The Day Kennedy Was Shot (26 page)

On Mr. Johnson's right shoulder, Agent Rufus Youngblood sat awkwardly, his dark walkie-talkie chattering the code of the secret service. “Dagger to Daylight. Shift to Charlie.” “Dusty to Daylight. Have Dagger cover Volunteer.” “Lancer may be critically wounded.” “Dandy still back on the street.” Senator Yarborough, wedged in the left corner of the seat, became fretful. “What is it?” he shouted. Rufus Youngblood tried to stretch his legs to the floor. He leaned toward the big figure of Lyndon Johnson, crushed beneath him and bent toward Mrs. Johnson. “When we get where we're going,” he said against the whip of the wind, “you and me are going to move off and not tie in with other people.” Johnson, who didn't understand but who recognized the voice of authority, said: “O.K. O.K., partner.”

Mrs. Lyndon Johnson, tilted toward the frightened face of Senator Yarborough, was afraid that the President might have been hurt. She, who had always felt that Texas was the finest state, felt a crushing weight. Her stomach began to cramp with visceral anger. The wind of speed whipped at her head. “This can happen somewhere else,” she thought, “but not in my country.”

Mrs. Robert Reid was emotionally wrung out. She was a clerk on the second floor of the Depository and had hurried
down to Elm Street to witness a pleasant and rare scene: the President and his lady moving past in an automobile. She heard the shots, heard the bedlam, and, without thought, had hurried back in the front entrance and up the stairs to her office. It was an orderly refuge from madness. As she opened the little gate enclosure to her desk, she saw Lee Harvey Oswald coming out of the glass commissary, a bottle of soda in his hand. For a moment, her mind told her that it was strange to see a warehouse boy in that room at this time. Then she shook her head sorrowfully, and said: “Oh, the President has been shot, but maybe they didn't hit him.” Oswald kept walking. He mumbled, but she did not understand what he said, nor did it interest Mrs. Reid.

He passed her station, walking diagonally across the floor to the front. Then he went down the steps, still holding the soda, and, at the entrance, a man accosted Oswald, flashing an identification card, and said: “Secret Service.” Oswald paused in the doorway. This could have been the end of the road. The man said: “Where is the phone?” Lee Harvey Oswald pointed inside the little half-gate. The “Secret Service” man was Robert MacNeil of the National Broadcasting Company.

The time on the roof clock stood at 12:33. The pigeons were still swinging broad circles over the plaza as Oswald brushed through the excited groups, heading east up Elm Street. There was time to think. Of what? Escape? In all the things he did, Oswald was a rational plotter. At each crisis of his life, the surly young man seemed to know what he wanted to do, and how best to do it.

Escape? He had left most of his money with his wife. In this gesture of generosity, he must have known that he had severely limited his chances of ever getting out of Dallas. He had thirteen dollars. He had left the empty shells on the sixth floor. The gun was up there, hidden between packing cases. They could be traced to him. He had purchased them and had used an
alias: “Alex Hidell.” The signature was in his handwriting. The rifle and a revolver which now reposed in his room on North Beckley Street had been mailed, prepaid, to his post office box in Dallas.

Then, too, when the police began a head count at the School Book Depository, Oswald would be the missing man. He would be the missing man from the sixth floor. His logical mind must also have told him that some of the people in Dealey Plaza had seen his rifle, partly out of the window. When the cops got out to Irving, would Marina stand by him and say that he had never owned a rifle? Would she? Oswald knew that in a crime of this magnitude, he could expect loyalty only from his mother. The rest, he must have known, would ally themselves with the law.

No one in the warehouse could swear that Oswald had been seen, here or there, while the shooting was going on. Everyone saw him some time before the crime, or two or three minutes afterward. He had no credible alibi, and he knew this, too. No money, no alibi, no sanctuary—is it possible that this young man wanted to be caught and tried? It is not only possible, but probable, that the most important circumstance, to Oswald, was that the world must know the name of the doer of the deed. For years, he had fought against the anonymity of the human cipher. What good would it do the ego to escape into additional anonymity? Oh, no. The world must know. The world must appreciate. The world must debate—while he remained silent in the prisoner's dock—whether he did it or didn't do it. And, could the world prove he did, to the exclusion of all doubt? His best course lay in getting caught in a manner of his own choosing and starring in a propaganda trial.

