What is past is PROLOGUE

“Bless his heart,” Mary said to Jean after she smiled at the nice policeman who told them they had to walk all the way around the plaza.

“We have to hurry he’ll be here any minute,” Jean said.

The two women hustled and when another cop wasn’t looking, they darted across the three-lane road to the middle of the grass. Mary looked around, “This is a good spot. Let’s do it from here.”

They had discussed exactly how they would do this. It required coordination and split-second timing. For if they were to get the shots off, Jean needed to be fast as Mary took the shots.

A roar and the sounds of sirens echoed coming down Main Street. “Mary, hurry he’s almost here.”

Mary was lining up the shot, she moved her position three feet to the right and four feet back. Jean didn’t see this as she was looking up the street. She was biting her fist, stamping her feet, her nerves getting the best of her. She turned, “Mary...” She snapped her head all around and found Mary, now behind her. “Tell me when you are moving.”

“Oh, shush. We can get a better shot from here. That man and his wife and kids were in the way.”

Jean followed where Mary was now aiming and immediately understood. “Good.”

Mary was removing her kerchief when the roar and the sirens were on top of them.

Mary’s finger was poised to shoot. Jean stood where they had practiced; for when the shooting started. Jean looked across Elm Street, “Any second now, be ready.”

Mary was glad Jean was giving her the heads up while she focused on the shot. Not taking her eye off the camera.

“Mr. President. Mr. President!” Jean yelled.

Mary pressed the shutter. Jean immediately pulled the Polaroid from the camera so Mary could take another shot.

“He turned and looked right at us. Did you get that? Did you get him?”

“Um hmm,” Mary said as her finger pushed down again. With the click of the camera came a loud bang. It startled Mary.

Jean screamed. “Oh, my God. Oh my God!” She was hyperventilating.

Another bang.

She let out a bone-chilling scream. Mary joined in. The unimaginable horror was in front of them. Mary instinctively dove to the ground, pulling her friend Jean down who was standing there screaming as she did. The camera and the film went flying. They don’t notice the supersonic snap of a bullet that burrowed into the ground three feet to their right.

Sixty seconds earlier:

As he stood across the way in his straw cowboy-style Stetson, 43-year-old, long-haul trucker, Cyrus Shaw, was angry but resigned to the fact that he couldn’t make his second delivery of the day, the cops had every street shut down. So, he lit up a Lucky and joined the crowds of people lining the roadway. His toes were right on the edge of the curb now. The crush of the crowd behind him almost had him in the street. He swiveled his head to his left as he heard the motorcade and motorcycles turn onto Main. He glanced over his shoulder at the yellow Hertz Rent-a-car sign with the clock on it that read 12:30. Maybe after he dropped his load of schoolbooks at the depository, he could still make his last stop in Fort Worth before 5. Although, the Friday afternoon traffic would be a bear, if this ended quickly, there was a chance.

As he took a long drag on a Lucky, he watched with great interest two women across the way in the plaza, fumbling with a camera and moving around. The one in the kerchief was cute. The other one was as jumpy as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

Police motorcycles rumbled by with lights flashing and sirens blaring, then a couple of cars passed in front of him. Then a limousine, a stretch, no top. He could see the governor of Texas and the president of the United States sitting right there behind him. His pretty wife, who was all over TV, was in a pink getup that she must have been baking in, what with being under the scorching, Dallas midday sun.

Some young girls next to him were screaming like he was Elvis or something. A woman a few feet away was lifting her grandchild up to be able to see better. The little rug rat was waving a cheap American flag. Probably made in Japan by nips, the ex-marine, who was wounded at Guadalcanal, thought just as a loud bang rang out from over his shoulder, then two more, maybe from somewhere else. He didn’t care or look. He hit the dirt and covered his head with his arms at the sound of the first gunshot. 

There was a lot of yelling, and he could hear the powerful engine of the limo rev up as it took off. People were screaming. Some crying. He chanced to look up. It was pandemonium. Something brushed his cheek. Thinking it was a bug, he swatted it. It was a polaroid that landed on the curbside in front of his face. Something caught his eye. He brought it close. In the corner was a red spot... BLOOD. He touched the drop on the upper right-hand corner of the white photographic paper backing... it stuck to his finger.

He got up staring at the scene with his cigarette dangling from his opened mouth.

Looking around, he saw people running up to the wood fence behind him screaming. He was turned around by the sounds of a tussle next to him, a man in a suit was wrestling a camera away from an old man. The two girls taking Polaroids, who were standing not far from him across the street, were being questioned by another man in a suit. He saw him flashing some kind of identification. Cyrus watched as other people in the crowd were being relieved of their cameras and being led away. He unconsciously slipped the photo into his pocket as he watched a bus go by with reporters hanging out of the windows snapping pictures.

Suddenly, he was spun around by a policeman, “You got a camera there, sir?

Cyrus, still in shock just shook his head, no. 

The officer gave him one more look. “What’s in the pocket?”

Cyrus pulled out what was in his pocket. The cop looked down and seeing the Oklahoma traffic citation, grunted and threw it to the ground, and was off to the next person.

Cyrus was surprised it wasn’t the Polaroid. He bent down and picked up the speeding ticket. He looked around; people were crying, pointing at the spot where the president was shot, and many were hugging one another. They ain’t gonna let me unload any damn books today.  

He stepped back through the crowd and walked to his truck five blocks away.

