The Day Kennedy Was Shot (71 page)

The average householder did not worry about “what this will do to business in Dallas” because the average householder had no stake in business. He began to wonder, sickened, if his city was going to become a tourist attraction for those who desired to see the place where Kennedy was shot. In his heart, he knew that Dallas was bigger, better, and worthier than that, and, collectively, the Dallasite listened to the pundits in New York and Washington with sinking heart. “It could have happened anywhere” was his impotent response. It could, but it had not.

At one point in the interviews between Captain Will Fritz and his composed prisoner, the officer said: “You know you have killed the President and this is a very serious charge.” “I did not,” said Oswald. The captain unlaced his fingers and spread the palms apart. “He has been killed,” he said. Oswald sat back. “The people will forget in a few days and there will be another President.” In that statement, he spoke for Dallas at lunchtime but not for Dallas at 8:30
P.M.
The city, helpless in its horror, began to realize that the world was saying that Dallas had shot a great man in the back.

What had to be done had been done. President Johnson stood behind his desk, a sign that he was ready to leave. He told Walter Jenkins, an overworked aide and friend, that Jenkins would be responsible for setting up the meeting of the cabinet at 10
A.M.
“That plane from Hawaii is coming in sometime tonight,”
the President told Jenkins, “and I want someone out at Andrews to tell them that we'll meet in the Cabinet Room at 10. There is going to be no gap in this government.” He stared through the gleaming spectacles at Jenkins. “No excuses either.”

He would not permit himself to dwell on the assassination; he knew that if he opened that topic, the young men who stood around offering suggestions and executing orders would fall into melancholy soliloquies. The event had brought its own dark thoughts. Frozen in the little first aid cubicle at Parkland Memorial, Johnson had been convinced by the Secret Service that he too might be marked for death. It was shameful to think of a new President as a prisoner in a tiled room hardly bigger than a shower stall. The crouching run to get into an automobile, the race to Love Field and sanctuary were, at best, degrading images in a great democracy, even though the attitude of the Secret Service, “maximum possible danger as part of a massive plot,” was the correct attitude.

“You know,” the President said, “Rufe did a brave thing today.” The man with the honey-sweet Georgia accent had folded the new President onto the seat and had exposed himself to rifle fire by sitting high on the shoulder of Mr. Johnson. The act was more than brave; it was dutiful. In a manner of speaking, Rufus Youngblood had taken charge of the President before Mr. Johnson had taken charge of the country. “You will follow me . . .” “We will stay right here . . .” “Our best bet is to get aboard
Air Force One
and get you back to the White House at once . . .” For an hour, the President who did not like to take orders accepted them from the agent who did not like to issue them.

The oaken door marked “The Vice-President” opened, and Lyndon Johnson stood in the light. “Come on, Jack,” he said to Mr. Valenti. “You come home with me.” He told Juanita Roberts and Marie Fehmer to finish up and go home for some rest, because tomorrow would be a big day. Emory Roberts and Rufus Youngblood fell into step ahead of the President. Behind him,
Cliff Carter, Bill Moyers, and Jack Valenti hurried to keep pace. This was the new O'Donnell, O'Brien, and Powers group. The corridor was empty. The office where a White House secretary had condemned Lyndon Johnson's soul was dark.

The party emerged from the side entrance. Rufus Youngblood was on the sidewalk first, waving the limousine into position and studying both sides of the closed street. Johnson walked around the car and occupied the right rear seat. Valenti came in the other door and sat with the President. The other two folded the jump seats back and sat sideward so that they could see the President. The car started and, on the right, the pale lighting of the White House brought it into view between the trees. Lyndon Johnson took a look and sat back. He had known this ghostly mansion for thirty-five years; it, too, was his. The government of the country was his, but, like the house, the tantalizing role of caretaker could be unrewarding. The government, the house, the fortunes of the country were more Johnson's responsibility than his proprietary right. For the next fifty weeks he must work to preserve them and enhance their value. Then the electorate would tell him whether he would be permitted to continue or send him away to let another man do the work.

