Timescape

CHAPTER FORTY FOUR

GORDON WROTE OUT THE EQUATION IN FULL BEFORE commenting on it. The yellow chalk squeaked. “So we see that if we integrate Maxwell’s equations over the volume, the flux—”

Movement at the back of the class caught his eye. He turned. A secretary from the department waved a hand hesitantly at him. “Yes?”

“Dr. Bernstein I hate to interrupt but we’ve just heard on the radio that the President has been shot.” She said it in one long gasp. There was an answering rustle from the class. “I thought… you would want to know,” she finished lamely.

Gordon stood unmoving. Speculations raced through his mind. Then he remembered where he was and firmly put them aside. There was a lecture to finish. “Very well. Thank you.” He studied the upturned faces of the class. “I think, in view of how much more material there is to cover in this semester… Until something more is known, we should go on.”

One of the twins said abruptly, “Where was he?”

The secretary answered meekly, “In Dallas.”

“I hope somebody gets Goldwater, then,” the twin said with sudden vehemence.

“Quiet, quiet,” Gordon said mildly “There is nothing we can do here, right? I propose to continue.”

With that he returned to the equation. He got through most of the introductory discussion of the Poynting vector, ignoring the buzz of whispers at his back. He fell into the rhythm of the discussion. His stabs with the chalk made their clicking points, one by one. The equations unfolded their beauties. He conjured up electromagnetic waves and endowed them with momentum. He spoke of imaginary mathematical boxes brimming with light, their flux kept in precise balance by the unseen power of partial differentials.

Another stirring at the back of the room. Several students were leaving. Gordon put down his chalk. “I suppose you can’t concentrate under the circumstances,” he conceded. “We’ll take it up next time.”

One of the twins got up to leave and said to the other, “Lyndon Johnson. Jesus, we might end up with him.”

Gordon made his way down to his office and put away his lecture notes. He was tired, but he supposed he should go hunt up a TV and watch. The last week had been a madhouse of interviews, challenges by other physicists, and an astonishing amount of attention from the networks. He was thoroughly weary of the whole process.

He remembered that the student center down by Scripps beach had a TV. The drive down in his Chevy took only moments. There seemed to be few people on the streets.

Students were ranked three deep around the set. As Gordon came in and stood at the back Walter Cronkite was saying, “I repeat, there is still no definite word from Parkland Memorial Hospital about the President. A priest who just left the operating room was heard to have said that the President was dying. However, that’ is not an official announcement. The priest did acknowledge that the last rites have been administered to the President.”

Gordon asked a student next to him, “What happened?”

“Some guy shot him from a school book building, they said.”

Cronkite accepted a piece of paper from off camera. “Governor John Connally is undergoing treatment in the operating room next to the President. The doctors working on the governor have said only that he is in serious condition. Meanwhile, Vice President Johnson is known to be in the hospital. He is apparently waiting in a small room down the corridor from where the President lies. The Secret Service has the area completely surrounded, with the help of the Dallas Police.”

Gordon noticed several of the students from his class gathered nearby. The recreation room was packed now. The crowd was absolutely still as Cronkite paused, listening to a small headset which he pressed to his ear. Through the glass sliding doors which led out onto a wooden porch Gordon could see the waves breaking into white and sliding up the beach. Outside, the world went on with its unending rhythm. In this small pocket, a flickering color screen held sway.

Cronkite glanced off camera and then back. “The Dallas police have just released the name of the man they suspect of the shooting. His name is Lee Oswald. Apparently he is an employee of the School Book Depository building. That’s the building that the shots—some said rifle shots, but that has not been confirmed—came from. The Dallas police have not released any further information. There are many policemen around that building now and it is very difficult to get any information. However, we do have men on the scene and a television camera is being set up, I am told.”

The recreation room was becoming hot. Fall sunlight streamed through the glass doors. Someone lit a cigarette. The plumes of smoke slowed and formed blue layers as Cronkite spoke on, repeating himself, waiting for more reports. Gordon began breathing more rapidly, as though the thickened air would not come freely into his lungs. The light became watery, weaving. The crowd around him caught the feeling and moved restlessly, human wheat beneath a strange wind.

“Some members of the crowd around Dealey Plaza say there were two shots fired at the Presidential motorcade. There are reports of three and four shots, however. One of our reporters on the scene says the shots came from a window on the sixth story of that School Book Depository—”

The scene suddenly shifted to a bleak fall landscape in black and white. Knots of people crowded the sidewalk before a brick building. Trees stood out in stark contrast to the bright sky. The camera panned to show a bleached, open plaza. Cars blocked the streets. People milled aimlessly.

“That is the site of the shooting you are seeing now,” Cronkite continued. “There is still no definite word about the President. A nurse in the corridor outside has said that the doctors working on the President have carried out a tracheotomy—that is, a cut in the windpipe, to make another breathing path for the President. This seems to confirm reports that Mr. Kennedy was struck in the back of the neck.”

Gordon felt ill. He wiped beads of sweat from his brow. He was the only person in the room wearing a jacket and tie. The air felt silky, moist. The odd sensation of a moment before was ebbing slowly away.

