and systems of being, come from some experience of the night before, a convergence of dreams, to stand together shouting as the Lincoln passed. They were here to be an event, a consciousness, to astonish the old creedbound fears, the stark and wary faith of the city of get-rich-quick. Big D rising out of caution and suspicion to produce the roar of a sand column twisting. They were here to surround the brittle body of one man and claim his smile, receive some token of the bounty of his soul.
Advise approaching Main go real slow speed.
Into the noontide fires. Twelve city blocks down Main Street, some embers of the melodrama of small towns, of Hallmark and Walgreen and Thorn McAn, scattered among the bank towers. The motorcycles came, a steady throttling growl, a tension that bit into the edge of every awareness. The sight of the Lincoln sent a thrill along the street. One roar devoured another. There were bodies jutting from windows, daredevil kids bolting into the open. They’re here. It’s them. They’re real. It wasn’t only Jack and Jackie who were riding in a fire of excitement. The crowd brought itself into heat and light. A knowledge charged the air, a self-awareness. Here was a new city, an idea that traveled at the speed of sound, pounding over the old hushed heart, a city of voices roaring. Loud and hot and throbbing. The crowd kept pushing past the ropes and barricades. Motorcycles drove a wedge and agents dropped off the running boards of the follow-up car to jog alongside the Lincoln. Was it frightening to sit in the midst of all this? Did Jack think this fervor was close to a violence? They were so damn close, nearly upon him. He looked at them and whispered, “Thank you.”
