by Don DeLillo
Someone said he’s coming. A kind of clustered stirring, like riled bees. Then formal jostling across the floor, a grab for position. When he appeared in the elevator door, a slight man in handcuffs, with a puffed eye and stubble, they went a little crazy. Stooped photographers moving backwards, hand mikes shooting out of the crowd, everybody shouting, reaching toward him. A howl, a passion washing through the corridor. Newsreel cameras floated over the heads of the men escorting him. They had to throw some elbows, working him toward the door of the interrogation room. One eye puffed, a cut over the other, his shirt hanging loose. He resembled a guy who comes out of a doorway to bum a smoke. But a protective defiance, an unyielding in his face. The flash units fired. TV floodlights cooked the nearest heads. The reporters stared and wailed. It was hard to breathe in the ruck around the prisoner. They looked at him. They all cried out.
“Why did you kill the President?”
“Why did you kill the President?”
He said he was being denied the right to take a shower. Denied his basic hygienic rights. The escorts worked him to the office door.
Questioned, arraigned, displayed in lineups. He felt the heat of the corridor mobs every time he got off the elevator, the actual roil of moist air. Assassin, assassin.
In his cell he thought about the ways he could play it. He could play it either way. It all depended on what they knew.
He had the middle cell in the maximum-security block in the jail area. They kept the cells on either side of him empty. There were two guards on constant watch in the locked corridor.
Every time they brought him back to the cell, they made him take off his clothes. He sat in the cell in his underwear. They were afraid he’d use his clothes to harm himself.
A bunk bed, a chipped sink, a sloped hole in the floor. No flush toilet. He had to use a hole.
They stared up his ass. They came and shaved some hair from his genitals, two men from the FBI, placing the samples carefully in plastic baggies.
The revolution must be a school of unfettered thought.
In the interrogation room there were Dallas police, Secret Service, FBI, Texas Rangers, county sheriffs, postal inspectors, a U.S. marshal. No tape recorder or stenographer.
No, he didn’t own a rifle.
No, he hadn’t shot anyone.
He was not the man in the photograph they’d found in Ruth Paine’s garage—the man with a rifle, a pistol and left-wing journals. The photograph was obviously doctored. They’d taken his head and superimposed it on someone else’s body. He told them he’d worked for a graphic-arts firm and had personal knowledge of these techniques. The only thing in the picture that belonged to him was the face and they’d gotten it somewhere else.
He denied knowing an A. J. Hidell.
No, he’d never been to Mexico City.
No, he wouldn’t take a polygraph.
They asked him if he believed in a deity. He told them he was a Marxist. But not a Marxist-Leninist.
It was pretty clear they didn’t get the distinction.
Whenever they took him down, he heard his name on the radios and TVs. Lee Harvey Oswald. It sounded extremely strange. He didn’t recognize himself in the full intonation of the name. The only time he used his middle name was to write it on a form that had a space for that purpose. No one called him by that name. Now it was everywhere. He heard it coming from the walls. Reporters called it out. Lee Harvey Oswald, Lee Harvey Oswald. It sounded odd and dumb and made up. They were talking about somebody else.
The men in Stetsons took him back through the crowds to the jail elevator. He held his cuffed hands high, making a fist. Flashbulbs and hoarse cries. They kept shouting questions, shouting right over his answers. The elevator climbed to the cell block.
In the clink. Back in stir. Up the river. In the big house. Lights flicker when they pull the switch. So long, Ma.
Rain-slick streets.
Courses at night in economic theory.
He sat in the cell and waited for the next event. He knew it was late. He pictured Ruth Paine’s street, the lawns and sycamores. Was Marina in bed, scared, sorry, thinking she might have shown him more respect, seen the seriousness of his ideas? He wanted to call her. He pictured her reaching for the phone, a drowsy arm warm from the sheets, and the trustful mumbled hello, her eyes still closed.
Never think it is your fault when I am the one. I am always the one.
Now they were coming to take him down again. He believed they would release him once he settled on the right story to tell them. The way the Russians released Francis Gary Powers. The way they released the Yale professor they arrested for spying. Trumped-up charges. Screw is slang for prison guard.
They took him to the assembly room in the basement. This was the fourth time today they’d brought the prisoner down. Three times for lineups. Now it was midnight and they wanted him to meet the press in a formal and controlled exchange.
Hell and bedlam. Crowds jammed clear back out to the hall. Reporters still trying to press in, just arrived from the East Coast and Europe, faces leaking sweat, ties undone. The prisoner stood on the stage in front of the one-way screen used for lineups. His hands were cuffed behind him. Photographers closed in, crab-walking beneath him. Reporters shouting out to him. A moan of obscure sounds that resembled charismatic speech. The chief of police could not get into the room. He tried to edge his way, prying people apart with his hands. He was concerned for the safety of his prisoner.
