Message From Nam

Praise for Danielle Steel “Steel is one of the best!” — Los Angeles Times “Few modern writers convey the pathos of family and material life with such heartfelt empathy.” — The Philadelphia Inquirer “Steel pulls out all the emotional stops. . . . She delivers!” — Publishers Weekly “What counts for the reader is the ring of authenticity.” — San Francisco Chronicle From the Publisher As a journalist, Paxton Andrews would experience Vietnam firsthand. We follow her from high school in Savannah to college in Berkeley and then to work in Saigon. For the soldiers she knew and met there, Viet Nam would change their lives in ways they could never have imagined. For the men in her life, Viet Nam would change their lives in ways hey could not escape or deny. Peter Wilson, fresh from law school, was a new recruit who would confont his fate in Da Nang. Ralph Johnson, a seasoned AP correspondent, had been in Saigon since the beginning. He knew Vietnam and the war inside out. Bill Quinn, captain of the Cu Chi tunnel rats, was on his fourth tour of duty and it seemed nothing could touch him. Sergeant Tony Campobello had come to Vietnam from the streets of New York to vent a rage that had followed him all the way to Saigon. For seven years Paxton Andrews would write an acclaimed newspaper column from the front before finally returning to the States and then attending the Paris peace talks. But for her and the men who fought in Viet Nam, life would never be the same again. From the Inside Flap ist, Paxton Andrews would experiencexa0xa0Vietnam firsthand. We follow her from high school in Savannah toxa0xa0college in Berkeley and then to work in Saigon.For the soldiers shexa0xa0knew and met there, Viet Nam would change theirxa0xa0lives in ways they could never have imagined. For the menxa0xa0in her life, Viet Nam would change their lives in ways hey could notxa0xa0escape or deny. Peterxa0xa0Wilson, fresh from law school, was a new recruitxa0xa0who would confont his fate in Da Nang. Ralphxa0xa0Johnson, a seasoned AP correspondent, had been inxa0xa0Saigon since the beginning. He knew Vietnam and thexa0xa0war inside out. Bill Quinn, captain of the Cu Chixa0xa0tunnel rats, was on his fourth tour of duty and itxa0xa0seemed nothing could touch him. Sergeant Tonyxa0xa0Campobello had come to Vietnam from the streets ofxa0xa0New York to vent a rage that had followed him all the way to Saigon.xa0&# As a journalist, Paxton Andrews would experience Vietnam firsthand. We follow her from high school in Savannah to college in Berkeley and then to work in Saigon. For the soldiers she knew and met there, Viet Nam would change their lives in ways they could never have imagined. For the men in her life, Viet Nam would change their lives in ways hey could not escape or deny. Peter Wilson, fresh from law school, was a new recruit who would confont his fate in Da Nang. Ralph Johnson, a seasoned AP correspondent, had been in Saigon since the beginning. He knew Vietnam and the war inside out. Bill Quinn, captain of the Cu Chi tunnel rats, was on his fourth tour of duty and it seemed nothing could touch him. Sergeant Tony Campobello had come to Vietnam from the streets of New York to vent a rage that had followed him all the way to Saigon. For seven years Paxton Andrews would write an acclaimed newspaper column from the front before finally returning to the States and then attending the Paris peace talks. But for her and the men who fought in Viet Nam, life would never be the same again. Danielle Steel has been hailed as one of the world’s most popular authors, with over 650 million copies of her novels sold. Her many international bestsellers include Country, Prodigal Son, Pegasus, A Perfect Life, Power Play, Winners, First Sight, Until the End of Time, The Sins of the Mother, and other highly acclaimed novels. She is also the author of His Bright Light, the story of her son Nick Traina’s life and death; A Gift of Hope, a memoir of her work with the homeless; Pure Joy, about the dogs she and her family have loved; and the children’s book Pretty Minnie in Paris. