Dallas was so quiet that Jack Ruby could listen to the continuous kiss of his tires on Jackson Street. The night air was chill and sweet and clear. On his left a big sign flashed hope to the emptiness: “Life Building.” At a red light near Field Street, if a man sat quietly, he could hear the summer thunder of the freight yards at Lamar Street rippling the length of a hundred cars or more. It was a noise similar to the one President Kennedy had heard from his pillow at the Hotel Texas last night. Another town; another railroad; another man.
Ruby turned right on Field. A car flashed lights at him. A horn honked. A policeman yelled: “Hello, Jack.” Ruby followed the lights into a parking lot diagonally across the street. The policeman, Harry Olsen, was a friend. There was a woman with him. She worked for Jack. She was a British girl with a lilting accent. He called her Kathy Kay, but her name was Kay Helen Coleman.
The nightclub owner had trouble understanding people who were in love. It embarrassed him. Olsen was in love with Kathy and was going to marry her in a month. But Ruby could not see it that way; he thought of Olsen as still married to another woman, going out on dates with this English girl. Mr. Ruby thought of this liaison as “secret”; Olsen was a man with “marital problems.”
The policeman and the nightclub girl had met at 11 P.M. and they had been drinking beer and conversing about the assassination. The more beer, the more emotional the event became. The three met near the shack of the parking attendant, Johnny. There were vast level empty spaces, and a few automobiles left overnight. The four asked each other: What do you think? Wasn’t it terrible? The standard question.
Sheba was permitted to sniff around the parking lot. When she wandered too far into the silent darkness, her master called her with a chirrup. The dog returned happily, scampering around the legs of Jack Ruby, as though daring him to try to catch her. This once, the nightclub owner found two persons who were more emotional than he. He would like to have told Olsen about Jack Ruby and the district attorney, but the couple had been wound up tight, and they had opinions which must be vented at once. “If he was in England,” Kay said in that prim lilting accent, “they would have dragged him through the streets and would have hung him.” Olsen thought that Oswald should be cut, inch by inch, into ribbons.
The nightclub owner listened to them and to Johnny, the parking attendant, and he decided to leave. They grabbed his arm and held him. Jack Ruby was told that he was the greatest guy in the world. Just the greatest. They did not want him to go. The conversation had the quality of a snowball running downhill; it became bigger, more magnificent as the mood plumbed the depths. At times, any two of them would burst into tears.
No one asked Olsen why he had not been on duty as a Dallas patrolman that day. He had fallen and broken a kneecap weeks before. The leg was still in a cast and he had been assigned to “light duty.” Ruby’s face sagged. When he found room in which to elbow the conversation, he kept saying: “What a wonderful man President Kennedy was. You know, I feel so sorry for Mrs. Kennedy and those little children.”
Mrs. Coleman told Ruby that, since Harry broke the kneecap, they seldom got out. They were so depressed this evening that she had driven him to the Sip and Nip on Commerce Street. They had some beer, and they expressed their solemn sentiments to Lee, the bartender. The place closed at midnight, so they had driven around, looking for places in which to exercise the catharsis of conversation.
“I took some sandwiches down to the boys,” Ruby said, lying to the policeman. This was another generous gesture that made Ruby the greatest guy in the world. The parking attendant listened, but no one gave him room for opinion. He knew Ruby was the owner of the Carousel, a block away at Akard and Jackson. Right now Mr. Ruby was sitting in the driver’s seat of his car with the door open. Olsen was leaning on the open windowsill. Kay Coleman noticed that her boss had his “starey, wild-eyed look.” She soon found out what had upset him. He was angry because his striptease competitors at the Theatre Lounge and the Colony Club had remained open, doing business, earning profits after he, Jack Ruby, had shown the proper manner in which to show respect for a dead President.
