Landslide (eBook)

HHH

Stories

November 23, 1963

At the beginning, the worst part is the uncertainty. Later, after the mourning dignitaries have come and gone, after the black crape has been taken down from the chandeliers and the funeral geldings have been put out to pasture, people will remember this weekend as a time of great sadness. For years and then decades, they'll look back and remember their sorrow. They'll say they knew, instantly, that life would never be the same again. But that will be memory doing memory's ruthless work, obliterating any discordant details, imposing order where once there was none. In these first hours, there is sadness, but mostly there is chaos and the dreadful unknown: What has happened to America? And what is going to happen next?

So everyone turns on their television sets, hoping to find out. On NBC's Today show, the clocks on a wall are comfortingly definitive. On the East Coast, it is just after seven o'clock in the morning. The date is November 23, 1963. Millions of Americans are waking up after a night of troubled sleep. Watching the program, they see the host's face contort in sudden pain as he speaks the words:

'The president of the United States is dead.'

Ah, yes, that is certain, too.

By now there are agreed-upon facts: At lunchtime the previous day, President John F. Kennedy, on a political trip to Texas, rode in an open limousine toward the center of Dallas. At 12:30 Central Time, shots struck his motorcade as it moved through the city's Dealey Plaza. By 12:45 p.m., CBS, NBC, and ABC had interrupted their programming to bring word of the shooting. At 1:35 p.m., the network Teletypes carried a wire from UPI: 'Flash: President Kennedy Dead.' Now, nearly eighteen hours after the shooting, it is impossible to find an American who does not already know the news the host has just delivered--that the president of the United States is dead.

Still, he says it. It is the first line in a script he must read, timed to a movie montage with carefully selected background music. It is the starting point of an elaborate story he is about to tell, the summary of what is known.

He goes on:

'The body of John Fitzgerald Kennedy is at this moment in the White House. And it is a much saddened nation and world that greets this day . . .'

The screen switches to scenes from the day. There is the dead president at Dallas's Love Field, very much alive, gracefully descending from Air Force One. And there is his beautiful wife, Jacqueline, wearing a pink suit and a pillbox hat, brushing the hair out of her face. He smiles and nods at local dignitaries on the tarmac. She clutches a bouquet of red roses to her breast. They climb into an open-topped limousine.

'At about 12:30 the motorcade turned the corner and approached the triple underpass feeding the Stemons expressway . . .'

The smiling Kennedys turn a corner and disappear from view.

'. . . and then three shots rang out in quick succession and the pleasant day turned into a nightmare of confusion and horror.'

The camera jolts and drops to the ground. The narration goes silent and the music is gone.

'The president died at about one p.m. . . . Meanwhile Dallas police had captured twenty-four-year-old Lee Oswald, an acknowledged left-wing supporter of Fidel Castro . . .'

'He was later charged with the murder of the president . . . he has thus far admitted nothing.'

Then a quick cut. Now, onscreen, we see a blurry shot of two large airplane tails, parked on a runway, behind a high fence.

'Vice President Lyndon Johnson recited the oath of office and assumed the presidency . . .'

But we do not...