(From “Dear Mr. Fantasy: An American Tale”) I didn’t believe that Kennedy would die. It was impossible for me to imagine an American president could be killed by something as simple as a bullet. Surely, someone would take the bullet out, patch him up and send him back to the Oval Office while the assassin was efficiently gunned down.
Then Kennedy died.
Like so many I watched the shaky 8mm home movie showing Jackie Kennedy reacting in shock, crawling back over the trunk of the open limousine while confused Secret Service men rushed to help. All too little, too late. Life magazine published blowups from that film, the images almost indecipherable from grain, pictures of Jackie Kennedy in her pink suit stained with blood. over the radio I heard the scene described: “The President was leaning forward slightly, his wife aware that he’d been the victim of a bullet. She was looking at his face when a bullet struck the President in the head, exploding in a pink-red glow of blood, brain matter, and skull fragments…”
I felt empty. and in denial. None of this was supposed to be able to happen here, and nothing, of course, could now bring him back. And then the best America could do was to arrest some guy “they” said did it who was then killed by some other man no one has ever heard of who in turn died so nobody was ever to know what happened.
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