Don DeLillo - Libra

They ran to the birdcage elevators, four young men in the lunch-hour race, horse laughs, jostling at the gates. Lee heard them call to each other all the way down. Dust. Faded white paint on the old brick walls. Stacks of cartons everywhere. Old sprinkler pipes and scarred columns. A layer of dust hovered at a height of three feet. Loose books on the floor. His clipboard already hidden, jammed between cartons near the west wall. Stillness on six.

He stood at the southeast window inside a barrier of cartons. The larger ones formed a wall about five feet high and carried a memory with them, a sense of a kid's snug hideout, making him feel apart and secure. Inside the barrier were four more cartons- one set lengthwise on the floor, two stacked, one small carton resting on the brick windowsill. A bench, a support, a gun rest. The wrapping paper he'd used to conceal the rifle was on the floor near his feet. Dust. Broken spider webs hanging from the ceiling. He saw a dime on the floor. He picked it up and put it in his pocket.

He looked down Houston Street as the motorcade approached, slow and vivid in the sun. There were people scattered on the lawns of Dealey Plaza, maybe a hundred and fifty, many with cameras. He held the rifle at port arms, more or less, and stood in plain view in the tall window. Everything looked so painfully clear.,

The President had chestnut hair and the First Lady was radiant in a pink suit and small round hat. Lee was glad she looked so good. For her own sake. For the cameras. For the pictures that would enter the permanent record.

He spotted Governor John Connally in one of the jump seats, a Stetson in his lap. He liked Connally's face, a rugged Texas face. This was the kind of man who would take a liking to Lee if he ever got to know him. Cartons stamped Books. Ten Rolling Readers. Everyone was grateful for the weather.

The white pilot car turned, the motorcycles turned. The Lincoln passed beneath him, easing left, making the deep turn left, seeming almost to rotate on an axis. Everything was slow and clear. He got down on one knee, placed his left elbow on the stacked cartons and rested the gun barrel on the edge of the carton on the sill. He sighted on the back of the President's head. The Lincoln moved into the cover of the live oak, going about ten miles an hour. Ready on the left, ready on the right. Through the scope he saw the car metal shine.

He fired through an opening in the leaf cover.

When the car was in the clear again, the President began to react.

Lee turned up the handle, drew the bolt back.

The President reacted, arms coming up, elbows high and wide.

There were pigeons, suddenly, everywhere, cracking down from the eaves and beating west.

The report sounded over the plaza, flat and clear.

The President's fists were clenched near his throat, arms bowed out.

Lee drove the bolt forward, jerking the handle down.

The Lincoln was moving slower now. It was almost dead still. It was sitting naked in the street eighty yards from the underpass.

Ready on the firing line.

Raymo got out of the supercharged Merc in the parking lot above the grassy embankment a little more than halfway down Elm. A wooden stockade fence enclosed the parking area, with trees and shrubs set alongside. The rear bumper of the car nudged the fence. There were ten or twelve cars parked nearby, many more in the spaces to the north and west.

Raymo stood a moment, rolling his shoulders. He gave a firm hoist to his balls, three quick jogs with the left hand. The fence was about five feet high, too high for him to brace his left arm comfortably. He went to the rear of the car and stood on the bumper. He looked out over the fence and across a stretch of lawn. The pilot car approached the Elm Street turn.

Frank Vasquez got out of the car on the driver's side. He carried a Weatherby Mark V, scope-mounted, loaded with soft-point bullets that explode on impact. He stood by the rear fender until Raymo extended a hand. Frank gave him the weapon.

He went back to the driver's seat. The car bounced when he got in and Raymo glanced back sharply.

The crowd noise from Main Street was still in the air, faintly, a rustle somewhere overhead, and Frank, with his back to the action, sat at the wheel listening. His view was past the railyards to the northwest. Water towers painted white. Power pylons trailing into a flat grim distance. All light and sky. He felt like he could see to the end of Texas.

Raymo stood just west of the point where the two sections of fence form a near-right angle. From the deep shade of the trees he looked out on a sun-dazzled scene. Small groups collecting on the grass on both sides of Elm," families, cameras, like the start of a picnic. The limousine came swinging into the street. People on the north side of Elm, their backs to Raymo, shaded their eyes from the sun. Other people waving, Kennedy waving, applause, sunlight, sharp glare on the hood of the limousine. A girl ran across the grass. The dangling men. Four men dangling from the sides of the follow-up car, only a few feet behind the blue Lincoln.

Dallas One. Repeat. I didn't get all of it.

Leon fired too soon, with the car passing under the tree. The report sounded like a short charge, a little weak, a defect, not enough powder.

Kennedy reacted late, without surprise at first, his arms coming up slowly like a man on a rowing machine.

The driver slowed to half-speed. The driver sat there. The other agent sat there. They were waiting for a voice to explain it.

Pigeons flared past.

Raymo eased the gun barrel out over the fence. He set his feet firmly on the bumper. His left forearm, bracing the weapon, was wedged between the tops of two pickets. He tilted his head to the stock. He waited, sighting through the scope.

On the grass a woman saw the limousine emerge from behind a freeway sign with the President clutching at his throat. She heard a sharp noise, like a backfiring car, and realized it was the second noise she'd heard. She thought she saw a man throw a boy to the grass and fall on top of him. She didn't really hear the first noise until she heard the second. A girl ran waving toward the limousine.

The noise cracked and flattened, washing across the plaza. This wasn't making sense at all.

There was so much clarity Lee could watch himself in the huge room of stacked cartons, scattered books, old brick walls, bare light bulbs, a small figure in a corner, partly hidden. He fired off a second shot.

He saw the Governor, who was turned right, begin to look the other way, then double up suddenly. A startle reaction. He knew this was called a startle reaction, from gun magazines.

He turned up the handle, drew the bolt back, then drove it forward.

Stand by a moment please.

Okay, he fired early the first time, hitting the President below the head, near the neck area somewhere. It was a foolishness he could dismiss on a certain level. Okay, he missed the President with the second shot and hit Connally. But the car was still sitting there, barely moving. He saw the First Lady lean toward the President, who was slumped down now. A man stood applauding at the edge of the telescopic frame.

Lee jerked the handle down and aimed. He heard the second spent shell roll across the floor.

There were roses on the seat between Jack and Jackie. The car's interior was a nice light blue. The man was so close he could have spoken to them. He stood at curbside applauding. A woman called out to the car, "Hey we want to take your picture." The President looked extremely puzzled, head leaning left. The man stood applauding, already deep in chaos, looking at crumpled bodies, a sense of guns coming out.

Put me on, Bill. Put me on.

Bobby W. Hargis, riding escort, left rear, knew he was hearing gunfire. There was a woman taking a picture and another woman about twenty feet behind her taking the same picture, only with the first woman in it. He couldn't tell where the shots were coming from, two shots, but knew someone was hit in the car. A man threw his kid to the ground and fell on him. That's a vet, Hargis had time to think, with the Governor, Connally, kind of sliding down in the jump seat and his wife taking him in, gathering the man in. Hargis turned right just after noticing a girl in a pretty coat running across the lawn toward the President's car. He turned his body right, keeping the motorcycle headed west on Elm, and then the blood and matter, the unforgettable thing, the sleet of bone and blood and tissue struck him in the face. He thought he'd been shot. The stuff hit him like a spray of buckshot and he heard it ping and spatter on his helmet. People were down on the grass. He kept his mouth closed tight so the fluid would not ooze in.