Supreme cruelty is reserved for the defenseless. Mrs. Kennedy was imprisoned in a speeding car with her personal horror. There was no way out, no one to help. Bending low, she cradled her husband's head on her right thigh. The handsome face, once
tanned and buoyant and alive with ideals, was blue-gray. The eyes, which had once belonged to a young Senator who had fastened them on a Georgetown society girl and never released her again, were wide open, seeing nothing, never to see anything again. The mouth, which had tenderly sealed a wedding vow in Newport, hung open. Now and then, a snore of sound escaped from it and startled her. She could look down into his brain through a hole big enough for her fist. His right leg, hanging over the door of the speeding car, twitched. The wound in the throat made an irregular, sucking sound, bubbling.

The agony was not John F. Kennedy's. It was Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy's. He was serene in the cool darkness of death. She, the least prepared for violence, sat with it, prayed over it, crooned at it on her lap. Agent Hill, off the edge of the back seat, could not help her. He hung on, the gun in his right hand, and he saw the knots of people on the street corners; the joyriders pulled to one side and parked with people leaning out. The faces were beaming; the people waved; they saw the pink of Mrs. Kennedy, and they yelled greetings.

They didn't appreciate the high speed of the motorcade, and some said, “Where was the President?” and others said, “Didn't you see him, sitting up there like a king?” There was a blur of buildings, street corners, fuzzy faces, and mouths forming cheery greetings. The sustained moan of the siren was ahead of the car, telling the world to get out of the way; it was weeping for a sturdy young giant who had been shot in the back while his hand was outstretched in greeting.

The kaleidoscope of thought moves swiftly and aimlessly in shock. Often it leaves no footprints. What are its capabilities in six minutes—360 seconds? Would the dark, tearless, shocked eyes see only the hole in his head? Or would it scramble through the files searching for all the tender moments? Would it balance the sheer terror of sight with visions of the children, growing up in his image and hers? Would it encompass those domestic
arguments, when her will was opposed to his, when she defied him? Would the mind block all of it out and go back five minutes in time to watch a triumphant President waving to his Texas constituents, the mouth saying: “Thank you, Thank you.” The mouth saying: “Take off the glasses, Jackie.” The mouth saying . . . It would say no more. “Ask not what your country can do for you . . .” The hair still had that reddish brown thickness, the jawline had the fighter's bulge. But the mouth hung open, and small strings of saliva hung from it. “We're in nut country now. . . .”

The roar of the onrushing wind, the speed of thoughts wanted and unwanted, the omnipotent sight of the sturdy oak felled—by whom? for what reason?—had to be lived and faced squarely by a sensitive young lady unprepared. The last of his blood was running down her stocking.

Gordon Shanklin read the accumulation of reports from his FBI agents. The office was quiet, and the pages on the desk were turned, one at a time, by thumb and finger at the lower left-hand edge. There was a knock on the door and Mr. Shanklin said, “Come in.” His secretary said that the young clerk who had been monitoring the Dallas police frequencies would like to see him. The boss nodded.

“Some shots were fired at the President's car,” he said. “They're headed for Parkland.” Shanklin is a man who thinks fast and speaks slow. He picked up a phone. “Tell Vince Drain to come in here,” he said. Then he dialed the private number of the Director, J. Edgar Hoover. He waited a moment, his eyes on the clerk. “Gordon Shanklin,” he said. “Dallas office. Let me speak to the Director.” In a moment, he heard the familiar voice. “Gordon Shanklin,” Mr. Shanklin said. “The President has been reported as shot in Dallas.” There was a momentary sucking of breath on the line. “He's on his way to Parkland Hospital. The first word we have here is by police radio. . . .”

Hoover, always under emotional control, asked a few crisp questions. The personal protection of the President was not his business, nor the FBI's. He had a good working arrangement with James Rowley and the Secret Service and no desire to tip the tactical boat. “Offer the full services of our laboratory,” he said. “Find out how badly he is hurt and call me back.”

Hoover hung up. His secretary dialed the home of the Attorney General in McLean, Virginia. No matter how painful the news, Robert Kennedy should hear it first and, even though no one knew whether the President had been hurt, it would be the Attorney General's function to brace the rest of the Kennedy family against the explosive impact of press and radio.

