by Tim Sandlin
Maurey said, “They killed President Kennedy.”
I looked at her face, then away. A pickup truck pulled into the cafeteria loading zone, but no one got out. White exhaust smoke plumed from the tail pipe, then spread and disappeared against the white background. “Are you sure?”
Maurey nodded, not looking at me. “It’s on the radio.”
Her fists rested one on each knee with the thumbs inside under the fingers. John Kennedy was dead. Dead was an odd word to me. People on television died every night, but that wasn’t real. John Kennedy was on television, but he was real. Down by the volleyball poles, some older kids were whooping at each other, making magpie sounds.
“Who killed him?”
Maurey shrugged. “Texans.”
Why would Texans kill the president? I thought of Jackie with her little hats and Caroline and John-John. Now he had no father either.
As word spread through the yard, kids gathered in small groups of shallow faces. No one had ever told us how to behave when something happened we couldn’t comprehend. At the teachers’ parking lot, some kids were singing “Yah, yah, the witch is dead,” over and over. Maurey’s jaw tightened. I could see each bone along the side of her face.
I wanted to say something to her that would make a difference. I wanted to tell her it wasn’t true, President Kennedy was alive, and no one was singing the witch is dead about him.
The kids cheering Kennedy’s death ran around the yard, taunting the others, behaving like real twerps. Dothan Talbot led the bunch, followed by his sister Florence and a couple of ranch kids who still wore cowboy boots even in the snow. Dothan was a ninth-grader. His hair was an oily flattop and he was a jerk to play football with, always the guy popping wet towels in the locker room and talking loud about pussy.
Dothan stood facing us with his hands on his hips and his feet spread. “Look at the little lovebirds bawling on the steps. You two crying over the nigger lover?”
I looked from Dothan to Maurey. Her eyes were amazing.
Dothan’s teeth showed a gap when he grinned. “Know what Caroline Kennedy asked Santa to bring her at Christmas?”
Florence squealed, “A Jack-in-the-box.” Must have been a stock joke around the Talbot house.
Dothan’s eyes locked on Maurey’s. “Maybe you’re a nigger lover too.”
Maurey’s shoulder caught him belt high, knocking him over backward with her on top. His hand twisted through her dark hair, then pulled her over into the slushy snow. As Dothan sat up, I kicked him in the throat. He caught my foot and pulled me into the pile. Florence started screaming like her teeth were being ripped out.
Did I jump into the fight in anger over Kennedy’s senseless death or because I knew it was the way into Maurey’s heart and/or pants? Whenever I do something right, I always suspect that I did it for the wrong reason. I couldn’t understand why the president was suddenly dead, I hated Dothan’s glee, I hated all the ignorant grunts in Wyoming or North Carolina or anywhere else who make things dirty for the rest of us.
Maybe I wasn’t simply sucking up to Maurey. Maybe I got myself beat up defending decency. Hell, I don’t know.
And beat up is what I got. Within seconds he’d twisted my arm up behind my back and slammed my face into the cold mud. He used his knee to pin me there while he wrestled a flailing Maurey into the same position. Then Dothan held us, each with one ear ground into the earth.
Maurey and I faced each other, nose to nose, maybe eight inches apart. Dothan’s hand spread across the side of her head, his nails digging into her cheek. He had me more by the neck. She didn’t make a sound so neither did I. The one eye I could see wasn’t crying anymore. It was hurt. Not the physical hurt I was in or the shame hurt of having your face rubbed in the snow by a horse’s ass. Maurey’s was the kind of hurt you get when you discover what an unfair mess of a world we’re stuck with and how helpless we are to do a damn thing about it.
Or maybe she was just king-hell pissed. I’m always reading twenty minutes of insight into a glance in someone’s eyes.
Sam Callahan came off the ground with a roar. He kicked once and Dothan’s knee bent at an impossible angle. Sam caught him with a left to the liver, a right to the mouth, and an elbow in the solar plexus. Sam picked up a baseball bat and broke it across Dothan’s forehead. Then Sam picked him up and threw him through the glass door.