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter One It was a chill gray day in Savannah, and there was a brisk breeze blowing in from the ocean.xa0xa0There were leaves on the ground in Forsyth Park and a few couples were wandering hand in hand, some women were chatting and smoking a last cigarette before they went back to work.xa0xa0And in Savannah High School, the hallways were deserted.xa0xa0The bell had rung at one o'clock, and the students were all in their classrooms.xa0xa0There was laughter coming from one room, and silence from several others.xa0xa0The squeak of chalk, the looks of bored despair on the faces of sophomores ill prepared for a surprise quiz in civics.xa0xa0The senior class was being talked to about College Boards they were going to take the following week, just before Thanksgiving.xa0xa0And as they listened, far away, in Dallas, gunfire erupted.xa0xa0A man in a motorcade catapulted into his wife's arms, his head exploding horrifyingly behind him.xa0xa0No one understood what had happened yet, and as the voice in Savannah droned on about the College Boards, Paxton Andrews tried to fight the sleepy waves of warm boredom.xa0xa0And all of a sudden in the still room, she felt as though she couldn't keep her eyes open a moment longer. Mercifully, at one-fifty the bell rang, all doors opened and waves of high school students poured into the halls, freed from quizzes, lectures, French literature, and the pharaohs of Egypt.xa0xa0Everyone moved on to their next rooms, with an occasional stop at a locker for a change of books, a quick joke, a burst of laughter.xa0xa0And then suddenly, a scream.xa0xa0A long anguished wail, a sound that pierced the air like an arrow shot from a great distance.xa0xa0A thundering of footsteps, a rush toward a corner room normally used only by teachers, the television set flicked on, and hundreds of young worried faces pressing through the doorway, and people saying "No!" and shouting and calling and talking, and no one could hear what was being said on the television, as still others shouted at them to be quiet. "Hush up, you guys! We can't hear what they're saying!" "Is he hurt?. . .xa0xa0is he .xa0xa0.xa0xa0." No one dared to say the words, and through the crowd again and again, the same words. . .xa0xa0"What's happening?. . .xa0xa0what happened?. . .xa0xa0President Kennedy's been shot. . .xa0xa0the President. . .xa0xa0I don't know. . .xa0xa0in Dallas. . .xa0xa0what happened? . . .xa0xa0President Kennedy. . .xa0xa0he isn't .xa0xa0.xa0xa0." No one quite believing it at first.xa0xa0Everyone wanting to think it was a bad joke.xa0xa0"Did you hear that President Kennedy's been shot?" "Yeah . . .xa0xa0then what? What's the rest of the joke, man?" There was no rest of the joke.xa0xa0There was only frantic talking, and endless questions, and no answers. There were confused images on the screen with replays of the motorcade breaking up and speeding away.xa0xa0Walter Cronkite was on the air, looking ashen.xa0xa0"The President has been seriously wounded." A murmur went through the Savannah crowd, and it seemed as though every student and teacher at Savannah High School were pressed into that one tiny room, and crowding in from the hallways. "What'd he say?. . .xa0xa0what did he say ?" a voice from the distance asked. "He said the President is seriously wounded," a voice from the front started back to the others, and three freshmen girls started to cry, as Paxton stood somberly in a corner in the press of bodies around her, and watched them. There was suddenly an eerie stillness in the room, as though no one wanted to move, as though they were afraid to disturb some delicate balance in the air, as though even the tiniest motion might change the course his life would take. . .xa0xa0and Paxton found herself thinking back to another day, six years before, when she was only eleven. . . .xa0xa0Daddy's been hurt, Pax. . . .xa0xa0Her brother George had told her the news.xa0xa0Her mother had been at the hospital with her father.xa0xa0He liked to fly hisxa0xa0own plane to go to meetings around the state, and he'd had to bring it down in a sudden thunderstorm near Atlanta. "Is he?. . .xa0xa0will he be okay? .xa0xa0.xa0xa0." "I .xa0xa0.xa0xa0." There had been a strange catch in George's voice, a terrible truth in his eyes that she had wanted to run and hide from.xa0xa0She had been eleven then, and George was twenty-five.xa0xa0They were fourteen years apart and several lifetimes.xa0xa0Paxton had been an "accident," her mother still whispered to friends, an accident that Carlton Andrews had never ceased to be grateful for, and which still seemed to startle Paxton's mother.xa0xa0Beatrice Andrews had been twenty-seven years old when their son George was born.xa0xa0It had taken her five years to get pregnant with him, and as far as she was concerned, her pregnancy was a nightmare.xa0xa0She was sick every day for nine months, and the delivery was a horror she knew she would always remember.xa0xa0George was born by cesarean section, finally, after forty-two hours of hard labor, and although he was a big beautiful ten-pound baby boy, Beatrice Andrews promised herself that she would never have another baby.xa0xa0It was an experience she wouldn't have repeated for anything, and she saw to it with great care that she wouldn't have to. Carlton was, as always, patient with her, and he was crazy about his boy. George was the kind of boy any father would have loved.xa0xa0He was a happy, easygoing, reasonably