The Day Kennedy Was Shot

by Jim Bishop

  He was a medium-dark young man who married early and was a steady provider. He worked in a brick plant in Denton, Texas, and the company sent him to Arkansas for additional training. Life was exacting, but Robert and his wife knew that in time, they would own a little house and be able to stake out fifty feet of grass as their own. He kept away from his mother because she whined and had little tact. His older half-brother, John Pic, was in the same situation and managed to remain aloof from Marguerite except for the time, years ago, when she left Texas and tried to move in with the Pics in New York. Inevitably, there had been trouble between the women; inevitably, there had been maternal ultimata; the mother had taken the sullen little brother, Lee, and moved to another apartment. The boy was a truant, and the school authorities in New York had put him away for psychiatric evaluation. Marguerite managed to escape the courts of New York by running back to Texas with the little one.

  Robert could not divest himself of the responsibility he felt for Lee. The publicity in the newspapers when Lee sailed for the Soviet Union fell on Robert. When Lee came back to Texas, Robert was at the airport to meet him. Lee said: “Hi!” and slapped his brother on the back. Then he looked around and said: “Where are the reporters?” There weren’t any, and Robert hoped that the family name would not get into the newspapers again. He couldn’t understand his younger brother’s disappointment at not seeing newsmen at the plane.

  Today, late in the afternoon, the name Oswald boomed from a small portable radio set in the plant. Robert had been at work and had heard about the assassination. Like his co-workers, he felt badly, doubly so because it had happened in Big D. It did not stop him from applying himself to his job. The radio could be heard as the men worked. There were bulletins about the hospital, about the death, about Johnson, the finding of a rifle. Much of it was sporadic and incoherent. Robert hoped that the police would get whoever was responsible.

  Then the blow fell and Robert stood nodding dumbly. Men were around him saying that the police had arrested someone named Lee Harvey Oswald. They had him for shooting a policeman and the commentators said that maybe the same man shot the President. Robert nodded. That was his brother’s name. Sure. Not just a relative; a kid brother. The men wanted to know what Robert was going to do. Young Mr. Oswald stood in the middle of the shop, thinking. What to do? The first thing to do was not to “go to pieces.” The second thing would be to see the boss and ask for some time off to go to Dallas.

  There was never any doubt about the second move. Didn’t Robert always protect Lee from the big kids in the orphanage? Wasn’t Robert the one who used his meager spending money to buy Lee a toy, a game, a ball to bounce? Robert could do anything except pry that kid loose from mother. Nor did he try. He knew, all along, and even when he was too young to know, that there was something wrong in an existence where a mother worked all day and ordered a little boy to play by himself in a room. There seemed to be something overly protective in having the little fellow sleep with mother until he was eleven. There was something wrong in that deep silent stare that the kid turned toward the world. When Lee returned from Russia, Robert and his wife tried to be friendly, but Lee talked about political doctrines which Robert could not comprehend. The two couples experimented with a friendship which died almost at once. The Russian bride could not be understood. Lee kept his family at Robert’s house, but the younger brother immersed himself in books. He was not interested in old memories or discussions about mother. Robert said he might speak to some people and try to get Lee a job. His brother’s eyes came up from a book and they were remote. Lee said he could handle his affairs.

  The office phone was nearby. Robert Oswald called his wife. “Vada,” he said, “you been listening to the television?” Yes, she said. The news was awful. Had she heard Lee’s name mentioned? No, she hadn’t. His name had been mentioned. He was arrested. “I’m leaving here for home,” Robert said. It was said in a calm tone. As he hung up, the phone rang again. It was for Oswald. The credit manager, Mr. Dubose, was calling from the Forth Worth office. “Bob, brace yourself,” he said. “Your brother has been arrested.”

  “Yes, Mr. Dubose. I know. I just heard.” Robert Oswald felt a fear. He could steel himself against the words, “Your brother has been arrested,” but he felt that he could not stand to hear such words as “for the assassination of the President of the United States.” He took a deep breath, and Dubose said, “Your mother has been trying to reach you.” Oswald said, “Thank you” and hung up.

