Butterfly (38 page)

her. Like last night, when she told him she was pregnant again. All he said was “I gotta

guy who’ll get rid of it for you.” Despite the criminal nature of her life, Carmelita Sanchez

was a devout Catholic and she went to confession every week. Now she was going to have

a really big sin to confess again—another abortion. But that was Manuel’s decision. It

would never occur to Carmelita to think for herself, to challenge his wish, to stand up to

him and say, “No more abortions. I’m keeping this baby.”

The two fell silent, Carmelita because she suddenly didn’t know why she was here,

Beverly because she so badly wanted to find the words that would persuade her friend to

come away with her.

“Hey, listen,” Carmelita said, rising, “I gotta go, you know? Manuel, he’ll be wonder-

ing where I am.”

As Beverly eased her Corvair through the traffic congestion near Stemmons Freeway,

she said, “If you’re afraid that Manuel will find you in California, you don’t have to worry.

He never will. You can change your name. Remember how you used to say you wished

your name was Carmen? You can change your identity just like I did.”

Carmelita cast her a nervous glance. Actually, that was a very real danger—Manuel

coming after her. But that wasn’t the only reason she wouldn’t leave him. Girls like her,

well, they just didn’t give up the life and try to go straight. It just wasn’t done.

There was something else Beverly wanted to say—that in a few years Carmelita was

going to start losing her youth and her looks and Manuel was going to abandon her for

someone younger, and then she was going to be completely on her own, a worn-out

whore whom nobody wanted—but she knew Carmelita was already aware of that. She

and Beverly had been aware of it nine years ago, when they were only sixteen.

The traffic was terrible. As Beverly inched her car past the Texas School Book

Depository she searched for a way out. All of Dallas, it seemed, had turned out to greet

the President.

She got stuck in the intersection of Elm and Houston. Cross-traffic blocked the way;

she was penned in on all sides. Behind her a bus practically nudged her bumper, the

driver leaning on his horn.

Carmelita cursed in Spanish, then said, “He can see we can’t go nowhere! Why honk

at us?”

Suddenly there was a brief opening in the traffic and Beverly pressed her foot down.

The Corvair shot forward and the gap closed behind her, leaving the bus and its angry

driver stuck like a dinosaur in tar.

Beverly immediately swerved down a side street and was able to get away from the

crowds trying to glimpse the president. “I have to get back to Hollywood,” she said to

Carmelita on their way to the Bar-None. “I’ll be checking out tonight. If you should

change your mind about coming with me, I’ll be there until six o’clock.”

But Carmelita knew she wasn’t going anywhere.

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Kathryn Harvey

Danny Mackay pounded the bus horn and tried to nudge the blue Corvair out of his

way. From what he could see, the blonde driving it wasn’t looking for opportunities. She

just sat there yakking with her friend while the cross-traffic continued to stream in front

of her.

Finally there was an opening. He leaned on the horn and shouted, “Hey! Come on!

Move!” And the little Corvair shot forward and disappeared down a side street.

“Man,” said Bonner Purvis in the seat next to him, “don’t this beat all?”

“Shoot, just ’cause old Jack Kennedy’s come to town.”

Danny anxiously tapped his foot and tried to find a way out of this mess. He hadn’t

come to Dallas to see the President. He was here to conduct important business.

Even though it wasn’t too warm a day—just in the seventies—Danny was getting hot

under the collar. Actually, he felt as if he were getting hot under the skin, he was that rest-

less. Seven years they’d been at it. Seven years since dumping old Billy Bob Magdalene in

the desert and taking off in his bus, and in that time Danny had made more money than

he had ever dreamed possible. Although he spent a lot of the take from his nightly tent

revivals on fancy women and hotels, he regularly put enough away to get him started on

the glory road. Danny was in Dallas to see about buying some property, to take a look

around and start making those contacts that were going to ease him up the ladder of suc-

cess. He was thirty years old and he had money in the bank—it was time to start thinking

less about preaching and more about ways to achieve his personal ambition.

The energy that had charged him back in San Antonio was driving him still. Danny’s

fame as a charismatic preacher had spread all over Texas; his meetings were so big they had

to be held outdoors, there wasn’t a tent large enough to contain them. People liked the

agitated young preacher who could never sit still. Danny was forever in motion, fidgeting,

moving his head this way and that; even when he sat back and talked in his slow drawl

and gave that lazy-eyed look, one sensed the tension gathering within him.

He felt the power building in him again, the electricity just bursting to get out.

Preaching wasn’t enough anymore.
Texas
wasn’t big enough. Danny wanted to
own
things;

he wanted to control things. So he was in Dallas today to see a man about an office build-

ing, and maybe some apartments. Danny was property-hungry, and now he was finan-

cially able to start acquiring.

The sign on the side of the bus read DANNY MACKAY BRINGS JESUS. It wasn’t the same

bus he stole from Billy Bob. This was a big shiny new model complete with bedroom,

bathroom, and kitchen inside. Danny didn’t as a rule drive the bus himself; that was

Bonner’s job. Danny had a white-and-chrome Lincoln Continental for his personal use.

But since he had decided to sell the bus and settle down in Dallas, he was driving it to the

buyer himself. In a way, Danny was going to miss the big sleek vehicle. He’d had some

good times in it. But he wasn’t going to stay here forever. And he had put a small bust of

Napoleon on the dashboard to remind him of that. Power was his goal, and the tent cir-

cuit had merely been a stepping-stone.

“Look down there,” Bonner said, pointing.

They were on the triple overpass. Down below, on Main Street, they saw the

President’s twelve-car motorcade. Sister Sue, one of the girls currently traveling with

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163

Danny, looked out a window in the back and squealed, “It’s Jackie! Look, Marcia. There’s

Jackie.”