athletic boy, with a serious penchant for his studies which also pleased his mother.xa0xa0Theirs was axa0xa0quiet, happy life.xa0xa0Carlton had a healthy law practice, Beatrice had an important role with the Historical Society, the Junior League, and the Daughters of the Civil War.xa0xa0Her life was fulfilled.xa0xa0And she played bridge every Tuesday.xa0xa0It was there that she felt the first twinge, that for the first time she felt suddenly violently nauseous. She assumed she had eaten something off at the League breakfast that day, and went home to lie down right after her bridge game.xa0xa0And three weeks later she knew.xa0xa0At the age of forty-one, with a fourteen-year-old son about to enter high school, and a husband who wasn't even gracious enough to hide his delight, she was pregnant.xa0xa0This pregnancy was easier for her than the first, but she didn't even seem to care.xa0xa0She was so outraged by the indignity of it, the embarrassment of being pregnant again when other women were thinking about grandchildren.xa0xa0She didn't want another baby, she had never wanted another child, and nothing her husband said seemed to appease her.xa0xa0Even the tiny, perfect, angelic-looking little blond baby girl they put in her arms when she awoke barely seemed to console her.xa0xa0All she could talk about for months was how foolish she felt, and she left the child constantly with the huge, purring black baby-nurse she had hired when she was pregnant.xa0xa0Elizabeth McQueen was her name, but everyone called her Queenie.xa0xa0And she wasn't really a nurse by trade.xa0xa0She had borne eleven children of her own, only seven of whom lived, and she was that rarestxa0xa0of rare gifts of the South, the old beloved black mammy. She was filled with love for everyone, but most especially for children and babies, and she loved Paxton with a passion and a warmth that no mother could have surpassed had she given birth to her, and certainly, Beatrice Andrews didn't.xa0xa0She remained uncomfortable around the little girl, and for reasons she herself couldn't really explain, she always kept her distance.xa0xa0The child always seemed to have sticky hands, or she wanted to touch the delicate bottles of perfume on Beatrice's table and she invariably spilled them, and somehow mother and child always seemed to make each other nervous.xa0xa0It was Queenie who comforted her when she cried, whose arms she ran to when she was hurt or afraid, Queenie who never left her, even for a moment. There were no days off in Queenie's life.xa0xa0There was nowhere she really wanted to go on a day off, her children had their own lives now, and she couldn't imagine what would happen to Paxxie if she wasn't there to help her.xa0xa0Her father was always good to her, and he loved that child so, but her mother was a different story.xa0xa0As Paxton grew older, the difference between them grew, and by the time she was ten, Paxton had already guessed that they had almost nothing in common.xa0xa0It was difficult to believe that they were even related. To her mother, her clubs were everything, her women friends, her auxiliaries, her bridge days, and benefits for the Daughters of the Civil War, her life with those women werexa0xa0what she lived for.xa0xa0She almost seemed uninterested when her husband came home, and she listened politely to what he said at the dinner table at night, but even Paxton noticed that her mother seemed almost bored by her husband.xa0xa0And Carlton noticed it too.xa0xa0Although he would never have admitted it to anyone, he felt the same chill emanating from his wife as Paxton had for years.xa0xa0Beatrice Andrews was dutiful, loyal, organized, well-dressed, pleasant, polite, perfectly bred, and she had never felt a single emotion for anyone in her entire lifetime.xa0xa0She simply didn't have it in her.xa0xa0Queenie knew it, too, although she expressed it differently than Carlton would have, she'd long since said of her to her daughters that Beatrice Andrews's heart was colder and smaller than peach pits in winter.xa0xa0The closest she ever came to loving anyone was what she felt for her son, George.xa0xa0They had a kind of rapport that she had never been able to allow herself with Paxton.xa0xa0She admired him, respected him, and he had long since affected a kind of cool, aloof, clinical way of looking at things that eventually led him into medicine, and she was impressed by that too.xa0xa0She liked the fact that her son was a doctor. He was even brighter than his father, she secretly told her friends, in fact, he reminded her a great deal of her own father who had been on the Georgia Supreme Court, and she felt certain that one day George would do great things. But what would Paxton ever do? She would go to school andxa0xa0graduate, and eventually get