Olsen discussed Oswald, and Ruby quietly played his trump card. “I saw him.” He waited for the proper reaction. They said: “You did? What did he look like?” Ruby said that he had seen him taken down at the assembly room and had been close enough to Lee Harvey Oswald almost to touch him. “What do you think, Jack?” said Olsen. The nightclub owner, in a clearly superior position, bent his lip into a sneer. “He looked just like a little rat. He was sneaky-looking, like a weasel.”
His friends nodded sagely. That was the impression they had. It was a sad day for Dallas that a thing like this had to happen because some crazy creep had a gun. “It’s too bad that a peon like that can get away with something like that,” Ruby said. The group nodded agreement. They talked on, Ruby calling Sheba back into the car, stroking her head and calling Oswald a “son of a bitch.” Patrolman Olsen congratulated Ruby for closing up for the whole weekend. The conversation became repetitious, but the foursome continued; excited thoughts were flung to the night air, hardly listened to in passing, and others spurted upward, like an erratic fountain of thought.
Ruby decided that, no matter how late this agreeable debate lasted, he was going to stop at the Times Herald before taking himself and Sheba back to the smelly little apartment and throwing himself on a bed.
The four men were no longer sharp of mind. They studied the supine President as Gawler’s men studied another one, except that this one was alive and new. Jack Valenti, so fatigued that he sat too erect, riffled through the pages of notes and suggestions. Cliff Carter, as big as Lyndon Johnson physically, was crushed by the weight of the hours. Bill Moyers, the facile student of government, kept a vigil on the President’s eyes.
The lids were heavy. They dropped a little, then lifted suddenly and stared at the hypnotic screen. A station was running a hastily wrought biography of “Lyndon Baines Johnson, 36th President of the United States.” The subject placed the bedclothes up under his arms and fought sleep. The men around him had no further words, no suggestions. Johnson felt a confidence in each one, but none of them were politicians. This was a “pickup” team. It is doubtful that, collectively, they knew more about the seat of power than its title. Their loyalty to him was touching but temporarily unproductive.
Lyndon Johnson understood power and its uses. Like a slow and ambitious student, he had studied twice as hard as his competitors in the Congress and at the White House. He had a more practical feel for government than his predecessor because he had watched the wheels of congressional committee spin eccentrically, and he understood the relationship—the true relationship—of the men on the Hill with the men on the High Bench, in relation to the Man in the White House.
Each of these was the right man for his time. The country had been aroused by the youth and exuberance of John F. Kennedy, who admonished citizens and legislators to execute his plans, not because it was politically right, but because it was good for America. The new frontier, as was true of the new gimmickry, was in outer space. Kennedy could draw more attention shooting his cuffs than Johnson could declaring war.
The country was not prepared to receive Lyndon Johnson. To retreat a step, it was not prepared to lose its Galahad in Texas. In pain, the people acquired guilt. They had felt it, in a similar situation, three times in the past hundred years. This time the scars would be deeper because of the almost instant communication of television. They saw what happened in Texas. They saw it again and again, as a repentant slayer relives his crime.
Those who had opposed John F. Kennedy were now prepared to receive him. The people who voted against him wept. The Congressmen who had disarrayed his program, stifled his progressive measures in committee, beat him on the floor of House and Senate with loud “Nays,” worked hard this night on speeches of sanctification and superlatives to be laid reverently in the back of The Congressional Record.
The mass of people, like lovers who have strayed, desired to touch him. They would pray for him, defend him, buy a color photo of him or an ashtray with his name on it, adore his widow and vote for his brothers, change the names of boulevards, schools, hospitals, capes, and stadia to Kennedy. The people would resurrect him and they could not do this without spiritually rejecting Lyndon Baines Johnson.
The new face was older, tougher, earthbound. The features were not intended for flights to the stars. The accent was Texas. Ironically none of the Texans around the bed could hear it. The new man understood the phrases: to think; to do; to produce. He knew more about them than Kennedy, and he had just completed the first eleven hours of earning his salary. And yet efficiency was not good enough. Grief is not an intellectual exercise. The national heart was depressed; the country was taking its pulse.
