The sun poured down on the limousine, baking the occupants, including the governor of Texas and his wife, and, sitting beside him, his own wife. He should have told her to wear something lighter than the pink wool suit, he thought. The scudding clouds that had covered the sun earlier that morning had all been blown away.
They were heading from the airport towards the center of town, moving now at a good clip. He looked idly at the signs as they passed. One of them announced REAL SIPPIN’ WHISKY, and he grinned and thought to himself, Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.
Soon the crowds began to thicken; the motorcade slowed down, and the waves and cheers washed over them. They passed a Coca-Cola bottling plant, where a thermometer showed that the temperature was well into the nineties. His wife had put on her large dark glasses, because she had been squinting in the sun, and he leaned over to ask her to take them off. “They want to see you. Those glasses hide your face.” She smiled and removed them, blinking in the fierce sunlight.
At the intersection of Lemmon Avenue and Lomo Alto Drive in the city, a group of small children stood, holding a sign that pleaded, MR. PRESIDENT, PLEASE STOP AND SHAKE OUR HANDS.
“Let’s stop here, Bill,” he called out to his driver, and he jumped out of the car and was instantly surrounded by the group of squealing children. He smiled; children always made him smile. He tousled the light brown hair of a child about his son’s age, and he solemnly shook hands with the other children. The Secret Service finally had to shoo the kids away so the motorcade could proceed.
He hopped back into the car, and they were off again. The closer they got to the center of the city, the denser the crowds became, and every time his wife lifted her white-gloved hand to wave, cries of “Jackie! Jackie!” rang out. At one point, the crowd was so close to the car that Secret Service Agent Clint Hill leapt out of the following car and trotted beside the limousine, to protect her from overeager people who wanted to reach out and touch her.
The president grinned and looked out at the crowds. He was starting to sweat from the intense heat, but the exuberance of the greeting lifted his mood. The ad in the Dallas paper was forgotten. Only a Goldwater sign held by two young men reminded him that not everybody in the throng was a political supporter. Running against Goldwater would be fun, he thought. Barry was a decent sort, even if some of his ideas were screwy. He’d love to debate Goldwater. There would be a real clash of ideas, and cultures, between them. It would be the Arizona Republican, the darling of the right wing, versus his own liberal-centrist, rational ideas. The right wing ran mainly on emotion. This Texas welcome, with people standing eight to ten deep, screaming and waving, was a good sign.
He glanced at his wife. There were tiny beads of sweat on her upper lip, and now and then she had to close her eyes because of the sun’s hot glare, but she kept smiling and waving, and the crowd went wild. She was going to be dynamite in the coming campaign; he made a mental note to tell her so.
The motorcade made several sharp turns, a zig and then a zag, before it hit the straightaway again. The Trade Mart, where he was to make a speech to the pillars of the Dallas establishment —Democrats and John Birchers alike — was only minutes away, and the motorcade was only five minutes late, a good performance. He looked up ahead and saw a patch of green amid the urban landscape around them: Dealey Plaza.
fust ahead, standing near a large pine tree that grew on a grassy knoll next to the road, a Dallas businessman named Abraham Zapruder was fastening a Zoomar lens on his movie camera. He had forgotten to bring it to work with him that morning, but his secretary had cajoled him until he went home and got it. How many times, she reminded him, did you get to take home movies of a president!
Not far from him stood a young Texan who had brought his wife out to see the president pass by He looked up to a window in the Texas Book Depository and said to her, “Do you want to see a Secret Service agent!”
“Where!” she asked him.
He pointed up to the window, where a man was clearly visible, holding a high-powered rifle with a telescopic sight.
“In that building there.” She looked up to see the man standing unnaturally still, the rifle held close across his chest, a military stance.
Inside the limousine, the wife of the governor of Texas twisted around in the jump seat in which she was riding and said, “You sure can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you, Mr. President.” He smiled at her and answered, “No, you can’t.”
He looked away from her and out again at the road. Not far ahead, through an underpass, was the Trade Mart. He began running his speech through in his mind, as was his custom. As he glanced to his left, something peculiar happened. The shadow was back, he saw it there, in his peripheral vision. That was very odd. He had lived so long without it.
But on the grass, standing beside his tall, young father, was a small boy, one who had to be about the age of his own son, John. The boy had lifted his hand tentatively, to wave at him. He smiled, caught the boy’s eye and waved back. The boy gave a little squeal of delight and waved harder.
There was a sudden, sharp sound. The Secret Service agents in the car behind thought a firecracker had gone off. They rarely heard small arms fire out-of-doors. The Texans who were hunters knew at once it was the sound of a rifle.
There was a strange tingling sensation in his throat. He lifted his hand to the spot where he felt the sensation and looked straight ahead. The shadow was no longer on the fringes of his vision. He was staring, now, directly at it, into its cold, blank eyes.
No, he thought. Oh, no, not now. Not now!
And then he heard, and saw, nothing more.