—
It was pouring on the day we returned.
The cab from LaGuardia Airport smelled like wet wool and cigarettes, and the sky was gray as soot.
The windows were opaque with droplets of rain, reflecting everyone’s terrible mood.
So little had been said on the flight home.
Oren had sat with Mom, I with Dad.
We both had window seats, and the entire flight Oren was either staring out his or had his face in his book on cars.
He refused to acknowledge me.
It had been thus since I’d beaten him, and I wanted to get on my knees and beg his forgiveness, I felt so much shame at my eruption.
Because it was a good prank, I thought, credit where credit is due, I wanted to tell him that.
Even now, in the cab, as Dad chatted up the driver, a behavior of his that drove us both crazy, Oren sat staring at the wet mess that was Grand Central Parkway.
Back home, Oren immediately left for Matt’s, and Mom and Dad went to their room and shut the door.
When I called Cliffnotes to tell him I was back, he said that he was taking his Intellivision console to Tanner’s house.
Mr.
Potts had just gotten a forty-five-inch TV, and they were going to play Sea Battle on it.
Did I want to come?
On the bus ride across town, we watched the rain.
It was one of those downpours that seemed to have caught people unawares.
Pedestrians ran down the streets with newspapers over their heads.
Others, hatless, walked soaked, disconsolately.
Lightning flashed, strobe-like, a rare event in March.
Thunder clapped.
When we ran into Tanner’s building, Sean the doorman said to us, “Someone shot the president!” He had a small closet off his desk and, on a shelf inside, a tiny black-and-white TV.
“Shot him as in killed him?” Cliff asked.
“Shot as in shot at,” Sean said.
Tanner’s elevator opened onto two apartments, and his parents always left their front door unlocked.
In spite of this, Cliff and I made a point to ring the bell before entering.
Tanner greeted us topless and in a bathing suit, like he’d just gone swimming.
He was as dark as a mug of Ovaltine but his hair, normally brownish blond, was as white as his puka-shell necklace.
“You bleached your hair,” Cliff said.
“Fuck you,” Tanner said.
“It was the sun.”
Cliff was laughing.
“What’d you use, hydrogen peroxide?”
“Lemon juice and beer.”
“And chemicals,” Cliff said.
“Strictly speaking, citric acid and alcohol are chemicals.” Wanting to change the subject, he took in my pink-streaked nose and shook his head.
“I warned you,” he said.
On the Pottses’ new television, Frank Reynolds was reporting live from the ABC newsroom.
He was stiff-backed and wooden in his delivery.
He had a deep voice like my dad’s, but it was absent human feeling and toneless, though he was clearly shaken: … and shots were fired apparently at President Reagan as he was coming out of the Washington Hilton this afternoon.
The president was not hit.
He was pushed into his limousine and immediately taken away to safety.
However, three persons were hit.
We believe they are two Secret Service agents and the president’s press secretary, James Brady.
Tanner said, “How many presidents were assassinated?”
“Kennedy, Lincoln,” I said, “probably more.”
“Yes, probably more, brainiac, but how many?”
“Garfield and McKinley also,” Cliffnotes said.
“How do you remember so much?” Tanner said.
“I don’t shampoo with antiseptic.”
Tanner dead-armed him.
Cliff, pissed, rubbed his shoulder.
“Let’s set up the Intellivision,” Tanner said.
The TV was easily the size of a dresser, the giant screen set in a walnut housing with the speakers hidden behind a black cloth grille at its base.
It had a remote control, really futuristic, even smaller than a Walkman, which Tanner let me hold while he began to slide the TV back from the built-in cabinets.
Cliff asked, “What are the specs on this thing?”
It was the difference between Cliff and Tanner and me that they could talk this sort of tech.
“It’s got a three-tube, three-lens system for super high definition.
You can only see the dots up close.
Check it,” Tanner said.
Cliff and Tanner put their faces right next to the screen.
The static electricity made their hair stand up and adhere to the glass.
“Whoa,” Cliff said.
“Look at all those pixels.”
