by Adam Braver
She thought to protest their casualness, tell Jack and Kenny, and everybody else who was laughing along, that this ought to be taken seriously. Acknowledge the tension. But she knew they would only attribute it to her nerves and her recovery. Treat her as though she were infirm, with kind and gentle touches on the elbows and overextended offers of water or juice, apologizing for being so insensitive while swallowing down their laughter, afraid of her fragility.
She really wanted to say something. But was it best to stay quiet? Maybe she was imposing her anxieties upon them.
If they just would see.
Take this seriously. That was all. It’s too easy to laugh yourself into tragedy.
On to Dallas.
Jack had been on the phone for some time. One call after the other. Donors. Local politicians. Luminaries. Patrons of the arts. Thanking them for their support. Agreeing with their causes. Saying that Mrs. Kennedy was doing much better now, and that he certainly would pass on their prayers and their words. He had finished up a call, the receiver still cradled against his neck, two fingers holding down the hook switch, when he whispered up at Kenny, “When do we need to be in Lyndon’s room?”
“Five minutes ago.”
“Time for one more call?”
Kenny shook his head. “Maybe from Dallas later.”
“If we make it.”
“Don’t worry,” Kenny said. “This whole trip will be over before we know it.” He then announced that the motorcade would leave upon the president’s return from the suite. Finally, they’d be relieved of the Hotel Texas and press on toward Dallas.
“And then home, I hope,” Jack said. He walked over to Jackie. She was pacing. Looking at the art on the walls. They may hang cow skulls from every spare nail in this state, but when it comes to taste, even the Texas socialites turned to the Europeans. “I’ll be back shortly,” he told her. “Momentarily. You know how these things are.” He said he wanted her to rest up. Save her energy for Dallas. There was a long day ahead.
Jackie reached out, taking his hand. She started to speak, but stopped. It was just all the joking about Dallas. Even though it was just talk, it was making her nervous, and she wondered if he were nervous too. You never could tell with him. And she wondered if he remembered what she said to him the night the baby died, only two days old. Feeling decimated, stripped bare of all control and everything she knew, she had looked up at Jack and told him that the one thing she couldn’t bear would be to lose him. And he had held her, told her he had no plans to go anywhere. She hadn’t repeated herself, instead squeezed him tighter.
“Is everything okay?” he asked.
She drew in a deep breath. Adjusted the hair falling from under her hat. She’d even managed to keep her eyes clear and dry. “This suit just feels so heavy right now. You know that feeling, Jack? That feeling like you’ve been carrying something forever. That’s how this feels. Eleven o’clock and I feel as though I’ve been wearing it all day, and will wear it forever. That’s all.”
“You look stunning.”
“The weather outside. It’s so . . . Maybe I should change.”
With one foot stepping toward the door, he held on to her hand. He turned to her, locking her in with the same mesmeric charm that had entranced every member of the earlier audience. “No,” he said, “I want people to remember how beautiful you are today. I hope they always will remember you in this dress. A pink rose.”
One More Fact.
More than forty years later, the pink dress remains boxed up at the National Archives in “courtesy storage” for the Kennedy family.
BODY AND BLOOD
HE WAS JUST A BARBER’S BOY. Not intended to amount to anything but the same-old in Cleburne, Texas, some thirty-seven miles away from Fort Worth and a million miles away from everywhere else. And when you’re making barely forty dollars a week, and you’ve got a wife and a child, you look up one day knowing you can do yourself better. So you go to Dallas after your cousin Jim tells you Dallas is your future and the Dallas PD is hiring. This is as brave as anything one could imagine, because you and your family are little-town people. And before he knows, it’s 1963 and nine and a half years have passed and he’s no longer a young fellow from Cleburne but a bona fide Dallas man, and on the motorcycle squad, and there are three others who get the call, and when he goes to bed on the evening of November 21, how could he possibly sleep? Not toss and turn? Wouldn’t the thoughts pound through his head like a wrecking ball on a pendulum, until pretty soon he’d want to yell out, I’m just a barber’s boy?
The barber’s boy who’d come from Cleburne is named Bobby Hargis, and he waits at Love Field for the president’s plane to arrive, pushing at the creases in his slacks, grinding the toe of his boot into the tarmac, and adjusting his helmet. The town he’d been raised in, come to at age seven from Rio Vista when his father passed, was named in honor of the heroic Confederate general Patrick Cleburne, born in County Cork, Ireland, and come to the United States in 1849. Cleburne was working as a lawyer in Tennessee when he enlisted in the Confederate army out of loyalty to the Southern people who had taken in this Irishman as one of their own. Patrick Cleburne skyrocketed to being one of the most respected generals, and then fell just as quickly in 1864, when, recognizing the lack in the Confederate army, he proposed emancipating slaves and enlisting them in the fight. Jefferson Davis himself put an end to that kind of talk, and later in the year Cleburne was shot in the gut on a battleground in Tennessee, charging in an assault he never believed to be wise. Patrick Cleburne was the highest-ranking Irishman in an American army. It’s amazing how histories can converge at a single point on a world that spins around so many times.
