The Day Kennedy Was Shot (68 page)

A lady can remain silent only so long. “Now, Mrs. Paine,” said Marguerite Oswald in the petulant, injured tone of her
third son, “I am sorry.” All the heads in the room came up. “I am in your home. And I appreciate the fact that I am a guest in your home. But I will not have you making statements that are incorrect.” This was calculated to divert the newsmen to the place where the correct story reposed. “To begin with, I do not approve of this publicity. And if we are going to have the story with
Life
magazine, I would like to get paid.”

There it was. The poor can afford to be tactless. Grant and Thompson glanced at each other. Marina realized that a new and jarring note had erased the smile from Ruth's face, but no one bothered to explain what grandmother was talking about. “Here is my daughter-in-law,” said Mrs. Oswald, pointing dramatically with her free hand, “with two small children. And I myself am penniless, and if we are going to give this information, I believe we should get paid for it.”

Lee Harvey Oswald was for sale. The type of story a writer would get would depend upon the source. Marguerite would defend her boy; Marina would give it a somber mood and gray skies; Ruth Paine could make it as cheerful as a Quaker picnic in the hills of Pennsylvania; Robert Oswald could analyze it back to the cradle; John Pic wanted to forget it.

The grandmother had a latent suspicion that Ruth Paine had engineered a secret deal with the men from
Life
and was being paid. The appearance of the two men at the front door, she was sure, was not accidental. It might even have been set up with Marina's assistance. Ruth spoke to Marina in Russian. This was an additional frustration because Marguerite could not present her motherly views to her daughter-in-law. Nor did she trust Mrs. Paine to translate her dicta accurately.

The conversation became a crossfire of two languages. One of the newsmen stood and, addressing Marguerite, said: “Mrs. Oswald, I will call my office and see what they think about an arrangement for your life story.” This was even better. Mrs. Oswald felt that her life story, one of hardships and affronts to
Southern womanhood, had more drama and more appeal than Lee's. She had not seen much of her son since he enlisted in the Marine Corps on October 26, 1956. He had been away a long while, come home for a few days, gone to Russia, come back to Texas, and avoided her. There was a question of how much information she could supply about him.

The
Life
man went into another room and called his superior. Mrs. Oswald dandled Rachel and, beyond doubt, had visions of real money at last falling into her hands. Private nursing cases are drudgery. She carried bedpans, changed sheets and nightclothes, brought cool glasses of water with glass straws, listened to the feeble protests of the chronically ill, snatched a little television and a nap, and hurried home to spend her waking time alone. This could be the biggest thing in her life.

The man came out and said that
Life
would not pay money for Marguerite's story. He had a counteroffer. The magazine would pay hotel and food expenses for the group in Dallas. Marguerite was disappointed. She was hurt. However, she would think about it, she said. The men from
Life
did not leave. Allan Grant made photographs. The flash winked. Marguerite began to feel warm. She rolled her stockings below her knees and sat. The cameraman made a picture. “I am not having this invasion of privacy,” she shouted. “I realize that I am in Mrs. Paine's home. But you are taking my picture without my consent—a picture that I certainly don't want made public.”

The photographer followed Marina into the bedroom. The babies were going to bed. Marguerite hurried to follow and interposed herself between the family and the photographer. He continued to make pictures. “I've had it!” she said, waving her arms. “Find out what accommodations you can make for my daughter-in-law and I so we can be in Dallas to help Lee.” Her tone brooked no argument. “Let me know in the morning!” The men left.

Time dragged. The night was long. The people on the streets shuffled aimlessly. The clocks on the banks flicked their lights to 7:55, and a man's mind would race with regret over broad spans of horror and, when he lifted his eyes eventually to another clock, the lights said 7:55. The eternity of time was the result of trying to turn it back to 12:29
P.M.,
when the roar of the downtown crowds assailed the ears of the pleased President. It did not matter, really, whether a man liked him or not; this was part of the fair and sunny world of democracy.

