Reclaiming History (188 page)

“Listen here,” Lee snarled, “I order you to cross it out. Do you hear?”

Marina responded, “I won’t do it.”

He started to scold her in a way she had never heard before. She hung up on him.
¹⁶⁰⁰

On Tuesday afternoon, November 19, 1963, the
Dallas Times Herald
ran a page 1A headline about President Kennedy’s major foreign policy speech given the previous night before an audience of one thousand at the Inter-American Press Association convention in Miami Beach, Florida: “Kennedy Virtually Invites Cuban Coup.” The first paragraph read, “President Kennedy all but invited the Cuban people today to overthrow Fidel Castro’s communist regime and promised prompt U.S. aid if they do…The president said it would be a happy day if the Castro government is ousted.”
¹⁶⁰¹

That morning’s
Dallas Morning News
reported, for the first time, the exact motorcade route: “From Love Field to Mockingbird Lane, along Mockingbird Lane to Lemmon, then Lemmon to Turtle Creek, Turtle Creek to Cedar Springs, Cedar Springs to Harwood, Harwood to Main, Main to Houston, Houston to Elm, Elm under the Triple Underpass to Stemmons Expressway and on to the Trade Mart.”
¹⁶⁰²

Even if Oswald, who avidly read newspapers (the previous day’s
Dallas Morning News
at work each morning in the domino room,
¹⁶⁰³
and the evening
Dallas Times Herald,
which he frequently bought out on the street), never read this article, there can be no question that by word of mouth, everyone at the Texas School Book Depository Building had to know that the presidential motorcade would pass by the building that Friday. It was clear to Oswald, then, that in three days President John F. Kennedy, the leader of worldwide capitalism and an avowed enemy of Fidel Castro and the Castro revolution, would be driven past the Book Depository Building, presumably in an open car, right past the building where he worked, right below those windows he had looked out so many times.

No one can possibly know what was going through Oswald’s mind during these three days before the assassination. But a few things we do know. He had once written, “I wonder what would happen [if] somebody was to stand up and say he was utterly opposed not only to the governments, but to the people, [to] the entire land and complete foundations of his socically [society].”
¹⁶⁰⁴
He had also once written to his brother Robert from Moscow, “In the event of war I would kill any american who put a uniform on in defence of the american government—any american.”
¹⁶⁰⁵

In a sense, Oswald had been at war with America ever since he could remember. He had been at war with the whole world. He had tried to fashion a new life for himself more than once, only to be thwarted at every turn. His career in the Marine Corps had ended in ignominy. His defection to the Soviet Union had petered out in a dead-end job in a factory. His return to America had been ignored. His job as a “photographer” led to nothing. He shot at General Walker and missed. His career as leader of a pro-Cuban political group had failed to attract a single follower. In Mexico City, representatives of Cuba and the Cuban Revolution seemed utterly uninterested in his devotion. Was there any battle in this war of his he could win? Oswald’s motive for killing Kennedy is discussed in depth in the “Motive” section of this book. But was it possible he was thinking that if he killed Fidel Castro’s most powerful enemy, he might avert the assassination of Castro, forestall the invasion of Cuba, and bring him at last to the status he craved as a hero of the Cuban Revolution? And that if he died in the attempt, Castro would see what Cuba had lost when its petty bureaucrats frustrated his ardent desire to serve the cause?

Additionally, since we know Oswald wanted to leave his footprints on the sand dunes of history, even naming his diary the Historic Diary, could it be that, like so many people, he felt fate was intervening in his life and sending him a message, nay, a command? I mean, could it really be pure chance, and nothing more, that the most powerful man on earth was going to pass right beneath his window? No one can ever know, but is it possible that, along with other toxic currents, the thought entered his mind that he had a historic duty, for whatever reason or reasons he conjured up, not to deny the hand that fate was now giving him? That he couldn’t fail to show up for his rendezvous with history?

