Timescape

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.