  In a moment, he was back on the phone. Oswald called William Darwin at the main office of the Acme Brick Company and asked permission to leave for Dallas at once. Mr. Darwin was sympathetic. “I know,” he said. “I just heard. You go ahead and do whatever you have to do, Robert. Don’t worry about the office.” Oswald felt the security in the tone, and he was grateful. Had he studied American history he might have recollected that, when John Wilkes Booth shot President Lincoln, John’s famous brother Edwin, the Shakespearean actor, was barred from stages all over America, even though he had no knowledge of his brother’s deed. Disconsolately, Robert Oswald said that he thought the best thing to do would be to phone the Federal Bureau of Investigation first. They would know what he should do.

  He was indeed panic-proof. At a time when competent minds were being swept up and fragmented in a vortex of fear, Robert Oswald disciplined himself to accept the deepest sorrow of his life.

  The boy, a little too straight, his jaw a bit too grim, strode through the emergency area and, in spite of the arms which reached out to inquire where he was going, he kept in motion, got on the elevator, and went up to the second floor. He was seventeen, a time when the adolescent sees a man in a mirror, and he went past the guards, the Texas troopers in the corridor, as though he had no time for greetings.

  He tried the most guarded door and it opened to his touch. Inside was Mrs. John Connally. He threw both arms around her and said: “It’s going to be all right, mother.” Mrs. Connally rocked in the embrace of her son John and, between sobs of joy, demanded to know how he could possibly have come all the way from Austin in so short a time. He wanted to know about his father. “I hitched a ride on an airplane,” he said. He was man-like, offering courage and support to his mother and, in the same breath, insisting that he be permitted to see his father.

  Mrs. Connally brought him through a door into the next room. There, the chief executive of the State of Texas reposed, looking like a scientific octopus. Plastic tubes ran into his body from overhead positions; others drained downward toward the floor. The fractured right wrist was suspended halfway over the bed. An oxygen mask was over his mouth, and the eyes turned to see the wonderment in the face of his son and the smile of pride shelving the tears on the face of his wife.

  An old Navy roommate came barging through the door. This was the huge figure of Henry Wade, district attorney. Mr. Wade was most of all a practical man. He had seen death at close hand many times and he had no time for mourning or thumping his chest. Tonight he had a social appointment, and he planned to keep it. He stopped at Parkland to say hello to the living.

  The Governor could not speak with the mask on his face, so Wade and young John wished him well. Mrs. Connally thought that this would be a good time to tell her husband some bad news. She was dwelling on it when Connally lifted the mask off with his left hand and said: “How is the President?” Nellie Connally said: “He died.” The white head on the pillow nodded. “I knew,” he said. “I knew.” The mask snapped back on the mouth and nose.

  They left as Doctor A. H. Giesecke, Jr., came into the room. The external signs, skin, lips, fingernails, had improved. The Governor emitted a groan with each breath and said he felt restless. His right shoulder was sore. It was impossible to get into a position of comfort. The doctor knew that all of this was unimportant. The Governor said that he felt a constant urge to urinate. Dr. Giesecke explained that a catheter was in him, and that this would cause urethral discomfort, but to bear with it for a while.
Throughout the operation, the Governor had lost 1,296 cc. of blood and 450 cc. of urine.

  He was dehydrated, even though whole blood had replaced what he had lost. As Doctor Giesecke concluded his examination, he noted minor signs of cyanosis, pink complexion, pulse 110, blood pressure 120 over 70, and the extremities were “warm and dry.” It was too early to give the patient a sleeping potion. He would have to bear the pain until later in the evening.

  The first aid room was a quiet place. The woman moaned and sobbed without control, and then she stopped and talked rationally for a while. Detective James Leavelle reasoned with Mrs. Helen Markham, and she sat on the white enameled chair listening and nodding. Suddenly she would see again the young fellow in the jacket waiting for the policeman to come out of the car, and she would hear the shots and watch the cop fold toward the road in slow motion. She clenched her hands between her knees and rocked back and forth with uncontrolled hysteria. The screams were high-pitched and steady.

