by Jim Bishop
Rufus Youngblood hopped from the front seat of the Vice-President’s car, yelling, “Get down!” and shoved Mr. Johnson’s right shoulder, pushing him toward Mrs. Johnson and Senator Yarborough and jumping up high enough to sit on his man. The men on the follow-up car turned backward toward the door of the Depository, as though, without consultation, they knew the sounds came from there. The faint scream of a woman came from somewhere. A man yelled, “Duck, for Christ’s sake!” One of the drivers hit a siren, and the wail started low and moved up to a pitch to terrify bystanders.
Tague, farthest away on Commerce Street, put his hand against his cheek and saw blood. Governor Connally looked down at his shirt and saw a massive amount of gore and was sure he had been killed. He began to sag toward the car door. Mrs. Connally, alarmed, reached quickly and pulled him toward her. Agent Hickey, in the follow-up car, got to his feet with the AR-15 rifle. He had no target. He was staring wildly at the green of sweet grass and the blue of a warm sky.
The final horror is always reserved for those least prepared. Mrs. Kennedy, the sheltered person, turned to see the agony on her husband’s face and she screamed: “What are they doing to you?” He could not tell her and, with his last conscious effort began to slump toward her—who knows?—maybe to protect her from what was still to come. He was conscious and there was time to fall forward, between the jump seats—seven seconds to be exact.
The man in the rough work clothes and the gray steel helmet, Mr. Howard Brennan, looked up in time to see the rifle being made ready again. On the fifth floor, Jarman heard a second empty shell drop. He and his friends began to look uneasy. On the street, a policeman roared: “Oh, goddamn!” Spectators who had struggled to approach the President began to flee. Like the pigeons now circling the plaza, they had been frightened and each moved awkwardly and precipitously away from danger. In the center of the plaza, some ran. Others fell and cupped their hands behind their heads. On the sidewalk near the grassy knoll, those in front knocked down those behind in the scramble to reach safety at the top of the knoll.
The aged Abe Zapruder kept the film in his camera moving, though he had heard the sharp reports. The policemen on the motorbikes flanking the presidential limousine turned their gleaming hard helmets this way and that, looking like inquisitive monsters behind the giant sunglasses. Off to the left, Postal Inspector Harry D. Holmes kept his binoculars on the car. He was sure someone was throwing firecrackers at it because he distinctly saw dust fly up from the street with the first crack. Then he noticed the car pull to a halt, and Holmes thought: “They are dodging something being thrown.”
Sorrels yelled: “Anybody hurt?” and a motorcycle policeman, pulling up on the lead car, nodded. “Get us to the hospital.” Curry picked up his microphone and said: “Surround the building!” He didn’t tell Channel Two what building. The Secret Service saw the President’s car pull up to a stop behind them and Lawson yelled: “Let’s get out of here!” They would trap the President if Curry’s car blocked the Lincoln. S. M. Holland, frozen with fright on the overpass, heard three more shots after the solitary puff of smoke and saw the President slump.
The terror spread. A man on a bench got up, picked his wife up, and slammed her onto the turf. Then he protected her body by falling on her. Officer T. L. Baker slowed his motorcycle and began to run it toward the curb with his feet dragging. Agent Clinton Hill left the running board of the follow-up car and began to run toward the back of the President’s car. William Greer hit the accelerator as Kellerman roared into a microphone: “Take us to a hospital, quick!”
The hard-boiled O’Donnell began to bless himself. Powers murmured: “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph . . .” On the sidewalk, Charles Brend, holding his five-year-old son up to see the President, fell on the little boy. Senator Yarborough thought he smelled gunpowder. “My God,” he said, “they’ve shot the President!” Mrs. Johnson, the sensitive one, the apprehensive wife and mother, shook her head negatively and said: “Oh, no. That can’t be.” In the press pool car, assistant press secretary Malcolm Kilduff straightened up and said: “What was that?” The young Negro student, Amos Lee Euins, was still watching the man in the window. He told himself it was a white man and he didn’t have a hat on. Euins could see some boxes behind the man. Mrs. Earle Cabell, wife of the mayor, was in a car still on Houston Street. She heard shots and jerked her head up toward the School Book Depository. She could see something sticking out of one of the windows.