The witnesses were in attitudes of fatigue. For them, too, time was slow. The brain examination was almost complete. The curiosity of science was almost satiated. The doctors stood behind the head, peering, whispering, making notes. The cerebellum was fixed with formaldehyde because the brain, in its common state within the skull, does not lend itself to adequate examination. Like an intact walnut, the brain forms two complete hemispheres. The flocculus cerebri—a tuft of wool-like fibers—had been smashed. More than half the right hemisphere was gone.

When the brain was removed, more photos were taken. The disruption of the tissue moved from a medium-low position in the back of the head to an increasingly shallow depth as it ran
toward the top of the head. The path of injury was parasagittal about 2.5 centimeters to the right of the midline, which connects the hemispheres. The parietal lobe was missing. Such lacerations as could be traced had a center which was jagged and irregular and which radiated into smaller lateral lacerations. The corpus callosum—a thicket of fibers which connects the hemispheres of the brain—was cut. By looking down, Humes, Boswell, and Finck could see parts of the ventricular system, where spinal fluid is normally stored. The smashing speed of the bullet had jammed the front portion of the brain against the right orb, causing a black eye.

The witnesses watched rheumy-eyed. The FBI men and Kellerman continued to make notes, but, as none had been medically trained or oriented, the notes amounted to personal observations reinforced by whatever opinions they could hear from the doctors. The rest sat stupefied. No one had a desire to study this event, and yet the tan, lean body on the table was compelling in its surrender. No one became ill. Men looked or turned away. The doctors may have been a little more zealous than usual, a little slower, but this was understandable.

Humes and Boswell cut the scalp down to both ears. Bits of the skull continued to fall off, and fissure fractures ran like tributaries to a deep lake on top. The doctors required little saw work to remove the top of the skull. Studying the X-rays, they were able to locate and lift two bullet fragments in the front of the brain. As they worked, the doctors must have reasoned that death from this wound would be practically instantaneous. On the X-rays, they counted between thirty and forty bits of metallic “dust,” too small for a search but large enough to be visible on the plate.

Kellerman waited until the doctors appeared to be taking a rest. Then he told them that an almost whole bullet had been found. His chief, James Rowley, ordered him to report it to them. One of the doctors made a note. After a brief respite, they
continued with their work. The government and the people had to know, but the work and the findings were dreary. The solemn thought which gripped the laymen sitting across the room was that early this morning this had been a working body and an intelligent brain, both buoyant and integrated, and on the table they lay destroyed. The driver, William Greer, who felt a personal affection for the President, was beset by a feeling that what was left on the table was no longer Kennedy.

Lee Harvey Oswald never had a friend. He had not been able to comprehend the concomitants of friendship—confidence, affection, and loyalty. He was born with the pout of the discontented. There was his mother—slavish, domineering, complaining—and there was nobody. A snapshot of him as a boy, smiling among his classmates, gives the impression that he was obedient to the whim of the photographer. His impatience with a world of three billion people who would not recognize his greatness was borne silently for years, eventually inducing an explosion of the brain second only to that which President Kennedy sustained.

People remembered him. They murmured: “Lee Oswald” and rubbed their chins or shook their heads. “A loner.” “He could be polite, but he was far away.” “Braggart . . . a liar.” “Dreamer.” “Didn't dance, date, play cards, never had a hobby. Never laughed.” “You could say hello, but Lee wouldn't answer.” People remembered him in Dallas and Irving and New Orleans and Fort Worth and El Toro, California. They were remembering tonight, as his face stared sullenly in their living rooms, but they were troubled about what to remember. Some said: “Yes, he would do a thing like that.”

A few career sergeants of the Marine Corps snorted: “Ossie Rabbit? Not him.” An intelligent liar is difficult to read. He is secretive and presents the face he wants one to see, whether it is a real face or a spurious one. To a few old buddies in the
Marine Corps, he was an okay guy who kept his gear clean, studied radarscopes for landing patterns, and enjoyed arguing politics. To a librarian, he was a bookworm. To a boss, lazy and disinterested. To a wife, weak on sex drive and strong on despotic domination. To a doting mother, an all-American boy. To God, an atheist. To the Russians, a potential suicide. To a New York psychologist, a neurotic with overtones of paranoia. To the women of an orphanage, a silent child who sat in one place with one toy all day.