married and have children.xa0xa0It hardly seemed an impressive path to Beatrice, and yet it was the one that she herself had followed.xa0xa0At her father's insistence, she had gone to Sweet Briar.xa0xa0And married Carlton two weeks after graduation.xa0xa0But in truth, although she enjoyed their company, and sought it out at every opportunity, she had no great respect for women.xa0xa0It was men who impressed her, who accomplished the great things.xa0xa0And there was no doubt in her mind that the pretty blond child who put her sticky little hands everywhere at every opportunity was certainly not destined for greatness. Walter Cronkite's voice droned on, as Paxton and the others stared silently at the television screen at school.xa0xa0The few people who were still talking were doing so in whispers.xa0xa0And every few minutes, Cronkite was switching over to the reporters now standing in the lobby of Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, where the President had been taken. "We don't have any real answers for you yet," the face on the screen said, "all we know is that the President's condition is critical, but there haven't been any new bulletins in the last few minutes." With that, a teacher's hand reached out and switched the dial, just in time to hear Chet Huntley say almost exactly the same thing on another network.xa0xa0The students were looking at eachxa0xa0other, with terror clearly etched on their faces.xa0xa0And again, Paxton could remember George coming to pick her up at school to tell her about their father.xa0xa0The accident, the plane coming down. . .xa0xa0and George's face as he told her.xa0xa0He had just finished medical school then, and he was waiting to start his residency at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta.xa0xa0He had managed to stay in the South for his entire education, although their father was a Harvard graduate and had encouraged him to go north.xa0xa0But Beatrice felt that it was important to stay close to their roots, and support the educational institutions of the South, and she frequently said so. It was two o'clock, and Paxton stood breathlessly in the corner of the room trying to believe that he would be all right, fighting back tears, and not sure if she was crying for their President, or her father.xa0xa0Her father had died the day after his plane crashed, his injuries too great, his wife and son at his side, while Paxton waited at home with Queenie.xa0xa0At eleven, they thought she was too young to see him at the hospital, and he had never regained consciousness anyway.xa0xa0She had never seen him again.xa0xa0He was gone, with all his warmth and his love and his broad wisdom about the world, his fascination with people and history and things far, far from Savannah.xa0xa0He was a southern gentleman of the old school, and yet in some secret ways he didn't fit into the mold he had been born to, and it was that that 0 Paxton loved about him.xa0xa0That and everything else in fact, the way he hugged her tight when she ran to him, the way he sounded when they went for long walks and talked about things she wondered about, like the war, and Europe, and what it had been like to go to Harvard.xa0xa0She loved the way he sounded and the way he smelled, the spice of his after-shave would leave a fresh smell in the room after he'd walked through it. . .xa0xa0and the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled, and the things he said about how proud he was of her. . .xa0xa0she felt as though she had died when they played "Amazing Grace" at his funeral, and Queenie sat in the back row and cried so loud, Paxton could hear her from where she sat between George and her mother. Her life had never been the same again since her father died.xa0xa0It was as though he had taken a piece of her with him, the piece that used to smell wild flowers with him, and go to his office to visit him when he had to work on Saturday mornings, the piece that could talk to him as though she really understood the world, and ask him all kinds of questions.xa0xa0She had an uncanny sense about people, and she had once said to him that she didn't think her mother really loved her.xa0xa0It didn't really bother Paxton anymore.xa0xa0It just was.xa0xa0And she had Queenie and her father. "I think. . .xa0xa0I think she needs someone like George. . . .xa0xa0He doesn't make her nervous, and he talks about the things she cares about.xa0xa0He kind of is like her, don't you think, Daddy? Sometimes when I say I really love something, I think it scares her." She was more perceptive than she knew, and Carlton Andrews knew it too, but he never admitted it to his only daughter. "She doesn't express her feelings the way you and I do," he said honestly, sitting back in the comfortable old leather chair that she