Florence’s godawful screaming stopped and I felt the sharp weight lifted off my spine. I rolled sideways, coughing, and looked up to see Coach Stebbins holding Dothan by both arms.
Florence had the voice of a raped goat. “They started it. They started it. They jumped on my brother.”
Maurey spit snow. “He was celebrating the fucker who killed Kennedy.”
Stebbins stared at us on the ground, then his eyes traveled the circle of kids, Teddy the Chewer, Chuckette Morris, Kim Schmidt. His jaw looked like he’d been hit, not us. He let Dothan go, then turned and walked back into the school.
***
That Friday in November must be the most analyzed, beat-to-pulp day in history. The day everything got quiet; the day America lost her virginity, or at least her innocence; the day the fifties ended. More strangers spoke to each other that day than any time before or since.
A lot of newspaper and TV guys made their careers that day. An entire industry has grown around trying to figure out what happened. I hate to think we’ll never know.
I take it as the day I first talked to Maurey, without which I’d be a different deal.
I’ve asked a number of people who were ten, eleven, twelve back in 1963, and most of them recall it as the day the grown-ups cried.
***
“Come on,” Maurey said.
“Where?” She was standing up, but I still sat in wet snow. I felt somewhat debased by losing the fight. Dothan wasn’t that tough. Maurey’s white skirt was a mess. I imagined the guys got some great panty shots, which was probably a bigger deal to them than the death of a president.
“I can’t be here anymore.”
“That makes sense.”
“We can to go my house and watch the news. I want to know what this is about.”
I glanced at the school. “Think they’ll miss us?”
She held out a hand to help me up. “All the rules are off today, Sam. Nothing we do matters.”
How did she know that? Maurey wasn’t any older than me. She didn’t have any more experience at presidential assassinations. Some people are just born with intuition.
I held on to Maurey’s hand after she pulled me upright. She looked at me sharply.
“You said the rules are off today.”
“Don’t get carried away.” She drew her hand free.
The town seemed asleep as we walked by the triangle. A few trucks sat outside the Esso station and the White Deck, and a parked Buick was running next to Kimball’s Food Market, but we passed no people, not even a dog, and the snow made everything unreal and quiet. The flag twisted around the pole in front of the Forest Service headquarters. I glanced at Maurey a few times, figuring the implications. Was the truce temporary or had a connection been made? A snowflake landed on her cheek and I counted to four before it melted.
“So all Southerners aren’t racist?” she asked.
“Nope.”
“Why do they try to make us think they are?”
“Makes a better story, I guess.”
We stopped at a yellow house with white trim. “Want to make a bet?” Maurey asked.
“You live here?”
“Mom will have heard about the president and it’ll have had no effect on her at all. She’ll be baking cookies and waxing the kitchen floor.”
“My mother’s never baked a cookie in her life.” Waxing floors was too much even to deny.
“I wish my mom hadn’t.”
We found M
rs. Pierce cutting out coupons at a coffee table. She had on a green apron with all these profiled sharp-nosed women on it in silhouette. The dishes were all clean in the drain board. A Santa Claus magnet held a newspaper recipe to the refrigerator. The contrast to Lydia’s kitchen was a hoot.
Mrs. Pierce had the same long, long neck, but on Maurey it was pretty and classy, while on her mom it was mostly strings. And Mrs. Pierce’s eyes were more a faded, washed-out blue.
She smiled at Maurey. “You’re home from school early.”
“They let us out on account of the assassination.”
“I know, isn’t it a shame about Mr. Kennedy.” She bent over a Sunday magazine section and scissored with a precision I wouldn’t waste on a coupon. “I wonder if Petey’s school will let out early too. Let me finish this last one and I’ll make us some hot cocoa.”
My theory is all thirteen-year-olds are embarrassed no end by their mothers. I mean, I thought Mrs. Pierce’s perfect home-maker act was kind of cute, like a Betty Boop cartoon, and cocoa sounded okay. I could use a warm-up after all that snow wallowing. But Maurey’s disdain came across like a paper cut.
