The Day Kennedy Was Shot (75 page)

Neither knew much about the afternoon and evening events in Dallas, except that Robert Kennedy had told Kellerman that a young self-professed communist had been arrested. The plates of steaming chicken arrived, and both men looked at them and decided to try the coffee. They sipped and stirred and ate two rolls. In fifteen minutes, they were back in the autopsy room.

Outside the room, Greer found two men in medical coats trying to get into the room. A check showed that they were newspaper reporters. They left without dispute. Inside, Sibert and O'Neill of the FBI were receipting a glass container with metal slivers taken from the brain. At the same time, Dr. Burkley's enlisted men were delivering a piece of skull. Burkley gave it to Dr. Humes, who made a sketch of it, examined it, and, with Boswell and Finck watching, found where it fitted.

Not far away, President Johnson sat in the dining room picking at chicken. It was something to do. This was going to be a long night for him—it already was—and he looked around at the young faces: Jack Valenti, Bill Moyers, Cliff Carter, and an old friend who had just arrived, chubby Horace Busby. One of the characteristics the President had managed to hide from most people—except his wife and daughters—was a deep-set loneliness which he denied. He felt it now. It came over him at night and he would call friends at unreasonable hours and say: “Aw, come on over and sit with us awhile.” He noticed that no one this evening called him “Lyndon.” He was “Mister President” to everybody except his wife.

It brought no pleasure. The feeling was one of remoteness imposed upon him. The man who enjoyed friendship and loyalty and the rough-and-tough game of party politics was on a solitary eminence in the dark. Briefly he chewed on the chicken and listened to the conversation and kept the rheumy brown eyes on the television set. The screen switched to Dallas, and
there was John F. Kennedy, the graceful, grinning chief, strolling along the Love Field fence in a forest of arms. Mrs. Kennedy, in the nubby pink suit, was behind her husband, smiling graciously and being yanked almost off her feet by the hearty Texas handshakes.

“Shut it off!” Johnson snapped. Then, more softly, “I just can't take that.” He was trying hard to think of things which would keep him from remembering. He wiped his hands carefully on a napkin and called Secret Service Chief James Rowley. “Rufe did a brave thing today,” he said. “He jumped on me and kept me down. I want you to do whatever you can, the best that can be done, for that boy.” He hung up. It had not occurred to him that Rowley, too, was lonely. If there was any blame, any official laxness, it didn't matter that the planning of the Texas trip had been in the capable hands of Floyd Boring; it meant nothing that Roy Kellerman was in charge, along with Emory Roberts; no one wanted to weigh the possibilities that, if a Secret Service man had been on the left rear bumper going down Elm Street, it would have been difficult to hit President Kennedy. All indictments filter upward, and Rowley was the man at the top of the Secret Service. He was pleased to hear a praiseworthy report about one of his men, but Rowley knew that he was going to be every critic's target.

The car was at the curb. The bulky figure came downstairs from the apartment. Under his arm he carried a small female dog. He got in on the driver's side and deposited the dog on the other side of the seat. It was 9:30
P.M.
—late. Jack Ruby had said that he would attend services for the President and they would soon be concluded. He had bragged to everybody. Now he would drive to 9401 Douglas and try to make the boast good.

The car jerked down the road, the little dog braced against the turns. Ruby kept his eye on the road and switched the radio
on. His favorite station was KLIF. They had Joe Long at police headquarters. He was giving a summary of all the information the police had of Oswald. In the car, Jack Ruby felt a psychological block against uttering the name “Lee Harvey Oswald.” Although Oswald had not been indicted or tried, the nightclub owner began to think of him as “the person that committed the act.” Jack Ruby frequently felt blocks in his mind against people and names. He saw himself as a good, wholesome person with strong religious beliefs, one who loved law and order and law enforcement officials—one who, perhaps, was guilty of a few minor things like traffic summonses and fist fights—but a true child of God withal.

Reprehensible people did not deserve to have names or faces. “The person who committed the act” was the newest on a long list. Ruby had no trouble detecting good men from bad; he could do it instantaneously. His keen intelligence told him, as a weather vane swings to the new wind. He knew that Joe Long of KLIF was a good man because Ruby recalled that Long had given his club free plugs on the air. Russ Knight was another good man. He was a disc jockey on KLIF, a man who could enunciate his thoughts in swift, sure words. Joe and Russ—good guys.

