The Day Kennedy Was Shot (4 page)

At the age of fifteen, books taught him what the United States symbolized as a democracy, and he chose the role of dissenter. Furthest removed from what his country stood for was the Soviet Union, and he chose that, with reservations. In time, his studies of Karl Marx made Oswald feel equipped to explain it in theoretical terms, but he could draw the attention only of those who did not understand it at all. Friends who had studied political science exposed him in conversation as superficial and for using communist terminology without understanding it.

He had left the Marine Corps as a “hardship discharge” to take care of his mother in Texas. He gave her three days of his time and left for New Orleans and a long trip to Russia. Marina, a shrewd, intelligent girl, was not a helpless person, but he could make her so by returning to the United States. She would be dependent on him just so long as she did not speak English. But she was not compliant. At Texas parties given by Russians, she asserted herself and agreed with those who said that life in the United States was far better than “at home.”

Oswald threatened to send her back to Russia and ordered her to write notes to the Soviet Embassy asking for repatriation. His frustrations mounted as he lost job after job. Recently he had taken a bus to Mexico and had appealed to the Cuban Embassy for a visa. He had formed a Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New Orleans, been arrested, told his story on radio, and tried to “enlist” in the Castro forces. They did not want him.

The young man who seldom responded to a friendly “good morning” found himself at the end of his particular blind alley. He was friendless, homeless, “hounded by the FBI,” as he said, and now he knew he was a cipher. He aspired above all other things to be big, to be known, to be respected or feared (equal values).

The coffee cup went into the sink. He went out into the garage and turned the ceiling's naked bulb on. He opened a rolled blanket on the floor, slipped a rifle out without disturbing the convolutions of the blanket, and closed the flap. He took some wrapping paper, placed the rifle in it, and wrapped it in such a way that one end appeared to be thick, the other thin. He went back into the kitchen, forgetting to turn the light off. Oswald left quietly.

The President, standing in the green tile bathroom, finished toweling himself and began to shave. He could hear someone rolling up his special hard mattress in the bedroom and, without looking, he knew that the black leather chair with the thick backrest would leave with it. Wherever he went, they went. He saw his plump, slightly jowled, and tan face in the mirror. It was a good strong face—many would call it handsome—but a man seldom dwells on features as he shaves. The pull of the razor is automatic, done without conscious thought, furrowing the white mantle of shaving cream in a pattern which is peculiarly the shaver's own.

It gives a man freedom to dwell on other matters—the day's schedule; the minutiae of business; the problems, if any; the triumphs—if any. Mr. Kennedy had a sturdy, almost youthful, body with patches of hair on the chest, and legs a bit slender for the bulk of the torso. It never got a good grade from the President.

His back was in pain constantly. Long years ago, in a football scrimmage at Harvard, the spine and adjacent musculature had twisted, and it was beyond repair. A delicate and protracted operation did not help. Massages and medication made him feel
better, but, as he sometimes said, the pain was never eliminated. It was lessened. It became bearable.

He combed his thick brown hair and moved to his right to the vanity set. There he donned his underwear and a surgical corset. The President had them in different sizes. He put on a large one and yanked the laces tightly. The vanity chair had a concave seat and the President sat to pull a long elastic bandage over his feet. He twisted it so that it formed a figure eight, then slipped it up over both legs. When it was adjusted over the hips, the Ace Bandage supported the bottom of the torso, as the back brace held the lower spine rigid. The figure eight constricted the natural long stride, but today was going to be a “backbreaker”—sitting, standing, walking, making speeches, handshaking, and spine-creaking climbs up airplane ramps.

He accepted help from George Thomas in slipping on a white shirt with a blue pinstripe, a plain blue silk tie, and a gray-blue suit with a half inch of kerchief showing in the breast pocket. Mr. Kennedy nodded toward the window. “How does it look, George?” George Thomas was picking up night gear from the bed, preparing to pack. “It's raining out,” he said. The President said, “That's too bad” and left the bedroom for the large sitting room.