Mary Moorman was on the grass. She had taken the one Polaroid shot. She pulled at Mrs. Jean Hill’s leg, screaming: “Get down! They’re shooting!” Brennan, on the low wall in his steel helmet, watched the rifle pull back into the window before the next shot. In the press buses, men were asking each other if that could be rifle fire. A driver said: “They’re giving him a twenty-one-gun salute.”
The great head was slumping slowly to the left. It came up in the rifle sights big and steady. The trigger was squeezed. As before, the rifle jumped, the bullet split the air, and the slower sound swelled through the plaza, tumbling in its echoes. Mrs. Kennedy was staring at her husband. The shell entered the right rear of the skull. A large portion of the head left the body in two chunks. One flew backward into the street. The other fell beside the President. Dura mater, like wet rice, sprayed out of the brain in a pink fan.
This one the President did not feel. The light had gone out with no memories, no regrets. After forty-six and a half years, he was again engulfed by the dark eternity from which he had come. For good or evil, his work, his joys, his responsibilities were complete. The heart, automatically fibrillating, pumped great gouts of blood through the severed arteries of the brain, drenching the striped shirt, blending on the petals of the flowers, puddling the rug on the car floor. It would stop in a few moments, when blood pressure dropped to zero.
Shock froze the mind of Mrs. Kennedy. She saw a flesh-colored piece of her husband’s head turning in air to drop behind the car. Jack’s expression reminded her of when he had a headache. Her voice sounded stiff and unnatural and she said: “They have shot his head off.” Mrs. Kennedy began to climb out on the trunk of the automobile. “I have his brains on my hand,” she said.
The heavy car leaped. “Bill,” Kellerman shouted to Greer, “get out of line.” Connally felt the car jerk. The Governor was sure he was dying; he was conscious and he was certain that the party had been ambushed by two or three marksmen. As he breathed, the wound in his chest sucked air. “My God,” he screamed, “they are going to kill us all!” He heard the sound of the third shot, heard the shell hit something soft, and he knew, reposing on Mrs. Connally’s lap and unable to see, that it had hit the President of the United States. His wife, as protective and determined as the Texas frontierswomen of old, cradled his head in her hands and murmured: “Don’t worry. Be quiet. You are going to be all right.”
The prisoners in the jail strained to see it all. Willie Mitchell, the “colored boy,” shouted that the President had been hit from behind by a bullet. “His head burst,” he said, excitedly. “It was like throwing a bucket of water at him.” Channel Two came on loud and clear:
Henslee: “12:30 P.M. KKB three six four.” Chief Curry in the lead car: “Go to the hospital—Parkland Hospital. Have them stand by. Get a man on top of that triple underpass and see what happened up there. Have Parkland stand by.” The voices were becoming strained, unnatural. Sheriff Decker picked up a microphone: “I am sure it’s going to take some time to get your men in there. Pull every one of my men in there.” Dispatcher Henslee: “Dallas One. Repeat. I didn’t get all of it. I didn’t quite understand all of it.” Sheriff Decker: “Have my office move all available men out of my office into the railroad yard to try to determine what happened in there and hold everything secure until Homicide and other investigators should get there.” Henslee: “Ten four. Dallas One will be notified.” The dispatcher hurriedly addressed Chief Curry. Henslee: “One. Any information whatsoever?” Curry: “Looks like the President has been
hit. Have Parkland stand by.” Henslee: “They have been notified.” Deputy Chief N. T. Fisher came in: “We have those canine units in that vicinity, don’t we?” Curry: “Headed to Parkland. Something’s wrong with Channel One.”
Lumpkin (now up on Stemmons Freeway in the pilot car, using motorcycle policemen to divert traffic): “What do you want with these men out here with me?” Curry: “Just go on to Parkland Hospital with me.” Patrolman R. L. Gross: “Dispatcher on Channel One seems to have his mike stuck.” Curry: “Get those trucks out of the way. Hold everything. Get out of the way.”
