11/22/63 Read online

  "Happy New Year, G--" She pulled back from me, frowning. "What's wrong?"

  I'd had a sudden image of the Texas School Book Depository, an ugly brick square with windows like eyes. This was the year it would become an American icon.

  It won't. I'll never let you get that far, Lee. You'll never be in that sixth-floor window. That's my promise.

  "George?"

  "Goose walked over my grave, I guess," I said. "Happy New Year."

  I went to kiss her, but she held me back for a moment. "It's almost here, isn't it? What you came to do."

  "Yes," I said. "But it's not tonight. For tonight it's just us. So kiss me, honey. And dance with me."

  5

  I had two lives in late 1962 and early 1963. The good one was in Jodie, and at the Candlewood in Kileen. The other was in Dallas.

  Lee and Marina got back together. Their first stop in Dallas was a dump just around the corner from West Neely. De Mohrenschildt helped them move in. George Bouhe wasn't in evidence. Neither were any of the other Russian emigres. Lee had driven them away. They hated him, Al had written in his notes, and below that: He wanted them to.

  The crumbling redbrick at 604 Elsbeth Street had been divided into four or five apartments bursting with poor folks who worked hard, drank hard, and produced hordes of snot-nosed yelling kids. The place actually made the Oswalds' Fort Worth domicile look good.

  I didn't need electronic assistance to monitor the deteriorating condition of their marriage; Marina continued to wear shorts even after the weather turned cool, as if to taunt him with her bruises. And her sex appeal, of course. June usually sat between them in her stroller. She no longer cried much during their shouting matches, only watched, sucking her thumb or a pacifier.

  One day in November of 1962, I came back from the library and observed Lee and Marina on the corner of West Neely and Elsbeth, shouting at each other. Several people (mostly women at that hour of the day) had come out on their porches to watch. June sat in the stroller wrapped in a fuzzy pink blanket, silent and forgotten.

  They were arguing in Russian, but the latest bone of contention was clear enough from Lee's jabbing finger. She was wearing a straight black skirt--I don't know if they were called pencil skirts back then or not--and the zipper on her left hip was halfway down. Probably it just snagged in the cloth, but listening to him rave, you would've thought she was trolling for men.

  She brushed back her hair, pointed at June, then waved a hand at the house they were now inhabiting--the broken gutters dripping black water, the trash and beer cans on the bald front lawn--and screamed at him in English: "You say happy lies, then bring wife and baby to this peegsty!"

  He flushed all the way to his hairline and clutched his arms across his thin chest, as if to anchor his hands and keep them from doing damage. He might have succeeded--that time, at least--if she hadn't laughed, then twirled one finger around her ear in a gesture that must be common to all cultures. She started to turn away. He hauled her back, bumping the stroller and almost overturning it. Then he slugged her. She fell down on the cracked sidewalk and covered her face when he bent over her. "No, Lee, no! No more heet me!"

  He didn't hit her. He yanked her to her feet and shook her, instead. Her head snapped and rolled.

  "You!" a rusty voice said from my left. It made me jump. "You, boy!"

  It was an elderly woman on a walker. She was standing on her porch in a pink flannel nightgown with a quilted jacket over it. Her graying hair stood straight up, making me think of Elsa Lanchester's twenty-thousand-volt home permanent in The Bride of Frankenstein.

  "That man is beating on that woman! Go down there and put a stop to it!"

  "No, ma'am," I said. My voice was unsteady. I thought of adding I won't come between a man and his wife, but that would have been a lie. The truth was that I wouldn't do anything that might disturb the future.

  "You coward," she said.

  Call the cops, I almost said, but bit it back just in time. If it wasn't in the old lady's head and I put it there, that could also change the course of the future. Did the cops come? Ever? Al's notebook didn't say. All I knew was that Oswald would never be jugged for spousal abuse. I suppose in that time and that place, few men were.

  He was dragging her up the front walk with one hand and yanking the stroller with the other. The old woman gave me a final withering glance, then clumped back into her house. The other spectators were doing the same. Show over.