  Leavelle and his partner, C. W. Brown, kept reasoning softly, and the screams diminished. Mrs. Markham required time to resume control. Then, when she had wiped her eyes with a handkerchief once more, she said she was afraid to look at the man who fired the shots. Leavelle reminded her that the Dallas police were not sure they had the right man; they thought they did. It would be up to her and the cab driver and the Davis sisters to identify the man. Mrs. Markham wasn’t sure she could do it; the episode had made her hysterical with fear and she wasn’t certain that she could stand in a lineup room and look at anyone.

  Leavelle smiled. He picked up a phone on the other side of the basement room and called the third floor. To Captain Fritz, he said: “Mrs. Markham is ready.” Word also went to the fifth-floor jail. Sergeant Duncan looked around to find young slender men who would approximate the build and age of the suspect. He ordered the jail clerk, Don Ables, to go to the basement showup room. Patrolman W. E. Perry was also young and slender. He reported to the basement. Richard Clark was another candidate. They passed muster as reasonable facsimiles of Lee Harvey Oswald, but he had something none of them had: a bruise over one eye and another under the other eye.

  Fritz and his Homicide detectives brought Oswald from the office through the press mob. Questions were shouted; responses were mumbled while other questions were heard. Radio reporters with microphones were thrust away from the prisoner by detectives who wore their cowboy hats indoors. Leavelle watched Mrs. Markham. Her head moved birdlike from Detective Sims to the so-called prisoners, and the woman began to wring her hands. Ables was first, as Number Four, then Clark, Oswald as Number Two, and Perry as Number One. The moment Oswald began to climb the steps, Mrs. Markham began to weep. She held her hands to her mouth and said: “That’s the man I saw.” Lieutenant Leavelle, conducting the lineup, didn’t ask her which man.

  He ordered each of the four to turn profile, each side, then slowly completely around, and he asked questions like “What is your name?” “Where do you live?” “What is your occupation?” of each one except Oswald. The suspect stared toward the screen, then began to look upward as the others answered questions. He listened to the obviously spurious replies. Each man was referred to by his number and, when Leavelle completed the questions, he turned to Mrs. Markham and she tried to calm herself to say: “He is the one. Number Two is the one.”

  To make certain, she asked Leavelle to have the number two man turn sidewards again. “The second one,” she said. “Which one?” the police said. “That second one—the one you called Number Two.” Mrs. Markham began to feel weak. “Number Two from which end?” the police asked. Mrs. Markham pointed. Then she fell over in a faint.

  The prisoner was returned by jail elevator to the third floor. Boyd and Sims cleared a path through the shouting press. Once Oswald tried to respond to a question, but the words were engulfed in sound. He was returned to Captain Fritz’s office. In the hall, Ferd Kaufman, an Associated Press photographer, had to hold his camera high and aim slightly downward to catch the swift appearance and disappearance of the suspect.

  Behind him someone said: “Eddie.” It was not Mr. Kaufman’s name, but he turned and a stout, middle-aged stranger said: “Excuse me. I thought you were Eddie Benedict.” Kaufman knew that Benedict was a Dallas freelance photographer. He said: “That’s all right,” and the stranger gave him a card. “My name is Jack Ruby,” he said. “I own the Carousel Club. This card will entitle you to be my guest at the club anytime.” Kaufman nodded his thanks, watching to see if there was going to be any more immediate action with Oswald. Ruby broadened his smile, as though he didn’t feel that he was making a sufficiently deep impression. “I’ll be the only businessman in Dallas who will have an ad in the morning paper saying that his place will be closed for three days in memory of the assassination of the President.”

  Kaufman looked at his watch. “I don’t know,” he said. “There is still time to change an ad in the morning paper. Up to five o’clock,” he said. They talked for a moment, and the photographer excused himself. He stuck the Carousel Club card in his pocket. Most newsmen would not wonder what a nightclub owner might be doing at police headquarters at a time such as this. To the contrary, one of the indexes to the truly big story is to count the number of outside individuals—politicians, department store executives, local characters afflicted with “copitis,” social lions—who are impelled to be at the scene of a major crime or disaster.