“Plus four two-way speakers,” Tanner said.
“Crank it up, man.”
Tanner aimed the remote at the screen until the sound blasted.
We now have the videotape.
Reagan is walking out of the Hilton.
Here you see the president coming out now.
We just have to watch.
Reagan waves to his right, smiling.
A Secret Service agent is right behind him and there are police all over.
I don’t know if I can hear this or not.
Reagan turns to his left and, facing the camera, waves again.
Shots are fired.
There, there! Shots…God!
Clap clap clap clap clap clap, and the camera dives to the right, to a pileup, a scrum of Secret Service agents and police against the building’s brick.
Tanner said, “That guy said ‘motherfucker.’ Did you hear him? He said it on TV. ”
The Black Secret Service agent screamed, “Get him out! Get him out!” which I figured meant Reagan.
“Dang!” Cliffnotes said.
“That guy is like G.I. Joe!”
“Check out that Uzi!” Tanner said.
“Do you see the Uzi that guy’s got?”
There was a bald man, facedown, blood pooling at his head.
Behind him, a pair of other men were being tended to.
Then, with much shouting, the scrum hustled the assailant into a squad car.
Then they replayed it from the beginning.
Reagan comes out.
He waves.
This time, I watched one of the Secret Service agents turn, stick out his arms, take a bullet, and then spin to the ground.
We all sat down on Tanner’s couch.
Then they replayed the shooting.
“That one Secret Service guy took a bullet for the president,” Tanner said.
“He just spread his arms and blam, ” Cliff said.
“That’s what I’d do,” Tanner said.
He stood to the side of the screen, spread his arms, winced from the bullet, and then leaped into the air, doubled over, and fell.
“People start shooting and most people freeze,” Cliff said.
“Others start crying.
And others start shitting, literally.
But only a few take a bullet.”
“What makes you such an expert?” Tanner said from where he now lay on the floor.
“That’s what my father said,” Cliff said.
Then they replayed the shooting.
Reynolds said, Mr.
Reagan was not hit, he was bounced around as the Secret Service agents maneuvered or flung I think is probably the right word—flung him into the car.
To get him out of there.
The president then went to George Washington University Hospital, where those who were hit were taken.
They include Jim Brady, who is the president’s press secretary; a Secret Service agent; and a policeman.
We don’t know their condition, but quite obviously as soon as we find out anything…
Tanner’s father walked into the apartment.
He was just back from grocery shopping, still in vacation mode but wearing a blazer beneath his raincoat, the latter dotted with droplets.
“Dad!” Tanner said.
“Someone—”
“Put a shirt on, you little faggot.”
“Someone tried to shoot the president!”
“Hey, Mr.
Potts,” we said.
“Griffin,” said Mr.
Potts.
“Cliff.”
“He hit—”
“Turn down the volume, you’re going to destroy my new speakers.”
“He hit three other people,” Tanner said.
“Go put a shirt on right now or you can kiss your friends goodbye.”
Tanner left the room to put on a shirt.
“You should’ve seen it,” I said to Mr.
Potts.
“One of the Secret Service agents had an Uzi.”
“He said ‘motherfucker’ on TV,” Cliff said.
Mr.
Potts got a big kick out of this.
Tanner came back in wearing a T-shirt.
“One of the Secret Service said ‘motherfucker.’?”
“Watch your language,” Mr.
Potts said, and winked at me.
I said, “The new TV is really awesome, Mr. Potts.”
“Thank you, Griffin,” Mr.
Potts said.
“How about that picture? Tanner, what the hell are you doing?”
Tanner had gone back to sliding the giant unit out from the cabinets.
“I’m setting up Cliff’s Intellivision.”
“You’ll do no such thing.”
“What’s the point of having a nice TV if we can’t play video games on it?”
“Keep it on the news, this is important.”
Mrs.
Potts walked in.
She was wearing pearls and black heels; her tan raincoat was also beaded and her cheeks were flushed.
“I heard someone shot the president,” she said.
“No one shot the president, Sharon.
He missed.”