Cars were parked around Temple Shearith Israel. Ruby switched his lights off, reassured the little dog as he always did, and locked the car. He hurried inside in time for the conclusion of the ceremony. A bar mitzvah was announced for Saturday and the communicants were invited to remain, at the conclusion of tonight's services, for cake and coffee. The jowly face of Jack Ruby hunted among the features of dedicated Jews for friends. He envied these people; they were regulars. They felt their Jewishness as a freezing man feels the warmth of fire. They were here because the spirit told them to be here. It was not fellowship which brought them, but an atavistic emotion of belonging to the true faith of God. In the temple they heard
the true words of all the prophets, the warnings and promises of God himself.

The nightclub owner felt cold. He saw no fire, felt no warmth. The temple and the replica of the Ark of the Covenant, the scrolls of the Talmud, all brought memories of an unhappy childhood. Among the
goyim
of the Chicago ghetto, Jack Ruby had been a Jew bastard, a Christ killer, before he understood the terms. His father's divorce from the family left Jack Ruby without an anchor. His mother's renunciation of reality placed her in a world apart from his, where the true test of strength was in hoodlum gangs and fists.

The temple was disturbing. All the bad memories of long ago swelled to flood in his mind. In the long ago, the beards, the curls, the black hats were a mockery to the unbeliever. How could a strong growing boy protect these ancients from attack among the tenements and still judge them as ridiculous? It was easy if the young man could subscribe to the thesis that the Jews were helpless, poor, and persecuted. Think of them, not as strong and righteous, a people with a heritage of culture and learning, but as the downtrodden. He could turn his electrifyingly swift mind in that direction, but then he could no longer admire them. No matter what the prophets said, this world could not be inherited by the meek. Never the meek. Looking at his parents, his temple, his heritage, Jack Ruby bent the golden rule so that it spake:
Do it to him before he does it to you.
A man can inflict this cruelty on his world if, in addition, he persuades himself that he is noble and generous and compassionate to the afflicted.

The service was over. The nightclub owner had endured fifteen minutes of it. The worshipers stood in groups, whispering, and some moved on to another room where the ladies cut plain cake and poured cups of steaming coffee and punch. Rabbi Hillel Silverman had more important things to do. His job was not only to preach the word of God but also to hold the people of his temple together in unity of purpose. The coffee and cake could
wait. He walked back toward the exit, exchanging greetings, listening to questions, offering counsel, shaking hands, tapping the satin yarmulke on his head to make certain that the badge of the male had not slipped.

Ruby went to the refreshment room and had a glass of punch. Mrs. Leona Lane, with her mother and growing sons, paused to say hello. The woman reminded Jack that they had had Passover dinner together four years ago at Sam Ruby's house. He was vague. She said that the assassination was a terrible thing. “It's worse than that,” he said. The rabbi knew Ruby as a man ruled by emotion rather than reason. Silverman recalled that Ruby had not attended services until 1958. The senior Rubenstein died, and Jack appeared in the temple, shaking and weeping. For eleven successive days he sought a minyan and recited kaddish. The display of the spirit died as quickly as it was born. To some, everything is “worse than that.”

Only two months ago Ruby had returned to temple services for the high holy days. This time he burst into tears and told the rabbi that his sister Eva refused to sit with him. They had had a disagreement. Eva Grant disapproved of her brother's behavior in dating a girl “too young for him.” Jack said that “at a time like this, families should be together.” The rabbi was in an awkward position. He phoned Mrs. Grant and, by coaxing, arranged for her to have lunch with her brother.

Silverman made a mental note to exchange greetings with Ruby tonight. The rabbi's spirit was crushed, and he found it difficult to raise others. His President had been assassinated in this city of riches and splendor. The Jewish community, perhaps more sensitive to violence than others, was stunned. The dreadful thing which had happened to the most powerful could therefore happen to anyone. At the door, the Jews sought comfort from their teacher, an explanation of how such a thing could happen, but he had little to offer. He, too, was confused and depressed.

