by Adam Braver
Lillian walks in, saying something he can’t hear. Something about government men. Waiting. She’s walking with a transistor radio in her hand. It’s static and chaos. She’s crying, sniffling while she pats at her pockets for a tissue. She says the men are in the outer office, and then she reports that the radio just said the president is only wounded, to which Abe replies, I know he’s dead. Lillian eyes the TV and then turns up the radio, trying to make out more announcements through the static.
Abe stands to greet the government men. For a moment disoriented. Confused between the noise outside the window and the sounds on the radio and the TV. He could close his window, but somehow it’s reassuring, hearing the sirens, and hearing all those people still milling in the plaza. Hearing their moans and their cries. He is a little less alone.
A True Story.
The night of November 22, Abe had a nightmare that he was walking through Times Square. There he passed a barker standing in front of some unsavory movie house. The barker called out, “Hey folks, come on in and see the president killed on the big screen.”
The Screening.
By 8 AM on November 23, Abe is showing the film to Secret Service agents. It’s an empty room on one of his floors in the Dal-Tex Building. There are no windows. No screen. Only a couple of folding chairs and a card table set up in the middle to hold the projector. The overhead lights are off, just the projector’s white light beaming a small but distinct square on the blank white wall.
The fan on the projector whirrs. Almost like a jet engine.
Abe stands beside it and asks, Are you ready, gentlemen?
Ready, Mr. Zapruder.
He fiddles with the knobs, trying to sharpen the focus on the edges of the blank picture. Okay now, he says. So you are ready?
They nod, looking impatient, checking their watches, and documenting the time on their notepads. Abe knows they’re not really ready. He’s seen the film. Seen how the mind plays funny tricks. Experienced how the first twenty seconds fill you with hope and excitement. And there is still the strange possibility that what you know is going to happen may not happen. Yet it does. You realize how vague hope really is.
Abe starts the film. The reels on the 8 mm projector click just off the beat. Turning round and round, repetitious. The makeshift screen has filled in with black. Scratches animate across the wall, lightning storms, off as quickly as they are on.
The agents shift. One taps his foot in time with the projector.
There is a long leader on the film, even after cutting off the home movies and the test footage he’d made before the parade. Then, abruptly, it starts. Here come the motorcycle cops twisting onto Elm, leading the motorcade. The sun is shining. Here comes the president.
Another True Story.
By 10:30 AM, after screening the twenty-four-second film over and over for various officials, Abe’s office is flooded with reporters wanting access to the film. They’re all speaking in controlled voices, guaranteeing something. But it is Richard Stolley, of Life, with whom he goes behind closed doors, despite the protests of the others. The garment industry is flat these days, he tells Stolley. Every year the business has been making its way closer to Mexico, and Dallas is as far south as Abe is willing to follow it. He worries for his family’s future. Tells Stolley he wants them be secure. Still, he doesn’t want to be part of exploiting the death of the president. The idea of being a profiteer seems shameful. Stolley reminds him that this is Life. Its reputation is its integrity. Stolley guarantees they’ll be prudent in how they use the film. This is now part of the story of America, and, like it or not, Abe’s film is one of the great documents of history. Through Stolley, Life pays $50,000 for the print rights. Two days later they pay an additional $100,000 for the original film, with payments to be disbursed annually at $25,000. Abe contributes the first payment to the Firemen’s and Policemen’s Benevolent Fund, with a donation suggestion for Mrs. J. D. Tippit. The balance goes to the Zapruder family’s future.
Frame 313.
A movie camera connects a series of still pictures. A series of small moments. And each frame is assigned a number. In the case of his film, it is frame 313. That is the one where Kennedy’s head bursts open. That sudden poof of red that is at once abstract and elliptical. Abe didn’t need to lose the whole memory. Just frame 313. If it could have just been edited out. Then the worst part of the day only would’ve been his disappointment at Kennedy fooling around like he’d been shot after the loud pop, before the limousine disappeared beneath the underpass on the way to the Trade Mart.
The Testimony.
Giving up the film was supposed to relieve him. But there are some days that he swears he sees it in his head. Starting up with the scratchy leader, and then right to the motorcade. And then it’s frame 313 over and over again. Backward and forward. Forward and backward. Until the motorcade disappears beneath the underpass. Some days it plays in his head several times. Sometimes only once or twice a week. But always the same pattern. Backward and forward. Forward and backward. And it occurs to him that his memory and the film are one and the same. That every time the film is studied in some Secret Service/FBI lab, or cut and spliced in New York at Life, it is somehow projecting through him.
By the time Abe is testifying for the Warren Commission, exactly eight months to the day have passed since he shot his film. Nearly down to the hour. He sits in the office of the U.S. attorney in Dallas, being questioned by Wesley Liebler, assistant counsel to the commission. Abe’s nervous. In a way, he seems more shaken than he was in the hours following the assassination. He can’t seem to get his words right. He knows what he’s thinking, but it just won’t translate. Maybe it’s that the shock has worn off. Now it’s an exposed wound.
Liebler is being gracious. Gentle. They start off with the background information. Abe tells him about not having the camera, going down to Elm Street, searching for the perfect spot until he found the concrete abutment. He’s thorough. Comfortable with the logic of these details.