When Bobby arrived in Dallas he worked on the patrol unit. It was there he got to know most of the people he would know, including J. D. Tippit. Tippit was already on the force when Bobby joined, working as a patrolman. The two of them formed a friendship that extended beyond the police family. They’d hang out after their shifts. Often working together off duty at the drive-in on Illinois, lingering between changing posts and shooting the breeze, talking about guys like Bailey and everybody else they knew in common. A couple of kindred boys, both come to Dallas as small-town folks hoping to make a better life for themselves and their families. Then, in 1957, the department put out a call for motorcycle officers, and Bobby thought, Why not? After he put in his request, one of his chiefs called to ask, Still interested? and Bobby said, Yes, and the chief said, Then report to work day after tomorrow in your civilian clothes, and Bobby said, Okay.
When you talked with him by phone, Bobby was polite. Thoughtful. He spoke slowly, and reminded you he was old, and that some of the things he used to know he didn’t know so well anymore; he could always recite the motorcade stories clearly, but the other questions stopped him. Sometimes gave him pause. And there was a sense that he was surprised anybody cared about the in-between details. Like when you asked him what he did that night after the shooting. And he claimed not to remember, which was a little disappointing since you wanted that for the story you planned to tell. So you asked him what it was like waiting at Love Field, and he told you it was like any other day. Although the details were interesting, it was an emotional truth you were after, but there just wasn’t one for him to recall. He had told you about getting called down to join the motorcycle squad, but again you wanted a different story, to know how he got the news that he’d be guarding Kennedy’s car. You tried to make the question lighthearted, and put it to him this way: “And then one day you’re getting a call that says, ‘Bobby, guess what you’re doing tomorrow?’” And there was a little silence on the receiver, and then a low, deep laugh before he drew out the word Well, and said, “That was just an assignment.”
The anticipation starts in shudders, and soon it seems as though all of Love Field is trembling. As part of the motorcycle division, Bobby, Douglass, Billy Joe, and Chaney have escorted famous people from Love Field before. They know what to expect. But this
is a different level of excitement, and a different level of seriousness. The giddiness of anticipation is tempered by the reality of the guest, and the fact that some people have made it known that Kennedy ought to stay out of Texas. Still, there are kooks everywhere. Kennedy’s as welcome here as anybody else.
The sun’s come out, and everyone feels the region getting just a little bit bigger, ready to welcome the Kennedys with a loud Dallas greeting, a hug that’ll sink them deep in its bosom.
Sergeants. Captains. Chiefs. Lieutenants. Everybody from the department is present. Photographers load their cameras. Clusters of donors and dignitaries and local politicians mill and make small talk. Secret Service agents are littered all over. Hundreds of little flags are waving. And although the crowd is thick and deep and faceless, there are people who manage to stick out for no logical reason: a woman in a brown dress holding against her chest a magazine with Mrs. Kennedy on the cover; a child in horn-rimmed glasses who looks like he doesn’t know why he’s there; an old lady in a wheelchair planting herself at the head of the group, her face hawklike, waiting sentry.
The presidential limousine had been airlifted in the day before, and then spent the night heavily guarded in the garage under the main terminal. Now on the tarmac, the car waits to be filled with the governor and the president and both their wives. That car looks proud and it looks serious. You can smell the history burning right off it. It’s all jacked up with platforms for Secret Service agents, the rear seat rising nearly a foot higher for a better view, and the whole vehicle a good yard or more longer than the everyday Lincoln Continental. The transparent roof panels that make the famed bubbletop have just been put in the trunk, now that the sun is peeking through the clouds.
Cruising Dallas in a convertible.
Black Ray-Bans.
She’ll wave to the left side, he’ll handle the right.
The Secret Service hoped the drizzle would turn to rain. A lousy day makes for a safer trip.
They look smaller than expected, coming down the airline stairs, framed by the blue nose of the 707. They’re like orbs of light—he a dark blue ray, and she, soft pink. Coming closer, their faces become defined, and Mrs. Kennedy looks tired and cautious, watching her feet land on the next step, while the president’s eyes twinkle to life when the first hand comes out to greet him. And then Mrs. Kennedy is handed a bouquet of roses, which almost blends with her suit, and soon they’re both shaking hands with their audience on the way to the limousine. The president starts to seem larger and larger, as though gaining strength. Hollywood galloping into Dallas. Mrs. Kennedy, pausing to talk with the old woman in the wheelchair, seems more and more delicate—a strange collision of fragility and strength. And there are so many details to catalog. The wheelchair woman’s blue dress. A lace collar. A red blanket on her lap that matches Mrs. Kennedy’s roses. But it all moves so fast. Bobby’s already forgetting what’s right before him.
He looks up to see the president a few feet away, working his way down the line, about to shake Bobby’s hand. There are times in your life when no matter how much you’ve earned, you never really believe you’ve deserved it. Kennedy’s grip is strong, and his smile is all movie-star charm. He looks at Bobby as though he recognizes something, and tells him, “I’m glad you’re here. Thank you for being here.” And although Bobby is a long way from Cleburne, Kennedy seems like something familiar from his past, a man who knows the value of a handshake and a gracious word. Who knows the good in people accepting you. In his mind, Bobby etches every word the president says to him.