“Shee-yit,” muttered Danny as he braked at a stop sign and reached for his Camels.

He admired and envied the Kennedys, knew exactly what made people go ga-ga over

them, and expected to wield that kind of power someday.

Crack!

“What was that?” said Bonner.

Crack! Crack!

“Car backfiring,” Danny said.

“Oh my God!” screamed Sister Sue. “Oh my God!”

“What—” Danny turned around and looked down. The President’s limousine had

stopped. Jackie was leaning over her husband; Governor Connally was strangely slumped

in his wife’s arms.

And then chaos broke loose. Suddenly, people were running, falling to the ground; a

Secret Service agent was shouting at Lyndon Johnson’s car, “Get down! Get down!” Jackie

was up on her hands and knees, crawling over the back of the car.

And then the President’s car was roaring off, the Secret Service car immediately behind

with an agent standing up holding a submachine gun.

Danny stared in disbelief as the cars swept beneath the underpass, and then, seconds

later, when he saw them suddenly appear on the freeway, just up ahead, he said, “Holy

shit!” and threw the bus into gear.

“Jesus, Danny!” cried Bonner, holding on tight. “The President’s been shot!”

Sue and Marcia began to scream in the backseat.

Danny wasn’t thinking; he had no idea what he was doing or why. He just raced after

the two cars, slowing to sixty when they slowed to sixty, veering off Stemmons Freeway in

close pursuit and down Industrial and Harry Hines boulevards.

When he saw the tan thirteen-story hospital up ahead, he realized what they were

doing. The President’s car raced up to the emergency entrance, and within seconds the

two unconscious men were being placed on stretchers.

Danny brought the bus to an abrupt halt, sending his three companions vaulting for-

ward. He flew out, knocking Bonner out of the way. “Hey!” Danny shouted, running.

“What happened?”

But Secret Service agents stopped him; cops on motorcycles pushed him back. He

stood and stared. Jackie was still clinging to her husband. There was blood on her skirt

and legs. Danny saw her go through the double doors with the stretcher, and the agents

took up positions immediately behind.

“What is it, Danny?” Bonner said breathlessly, running up. “Is he alive? Who shot

him?
Danny!”

“Oh God,” Danny groaned. “I don’t know. Christ, I don’t know!”

More cars were pulling up to Parkland Hospital now. People were running up the side-

walk, some were shouting, some were crying, some walked like zombies in stone-dead

silence. The police kept them away from the building. Reporters rushed through the dou-

ble doors; a television news crew was setting up on the lawn as quickly as they could.

164

Kathryn Harvey

There was a station wagon there now, from one of the big Dallas radio stations. People

milled around helplessly, looking for guidance.

The President had been shot. The world had come to an end.

Danny looked around himself in shock. He saw a Negro woman kneeling on the

grass, tears streaming down her cheeks. She was beating her breast and wailing. Others

stood staring at the hospital, holding hands, their faces white, stunned. Danny saw Sue

and Marcia stumble down from the bus, clutching each other. And the news crews were

trying to get some answers.

How badly hurt was the President?

The crowd was growing. People were drawn to the hospital in order to be near their

fallen leader. To Danny the chaotic scene looked like an anthill that had been kicked.

There was no direction, no cohesion in this mob of panic-stricken Texans.

And then, all of a sudden, he saw it.

His place in history.

“Hey,” he said. “Hey!” He ran to the bus and hauled himself up onto the dented hood.

“Brothers and sisters in Christ,” he cried with his arms outspread. “Join me in prayer for

our beloved president.”

Just like that, Danny had them. Here was someone saying something at last, here was

someone standing out from the crowd, like a beacon, a man with the voice of authority, a

man suddenly saying words they wanted to hear—familiar, comforting words—and they

converged on him like bees on honey.

Danny looked down at the bewildered, hopeful faces and he knew what he had to do.

They were like children, he thought. Lost little children. They were asking for someone to

take them by the hand. They were asking to be led.

“I do not know what is going on inside that there building, my brothers and sisters,”

his voice rang out over their heads. “But I do know that the man who lies on that hospi-

tal stretcher is in desperate need of our prayers. We have to lift our voices up to God and

let Him know that we don’t want Him to take John Fitzgerald Kennedy to His bosom

today. We have to pour out our love and our need to God so that He sees how worthy we

are.”

“Amen!” someone shouted.

“We know who the world’s going to blame for what happened today!” Danny cried.

“They’re going to blame Texas! But Texas didn’t shoot our beloved president. The Devil

did! It was the sin and corruption running rampant in our world today that shot John

Kennedy! If that blessed man in there dies”—he flung an arm toward the emergency

entrance—“then it will be our sinfulness and godlessness that killed him!”

“Amen, brother!” shouted Bonner.

Danny was getting warmed up now, just as he did in his tent revivals. Once he got the

heat started, there was no stopping him. He felt the power take over, he thought he was

going to burst with it. His body felt as if it were soaring above the crowd; his voice rolled

out and the words just came and came.

He dropped to his knees and clasped his hands under his chin. “Dear Father in

Heaven,” he called out, “please hear our prayers. We are all miserable sinners and we are

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deserving of Thy divine wrath. But we beseech Thee not to take John Kennedy from us

today! We are like little children. We need our father!”

“Amen,” people started to say. A few fell to their knees, hands folded in prayer. All

faces were fixed on the charismatic young man kneeling on the bus, his almost-reddish

hair glowing like a halo in the sunlight.

Danny had a beautiful voice. It commanded. It persuaded. It made folks change their

minds about things. He also had another talent. He could cry.

The tears started to stream down his face now as he belted out his prayer to God. His

voice broke in the right places; he sobbed uncontrollably in others. And the crowd cried