That Tuesday, Lee worked all day, but very uncharacteristically did not call Marina even once, much less twice, as he virtually always did.
¹⁶⁰⁶
On Tuesday evening, Radio Havana’s English-speaking broadcast said that “since last March the [U.S.] Central Intelligence Agency has itself been organizing all attacks on Cuba…We know the ships they came on, including the famous
Rex
that sails out of West Palm Beach on missions against Cuba.”
¹⁶⁰⁷

He worked a full day on Wednesday, November 20, also, but again did not call Marina.
¹⁶⁰⁸
Marina told Ruth Paine, “He thinks he’s punishing me.” She was angrier with him than he was with her, and she was perfectly willing to let him sulk.
¹⁶⁰⁹

Late that Wednesday night, Oswald took a load of his clothes to Reno’s Speed Wash, a washateria a half block away across the street at 1101 North Beckley. While his clothes were being washed and dried, the janitor noticed that he spoke to no one, sitting and reading magazines until closing time at midnight. When the merchant patrolman requested him to leave because the speed wash was closing, Oswald ignored him and continued to read for an additional five minutes.
¹⁶¹⁰

On the morning of Thursday, November 21, Oswald dressed and left for work, his head roiling with the grandiose scheme that, if he dared to carry it out, would finally ensure his place in history. Based on his conduct later that evening with Marina at Ruth Paine’s residence, he probably had not made up his mind yet. But all the circumstantial evidence shows the thought clearly was in his mind, and it had to be intoxicating. Befitting the moment, he expansively offered himself a treat. Instead of making his breakfast in the rooming house, as he usually did, he went over to the Dobbs House restaurant at 1221 North Beckley, just short of two blocks away on the other side of the street. He had been there before, often enough for the waitresses to recognize him. Dolores Harrison cooked a couple of eggs for him, but when the other waitress, Mary Dowling, served him, Oswald complained that he had ordered them “over light,” and they were “cooked too hard.” He accepted them anyway.
¹⁶¹¹

Later that morning, but before the ten o’clock break, Lee asked Wesley Frazier if he could ride out to Irving with him that evening. That was okay with Frazier, but it dawned on him it was only Thursday, and with the exception of the Monday night in October the day after Marina had given birth to their daughter Rachel, Lee had never driven out to Irving with him on anything but a Friday. “Why are you going home today?” he asked Lee.

“I’m going to get some curtain rods,” Lee said. “You know, put in an apartment.”

By telling Frazier this, a lie that was demonstrated to be such (see later text), Oswald showed he had already come up with a story to cover up the fact that, absent a reconciliation with Marina, he was going back to Irving a day early to pick up his rifle for the following day.

“Are you going to go out to Irving tomorrow night too?” Frazier asked Oswald.

“No,” Oswald answered.
¹⁶¹²

Probably sometime during the course of that day Lee improvised a bag to contain his rifle from the heavy, brown wrapping paper and three-inch paper tape used in the shipping department.
¹⁶¹³

Marina was surprised when she saw Wesley’s car stop in front of Ruth Paine’s house to let Lee out early that evening. Not only had he never come out on a Thursday evening before, but even on the weekends he had always asked Ruth’s permission to come.
¹⁶¹⁴
At the London trial I asked Mrs. Paine, “On Thursday, November 21, 1963, did anything unusual happen with respect to Mr. Oswald?”

Paine: “Well, yes, he came out that night. And it was the first night he had come out on a weeknight, and it was the first time he had ever come without asking permission.”

“You were surprised?”

“I was very surprised, yes.”

“Was Marina a little embarrassed and surprised at this?”

“She was, yes. She said to me—she apologized for his not asking whether he could come, and she expressed her surprise.”
¹⁶¹⁵

Marina was still angry about his use of a false name at his rooming house and did not go to greet him. In fact, she was pleased that he had come, but she wasn’t about to let him know that. He found her in the bedroom. She asked him why he had come.

“Because I’m tired of living alone and because I got lonesome for my girls,” he said. He told her he didn’t want her to continue living with Ruth Paine, and if Marina wanted him to, he would “rent an apartment in Dallas tomorrow.”

He tried to kiss her, but she turned away and ordered him to clean up and change his clothes. Docilely, he did as he was told. When he had showered and changed, he again demanded a kiss, and this time he blocked her exit from the bedroom until she submitted, unwillingly, still angry.

“He tried to talk to me,” Marina would later tell the Warren Commission, “but I would not answer him, and he was very upset…He tried to start a conversation with me several times, but I would not answer.”

“Enough,” he finally said, angered by her rejection. “You get too much spoiling here.” He told her he was “going to find an apartment tomorrow and take all three of you with me.”

“I won’t go,” Marina said.

