I Shot JFK Read online

  *****

  Later in the fall, Gunnar’s quick thinking saved me from being dismissed from Alamogordo High. Gunnar and I were comparing physical science notes before the first bell. A senior, the captain of the football team, was being verbally abusive to his cheerleader girlfriend, a sophomore. Gunnar saw my face flush with anger. He knew I was about to act. I wanted to punch the guy out. At a minimum, I was going to break his nose.

  Gunnar blocked my path. He stepped eighteen inches from the quarterback and, lightning-like, performed a judo foot sweep. The football player was on the ground seemingly before he started his fall. It was so sudden the senior was totally stunned. Gunnar reached down with his right hand to grab the football captain’s right hand. Gunnar shook his head, “Happens to be me all the time. Let me help you!”

  As the senior glanced around to see whether anyone saw what happened, he realized it had been way too fast for anyone to see. He sheepishly took Gunnar’s hand and got up. “Thanks, man.” His mind had obviously sized up the situation. He didn’t know what other tricks this little freshman had up his sleeve. Better to write this off as a stumble than add on another defeat. “Hey, man, you ought to come out for the team.”

  That evening I thanked Gunnar, “You know I was going to deck him!”

  “I know you were, Alex. I knew I had to do something.”

  “It was the right thing to do, Gunnar,” I defended myself.

  “I’m not so sure,” Gunnar began. “When we were up at Ruidoso last summer, I stayed in the car reading a book while Aunt Cece went into the grocery store. I looked up at a commotion. A man was jerking his female companion around. A well-intentioned bystander intervened. He got between them and engaged the man. In no time, the do-gooder was in a two-front war. The man and his girlfriend took on the do-gooder. ‘Dead right’ seemed to apply. With couples, it’s not always simple. Often, other people’s business is other people’s business.”

  “Well,” Gunnar, “I closed, “good thing Dad insisted on our taking judo lessons back in Albuquerque.”

  My brother always amazed me. He went through life soaking up lessons and applying them with intelligence. We all do that, don’t we? No!

  *****

  Ninth grade physical science cemented Gunnar’s reputation in the academic hall of fame. In early October, the teacher collected physical science workbooks to assure that the first three chapters had been completed. Gunnar had worked ahead and completed all twenty-five chapters, accurately filling in all appropriate information. When did he do this? I guess when he and I were watching “Twilight Zone” on the television. He was really too old for TV’s “Watch Mr. Wizard,” but he said he wanted to make sure there were no holes in his scientific knowledge so he watched it faithfully.

  Gunnar’s curiosity brought interesting ideas to the dinner table. He looked at the climate and soil of the Tularosa Basin where we lived. He saw great potential for growing wine grapes and pistachios. Uncle Walt, Aunt Cece, and I laughed at the prospect of our arid soil ever producing good crops. He had facts and figures. We had skepticism. We lacked his foresight, as history would show.

  Both of us pursued a challenging pre-college curriculum. Gunnar was leaning toward the hard sciences. He quickly found anything connected with biology to be “too squishy soft.” He demanded hardcore, definite answers to problems. In contrast, I chose courses to position me for pre-med in college. We shared a dynamic five-foot-tall Latin teacher. She brought Julius Caesar to life and had us striving for conversational Latin; hence, Gunnar’s many jokes about studying for the seminary.

  I don’t remember whether we had Vespa motor scooters because we had paper routes or paper routes so we could have Vespas. In any case, we were busy and learning a little bit about business, too. We still didn’t have car licenses, so one time Gunnar suggested, “Let’s get on the Vespas and circle the Rooster.”

  “Not cool, Gunnar,” I advised. Gunnar was not about cool. He was about idea generation. Advertising you weren’t old enough to drive a car was not cool. We all had to be cool — except Gunnar who could get by without trying to be. And that’s what made him cool in the eyes of many, including me. You had to know Gunnar.

  In the aftermath of the Korean Conflict, the movie, “The Bridges at Toko-Ri,” came out. Gunnar was fascinated by the carrier-based jets. I was consumed by the tension of war and grim aftermath. Gunnar knew he could not be killed I knew I could not kill.