A burly man moved through the crowd introducing out-of-town reporters to Dallas cops. He handed out a brand-new card he’d printed for his club. Who could it be but Jack Ruby? It was a card he was proud of, with a line drawing of a champagne glass and a bare-ass girl in black stockings. It was a come-on to the average patron, but with class. Nobody challenged Jack’s presence in the assembly room. He had the ability to carry a domineering look into a building. He was looking for a radio reporter named Joe Long because he had a dozen corned-beef sandwiches out in the car which he planned to take to the crew at KLIF working into the night to report this frantic tale to the unbelieving city. Instead he spotted Russ Knight, the Weird Beard, and even arranged an interview, clearing the way for Russ so he could tape the District Attorney for local radio. Jack was playing newsman and tipster tonight. He was in complete charge of mentally reacting. He had a pencil and pad at the ready, just in case he caught a remark he could give to NBC.
That’s it, boys, take the little rat’s picture.
It mulled over him that he might go to the Times Herald later and see how things were going in the composing room. He had a sample twistboard in the car and he thought he might treat the people to a demonstration, just for the frolic of the moment. It was always a popular sight, Jack doing a rolling rumba to show off the board.
The horror of the day swept over him. He began to sob, talking to a newsman by the back wall.
Ask the weasel why he did it, boys.
The reporters wouldn’t stop shouting. The prisoner tried to answer a question or make a statement but no one could hear him. It was a riot in a police station. Too crowded here, a danger, and the detectives moved in to end the session before it even started.
They took him back to the cell. He stripped to his underwear and sat on the bunk, thinking, feeling the noise of the assembly room still resonating in his body. A cell is the basic state, the crude truth of the world.
He could play it either way, depending on what they could prove or couldn’t prove. He wasn’t on the sixth floor at all. He was in the lunchroom eating lunch. The victim of a total frame. They’d been rigging the thing for years, watching him, using him, creating a chain of evidence with the innocent facts of his life. Or he could say he was only partly guilty, set up to take the blame for the real conspirators. Okay, he fired some shots from the window. But he didn’t kill anyone. He never meant to fire a fatal shot. It was never his intention to cause an actual fatality. He was only trying to make a political point. Other people were respo
nsible for the actual killing. They fixed it so he would seem the lone gunman. They superimposed his head on someone else’s body. Forged his name on documents. Made him a dupe of history.
He would name every name if he had to.
In Dallas
Dealey Plaza is symmetrical. A matching pair of colonnades, stockade fences, triangle lawns and reflecting pools—split down the middle by Main Street, which shoots straight out of the triple underpass into downtown Dallas. To one side of Main, Elm Street curves out of the underpass and proceeds at a gradual elevation past the Texas School Book Depository, where Lee Oswald stood in the sixth-floor window with a rifle in his hands. To the other side of Main, Commerce Street carries incoming traffic eastward past the Carousel Club, six blocks into the downtown core, where Jack Ruby sits in his office at 4:00 A.M. cursing the smirky bastard who killed our President.
He was alone and vomiting. He vomited the meals of the last three weeks. Crying for five minutes, vomiting for five minutes. He couldn’t bear to hear the name Oswald one more time. Even off in his own mind the name was waiting at the end of every shrunken thought.
Some of the clubs stayed open Friday night. Jack closed the Carousel and Vegas. He was committed to closing for the weekend in honor of the President being shot.
He vomited into a polyethylene bag he had somebody manufacture for his twistboards. Then he picked up the phone and called his roommate, George Senator.
“What are you doing?” he said.
“What am I doing? I’m sleeping.”
“Schmuckhead. They killed our President.”
“Jack, that was yesterday.”
“We’re going out to take pictures. Where’s the Polaroid?”
“At the club.”
“You know those Impeach signs? There’s one around here someplace. I’m coming to pick you up.”
“I want you to know. There’s this constant interference of the time that I wake up and the time that you go to bed. Which don’t match.”
“Get dressed fast,” Jack told him.
He found the camera and drove out to his apartment building. It was located over a freeway and looked like a motel that changed its mind. The whole scene was removable. George was sitting on the iron stairway in baggy clothes and slippers. They headed back downtown.
Jack explained the nature of the assignment.
First there was the ad in the Morning News. It said, Welcome Mr. Kennedy to Dallas. A series of lies and smears. Not that Jack fully absorbed the points in the ad. It was the nasty tone he noticed most. And of course the black border. And of course the fact that the ad was signed by someone Bernard Weissman. A Jew or someone posing as a Jew to blacken the name of the Jews. Then it just happened that he drove past a billboard with three towering words on it. Impeach Earl Warren. The ad had a post-office box number. So did the billboard. Thinking about it in his mind, as he went over both incidents, Jack believed the number was the same.
“So I am trying to put the two together.”
“You think the same person.”
“Whereby the same person or group is behind both incidents. And since it is against the President, I am trying to take a crime reporter’s frame of mind.”
They drove all over the downtown fringe trying to find the Earl Warren billboard and check out the box number. Jack was sure there was conspiracy here. The John Birch Society or the Communist Party were the suspects uppermost. He had his pad and pencil to take down particulars.
That clean but lonely feeling when there are no other cars. The traffic lights changing just for you.