“It’s getting late, Mr. President,” Cliff Carter said. It was a hint to close the book for the day. If he said: “Stay,” they would remain seated. The brown eyes opened wide, moving from man to man. “It is,” he said. The President propped himself up on one elbow. “Now you all go to bed and get some sleep.” He looked at the little clock on the night table. It was nine minutes past three. “We’ll be leaving here at eight in the morning.” If there was shock, none showed it. They would be up at seven. Moyers asked if he should shut the television set off. “No,” the President said. “I’ll take care of that.”
They said “Goodnight, Mr. President.” As they left, he was still awake, still looking.
To the witnesses, the morticians were, in a manner of speaking, magicians. They had been given a broken shell of a man, and they had walked around him many times, whispering incantations to each other, applying the laying on of hands, and the shell began to look more and more like John F. Kennedy. The brows, the cheeks were smoothed outward and downward. The natural complexion of the President seemed to return. Thatches of thick chestnut hair were applied to the head and were combed out.
It had not hurt as much for the Greers and Kellermans and Burkleys and McHughs to stare at him when he was torn and broken. It hurt now. An undershirt, a pair of trousers, a white shirt were put on the unresisting frame and, when the tie was knotted, he had everything but breath. Greer turned away. Kellerman found it difficult to believe. Perhaps McHugh or Burkley might have fleetingly remembered the old story about the genie who could grant but one wish.
The entire evening had been morbid and gruesome, but the government had insisted on having witnesses. Death, in this case, was not a personal matter but an affair of state. From the moment the first shot in Dealey Plaza split the sky until the last volley drifted across the green hill at Arlington Cemetery, everything that happened to this man, everything that was noted, surmised, or conjectured, every conclusion for good or ill would become history.
The dark jacket was put on. It was buttoned and the hands were entwined across the front. The shoes were put on. Hagan and his men walked around the body again and again, tugging at wrinkled cloth, smoothing the hang of the suit of clothes, studying the serene features from the sides, the front, and even from the back of the head. All of it would have to be done again, when the body left the table, but the men wanted to be reasonably sure that they were satisfied with their work.
The long night was running out. There was a morning chill on the stone of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The amber rays from the high windows crossed swords inside the nave. Paul VI knelt at an ornate prie-dieu before the main altar, the dark baldachinos lifting a canopy over the Host as the assembled monsignori carried the Pope’s heavy brocade vestments forward to cover the prayer bench.
Thus began the pontifical requiem Mass for the repose of the soul of John F. Kennedy, a supplicant Roman Catholic, a sinner. The Pope clasped his hands, the fingertips touching each other, and he began his entreaty to Almighty God by asking forgiveness of sin. The early communicants at St. Peter’s Basilica, pious Romans and inquisitive tourists, saw the Pope and knelt on the marble floor in astonishment. Prayers had been assaulting the gates of heaven for John F. Kennedy in many tongues and many temples, but if the credos of the Catholic Church are to be accepted, the real authority, the valid plea for the soul came from the lips of Father Oscar Huber, the little priest who had never seen a live President.
Thousands of miles to the west, Vincent Drain rested his eyes. If he had a prayer to say, it had been said. The tanker was high in the sky and a little smile crossed his lips. The FBI agent approached the ladder laden with packages of evidence, the military personnel had saluted him.
As he was smiling through the closed eyes, he felt something move at his feet and looked down to find a sergeant removing his shoes. “Hey,” the FBI man said, “what are you doing?” “You look like you need rest, mister.” The shoes came off. The jacket was hung. Then sleep fled, and Vincent Drain went forward with his evidence, to sit behind the captain and await the pink flush of dawn on the flight deck.
In London, Sir Alec Douglas Home knelt in Westminster Cathedral, peering like an emaciated owl over the tops of his spectacles. The first British services for Kennedy had begun. In Paris, groups of blue-clad laborers stood before the window of a television shop, studying the animation of a face which was no more. Down the Kurfürstendamm, past the Kaiser Wilhelm Kirche and the zoo paraded the remnants of the torch carriers of Berlin.
