Libra (54 page)

 

 

In the jump seat John was crumpled up. Nellie Connally pulled him over into her arms. She put her head down over his head. She was pretending she was him. They were both alive or both dead. They could not be one and one. Then the third shot sent stuff just everywhere. Tissue, bone fragments, tissue in pale wads, watery mess, tissue, blood, brain matter all over them.

She heard Jackie say, “They’ve killed my husband.”

It could have been Nellie’s own voice, someone speaking for her. She thought John was dead. Then he moved just slightly and she thought at the same time that Jackie was out of the car, gone off the end of the car, but now was somehow back. John moved in her arms. They were one heart pumping.

The car picked up speed and everything went rushing past. Nellie thought how terrible this must be, what a terrible sight for people watching, to see the car speeding past with these shot-up men; what a horror, what a sight.

She heard Jackie say, “I have his brains in my hand.”

Everything rushing past.

The man in the white sweater, applauding, saw the stuff just erupt from the President’s head. The motorcycles went by. There were guns coming out, a man in the second car with an automatic rifle. The second car went by. A motorcycle went fishtailing up the grassy slope near the concrete structure, the colonnade. Someone with a movie camera stood on an abutment over there, aiming this way, and the man in the white sweater, hands suspended now at belt level, was thinking he ought to go to the ground, he ought to fall right now. A misty light around the President’s head. Two pink-white jets of tissue rising from the mist. The movie camera running.

 

 

Lee was about to squeeze off the third round, he was in the act, he was actually pressing the trigger.

The light was so clear it was heartbreaking.

There was a white burst in the middle of the frame. A terrible splash, a burst. Something came blazing off the President’s head. He was slammed back, surrounded all in dust and haze. Then suddenly clear again, down and still in the seat. Oh he’s dead he’s dead.

Lee raised his head from the scope, looking right. There was a white concrete wall extending from the columned structure, then a wooden fence behind it. A man on the wall with a camera. The fence deep in shadow. Freight cars sitting on the tracks above the underpass.

He got to his feet, moving away from the window. He knew he’d missed with the third shot. Went wild. Missed everything. Maggie’s drawers. He turned up the bolt handle.

He was already talking to someone about this. He had a picture, he saw himself telling the whole story to someone, a man with a rugged Texas face, but friendly, but understanding. Pointing out the contradictions. Telling how he was tricked into the plot. What is it called, a patsy? He saw a picture of an office with a tasseled flag, dignitaries in photos on the wall.

He drew the bolt back, then drove it forward, jerking the handle down. He walked diagonally across the floor to the northwest end, where the staircase was located. Books stacked ten cartons high. That fragrance of paper and binding.

 

 

The fender sirens opened up, the guns started coming out.

The girl stopped running toward the car. She stood and looked without expression.

A woman with a camera turned and saw that she was being photographed. A woman in a dark coat was aiming a Polaroid right at her. It was only then she realized she’d just seen someone shot in her own viewfinder. There was bloodspray on her face and arms. She thought, how strange, that the woman in the coat was her and she was the person who was shot. She felt so dazed and strange, with pale spray all over her. She sat down carefully on the grass. Just let herself down and sat there. The woman with the Polaroid didn’t move. The first woman sat on the grass, put her own camera down, looked at the colorless stuff on her arms. Pigeons spinning at the treetops. If she was shot, she thought, she ought to be sitting down.

 

 

Agent Hill was off the left running board and moving fast. There was another shot. He mounted the Lincoln from the bumper step, extending his left hand to the metal grip. It was a double sound. Either two shots or a shot and the solid impact, the bullet hitting something hard. He wanted to get to the President, get close, shield the body. He saw Mrs. Kennedy coming at him. She was climbing out of the car. She was on the rear deck crawling, both hands flat, her right knee on top of the rear seat. He thought she was chasing something and he realized he’d seen something fly by, a flash somewhere, something flying off the end of the limousine. He pushed her back toward the seat. The car surged forward, nearly knocking him off. They were in the underpass, in the shadows, and when they hit the light he saw Connally washed in blood. Spectators, kids, waving. He held tight to the handgrip. They were going damn fast. All four passengers were drenched in blood, crowded down together. He lay across the rear deck. He had this thought, this recognition. She was trying to retrieve part of her husband’s skull.

He held on tight. He could see right into the President’s head. They were doing eighty now.

Raymo’s view was briefly obscured. He had to wait for the right side of the limousine to clear the concrete abutment. He knew Connally was hit. He had time to think, Leon’s picking them off one by one. He had a sense of people ducking and scattering even though they weren’t in the frame. Now the car moved clear, quartering slowly in. He held on Kennedy’s head. The man was leaning left, tight-eyed in pain. A hundred and thirty feet. A hundred and twenty feet. He got off the shot. The man’s hair stood up. It just rippled and flew. Raymo stepped off the bumper and got in the back seat. Frank had the car moving. He drove between rows of parked cars behind the Depository. He headed straight for three freight cars marked Hutchinson Northern. Raymo leaned forward. Watch it, man. But he didn’t say a word.

