Not in Your Lifetime: The Assassination of JFK by Summers Anthony

Author:Summers, Anthony [Summers, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 20

Facts and Appearances

“Truth: An ingenious compound of desirability of appearance.”

—Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

The real Lee Harvey Oswald made a mundane return to the United States. The trip home to infamy was another bone-shaking bus journey, not to New Orleans but to Dallas, Texas, and a night at the YMCA. He made a weekend visit to his wife, Marina, now awaiting the birth of a second child at the home of her friend Ruth Paine on the outskirts of the city—a contact that was to have a pivotal effect on Oswald’s destiny.

Ten days after his arrival in Dallas, Paine told a neighbor, Linnie Mae Randle, that Oswald was having trouble finding a job. There might be an opening, Randle thought, at her brother’s place of work. Oswald followed up and two days later started the last job of his life, as an order-filler at a warehouse that handled the distribution of educational books—the Texas School Book Depository.1

Superficially, the last forty days of Oswald’s life were unremarkable. After five days renting from a first landlady with whom he did not get on, he took a room at 1026 North Beckley—registering under the name “O. H. Lee.” To the owners of the house and to fellow tenants, Oswald seemed quiet, lonely. He spent most evenings reading or watching television, rarely made conversation. He visited Marina almost every weekend.

The women made an occasion of Oswald’s twenty-fourth birthday, which fell on October 18. Ruth brought wine, decorated the table, and baked a cake. The cake was carried in aglitter with candles, and everyone sang “Happy Birthday, Lee.” Oswald was visibly moved, and his eyes filled with tears. He rejoiced when Marina gave birth two days later to their second child, another daughter. In some ways, it seemed, the rickety marriage was recovering a little. Oswald seemed interested in reestablishing a domestic life, and talked of their setting up house together again.

At work at the Book Depository, Oswald’s supervisor thought he “did a good day’s work” and deemed him an above-average employee. According to his wife, Oswald said he was saving money. He may have anticipated an early end to his employment. Around November 1, three weeks before the assassination, Oswald wrote in a letter to the Internal Revenue Service that he had “worked only six months in the fiscal year of 1963.” Days later, he supposedly told Marina that “there was another job open, more interesting work … related to photography.” There is no knowing what he meant, in the letter to the taxman or in the alleged remark to his wife.2

During the final two weeks of the saga, a new, unwelcome development occurred. There were visits that were reported to Oswald by Marina and her hostess, Ruth Paine, by a Dallas FBI agent named James Hosty. Seven months earlier, when routine reports had picked up Oswald’s subscription to the The Worker, the American Communist Party newspaper, the record indicates, Hosty had suggested the Oswald case be reopened. Now, on November 1, having

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