There were torchbearers in Bern, too, but the Swiss started before dawn. In the black velvet of the hills, they had made a glacial river of fire descending toward the old city. Thousands of Britons braved the needle veils of morning rain to stand in reverence before the United States embassy in London. A long time ago, the dead President had called this home. He and young Joe had come here to study and to be at the side of their father, Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr.
The Kennedy boys had complained at wearing homburgs and carrying furled umbrellas, but they had come to know the ambassador as an absolute authority. They had made fun of each other in the embassy when the hats went on. The people who braved the morning drizzle knew nothing of these things, but they paid their homage in rain because they felt they had lost “well, a cousin of sorts.”
Everywhere the hearts of the multitude felt regret at the passing of a man. Governments were different. Official grief was stereotyped: a wreath; a warm cablegram to a widow; signing a book in an embassy foyer; an emissary at a funeral. Governments are concerned with the living. The morning reaction would be coming in from everywhere. Britain understood Kennedy, but could the United Kingdom depend upon Johnson? Germany believed that the format and policy of the Kennedy regime would remain intact, but would the spirit be alive? Argentina was worried. Italy would appreciate assurances of continued support.
France, well, France would send De Gaulle to find out for himself. America, too, was fearful. It had gone to bed with its confidence shaken. How much did it know about Lyndon Johnson? Didn’t he have a heart attack? Who succeeds Johnson? Well, there was old reliable John McCormack, seventy-one years of age, Speaker of the House. He was an excellent politician, an ideal lieutenant—but a captain? Politically and philosophically, he was hardly sophisticated. Behind him, in line of succession, came Senator Carl Hayden of Arizona. He was eighty-six years of age, a man revered by his confreres as a great American. The mileage on his mind was insuperable. In a day, America had lost its youth.
The casket was wheeled sideward toward the table. They touched. The witnesses offered assistance, but Hagan declined. He and his men worked easily. Both lids of the casket were open. On a signal, they lifted the body, kicked the autopsy table away, and held the body over the casket and lowered it gently. The final tender service to the flesh had begun. The men walked back and forth around the box, straightening feet and seams and shirring. The tie was firmly held under a clasp, and the jacket was draped softly downward.
The hair was carefully combed once more. A rosary was carefully laced through the fingers. The morticians examined their work from every side. They rubbed cloths over the dark mahogany, where hands had touched it. Joseph Hagan looked across the room at the witnesses. “We are ready,” he said softly. The lid came down.
The word reached the seventeenth floor. The Attorney General looked at his watch. It was close to 4 A.M. Relatives and friends hurried to get coats, women to powder. A pall of cigarette smoke hung in the sitting room and it undulated as the guests made ready. They had served the widow well. Conversations of many hues had diverted her mind from the permanent shock. She had been forced, for a time, to think of other things. She had lapsed into a staring, dull expression, but there was always someone present to ask a question, tell an anecdote, make a suggestion.
Robert F. Kennedy had been heroic. He sublimated his crushing sorrow to serve hers. It is possible that Robert Kennedy had more courage than either Joe or Jack or Ted. Everything affected him more and showed less. He often felt pity, rancor, indignation, contempt, and sorrow—and denied them. His likes were as fierce as his dislikes and as possessive. He was small and tough and shyly sentimental. It was the Attorney General who originally divided the world into “them” and “us.”
Mrs. Kennedy spoke this evening of her husband as though he were living. Bobby spoke of him as dead. He had spent time in the kitchen with McNamara and others discussing the Kennedy regime, the Kennedy policies, as though they had been killed in Dallas, and he wondered aloud if Lyndon Johnson would try to resurrect them. He had loved his brother slavishly, so that if an error was committed, he wanted to take the onus upon himself. When Robert irritated men of lofty station, they complained to the President, and he smiled and said: “I can handle Bobby.”
