The Day Kennedy Was Shot (37 page)

Each of these men knew, better than most, the permanence of the word “dead,” and each riffled through his mental files for memories and unfinished business. The story was so monumental in size that they would be writing all day and half the night, trying to sew a literary crepe. A man in surgical white walked into the room. It was Bill Stinson, aide to Governor Connally, and he wanted to report on the condition of the Governor. Kilduff almost pinned him to the blackboard. “One o'clock, one o'clock,” he whispered loudly. The Governor's public relations expert, Julian O. Reed, came into the room and, in answer to a reporter's question, began to draw on the blackboard the seating in the President's limousine. This became confused, corrected, and redrawn, until at last all hands agreed that this was where the Kennedys were sitting, and here, in the jump seats, the Connallys sat.

One of the writers started to ask a question and burst into tears. In the hospital hall, a woman married to a United Press International man dropped a dime into a public telephone. In one minute, teletype machines chattered everywhere:

“We must get her out of there,” O'Donnell said. “If she sees that casket, it's going to be the final blow.” Mr. David
Powers, small and bald and close to tears, said that he would give Mrs. Kennedy some kind of a story to get her away from Trauma One right now. It would help, O'Donnell said, if they could both get her into a room on a pretext that they had to talk over something confidential. Then let the Secret Service sneak the box into the room and it would spare her an additional shock.

It would have to be done quickly, because Oneal was expected at the emergency entrance. The plotters decided to do it together. They sauntered over to Trauma One and started the little whispers about the need for a private chat. At first, Mrs. Kennedy stared at her husband's dear friends, the mouth still half open with shock, the dark eyes pooled with grief. Suddenly she shook her head negatively. “No,” she said firmly, “I want to watch it all.” She spurned the easy way.

Vernon Oneal and two assistants rolled the four hundred-pound bronze casket down the long corridors, between the rows of faces awaiting medication or treatment and around the narrow corner to Trauma One. It was on a carriage and, as they passed Mrs. Kennedy, the three men glanced at her and mumbled their sympathy. Inside they turned it over to Nurse Hutton and offered their assistance. The casket, as Kenneth O'Donnell said, may have been the final blow to the widow, but she did not whimper. She saw the gleaming bronze sides and the silver handles and the huge convex lid, but she didn't flinch. She studied it.

Miss Hutton had a problem. The brains of the President were still oozing from the massive hole in his head. She had lifted the body by the neck, and wrapped four sheets around it, but it was still leaking through. Obviously it would stain the casket, with its white satin shirring. She asked Supervisor Doris Nelson for instructions. “Go up to Central Supply,” she was told, “and get one of those plastic mattress covers.”

The cover was placed in the casket, so that the edges hung
over the sides. Then the nude body of the President, covered with sheets, was lifted inside. The plastic was folded over him and the lid was closed. Nurse Bowron sighed. The British girl had never been to America before, but this was a day she would never forget.

The mayor's wife wished to be sympathetic. “Mrs. Kennedy,” she said softly, “I am Elizabeth Cabell. I wish there was something—” “Yes,” Mrs. Kennedy said, “I remember you gave me the roses.” The tone was soft and musical, but the mind retreated from reality. “I would like a cigarette,” Mrs. Kennedy said. Mrs. Cabell looked for her purse. When she glanced up again, the young widow had disappeared. She was in one of the trauma rooms. Mrs. Kennedy found her pocketbook on a carriage and dug into it looking for cigarettes. The mayor's wife said: “I have a cigarette for you.” She held them out but Mrs. Kennedy did not see. When she found her own, she stuck one in her mouth and stared at Mrs. Cabell as though seeing her for the first time. “I don't have a match,” she said.

They were back in the chairs, waiting for the casket to come out of Trauma One, when a priest came around the corner. He was the Catholic chaplain at the hospital, too late to be of any assistance, but not too early to irritate Mrs. Kennedy with pious platitudes and hand-patting. It is possible that she wanted to ask him where he was when her husband needed him so desperately; it is possible that the man was not in the hospital at the time, or, if he was, no one informed him that a Christian was expiring. It is even possible that his approach was too unctuously friendly. Mrs. Kennedy needed some assistance to break the conversation.