The elegant little family dining room on the second floor of the White House was never brighter than when it was filled with the morning chatter of Caroline and John. She would be six next week, and already she was accustomed to the serious business of being a lady. She knew how to keep a pretty frock tidy and unwrinkled in the back, how to wear white gloves and keep them white, how to flick the well-brushed brown hair back off her shoulders, how to apply herself to study.

John would be three years old in a few days, part baby, part boy. He enjoyed running through the White House corridors, hitching a skip in his stride and he could make it at top speed to
his father, falling against the parental knees, and wrapping both arms around the tall legs. He understood little about his father's work, but he was willing to extend his complete confidence to the many strangers he saw in his home, men and women who stooped to hug him or to say hello.

The children spent ten minutes with their father shortly after 7
A.M.
When he was eating from a tray in his bedroom, he could hear the typewriter speed of the little feet coming down the corridor from their bedroom, and the President of the United States grasped both sides of the tray and held on, bracing against the assault of morning kisses and hugs.

The routine of conversation seldom varied. The President asked his daughter for a report on her current schoolwork. Shyly she would hold out a sheet of paper on which the alphabet had been printed in large block letters. Mr. Kennedy would study it and fall back against his chair in mock surprise. “Caroline,” he would say, “did you do this? All by yourself?” The child was girlishly embarrassed by lavish praise and often hung her head and twisted her laced fingers.

Then, noting that John was waiting, Mr. Kennedy would crook his finger at his son and say: “John-John, tell me a secret.” This too was a morning ritual and, even before the familiar routine began, the little boy laughed and held his stomach. He went to his father's side, stood on tiptoe and whispered: “Bzzzz-bzzzzzzz—bzz-bzz.” The President threw both hands in the air, reared back with surprise, and whispered: “You don't tell me!” The effect on the boy was to cause him to fall to the floor, rolling over with laughter. It was repeated almost every morning.

The Kennedy children were accustomed to having one parent home. When father went on a trip, quite often mother remained with them. When mother flew away for a rest, father was in the White House. This morning, neither was home and they sat in the dining room with Miss Maude Shaw, their British nanny. The lady was slender and middle-aged.

She slept in a small alcove bedroom between theirs, and time and understanding had built a solid edifice of affection among the three. The children were well behaved and tractable. Sometimes, when they awakened before seven in the morning, they would ask respectfully: “Good morning, Miss Shaw. May we get up now?”

She permitted them to chatter for a longer period this morning, and there was still plenty of time. It was 8:15
A.M.
^*
and Miss Shaw said that Caroline had time to wash her hands before going upstairs to the little private school composed mostly of children of old Georgetown friends of the Kennedys. It was a bright room with a ramp leading upward toward the shafts of morning light, and the other students arrived by vehicle at 8:45
A.M.
and waited in the front lobby of the White House until schooltime.

Then, said Miss Shaw, she would take John-John for a walk around the White House grounds. His happy hope was to be on the South Grounds when a helicopter landed or took off. The only better one he could think of was to be in one.

The big cellar kitchen of the Hotel Texas was charged with excitement. The chefs and waiters had arrived early, and breakfast orders were being filled quickly and carried up by service elevator to the members of the most important group ever to grace the sedate edifice. An order had come in from 850, and everyone paused to listen. Peter Saccu, the short, dark, jovial man who supervised all the catering and food, took the order.

“The President,” he said, “wants a large pot of coffee, some extra cups and saucers, orange juice, two eggs boiled five minutes, some toast and marmalade on the side. Come on now. Let's move.” Saccu turned to a tall, dignified Negro waiter. “George Jackson will handle it.” Some of the other faces relaxed in res
ignation; Mr. Jackson began to beam. At once, he got a rolling table, a pad, a snowy tablecloth, some napkins, knives, forks, spoons, cups and saucers, and his expert fingers flew as the tools were placed on the table. He kept shaking his head. “Man,” he murmured. “I have never even seen a President of the United States. Now I'm going to walk right into the room with him.”

In five minutes, the steaming snowy eggs were lifted out of boiling water and placed in a side dish. The table moved off with George Jackson behind it. When he arrived on the service elevator at the eighth floor, a man stood in the doorway of his elevator. He lifted the covers of dishes, stooped to look at the underside of the table, gave Mr. Jackson a cursory study, and nodded for him to proceed.