He could. Jack was dead, and old Joe could not speak, and for a time Robert F. Kennedy would wander in the fields of McLean, Virginia, with his Newfoundland dog, wondering about himself, asking himself if the attainment of power was worth the result, brooding over Jacqueline’s brooding, worried because the face in that majestic office wasn’t Jack’s. There was no one to handle Robert Kennedy. For several months, he would not be able to handle himself.
At the stone dock, a Navy ambulance was backed tight. Limousines sat in the dark. Ranking naval officers, summoned by subordinates, appeared. The witnesses who had waited all night, stood for a moment. Kellerman met Hill and Landis in the corridor, and led the party to an anteroom. The Attorney General, head down, took his sister-in-law’s elbow. Behind them, in slow procession, were the Kennedy sisters, Ted Kennedy, Powers, O’Donnell, O’Brien, McNamara, the old friends, the new Cabinet members—they filed on in greater numbers than anyone had thought.
Naval personnel stood around the casket. Kellerman smiled briefly. “We’ll take care of that,” he said. The Secret Service agents wheeled it out onto the dark dock and into the ambulance. The trolley was taken from underneath and pulled back to the autopsy room. Roy Kellerman made the arrangements. He held a whispered conversation with the Attorney General and came back to the dock. “Bill,” he said to Greer, “you drive. I’ll sit up with you. Mrs. Kennedy and the Attorney General are going to ride in back with the body. Clint, take the second car.”
There were motorcycle policemen in a wedge on Palmer Road. Kellerman went out and told them the route back to the White House. He wanted no sirens, no noise. They would aim for about thirty miles per hour and hold it. The cops could get the cortege through the red lights. They would go down Wisconsin and then left to the White House. At the northwest gate on Pennsylvania Avenue, the motorcycles would turn away, permitting the ambulance and the automobiles to go through.
Kellerman hurried back to the dock. He saw the widow stooping to get through the back, where, as before, she sat on one side of the casket and Robert sat on the other. They drew the shades. The doors of the limousines were slamming. Drivers put their lights on. Officers of the United States Navy stood on the dock at salute. The faces, the uniforms, the rank were blurred in the night light. A few enlisted men had put white caps on and stood on the ground, saluting.
Greer took the order from Kellerman. The ambulance lights went on. The rotating red beacon on top swept the night air with carmine crayon. The motorcycle cops forced their weight down on their starters and the racket of exhausts was like gunfire. They moved out onto Palmer, behind the giant monument of Bethesda.
There were houses of naval personnel here. The hedges and lawn flowers were stiff and dead, but the occupants were soft and alive. In the dark, they stood on their porches, watching the cortege come toward them, the sweeping beacon magnetizing the eyes of parents and children. They saw it coming toward them, the phalanx of police a spearhead, and they saw it pass, and they watched it go away, up the climb of Palmer toward the front drive, where the grass was velvet green. Commanders in pajamas shifted sleepy youngsters from one arm to the other and came to stiff salute. Some women watched and wept. Some shook their heads perplexedly. A few blessed themselves and wished him a long calm voyage to whatever haven sailors seek.
On shortwave, the word went to the White House. The President of the United States was on his way home. Hurriedly, a triangular piece of crepe was hung on the front door of the main entrance. Sleepy honor guards were whipped by words to attention. Officers strode up and down in the darkness, sabers against shoulders, the mouths forming the same truculent O which was so common to the face of Lee Harvey Oswald. The final tape of black was tacked to the bottom step of the big catafalque. In the darkness, saffron lights shone from the second floor. The great fountain on the lawn tossed a stream high in color, and it diffused in veils as it fell.
The house waited for him as it had waited for others. The sound of sobs had been heard here before. The house had heard the rattle of death, the smacking kiss of the bridegroom, the cry of an infant. This man had no more days to go. The house must live on, to endure what time would bring.