“What would the guys in your father’s barbershop have thought of Kennedy?” He paused and said, “I don’t quite understand you.” You stopped, unsure how to explain, realizing that although you’d had an agenda behind the question, you didn’t really know what that agenda was, other than trying to find a new way into the story. You waited. Took a breath. Looked for the objectivity that felt as though it were slipping away. At something of a loss, you repeated the question. Said it a little louder, as if trying to bully a foreigner with English. He cut you off midsentence to say that he was only a boy when his father died, that was why they had left Rio Vista for Cleburne. So you reframed the question. “What about you? What did you think of Kennedy?” And he said, “Oh.” Then there was a pause, and in that pause, across the transom, you could see his words starting to change shape, going from squares to ovals, and his whole tone brightened when he said that Kennedy “was like one of the preachers in my church that can hold your attention, and get you feeling exactly what he’s saying.”
In the limousine, Governor and Mrs. Connally sit one row ahead of the president, and Mrs. Kennedy takes her place to Jack’s left, her little pink hat blooming against the sky. Kennedy leans forward to say something to the Connallys, and then hits his hand on the back of the seat, his laugh cutting through the din of Bobby’s motorcycle.
Kennedy jerks back a little as the motorcade begins. Mrs. Kennedy waves to the entourage, her eyes looking downward, as though trapped.
On Cedar Springs Road, just barely out of the airport, the limousine moves at a crawl between the walls of spectators. Bobby tries to keep close to the car, but navigating the crowds takes him off center. Breaks his focus. Kennedy sits up, as though he’s calling up to the driver, and like that, the limo stops.
Kennedy is not in the car.
Bobby slams on the brakes, unsure what is going on, and the Secret Service hot potato themselves all over the place, crouching and guarding, calling back and forth to one another, just about having a collective heart attack. It’s only a split second that seems like forever until he sees that the president is just shaking hands, spotlighted in the sunshine breaking through the clouds.
You asked, “Is that the first time you sensed tension that day?” and Bobby tells you, “Well, when somebody else gets nervous, you’re gonna get nervous too.” But you wanted to know if that nervousness held, if it overtook the mood. You wanted a narrative. A broader part of the day that maybe he didn’t see then. And so you widen the question, and ask if, upon reflection, there was a general sense of tension that permeated the day from the start, and although you’re talking by telephone, you can see his head shake confidently as he says, “No, sir.”
The route has been well publicized, even published in the morning paper. There’s not a person in Dallas who doesn’t know every inch of the motorcade’s course, Bobby included. He follows it down Main toward Elm, trying to hug the limousine, keeping a vigilant eye on both Mrs. Kennedy and the boisterous crowd.
Most of the congestion is in Dealey Plaza, and Bobby can see that once they close in on the underpass, the road will open, and he’ll be able to move into a better formation. But he’s still not nervous. It’s all going smoothly—the flags are streaming in streaks of red, white, and blue, and everybody is smiling and waving—and it makes him feel good to see the respect of his fellow Texans, because there was all that talk about hating Kennedy, but Bobby knew all along those were just small factions, and it wasn’t even worth paying them any mind or attention, because there are always going to be small factions, and not a one ever deserves the mind or attention it’s looking for.
Bobby can see the bottleneck breaking open a little farther up Elm. Nearly free. They’ll be through the worst of it by the time they approach the Trade Mart. There’s even a touch of breeze on his face that feels fresher. More open. He looks once at Mrs. Kennedy, seeing the same smile she’s had on her face since leaving the airport, and then he looks away for a half second, and it’s only a half second, but it’s the sound that draws Bobby back.
You told him you weren’t going to ask him to recount the shooting. It must be difficult, you explained, plus you’ve read other interviews he’s given, gone through his Warren Commission testimony, to which he asked, “You read an interview with me?” His surprise seemed genuine. In truth (and though you wouldn’t want to admit to it), avoiding the story has nothing to do with how difficult it might be for him
. It’s because you have a narrative in mind, and your conversation’s main intent is to have a recorded witness for the details of the story. But no matter how much you’d planned to avoid it, suddenly the limousine turns on Elm toward the triple underpass at the same moment a hammer is being cocked on the sixth floor. And, that quickly, the story you weren’t looking for is the story that is now taking place.
Hargis: I knew the shot didn’t come from the front. It didn’t come from underneath. Or from the side. It’d got to come from up above his right shoulder.
Interviewer: It must have been frightening.
Hargis: Your level of heartbeat race goes up. Your blood pressure goes up. Everything goes up.
Interviewer: What was going through your head?
Hargis: Just do what I was trained to do . . . If he’d wanted to, Oswald could’ve filled me full of holes. I didn’t know where the shots was coming from.
They always want to know about the blood. Sam Stern, as assistant counsel on the Warren Commission, wants to know about the blood. In Dallas, gathering testimony for the report, Stern seems to break from the flat, just-the-facts questioning to ask Bobby about the blood. It almost suggests an innate understanding that facts alone aren’t enough to make a story. He asks, “Did something happen to you personally in connection with the shot you have just described?”