liked to swivel in until it threatened to fall off its moorings.xa0xa0"But that doesn't mean she doesn't have them." He felt an obligation to protect his wife, even from Paxton, although he knew that what Paxxie said was true.xa0xa0Beatrice was as cold as ice.xa0xa0Dutiful and loyal and a "good wife" in her own eyes.xa0xa0She kept a nice home, was always polite and kind to him, she would never cheat on him, or be rude to him, or betray him.xa0xa0She was a lady to her very core, but like Paxxie he wondered if she had ever loved anyone or anything, except George, but even there she kept a cool, comfortable distance.xa0xa0It was just that their son was so much like her, he didn't expect more than that.xa0xa0But Carlton did, and so did Paxxie, and they both knew that, from Beatrice, they would never get it.xa0xa0"She loves you, Pax." But even as he said it, Paxton thought he was lying.xa0xa0She didn't totally understand the subtle shadings of just how much the woman was capable of, or wasn't.xa0xa0Carlton had a much clearer picture. "I love you, Daddy." She had thrown her arms around him then, without hesitation or reserve.xa0xa0She never held back anything from him, and he laughed as she almost knocked him off the ancient swivel chair. "Hey, you. . .xa0xa0you're goin' to have me on the floor here in a minute." He dreamed about her going to Radcliffe one day, and as he held her close to him, he could imagine her grown and beautiful, and the pride of his sunset years. She was everything he had ever dreamed of, warm and loving and giving and caring.xa0xa0She was everything he himself was, although he didn't know it. And then, he was gone, and Paxton was alone with them, except for Queenie.xa0xa0She studied hard, and she read all the time.xa0xa0She wrote letters to her father, as though he were away on a trip, and she could mail the letters to him, except that she couldn't.xa0xa0Sometimes she put the letters away, and sometimes she just tore them up.xa0xa0But it helped her to write them.xa0xa0It was a way of still "talking" to him, since she couldn't talk to "them." Her mother seemed to jump at everything she said, she disagreed with everything Paxton said, and sometimes Paxxie almost felt as though she'd come from another planet.xa0xa0They were so different in every way.xa0xa0And George was just like her.xa0xa0He would urge Paxton to "behave" and try to see things her mother's way, to be "reasonable," and remember who she was, which only confused her further.xa0xa0Who was she? Her father's daughter, or theirs? Who was right? But in her heart of hearts, there was no confusion.xa0xa0She knew that his broader love of the world was the only way for her, and by the time George finished his residency at Grady Memorial, and she turned sixteen, she knew without a moment's doubt that she wanted to get out of the South and go to Radcliffe.xa0xa0Her mother wanted her to go to Agnes Scott or Mary Baldwin, or Sweet Briar where she had gone herself, or even Bryn Mawr, but she thought it a ridiculous idea for Paxton to go to Radcliffe. "You don't need to go to a northern school.xa0xa0We have everything you need right here.xa0xa0Look at your brother.xa0xa0He had every opportunity to go anywhere in the country, and he stayed right here in Georgia." The very idea of it made Paxton feel claustrophobic.xa0xa0She wanted to get away from their narrow ideas, from her mother's friends, from the things she heard about the "horrors of integration." Civil rights were something she discussed with her friends, or with Queenie, sotto voce in the kitchen.xa0xa0But even Queenie clung to the old views and thought that black folks should stay where black folks belonged, and that ain't the same place as white folks.xa0xa0The thought of mixing the two frightened her, and it was only her children and her grandchildren who wanted the same changes as Paxton.xa0xa0But Paxton thought the things she had grown up with were wrong, and she wasn't afraid to say so, or write papers about it for school.xa0xa0She knew her father would have agreed with her too, he always had, and that added fuel to her fervor.xa0xa0It was a subject she had learned not to discuss with her mother and brother.xa0xa0But that fall, she had applied to half a dozen northern schools, and two in California.xa0xa0She had applied to Vassar, Wellesley, Radcliffe, Smith, and in the West, Stanford, and UC Berkeley.xa0xa0She didn't really want to go to a girls' school, and Radcliffe was the only one she really wanted.xa0xa0She had applied to the two western schools because her adviser thought she should, and she had finally applied halfheartedly to Sweet Briar, to appease her mother. And her mother's friends kept telling her how happy she was going to be there, as though her going to Sweet Briar was a foregone