Libra

  He stood at the side of the bed in his pajamas. He’d forgotten to register the fact that the oven was off. He would have to go back downstairs to check the oven. Mary Frances lay in the dark, already sleep-breathing, deep and even. He has to see that the oven is off and he has to register the fact. This means they are safe for another night.

  Mackey stood by the refrigerator drinking water from a pitcher. He wore-a sweatsuit and baseball cap. He’d taken to running at night to keep his weight down.

  He took off the cap and blew into it. Then he sat at the kitchen table and peeled an orange. The house was at the end of an unfinished street about half a mile from the heart of Little Havana.

  Raymo walked in. He said, “When did you get back?”

  “This afternoon.”

  “Did you hear there’s word going around? Somebody in Chicago’s planning the same thing.”

  “Banister called. He got a look at an FBI teletype. An attempt on the life.”

  “Four-man team. At least one of them might be Cuban. JFK’s supposed to be in Chicago like November second.”

  “We have to wait our turn.”

  “If word leaks out there, same thing could happen to us.”

  “I’m counting on it,” T-Jay said. “In fact I’m taking steps to make it happen. It’s the only way we’ll succeed. We’re going in quick and tight. You keep it quiet. You don’t tell Frank or Wayne.”

  “Forget Miami.”

  “That’s right. ”

  “Then we don’t bring Leon here.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He took a Transportes del Norte bus to Laredo. I’m betting he took a Greyhound from there to Dallas. Main thing is the Cubans didn’t take him. No visa for Leon. It’s beginning to take shape. Small, spur-of-the-moment, that’s what we want. An everyday Texas homicide.”

  “JFK.”

  “Goes to Dallas next month. The man’s a serious traveler. And wherever he goes, somebody wants a piece of him. Deep sweats of desire and rage. I don’t know what it is. Maybe he’s just too pretty to live.”

  He detached a couple of wedges from the orange and handed them to Raymo.

  “Somebody keeps an eye on Leon.”

  “I think Leon will be hiding from us,” T-Jay said. “He knows what we’re up to and he doesn’t necessarily approve. For the time being, we have our own model Oswald. Alpha is running people up and down the state. Eventually we’ll have to pinpoint the original.”

  “When we took him to Houston he doesn’t say ten words to me. He only talked to Frank.”

  “What did he say to Frank?”

  “He got after Frank right away. He wanted some Spanish les- sons.

  Suzanne sat up in bed in the dark. She knew they were asleep. Once the radio hum withdrew from the wall by her ear, all she had to do was count to a hundred. Both sound asleep. If she was going to move the Little Figures, now was the time. She needed a safer hiding place. The closet had so much junk they would clean it any day and the Little Figures were hidden in one of the pockets on the shoe bag that hung inside the door. Once they found the Little Figures, that was the end of Suzanne. She would have no protection left in the world.

  Lucky she had a good new place to keep them safe.

  She got out of bed and raised the shade halfway, letting in light from the streetlamp. Then she moved softly in her nightgown that touched the floor. She took the Little Figures out of the shoe bag and sat them down on the narrow ledge behind the old bureau that used to belong to Grandma. The ledge stuck out about an inch near the bottom of the bureau. Hers was the only hand that could fit between the bureau and the wall. That was the perfect place because the Figures were already seated so they balanced just right. They were a clay man and a clay woman that her best friend, Missy, had given her as, a birthday present. They were Indians who dwelt in pueblos and their hair and their clothes were painted black, with little black dots for the eyes and mouth.

  She got back into bed and pulled the covers up.

  The Little Figures were not toys. She never played with them. The whole reason for the Figures was to hide them until the time when she might need them. She had to keep them near and safe in case the people who called themselves her mother and father were really somebody else.