“There is a report that Mrs. Kennedy has been seen in the corridor outside the operating room. We have no indication of what this means.” Cronkite was in shirt-sleeves. He looked uncertain and anxious.

“Back at Dealey Plaza—” Again the crowds, the brick building, police everywhere. “Yes, there is a police statement that Oswald has been removed from the area under heavy police guard. We did not see them leave the School Book Depository building, at least not from the front entrance. Apparently they left through the back. Oswald has been inside the building since he was captured there, moments after the shooting. Wait—wait—” On the screen the crowd parted. Men in overcoats and hats moved ahead of a double rank of police, pushing the crowd back.

“Someone else is leaving the Depository building, taken by the police. Our camera crew there tells me it is another person involved in the incident, in the capture of the suspect, Lee Oswald. I think I can see him now—”

Between the lines of policemen marched a teenager, a boy. He looked around at the press of bodies, appearing dazed. He wore a tan leather jacket and blue jeans. He was well over six feet in height and looked out over the heads of the policemen. His head swiveled around, taking it all in. He had brown hair and wore glasses that reflected the glaring, slanted sunlight. His head stopped when he saw the camera. A figure moved into the foreground, holding a microphone. The police surged to block him. Distantly: “If we could have just a statement, I—”

A plainclothesman leading the group shook his head. “Nothing until later, when—”

“Hey, hold on!” It was the teenager, in a loud, booming voice that stopped everyone. The plainclothesman, a hand raised palm forward toward the camera, looked back over his shoulder.

“You cops have bugged me enough,” the boy said. He shouldered his way forward. The policemen yielded before him and concentrated on keeping the crowd back. He reached the plainclothesman. “Look, am I under arrest or what?”

“Well, no, you’re under protective custody—”

“Okay, that’s what I thought. See that? What it is, is a TV camera, right? You guys don’t have to protect me from that, do you?”

“No, look, Hayes—we wanna get you off the street. There could be—”

“I tell you that guy was alone up there. There isn’t anybody else to worry about. And I’m gonna talk to these TV guys ‘cause I’m a free citizen.”

“You’re a minor,” the plainclothesman began hesitantly, “and we have to—”

“That’s a lotta bull. Here—” He reached beyond the plainclothesman and grabbed the microphone. “See?—no trouble.” Several people standing nearby applauded. The plainclothesman glanced uncertainly around. He began, “We don’t want you giving—”

“What happened in there?” someone shouted.

“A lot!” Hayes shouted back.

“Didja see that guy shooting?”

“I saw it all, man. Cold-cocked the guy, I did.” He peered at the camera. “I’m Bob Hayes and I saw it all, I’m here to tell ya. Bob Hayes from Thomas Jefferson High.”

“How many shots were fired?” an off-camera voice asked, trying to get Hayes on the track of the story.

“Three. I was walkin’ down the hall outside when I heard the first one. The guy downstairs was eatin’ lunch and he sent me up to get some magazines they had stored up there. So I’m lookin’ for them and I hear this loud noise.”

Hayes paused, plainly enjoying this. “Yeah?” someone said.

“I knew it was a rifle right off. So I open this door where it came from. I see these chicken bones on a carton, like somebody’s havin’ lunch. Then I see this guy crouched down and pointin’ this rifle out the window. He had it on the sill, to brace it. He was leaning on some cartons, too.”

“That was Oswald?”

“That’s what these guys said his name was. Me, I didn’t ask.” Hayes grinned. Someone laughed.

“I start over toward this guy and boom he fires again. I can hear somebody yelling outside. I didn’t think about it, I just went for him. Dove over this crate and slammed into him. Just then the rifle goes off again, just as I hit him. I used to play some football, y’know, an’ I know how to take a guy out.”

“You got the rifle away from him?”

Hayes grinned again. “Hell no, man. I mashed him up against that window sill. Then I leaned back to get some room an’ I gave him a good one up side the head. He forgot all about that rifle, right then. So I hit him again and he went all glassy-eyed. His number was up, man.”

“He was out cold?”

“Sure was. I do good work, fella.”

“Then the police arrived.”

“Yeah, once this guy was out, I looked out the window. Saw all these cops lookin’ up at me. Waved to ‘em and called down to tell ’em where I was. They got up there right away.”

“Could you see the President’s Lincoln speeding away?”

“I didn’t know there was any President. Just a lot of traffic, that’s all. Some kind of parade, I thought. For Thanksgiving or somethin’, y’know. I came down here because Mr. Aiken, our physics teacher, sent me on down.”

The crowd around Hayes was utterly silent. The boy was a born performer, beaming straight into the camera and playing to the audience. The off-camera questioner asked, “You realize that you may have prevented a successful attempt on the life of the—”

“Yeah, that’s amazin’. Great. But y’know, I didn’t have any idea about that. Didn’t even know he was in town. Woulda gone downstairs to see him and Jackie if I’d known.”