  From my living room, I trained my binoculars on the redbrick monstrosity catercorner from me. Two hours later, just as I was about to give up the surveillance, Marina emerged with the small pink suitcase in one hand and the blanket-wrapped baby in the other. She had changed the offending skirt for slacks and what appeared to be two sweaters--the day had turned cold. She hurried down the street, several times looking back over her shoulder for Lee. When I was sure he wasn't going to follow her, I did.

  She went as far as Mister Car Wash four blocks down West Davis, and used the pay telephone there. I sat across the street at the bus stop with a newspaper spread out in front of me. Twenty minutes later, trusty old George Bouhe showed up. She spoke to him earnestly. He led her around to the passenger side of the car and opened the door for her. She smiled and pecked him on the corner of the mouth. I'm sure he treasured both. Then he got in behind the wheel and they drove away.

  6

  That night there was another argument in front of the Elsbeth Street house, and once again most of the immediate neighborhood turned out to watch. Feeling there was safety in numbers, I joined them.

  Someone--almost certainly Bouhe--had sent George and Jeanne de Mohrenschildt to get the rest of Marina's things. Bouhe probably figured they were the only ones who'd be able to get in without physical restraints being imposed on Lee.

  "Be damned if I'll hand anything over!" Lee shouted, oblivious of the rapt neighbors taking in every word. Cords stood out on his neck; his face was once more a bright, steaming red. How he must have hated that tendency to blush like a little girl who's been caught passing love-notes.

  De Mohrenschildt took the reasonable approach. "Think, my friend. This way there's still a chance. If she sends the police . . ." He gave a shrug and lifted his hands to the sky.

  "Give me an hour, then," Lee said. He was showing teeth, but that expression was the farthest thing in the world from a smile. "It'll give me a chance to put a knife through ever one of her dresses and break ever one of the toys those fatcats sent to buy my daughter."

  "What's going on?" a young man asked me. He was about twenty, and had pulled up on a Schwinn.

  "Domestic argument, I guess."

  "Osmont, or whatever his name is, right? Russian lady left him? About time, I'd say. That guy there's crazy. He's a commie, you know it?"

  "I think I heard something about that."

  Lee was marching up the porch steps with his head back and his spine straight--Napoleon retreating from Moscow--when Jeanne de Mohrenschildt called to him sharply. "Stop it, you stupidnik!"

  Lee turned to her, his eyes wide, unbelieving . . . and hurt. He looked at de Mohrenschildt, his expression saying can't you control your wife, but de Mohrenschildt said nothing. He looked amused. Like a jaded theatergoer watching a play that's actually not too bad. Not great, not Shakespeare, but a perfectly acceptable time-passer.

  Jeanne: "If you love your wife, Lee, for God's sake stop acting like a spoiled brat. Behave."

  "You can't talk to me like that." Under stress, his Southern accent grew stronger. Can't became cain't; like that became like-at.

  "I can, I will, I do," she said. "Let us get her things, or I'll call the police myself."

  Lee said, "Tell her to shut up and mind her business, George."

  De Mohrenschildt laughed cheerily. "Today you are our business, Lee." Then he grew serious. "I am losing respect for you, Comrade. Let us in now. If you value my friendship as I value yours, let us in now."

  Lee's shoulders slumped and he stood asid
e. Jeanne marched up the steps, not even sparing him a glance. But de Mohrenschildt stopped and enveloped Lee, who was now painfully thin, in a powerful embrace. After a moment or two, Oswald hugged him back. I realized (with a mixture of pity and revulsion) that the boy--that was all he was, really--had begun weeping.

  "What are they," the young man with the bike asked, "couple of queers?"

  "They're queer, all right," I said. "Just not the way you mean."

  7

  Later that month, I returned from one of my weekends with Sadie to discover Marina and June back in residence at the shithole on Elsbeth Street. For a little while, the family seemed at peace. Lee went to work--now creating photographic enlargements instead of aluminum screen doors--and came home, sometimes with flowers. Marina greeted him with kisses. Once she showed him the front lawn, where she had picked up all the garbage, and he applauded her. That made her laugh, and when she did, I saw that her teeth had been fixed. I don't know how much George Bouhe had to do with that, but my guess is plenty.

  I watched this scene from the corner, and was once more startled by the rusty voice of the old lady with the walker. "It won't last, you know."

  "You could be right," I said.