In the Sante Fe Building office, Shanklin stared at the forgotten reports. He looked up at the bulk of Vincent Drain. “Get to Parkland at once,” he said, “and offer our laboratory facilities if we can help.” It did not occur to Shanklin, of course, that he had another agent, Jim Hosty, who, in a few hours, would turn out to be the man with a knowledge of the suspect. The only man.

The microphone on Dallas Channel One became unstuck. It was 12:33 and Mrs. Kinney, a dispatcher, ran to the office of Captain W. R. Westbrook to tell him that shots had been fired at Kennedy and the limousine had just passed the Trade Mart on its way to Parkland. Westbrook, in charge of personnel, staring at Mrs. Kinney. If this was another joke . . . Her face began to lose complexion. The eyes were disbelieving. Westbrook asked no more questions.

She had notified Parkland. Mrs. Kinney had also called all patrol craft on the route to the hospital, asking that they seal off traffic and permit the big Lincoln and its wildly swinging satellites to get through. Channels One and Two now were handling Kennedy traffic. They were asking everyone else with routine Dallas business to please keep off the air. Westbrook was dazed.
He stood and then walked away, still listening but no longer hearing, no longer digesting the words. The President had been shot at in Dallas. Shot in Dallas. Right here.

He left the office, meeting patrolmen and detectives and uttering the same words. “If you're not busy, report down to the Texas Depository building. Chief Curry has been on Channel Two, asking for help down there. If you have no big assignment, drop it and go down right away. Sergeant Stringer—yes, you. Joe Fields. Carver. McGee.” They saw the deep shock, and they said, “Yes sir,” to the captain and hurried to the basement to get into cars. When Westbrook got to the basement, there was no car left. Mechanically, he walked up the ramp to the street, and out into the bright sunshine. His shoulders were squared and he began the long walk to Dealey Plaza, his stride bucking the tide of pedestrians who had witnessed the motorcade and were still talking about what a handsome couple the Kennedys were.

The motorcade, careening wildly and approaching eighty miles per hour, passed the big Levitz Furniture Store on the left, the P. C. Cobb stadium, the Trade Mart, brilliant with snapping flags, and was passed by the big jet airliners letting down slowly to Love Field, two miles ahead. In the convertibles, the wind snapped the eyelids shut. A billboard proclaimed the “Smart Smooth Way to Go.” Some of the trees along the edge of Stemmons held onto their leaves even though the season was over the long sleep had arrived. Red berries, like holly, confettied the bushes bordering the lawns.

The grass had turned off its chlorophyll and adopted the beige of the lion's mane. Some boys in empty lots played with kites, getting them aloft and paying out white cord from a stick of wood. A sign said: “Roller Skating Time.” There was a shimmer of heat haze on Stemmons Freeway, so that, looking back, the skyscrapers, standing alone on the big plain, shivered a little.

Mr. Stemmons and Mr. Crow, who were co-owners of the Trade Mart, stood with David B. Grant, a Secret Service agent,
and asked how to greet the President of the United States. Mr. Grant took them out front, under the canopy, and told them to wait until both the President and the First Lady alighted, and then to present themselves as co-owners and to bid the Kennedys welcome to the Trade Mart. Then both men would please step aside to permit the Secret Service to escort the President and Mrs. Kennedy to the head table.

Agent Grant had received his five-minute warning from the White House switchboard in the Dallas Sheraton. Three of those minutes had gone by. Then he had heard the faraway sirens, getting closer, and the Secret Service man shaded his eyes to look at Stemmons Freeway, immediately behind the Trade Mart. He saw the motorcade disappear at high speed. It was not turning off for the luncheon. And who was that lying across the trunk of the car?

Kilduff, in the press pool car, said to the driver, “What's that large building?” and the man said: “Parkland Hospital.” This was the first real clue. Everyone knew that rifle shots had been fired; all hands were aware that the motorcade had pulled away from the plaza at high speed. Now they knew that someone had been hurt. It didn't have to be the President. It could be almost anyone in that head car.

The nurses' station in major surgery was ringing. It was picked up by a plump dimpled woman in starched white. “Nelson,” she said. One of the telephone operators at Parkland Hospital, Mrs. Bartlett, said that President Kennedy had been shot and was on his way to the emergency entrance. Doris Nelson, R.N., said: “Stop kidding me.” Mrs. Bartlett, almost weeping, said: “I have the police dispatcher on the line.”