In the outer hall, a Negro preacher arrived and said that he had been called to comfort a dying President of the United States. No one asked him the name of his church or who called him. He was ushered out by the Secret Service, who assured him that the matter had been taken care of. Mrs. Kennedy,
hostile to the living, stamped her cigarette out and went into Trauma One and sat in a chair with her head leaning against the cold side of the casket.

The forward door on
Air Force One
was closed by Clint Hill. He turned the handle inside and locked it. A Secret Service man was stationed there and another at the rear ramp. On the concrete below, Secret Service men stood quietly, facing away from the aircraft. City police details patrolled the airport, and detectives walked from counter to counter, looking over young men who were departing from Dallas. Uniformed policemen patrolled the fence and Gate 24.

When Lyndon Johnson got aboard, he ordered all the shades drawn. The interior was hot and stuffy. The air conditioning had been shut down when the engines stopped. Mr. Johnson and his party threaded the aisle through the communications shack, where sergeants with headsets crouched, looking up in wonderment as their new President passed. The group went through the galley and the crew's quarters, all forward of the wing, then into the staff and press area, where the seats faced the back of the plane. In the middle of the silvery wing was the door to the President's private stateroom. An attendant held the door open, and the Seal of the President shone in white.

The first sound inside was from the television set. Lyndon Johnson looked up to see the face of Walter Cronkite, in New York, discussing a dark deed in Dallas. The President shhh'd everyone, hoping to hear something new about the extent of the assassination plot. A commentator in Dallas told Cronkite that Mr. Kennedy had been pronounced dead; the shots came apparently from a school book building near the end of a lively motorcade; the police had clues and were looking for a suspect; Vice-President Johnson had left Parkland Memorial Hospital but no one knew his whereabouts.

The big stateroom with its wall-hugging couches and ornate desk and rug was just as John F. Kennedy left it, except that the Texas newspapers were now crumpled in a rack. Mrs. Johnson walked aft to the bedroom with tears in her eyes. She alone had noticed the hospital flag at half-staff and it had crushed her with its finality as the sight of the bronze casket had Mrs. Kennedy. The bedroom has a walkway on the port side of the plane. Outside the bedroom another Secret Service agent stood. In the tail of the plane was a small area near the ramp door for the President's staff and Secret Service men. There were two lavatories, a small galley, and a breakfast nook.

The President left the television set and walked toward the back of the plane. He instructed the stewards to hold the private bedroom for Mrs. Kennedy's use. However Mr. Johnson quickly discovered that there was no other place from which he could make a private phone call, so he removed his jacket, tossed it on a clothes tree, and signaled the communications crew that he would be using this phone for a while.

There were many phone calls; the shocked man had to know that, beyond this little hell of terror, there was a normal, sunny world which was still official and still functioning. One of the first calls was to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. This one required some thought. Words of sympathy sound superficial no matter how well intended. Johnson wanted to convey the depth of his personal loss as well as offering his hand to the Kennedy family; he also wanted to ask the Attorney General for a legal opinion on when to take the oath of office as President.

Neither of these was easy to say. Robert Kennedy, on the phone, was less emotional than the President. He had no report from the FBI or any other government agency that there was a broad plot against the leading officers of government; he knew that Governor Connally had been hit, but it could be an acci
dent, because he was in the same car with Robert's brother. So far as the oath of office was concerned, he wasn't sure when it should be administered or by whom. He promised to have Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach call back with the correct answers.
^*

Officials at the Pentagon were calling the White House switchboard at the Dallas-Sheraton Hotel asking who was now in command. An officer grabbed the phone and assured the Pentagon that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff “are now the President.” Somehow, in the flight from the hospital, the new President had overlooked The Bagman and Major General Chester V. Clifton, who understood the coded types of retaliation. If, at this time, the Soviet Union had launched a missile attack, referred to in the Department of Defense as a “Thirty-Minute War,” it would have required a half hour for The Bagman and General Clifton to get to Johnson's side.

