I get tired of them always opening their wallets, Lee said. Rinas starting to forget that we didnt come back to America just to buy a damn freezer and a bunch of dresses.
De Mohrenschildt waved this away. Sweat from the back of the capitalist hog. Man, isnt it enough that you live in this depressing place?
Lee said, It sure idnt much, is it?
De Mohrenschildt clapped him on the back almost hard enough to knock the smaller man off the couch. Cheer up! What you take now, you give back a thousandfold later. Isnt that what you believe? And when Lee nodded: Now tell me how things stand in Russia, Comrademay I call you Comrade, or have you repudiated that form of address?
You can call me anything but late to dinner, Oswald said, and laughed. I could see him opening to de Mohrenschildt the way a flower opens to the sun after days of rain.
Lee talked about Russia. He was long-winded and pompous. I wasnt very interested in his rap about how the Communist bureaucracy had hijacked all the countrys wonderful prewar socialist ideals (he passed over Stalins Great Purge in the thirties). Nor was I interested in his judgment that Nikita Khrushchev was an idiot; you could hear the same idle bullshit about American leaders in any barbershop or shoeshine parlor right here. Oswald might be going to change the course of history in a mere fourteen months, but he was a bore.
What interested me was the way de Mohrenschildt listened. He did it as the worlds more charming and magnetic people do, always asking the right question at the right time, never fidgeting or taking his eyes from the speakers face, making the other guy feel like the most knowledgeable, brilliant, and intellectually savvy person on the planet. This might have been the first time in his life that Lee had been listened to in such a way.
Theres only one hope for socialism that I see, Lee finished, and thats Cuba. There the revolution is still pure. I hope to go there one day. I may become a citizen.
De Mohrenschildt nodded gravely. You could do far worse. I have been, many times, before the current administration made it difficult to travel there. It is a beautiful country and now, thanks to Fidel, its a beautiful country that belongs to the people who live there.
I know it. Lees face was shining.
But! De Mohrenschildt raised a lecturely finger. If you believe the American capitalists will let Fidel, Raul, and Che work their magic without interference, youre living in a dream-world. Already the wheels are turning. You know this fellow Walker?
My ears pricked up.
Edwin Walker? The general who got fired? Lee said it fard.
The very one.
I know him. Lives in Dallas. Ran for governor and got his ass kicked. Then he goes over to Misssippi to stand with Ross Barnett when James Meredith integrated Ole Miss. Hes just another segregationist little Hitler.
A racist, certainly, but for him the segregationist cause and the Klan bobos are just a blind. He sees the push for Negro rights as a club to beat at the socialist principles that so haunt him and his ilk. James Meredith? A communist! The N-double-A-C-P? A front! SNCC? Black on top, red inside!
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Sure, Lee said, its how they work.
I couldnt tell if de Mohrenschildt was actually invested in the things he was saying or if he was just winding Lee up for the hell of it. And what do the Walkers and the Barnetts and the capering revivalist preachers like Billy Graham and Billy James Hargis see as the beating heart of this evil nigger-loving communist monster? Russia!
I know it.
And where do they see the grasping hand of communism just ninety miles from the shores of the United States? Cuba! Walker no longer wears the uniform, but his best friend does. Do you know who Im talking about?
Lee shook his head. His eyes never left de Mohrenschildts face.
Curtis LeMay. Another racist who sees communists behind every bush. What do Walker and LeMay insist that Kennedy do? Bomb Cuba! Then invade Cuba! Then make Cuba the fifty-first state! Their humiliation at the Bay of Pigs has only made them more determined! De Mohrenschildt made his own exclamation marks by pounding his fist on his thigh. Men like LeMay and Walker are far more dangerous than the Rand bitch, and not because they have guns. Because they have followers.
I know the danger, Lee said. Ive started organizing a Hands Off Cuba group here in Fort Worth. Ive got a dozen people interested already.
That was bold. To the best of my knowledge, the only thing Lee had been organizing in Fort Worth was a passel of aluminum screen doors, plus the backyard clothes-whirligig on the few occasions when Marina could persuade him to hang the babys diapers on it.