“The president is dead, Mom. This isn’t the time for hot cocoa.”
Mrs. Pierce put down her scissors. “It’s always time for cocoa. What happened to your skirt?”
“I fell down.”
After Maurey changed, she and I sat on a couch in the den to watch history unfold on a black-and-white RCA Victor fourteen-inch. I had trouble with juxtaposition. There was the scene—Maurey and me next to each other in a spotless house in the absolute midst of the Wyoming winter—and there was what we watched—muted, frightened faces, people talking slowly. Death and national tragedy.
My stomach hurt. Maurey chewed her lower lip. Her eyes were a dark blue with gray specks. I guess I’d never seen them close up before. When they were loading the casket into the plane, she put her hand on my arm.
A Dallas policeman was killed. No one knew why. A doctor explained entry wounds. Maps were shown, detailing Dealey Plaza and the route to the hospital. Cameras filmed the fence of the Hyannis Port compound while analysts wondered if they would tell John’s grandmother. Somebody interviewed a priest. They made a big deal out of whether the president got last rites before or after he died.
“What do you think happens to people when we die?” Maurey asked.
World’s most personal question and she’s asking it an hour after our first real words. I guess all the rules were off for the day. I thought of about six answers, but they were all either unacceptable, cute, or weird. “I don’t know.”
“Why would God care if someone chants magic words over your body before you die. That’s an awful stupid thing to base eternity on.”
“My grandfather’s Episcopal. I think they go to heaven without it.”
“All sounds like a crock to me.”
When Mrs. Pierce—who introduced herself as Annabel— brought the cocoa, I noticed Maurey didn’t turn it down as unbefitting the occasion. It tasted good, none of that instant jive. This stuff was real and wholesome as life gets—even with a marshmallow half-sunk on top. Maurey held her mug with both hands, blew across the steaming surface, and smiled at the first sip. Down a hallway, I heard a vacuum cleaner kick in.
“Who’s Petey?”
“My baby brother. He’s a brat, Mama’s little angel.”
“Are you close?”
“Are you kidding?”
A man was arrested in a movie theater. Eyewitnesses to the murder were interviewed. John Connally’s press secretary issued a statement. They announced that Lyndon Johnson, a Texan, had been sworn in on the plane. College football games were canceled for the next day. Everything was canceled.
“I wish my dad was here,” Maurey said.
“Where is he?”
“We have a little horse ranch ten miles up the hill and they don’t plow the road. He stays out there most of the winter.”
“He’s stuck?”
“Dad snowmobiles out every couple of weeks and for the holidays. In the summer we’re mostly out there.”
“What’s your dad’s name?”
“Buddy. I wish he was home today.”
The news announcer said the arrested man’s name was Lee Henry Oswald. One after another, strange facts came out. He had a Russian wife. He’d been to Cuba. He’d been to Russia. His name was Harvey instead of Henry. They interviewed his landlady downtown.
“What’s your dad do?” Maurey asked.
“I don’t have a father.”
She looked from the TV to me. “Did he die?”
“Lydia won’t tell me anything about him. When she’s drunk she claims virgin birth, like Mary and Jesus.”
Maurey said, “I’d like to see my mom drunk.”
“It’s not that neat.”
We sat in more silence. I held her hand a little while, but then she took it away. “So you don’t have a clue to what your dad was like?”
“Lydia has these pictures hidden in her panty box. They’re from different yearbooks, I think. Four photos of five guys in football uniforms. I kind of figure one of them might be my dad because she hides the pictures.”
“Panty box?”
“Lydia hasn’t unpacked yet. Her stuff is in suitcases and boxes. She won’t sleep in her bedroom.”
“What were you doing in the panty box?”
I skipped that one. “One of the guys in the pictures is a Negro.”
Maurey studied me closely. “I heard the rumor. Is it true?”