“You had not seen Oswald before? You had no sign that he had a rifle and—”

“Look, like I said, I was down here to get some magazines. Mr. Aiken is doin’ this special twoday extracredit project in our college level physics course, the PST one. It was on the stuff in this magazine, Senior Scholastic. Mr. Aiken, he had me come down here to get ‘em for the class this afternoon. There was somethin’ about y’know this ah, signal from the future an’—”

“The shots—how many of them hit?”

“Hit what?”

“The President!”

“Hell, I dunno. He got off two of ‘em okay. I socked him good just before the third.”

Hayes grinned, looking around, beaming. The plainclothesman tugged at his arm. “I believe that’s enough, Mr. Hayes,” he said, using another tactic. “There will be a press conference later.”

“Oh, yeah,” Hayes said affably. His momentum was spent for the moment. He was still transfixed by being the center of attention. “Yeah, I’ll tell it all later.”

More shouted questions. A blur of motion as the police formed a wedge for Hayes. Clicking of cameras. Calls to clear the way. A rumble as a motorcycle started. Flickering images of men in overcoats pushing, mouths twisted.

Gordon blinked and for a moment he seemed to lose his balance. Senior Scholastic. The rec room swam in its pale, musty light.

Then Cronkite was talking again in that reedy voice. At Parkland Memorial Hospital a brief press conference had just concluded, while Hayes was speaking. Malcolm Kilduff, assistant press secretary to the President, had described the wound. A bullet had entered the lower back of the President’s neck. It had passed through and left a small exit wound. The entry wound was larger and bled freely. The President had received several pints of O RH negative blood as well as 300 mg. hydrocortisone intravenously. At first the attending physicians had inserted a tube to clear the President’s breathing passage. This failed. The senior physician, Michael Cosgrove, elected to perform a tracheotomy. This took five minutes. Lactated Ringer’s solution—a modified saline solution—was fed into the right leg via catheter. The President began breathing well, though he was still in coma. His dilated eyes were open and staring directly into a glaring fluorescent lamp overhead. A nasogastric tube was thrust through Kennedy’s nose and fitted behind his trachea, to clear away possible sources of nausea in his stomach. Bilateral chest tubes were placed in both chest pleural spaces to suck out damaged tissue and prevent lung collapse. The President’s heartbeat was weak but regular. The exit wound was treated first, since the President was on his back. Three doctors then rolled the body onto its side. The entry wound gaped, larger than the exit wound by more than twice, and was the principal point of blood loss. It was treated without difficulty. Kennedy was still in Trauma Room No. 1 of Parkland as Kilduff spoke. His condition appeared stable. There was no apparent damage to the brain. His right lung was bruised. His windpipe was ripped apart. It appeared that, barring complications, he would live.

Mrs. Kennedy was not hit. Governor Connally was in critical condition. The Vice President was not hit. The attending physicians could make no comment on the number of shots fired. It was clear, however, that only one bullet had struck the President.

The crowd around the television murmured and stirred. The sensation of lightness and pressing heat had gone. Objects no longer swayed as though seen underwater, refracted. Gordon shouldered his way through the close-packed students. Speculations buzzed around him. He slid aside the glass door to the wooden deck and stepped through. Without thinking he vaulted over the railing and out onto the parking lot. He got his running gear out of the trunk of the Chevy. He changed in the nearby men’s room. In shorts and tennis shoes he looked as young as many of the students still flocking to the rec room in search of news. He felt an airy sense of liberation and a humming, random energy, almost pleasurable. He did not want to think just now.

He began to run on the flat, watery sand. A steady breeze came in, blowing strands of black hair across his eyes. He ran with his head down, watching his feet strike. When his heel hit the sand a pale circle leaped into being as the water rushed out, driven by the impact. The beach hardened under each step, upholding him, and dissolved back to a gray slate sameness behind him. A helicopter passed whump whump whump overhead.

He skirted the town and ran through crescent coves, heading south, until he reached Nautilus Street. Penny was grading papers. He told her the news. She wanted to turn on the radio, learn more, but he tugged her away. Reluctantly she went with him. They went to the beach and walked south. Neither spoke. Penny fidgeted, face cloudy. The sea breeze scuffed the tops from the whitecaps and furled a banner of foam from each. Gordon looked at them and thought about them coming across the Pacific, driven by tides and winds. They were shallow out in the ocean and moved fast. As they neared the land the sea bed reared up beneath them and they deepened and slowed. Coming in, a wave moved faster at the top than at the bottom and they toppled forward, the energy from out of Asia churning into turbulence.

Penny called to him. She was already charging into the shallows. He followed. It was the first time he had tried this but that did not matter. They swam out beyond the waves and waited for the next big one to come in. It moved with stately slowness. The dark blue line thickened and rose and Gordon looked at it and estimated where it would break. He pulled forward, stroking fast and kicking. Penny was ahead. He felt something picking him up and the water ahead fell away. A rushing sound, and he moved faster. He flung out his arms and leaned to the left. Spray hazed his eyes. He blinked. He cut down the face of the wave, cupped in a wall of water, curling and churning toward the shore.