Youd better work fast, de Mohrenschildt said grimly. Cubas a billboard for revolution. When the suffering people of Nicaragua and Haiti and the Dominican Republic look at Cuba, they see a peaceful agrarian socialist society where the dictator has been overturned and the secret police have been sent packing, sometimes with their truncheons stuck up their fat asses!
Lee squalled laughter.
They see the great sugar plantations and the slave-labor farms of United Fruit turned over to the farmers. They see Standard Oil sent packing. They see the casinos, all run by the Lansky Mob
I know it, Lee said.
shut down. The donkey-shows have stopped, my friend, and the women who used to sell their bodies and their daughters bodieshave found honest work again. A peon who would have died in the streets under the pig Batista can now go to a hospital and be treated like a man. And why? Because under Fidel, the doctor and the peon stand as equals!
I know it, Lee said. It was his default position.
De Mohrenschildt leaped from the couch and began to pace around the new playpen. Do you think Kennedy and his Irish cabal will let that billboard stand? That lighthouse, flashing its message of hope?
I sort of like Kennedy, Lee said, as if embarrassed to admit it. In spite of the Bay of Pigs. That was Eisenhowers plan, you know.
Most of the GSA likes President Kennedy. Do you know what I mean by the GSA? I can assure you that the rabid she-weasel who wrote Atlas Shrugged knows. Great Stupid America, thats what I mean. The citizens of the USA will live happy and die content if they have a refrigerator that makes ice, two cars in their garage, and 77 Sunset Strip on their boob tubes. Great Stupid America loves Kennedys smile. Oh yes. Yes indeed. He has a wonderful smile, I admit it. But did not Shakespeare say a man can smile, and smile, and be a villain? Do you know that Kennedy has okayed a CIA plan to assassinate Castro? Yes! Theyve already triedand failed, thank Godthree or four times. I have this from my oil contacts in Haiti and the DR, Lee, and its good information.
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Lee expressed dismay.
But Fidel has a strong friend in Russia, de Mohrenschildt went on, still pacing. It isnt the Russia of Lenins dreamsor yours, or minebut they may have their own reasons for standing with Fidel if America tries another invasion. And mark my words: Kennedy is apt to try it, and soon. Hell listen to LeMay. Hell listen to Dulles and Angleton of the CIA. All he needs is the right pretext and then hell go in, just to show the world hes got balls.
They went on talking about Cuba. When the Cadillac returned, the rear seat was full of groceriesenough for a month, it looked like.
Shit, Lee said. Theyre back.
And we are glad to see them, de Mohrenschildt said pleasantly.
Stay for dinner, Lee said. Rinas not much of a cook, but
I must go. My wife is waiting anxiously for my report, and Ill give her a good one! Ill bring her next time, shall I?
Yeah, sure.
They went to the door. Marina was talking with Bouhe and Orlov as the two men lifted cartons of canned goods from the trunk. But she wasnt just talking; she was flirting a little, too. Bouhe looked ready to fall on his knees.
On the porch, Lee said something about the FBI. De Mohrenschildt asked him how many times. Lee held up three fingers. One agent called Fain. He came twice. Another named Hosty.
Look them right in the eye and answer their questions! de Mohrenschildt said. You have nothing to fear, Lee, not just because you are innocent, but because you are in the right!
The others were looking at him now and not just them. The jump-rope girls had appeared, standing in the rut that served as a sidewalk on our block of Mercedes Street. De Mohrenschildt had an audience, and was declaiming to it.
You are ideologically dedicated, young Mr. Oswald, so of course they come. The Hoover Gang! For all we know, theyre watching now, perhaps from down the block, perhaps from that house right across the street!
De Mohrenschildt stabbed his finger at my drawn drapes. Lee turned to look. I stood still in the shadows, glad Id put down the sound-enhancing Tupperware bowl, even though it was now coated with black tape.
I know who they are. Havent they and their CIA first cousins been to visit me on many occasions, trying to browbeat me into informing on my Russian and South American friends? After the war, didnt they call me a closet Nazi? Havent they claimed I hired the tonton macoute to beat and torture my competitors for oil leases in Haiti? Didnt they accuse me of bribing Papa Doc and paying for the Trujillo assassination? Yes, yes, all of that and more!