  "He's probably goan kill her. I seen it before." Below her electric hair, her eyes surveyed me with cold contempt. "And you won't step in to do nothing, will you, Sonny Biscuit?"

  "I will," I told her. "If things get bad enough, I will step in."

  That was a promise I meant to keep, although not on Marina's behalf.

  8

  The day after Sadie's Boxing Day dinner, there was a note from Oswald in my mailbox, although it was signed A. Hidell. This alias was in Al's notes. The A stood for Alek, Marina's pet name for him during their Minsk days.

  The communication didn't disturb me, since everyone on the street seemed to have gotten one just like it. The flyers had been printed on hot-pink paper (probably filched from Oswald's current place of employment), and I saw a dozen or more flapping up the gutters. The residents of Dallas's Oak Cliff neighborhood were not known for putting litter in its place.

  PROTEST CHANNEL 9 FASCISM!

  HOME OF SEGREGATIONIST BILLY JAMES HARGIS!

  PROTEST FASCIST EX-GENERAL EDWIN WALKER!

  During the Thursday night telemcast of the Billy James Hargis so-called "Cristian Crusade," Channel 9 will give are-time to GENERAL EDWIN WALKER, a right-wing fascist who has encouraged JFK to invade the peaceful peoples of Cuba and who has formented anti-black, anti-integration "HATE-SPEAK" all over the south. (If you have doubts about the accuracy of this information, check the "TV Guide.") These two men stand for everythig we fouht against in WWII, and their Fascist RAVINGS have no place on the are-waves. EDWIN WALKER was one of the WHITE SUPREMACISTS who tried to bar JAMES MERDITH from attending "OLE MISS." If you love America, protest the free are-time given to men who pretch HATE and VIOLENCE. Write a letter! Better still, come to Channel 9 on Dec. 27 and "sit in!"

  A. Hidell

  President of Hands Off Cuba

  Dallas-Fort Worth Branch

  I briefly pondered the misspellings, then folded the flyer and put it in the box where I kept my manuscripts.

  If there was a protest at the station, it wasn't reported in the Slimes Herald the day after the Hargis-Walker "telemcast." I doubt that anyone turned up, including Lee himself. I certainly didn't, but I tuned in to Channel 9 on Thursday night, anxious to see the man Lee--probably Lee--was soon going to try to kill.

  At first it was just Hargis, sitting behind an office-set desk and pretending to scribble important notes while a canned choir sang "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." He was a fattish fellow with a lot of plastered-back black hair. As the choir faded out, he put down his pen, looked into the camera, and said: "Welcome to the Christian Crusade, neighbors. I come with good news--Jesus loves you. Yes he does, every last one of you. Won't you join me in prayer?"

  Hargis bent the Almighty's ear for at least ten minutes. He covered the usual stuff, thanking God for the chance to spread the gospel and instructing Him to bless those who'd sent in love-offerings. Then he got down to business, asking God to arm His Chosen People with the sword and buckler of righteousness so we could defeat communism, which had reared its ugly head just ninety miles off the shores of Florida. He asked God to grant President Kennedy the wisdom (which Hargis, being closer to the Big Guy, already possessed) to go in there and root out the tares of godlessness. He also demanded that God put an end to the growing communist threat on American college campuses--folk music seemed to have something to do with it, but Hargis kind of lost the thread on that part. He finished by thanking God for his guest tonight, the hero of Anzio and the Chosin Reservoir, General Edwin A. Walker.

  Walker appeared not in uniform but in a khaki suit that closely resembled one. The creases in his pants looked sharp enough to shave with. His stony face reminded me of the cowboy actor Randolph Scott. He shook Hargis's hand and they talked about communism, which was rife not just on the college campuses, but in the halls of Congress and the scientific community as well. They touched on fluoridation. Then they schmoozed about Cuba, which Walker called "the cancer of the Caribbean."

  I could see why Walker had failed so badly in his run for the Texas governorship the year before. At the front of a high school class he would have put the kids to sleep even in period one, when they were freshest. But Hargis moved him along smoothly, interjecting "Praise Jesus!" and "God's witness, brother!" whenever things got a little sticky. They discussed an upcoming barnstorm crusade through the South called Operation Midnight Ride, and then Hargis invited Walker to clear the air concerning "certain scurrilous charges of segregationism that have surfaced in the New York press and elsewhere."

