"You're going to love this operation," T-Jay said.
He watched Oswald walk out of the alleyway onto Griffin Street and then head southwest, back to work.
The main thing is Kennedy dead.
The next thing is Oswald dead.
Once Oswald's leftist sympathies are exposed, the authorities will conclude, will want to conclude, that Castro agents recruited him, used him, killed him.
Guy Banister would alert the FBI to the Hidell alias.
David Ferrie would spend a lonely night in Galveston.
Marina and Lee were in the backyard of the Paine house, pushing kids on the swings in turn, Sylvia and Chris and Junie and a neighbor's little girl and boy. It was dark but the kids didn't want to go inside. Two swings, two parents to push them.
"But you still haven't said what you're doing here on a Thursday."
"I miss my girls," he said.
"Without even calling."
"If you come to Dallas to live."
"No."
"Then I won't have to call. Everything will change. I can't live in that room too much longer."
"The children are better off here."
"Do you know the size of that room?"
"Ruth is still happy to have us stay."
"Papa thinks you don't love him."
They took two kids off the swings, put two more on. Marina was still angry at Lee for not telling her that he was using a false name. She found out when Ruth called the rooming house and asked for Lee Oswald. She wanted this foolish business to end. All these comedies. First one thing, then another.
The kids screamed, "Higher."
"I'll buy you a washing machine," he said.
"We might be better with a car."
"I'm saving the best I can. First we need to get an apartment."
"No."
"If you come to Dallas to live."
"No."
"The girls want to be with their daddy."
"Who will I talk to all day? Here I can talk to Ruth. Ruth is a big help to me."
"A balcony like Minsk," he said.
At dinner Ruth asked that the three of them hold hands around the table. She explained this was how Quakers say grace. Each person is supposed to recite a silent prayer, although it was clear to Marina that Lee's silence was not the prayerful kind.
When Marina was cleaning up in the kitchen, Ruth came in and said in a slightly puzzled way that someone had left the light on in the garage. They said it was probably Lee looking for a sweater among his belongings. Most of the things they owned were in boxes in Ruth's garage.
In the bedroom Marina took off her clothes. Lee sat in a chair, dressed except for his shoes and socks. Getting ready for bed, the same as anyone, here in this American place.
"Everything will change."
"No."
"But first we have to live together."
"I don't see any reason to hurry."
"If you come to Dallas to live."
"The children play outside here. Ruth is here."
"I have a little saved."
"I don't want my baby sucking nervous milk."
"Our own furniture for a change."
She stood naked on the far side of the bed. She reached around to the chair for her nightdress. He was watching her. She thought he was going to say something. She put the nightdress over her head and rolled back the bedcovers. Ordinary in every way, simple moments adding up, with rain falling on the lawn.
In the morning, early, he was gone. She found money in little bunches on top of the bureau and she counted it up, amazed. One hundred and seventy dollars. She was sure it was everything he had.
Three times he'd asked her to live with him in Dallas. Three times she'd said no. She stood by the bureau thinking. It was a well-known pattern, things that happen in threes. There was a certain dark power to the number three. She'd noticed all her life how it meant bad luck.
22 November
At the airport they were standing on baggage carts and clinging to light posts. They were draped over the chain-link fence, people in raincoats, waving flags, hanging off the sign for Gate 28. Skies were clear now and the 707 swung massively to a stop on the tarmac. They came running from their cars. They stood at the edge of the crowd, jumping up and down. Children rode the shoulders of gangly men. There was a mood rising from the packed bodies, an eager spirit of assent. Members of the welcoming party edged into place at the foot of the ramp, fussing with their clothes and hair. The aft door opened and the First Lady appeared in a glow of rosebud pink, suit and hat to match, followed by the President. A sound, an awe worked through the crowd, a recognition, ringing in the air. People called out together, faces caught in some stage of surprise resembling dazzled pain. "Here" or "Jack" or "Look." The President fingered his lapel, gave a little jacket-adjusting shrug and walked down the ramp. The sound was a small roar now, a wonder. They shook the fence. They came running from the terminal building, handbags arc! cameras bouncing. There were cameras everywhere, held aloft, a rustling of bladed shutters, with homemade signs poking through the mass.
Welcome Jack and Jackie to Big D.
After the handshakes and salutes, Jack Kennedy walked away from his security, sidestepping puddles, and went to the fence. He reached a hand into the ranks and they surged forward, looking at each other to match reactions. He moved along the fence, handsome and tanned, smiling famously into the wall of open mouths. He looked like himself, like photographs, a helmsman squinting in the sea-glare, white teeth shining. There was only a trace of the cortisone bloat that sometimes affected his face-cortisone for his Addison's disease, a back brace for his degenerating discs. They came over the fence, surrounding him, so many people and hands. The white smile brightened. He wanted everyone to know he was not afraid.
The Lincoln was deep blue, an iridescent peacock gleam, with an American flag and a presidential standard attached to the front fenders. Two Secret Service men in front, Governor Connally and his wife in the jumpseats, the Kennedys in the rear. The Lincoln moved out behind an unmarked pilot car and five motorcycles manned by white-helmeted city cops showing traditional blank faces. Stretching half a mile behind came the miscellaneous train of rented convertibles, station wagons, touring sedans, Secret Service follow-up cars, communications cars, buses, motorcycles, spare Chevys, Lyndon, Lady Bird, congressmen, aides, wives, men with Nikons, Rolliflexes, newsreel cameras, radiophones, automatic rifles, shotguns, service revolvers and the codes for launching a nuclear strike.
The Lincoln seemed to glow. Sunlight flashed from the fenders and hood, made the upholstery shine. The Governor waved his tan Stetson and the flags snapped and the First Lady held roses in the crook of her arm. The burnished surface of the car mirrored scenes along the road. Not that there was much to collect in the landscape at hand. Airport isolation. Horizontal buildings with graveled rooftops. Billboards showing sizzling steaks. Random spectators, brave-looking, waving, in these mournful spaces. And a man standing alone at the side of the road holding up a copy of the Morning News opened to the page that had everybody talking. Welcome Mr. Kennedy to Dallas. An ad placed by a group called the American Fact-Finding Committee. Grievances, accusations, jingo fantasia- not so remarkable, really, even in a major newspaper, except that the text was bordered in black. Nicely ominous. Jack Kennedy had seen the ad earlier and now, with towered downtown Dallas in the visible distance, he turned and said softly to Jacqueline, "We're heading into nut country now."
Still, it was important to be seen in an open car without a bubbletop, without agents on the running boards. Here he was among them in a time of deep division, the country pulled two ways, each army raging and Jack having hold of both. Were there forebodings? For weeks he'd carried a scrap of paper with scribbled lines of some bloody Shakespearean ruin. They whirl asunder and dismember me. Still, it was important for the car to move very slowly, give the crowds a chance to see him. Maximum exposure as the admen say, and who wants a president with a pigeon's heart?