  The few toughs at the high school wore black motorcycle jackets with many large diagonal zippers. Since they couldn’t smoke on campus, they hung out across the street from the school and tried to look cool as they rebelled against — whatever. That inspired me to get Gunnar his own motorcycle jacket for Christmas. I bet him ten dollars he couldn’t wear it to supper and not laugh.

  So Gunnar showed for supper Christmas night, all stoic-faced. Clueless about fads, Uncle Walt ingenuously chimed in, “Are you cold, Gunnar?” I instantly won the bet as Gunnar cracked up. Aunt Cece knew something was up from the get-go. Uncle Walt was last to laugh — after we explained everything.

  If I couldn’t have my Mom and Dad, these were the people I would chose to live with.

  Sophomores in High School

  Gunnar continued to live his life in bold technicolor while mine was in sepia. He lived in stereo; I lived in monaural. His single-minded pursuit of a military career was beginning. His advanced algebra teacher in tenth grade pulled him aside, “Are you looking at MIT? I know they’ll be looking at you. You have a gift with numbers.”

  Gunnar was somewhat taken aback, “No, sir, I think I need the discipline of a military academy.” This, from the most disciplined kid in the school. I could not believe he could say that with a straight face. Gunnar could. It also would have brought hysterical laughter if uttered by anyone but Gunnar.

  Noting the stiff white collars worn by cadets at West Point, I needled him when he told me of the MIT remark, “That would go along with your studying for the seminary. Better work on that conversational Latin!”

  Gunnar had that twinkle in his eyes. He liked that I could build on his humor. That was easy. I remembered everything he said.

  The same year in American history, a very charismatic teacher, a Marine veteran of the Korean Conflict, graphically taught the downside of war from personal experience. Gunnar discussed the sad facts at supper. The combat the teacher described had been gruesome, frustrating, and traumatic for frontline soldiers and Marines. On his own, Gunnar learned that the class of 1950 from West Point lost 365 of its graduated 670 cadets in that conflict. He expressed his shock at this fact during supper.

  Soft-spoken Uncle Walt asked, “Gunnar, will you please consider another profession?”

  Gunnar could not answer. He had no room for laughter or kidding around that night. The images of Korea were too hard to digest.

  *****

  We were surprised one Thursday night after school. Glen had flown in to check on us. He had other business at Holloman Air Development Center at, of course, Holloman AFB, only ten miles away, and at New Mexico Joint Guided Missile Test Range, fifty miles away. He took the four of us to the Red Rooster for supper. If Gunnar and I were interested, he said, he would stay into the weekend to have some fun shooting rifles he had brought along. He knew I was interested.

  When he visited us before in Albuquerque, I always had a sense that I could trust Glen 95% of the time. That had grown to 99% with this visit. The expression of my suspicion of this dedicated friend of the family was an offshoot of my parents’ scientific teachings from quantum theory: The physical universe is not binary; it’s probabilistic. I am no angel, and he seemed a lot like me. More likely, I was projecting my sour soul onto him.

  Saturday morning, Glen brought three gun cases in his full-size rental car. We went up dirt roads along the section lines to the foothills of the Sacramento Mountains. He was ready. He brought cardboard boxes, empty tin cans, and glass soda bottles. After plunking around, he had Gunnar try the
M1D, Cal. 30 military sniper rifle with a telescope and flash suppressor.

  While Gunnar was shooting, Glen put a transistor radio next to Gunnar and gradually increased the volume. Gunnar was missing some shots and shouted, “Turn that thing off!”

  Then it was my turn. I adjusted the sights and hit one bull’s-eye after another. Glen tried his increasing-volume radio trick on me. I deepened my breathing and pounded out perfect shots, ignoring his interference. When the noise didn’t bother me, Glen began firing water from a fluorescent yellow kid’s squirt gun at the left side of my face. I reflexively breathed deeper and continued to drill the center of the target. No bastard can make me miss!