The dreadful thing happened and those who did not admire him mourned with those who did. A blackness had settled on the land and strangers in buses and elevators and planes and in shops said: “I was on my lunch hour . . .” “I called home to see how things were . . .” “It was Friday, I thought we'd go to a movie tonight . . .” “I slept late . . .” “I was in class . . .” “I rarely turn the car radio on . . .” “I was getting a roast for Sunday . . .” “We felt as though we knew him . . .” “We were going out to our country place for a last weekend . . .” “I saw this woman crying . . .”

The only thing which could reverse the clock was television. The commentators were solemn, the voices sometimes shaken. But there he was, alive again, the arm punctuating the words: “Let the word go forth from this place at this time . . .” “Ask not what your country can do for you . . .” “. . . she takes longer, but then when she appears, she looks better than we do . . .” Robert Oswald, the lonely man, walked seven blocks to his car and it seemed as though he arrived at the same moment he had left police headquarters. Time would not dissolve. Nor would it evaporate. This frightful night would go on and on, torturing the innocent and the helpless. How long ago was it that his mind had been set in flames in that shop in Fort Worth? It must have been a long, long time because the same thoughts had been slipping in and out of the revolving door of the mind.

He drove through the downtown area. Robert Oswald wasn't sure where he was going. He could go home, but there
was nothing to say. A man does not like to plague his wife and family with this situation. He would be impelled to discuss it, but what would he say? What would he say Monday at the shop? Or, more important, what would the men say to him? Suppose it was true—suppose his brother had done this thing? What do you say: “My name is Robert Oswald—you know, the brother of the assassin.”

The car moved slowly through the almost empty streets. It came to Dealey Plaza and rolled slowly down the incline past the Texas School Book Depository building. Two policemen stood in the middle of Elm with flashlights, hurrying the flagging motorists. Robert Oswald had no desire to stop. He didn't know where he was going, but he didn't want to look at that building. His wheels passed near the spot where life ended and eternity began for John F. Kennedy. At the underpass, he moved out across the viaduct and over the damp bed of the Trinity River and on out on Route Eighty.

Thinking would do no good, and yet thought imprisoned him. He drove slowly, carefully, doing the right things, going west on Arcadia, staring along through the windshield. He could not go to his mother because he lacked the faith. It would be almost as difficult to try to communicate with Marina. The night was cool; that was all a man could say for it. The false summer of the sun was gone. Vaguely, a man could see the bright cat's eyes of trailer trucks eastbound, making him squint, and then they were gone. He must have passed Cockrell Hill and Arcadia Park because they were behind the car. There were filling stations whizzing by and lights, a diner, a motel. Cars went by him showing broad braces of red lights in the back. He passed Arlington, and Robert Oswald asked himself where he was going.

Nowhere. He would not flee, even if he could. He would help Lee. Being a good brother carries a price. On this day, it was high. In random thought, he may have asked himself if there was a small key out of the past which might have trig
gered this deed. There were scores of scenes, unwholesome, unhealthy, which could be dredged from boyhood. To a child, a bad life is livable if he has seen no other. To an adult who has earned his own contentment, old memories can be a pit of vipers. It would seem to the Oswald boys that they never had a youth. They were always little men, doing as they were told by their mother; doing as they were told in orphanages; doing as they were told in school; eating when they were told; eating what they were told. There was a shy, timid joy when Marguerite married another man and, for a moment in time, they had a home and a bedroom and a few toys. Even that was a cruel come-on because the boys barely became acclimated to the joys of climbing a tree, throwing a ball, or breaking in a new pair of shiny shoes when it was gone.

He drove over Lancaster into Fort Worth and out near the Ridglea Golf Club and turned around. The car, like his thoughts, was on a carousel. Robert Oswald returned to Dallas. He did not know why. There was nothing he could do. And he had no place to go.

A Secret Service man stood outside the seventeenth-floor suite with two cases. There was an overnight bag with fresh clothing for Mrs. John F. Kennedy. The small one was a makeup case. Both carried the monogram JBK. They had been packed by Providencia Parades, an attractive darkskinned maid from Santo Domingo. Miss Parades knew that Mrs. Kennedy required a change of clothing. The bags were taken into the suite. Mrs. Kennedy had them placed in the bedroom and left them unopened.