      Pecox, Texas hardly deserved a dot on the map. It was mostly scrub-brush and dried-out arroyos. It was a landscape that could care less about the rusted old trailer, permanently parked up on blocks that marred the vista. Cyrus’ unhitched, 52’ Mack semi-tractor pulled up to this, three-room, no longer mobile, home. He climbed down and headed inside, flicking away a cigarette, and coughing as he did.

      The 30-year-old house trailer started out small but was now even smaller with the inside crammed with cases of Marlboro, Winston, and Lucky Strike cigarettes. The boxes were in every conceivable space, leaving only two seats around the table, a worn high back chair, and half a mini sofa, in front of a 15-inch Sears black and white TV, propped up on a case of Tarrytons. Except for the brand logos, all the other writing on the boxes was in Spanish. 

Cyrus’ common-law wife, Maria Gonzalez, was very frail for her 52 years. She sat on her half of the couch alongside some Chesterfield cases, watching the television coverage of the assassination. The reception this far out was weak, the picture was snowy and often ghosted. Her madre, in her 80s, sat crossing herself as they showed pictures of Jackie Kennedy at Love Field.

Cyrus started opening drawers looking for something. “Where’s my damn camera, Maria?”

      Clutching her rosaries, she looked up with tearful eyes, “The President Kennedy has been shot!”

      “I know that. I was there.”

Her mother, who didn’t speak English, sat mesmerized at the screen.

Maria crossed herself, “Dios Mio, that must have been horrible.”

Cyrus ignored her and finally found the camera bag in the small cabinet over the smaller sink. He removed his Polaroid camera, then searched around the bottom of the bag and came up with a gray plastic tube. “You should have seen it. Maria, there was cops and G-men everywhere. They was takin’ people’s cameras and ripping film right out they hands.”

He sat at the table, lit a Lucky, and took a long draw. He removed the photo from his pocket and started to peel back the developer-coated flap. His right eye was closed as the smoke from the Lucky billowed into it. But as the picture was revealed under the backing that eye also opened wide. For the second time today, his jaw dropped, and he was awestruck. He took the sponge “fixer” applicator out of the gray tube and wiped it across the picture. 

The staticky sound of the TV cleared at that moment. “All we know at this time is that 3 shots were fired at the presidential motorcade from a lone assassin perched in the 6th-floor window.”

Cyrus looked at the photo. 

“...of the Texas School Book Depository building. I’m just getting word that police have found a rifle...”

Maria came over to him, looked at the photo then the TV, then the photo, and again at the TV. She was confused. She leaned in and whispered to Cyrus. “Madre Mia, maybe you should show them this picture.”

      “I can’t do that. What if they start nosing around?” He picked up a pack of Luckies and waved it at the cigarette cases. “This is all contraband.” He pointed to the bottom of the pack where there was no tax stamp. “Besides, they’d find out about Mom and send her back.”

      Maria’s eyes widened.

      “Comprende?” Cyrus said still unnerved by what they saw in the picture.

           On Sunday morning, Cyrus was out in front of the trailer. He, Dan and Gus were loading cases of smokes into a white Ford Econovan. Maria and her mother were glued to the TV ever since Friday afternoon.

           Dan brought out the last three cases in his arms and slid them into the truck. “TV says they’re moving the shooter, and no matter what you say, Gus, this Lee Harvey guy was just some lone nut. He’s a loser like they said on TV.” He closed the rear doors and turned to Cyrus. “So, Wednesday for the Parliaments?”

           “Should be, I am making a run to Nuevo Laredo on Tuesday. Come by Wednesday before 8, I got a early run to El Paso.”

Cyrus took a tally.

Gus closed the side door, “No “nut” can shoot like that, Dan. Not at a moving target,” he held his hands like he was aiming a rifle and shaking like a leaf. “The God damn President and the Governor no less.”

Cyrus was just letting them talk all morning. At times just shrugging. He kept it all business, “Let’s see, 20 cases of Winstons. 10 cases Luckies. Make it fifty even.”

Gus peeled off five tens and continued making his point. “I’m telling you as sure as the sun is gonna rise tomorrow it had to be a crossfire. Two, three men.”

“Bullshit! They only found one guy!” Dan said.

“If Oswald lives, then it was just him. But if he had some partners, I bet you they shut him up, good.” Dan said as he held his hand to his head like a gun and pulled the trigger. 

The sound of a gunshot rang out from inside the trailer, Maria screamed, and the three men rushed in.

Maria and her mother were sitting in shock, eyes glued to the TV screen. 

The announcer was also in shock. “He’s been shot! He’s been shot! Oswald has been shot!”

“Son of a bitch, they did it,” Cyrus said.

Gus started laughing, “I told you. They shut that old boy up real good.”

“Hot damn.” was all Dan could get out.

Cyrus snapped out of his momentary shock in time to grab the Polaroid off the table before the two men saw it.

A few minutes later, the men in the truck pulled away. Cyrus and Maria stood in the doorway. Cyrus took the photo out of his breast pocket.

Maria looked at it and then at her man, “Promise me you’ll destroy that picture. They’ll kill you too if you show anyone what you got.”

Cyrus walked over to an open oil drum.

Maria stayed at the door. “Cyrus, burn it. Burn it! Please promise me!”

Cyrus lit it with his Zippo lighter. 

Maria watched.

He took out a cigarette, lit it, and inhaled as he watched the speeding ticket burn.