  In Dallas

  Four women sat around the table in Mrs. Ed Roberts’s kitchen, drinking coffee and passing the time of day. A basket of folded laundry rested on the counter. Ruth Paine gestured again, calling for a pause. They all waited. Then she spoke softly in her halting Russian to Marina Oswald, who listened and smiled, a finger curled through the handle of her cup. The talk was kids, husbands, doctors, the usual yakkety-yak, but Ruth found it interesting. A chance to speak Russian. Mrs. Bill Randle, sitting next to her, nodded periodically as she translated. And Dorothy Roberts studied Marina’s face to see that she was getting it. They wanted her to feel she was part of things.

  The kids made a racket in the next room. Ruth Paine told her two neighbors that Marina’s husband was having no luck finding work. He was living in a rooming house in Oak Cliff until he could find a job and an apartment for his family. Marina was due any day, of course.

  Dorothy Roberts mentioned Manor Bakeries. They had a home-delivery service. Then there was Texas Gypsum, where somebody said they were hiring.

  Ruth Paine said Marina’s husband didn’t drive, so that cut down the prospects.

  Mrs. Bill Randle, Linnie Mae, said maybe she would have a piece of that coffee cake after all. It looked real good.

  Dorothy Roberts said, “Is it warm for October or is it just me?”

  A van door slammed across the street.

  Then Linnie Mae Randle mentioned her brother. How he was saying the other day he thought they needed another fellow at the book warehouse where he worked, on the edge of downtown Dallas.

  Ruth translated for Marina.

  One of the little girls came in, wetting her finger to pick crumbs off the tabletop.

  Dorothy opened the door to the carport.

  “Out on Elm Street,” Linnie Mae said. “Near Stemmons Freeway.”

  Five minutes later Ruth and Marina and June Lee and Ruth’s small children, Sylvia and Chris, cut across the lawn to the Paine residence next door, a modest ranch house with an attached garage. Ruth turned at the door and watched Marina coming along slowly, vast, wide, ferrying one more soul across the darkness and into the world, or into suburban Dallas. The Oswald family was catching up to the Paines. Not that Ruth minded. She didn’t even mind having Lee come out to visit once a week. She was separated from her husband and it was nice, actually, having a man to do certain jobs around the house.

  Inside, Marina asked Ruth if she would telephone. Ruth looked in the phone directory for Texas School Book Depository. She talked to a man named Roy Truly about a job for a young veteran of the armed forces whose wife is expecting a child, and they already have a little girl, and he has been out of work for a while, and is desirous of employment, and is willing to work part-time or full-time, and is there a possibility of an opening?

  Marina stood nearby, waiting for Ruth to translate.

  It was a seven-story brick building with a Hertz sign on the roof. Lee was an order-filler. He picked up orders from the chute on the first floor and fixed them to his clipboard. Then he went up to six, usually, to find the books. Most of the order-fillers were Negroes. They had elevator races in the afternoon. Gates slamming, voices echoing down the shaft, laughter, name-calling. He took the books down to the girls on one, to the wrapping bench, where the merchandise was checked and shipped.

  All these books. Books stacked ten cartons high. Cartons stamped Books. Stamped Ten Rolling Readers. Stacked higher than the tall windows. The cartons are a size you have to wrestle. When you open a fresh carton you get the fragrance of paper, of book pages and binding. It floods you with memories of school.

  He liked carrying a clipboard. The clipboard made him feel this was a hal
f-decent way to earn a dollar. He didn’t have to listen to crazy-ass machines. There was no dirt or grease on the job. Just dust rising when the men ran to the elevators in the afternoon, three or four men pounding across the old wood floors to begin the race down—sunny dust forming among the books.

  Lee sat in the dining room at the Paine house, wondering where the women had sneaked off to. Then Marina and Ruth walked in carrying a cake and singing “Happy Birthday.” He was taken by surprise. It was a shock. He laughed and cried. Twenty-four.

  He stayed over that night, a Friday, and the next evening he sat on the floor watching a double feature on TV, with Marina curled up next to him, her head in his lap.

