Don DeLillo - Libra

He was able to sleep now. They all slept for a brief time in the late morning. Hours later in the dark they picked up the first pulse of Dallas on the radio, a scratch and rustle at the edge of the band, and they listened to an eerie voice ride across the long night.

"Tell you something, dear hearts, Big D is ner-vus tonight. Getting real close to the time. Notice how people saying scaaaary things. Feel night come rushing down. Don't y'all sense it around you? Danger in the air. You can see it in the streets. Billboards. Bumper stickers. Handbills. They're saying awful things about Our leaders. I'm walking down the street this morning and there's a

zigzag thing painted on a storewindow and it hits me all at once like it's a swastika. Do you think I'm making it up? I'm not making it up. Let me pass a thought through the ozone just to get your clock unwound. How do we know it's really him that's coming to town? Don't you know the rumors he travels with a dozen look-alikes when he goes into no man's land? Just to disorient the enemy. So maybe we're getting Jack Seven or Jack Ten. Or all of them at once in different locales. I can understand the need, myself. Or might be I'm just receptive to other people's fantasies. Some things are true. Some are truer than true. Oh the air is swollen. Did you ever feel a tension like right now? You know what Dallas is like, don't you, in the universal scheme? We're like everywhere. Or we're like everywhere wants to be. Dress alike, talk alike, think alike. We're a model for the country. I'm not making it up. But the little itchy thing is seeping out. Don't you feel it oozing to the surface? People say he's riding Caroline's tricycle into town. Not tough enough to lead us to Armageddon. All the ancient terrors of the night. We're looking right at it. We know it's here. We feel it's here. It has to happen. Something strange and dark and dreamsome. Weird Beard says, Night is rushing down over Big D."

Raymo, Wayne and Frank had never been to Dallas and they wondered what this creep could mean.

Wednesday. Lee walked out of the rooming house and went up the street to a diner where he had breakfast most mornings. He checked the license plates on cars parked along North Beckley, looking for Agent Hardy's number.

They'd get their own furniture, modern pieces, and a washing machine for Marina.

He had eggs over light. He ate with a folded-up newspaper under his left elbow. The noise and talk fell around him. He kept his head close to the page, reading the fourth or fifth story in the last week about a Yale professor of political science arrested in the Soviet Union as a spy. Arrested outside the Metropole Hotel, one of the places Lee had stayed. Arrested and then released. The story was really about him. Everything he heard and saw and read these days was really about him. They were running messages into his skin.

He walked to the bus stop, checking license plates along the way. A coppertone Mercury eased alongside and moved at Lee's pace down the street. It had those smoked-over windows. He was prepared to give his name as O. H. Lee and tell them nothing else. He knew his rights. He had his guaranteed rights. He would not stand for harassment.

The window slid down and David Ferrie rested an elbow on the door, then turned to look at him.

Lee said, "I can't be late for work."

They drove to the Book Depository. Lee interrupted the talk several times to give directions, concerned that they'd miss a turn.

"Been reading the papers?" Ferrie said. "I understand they've had a story every couple of days. First he's coming. Then he's having lunch at the Trade Mart. Then there's a motorcade looping through the downtown area. Then yesterday's papers, both papers, which I saw myself. A street-by-street outline of the motorcade route. Har-wood to Main. Main to Houston. Houston to Elm. Down Elm to Stemmons Freeway. I thought to myself, Old Leon's looking at this. What's he feeling right now? What were you feeling, Leon? It must have been an incredible moment. Like a vision in the sky. Must have froze your blood."

"I'm only aware five cities, two days. He'll be here a couple of hours."

"They know where you live and they know where you work."

"I didn't see yesterday's paper as a matter of fact."

"Of course you saw it. It said the President's passing under your fucking window. The fucking building faces Elm Street, doesn't it? You spend most of the day on the sixth floor, don't you? His car is coming along Houston right straight at you. Then dipping away down Elm. Moving slowly and grandly past, The one place in the world where Lee Oswald works. The one time of day when he sits alone in a window and eats his lunch. There's no such thing as coincidence. We don't know what to call it, so we say coincidence. It happens because you make it happen."

Ferrie was pink-faced, nearly shouting. Lee gave a direction to turn left. Ferrie gripped the steering wheel hard.

"You see what this means. How it shows what you've got to do. We didn't arrange your job in that building or set up the motorcade route. We don't have that kind of reach or power. There's something else that's generating this event. A pattern outside experience. Something that jerks you out of the spin of history. I think you've had it backwards all this time. You wanted to enter history. Wrong approach, Leon. What you really want is out. Get out. Jump out. Find your place and your name on another level."

Lee directed him to Houston Street, where they parked in front of the Old Court House, facing south, their backs to the Book Depository, which was a block and a half away. Ferrie wiped spit from the corners of his mouth. He seemed out of breath. Lee sat calmly looking out the window.

"It's been waiting to happen, Leon."

"I have to be at work at eight."

"That building's been sitting there waiting for Kennedy and Oswald to converge on it."

"Just o"* of curiosity. How did you find out where I live? The Feebees don't know. They know where I work."

"They know where you work. That's how we know. We followed you from work last night. We're more interested in you than they are. Listen. I sat in the car outside your rooming house half the night. I was afraid to come see you. Now that it's going to happen, I'm scared half to death. I've got fear running through my system. Look at what we're doing. The chaos? The fucking anguish we'll cause? We'll give everybody cancer. I sat in the car. I was afraid to face you. I thought, What are we doing to poor Leon? I thought, Poor Leon's seen that item in the paper. Harwood to Main. Main to Houston. Houston to Elm. Like a scary nursery rhyme. He's going to kneel in that window and do it. And I'm one of the ones. I'm the agitator. I'm the fool that's responsible." Lee took a stick of gum out of his pocket and broke it in half. He offered a piece to Ferrie, who slapped it out of his hand. "Where's the rifle?"

"In a garage in a suburb, where Marina's staying." "They drive you to Galveston when it's done. I meet you there. This way we're one city removed from the scene. There's a plane all set in Galveston. We fly to Yucatan. A place called Mdrida. They drive you across the peninsula. They put you on a boat to Havana. They want you in Havana. It suits their purposes just as it suits yours. The boat's all set. They'll give you a name and documents." Ferrie looked at him sadly. "Or there's more to it. Something we don't know about. Like they kill us both in Yucatan." Lee gave a little laugh, expelling air from his nose. Then he turned to look at the clock attached to the Hertz sign on the roof of the Book Depository. He got out of the car and walked down the street.

Just after lunch hour he went past Roy Truly's office on the first floor. Mr. Truly, the man who'd hired him, was talking to one of the textbook salesmen. Lee saw the salesman hand Mr. Truly a rifle. Two or three other men stood in the doorway commenting. Lee walked over. There were two rifles the salesman said he'd just bought. He had a.22 for his son for Christmas. And a deer rifle that Mr. Truly was inspecting. The fellows commented from the doorway. Lee watched the salesman box up the. 22 and then he walked over to the elevator and hit six. He wasn't surprised to see rifles in the building. How could he be surprised? It was all about him. Everything that happened was him.