  Gunnar was beside himself in joy and laughter. “You are the world’s greatest shot!” he shouted as he slapped me on my back when I finished. And not a tad of jealousy at my victory — that I would have felt and shown if the roles were reversed, I must add. Oh, I would have tried to suppress my envy, but my Uncle Walt and Aunt Cece would have known if they’d been there.

  Glen tried to hide his admiration, “Not bad. I see you still have it.” As he drove us home, I could also tell that on another level he was 50% beaten down by my defiance of his trying to interfere with my aim and 50% pleased with me. Neither this nor that — quantum physics.

  As spring rolled around, Gunnar had one of his favorite coming-of-age stories take form. One day he was in his advanced physics class. The talented teacher was noted for making his class come to life with vivid animation. He liked to start out revolving one fist around the other for electrons circling the atom’s nucleus. He kept that up as he started randomly moving about the room to show an atom in motion in a molecule. Then the molecule had to be vibrating. He hopped up and down. And so on, until the earth was revolving around the sun. He would be all over the room illustrating the universe in motion. It was funny.

  Well, that’s not the story. That same teacher had his tall stool leaned back against the blackboard, his feet propped up on his lab table/desk, and arms across his chest. He was halfway through a lecture. Everyone also had one eye out the extensive side windows, wishing he or she were out in the enticing bright sun. Out there, someone in a female physical education class kicked a dodgeball out of bounds. Pretty Grace Saunders bounced up to the windows after the ball. Grace was a very well-endowed young woman, The whole class turned to watch the short-shorted young lady and her bouncing breasts. The physics teacher turned so violently to behold her that he crashed to the floor. The class roared. The lore: the physics teacher who fell from Grace.

  *****

  Not surprisingly, Gunnar had a brilliant idea to distinguish our summer lawn mowing business from its competitors. He created models of different lawn shapes and calculated how much time it would take one of us to mow each area. From those he could extrapolate how much we should charge. That kept us from underestimating what we should charge, and it made our tiered pricing explainable to customers. “$15.27” really made us sound like professionals.

  The methodology helped us get the business of several PhDs from the base that no one else could sell. They loved the scientific approach. For one really difficult sale, Gunnar measured the man’s yard. He talked Aunt Cece into using a computer at the base to run a program to give us a very precise calculation of the time to mow the yard and resultant price we should charge. The computer printout was the coup de grace, or coup de grass as Gunnar called it. We got his business and a nice ongoing tip.

  While I was content with that, Gunnar went on to offer clients their preferred mode for having their grass mowed. He would adjust the mower height on request. He also gave customers a choice of rectangular, diagonal, or circular cutting patterns. He was careful to explain that the circular cut cost slightly more. As you can guess, no other lawn service offered so much personal attention.

  Besides our joint businesses of mowing lawns and delivering newspapers, Gunnar and I occupied our summer with projects. Gunnar spent several hours a day teaching himself to type. He had not been able to squeeze that course into his science-and-math-heavy class schedule. He checked out a book from the library as a guide. He also began to teach himself to speak Russian. One of Uncle Walt’s friends at work gave Gunnar a set of Russian language tapes to play on our reel-to-reel player. The friend had given up on the task. Studying Russian? What did Gunnar know?

  I read widely. I chose from several lists of the great works of Western civilization. I knew I faced tough interviews for medical school in my future. I wanted to be prepared in every way. Gunnar inspired me.

  Juniors in High School

  Gunnar started our second year of high school like gangbusters. He dropped his advanced physics class for home ec. Of course, he was the only guy in the class at the time. By noon that day, everyone in the school was talking about it. Asked why, Gunnar whispered in the asker’s ear, “Great way to meet chicks!” The genius of that rippled through the space-time continuum of hormonal boys at the speed of light. For the next two days the male composition of the class rose until guys outnumbered gals.

  At the last minute on the third day, the last add-drop day, he quietly dropped the class and reenrolled in the original physics class. When I asked why he withdrew from home ec, he tried to suppress a grin, “Too many guys!” He winked. “And it looks as if every one of them but me is stuck there for the semester.”

