Page 107 of Jackie

“Walk with me, please, Mr. Hill.” I fold my riding gloves into my jacket pocket. I can feel the burn of the ride still, that sense of alive. “Mr. Hill, I’d like to know what you think.”

“Of course, Mrs. Kennedy.” He doesn’t look up, his face solemn, attentive. He seems almost bodiless sometimes, but he’s become a confidant. I trust him. He is always there.

“Mr. Hill, do you think the climate in Dallas is so hostile to the president that the people could mistreat us as they did Adlai?”

A pause, then, “Anything’s possible, Mrs. Kennedy. But as far as I know, there are no more threats in Dallas than in any other part of the South right now.”

He doesn’t look at me when I catch his hand. It’s brief—the touch. I hold on for only a moment, then let go.

“Thank you, Mr. Hill. You always know the right thing to say to me.”

Jack

Rockefeller’s the one he worries about. Goldwater he can beat. The Arizonian might be quick, but he’s too extreme to be a threat in the campaign. Rockefeller, though, is a centrist. That mystique of old American money. In early November, five days after the coup in Vietnam, Rockefeller announced his candidacy, slamming Jack’s “failures at home and abroad” and citing a Newsweek poll that named him “the most widely disliked Democratic president of this century among white Southerners.”

Jack called Bobby, told him to start booking strategy meetings for the reelection campaign. “Let’s hit the ground running, knock Rockefeller’s feet out from under him before he gets in this race.”

—

Saturday at the house in Virginia, Jack sits on the patio, talking with Ben Bradlee about Texas, how Connally’s at it with Senator Yarborough, how even Johnson’s lost the power to mend that feud. The mood in Dallas is ugly.

Clipper is at Jackie’s feet. Her hand strokes the dog’s head. She’d been talking to Tony, but now she’s looking out toward the land. Thinking about the horses, he’d bet.

She taps her cigarette into the ashtray. I’ll finish this one—that’s what she’s thinking—then tell them I just need to walk down, check on Sardar. I’ll slip in a quick ride.

—

He can read it in her face.

—

She turns and smiles at him then—a pure bold strength in her smile, beautiful but with a new look, removed.

She’s been different since Greece, or maybe since Patrick. Different.

She draws in on the cigarette, turns away and exhales.

“Come on,” he says, standing up. “Before you leave me for your horse, let’s take a walk.” He brushes off his pants and starts down the steps to the stone path, the green lawn flung on either side. The children fly across the yard, running to catch up. John saunters ahead. Caroline slips her hand into her father’s, little fingers weaving through his.

—

The world is a cage of light, tenuous and sheer, hills rolling away beyond.

—

Jackie’s right, he thinks. This will be a good home for a while.

—

They’ve begun to talk about “after.” After his first term ends. After he runs for another and, assuming he wins, after four more years, which will pass in a week like a dream.

He wants to write. He knows that for sure. He wants to get back to who he was before his brother Joe was killed and this work fell to him. He wants to pick up those older threads and start new. There’s so much, though, to do before then. The poverty initiative, the space program, the civil-rights bill. And, next up, the trip to Dallas to smooth the rift that bill has ostensibly caused.

That rift was always there. The country was built on that kind of hatred. Built on slave labor and the racist American violence that runs through the nation like veins. No one likes to admit that, but it’s true.

So just do it. Get through the 88th Congress. Get that bill out of the House Judiciary and passed. The tax bill, too, which is stuck in Ways and Means. Get that work done, effect what change you can in the years you have left. Get things on the rails and have some fun along the way.

Enjoy yourself. It’s later than you think.

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