[Sitting in eighth-period study hall on that ghastly Friday afternoon, writing on the back of half-used three-hole punched lined paper, which is what I had available:]
[First page]
The President is dead. Kennedy killed. His wife and children. He’s dead. Lyndon Johnson is the President of the United States. [Segueing to the unknown assassin:] Death is too good for that son-of-a-bitch. When they capture him they ought to torture him for days without end.
Dead. Not even fifty. He was forty-six. Never hurt anybody deliberately, took on the toughest job in the world for the good of his country and gets killed for it.
[Segueing to the kids in the study hall around me:] These crazy guys here don’t even give a damn. The girls do, but the boys don’t even seem to mind. Some damn idiot here laughing. Now it’s beginning to dawn. “The most important man in the world.” Leo. “He was cute,” says some girl dazedly. Then she mutters about his wife and kids. Some fool speculates on the next election. Now they realize what happened. Someone has come in and said that he is definitely dead. I wish to God that murderer were here. We’d tear the bastard to pieces. What kind of Goddamned nut will kill a man like that? Some idiots speculating on who takes over now. Can’t they realize that the man stopped living?
[Second page]
Don’t they realize he’s dead? Someone says, “Outlaw the Communist Party. They had something to do with it.” Maybe. Or maybe it was some goddamned nut of a Southerner.
What a shock. I feel like crying, but the tears don’t come. I feel like raging, but I’m numbed. All I can see is the president being shot and his wife and kids. My God Why.
Even the stupidest of these here are now shocked and sober. Some continue writing, some stare into space only I continue this idiot writing, I keep on writing without preparation as they come into my mind. I want to cry very badly.
There is a lead weight in my stomach. My arms are heavy, like when I want to sleep. My eyes and my brain alone continue undiminished. Almost against my will I keep on writing, and the more I write the more hypocritical it seems. And yet
[Third page]
someday I may need a record of my thoughts at a time of crisis and later, in a calm state of mind, I’ll analyze this and see just how rational I really am.
I’m glad I wrote so much. I think I’ve burned myself out. All I feel now is one of apathy to what happened. I can’t even feel intense hate for the bastard, at least not emotional hate. I think though that I’ll carry this hate I have for the rest of my life. Something is coming over the loudspeaker. Maybe it’s a radio broadcast.
[Fourth page]
It is night. The story of the day can be stated in three words. Business as usual. I talked with Cathy, among others. [She was a college student who worked at the drug store I worked in.] She expressed her feelings. When she’d heard the news she’d been driving home, and it hit her like a ton of bricks. And then she realized that she was still driving, though she had to pull over when the shock wore off and the tears came. Business as usual. The show goes on. I went to church when I got there, left books and all, without really knowing what I was doing, and
[back of fourth page]
stayed there for what seemed eternity. [Can’t remember how I got from the high school to the church.] I wanted to die, and I prayed as I had, in school, I’d give my life for the President’s. Naturally I didn’t get my desire. Finally I realized that I couldn’t stay here and I left, and as I left I heard the four o’clock whistle. I started to walk to [my uncle’s] office [where my father was working in those years], and somewhere along the way I decided Business as usual. I would go to get the haircut I had planned on. I had nothing better to do. Otherwise I might have been tempted to play holy martyr which was the last thing I wanted to do.
I was still stunned, and dazed when I entered the office. I had seen dad in the car enter the lot [behind the building], so I knew he’d be coming in the back. As I went in I passed right by Aunt Mildred and Aunt Betty. I said something, I don’t remember what, and continued on. I met dad coming in the back door and, still distracted, I just told him I was going for a haircut and started to leave, not even thinking of what I would do after that. Dad did, though, and told me to come back when I was done. As I left the office I made some attempt at humor to Aunt Mildred, but as I couldn’t
[Fifth page]
even inject anything into my voice it was a complete failure, not that I cared. I walked head down all the way to the barbershop, stopping at one street when I saw a car which would have hit me. As for the others, I didn’t stop or slow in the slightest, just crossing at normal pace. Had I been struck down by a car I would have been the happiest man dead, but I couldn’t bring myself to step deliberately into the path of that one car which might have killed me (the driver looking the other way). I was very disgusted with myself then.
But the band played on. There was not a smile on the street in the afternoon and only on those idiots you would expect at night. People, tho continued. I got a haircut, and Cathy came to work.
[Sixth page]
The thing I wanted most was either to die or to go off somewhere alone, and I was allowed to do neither. Business as usual, the world turns on, the band played on, however you prefer to say it. Not even Mr. Kennedy’s death stops it. The president dies and idiot kids ride the avenue, a person comes in and buys athlete’s foot ointment and a boy gets a haircut and a girl comes to work. The whole of the ship of state is violently wrenched. I’m sick of writing. I want to forget this day and I never will. Maybe I can find a book for a while. I doubt it.
[End of the pages.]