  Walker finally forgot he was on television and came to life. "You know that's nothing but a truckload of commie propaganda."

  "I know it!" Hargis exclaimed. "And God wants you to tell it, brother."

  "I spent my life in the U.S. Army, and I'll be a soldier in my heart until the day I die." (If Lee had his way, that would be in roughly three months.) "As a soldier, I always did my duty. When President Eisenhower ordered me to Little Rock during the civil disturbances of 1957--this had to do with the forced integration of Central High School, as you know--I did my duty. But Billy, I am also a soldier of God--"

  "A Christian soldier! Praise Jesus!"

  "--and as a Christian, I know that forced integration is just flat-out wrong. It's Constitution-wrong, states rights-wrong, and Bible-wrong."

  "Tell it," Hargis said, and wiped a tear from his cheek. Or maybe it was sweat that had oozed through his makeup.

  "Do I hate the Negro race? Those who say that--and those who worked to drive me from the military service I loved--are liars and communists. You know better, the men I served with know better, and God knows better." He leaned forward in the guest's chair. "Do you think the Negro teachers in Alabama and Arkansas and Louisiana and the great state of Texas want integration? They do not. They see it as a slap in the face to their own skills and hard work. Do you think that Negro students want to go to school with whites naturally better equipped for readin, writin, and rithmetic? Do you think real Americans want the sort of race mongrelization that will result from this sort of mingling?"

  "Of course they don't! Praaaiiise Jesus!"

  I thought about the sign I'd seen in North Carolina, the one pointing to a path bordered with poison ivy. COLORED, it had said. Walker didn't deserve killing, but he could certainly do with a brisk shaking. I'd give anyone a big old praise Jesus on that one.

  My attention had wandered, but something Walker was now saying brought it back in a hurry.

  "It was God, not General Edwin Walker, who ordained the Negro position in His world when He gave them a different skin color and a different set of talents. More athletic talents. What does the Bible tell us about this difference, and why the Negro race has been cursed to so much pain and travail? We only have to look at the ninth chapte
r of Genesis, Billy."

  "Praise God for His Holy Word."

  Walker closed his eyes and raised his right hand, as if testifying in court. "'And Noah drank of the wine, and was drunken, and lay uncovered. Ham saw the nakedness of his father, and told them who stood without.' But Shem and Japeth--one father of the Arab race, one father of the white race, I know you know this, Billy, but not everybody does, not everybody has the good old Bible-learning we got at our mothers' knees--"

  "Praise God for Christian mothers, you tell it!"

  "Shem and Japeth didn't look. And when Noah awoke and found out what had been going on, he said, 'Cursed be Canaan, he shall be a servant even unto servants, a hewer of wood and a drawer of wa--'"

  I snapped the TV off.

  9

  What I saw of Lee and Marina during January and February of 1963 made me think of a tee-shirt Christy sometimes used to wear during the last year of our marriage. There was a fiercely grinning pirate on the front, with this message below him: THE BEATINGS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES. Plenty of beatings took place at 604 Elsbeth Street that winter. We in the neighborhood heard Lee's shouting and Marina's cries--sometimes of anger, sometimes of pain. Nobody did anything, and that included me.

  Not that she was the only wife to take regular beatings in Oak Cliff; the Friday and Saturday Night Fights seemed to be a local tradition. All I remember wanting during those dismal gray months was for the squalid, endless soap opera to be over so I could be with Sadie full-time. I would verify that Lee was solo when he attempted to kill General Walker, then conclude my business. Oswald acting alone once didn't necessarily mean he'd been acting alone both times, but it was the best I could do. With the i's dotted and the t's crossed--most of them, anyway--I would pick my time and place and shoot Lee Oswald as coldly as I had shot Frank Dunning.

  Time passed. Slowly, but it passed. And then one day, not long before the Oswalds moved into the apartment on Neely Street above my own, I saw Marina talking to the old lady with the walker and the Elsa Lanchester hair. They were both smiling. The old lady asked her something. Marina laughed, nodded, and held her hands out in front of her stomach.