The jump-rope girls were staring at him with their mouths open. So was Marina. Once he got going, George de Mohrenschildt swept everything before him.
Be courageous, Lee! When they come, stand forward! Show them this! He grasped his shirt and tore it open. Buttons popped off and clattered to the porch. The jump-rope girls gasped, too shocked to giggle. Unlike most American men of that time, de Mohrenschildt wore no undershirt. His skin was the color of oiled mahogany. Fatty breasts hung on old muscle. He pounded his right fist above his left nipple. Tell them Here is my heart, and my heart is pure, and my heart belongs to my cause! Tell them Even if Hoover rips my heart out of me, it will still beat, and a thousand other hearts will beat in time! Then ten thousand! Then a hundred thousand! Then a million!
Orlov put down the box of canned goods he was holding so he could offer a round of light satiric applause. Marinas cheeks were flaming with color. Lees face was the most interesting one. Like Paul of Tarsus on the Damascus Road, hed had a revelation.
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The blindness had dropped from his eyes.
3
De Mohrenschildts preaching and shirt-ripping anticsnot so very different from the tent-show shenanigans of the right-wing evangelists he reviledwere deeply troubling to me. I had hoped that if I could listen in on a heart-to-heart between the two men, it might go a long way toward eliminating de Mohrenschildt as a real factor in the Walker attempt, and hence the Kennedy assassination. Id gotten the heart-to-heart, but it made things worse instead of better.
One thing seemed clear: it was time to bid Mercedes Street a not-so-fond adieu. I had rented the ground-floor apartment at 214 West Neely. On the twenty-fourth of September, I packed up my aging Ford Sunliner with my few clothes, my books, and my typewriter, and moved them to Dallas.
The two fat ladies had left behind a sickroom-stenchy pigsty. I did the cleanup myself, thanking God that Als rabbit-hole emerged in a time when aerosol air-freshener was available. I bought a portable TV at a yard sale and plunked it down on the kitchen counter next to the stove (which I thought of as the Repository of Antique Grease). As I swept, washed, scrubbed, and sprayed, I watched crime shows like The Untouchables and sitcoms like Car 54, Where Are You? When the thumps and shouts of the kids upstairs quit for the night, I turned in and slept like the dead. There were no dreams.
I held onto my place on Mercedes Street, but didnt see much at 2703. Sometimes Marina popped June into a stroller (another gift from her elderly admirer, Mr. Bouhe) and rolled her up to the warehouse parking lot and back again. In the afternoons, after school let out, the jump-rope girls often accompanied them. Marina even jumped herself a couple of times, chanting in Russian. The sight of her mother pogoing up and down with that great cloud of dark hair flying made the baby laugh. The jump-rope girls laughed, too. Marina didnt mind. She talked a lot with them, and never looked irritated when they giggled and corrected her. She looked pleased, in fact. Lee didnt want her to learn English, but she was learning it anyway. Good for her.
On October 2, 1962, I woke to eerie silence in my Neely Street apartment: no running feet overhead, no young mother yelling at the older two to get ready for school. They had moved out in the middle of the night.
I went upstairs and tried my key on their door. It didnt work, but the lock was of the spring variety and I popped it easily with a coathanger. I spied an empty bookcase in the living room. I drilled a small hole in the floor, plugged in the second bugged lamp, and fed the tapwire through the hole and into my downstairs apartment. Then I moved the bookcase over it.
The bug worked fine, but the reels of the cunning little Japanese tape recorder only turned when prospective tenants came to look at the apartment and happened to try the lamp. There were lookers, but no takers. Until the Oswalds moved in, I had the Neely Street address entirely to myself. After the bumptious carnival that was Mercedes Street, that was a relief, although I kind of missed the jump-rope girls. They were my Greek chorus.
4
I slept in my Dallas apartment at night and watched Marina stroll the baby in Fort Worth by day. While I was so occupied, another sixties watershed moment was approaching, but I ignored it. I was preoccupied with the Oswalds, who were undergoing another domestic spasm.
Lee came home early from work one day during the second week of October. Marina was out walking June. They spoke at the foot of the driveway across the street. Near the end of the conversation, Marina spoke in English. Vut is lay-doff mean?