He started vomiting again on the Central Expressway. The way he did it was to open the door, right hand clamped on the steering wheel, and drop his head down to vomit on the road. He could tell where they were going by his view of the white line, which was only inches away. George was screaming at him to stop the car or give up the steering to him. Jack straightened up. He said don’t worry, he’d done this as a kid growing up in the toughest streets of Chicago. It was part of how you survived. Then he leaned way over to vomit some more. He vomited half his life out the car door, due to these assaults on his emotions.
They found the billboard on Hall Street. George got out of the car and took three pictures with the flash. To Jack Ruby this was hunting down a major clue and acquiring physical evidence. Now they had to find a copy of the ad so they could compare the box numbers. Jack didn’t know where he’d left his newspaper. They drove to the coffee shop at the Southland Hotel just to take a break from these excitements. The place was either just closing or just opening. An old bent Negro working a mop. They sat at the counter and there’s a copy of the Morning News lying right there waiting. They looked at each other. Jack ripped through the pages and found the ad. George took out the Polaroids.
The numbers didn’t match.
Jack looked around for someone to get some coffee. He didn’t even comment on the numbers. He had a twelve-inch stare, a dullish flat-eyed gaze. How a complete nothing, a zero person in a T-shirt, could decide out of nowhere to shoot our President.
They drove past the Carousel to take a look at the sign Jack had put up, one word only, saying CLOSED.
Then they went home. Jack got a few hours’ sleep, woke up, took a Preludin with his grapefruit juice and watched a famous New York rabbi on TV.
The man spoke in a gorgeous baritone. He went ahead and eulogized that here was an American who fought in every battle, went to every country, and he had to return to the U.S. to get shot in the back.
This, with the rabbi’s beautiful phraseology, caused a roar of sorrow in Jack’s head. He turned off the set and picked up the phone.
He called four people to tell them he’d closed his clubs for the weekend.
He called his sister Eileen in Chicago and sobbed.
He called KLIF and asked for the Weird Beard.
“Tell you the truth,” Jack said, “I never know what you’re talking about on the air but I listen in whenever. Your voice has a little quality of being reassuring in it.”
“Personality radio. It’s the coming thing, Jack.”
“Plus when do I see a beard in Dallas?”
“I’m the only one.”
“Russ, you’re a good guy so I called with a question I want to ask.”
“Sure, Jack.”
“Who’s this Earl Warren?”
“Earl Warren. Are we talking this is blues or rock ’n’ roll? There was an Earlene (Big Sister) Warren sang on the West Coast for a while.”
“No, Earl Warren, from the Impeachment signs. The red, white and blue signboards.”
“Impeach Earl Warren.”
“That’s the one.”
“He’s the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Jack. Of the United States.”
“The events have got me bollixed up.”
“Who can blame you?”
“It’s the worst thing ever in our city.”
“One little man comes along and turns everything upside down. And we’ll get the blame for him.”
“Don’t say his name,” Jack said. “It has an effect of making me worse in my mind. Like I’m watching a dog playing in the dirt with my liver.”
Saturday afternoon. Lee Oswald sat in a small glass enclosure with a phone on a shelf to his right. The door across the room opened. Here she came moving toward him, bandy-legged, dry-eyed, jowly, hair pure white now, long and white and shining. She sat on the other side of the partition. She looked at him carefully, taking him in, absorbing. They picked up the phones.
“Did they hurt you, honey?” she said.
She went on to tell him how she heard the news on the car radio and turned around and went home and called the Star-Telegram and asked them to take her to Dallas in a press car. Then she was interviewed by two FBI men, both named Brown. She told them for the security of the country she wanted it kept perfectly quiet that her son Lee Harvey Oswald returned to the United States from Russia with money furnished by the State Department. T
his was news to the Browns and they were pop-eyed.
“They’re taping this, Mother.”
“I know. We’ll be careful what we say. I told them I haven’t seen my son in a year. ‘But you are the mother, Mrs. Oswald.’ I told them I’ve been doing live-ins as a nurse and they didn’t tell me where they’d moved to. ‘But you are the mother, you are the mother.’ I told them I didn’t even know about the new grandchild. I had to endure a year of silence and now there is family news every minute on the radio.”
These men, Brown, were looking for suspects in every direction. Magazine people were keeping the family in a room at the Adolphus Hotel. It was kept extremely hush hush. They were whisked from place to place with precautions. All of them. The accused mother, the brother, the Russian wife, the two little babies. Accompanied by approximately eighteen to twenty men who were suspicious of them and of each other. These were FBI, Secret Service and Life magazine. There was a man continually taking pictures. And Marguerite rolled her stockings down and he took that picture too, of the mother rolling her hose after a day that made history.
“Things were done without my consent,” she told Lee. “But I’m checking every quote I make to them and if there are mistakes coming out, I’ll know it is all stacked up against us, going back to Russia. ”
The babies had diarrhea in their hotel surroundings and there were diapers strung across the room from wall to wall. A president had to die before she could learn she was a grandmother again.
When Marina went into the room to talk to Lee she didn’t know the police had found prints of the photographs she’d taken in the backyard on Neely Street. They were with Lee’s belongings in Ruth Paine’s garage. Marina had found two prints herself, overlooked by the police, in little June’s baby book. The pictures with the fateful rifle. The gun in one hand, then the other.
