Читать книгу Fri Nov 22 00:00:00 CST 2019 - Bryan Woolley - Страница 25

The Sixth Hour

RAYMOND

“YOU’VE BEEN IN THE BOONIES too long, Ray,” the White House man had said the first time they drove the route together. “The object of the motorcade is to let the people see him.”

“Our job is to protect the president,” Raymond has replied.

“Well, yeah. But you’ve got to be reasonable.”

Raymond Medley reached to the nightstand and plugged in the percolator, then lay back in bed. Every morning for two months, the thought of the motorcade had been the first to pop into his mind. He closed his eyes and visualized its route again and was glad that this was the last morning he would have to think of it.

He had driven every block of it ten times or more with the man from the White House detail and another dozen times alone. He knew every street, every intersection, every building, every billboard. Mockingbird Lane. Then right onto Lemmon Avenue. Then right onto Turtle Creek Boulevard, which suddenly and without explanation became Cedar Springs Road. Then a jog to the right onto Harwood Street. Then a sharp right onto Main Street, the canyon between the downtown skyscrapers and the leg of the journey that he dreaded most. Then the little jog to the right onto Houston Street to reach Elm Street. Then left on Elm, through Dealey Plaza. Then under the Triple Underpass and onto Stemmons Expressway to the Trade Mart.

If you had to have a motorcade, an expressway was the place. The limousines could move swiftly along behind their motorcycle escort, and there were no buildings close to the roadway and no sidewalks for crowds. When Raymond was informed that the president was to visit Dallas, he had suggested that the entourage go directly to the Trade Mart, a short, swift drive from Love Field. When the White House insisted on a motorcade, he recommended North Central Expressway as the fastest, safest route downtown. The White House vetoed that, too. The politicians wanted Dallas to see Kennedy.

Raymond went into the bathroom and pulled the white bath mat from the rim of the tub and spread it in front of the toilet to protect his feet from the cold white tiles. He pulled the drawstring on his pajamas and sat down and stared at the words “Stoneleigh Terrace” on the mat. He had seen the same words from the same perspective almost every morning for the ten years he had served in Dallas, and only a couple of times had he wished for more than he had. A wife, maybe. Kids, no. A transfer to the White House, only in his ambitious moments when he was younger. The Stoneleigh, threadbare as it was becoming, still provided a fair restaurant, a good bar, maid service, free parking, and had never raised his rent. The manager had told him the other permanent tenants, old ladies and gentleman, most of them, felt secure with a Secret Service man on the premises. He had everything he really wanted, and the only thing he had that he didn’t want was the president coming to Dallas.

Adlai Stevenson had warned the White House against it a month ago, and then chickened out and told the president to go ahead if he thought it was important. The picture on the front page of the evening paper had been a lulu, all right. The congressman from Dallas, the darling of the right-wingers, snarling into the camera and, presumably, into Stevenson’s face, just before Adlai got bopped with a picket sign. And Johnson. He couldn’t want to come here. A mob of screaming women had spit on him and Lady Bird in Dallas during the campaign, and since then the Johnsons’ visits had been quiet and brief. Raymond had watched Lady Bird’s face turn tense and her hands clench whenever she had to leave a hotel suite or a friend’s home and be exposed, even for a moment, to the anonymous Dallas public.

Yarborough had warned the White House about Dallas, too, and so had Henry Gonzalez. They were liberals, though, and had nothing to gain here. Gonzalez had been anxious enough to show off the president in his own congressional district in San Antonio. And Yarborough had never carried Dallas, not for governor, when he lost, and not for senator, when he won. He couldn’t carry Dallas for dogcatcher. He was paranoid as hell, too, as most Texas liberals were, especially when in Dallas. And Kennedy. Could he carry Dallas? Not in a month of Sundays.

So why were they coming? Just because Dallas was the state’s second-largest city and would be insulted if Kennedy visited Houston and San Antonio and Fort Worth and Austin and didn’t come here? Why should Kennedy care?

Raymond thought of the city as a Republican castle surrounded by a Democratic forest, a castle where money was king and needed no excuse, no explanation, for running things. He didn’t mind that. Almost half of his twenty years in government service had been spent here, and he had grown to love the city and the smooth, quiet way it did things. It didn’t deserve all the bad press it had gotten, nor the reputation that Luther Byrd and the Birchers and Edwin Walker and the rest of the lunatic fringe were giving it. He wished Kennedy weren’t coming to stir it all up again.

The visit was probably John Connally’s idea. He was the nearest thing to a Republican that Texas was likely ever to elect as governor. He loved Dallas, and Dallas loved him. They saw and did things the same way. He understood the city. What was it he had said? “I’ve been poor, and I’ve been rich, and rich is better.” That was the Dallas point of view, all right. But why did Connally want to come here with Kennedy? Maybe he didn’t. Maybe Kennedy wanted to come here with Connally. Maybe he was so confident of his charm that he thought he could win over even the Connally people of Dallas. Or maybe he just wanted to prove that the president of the United States wasn’t afraid of Dallas. Or maybe it was Jackie’s idea. Since the election, she hadn’t accompanied her husband on a single political trip. So why Texas? Did she want to see what Neiman-Marcus women looked like?

The aroma of coffee drifted into the bathroom, and Raymond got up and flushed the toilet. Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do or die, he thought. He went to the tiny foyer between the bedroom and the sitting room that he seldom used and opened the hall door. The newspaper hadn’t arrived yet. He closed the door and fastened the chain latch again. He returned to the bedroom and poured his coffee and pulled the cord to open the drapes. In the dimly lighted parking lot the cars were still shiny wet, but the rain was only a drizzle.

“Damn,” he said aloud. But a drizzle might be enough to keep the crowds small. Maybe the bubble top would have to be put on the limousine to protect Jackie’s hair. He hoped the rain wasn’t ending.