The Lincoln was bucking with too much acceleration and Agent Clint Hill barely got a foothold and reached for the small handrail. The car swung hard left and then split the clear air as it picked up speed. Hill felt the forces try to pull him off the car. He hung on, reached forward with one hand, and shoved Mrs. Kennedy backward, into the seat. Agent Ready, jumping off the other side of the follow-up car, was called back. The word, the ugly, shocking news, was in each official car on Channel Two. It was rifle fire. The President has been wounded.
Hill pulled himself forward as the car hit the cool darkness of the underpass. He kept pulling up and up. The agony in Mrs. Kennedy’s face turned full upon him. The wind whipped her straight dark hair back and forth across her forehead. The agent at last stretched over the seat and she shouted: “They have shot his head off.” Hill looked down. The President was on his left side. His head was in the roses. A large part of the right side was missing. The eyes, wide open, stared at the back of Mrs. Connally. One foot was lifted and hung over the door on the right side. Brain tissue was scattered. Governor Connally, down between the jump seats, began to scream louder and louder, and Mrs. Connally began to wail with him.
Agent Hill held onto the back seat and beat the trunk with his hand. The President’s wife was looking up at him as the car moved up onto Stemmons for the race to Parkland, four miles away. Pathetically, she held up an arm. “I have his brains in my hand.” Hill saw a piece of the President’s head lying beside him. The agony on his face was screened by the big sunglasses. He looked back and shook his head no, and turned a thumb downward.
Agent-in-Charge Emory Roberts, in the follow-up car, picked up the phone: “Escort us to the nearest hospital,” he said, “fast but at a safe speed.” Roberts repeated the words. The President had been lost. Mr. Roberts did not want to risk the life of the new President. He waved the Johnson car closer and yelled, pointing ahead: “They got him. They got him.” He pointed to Agent McIntyre: “You and Bennett take over Johnson as soon as we stop.” It was the cold intelligent move to make.
Dealey Plaza was quiet. The running had stopped. People sat up on the grass. Policemen were at the School Book Depository door. Some were up the incline, as ordered on Channel Two. In a press car, Bob Jackson pointed: “Look up in the window,” he said. “There’s the rifle.” Tom Dillard, chief photographer of the Dallas News, raised his camera at once and took two shots of the red brick façade. The man in the window remained long enough to make certain that his victim had convulsed, then slumped to the left. He had seen the people run; he had heard the screams.
Slowly, the rifle retreated through the window. Euins watched it; so did Brennan. Jackson saw it clearly; then he saw nothing. The automobiles in the motorcade began to pick up speed. From the sixth floor, they looked like derailed cars in a toy train set. The new President was under the crushing weight of his bodyguard. The assassin’s heart must have leaped with excitement because he had dared to do a thing which no boy, dominated by mother, sneered at by wife, would have the nerve to do: Lee Harvey Oswald had killed the most powerful man in the whole world; he had done it as casually as a boy might shoot a tin can in an empty lot.
He looked over the little fortress of cartons. The sixth floor was still empty. He stepped over the empty shells, ran diagonally across the big, dusty room and set the gun down between rows of cartons. The fourth shell was still in it. If one of the “colored boys” had remained on the sixth floor, the fourth shot might have become a necessity. Quickly, Oswald walked down the steps toward the second floor. There were eighteen steps to each floor and the young man was sure-footed. All he had to do was to get in that commissary before the wave of excitement came up from the street. Seventy-two steps—one at a time or two?
At the front of the building, Roy Truly was elbowing his way through a group of shocked people. At the first step, he met officer T. L. Baker, who had jumped off his motorcycle with revolver drawn and had run to the entrance of the School Book Depository. Truly, trotting, announced breathlessly that he was the manager. Baker waved the gun: “Then come with me.” Reporters were asking to be let off the press bus, but the driver picked up speed and headed for the Trade Mart. Some photographers dropped off another bus, spinning with their equipment, and ran back toward the School Book Depository to cover the story—if there was a story.
It required all of seven seconds for Howard Brennan to get off the wall—having watched the rifleman get off three shots—and become sufficiently frightened to run to the Houston Street side of it and crouch for protection. Jean Hill kept saying: “His hair stood up. It just rippled like this.” Wesley Buell Frazier, the boy who was worried about his weak automobile battery, had watched the panic and he remained stock-still. In his mind, he was thinking: “When something happens, it is always best to stand still because if you run that makes you look guilty sure enough.” Ronald Fischer, who had seen the gun in the window, ran down the grassy center of Dealey Plaza and back up again. It seemed to him that many policemen were running up toward the tracks.
