Chapter 46
November 22, 1963
We have an hour before the flight to Dallas. Walking back to our suite, I hold his arm.
“I couldn’t decide, Jack, between the long gloves or the short gloves, and then once we came outside, Clint explained I was going to a breakfast in a ballroom.”
“Now we’re back, and we can have breakfast.”
“I want to look at the art,” I say. “Did you see what they did in the room—the art they hung for us? They must have stripped their whole museum. I was too tired to really see it last night, then I woke up to Van Gogh, Picasso, and that sculpture of the girl.”
There’s a catalog of the art on the coffee table. Jack flips through it.
“Does it say who put this together?” I ask.
“A Mrs. J. Lee Johnson III. Why don’t we call her?”
“Did you know they were doing this?”
“I know everything.”
I laugh. “How dim of me not to remember.”
“It was in the papers. Kenny saw it and told me.”
“I don’t trust Texas, Jack. Connally—I hate his big soft mouth.”
“You mustn’t use that word.”
“Mouth?”
“Hate.” He looks at me. “Let’s give Mrs. J. Lee Johnson a call.”
“She’s probably a Republican.”
“I’m sure she’s a Republican.”
“Do we have time?”
“Always.”
“If that was true, you wouldn’t need to rush me to get here and there, would you?”
“The faster you get down to things like ballroom breakfasts, the more time you have with me.” He smiles as he says it. It’s not the kind of thing he’d usually say, and he’s only half serious. That’s how he talks around things he cares about—he floats them out in a teasing way, making a joke, testing the air or the heart.
He picks up the phone and asks the operator to help hunt up this Mrs. Johnson III. I study the Van Gogh on the wall. The paint does not seem dry.
“Well, Mrs. Johnson,” Jack says into the receiver, “Mrs. Kennedy would like to express her thanks to you as well. Let me get her for you.”
He holds out the receiver, and I take it.
“That was nice,” I say, hanging up.
“Come to California with me.”
“Is that the next trip?”
“In two weeks.”
There’s a knock on the door.
“Open,” he shouts. He’s still looking at me, waiting for my answer.
“I guess I’ll go anywhere with you, Jack.”
The papers Kenny O’Donnell brings in include The Dallas Morning News turned to a black-bordered full page and a large headline that reads: Welcome Mr. Kennedy to Dallas.
“It isn’t good,” Kenny says. “This either.” He tosses another paper on the table, with a half-page article about how Jack has failed to recognize the needs of the South.
“I was looking forward to the treason leaflets myself,” Jack says. “Got one of those for me?”
Kenny digs into his jacket pocket and tosses one down. I pick it up. Two photographs of Jack—mug-shot style, one face forward, one at profile. Underneath in large type:
Wanted
For
Treason
I skim the numbered list.
Betraying the Constitution
Turning the sovereignty of the U.S. over to the communist controlled United Nations.
WRONG on innumerable issues affecting the security of the U.S.
Farther down:
He has given support and encouragement to the Communist-inspired racial riots…. Aliens and known Communists abound….
I set down the leaflet.
“How can they even think this, let alone print it?”
“Texas,” Kenny says.
“I don’t like it here, Jack,” I say. “They don’t like you at all.”
“They don’t like change,” Jack says. He taps the leaflet. “Keep one to frame.”
12:20 Main Street, Dallas.
Clint Hill jogs alongside the car. Every few blocks, he hops up on the running board to catch his breath, until Jack throws him a look; then Clint hops off and starts jogging again in the street. The sun strikes off the dark waxed surface of the car. We pass the looming stretch of a department store.
One intersection, then another. A turn.
The crowd swells and ebbs. It’s like any other crowd, a tide of faces, waving hands, bunting, loud cheers in the hot white glare of the sun. Behind them, the expressionless blank windows of factory buildings flank the street.
Another turn.
Up ahead, a tract of green where the space opens—trees, blue free sky.
“You can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you, Mr. President,” Nellie Connally says, twisting around in her seat, a wide smile, bright-pink cheeks.
Jack smiles back at her. “No, you can’t.”
An underpass ahead.