Frank found a lane to the street. He went one block east on Pacific Avenue. He made a left onto Record Street. Warehouses and parking lots. He felt there was someone sitting inside his body making these moves and turns. He tried not to think past the moment. Elevated highway straight ahead. He had a pestering fear about what would happen when they were past the moment of turns and traffic signs. He didn’t know how he’d feel when he was back in his body again.

 

 

The guns were coming out.

Cops left their Harleys to run up the slope with pistols drawn. In the motorcade the Secret Service men had automatic weapons cocked, sidearms coming out.

Pigeons reversing flight, beating eastward now.

Mackey watched from the south colonnade, across Elm, across Main, across Commerce. There was no one on the lawns or under the trees here. It was the matching half of the plaza, less than a hundred yards from the scene but totally remote, hot and empty in the glare. He stood against a column, arms folded. He let his sunglasses dangle from his right hand.

The sirens opened up. Outside the Book Depository, policemen stood with rifles and shotguns pointing up. Men pointing. People looking up.

A small girl stood with a hand over each ear. The motorcade was in collapse, vehicles stopped, others rushing past. Ordinary traffic moved into Elm. Many people running up the steps between the stockade fence and the colonnade. A goddamn mob of people. Figures prone on the grass. A man pounding his fist on the hood of a car. Mackey saw a man get out of another car and fall down. Ragged cries and shouts. People on their knees. Others sitting, with cameras, out of breath and unbelieving.

He saw a fire truck come down Main. It was the dumbest thing he’d seen in twenty years.

From this distance Mackey wasn’t sure whether the people going up the embankment steps looked like a lynch mob or men and women in raw shock, in flight, running with others. He was thirsty and depressed. Strange harsh cries kept sounding from the lawns, from the echoing underpass, a thickness of voice, all desperate effort, like speech of the deaf and dumb.

 

 

Lee hid the rifle on the floor between rows of cartons near the sign for the stairway. They’d find it easy enough. But he still had to hide it, just to do the expected thing, make them believe he didn’t want to be identified. It was the same with the clipboard, already hidden, and the unfilled orders that were fixed to it. He wanted to give them something to uncover, a layer to strip away.

He liked the idea of a job that required a clipboard.

He was down the stairs fast and headed for the Coke machine on the second floor. A Coke in his hand would make him feel secure. It was a prop, a thing to carry around by way of saying he was okay. He thought he might need a prop to get him out of the building.

He heard a voice behind him like, “Come here.”

It was a cop with a drawn gun rushing into the lunchroom. He had one of those plastic covers on his hat for rainy days. Lee turned and walked slowly at him. He showed a face you’d see on any public transport, anonymous and dreamy. He made it a point not to notice the pistol aimed at his chest.

Roy Truly came in then and the cop said, “Does this man work here?” And Mr. Truly said yes and they both headed out to the stairway. Lee got his Coke and wandered down one flight and out the front entrance, a hole in the elbow of his shirt.

 

 

Agent Grant stood under the canopy at the Trade Mart entrance, just off Stemmons Freeway. He was explaining to two local business leaders how to present themselves to the Kennedys. He heard sirens getting louder. He saw the pilot car, the motorcycles, the Lincoln doing maybe eighty, with somebody spread-eagle on the rear deck. Other vehicles following, high speed, the craziest damn scene, a press bus blowing past. He asked one of the businessmen what time he had. Then they all checked their watches, placing the event in a framework they could agree upon.

There was a man holding Mary’s arm and she was crying. He had hold of her camera trying to take it with him. He said he was Featherstone of the Times Herald. Mary’s friend Jean was saying, “I thought that was a dog on the seat between them. I was saying I could see Liz Taylor or the Gabors traveling with a dog but I can’t see the Kennedys on tour with dogs.” Mary was not listening to this. She was crying and fighting to keep her camera. This man from the paper would not let go her arm. He was dragging her away toward Houston Street. Jean wasn’t able to get to her feet. She sat on the grass trying to finish her train of thought about seeing a dog in the car. She wanted to say to Mary, she did actually say, “I realized finally that little fuzzy thing. It was roses on the seat between them.”

 

 

Flying down that freeway with those dying men in our arms and going to no telling where. Everything flashing by. A billboard reading, Roller Skating Time.

 

 

Lee got off the bus in stalled traffic and walked to the Greyhound terminal to catch a taxi. The traffic was stalled for pretty obvious reasons, so maybe the bus was not a good idea. He walked south on Lamar, the sirens going all around him, and spotted an empty cab. They were a little removed here from the major congestion.

He got in next to the driver and here is a nice old lady sticking her head in the window looking for a taxi. Lee started getting out. He offered the cab to the lady. But the driver rolled away and Lee gave him an address a few blocks from his rooming house. It was a five- or six-minute ride, going out over the old viaduct. The driver said something about all the squad cars running a code three—lights spinning, sirens going. He wondered what was up.

Lee got out and walked north on Beckley, hearing a jangling in the air, feeling the first nervousness.

What do I look like?

To anybody seeing me, where do I look like I’m coming from?

He checked the numbers on the license plates of parked cars.

Do I look like someone leaving the scene?

His stomach was empty and he had that feeling in the mouth where there’s a rusty taste, something oozing from the gums.

That old patchy sadness of this part of Oak Cliff, the room-to-let signs and the trees going bare, the clotheslines, the bare-looking house fronts.