Dallas One. Repeat. I didn't get all of it.
Leon fired too soon, with the car passing under the tree. The report sounded like a short charge, a little weak, a defect, not enough powder.
Kennedy reacted late, without surprise at first, his arms coming up slowly like a man on a rowing machine.
The driver slowed to half-speed. The driver sat there. The other agent sat there. They were waiting for a voice to explain it.
Pigeons flared past.
Raymo eased the gun barrel out over the fence. He set his feet firmly on the bumper. His left forearm, bracing the weapon, was wedged between the tops of two pickets. He tilted his head to the stock. He waited, sighting through the scope.
On the grass a woman saw the limousine emerge from behind a freeway sign with the President clutching at his throat. She heard a sharp noise, like a backfiring car, and realized it was the second noise she'd heard. She thought she saw a man throw a boy to the grass and fall on top of him. She didn't really hear the first noise until she heard the second. A girl ran waving toward the limousine.
The noise cracked and flattened, washing across the plaza. This wasn't making sense at all.
There was so much clarity Lee could watch himself in the huge room of stacked cartons, scattered books, old brick walls, bare light bulbs, a small figure in a corner, partly hidden. He fired off a second shot.
He saw the Governor, who was turned right, begin to look the other way, then double up suddenly. A startle reaction. He knew this was called a startle reaction, from gun magazines.
He turned up the handle, drew the bolt back, then drove it forward.
Stand by a moment please.
Okay, he fired early the first time, hitting the President below the head, near the neck area somewhere. It was a foolishness he could dismiss on a certain level. Okay, he missed the President with the second shot and hit Connally. But the car was still sitting there, barely moving. He saw the First Lady lean toward the President, who was slumped down now. A man stood applauding at the edge of the telescopic frame.
Lee jerked the handle down and aimed. He heard the second spent shell roll across the floor.
There were roses on the seat between Jack and Jackie. The car's interior was a nice light blue. The man was so close he could have spoken to them. He stood at curbside applauding. A woman called out to the car, "Hey we want to take your picture." The President looked extremely puzzled, head leaning left. The man stood applauding, already deep in chaos, looking at crumpled bodies, a sense of guns coming out.
Put me on, Bill. Put me on.
Bobby W. Hargis, riding escort, left rear, knew he was hearing gunfire. There was a woman taking a picture and another woman about twenty feet behind her taking the same picture, only with the first woman in it. He couldn't tell where the shots were coming from, two shots, but knew someone was hit in the car. A man threw his kid to the ground and fell on him. That's a vet, Hargis had time to think, with the Governor, Connally, kind of sliding down in the jump seat and his wife taking him in, gathering the man in. Hargis turned right just after noticing a girl in a pretty coat running across the lawn toward the President's car. He turned his body right, keeping the motorcycle headed west on Elm, and then the blood and matter, the unforgettable thing, the sleet of bone and blood and tissue struck him in the face. He thought he'd been shot. The stuff hit him like a spray of buckshot and he heard it ping and spatter on his helmet. People were down on the grass. He kept his mouth closed tight so the fluid would not ooze in.
In the jump seat John was crumpled up. Nellie Connally pulled him over into her arms. She put her head down over his head. She was pretending she was him. They were both alive or both dead. They could not be one and one. Then the third shot sent stuff just everywhere. Tissue, bone fragments, tissue in pale wads, watery mess, tissue, blood, brain matter all over them.
She heard Jackie say, "They've killed my husband."
It could have been Nellie's own voice, someone speaking for her. She thought John was dead. Then he moved just slightly and she thought at the same time that Jackie was out of the car, gone off the end of the car, but now was somehow back. John moved in her arms. They were one heart pumping.
We are hit. Lancer is hit. Get us to Parkland fast.
The car picked up speed and everything went rushing past. Nellie thought how terrible this must be, what a terrible sight for people watching, to see the car speeding past with these shot-up men; what a horror, what a sight.
She heard Jackie say, "I have his brains in my hand."
Everything rushing past.
The man in the white sweater, applauding, saw the stuff just erupt from the President's head. The motorcycles went by. There were guns coming out, a man in the second car with an automatic rifle. The second car went by. A motorcycle went fishtailing up the grassy slope near the concrete structure, the colonnade. Someone with a movie camera stood on an abutment over there, aiming this way, and the man in the white sweater, hands suspended now at belt level, was thinking he ought to go to the ground, he ought to fall right now. A misty light around the President's head. Two pink-white jets of tissue rising from the mist. The movie camera running.
Lee was about to squeeze off the third round, he was in the act, he was actually pressing the trigger.
The light was so clear it was heartbreaking.
There was a white burst in the middle of the frame. A terrible splash, a burst. Something came blazing off the President's head. He was slammed back, surrounded all in dust and haze. Then suddenly clear again, down and still in the seat. Oh he's dead he's dead.
Lee raised his head from the scope, looking right. There was a white concrete wall extending from the columned structure, then a wooden fence behind it. A man on the wall with a camera. The fence deep in shadow. Freight cars sitting on the tracks above the underpass.
He got to his feet, moving away from the window. He knew he'd missed with the third shot. Went wild. Missed everything. Maggie's drawers. He turned up the bolt handle.
Put me on. Put me on. Put me on.
He was already talking to someone about this. He had a picture, he saw himself telling the whole story to someone, a man with a rugged Texas face, but friendly, but understanding. Pointing out the contradictions. Telling how he was tricked into the plot. What is it called, a patsy? He saw a picture of an office with a tasseled flag, dignitaries in photos on the wall.
He drew the bolt back, then drove it forward, jerking the handle down. He walked diagonally across the floor to the northwest end, where the staircase was located. Books stacked ten cartons high. That fragrance of paper and binding.
The fender sirens opened up, the guns started coming out.
The girl stopped running toward the car. She stood and looked without expression.
A woman with a camera turned and saw that she was being photographed. A woman in a dark coat was aiming a Polaroid right at her. It was only then she realized she'd just seen someone shot in her own viewfinder. There was bloodspray on her face and arms. She thought, how strange, that the woman in the coat was her and she was the person who was shot. She felt so dazed and strange, with pale spray all over her. She sat down carefully on the grass. Just let herself down and sat there. The woman with the Polaroid didn't move. The first woman sat on the grass, put her own camera down, looked at the colorless stuff on her arms. Pigeons spinning at the treetops. If she was shot, she thought, she ought to be sitting down.
Agent Hill was off the left running board and moving fast. There was another shot. He mounted the Lincoln from the bumper step, extending his left hand to the metal grip. It was a double sound. Either two shots or a shot and the solid impact, the bullet hitting something hard. He wanted to get to the President, get close, shield the body. He saw Mrs. Kennedy coming at him. She was climbing out of the car. She was on the rear deck crawling, both hands flat, her right knee on top of the rear seat. He thought she was chasing something and he realized he'd seen something fly by, a flash somewhere, something flying off the end of the limousine. He pushed her back toward the seat. The car surged forward, nearly knocking him off. They were in the underpass, in the shadows, and when they hit the light he saw Connally washed in blood. Spectators, kids, waving. He held tight to the handgrip. They were going damn fast. All four passengers were drenched in blood, crowded down together. He lay across the rear deck. He had this thought, this recognition. She was trying to retrieve part of her husband's skull. He held on tight. He could see right into the President's head. They were dcing eighty now.