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He explained in Russian. Marina spread her hands in a what-can-you-do gesture, and hugged him. Lee kissed her cheek, then took the baby out of the stroller. June laughed as he held her high over his head, her hands reaching down to tug at his hair. They went inside together. Happy little family, bearing up under temporary adversity.
That lasted until five in the afternoon. I was getting ready to drive back to Neely Street when I spied Marguerite Oswald approaching from the bus stop on Winscott Road.
Here comes trouble, I thought, and how right I was.
Once again Marguerite avoided the still unrepaired ha-ha step; once more she entered without knocking; fireworks followed immediately. It was a warm evening and the windows were open over there. I didnt bother with the distance mike. Lee and his mother argued at full volume.
He hadnt been laid off from his job at Leslie Welding after all, it seemed; he had just walked away. The boss called Vada Oswald, looking for him because they were shorthanded, and when he got no help from Roberts wife, he called Marguerite.
I lied for you, Lee! Marguerite shouted. I said you had the flu! Why do you always make me lie for you?
I dont make you do nothing! he shouted back. They were standing nose-to-nose in the living room. I dont make you do nothing, and you do it anyway!
Lee, how are you going to support your family? You need a job!
Oh, Ill get a job! Dont you worry about that, Ma!
Where?
I dont know
Oh, Lee! Howll you pay the rent?
but shes got plenty of friends. He jerked a thumb at Marina, who flinched. They arent good for much, but theyll be good for that. You need to get out of here, Ma. Go back home. Let me catch my breath.
Marguerite darted to the playpen. Whered this here come from?
The friends I told you about. Half of ems rich and the rest are trying. They like to talk to Rina. Lee sneered. The older ones like to ogle her tits.
Lee! Shocked voice, but a look on her face that was pleased? Was Mamochka pleased at the fury she heard in her sons voice?
Go on, Ma. Give us some peace.
Does she understand that men who give things always want things in return? Does she, Lee?
Get the hell out! Shaking his fists. Almost dancing in his impotent rage.
Marguerite smiled. Youre upset. Of course you are. Ill come back when youre feeling more in control of yourself. And Ill help. I always want to help.
Then, abruptly, she rushed at Marina and the baby. It was as if she meant to attack them. She covered Junes face with kisses, then strode across the room. At the door, she turned and pointed at the playpen. Tell her to scrub that down, Lee. Peoples cast-offs always have germs. If the baby gets sick, youll never be able to afford the doctor.
Ma! Go!
I am just now. Calm as cookies and milk. She twiddled her fingers in a girlish ta-ta gesture, and off she went.
Marina approached Lee, holding the baby like a shield. They talked. Then they shouted. Family solidarity was gone with the wind; Marguerite had seen to that. Lee took the baby, rocked her in the crook of one arm, thenwith absolutely no warningpunched his wife in the face. Marina went down, bleeding from the mouth and nose and crying loudly. Lee looked at her. The baby was also crying. Lee stroked Junes fine hair, kissed her cheek, rocked her some more. Marina came back into view, struggling to her feet. Lee kicked her in the side and down she went again. I could see nothing but the cloud of her hair.
Leave him, I thought, even though I knew she wouldnt. Take the baby and leave him. Go to George Bouhe. Warm his bed if you have to, but get away from that skinny, mother-ridden monster posthaste.
But it was Lee who left her, at least temporarily. I never saw him on Mercedes Street again.
5
It was their first separation. Lee went to Dallas to look for work. I dont know where he stayed. According to Als notes it was the Y, but that turned out to be wrong. Maybe he found a place in one of the cheap rooming houses downtown. I wasnt concerned. I knew theyd show up together to rent the apartment above me, and for the time being, Id had enough of him. It was a treat not to have to listen to his slowed-down voice saying I know it a dozen times in every conversation.
Thanks to George Bouhe, Marina landed on her feet. Not long after Marguerites visit and Lees decampment, Bouhe and another man arrived in a Chevy truck and moved her out. When the pickup left 2703 Mercedes, mother and daughter were riding in the bed. The pink suitcase Marina had brought from Russia had been lined with blankets, and June lay fast asleep in this makeshift nest. Marina put a steadying hand on the little girls chest as the truck started rolling. The jump-rope girls were watching, and Marina waved to them. They waved back.