conclusion. It was something she couldn't even think of now, as her eyes clung to the clock.xa0xa0It was only two o'clock, half an hour after the President had been shot, ten minutes since they had been watching the television for news of him, as the entire nation prayed, and his family knew what Paxton had learned six years before when her father died. . .xa0xa0that it was over. At 2:01, Walter Cronkite looked into the camera with a defeated look and told the American people that their President was dead, and in the tiny room at Savannah High, there was a murmur of grief that became a wail, and the room was suddenly filled with the sound of sobbing.xa0xa0People were crying everywhere and teachers and students embraced, muttering incoherently about how could a thing like that happen.xa0xa0Walter Cronkite went on, two doctors were interviewed, and Paxton felt as though she were moving underwater.xa0xa0Everything seemed to have slowed down, and everything seemed to be happening at a great distance.xa0xa0People were crying everywhere, and Paxton could barely see as the tears coursed down her cheeks and she felt a breathlessness she had felt once before, as though someone had squeezed all the air out of her and she would never catch her breath again.xa0xa0It was a pain and a grief almost beyond bearing.xa0xa0And in an odd way, this was like losing him all over again.xa0xa0Her father had been fifty-seven years old when he died, and John Kennedy was only forty-six, and yet both had been cut down in the prime of their lives, filled with fire and ideas and excitement about living, both had families, both had children who loved them dearly.xa0xa0And Jack Kennedy would be mourned by an entire world, Carlton Andrews was only mourned by those who knew him.xa0xa0But it felt the same to Paxton now, and she could feel what his children must feel, the terrible grief, the loss, the sorrow, the anger.xa0xa0This was so terrible, so wrong, how could anyone do it? She walked blindly down the halls as she left the school, without saying a word to anyone, and she ran the half-dozen blocks to their home on Habersham, and the door to their house slammed as she flew into the front hall, still crying, her white-blond mane still flying behind her.xa0xa0She looked like her father, too, or as he had as a boy, with shining blond hair, and big green eyes that always seemed to be searching for answers.xa0xa0And she looked frighteningly pale now as she dropped her books and her bag, and hurried to the kitchen to find Queenie. Queenie was humming to herself as she hustled around the kitchen she loved. The copper pots shone to perfection as they hung on the racks above her head, and there was the fragrant smell of her baking.xa0xa0And she turned in surprise to see Paxton standing staring at her with a wild-eyed look and her lovely young face frightened and tear-stained.xa0xa0At that moment, Paxton was the symbol of an entire nation. "What happen', child?" Queenie looked frightened as she moved her enormous bulk toward the girl she had raised and loved like no other. "I .xa0xa0.xa0xa0." For a moment, Paxxie didn't know what to say.xa0xa0She couldn't find the words, didn't know what to tell her.xa0xa0"Haven't you watched TV today?" Queenie was addicted to the soaps, but she only shook her head and stared at Paxton. "No, your mom took the kitchen set to be fixed yesterday.xa0xa0It's broke.xa0xa0And I never watch the big set in the living room." She looked hurt at the suggestion. "Why?" She wondered if something terrible had happened in downtown Savannah. . .xa0xa0maybe Dr.xa0xa0George. . .xa0xa0or Mrs. Andrews. . .xa0xa0or even her own children might be affected. . .xa0xa0maybe one of those terrible civil rights demonstrations. . . maybe. . .xa0xa0But she was in no way prepared for what Paxton told her. "President Kennedy was shot.""Oh, my land .xa0xa0.xa0xa0." Queenie sank her enormous bulk into the nearest chair with a look of shocked horror.xa0xa0Her eyes moved to Paxton's then with an unspoken question. "He's dead." Paxxie began to cry again, and then knelt next to Queenie and put her arms around her.xa0xa0It was like losing her father all over again.xa0xa0That terrible feeling of loss and despair and grief and betrayal.xa0xa0And Queenie held her as they both cried for a man they had never known and who had been felled so young, and for what? Why? Why had they done it? How angry could anyone be? What purpose would it serve? And why him as an example? Why a man with two small children and a young wife? Why anyone? And why someone so alive and so full of hope and promise for so many? Paxxie mourned him in Queenie's arms, and the old black woman held her and rocked her as she had as a child, as she herself cried for a man she had never known, but believed to be a