“I said they shot him,” she said, “not hit him.” The Pottses had sudden spats like this all the time, though now Mrs.
Potts doubted herself.
“At least that was what Sean said downstairs.”
Sam Donaldson had joined Frank Reynolds.
He had a phone next to him, and all the cubed lights on it were flashing.
He picked up the receiver, placed it to his ear, hung it up.
I said, “Sam Donaldson sort of looks like Martin Landau from Space: 1999. ”
Mr.
Potts chuckled at this.
“He does, doesn’t he?”
“Hey, Mrs.
Potts,” I said, “you kind of look like Barbara Bain.”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“He’s right,” Mr.
Potts said, “but you’re prettier.”
“Is that an apology or a compliment?”
“It’s both,” said Mr. Potts.
Lyn Nofziger has told reporters at the hospital that the president was not wounded…
Mr.Potts said, “Griffin, is your dad the voice on that Schlitz commercial? With the guy from Get Smart ?”
“No one does it like the bull,” I said.
“Bet he made a lot of shekels on that.”
“Ay caramba,” Cliff muttered.
Off camera, another reporter spoke to Frank Reynolds, after which Reynolds’s shoulders slumped.
He was wounded!
“Turn it up, please,” Mr.Potts said.
My God…he was…the president was hit…he is in stable condition.
All this information— The pages Reynolds was holding in his hands shook.
The president was hit.
He was hit in the left chest.
According to this…
“Can you hear that?” Mrs.Potts said.
“Hear what?” Tanner said.
“Exactly,” she said, and nodded at the screen.
“All the typing in the newsroom has stopped.”
She was right.
Off camera and off mic, someone in the newsroom said to Donaldson and Reynolds, One shot.
Stable condition.
Reynolds, furious, pointed at the reporter off camera. Speak up!
The reporter repeated himself.
Reynolds said, The president was hit…One…My God…The president was hit…All this that we’ve been telling you is incorrect.
He took a long beat to gather himself.
We now must…redraw this entire tragedy in different terms.
Softly, Mrs.Potts said to her husband, “Drink?”
“Thank you,” he said, his voiced lowered too.
“Martini, please.”
“Good idea,” Mrs.Potts said.
Before she could walk away, Mr.
Potts gently took her elbow, pulled her to him, and, keeping his eyes on the television, kissed her half on the mouth.
She half-kissed him back.
Now we have been told—ABC News has been told by a doctor at the hospital—that one lung of the president has partially collapsed.
Over Reynolds speaking, the image crosscut to the shooting, but this time in slow motion.
Now that I’d seen it so many times, there were several things I noticed that I hadn’t before.
An old man, a bystander, in a red cardigan, leaned into the scrum as they subdued the shooter, helping the Secret Service agents pin him against the hotel’s decorative stone wall.
The blood around James Brady’s head was diffused at its edges by the rain.
In slow motion you could see the agent who took the bullet raise his eyebrow in the millisecond before impact, the muscle twitching first at the shot’s sound, and who did, upon being struck, something like a scissor kick as he leaped in the air, as if the momentary separation from the planet allowed the bullet’s force to pass through him.
The cop in front of him, who, even with bullets flying, pinched the brim of his hat with both hands so that it would not fall off.
And there was a roughhouse quality that approximated care as the agents formed a testudo around the shooter and hustled to a nearby police car.
Which was to say that every time they showed the event, I realized that in several seconds so many things occurred you could spend a lifetime trying to understand just how everything converges on the now.
And I reflected that men like John Wilkes Booth, Mark David Chapman, and this unnamed shooter were entirely committed to the role they’d decided to play.
It was the unspoken aspect of what Elliott had observed in Gramercy Park.
I’m going to give you the name of this, uh, man that has been reported to us as the assailant, simply because everyone else has been reporting his name.
He is John W.Hinckley Jr. That is the report we have.
John W.Hinckley Jr.
And it is understood that he is from Evergreen, Colorado…
Without a shred of self-consciousness, with no space between the mask and your face, you enter history.