The guests tried to become accustomed to the blood and brains. It was impossible. The glances were masked. In spite of the several conversations going on in the sitting room, the kitchen and the bedroom, the sight of this remarkable young woman emerging from a room constricted throats and hurt eyes. It was as though they were looking at a murder. Part of the President of the United States was in the room. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara sat on the kitchen floor, his back against a counter, as Mrs. Kennedy chatted.

The conversation drifted. He saw the “bloody skirt and blood all over her stockings” and he, the most composed of men, thought of it as “fantastic.” “Where am I going to live?” she asked, at one time. This was specious and small-girlish. No one who lives in the White House has ever regarded it as a permanent residence. It was not as though she were being evicted, nor even as though she had no place to go. She had inherited a fine home at Hyannis Port; her mother had a big home in Georgetown; Mrs. Kennedy had riches. It is possible that she intended the question to mean “What place would be best for me?”

An hour had passed since Godfrey McHugh came upstairs with news about the President's remains. Mrs. Kennedy, alert with the energy which nature lends to those most deeply hurt, noticed that some of the women looked fatigued. She suggested that they all go home and “get some rest.” The ladies declined. Some pointed out that she was the one who needed rest, that there would be much for her to do, many decisions to make, and that she should consider lying down. She too declined. The widow had promised herself that she would remain at her husband's side until she brought him “home.” It was a sacrifice for Mrs. Kennedy to remain on the seventeenth floor while he was in the autopsy room.

Charles and Mary Bartlett arrived, and this brought a freshet of tears. Mr. Bartlett was a Washington columnist. Twelve years ago, when Jacqueline Bouvier had been an inquiring photographer for a local newspaper, the Bartletts had introduced her to the young and dashing Congressman from Massachusetts, Jack Kennedy. He was a ladies' man indeed, with an eccentricity, he seldom carried cash. Often, at a motion picture house, he fanned his pockets and had to borrow money from his dates. For a young man who was granted a trust fund of one million dollars before he earned one, it was embarrassing to watch the lady of his choice hold up a queue while she delved into her purse.

The tears came. The tears dried. Often, the mind of the widow regressed to the good days. She remembered and remembered and remembered. In some of the sad, sweet recollections, a joy suffused her wan face. The eyes became enormous pools of dusky light, the graceful hands augmented the stories, Dallas didn't happen. Her relatives and friends nodded and smiled and added some anecdotes of their own. Then she would speak of how she planned to conduct herself, and the doleful word “funeral” was uttered, and suddenly all the happy days lay shattered in the silence and on the stunned faces.

America would be watching this funeral; of that she was certain. And Mrs. Kennedy said that she was going to hold her head high. She would not break down because she would not permit it. Everything that she would do, or permit to be done, would have to conform with what she thought her husband would approve. She recalled that, as a former naval officer, he had looked forward with pleasure to the forthcoming Army-Navy game. That is why she had asked for a Navy ambulance and a naval hospital. The Navy, she felt, would remove the bullets from his body and dress it for burial. She was not told that the procedure involved a full autopsy.

Morgan Gies waved the car into the White House garage. He took it to the back and had the driver place it in a deep alcove. Hickey shut the ignition off and said: “Look at this.” He pointed to a star-shaped crack on the windshield. Gies looked. He did not touch. Orders had come down from Chief Rowley to cover SS-100-X without touching it. Hickey said: “I noticed it coming in from Andrews. It isn't much, but it keeps spidering.” The motion of the car seemed to spread it in radiation.

Gies looked across the hood of the car. “Whatever it is,” he said, “the crack isn't on the outside. This side is smooth.” Two agents were backing the other Secret Service car into a bin. The President's limousine had a huge plastic cover drawn over its length. Two men guarded it. They took their posts in the alcove. Deputy Chief Paul Paterni of the Secret Service and Floyd Boring, assistant Agent-in-Charge of the White House detail, were on the other side of the street in front of Blackie's Beef House, waiting for a traffic light before crossing. They wanted to see this automobile at once. With them were Chief Petty Officers William Martinell and Thomas Mills of the White House medical staff.