  That same year, we stayed in Junior Classical League, an off-shoot club of Latin class, even though we were no longer taking Latin. We enjoyed it and the teacher. We wore togas to the periodic evening club meetings, drank grape juice, and socialized. Gunnar-the-ham was back, at least with writing and directing. Suffice it to say, his comedy about Roman life was chock full of bad puns. Brutus asked, “How many eggs did you eat this morning, Caesar?” Caesar: “Et tu, Brute!”

  Both of us signed up for debate club on the advice of our aunt and uncle. Since we already knew each other well, we both favored not being partners in order to get to know other people. I remember everyone seemed to want to partner with Gunnar. The savvy debate coach wanted to win, so she had Gunnar and me partner. She probably also knew the double power of twins being able to read each other. After just a few debates, she knew Gunnar had a gift with analysis. My strength was synthesis — putting the details together to form a coherent, constructive plan to attend to all the problems we cited.

  I held onto my anger over the loss of our folks — and my ability to hide it. That was not unlike my ability to hold onto grudges. A friend at school asked how long I held onto grudges, I replied with sincerity, “I don’t know. I’ve never dropped one.”

  In late fall, Glen combined a deer-hunting vacation with business in the local area. He brought See’s chocolates, fresh from California, and his deer rifle. He took us to sight in his .30-30. When he left, he commented, “Glad to see both of you doing so well. Gunnar, if you need any help with the academy applications, let me know. I have some contacts who can help you. Alex, same for you with colleges. Whatever your folks would have done for you, I’ll do. I know your uncle and aunt are a tremendous help, but let me do a little. My network might be a little wider than theirs because of my frequent travel. And, Alex, you call me if you ever miss a bull’s-eye — anytime, any hour. Since that will never happen, just call me.”

  ******

  The last thing I ever expected from Gunnar was getting involved in student politics. Freshman year, he had famously dismissed the student council as “the dance committee.” No, he was not running for school president, but he became campaign manager of a friend who was. It was purely an assumptive approach by Gunnar. He didn’t ask anyone, he was not selected; he just started doing it. His candidate, Frank Gilmore, was also on the debate team with us. His opponent, Ellen Fulbright, was a popular cheerleader and long-time school favorite.

  Gunnar decided marketing was the key to success. He pulled out all the stops to get support for Frank. The week prior to the vote, he had friends at school wearing life vests carrying signs, “Only
Frank Can Save Us.” He had others carrying posters showing a poker hand with words, “Don’t Gamble; Vote for Frank!” His assembly endorsement speech for Frank in the gymnasium put him on the edge of impropriety in the estimation of Mr. Arnold, one of his favorite teachers.

  “Alex,” Gunnar told me, “Mr. Arnold warned me not to let the campaign get into dirty politics. That’s right where we want it — pushing the envelope. Otherwise, we can’t possibly win against a well established candidate like Ellen.”

  Frank won. The final push across the finish line happened when Gunnar and company seized the opportunity to sing doctored words of “Big Bad John” on the local radio station. “Big Good Frank” was a constant refrain. The radio station had set up to talk to students decorating the gym for the junior-senior prom. It was a real win for Gunnar. And I knew Gunnar was a real winner. I always could see his charisma. In that campaign, he let the world see a glimmer of that.

  ******

  As Gunnar continued to distinguish himself, of course, there had to be some detractors. One of those made an unfortunate remark behind Gunnar’s back just before the first bell rang for school: “He’s a kiss-up son-of-bitch.”

  I could not let that stand. I gut-punched the guy. My fist went so deep into his abdomen that I think I touched his spine. He doubled over, pathetically looking up at me with a why look.

  I got in his face and explained, “You don’t talk that way about my family!” I helped him pick up his books. “Try not to drop these again,” I counseled him.

  I tried not to smile when he went out of his way later to avoid me. He definitely dodged me in the halls. No one hurts those close to me!