But shortly the motorcade is in front of him, and Liebler is asking more pointed questions. Frame by frame. Bullet by bullet. As he did on WFAA, Abe confesses he thought Kennedy was joking after the first shot. After eight months, he sounds a little more practiced. Still, the shame remains. He goes on to say, “I heard a second shot and I saw his head opened up and the blood and everything came out and I started—I can hardly talk about it . . .” and he falls forward, dropping his face into his hands, sobbing. He looks up once or twice. Takes in a breath, holding it, trying to compose himself, and then starts crying again.
“That’s all right, Mr. Zapruder,” Liebler says. “Would you like a drink of water? Why don’t you step out of the room and have a drink of water?”
Abe doesn’t move. He looks up, trying to regain his posture, but unable to look Liebler in the eyes. Fixing his stare on a knot in the paneling. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m ashamed of myself really, but I couldn’t help it . . . The whole thing that has been transpiring . . . It was very upsetting, and as you see, I got a little better all the time, and this came up again . . . And . . . It to me . . . Looked like a second shot.”
They resume the deposition, continuing to take the day apart, frame by frame. He answers steadily. Keeps on track. He wants to be useful. And when Liebler is ready to wrap things up, he lets Abe know how helpful the film has been to the commission. Abe nods. “I’m only sorry I broke down,” he says. “I didn’t know I was going to do it.”
Liebler thanks him. Repeats how helpful the film has been.
“Well, I’m ashamed of myself. I didn’t know I was going to break down, and for a man to . . . but it was a tragic thing, and when you started asking me that, and I saw the thing all over again, and it was an awful thing . . . An awful thing.”
And though they’ll forever call him helpful for what he did, he wishes he’d had nothing to offer. That he’d left the camera at home. Wishes he’d never even cared about Kennedy. Because, in the end, all
this has done is brought him shame. For thinking the wrong thing when the first bullet struck. For feeling as though he were selling out the horror for profit, scrambling to donate a chunk of the money as fast as it came in. For breaking down with childish tears. Imagine that. A Ukrainian Jew who escaped the pogroms and terrors of the Russian civil war, who came to America and built himself into a businessman, just to become someone who can’t compose himself, all for what he saw through his viewfinder. At least he was able to provide for his family. For that he can feel no shame.
THE OATH OF OFFICE
Within Twenty-four Seconds.
Jack screamed out, and she fell forward, and it sounded like firecrackers, and Jackie’s first thought had been Why on earth would they be shooting off fireworks? That’s a strange thing to be doing. It was hard to see what was what. Jackie only looked up once, but when she did, she found herself on the back of the limo, and she doesn’t know what she was thinking, only that she might have believed herself dead. That her soul was climbing out of her body.
Then she’s huddled down in the backseat. Hunkering. Taking refuge. Clint Hill lying on top of them. Jack’s foot sticking up out of the car. She’s trying to tug it down. Hiding from where she thinks the shots are coming from.
People can say what they want about her class and her debutante poise, but once those shots were flying, she was all over him, willing to take the bullets. And Jackie knows she would have if they hadn’t found Jack first.
Walking Spanish: Part One.
It’s not a long walk through the airplane, from the bedchamber to the presidential suite. But it’s long enough. She keeps her hands to her sides. No one seems to notice her. Not Kenny or Larry or Pam or Mac or anybody else from Jack’s staff. They must be in the compartment already, waiting for the administration of the oath. It’s taking her forever to walk the short distance, but she trusts she can. Her body is dulled, and her head just as dulled. But she can sense her mind working rapidly, processing and dismissing at equal rate. A paralyzing contradiction. Still, as she moves forward, closer and closer to the swearing-in, she is moving further away from what she knows. There’s an expression she remembers from a novel or a movie. Walking Spanish. When a sailor is being dragged through a ship before being forced to walk the plank. Walking Spanish.
Within Twenty-eight Seconds: Part One.
Lyndon’s holding her hands. His are big like clown gloves, and they cover hers completely, the bones of his fingers like bars. She’s looking down, but can feel his eyes, staring. And he calls her sweetheart, saying, “Sweetheart, I’m so sorry.” It’s all rocks and gravel in his voice. She tries to slip her hands free, but he keeps a firm grip on them. She can sense Lady Bird looking at her. At the mess she is. Already planning to pick out a nice change of clothes. Clean her up. Fix her hair. Maybe run a warm bath. But Lyndon will not let go of her hands. It’s as though he wants her to cry before him. But she won’t cry. Even if she could.
The compartment is hot and crowded, and it smells of sweat. And she just wishes this would get going. Lyndon finally lets go, and he reaches for a glass of water, swallowing it in one gulp, as though trying to drown himself. Everybody’s shifting. Every movement magnified. The judge takes her place, with the Bible in one hand and the typed-out oath in the other. The Dictet is turned on to preserve this moment. Prove that it was real, when nobody will be able to believe such a thing could happen.
Lyndon speaks his lines of the oath slowly; not as though deliberately savoring the moment, rather he’s unable to get hold of the words. As though his voice and his brain belong to two different bodies. Judge Hughes seems to rush her part, trying to speed him up.