good person. "Lawd, child. . .xa0xa0I can't hardly believe it.xa0xa0Why would anyone do such a thing? Do they know who did it?" "I don't think so." But when they went to the living room and turned on the TV, there was fresh news, a man named Lee Harvey Oswald had shot and killed a Dallas policeman who tried to question him, and had been traced to the Book Depository where the fatal shots had been fired into the motorcade at one-thirty.xa0xa0And he was believed to be President Kennedy's killer.xa0xa0Oswald had been apprehended, the policeman and the President were dead, a secret service agent too, Texas governor John Connally had been severely wounded, but was doing well, and the President's body was on its way to Washington on Air Force One, with his wife beside him.xa0xa0President and Mrs. Johnson were on board, too, and there had been earlier reports that he had been wounded slightly, which were later proven to be only rumors.xa0xa0An entire nation was in shock, and Paxton and Queenie stood there mutely, still unable to believe what they were hearing and seeing.xa0xa0They were still standing there, watching silently, tears streaming down their faces, when Paxton's mother walked in a few minutes later.xa0xa0She went to the hairdresser every Friday afternoon and was just returning from her weekly appointment.xa0xa0She had heard the news there, and she looked grim as she silently joined them.xa0xa0Several of the women had gone home with wet hair, and most of the hairdressers didn't have the heart to finish what they had started. Everyone was in tears, and Beatrice Andrews had been having her hair rinsed when they first heard the news.xa0xa0But she had stayed to have everything done, and even convinced one of the girls to finish her manicure.xa0xa0She hated to let it all go for a few more days.xa0xa0She had a lot to do that weekend before Thanksgiving, and her bridge club was giving a dinner.xa0xa0It never dawned on her that no one would be giving anything.xa0xa0Every festivity imaginable would be canceled, as people sat glued to their TVs and an entire nation went into mourning.xa0xa0But that hadn't occurred to her, and she had come home, feeling subdued, but not hysterical by any means.xa0xa0She thought some of the women got a little too carried away.xa0xa0She knew what real grief was, she had lost her own husband, after all, hadn't she, and it was impossible to feel the same emotion for a public figure.xa0xa0And yet people did feel that for him, that intense kind of personal grieving as though they had known and loved him.xa0xa0He had brought new hope to everyone, the promise of youth brought to ancient tasks, the magic of a world they would never know and could only dream of.xa0xa0And his beautiful wife reminded everyone of a fairy princess. Beatrice Andrews stood solemnly beside her daughter and the woman who had raised her, and then sat down to watch Lyndon Johnson take the oath of office on Air Force One, but she did not invite Queenie to join her.xa0xa0The cameras showed Judge Sarah Hughes administering the oath to Lyndon Johnson, as Jacqueline Kennedy stood beside him, and everyone watching suddenly realized that she was wearing the same pink suit, the suit she had worn when he was killed, the suit that was still covered with his blood.xa0xa0And her face showed the ravages of grief, as Lyndon Johnson became President, and Paxton sank slowly into a chair beside her mother.xa0xa0The tears were pouring down her cheeks, and she stared at the screen in disbelief, unable to absorb what had happened.xa0xa0"How could anyone do such a thing?" She sobbed as Queenie shook her head, and still crying herself, went back to the kitchen. "I don't know, Paxton.xa0xa0They're talking about a conspiracy.xa0xa0But I don't think anyone knows yet why it happened.xa0xa0I feel sorry for Mrs. Kennedy and the children.xa0xa0What a terrible thing for them." It made Paxton think again about her father.xa0xa0Although he hadn't been assassinated, he had died unexpectedly, and his absence still hurt her.xa0xa0Maybe it always would.xa0xa0And surely the President's children would always feel his absence too.xa0xa0Why did it have to happen? "These are times of terrible turmoil," her mother went on, "all the racial disturbances. . .xa0xa0the changes he tried to make. . .xa0xa0perhaps this is the price he paid for it in the end.xa0xa0.xa0xa0.xa0xa0." Beatrice Andrews looked prim as she turned off the TV, and Paxton stared at her, wondering if she would ever understand her. "You think this is because of civil rights? You think that's why it happened?" Paxton sounded suddenly angry.xa0xa0Why did she think that way? Why did she want to keep everything back in the Dark Ages? Why did they have to live in the South? Why had she been born in Savannah? Read more