Jack Ruby went to the rabbi and shook hands. Silverman was certain that he was about to listen to an emotional dissertation on the assassination. Jack Ruby did not mention it. He sought the rabbi's sympathy through the illness of his sister. He told what she had gone through in the hospital and of how she was now at home trying to regain her strength. He thanked the rabbi for stopping in the hospital to see Eva. In a moment the nightclub owner was gone.

The dark of the city matched Ruby's mood. It was a blackness which could be relieved by the miraculous flick of an electrical switch. Dark, bright, dark again. Big bare roads in the night chalked with warm light and, in the fields beyond them, nothing. Moods, too, had an electrical switch—high, low, on, off. Near the downtown area, the colored neons flirted with the mind. “Girls, Girls, Girls.” “Strippers.” “Sensational.” “First time anywhere . . .” “Fresh from New York!” “Treasure Chest.”

He kept the radio on. The Dallas Police Department was working overtime. The radio stations were working overtime. Civic, righteous, church-going Dallas would expunge this obscene graffiti from its conscience with swift, sure Texas justice. No stone would be left what? Bali-Hai was open. Jack Ruby, driving through the garish lights, took note that his clubs—Carousel and Vegas—were closed in memorial to the President of the United States, a mark of respect. But not Bali-Hai. The lights were on; the people were there. Ruby took note.

The Gay Nineties was closed. Note, closed. That is class. The trade would be forced to patronize the open places. The big sweaty men would sit at dark tables with their setups, their brown paper bags of liquor, and the more they drank the more courageous they would become, and they would stare with reptilian fascination at the soft white skin on the little box of talcum called a stage and chant hoarsely: “Take it off. Take it off.” The memorial mood could not tolerate this. This was a night for putting it all back on, from neck to ankles; a night for men to
weep for each other because of what had happened to
him.
The baggy pants comics would crack dirty jokes and the customers would laugh the louder, to prove that they understood. Who could laugh? Somewhere far off that poor woman huddled with those two babies, crying their innocent hearts out. Who could laugh tonight?

There was nothing else to do. The duties of motherhood were complete. The little ones slept; the house was quiet. Marina said in Russian: “May I borrow the hair dryer?” Ruth Paine got it. “I am not sleepy yet,” Mrs. Oswald said. “A shower lifts my spirits. I will take a shower and set my hair.” A vigorous shampoo would kill time. She wandered around the living room, carrying the dryer, and asking aloud what Lee could have “against” President Kennedy. Nothing.

That was the strange thing. He had read articles to her, translating into Russian as the avalanche of phrases and sentences tripped from the mind in English to the tongue in Russian, and she knew that he always injected his opinions. Marina tried to remember his rendition of these articles about John F. Kennedy. He had said nothing critical about the man. If he felt no hatred for the man, then he could not have killed him. The motive, the pressure, the compulsion were not present. Unless, of course, a man was willing to kill any great man who passed that close to the window that day—Khrushchev, Johnson, De Gaulle, Adenauer, Harold Wilson, Erhard, or Mao. Then it becomes motiveless, and the mind retreats from the field of reason.

Ruth Paine said good night. They might have felt a compulsive interest, not in dryers but in television. Both women were helpless, swinging in the orbital perimeter of the assassination, but they switched it off and another light was extinguished. Marguerite Oswald made a place for herself on the couch in the living room. There would be time to think in the morning, time to propagate a mother's views on what mysterious and secretive
force had assigned her son to kill Kennedy. Her mind was made up, as it always was. All she had to do was to hammer the facts into shape to fit the jigsaw which told her that her poor son was under orders to do this thing. Assuming, of course, that he did it.

There were three women in this small house at 2515 Fifth Street in Irving. The night hours brought no tears, no beating of breasts. There was regret without understanding; curiosity without mourning; self-interest embodied in a hair dryer. Like anti-magnetic satellites, the closer these women drew the faster they would fly apart. For Marina, there was the Slavic sense of gloom encompassed by possible deportation. Whatever flashes of sorrow she felt for her husband were brief and bright. Whether he was guilty or not, he had hurt her world—hers and her babies'.