Bodark Creek - 40. Chapter 40

It wasn’t just that President Kennedy was killed in Dallas. It would have made us feel awful no matter where it happened. But the fact that it happened so close to us made it seem worse.

I’m not sure I even knew he was coming to Texas. Del insisted that he said something about it that morning at breakfast. “I told you that if I had the day free, I might’ve gone and waved to the president. Just so I could say I’d seen him once.”

Del really liked President Kennedy, a lot more than the rest of us. We were all good Democrats, and we’d vote for anything they wanted. But we all liked Lyndon Johnson a lot better than President Kennedy. In fact, I don’t think there was a decent person living in Texas who could say anything bad about Lyndon Johnson.

But I wasn’t thinking about those things that morning. And I was thinking about something completely different right after lunch. I’d just fed Paul and Lilah, and I was thinking ahead to dinner when the phone rang.

“Turn on the television, fast,” Susan was saying. I couldn’t really hear her because her voice wasn’t clear, but it wasn’t from the usual static. Then I thought she said, “The president’s been shot.”

“What?” I asked.

“Shot. He’s been shot. In Dallas. Ten minutes ago.”

Then I could tell she was crying, and that wasn’t like Susan at all.

“Oh, God,” she added.

Then I turned on the television and watched the newscast. At first, no one seemed to know what was happening. Then there was bad news. Then it got worse. Then everyone seemed to be in shock.

I was in shock, too. So much that I didn’t even think to tell Martin and the boys. They were off working in the fields.

“Grandma! Grandma!” Paul was saying. “Grandma! Grandma!” But I wasn’t listening to him.

I went out to the car. I took Paul and Lilah with me, and we drove as close as I could get to where Martin was working. He waved at me from the tractor. I waved back and started walking toward him. I left the children in the car figuring they’d be all right for a minute. But it wasn’t until I reached Martin that he realized something was really wrong.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

When I told him, he just stared

“Where are the boys?” I asked.

“What?”

“Del. And Neal.

“Oh. Oh, they’re working. On the farm. The other one. Working on that gate.”

“Are you all right?” I had to ask.

“No,” he said. And he got off the tractor.

He followed me to the car. The children were playing in the front seat. Paul was pretending he could drive. I shooed them to the back and remembered Del and Neal talking about fixing that gate. It was something they’d repaired before, but the cattle kept pushing through it, making it worse.

“I’ll tell the boys,” I told Martin.

“Okay. I’ll be at the house.”

And he headed to the tractor, to drive in.

When I found the boys, and Del heard, he smashed the two-by-four he was holding across the top of the gate. Neal had to take it away from him so he didn’t hurt himself. Then Del just stood there, cursing.

“Paul and Lilah are with me,” I finally reminded him. And he looked toward the car.

“Uncle Del!” Paul shouted. “Hi, Uncle Del!”

“I’m sorry,” Del mumbled.

When I got back to the house, Martin was sitting in the living room. He hadn’t even bothered to clean up. He was just sitting on the couch. I knew I’d left the television on, and I’m sure he’d just walked in the door and couldn’t do anything but watch.

I’d been listening to the car radio, and I’m sure Del and Neal were, too. They didn’t get home much after I did, and soon Susan and Valerie came back from the office.

“We were working,” Val said. “Just listening to the radio when it got interrupted.”

“This is terrible,” Susan added. “The worst thing that’s ever happened.”

I wanted to say it wasn’t the worst thing. It was horrible, and he was our president, but he was only one man. So many other men had died in the wars.

“It’s not the same thing,” Martin told me later. “It’s what he stands for.”

“Those men all stood for something, too,” I said. “They believed as much as we do.”

“But he was elected.”

Even before it was announced that President Kennedy was dead, Joann called. And then Pat called from the hospital. “Everything’s out of control here,” she said. “Everyone wants to go home. But somebody has to stay and work.”

“Come back when you can,” I said. And after the announcement, they both came home. Then they stayed for the next four days. We all stayed.

We were relieved when Oswald was arrested, but then shocked again when he was shot. And he’d killed another man, too, a police officer. It seemed we watched it all on television, but that was all we could do. We ate. We tried to sleep. Sometimes, we cried. But we never seemed to leave the living room.

Walter came by at one point. And we spoke with Dougie and Rosalind on the phone, and Martin called his sisters. Valerie and Susan called their families, too, but they didn’t want to leave, even though people offered to pick them up. “This is where I want to be,” Valerie said to someone, maybe her mother. “This is where I feel safe.”

It was the worst weekend. With a funeral, at least, no matter how sad you are, you know the person and can say something about them. We couldn’t even laugh. No one knew what would happen next.

“Johnson is president,” Joann said. “That’s one thing for certain. Thanks god, he’s someone we can trust.”

“But we don’t know who killed President Kennedy,” Pat told her. “Or why. And who knows who’s going to be murdered next?”

“No one,” Del insisted. “It would have happened already.”

When Oswald was killed, that seemed to change Del’s mind. I’d gone into the kitchen for a minute. I was warming the baby’s bottle or washing out her bib, when suddenly Val screamed.

“I just saw a man shot,” she cried. “We all just saw him killed. That’s never happened before on television.”

“This country’s going to hell,” Del said. “Oswald was crazy, but even he deserved a fair trial. And a fair execution.”

“No. He should’ve been publicly hung,” Neal insisted. “Naked and bleeding, like Jesus.”

“They don’t do that anymore,” Susan said

“They did with Lincoln. With the people who shot him. There’s a picture of them upstairs in a book.”

“That was in public,” Martin admitted. “But they weren’t tortured. And they were dressed all in black.”

“And that was a hundred years ago,” I said. Though Neal wasn’t listening.

“I would have shot Oswald myself,” he went on.

We argued over that. And we talked. And I tried to imagine how I’d feel if Neal had shot Oswald. Or shot anybody. What that would mean. But it didn’t happen, and I think we mainly argued so we wouldn’t have to think about what did.

On Monday, we all watched the funeral. The world seemed to stop for a couple of days. Everything stopped, though Paul and Lilah kept trying to change that. They kept fighting to get our attention, and someone always had to be playing with them. Except when Joann finally came into the living room and sighed, saying, “I think they’re asleep.”

Everyone in the world was probably watching, but for me that didn’t matter. I was just glad we were all there together.