He lived in a concrete cocoon. Lee Oswald was fifteen years old when he found room inside it for Karl Marx. He read
Das Kapital
, but he did not understand it. The boy enjoyed the dogmatic and doctrinaire phrases of communism. They had a ring of mystery; they were incontrovertible. They could be tossed into conversations and people would rage futilely against them without knowing, anymore than he, what they were fighting. The world struggle of the working classes was not appreciated in Texas or Louisiana so Lee Harvey Oswald could identify with it and feel himself part of a small secret band.

School was anathema because school was regimented knowledge. Lee was superior to this. He could attain passing grades, but he had to work hard to achieve them. A dispute with a teacher was a better thing than study. Someday, he said, he would go to Russia. The Soviet system would not permit his poor mother to suffer the way she had when jobs were difficult to find. The Soviets took care of everyone according to his needs. And yet he found it increasingly difficult to tolerate the presence of his mother. When he was thwarted, sometimes he would lash out with his fists.

He accepted the drudgery and degradation of being a “boot” in the Marine Corps. His marksmanship on the rifle range was not as good as his drill instructors expected. Some called his work “sloppy.” When other recruits enjoyed liberty, Lee Oswald was in the rifle pits firing. “Come on, scum!” they shouted. “Drill
that target.” Little by little, he improved. In time, he was given a test “for the record” and he scored 212 points. The gradations were “Marskman,” “Sharpshooter,” “Expert.” Lee Oswald became a Sharpshooter. He became proficient in the use of pistols. His battalion went to Japan, to the Philippines, but Lee Oswald did not feel captivated by alien culture or hospitable people. He called himself an instrument of imperialism.

Sometimes he hopped into his “rack” to read. At others, he might be persuaded to go to the nearest town with his comrades and drink beer. Once, he hit a sergeant on the head with a mug and was court-martialed. On other occasions, when the boys went to a house of prostitution, “Ossie Rabbit” waited outside. Some marines said Oswald hated the Corps. He argued that Nikita Khrushchev was a great man and stated that he would like to kill President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Nobody knew the nobody. Except for peeps at the world, he lived inside the cocoon. Marine Peter Connor said: “When the fellows were heading out for a night on the town, Oswald would either remain behind or leave before they did. Nobody knew what he did.” The cocoon, in time, becomes a warm womb. It is self-sustaining and requires no fuel. It resists the hand of friendship, the pressure of soft lips. Sentiment and affection are threats to the cocoon.

Many were pondering what they knew of this man. On Fifth Street, Ruth Paine was trying to unravel her skein of thoughts about Lee Oswald. She asked her husband to go out and get some hamburgers. No one was in a mood for cooking. Marina came out of the bathroom and said wistfully: “Last night Lee said he hoped we could get an apartment together soon.” Another thought, another thread which matched none of the others. Mrs. Oswald was hurt, as though she wondered how he could have held out such a bright promise to her and the babies if he planned a dark deed. There was no proof that he planned anything. Casually, Ruth said: “Do you think Lee killed
the President?” The Russian girl frowned. “I don't know,” she said slowly. Marguerite Oswald swept out of the bathroom, proclaiming that if the Oswalds were prominent people there would be three lawyers down in police headquarters right now to defend that boy. “This is not a small case, Mrs. Oswald,” Ruth said. “The authorities will give it careful attention—you'll see.” Marguerite didn't see.

Mrs. Paine was perplexed. None are so blind as Good Samaritans. She, too, remembered last night. Lee had arrived before dark unexpectedly. To her, he was always a strange and aloof man. She had befriended this little family, had given it sustenance and a roof when it had neither, but Lee Oswald felt no gratitude. He had ordered the Russian community of Dallas to stop offering gifts to his children and his wife; Lee Oswald would provide. The dependency he required from his wife was so complete that he forbade her to learn to speak English.