On the fifth floor, Bonnie Ray Williams’ face worked itself toward fear. He and Harold Norman and James Jarman had heard all the shots, had watched the windows rattle, had listened to the empty shells bouncing on the floor above; now dust and plaster was sifting down. Harold pointed to the ceiling and said the shots came from there. Bonnie Ray blurted: “No bullshit!” Norman said: “I even heard the shell being ejected. . . .” Jarman began to edge toward the staircase. “You got something on your head,” he said, pointing. “Somebody was shooting at the President.” Bonnie Ray began to edge away, and he said again: “No bullshit!” The three dashed for the exit.
In the middle of Elm, Officer B. J. Martin was sickened. He had been riding left front of the limousine. He was wiping blood and brain tissue from the right side of his windshield and his helmet. Another policeman, on the grassy knoll, bent downward in nausea. James R. Worrell, the young man who watched each shot fired from the sixth floor and had glanced at the car to see the effect, realized that he would never forget the screams of so many persons saying, “Duck!”
In the press pool car, Merriman Smith of United Press International took a calculated risk. He lifted the pool phone from between his knees, got the Dallas bureau and said: “Three shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade in downtown Dallas.” Jack Bell of the Associated Press, sitting in the back seat, knew that this terse message would be heard around the world in a few minutes, and that the world would be waiting to know the destination and fate of those three bullets. He was sitting with Baskin, chief of the Dallas News Bureau, and Clark of ABC.
Jack Bell demanded the phone. He stood. Smith began to dictate additional material in “takes.” Over the scream of sirens, he jammed a finger in his ear, squinted his eyes, and asked that his words be read back to him. Each ticking second gave UPI an additional exclusive lead over AP. Bell reached across his adversary for the phone. Smith tried to yank it loose. Bell, swaying in a speeding car, took a swing at Smith and hit the driver. Kilduff, the President’s press representative, tried to pacify the journalists. He didn’t know where the car was going or what had happened. But the word was out.
On the first floor, Roy Truly led Officer Baker to the shaft. “Turn loose the elevator,” he shouted up the well. Baker could not wait. He asked about stairs. Truly led him across the ground floor and up the steps. The policeman, a big dark man with cr
ew haircut and cleft chin, followed holding his gun downward. At the second floor, Truly made the turn to the third. The cop thought he saw a movement out of the perimeter of his eye. He stopped. Through the glass door, a man stood empty-handed near a soft drink stand. The officer went into the commissary. “Come here,” he said.
The young man walked toward Baker. Truly, halfway up the flight of stairs, returned. “Do you know this man?” the cop said, holding the gun close to the belly of Lee Harvey Oswald. “Yes.” “Does he work here?” Truly nodded impatiently. “Yes,” he said. “He works for me.” They left. Oswald dropped a coin in the soda machine. He got a Coca-Cola. This was nervousness because he invariably drank Dr. Pepper. Truly and Baker worked their way up to the fifth floor, found an elevator, ran it to the seventh, examined the roof, and came back down overlooking only one floor: the sixth.
The police dispatcher moved more patrol cars to the School Book Depository, and inched others forward from the outlying districts to protect the city. From the sheriff’s office across the street, unassigned deputies poured in to help. The word from Chief Curry and Sheriff Decker had mentioned the overpass; as a consequence, much of the running was up the grade. On top stood Patrolman Earle V. Brown, a fourteen-year veteran. He had screened the men sitting on the overpass, making certain that they were railroad personnel. He knew that no shots had come from his area, but, still carrying his yellow raincoat, he met the oncoming rush of policemen and deputies and helped them to scour the area. No one on the overpass tried to run. Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman, running up the grassy knoll, heard someone say the shots came from the parking lot behind. At once he hopped the wall, but no one and no automobile was seen leaving the lot. Weitzman canvassed the parked cars, sitting in cool dead rows.