  Ruby had “copitis.” Many times, he had bought the smiles of hardened police officers by bringing bags of cole slaw, cold cuts, seeded rye bread, rolls, and coffee. He had repeated his act at many big Dallas fires. He was never truly “in” with the officers of the law, but Ruby could get in and out of most places where the public might be excluded. A large number of cops had been his guests at his nightclubs and, though he might be a pest, no one wanted to order the man to leave.

  Night fell quickly in Washington, as though for an event as solemn as this, darkness was de rigueur. The capital, always gifted with an acute sense of the proprieties, demanded the mood of the long shadows. Sometimes, in the bronze sunsets of autumn, the city clutches dusk to its bosom, but not on this day. The sun, so it seemed, had been there a moment ago, and now the great dome of the Capitol stood bright and pale against the black of the sky.*

  Taxis returning to the city from across the Potomac spun the circle from behind the Lincoln Memorial and slowed to study the bronze face in meditation, the knuckles shiny on the arms of a granite chair. On the front porch of the White House, the great glass vial was alight, shedding its radiance between the great columns. Pedestrians peered between the tall iron pickets of the fence, sensing the historic majesty of the building which had lost a tenant. Inside, an usher carried the late newspapers to the table behind the President’s desk. Among them was The London Daily Express. On its front page was a photo of Barry Goldwater. The caption read: “The Man Who Is Gunning for Kennedy.”

  Everywhere the dismay of the people was indoors. There, too, the lights were bright, but spirits were dark. The cocktail lounges were patronized. Office workers sipped drinks and talked of the event, both actions of therapeutic value. For some, it would be an excellent night to remove dinner from the list of events and place a bottle on the table.

  There were a few happy people left. At 3044 O Street, in Georgetown, two of them scrambled upstairs and down, chattering about the things which please children. Neither John-John nor Caroline appeared to notice that Grand-mère, waiting inside the front door, stooped to give them an extra fervent kiss and a long hug. She had dried her eyes and caressed the lids with a powder puff, and they had not noticed. Mrs. Hugh Auchincloss disciplined herself to face the children with a smile, but she could not bear to engage glances with an adult such as Maude Shaw, their nurse.

  She wanted the children to eat early, so the dining room table was being set, but there had been no time to make preparations for an overnight stay. Grand-mère, a handsome woman who knew Washington as she knew the handrail
on the staircase, led everyone up to a guest room. It was going to be awkward, she thought, because this room had twin beds. Miss Shaw could use one; Caroline was accustomed to a youth bed, but John-John needed a crib.

  There was one in the attic, an old one with sideboards kicked by energetic feet, but it was in disrepair. Maude suggested that she could make it do. They went up to the attic, while the youngsters spun with the happiness of an unexpected visit to a loved one who granted them small liberties denied by their mother. For them, this was a good day. Caroline, who was usually sensitive to the moods and demeanor of others, did not even notice the shocked silence of the people at the South Entrance when she left the White House. They stared; some averted their eyes; one wept and turned to study a wallpaper of ancient ships.

  The women brought the crib down. It was in sections, and something might have been done with it if some of the long screws and washers had not been mislaid. They sat on the floor of the guest room, trying to hold the pieces together. A maid brought some cord, and they tied the parts together. It was a sorry vehicle, but when the women shook it, the crib held.

  Bedclothes and a mattress for the crib were found. It seemed good, in a way, to have many small things to do. When the guest room was ready, Mrs. Auchincloss led the way down to the dining room. There it was bright and cheerful, and the children consumed what was placed before them and kept up a running brook of comment. After a little play, they would be undressed and helped with their nightclothes. Mrs. Shaw kept telling herself that she couldn’t do it; she just couldn’t tell them.

  The mood inside the White House was demanding and uncompromising. Men from bureaus and departments were impressed into service. Some, who did not have credentials, had to be endorsed by phone at the West Gate. They were planning a funeral for a President. He was still on his last flight and was still to be autopsied and embalmed, but the gentlemen acted as though there was not a moment to lose. They had yet to hear the wishes of the widow and those who were acquainted with Jacqueline Kennedy were aware that her wishes were adamant and positive.