Jefferson Boulevard between Zangs and Bishop is a Friday night shopping area. The street is broad, and cars on both sides park in parallel rows. It is one of the brightest, busiest parts of Oak Cliff at night, but this was Friday at 1:30
P.M.
The only parked cars were owned by store clerks. A couple of women chatted and studied the windows. A bus on its way out to Cockrell Hill took its time. One or two shop managers, with no customers inside, stood along the curb in shirtsleeves, absorbing warm sun.

At 1:15
P.M.
the box office of the Texas Theatre had opened. Julia Postal, the long-time cashier, had a little radio on and she looked through the slotted window at fourteen customers lined
up for the first show. The marquee, jutting out over the sidewalk, proclaimed:

She took ninety cents apiece from each of them. Mrs. Postal was not discouraged. There would be plenty of customers before the day was over. The Texas Theatre had a one-price policy: ninety cents no matter what time the customer arrived. The war pictures always attracted the men. The manager, Mr. John A. Callahan, was inside. He was excited about the shooting of the President. He was talking to Butch Burroughs, who handled the hot buttered popcorn and the candy inside the lobby. It was a small movie house, part of a chain, but Callahan and Mrs. Postal and Burroughs kept it clean.

On the same side of the street, Johnny Calvin Brewer managed Hardy's Shoe Shop. Mr. Brewer was only twenty-three years old, but he was ambitious and industrious. He had been entrusted with his own shop for fourteen months, and the big bosses did not regret it. At the moment, there wasn't a customer in the store, and Johnny Brewer, neatly dressed in a nice suit and tie, listened to a radio telling the awful events going on in downtown Dallas. A moment ago another flash had come on: some policeman—no name was given—had been shot at Tenth and Patton, right here in Oak Cliff.

The youthful manager wondered what the heck the world was coming to. He was listening and facing the open front door when he heard the shrill scream of a siren. It was approaching the store seemingly at top speed. Mr. Brewer was waiting to see which way it was going when a young man in a flappy shirt turned in toward the store. The windows were recessed from the sidewalk in a “V.” The stranger appeared to be studying the
shoes in one of the windows. The police car whizzed by and the stranger walked out on the sidewalk and continued on his way.

The manager thought that the man seemed suspicious. He couldn't say why, and perhaps if a customer had been in the store he might have paid no attention to the matter. But the store was empty, and the radio was full of flashes of terrible deeds, one of them only eight blocks away. Johnny Brewer stepped out on the sidewalk and shaded his eyes.

He looked toward the Texas Theatre and saw Julia Postal—now free of customers—out at the curb. Mr. Callahan was hopping into his car and she was talking to him. The stranger with the dirty-looking sports shirt and the slacks turned into the Texas Theatre, without buying a ticket, and disappeared. Callahan was telling Julia Postal that he was going to follow that police car to find out what the excitement was.

Johnny Brewer approached the cashier as she returned to her post, and he asked her if she had sold a ticket to a man “wearing a brown shirt.” She said she couldn't remember one. Mr. Brewer, who is not easily dissuaded, said that a man had ducked into the movie while she had been out talking at the curb. The shoe store manager insisted that this was a most suspicious person because, as the police car approached his shop with the siren at its loudest, the man had pretended to look at shoes and then had walked on to the Texas Theatre and was now inside without purchasing a ticket.

She hadn't sold a ticket in the past ten minutes. The movie was just starting, so Brewer walked inside and asked Butch Burroughs if he had seen a man in a brown shirt passing through. No, the candy butcher said, he had been busy and he wanted to know why. “I think the guy looks suspicious, that's why.”

It seemed like a lot of trouble for one ninety-cent gate crasher, but Brewer was going to follow his lead all the way. He reminded himself that the cashier's booth is flush with all
the storefronts on the street and, if the man had stopped to buy a ticket, he would have been in plain view from the shoe store. Besides, Julia Postal wasn't in the booth. And another “besides”—why didn't the man look up to watch that shrieking police car go by? Who looks at shoes at a time like that? Brewer thought the stranger looked “messed up and scared.”