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6
I found George de Mohrenschildts address in the Dallas White Pages and followed him several times. I was curious about whom he might meet, although if it were a CIA man, a minion of the Lansky Mob, or some other possible conspirator, I doubt I would have known it. All I can say is that he met no one that seemed suspicious to me. He went to work; he went to the Dallas Country Club, where he played tennis or swam with his wife; they went out to a couple of strip clubs. He didnt bother the dancers, but had a penchant for fondling his wifes boobs and butt in public. She didnt seem to mind.
On two occasions he met with Lee. Once it was at de Mohrenschildts favorite strip club. Lee seemed uncomfortable with the milieu, and they didnt stay long. The second time they had lunch in a Browder Street coffee shop. There they remained until almost two in the afternoon, talking over endless cups of coffee. Lee started to get up, reconsidered, and ordered something else. The waitress brought him a piece of pie, and he handed her something, which she put in her apron pocket after a cursory glance. Instead of following when they left, I approached the waitress and asked if I could see what the young man had given her.
You cn have it, she said, and gave me a sheet of yellow paper with black tabloid letters at the top: HANDS OFF CUBA! It urged interested persons to join the DallasFort Worth branch of this fine organization. DONT LET UNCLE SAM DUPE YOU! WRITE TO PO BOX 1919 FOR DETAILS OF FUTURE MEETINGS.
What did they talk about? I asked.
Are you a cop?
No, I tip better than the cops, I said, and handed her a five-dollar bill.
That stuff, she said, and pointed at the flyer, which Oswald had undoubtedly printed off at his new place of employment. Cuba. Like I give a shit.
But on the night of October twenty-second, less than a week later, President Kennedy was also talking about Cuba. And then everybody gave a shit.
7
Its a blues truism that you never miss your water until the well runs dry, but until the fall of 1962, I didnt realize that also applied to the patter of little feet shaking your ceiling. With the family from upstairs gone, 214 West Neely took on a creepy haunted-house vibe. I missed Sadie, and began to worry about her almost obsessively. On second thought, you can strike the almost. Ellie Dockerty and Deke Simmons didnt take my concern about her husband seriously. Sadie herself didnt take it seriously; for all I knew, she thought I was trying to scare her about John Clayton in order to keep her from pushing me entirely out of her life. None of them knew that, if you removed the Sadie part, her name was only a syllable away from Doris Dunning. None of them knew about the harmonic effect, which I seemed to be creating myself, just by my presence in the Land of Ago. That being the case, who would be to blame if something happened to Sadie?
The bad dreams started to come back. The Jimla dreams.
I quit keeping tabs on George de Mohrenschildt and started taking long walks that began in the afternoon and didnt finish up back at West Neely Street until nine or even ten oclock at night. I spent them thinking about Lee, now working as a photoprint trainee at a Dallas graphic arts company called Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall. Or about Marina, who had taken up temporary residence with a newly divorced woman named Elena Hall. The Hall woman worked for George Bouhes dentist, and it was the dentist who had been behind the wheel of the pickup on the day Marina and June moved out of the dump on Mercedes Street.
Mostly what I thought about was Sadie. And Sadie. And Sadie.
On one of those strolls, feeling thirsty as well as depressed, I stopped into a neighborhood watering hole called the Ivy Room and ordered a beer. The jukebox was off and the patrons were unusually silent. When the waitress put my beer in front of me and immediately turned to face the TV over the bar, I realized that everyone was watching the man I had come to save. He was pale and grave. There were dark circles under his eyes.
To halt this offensive buildup, a strict quarantine of all offensive equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated. All ships of any kind bound for Cuba, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, will be turned back.
Christ Jesus! said a man in a cowboy hat. What does he think the Russkies are goan do about that?
Shut up, Bill, the bartender said. We need to hear this.
It shall be the policy of this nation, Kennedy went on, to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.
A woman at the end of the bar moaned and clutched her stomach. The man beside her put an arm around her, and she put her head on his shoulder.
What I saw on Kennedys face was fright and determination in equal measure. What I also saw was lifea total engagement with the job at hand. He was exactly thirteen months from his date with the assassins bullet.
