Lee’s shoulders slumped and he stood aside. Jeanne marched up the steps, not even sparing him a glance. But de Mohrenschildt stopped and enveloped Lee, who was now painfully thin, in a powerful embrace. After a moment or two, Oswald hugged him back. I realized (with a mixture of pity and revulsion) that the boy-that was all he was, really-had begun weeping.
“What are they,” the young man with the bike asked, “couple of queers?”
“They’re queer, all right,” I said. “Just not the way you mean.”
Later that month, I returned from one of my weekends with Sadie to discover Marina and June back in residence at the shithole on Elsbeth Street. For a little while, the family seemed at peace. Lee went to work-now creating photographic enlargements instead of aluminum screen doors-and came home, sometimes with flowers. Marina greeted him with kisses. Once she showed him the front lawn, where she had picked up all the garbage, and he applauded her. That made her laugh, and when she did, I saw that her teeth had been fixed. I don’t know how much George Bouhe had to do with that, but my guess is plenty.
I watched this scene from the corner, and was once more startled by the rusty voice of the old lady with the walker. “It won’t last, you know.”
“You could be right,” I said.
“He’s probably goan kill her. I seen it before.” Below her electric hair, her eyes surveyed me with cold contempt. “And you won’t step in to do nothing, will you, Sonny Biscuit?”
“I will,” I told her. “If things get bad enough, I will step in.”
That was a promise I meant to keep, although not on Marina’s behalf.
The day after Sadie’s Boxing Day dinner, there was a note from Oswald in my mailbox, although it was signed A. Hidell. This alias was in Al’s notes. The A stood for Alek, Marina’s pet name for him during their Minsk days.
The communication didn’t disturb me, since everyone on the street seemed to have gotten one just like it. The flyers had been printed on hot-pink paper (probably filched from Oswald’s current place of employment), and I saw a dozen or more flapping up the gutters. The residents of Dallas’s Oak Cliff neighborhood were not known for putting litter in its place.
PROTEST CHANNEL 9 FASCISM! HOME OF SEGREGATIONIST BILLY JAMES HARGIS! PROTEST FASCIST EX-GENERAL EDWIN WALKER!
During the Thursday night telemcast of the Billy James Hargis so-called “Cristian Crusade,” Channel 9 will give are-time to GENERAL EDWIN WALKER, a right-wing fascist who has encouraged JFK to invade the peaceful peoples of Cuba and who has formented anti-black, anti-integration “HATE-SPEAK” all over the south. (If you have doubts about the accuracy of this information, check the “TV Guide.”) These two men stand for everythig we fouht against in WWII, and their Fascist RAVINGS have no place on the are-waves. EDWIN WALKER was one of the WHITE SUPREMACISTS who tried to bar JAMES MERDITH from attending “OLE MISS.” If you love America, protest the free are-time given to men who pretch HATE and VIOLENCE. Write a letter! Better still, come to Channel 9 on Dec. 27 and “sit in!”
A. Hidell
President of Hands Off Cuba
Dallas-Fort Worth Branch
I briefly pondered the misspellings, then folded the flyer and put it in the box where I kept my manuscripts.
If there was a protest at the station, it wasn’t reported in the Slimes Herald the day after the Hargis-Walker “telemcast.” I doubt that anyone turned up, including Lee himself. I certainly didn’t, but I tuned in to Channel 9 on Thursday night, anxious to see the man Lee-probably Lee-was soon going to try to kill.
At first it was just Hargis, sitting behind an office-set desk and pretending to scribble important notes while a canned choir sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” He was a fattish fellow with a lot of plastered-back black hair. As the choir faded out, he put down his pen, looked into the camera, and said: “Welcome to the Christian Crusade, neighbors. I come with good news- Jesus loves you. Yes he does, every last one of you. Won’t you join me in prayer?”
Hargis bent the Almighty’s ear for at least ten minutes. He covered the usual stuff, thanking God for the chance to spread the gospel and instructing Him to bless those who’d sent in love-offerings. Then he got down to business, asking God to arm His Chosen People with the sword and buckler of righteousness so we could defeat communism, which had reared its ugly head just ninety miles off the shores of Florida. He asked God to grant President Kennedy the wisdom (which Hargis, being closer to the Big Guy, already possessed) to go in there and root out the tares of godlessness. He also demanded that God put an end to the growing communist threat on American college campuses-folk music seemed to have something to do with it, but Hargis kind of lost the thread on that part. He finished by thanking God for his guest tonight, the hero of Anzio and the Chosin Reservoir, General Edwin A. Walker.