A silent man outside the door of 850 studied the table and the waiter and gave him a small orange pin to wear in the lapel of his white jacket. George Jackson pushed the breakfast tray inside the small foyer and into the living room to the right. He said, “Good morning, Mr. President” at once, and Mr. Kennedy, chatting with Kenny O'Donnell near the coffee table, said, “Good morning.”

The Chief Executive appeared to be bright and forceful to the waiter. A “take-charge” man. Mr. O'Donnell was explaining that the rancorous battle between Senator Ralph Yarborough and his liberal Texas Democrats and Governor John Connally and his conservative Democrats had not been resolved by the President's visit. It was worse, in a way. The Senator had refused to ride in the same car with Vice-President Lyndon Johnson in the San Antonio motorcade and at Houston, in spite of a presidential request to do so.

“Get on that phone,” Mr. Kennedy said, pointing a finger at the instrument, “and tell him he's riding with Johnson today or he's walking.” O'Donnell asked the President if he had seen the crowds waiting in the rain. Mr. Kennedy strode to a couch near the window and put a knee on it, but he couldn't get a satisfac
tory look so he went to his wife's room, rapped lightly with his fingernails, and entered.

Mrs. Kennedy, who had promised to sleep late, was awake. Her husband hurried through the room to the window and parted the closed Venetian blinds with two fingers. “Look at that crowd,” he murmured. “Just look.” His wife pulled a robe around her and peeked. It was still raining, and the large parking lot, with its diagonal white lines, was filling with a happy-go-lucky crowd. There were two thousand people down there, jostling and joshing. It was easy to pick the women out; they carried colored umbrellas.

“Take your time,” the President said, as he left the room. “The breakfast is at nine or nine-fifteen.” Mr. Kennedy was enthused about that crowd. So far, the crowds in Texas had been larger than expected and more cordial. He sat down to his breakfast, cracking the eggs and talking brightly to O'Donnell, when Dave Powers walked in. Mr. Powers was the balding gnome of the Kennedy inner circle.

It was he who had first managed John F. Kennedy's campaign for Congress in 1946; it was he who had taught him the little tricks of choosing topics for speeches; it was Dave Powers who followed his young man on the long run to the White House, telling Irish stories, making the candidate smile, swimming with him in the Executive Mansion pool (“I had to learn to breast stroke because it's the only way to swim and talk”); sleeping in the same room with the President when Mrs. Kennedy was away on a trip (“My family calls me John's Other Wife”); a confidant, a buddy, a lead pony for a race horse, but never a topflight political strategist as Kenny O'Donnell was and as Larry O'Brien was.

“Have you seen the square?” Kennedy said, waving the toast. Dave Powers nodded. “Weren't the crowds great in San Antonio and Houston?” Mr. Powers peeked out at the square again. “They were better than expected,” he said sagely. “Listen,” the President said, “they were terrific. And you were right—they loved Jackie.”

The waiter was in the foyer. He paused a moment to speak to George Thomas. Could Thomas ask the President for some little souvenir? Any little thing that he could keep as a remembrance? George said he would see. He walked back into the living room and whispered to the President. Mr. Kennedy reached into his jacket pocket and arose from the table. In the foyer, he handed George Jackson a PT-109 tie clasp. They shook hands.
^*

The two confidants who sat in the room with the President were anxious to resolve three pressing problems: How to secure Texas for Kennedy in 1964; how to resolve the fight between Texas Democratic liberals and Texas Democratic conservatives and get both to work for a second term for John F. Kennedy; how to raise money from Texas dinners—half of which would remain in the state, the other half of which would go to the Democratic National Committee.

The President was talking about the contents of the morning newspapers when Mrs. Kennedy came into the room. Even without makeup, she had a dark radiance, a female mystique which attracted men of all ages and forced women to emulate her careless coiffure, her big soft mouth, her street clothes, even her hats. Mr. Kennedy, more than anyone else, knew that Mrs. Kennedy was a co-equal in marriage. There was nothing suppliant about her. Submissiveness was anathema.