I’m not that dark, a little maybe, darker than Lydia for sure, but not that much, and I have curly hair, but it’s not kinky or anything. “I guess the odds are one in five. If my father is one of the pictures.”
Petey arrived amid much banging and slamming of doors. He clomped into the den from the kitchen, dropped his coat in a heap on the floor, and crossed to the television where he changed the channel.
“Hey,” Maurey yelled. “We’re watching that.”
Petey ignored her. He stood with one hand on the dial, peering suspiciously at the picture. “What’s this?”
“It’s news. There’s nothing on but news. Now change it back to what we were watching.”
Petey didn’t move. He had these remarkably dark eyebrows, long eyelashes, and a natural pout of a mouth. Would have made a cute girl. Maurey left the couch and advanced on Petey and the television.
“This sucks.” He slapped the screen with the flat of his left hand. I mean, the kid was eight, nine years old, way too far along to think you can punch sense into a TV show.
Maurey grabbed his other hand on the channel knob and Petey let out a scream. She pulled him hard, but he latched on like a snapping turtle, screaming his damn brains out. He tried to hit her with his free hand, but Maurey blocked him with her forearms. Just as Mrs. Pierce charged into the room, Maurey doubled up her fist and decked her brother in the face.
“Maurey.” Mrs. Pierce was aghast.
Petey held both hands over his eyes and went right on screaming. I come from two generations of only-child families. This was miles out of my context.
Maurey looked from me to her mom. “I didn’t hit him that hard.”
Petey made loud snuffling noises. “She won’t let me watch Rocky.”
Mrs. Pierce gathered the kid into her arms and glared across the top of his head at Maurey. “You know he watches Rocky every afternoon, what’s the matter with you?”
“It’s not on today. The Texans killed President Kennedy.”
Petey howled. “It is so on, she won’t let me see it.”
“Look, brat.” Maurey stepped to the TV and slowly turned the selector knob all the way around the dial.
See, the deal back then was that if a family had a really tall outside antenna they could pick up two Idaho statio
ns, CBS and NBC. No one in northwest Wyoming saw ABC until the cable came in twenty years later. A person without an outside antenna, say Lydia, could only watch a snowy CBS. Not a bad place to raise kids.
Anyhow, Maurey went clear around the dial twice while Petey snuffled into Mrs. Pierce’s breasts and she cooed in his ear.
“She’s hiding the station,” Petey whimpered.
“Why isn’t Rocky on?” Mrs. Pierce said.
Maurey was at a peak of exasperation. “The president of the country is dead. Some things are more important than Rocky the Flying Squirrel.”
Petey took this as the lie it obviously was, and his mother blinked dubiously. “Come on to the kitchen, baby Pete, I made some Toll House cookies and I’ll pour us some fresh milk.”
“I hate Toll House cookies.”
There’s a certain type of mother who calls chocolate chip cookies Toll House, and I’ve never liked that type. They’re the same women who call gravy sauce.
Mrs. Pierce turned to me. “Would you care to stay for dinner, Sam? We’re having tuna croquettes.” I checked Maurey to see if she caught the bizarre irony, but I guess she’d missed lunch at school. She was glaring at Petey with that same look she used to give me before today.
“No, thank you, ma’am. My mother will be expecting me soon. She’ll have supper on by now.”
“You could call her and tell her you’re eating here.”
“We don’t have a telephone, ma’am.” There’s a Southern defense mechanism where whenever someone makes you uncomfortable, you fall back on antebellum politeness. I saw poverty pity in Maurey’s mother’s eyes, so I figured I better explain the phone deal. “It’s not that we’re poor, we just don’t know anyone to call.”
“Why, you’ve been in town two months. Hasn’t your mother met anyone yet?”
“Lydia’s not all that outgoing.”
Mrs. Pierce gently moved Petey off her lap. He moved back on. “Well, we’ll just have to have you and your mother over for dinner soon.”
I tried to picture Lydia in this house full of trinkets and dust-free knickknacks. Mrs. Pierce was the sort of woman Lydia always said “Fuck me silly” in front of.