Chapter 43
Rockefeller’s the one he worries about. Goldwater he can beat. The Arizonian might be quick, but he’s too extreme to be a threat in the campaign. Rockefeller, though, is a centrist. That mystique of old American money. In early November, five days after the coup in Vietnam, Rockefeller announced his candidacy, slamming Jack’s “failures at home and abroad” and citing aNewsweek poll that named him “the most widely disliked Democratic president of this century among white Southerners.”
Jack called Bobby, told him to start booking strategy meetings for the reelection campaign. “Let’s hit the ground running, knock Rockefeller’s feet out from under him before he gets in this race.”
Saturday at the house in Virginia, Jack sits on the patio, talking with Ben Bradlee about Texas, how Connally’s at it with Senator Yarborough, how even Johnson’s lost the power to mend that feud. The mood in Dallas is ugly.
Clipper is at Jackie’s feet. Her hand strokes the dog’s head. She’d been talking to Tony, but now she’s looking out toward the land. Thinking about the horses, he’d bet.
She taps her cigarette into the ashtray.I’ll finish this one—that’s what she’s thinking—then tell them I just need to walk down, check on Sardar. I’ll slip in a quick ride.
He can read it in her face.
She turns and smiles at him then—a pure bold strength in her smile, beautiful but with a new look, removed.
She’s been different since Greece, or maybe since Patrick. Different.
She draws in on the cigarette, turns away and exhales.
“Come on,” he says, standing up. “Before you leave me for your horse, let’s take a walk.” He brushes off his pants and starts down the steps to the stone path, the green lawn flung on either side. The children fly across the yard, running to catch up. John saunters ahead. Caroline slips her hand into her father’s, little fingers weaving through his.
The world is a cage of light, tenuous and sheer, hills rolling away beyond.
Jackie’s right, he thinks. This will be a good home for a while.
They’ve begun to talk about “after.” After his first term ends. After he runs for another and, assuming he wins, after four more years, which will pass in a week like a dream.
He wants to write. He knows that for sure. He wants to get back to who he was before his brother Joe was killed and this work fell to him. He wants to pick up those older threads and start new. There’s so much, though, to do before then. The poverty initiative, the space program, the civil-rights bill. And, next up, the trip to Dallas to smooth the rift that bill has ostensibly caused.
That rift was always there. The country was built on that kind of hatred. Built on slave labor and the racist American violence that runs through the nation like veins. No one likes to admit that, but it’s true.
So just do it. Get through the 88th Congress. Get that bill out of the House Judiciary and passed. The tax bill, too, which is stuck in Ways and Means. Get that work done, effect what change you can in the years you have left. Get things on the rails and have some fun along the way.
Enjoy yourself. It’s later than you think.
That old Guy Lombardo song.
She is walking next to him, her long legs keeping stride with his, and as they cross the lawn under that free November sky, an unfamiliar feeling sweeps through him, something sweet and brutal and sad. Not pleasure. He’d recognize that. This is different, clear and strange.
Happiness. Would that be the word? For this moment, this walk, this life, the echoing sound of his footsteps on the stone under the trees, the shade and the cool autumn air. John is singing some tuneless song he’s made up, and the four of them are just walking, listening for birds, or a pattern in the rustle of leaves, or silence, Caroline clutching his hand. He can feel the moist beating warmth of her palm pressed hard to his. His back hurts, his shoulder hurts, and none of that matters; the pain seems almost irrelevant against the looming depth of this new feeling, the ache that comes with this kind of happiness.
The spaniel bolts across the path, Clipper in pursuit, and the children run after the dogs, the breeze ransacking their hair, and it strikes him that life has never felt as close as this. She is telling him quietly that she’s going to peel off soon, walk down to the stables, and, if he doesn’t mind, she’d like to take a short ride. Sure, he says, and they keep walking. The light is sharp. Blades of liquid silver on the leaves.
Thursday, November 21.
On his desk, a stack of newspapers and an updated schedule for the next few days: ten hours on the ground, three major cities, five motorcades.
1:30 pm Arrive San Antonio
1:40 pm Motorcade through city
2:25pm Arrive Brooks AFB to dedicate Aero Space Medical Health Center
3:30pm Depart for Houston
4:15 pm Arrive Houston
5:00 pm Arrive Rice Hotel
8:20 pm Drop by reception of Latin American Citizens in hotel
8:35 pm Depart Hotel for Coliseum dinner
He skims halfway down the page to the second day, November 22.
11:35 amArrive Dallas Love Field
2:35 pm Depart Love Field for Austin
I’m going to need an hour rest somewhere is what he’s thinking when Evelyn Lincoln appears in the doorway.
“Ambitious schedule, Mrs. Lincoln.”
“Time to go, Mr. President.”
He’s told Jackie to pack her hats. Unless there’s rain, the cars will be open.
“What about a bubbletop?” Pam Turnure had asked.
“Hats,” he repeated.
The conversation ended there.
Two days ago, before Salinger left for Japan, Jack said to him, almost in passing, “I wish I weren’t going to Texas.”
Stepping out of his office into the hall, he hears the sound of shredded air as the helicopter nears.
John cries as they are leaving, clutching his father’s leg.
“I want to come,” John sobs. Jackie kneels beside him.
“Just a few days, darling,” she says. “When we get back, it will be your birthday, and we’ll have a big party.”
John reaches up then; Jack lifts him and, for a moment, buries his face into that sweet boy smell.
“Take care of him, Agent Foster,” he says.
“Yes, sir, Mr. President.”
Jack turns away. Since Patrick, it’s sandpaper on skin now—every leaving.