After Lyndon repeats So help me God, there’s a pause, a long pause, and it’s so quiet in the room, almost without air. This should be the space they stay in forever, where everything just pauses. Lyndon leans down and kisses Lady Bird with his eyes open; and when he catches Jackie’s glance, he pulls away from his wife, a little ashamed, reaching out to Jackie, but she doesn’t give her hands this time. He hugs her like he’s hugging a man, and then takes a half step back, holds on to her elbows. She doesn’t want him to say anything, and he seems to know it. He purses his lips, then swallows. Looking at her. Part of her hopes he’s sick inside. That his intestines can barely hold anything in. And it’s not from anger toward him. Nor from spite. It’s just seeing his men behind him shaking hands.
Again, he says, “I am so sorry, Jackie.”
“Thank you, Mr. President.” As she steps to the side, his hands stay on her elbows, and she realizes that he is in his own pause. Once she feels his hands slip away, she knows everything is moving forward. That there is no place for her, other than to tend to her husband.
If.
It’s impossible not to think in terms of if. When she’d been walking through the cabin to the swearing-in, she’d considered over a dozen ifs. She thought of the weather. The bubbletop. The various pauses along the route, each time Jack commanded the car to slow down to say something to a spectator. Maybe when they motored around the corner into the downtown. If maybe she’d leaned in to say something, and, unable to hear, he’d leaned back just as the bullets passed by. If maybe she’d sat that much closer to him. If maybe the wind had shifted, and the hanging banners had blown in the other direction. Or if maybe she’d pushed the hair off her forehead. Or if maybe Patrick hadn’t died.
If was a split second that nearly any detail might have altered.
But already she can’t recall details. Only flashbulbs. Snapshots that barely linger. This morning in Fort Worth already is another lifetime. Sitting in the Hotel Texas, getting dressed. Wishing he wouldn’t laugh about the risks. Thinking she should say so, because she was that certain something wasn’t right. But deciding not to. And when that first shot rang out, and she didn’t know what it was, a noise, a firecracker, and Jack’s clutching at his throat, and she leaned in toward him. Knew something was wrong. It was barely a second. A breath. But when she leaned over and grabbed at him (asking? yelling? shrieking?), that thought about deciding not to say something went through her head, as though it were loading the bullet and cocking the rifle. She tried to scream it from her mind, just as the next shot came. Then she was climbing out of the car.
But it was the proper thing at the time, right?
As she entered the suite for the swearing-in, she was replaying that second, trying to remember if that’s how it had really happened. Not quite certain anymore. Maybe her mind was already recalibrating the details. Turning it into her own private experience, with an ordering of details that at least gave the murder a logic.
Once over the threshold of the room, she looked up to see all those familiar faces staring back at her, and then looking away just as quickly. She tried to lift her head up and walk into the room with pride. But nothing was working right. She tripped on a tuft of carpet, losing her balance. Every hand reached out to brace her. If only she’d paid attention.
Within Twenty-eight Seconds: Part Two.
Lyndon has walked over to talk to his people. Strangely, he already looks presidential. Jack worked hard to make Lyndon feel valued in his vice-presidential role. Inviting him and Lady Bird to state dinners. Making sure each guest was welcomed by both the president and vice president. Jack sent Lyndon abroad, using him as the ambassador that Nixon never was. He’d bungled some early on, especially in Berlin. But Jack had bailed him out. Lyndon just didn’t have a diplomat’s personality. It’s about social ways. But there he is, standing across the room. Already as though he were born into the job.
Lady Bird puts a hand to Jackie’s wrist. Her touch is opposite Lyndon’s, fragile, like kindling. And Lady Bird’s face is sympathetic, maternal, so different from everybody else, who seem frightened of her. “Let’s get you away from here,” Lady Bird says. “Let me help you.”
Words are hard to find. But Jackie tells her thank you.
The two of them stand in the center of the room. Hushed voices surround
ing them. Not quite sure where to go.
“We need to get you out of those clothes, dear,” Lady Bird says, almost in a whisper. She looks Jackie over. “Get you changed into something more comfortable. Out of these.”
Jackie looks down. Her dress is covered in blood. Her right leg caked with it. She reaches up to scratch her cheek and sees her glove almost fully stained brown. She draws in a deep breath, taking in enough air to keep her standing.
“Please, Jackie. Let me help you get changed.”
Jackie’s not ready to move. Not sure where to go. What to do. And she can sense Lady Bird getting antsy. Trying to find the right things to say. Being helpful. Keep any conversation going, because Lady Bird must be sure that quiet is the worst thing right now. Where the horrors get played and played over and over. But Jackie does want the quiet. Needs it. And she wants it to be with Jack. Sit with him as though these past two hours never existed.
“Shall we go now, Jackie?” Lady Bird’s voice starts to tremble.
Together, they walk out of the room and into the hallway, to the bedchamber. Jackie wants to keep moving to the back of the plane. To Jack. But she lets herself be guided. Her thoughts seem like wishes. She’s unable to go anywhere she’s not directed.