He said she would, or he would take the children.

“That’s fine,” she said. “Just you try nursing Rachel. You know what that’s like.”

He told her he had gone to see the FBI and told the agents not to bother her anymore. She didn’t care about that. She went out to the backyard to gather the laundry from the line, and Lee went into the garage.
¹⁶¹⁶

Since we know from all the evidence that he brought his Mannlicher-Carcano rifle to work with him the next morning, it was probably then that he attended to it. Neither Ruth nor her children were at home; Marina would be occupied at the clothesline for a few minutes. He didn’t need much time. We know the carbine, wrapped and tied in its blanket, was lying on the floor. He quickly removed the two parts—the short barrel with its mounted telescopic sight and the stock with a sling improvised from a camera strap—and placed them both in the heavy, brown wrapping paper bag he had fashioned most likely earlier that day. From somewhere he gathered the cartridges. He carefully arranged the blanket to look exactly as it had when the carbine was still in it, left the new package containing the rifle someplace where it would not attract attention,
*
and went out to the backyard to help Marina bring in the clothes.

Again he asked her to come live with him and their children in an apartment in Dallas. When she once again refused, he told her she preferred her friends to him, and that she obviously didn’t love or need him anymore. She responded that they had already agreed that she would stay with Ruth through the coming holiday season, and they might as well save their money till then. Besides, she said, she would just be lonely in an apartment in Dallas while he was at work.

“Don’t worry about the money,” Lee said. “We have a little saved up. I’ll take an apartment and we’ll buy you a washing machine.” In fact, they had $183 and another payday in two weeks, easily enough to rent a cheap apartment and, with a bit of scrimping, to buy a secondhand washing machine to boot. Although Marina wanted a washing machine, it always seemed more important to Lee than Marina that she have one, and she told him now to forget about getting her a washing machine. If there was money, she said, “it would be better” if he got himself a car, that she “would manage.” Indeed, Michael had just bought an Oldsmobile, which Lee and Marina had looked at out on the street and admired, for $200, and it was only seven years old.
¹⁶¹⁷

“I don’t need a car,” Lee told Marina, saying he would continue to take the bus. But she, he told her, would need a washing machine now that she had two children in diapers. She couldn’t go back to washing things in the bathtub.
¹⁶¹⁸

Marina was noncommittal. Secretly, she was pleased he was making a strong effort to heal the rift between them. “I was smiling inside, but I had a serious expression on my face,” she would later recall, to the very end playing their little game of
Carmen
, not giving the other what they knew the other needed. Although she did want to stay at Ruth’s until the new year, she was not adamantly opposed to Lee’s plan. If he persisted, she might just give in—sooner or later she would have to anyway—but she still had to teach him a lesson for scaring her over the recent alias thing. Now she was additionally upset because he had come out to Irving on a weeknight, in violation of their understanding with Ruth and without even asking permission.
¹⁶¹⁹

When Ruth drove up with her station wagon full of groceries, Lee and Marina went out to help her carry them into the house. Marina lagged behind to make a quiet apology for Lee’s unannounced and unexpected visit, but Ruth was not at all put out. She guessed that Lee had come out to Irving unannounced in the hope of smoothing over the rift with Marina.
¹⁶²⁰

As they entered the house, Ruth said to Oswald in Russian, “Our president is coming to town,” but he merely replied, “Uh, yeah,” as he brushed past her, communicating to her that he didn’t want to talk about it.
¹⁶²¹

Later, as the Oswalds sat together on the couch folding diapers, Marina, ever the fan of the Kennedys, also brought up the president’s visit. “Lee,” she said, “Kennedy is coming tomorrow. I’d like to see him in person. Do you know where and when I could go?”

“No,” he said.

It seemed odd to her that Lee, who had been almost as interested in the Kennedys as she had—or at least indulged her fascination with them—had nothing to say about the forthcoming visit. Lee went out to the front lawn to play with the children—some of the neighbor’s children as well as the Paines’ and June—and Marina watched them. He carried June piggyback as they galloped about in pursuit of a butterfly, then Lee tried to catch oak wings drifting down from the trees. Later he sat with June on a red kiddie cart, talking with the children in English. He said to Marina, in Russian, “Good, our Junie will speak both Russian and English…but I still don’t like the name Rachel. Let’s call her Marina instead.”