It is impossible to exaggerate the impact of this realization on Lee. Seven months earlier, before his attempt to kill a leader of the American right, he had composed a document predicting a “crisis” that would destroy capitalist society forever. Without his having been able to foresee it, an opportunity had now been vouchsafed to him, of all men, to deal capitalism that final, mortal blow. And he would strike it not at the right or at the left, but, quite simply, at the top. It had become his fate to decapitate the American political process. He was history’s chosen instrument.
The announcement of the president’s route was the last in a chain of twelve or fifteen events without any one of which Lee might have approached his decision in a very different frame of mind. The first of these events, curiously, appears to have been the attempt on Nikita Khrushchev’s life in Minsk while Lee was living there in January 1962. Another was Lee’s failure to receive any sort of punishment on his redefection to the United States later that year. Still another was Marina’s letter of January 1963 to her former suitor, Anatoly Shpanko, who in her eyes and possibly in Lee’s as well, bore a resemblance to President Kennedy. There had been the failure of Lee’s attempt on General Walker and the heightened sense of immunity that he carried away from that episode. When Lee had moved to New Orleans, there was the murder, in June 1963, of Medgar Evers, in a town nearby, and only a few hours after a speech by Kennedy. Then there was the passage in William Manchester’s book, comparing Kennedy to a president who had been assassinated; and the death of the Kennedy baby at a time when the Oswalds, too, expected a baby. There was Lee’s brief incarceration in New Orleans, an interlude during which he had two enjoyable conversations with Police Lieutenant Francis Martello and realized that prison could be an excellent forum from which to proclaim his political ideas. And there was the fiasco of Lee’s visit to Mexico and his failure to obtain a Cuban visa, which, curiously, may have turned Castro into a negative constituent. Far from wanting to fight for Castro, Lee may now have wanted to show him, as he almost always did after he was dealt a rebuff, what a good fighter he had missed out on.
During that very month of November 1963, several events occurred that were profoundly disturbing to Lee, by far the most shattering being the visits of Agent Hosty to Marina. Only the week before, there had been the Barghoorn affair. And now the bitter quarrel with Marina over the alias. Lee’s wildly disproportionate anger at Marina was a symptom that, while he was able to cope, just barely, with the demands of his life on the outside, he was on the point of coming apart within. Lee himself was like a rifle that has been loaded and cocked and is ready to go off. Now, suddenly, unforeseeably, he had been placed in a situation in which he had an opportunity to alter the course of history.
On Wednesday, November 20, at about one o’clock, a small but seminal incident took place at the book depository. Warren Caster, a textbook company representative who had an office in the building, went to Roy Truly’s office to show off a pair of purchases he had made during the lunch hour. Caster proudly drew from their cartons two rifles, one a Remington .22 that he had bought as a Christmas present for his son, and the other a sporterized .30–06 Mauser, which he had bought to go deer hunting. Truly picked up the Mauser and, without cocking it, lifted it to his shoulder and sighted it. He handed it back to Caster and said it was a handsome thing.[9] A number of men were present in Truly’s office. Lee Oswald happened to be among them. Marina thinks that this could have been the decisive moment. Lee now knew the route, and he had seen guns in the building. If anyone should accuse him later of keeping a rifle there, he had a pretext. There were two rifles in the building already, so why should he be under suspicion?[10]
Still, he had not made up his mind. Marina had not noticed in him anything like the “waves” of tension that she had seen three times earlier: before his visit to the American embassy in Moscow in 1961, when he expected to be arrested; before his attempt on General Walker; and before his visit to Mexico City. Each time he had been nervous and irritable for weeks in advance, each time he had talked in his sleep and suffered convulsive anxiety attacks at night, and each time he had lost weight. This time he showed none of those signs. Lee was even seven pounds above his lowest New Orleans weight, a certain indication that he had not been worrying or preparing anything momentous. Even now, on Wednesday, he did not do what he could easily have done. He did not telephone Marina, make up with her, and go out to Irving to fetch his rifle at a moment when bringing it into town would be far less conspicuous than it would be later in the week. And it is clear that he made no plan of escape.
Indeed, it appears certain that Lee’s decision was an impulsive one, not only because the route had been announced at the last minute but because the deed was so momentous and Lee’s feelings about it apparently so ambiguous that if he had had time to prepare he might very possibly have failed, as he did in the case of General Walker, or he might somehow have slipped and given his plan away.
Lee was still hesitating on the morning of Thursday, November 21. When he dressed that day and left the rooming house, he did not take his pistol with him, as he is likely to have done had he made his mind up and realized that he would need his revolver for self-defense. On the other hand, he broke his routine that morning in a way that suggests he was coming to a decision. Instead of making breakfast in the rooming house, as he generally did, he went across the street to the Dobbs House restaurant and treated himself to a special breakfast. He complained that his eggs were cooked “too hard,” but he ate them anyway.[11]
At last, after his arrival at the book depository, Lee took a decisive step. Between eight and ten in the morning, he sought out Wesley Frazier, who lived near the Paines with his sister Linnie Mae Randle, and asked for a ride to Irving that afternoon. He said he was going “to get some curtain rods. You know, put in an apartment.”[12] Later that day Lee took time to fashion a bag 26 or 27 inches long, made of the brown paper and tape that were used by the book depository employees.
Marina was in her bedroom with Rachel late in the afternoon when Lee arrived unexpectedly. He had not called her ahead of time, and ostensibly they were still angry at one another because of their fight over Lee’s alias. Marina saw Frazier’s car stop at the house and Lee get out. She did not go to greet him. She looked sullen as he entered the bedroom. Inwardly she was pleased that he had come.
“You didn’t think I was coming?”
“Of course not. How come you came out today?”
“Because I got lonesome for my girls.” He took her by the shoulders to give her a kiss.
Marina turned her face away and pointed at a pile of clothes. “There are your clean shirts and socks and pants. Go in and wash up.”
Lee did as he was told. “I’m clean now,” he said, as he emerged from the bathroom. “Are you angry at me still?”
“Of course,” she said, turning aside another kiss.
Marina tried to leave the bedroom, but he blocked the door and would not let her go until she allowed him to kiss her. With utter indifference, like a rag doll, she acceded.
“Enough,” Lee said, angry that she was not glad to see him. “You get too much spoiling here. I’m going to find an apartment tomorrow and take all three of you with me.”
“I won’t go,” Marina said.
9
Testimony of Roy S. Truly, Vol. 7, pp. 381–382; Testimony of Warren Caster, Vol. 7, pp. 387–388.
10
After the assassination, this is precisely what Oswald said about the discovery of his rifle in the Book Depository Building.