  The first movie was Suddenly. Frank Sinatra is a combat veteran who comes to a small town and takes over a house that overlooks the railroad depot. He is here to assassinate the President. Lee felt a stillness around him. He had an eerie sense he was being watched for his reaction. The President is scheduled to arrive by train later in the day. He is going fishing in a river in the mountains. Lee could tell the movie was made in the fifties from the cars and hairstyles, which meant the President was Eisenhower, although no one said his name. He felt connected to the events on the screen. It was like secret instructions entering the network of signals and broadcast bands, the whole busy air of transmission. Marina was asleep. They were running a message through the night into his skin. Frank Sinatra sets up a high-powered rifle in the window and waits for the train to arrive. Lee knew he would fail. It was, in the end, a movie. They had to fix it so he failed and died.

  Then he watched We Were Strangers. John Garfield is an American revolutionary in Cuba in the 1930s. He plots to assassinate the dictator and blow up his entire Cabinet. Lee knew this was the period of the iron rule of Machado, known as the President of a Thousand Murders. The streets were dark. The house was dark except for the flickering screen. An old scratchy film that carried his dreams. Perfection of rage, perfection of control, the fantasy of night. John Garfield and his recruits dig a tunnel under a cemetery. Lee felt he was in the middle of his own movie. They were running this thing just for him. He didn’t have to make. the picture come and go. It happened on its own in the shaky light, with a strand of hair trembling in a corner of the frame. John Garfield dies a hero. He has to die. This is what feeds a revolution.

  Lee sat there after the movie ended, with loud late-night commercials coming one after another, fast-talking men demonstrating blenders, demonstrating miracle shampoo, and Marina next to him, asleep, softly breathing.

  It wasn’t only the movies that made him feel a strangeness in the air. It was the time of year. October was his birthday. It was the month he enlisted in the Marines. He shot himself in the arm, in Japan, in October. October and November were times of decision and grave event. He arrived in Russia in October. It was the month he tried to kill himself. He’d last seen his mother one year ago October. October was the missile crisis. Marina left him and returned last November. November was the month he’d decided with Dupard to take a shot at General Walker. He’d last seen his brother Robert in November.

  Brothers named Robert.

  He got Marina settled in bed, then sat next to her and murmured serious baby talk to help her fall asleep again. He felt the power of her stillness, a woman’s ardor and trust, and of the child she carried. He would start saving right away for a washing machine and car. They’d get an apartment with a balcony, their own furniture for a change, modern pieces, sleek and clean. These are standard ways to stop being lonely.

  The landlady let him keep a jar of preserves and some milk in a comer of the fridge. He sat with the other roomers about half an hour a week, watching TV was all. He never spoke to them or raised his eyes to see them clearly. They were gray figures in old chairs, total nobodies. He was registered as O. H. Lee.

  The rooming house was in an area of Oak Cliff that he knew well. The Gulf station where he’d rendezvoused with Dupard was across the street. The speed wash, now called Reno’s, was half a block away. He went into the speed wash but Bobby didn’t work there anymore. The place in daylight was home turf to half a dozen women and their scruffy kids. The children ate and played. The Coke machines sent bottles clunking into the slot.

  His room was eight by twelve. Bed, dresser, clothes closet. He spent hours there reading the Militant and the Worker. One night he took the 22 bus back downtown. He walked the streets, looking into bars. He walked all the way down South Akard and stood outside Gene’s Music Bar. Two men brushed past him, entering, and he followed them in. He stood near the door. The place was crowded. There were hard benches along the walls, rough-hewn benches. He could easily clear the room with an AR-15, which is what they use to guard the President, firing full auto. The idea was to stand here as long as he could without being noticed, just to watch, to see how queers work out their arrangements.

  Somebody said, “It’s none of my business but . ”

  He tried to pick out a person he might want to talk to, an understanding type. He drew some glances, then straight-out looks. It was either go to the bar and order something or walk out the door. He decided this was a visit just to see. He could come back with a surer sense of things, not feeling so watchful and odd. Hidell means don’t tell. He went out into the cool air, where he realized he was sweating. When he got to the rooming house he read every word of the week-old Militant. He also read between the lines. You can tell when they want you to do something on behalf of the struggle. They run a message buried in the text.