As a necessary military precaution, I have reinforced our base at Guantánamo and evacuated today the dependents of our personnel there.
Drinks for the house on me, Bill the Cowboy suddenly proclaimed. Because this looks like the end of the road, amigos. He put two twenties beside his shot glass, but the bartender made no move to pick them up. He was watching Kennedy, who was now calling on Chairman Khrushchev to eliminate this clandestine, reckless, and provocative threat to world peace.
The waitress who had served my beer, a rode-hard-and-put-away-wet peroxide blonde of fifty or so, suddenly burst into tears. That decided me. I got off my stool, wove my way around the tables where men and women sat looking at the television like solemn children, and slipped into one of the phone booths next to the Skee-Ball machine.
The operator told me to deposit forty cents for the first three minutes. I dropped in two quarters. The pay phone bonged mellowly. Faintly, I could still hear Kennedy talking in that nasal New England voice. Now he was accusing Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko of being a liar. No waffling there.
Connecting you now, sir, the operator said. Then she blurted: Are you listening to the president? If youre not, you should turn on your TV or radio.
Im listening, I said. Sadie would be, too. Sadie, whose husband had spouted a lot of apocalyptic bullshit thinly coated with science. Sadie, whose Yalie politico friend had told her something big was going to pop in the Caribbean. A flashpoint, probably Cuba.
I had no idea what I was going to say to soothe her, but that wasnt a problem. The phone rang and rang. I didnt like it. Where was she at eight-thirty on a Monday night in Jodie? At the movies? I didnt believe it.
Sir, your party does not answer.
I know it, I said, and grimaced when I heard Lees pet phrase coming out of my mouth.
My quarters clattered into the coin return when I hung up. I started to put them back in, then reconsidered. What good would it do to call Miz Ellie? I was in Miz Ellies bad books now. Dekes too, probably. Theyd tell me to go peddle my papers.
When I walked back to the bar, Walter Cronkite was showing U-2 photos of the Soviet missile bases that were under construction. He said that many members of Congress were urging Kennedy to initiate bombing missions or launch a full-scale invasion immediately. American missile bases and the Strategic Air Command had gone to DEFCON-4 for the first time in history.
American B-52 bombers will soon be circling just outside the Soviet Unions borders, Cronkite was saying in that deep, portentous voice of his. Andthis is obvious to all of us whove covered the last seven years of this ever more frightening cold warthe chances for a mistake, a potentially disastrous mistake, grow with each new escalation of
Dont wait! a man standing by the pool table shouted. Bomb the living shit out of those commie cocksuckers right now!
There were a few cries of protest at this bloodthirsty sentiment, but they were mostly drowned in a wave of applause. I left the Ivy Room and jogged back to Neely Street. When I got there, I jumped into my Sunliner and rolled wheels for Jodie.
8
My car radio, now working again, broadcast nothing but a heaping dish of doom as I chased my headlights down Highway 77. Even the DJs had caught Nuclear Flu, saying things like God bless America and Keep your powder dry. When the K-Life jock played Johnny Horton caterwauling The Battle Hymn of the Republic, I snapped it off. It was too much like the day after 9/11.
I kept the pedal to the metal in spite of the Sunliners increasingly distressed engine and the way the needle on the ENGINE TEMP dial kept creeping toward H. The roads were all but deserted, and I turned into Sadies driveway at just a little past twelve-thirty on the morning of the twenty-third. Her yellow VW Beetle was parked in front of the closed garage doors, and the lights were on downstairs, but there was no answer when I rang the doorbell. I went around back and hammered on the kitchen door, also to no effect. I liked it less and less.
She kept a spare key under the back step. I fished it out and let myself in. The unmistakable aroma of whiskey hit my nose, and the stale smell of cigarettes.
Sadie?
Nothing. I crossed the kitchen to the living room. There was an overflowing ashtray on the low table in front of the couch, and liquid soaking into the Life and Look magazines spread out there. I put my fingers into it, then raised them to my nose. Scotch. Fuck.
Sadie?
Now I could smell something else that I remembered well from Christys binges: the sharp aroma of vomit.