  Three days after Rachel was born he went to a rally at Memorial Auditorium. The main speaker was Edwin A. Walker. Lee stood at the rear of the hall, watching people come in. The secret he carried with him made him feel untouchable. He was the one, the man who’d fired the shot that barely missed. It was a secret and a power. And he was standing right here, among them, among the Birchers and States Righters, wearing his . 38 under a zipper jacket.

  Crowd of about a thousand. Walker stood up there in his tall Stetson and moaned and groaned about the United Nations. Clap clap. The UN was an active element in the worldwide communist conspiracy. Clap clap. Lee slipped into a seat about midway down the aisle. He felt the smallness and rancor of these people. They needed to knock someone to the ground and stomp him for fifteen minutes. Feel better now? Walker went on about something called the Real Control Apparatus. He spoke in a clumsy way that engaged nothing, compelled nothing. There was a Lone Star standard on one side of him, a Confederate flag on the other. Lee moved farther down the aisle, stooped over so he wouldn’t block anyone’s view, and found a seat near the stage. Walker was a tired man. His face was like some actor’s made up to show fatigue and aging. Lee saw a picture of a bright-red splotch on Walker’s shirtfront just below the heart.

  Outside the hall people crowded around the general, trying to touch him, show him their faces. He moved slowly to a waiting car. Lee pushed through the crowd. People thrust their faces into Walker’s line of sight. They called to him and reached across bodies. Lee caught the general’s eye and smiled as if to say, Bet you don’t know who I am. Untouchable. He had his hand inside the jacket, gripping the stock of the .38, just to do it, to get this close and show how simple, how strangely easy it is to make your existence felt. He saw a picture of the crowd breaking apart, crying out as they scattered, No, no, no, and Walker on the pavement, hatless now, a front-page photo in the Morning News.

  He took the bus to his rooming house. He sat on the bed, holding the revolver. Shooting Walker was a dead-end now. He had no means to get to Cuba. They probably wouldn’t take him even if he shot the man and managed to escape. History was closed to Edwin Walker. He put the gun in a dresser drawer. He went to the kitchen and drank some milk, standing in the dark.

  What would he have to give Fidel before they let him live happily in little Cuba?

  He sat at the wheel of Ruth Paine’s station wagon. Dust blew across the gravel surface of the huge parking lot. It was Sunday and the lot was empty. br />
  Ruth Paine was tall and slender, a long-jawed woman in her thirties with wavy doll’s hair and librarian’s glasses. She turned in her seat, looking straight back.

  “Slow, slow, slow,” she said. “Take it very slow.”

  He went in reverse for thirty yards, then hit the brake too hard, jolting them both. They sat looking out at the windswept lot.

  “Did you tell him where I live?”

  “I don’t know where you live,” she said. “It wasn’t until he asked that I realized I didn’t know. Even Marina doesn’t know. Put it in forward and we’ll do some turns.”

  “Did he say how he found you? How he knew Marina is staying with you?”

  “He seemed a very reasonable man. I don’t think he’ll cause you any trouble at work. He said he wouldn’t do that and I believe him.”

  “He knows where I work?”

  “I told him. I didn’t see what else I could do. They’re the government, Lee.”

  He stared through the windshield.

  “Put it in forward. Drive toward that litter basket. Then make a left around it.”

  He remembered now. He’d left a forwarding address at the post office in New Orleans before he went to Mexico City. Ruth Paine’s address. But why are they looking for him? Because they know he visited the Soviet and Cuban embassies. They have him on film. They have recordings of his voice. What is it called, electronic eavesdropping?

  “Ease up on the accelerator,” Ruth said.

  A broadsheet was fastened around the litter basket. THE VATICAN IS THE WHORE OF REVELATION. He made the turn nicely and straightened out.

  “He wanted to know about anyone visiting or calling. I told him your social contact at the Paine house consisted mainly of dialing the number that says what time it is. He thought that was fairly funny.”