Reclaiming History (169 page)

Ruth, who found some sympathy for Lee in his effort to please Marina, and her children stayed with them on Magazine Street for three days, but the atmosphere did not improve. On the trip from Texas Ruth had bought a lot of blackberries from a roadside stand, and Lee set out to make wine from those that were left over, a move Marina considered stupid. She bawled him out for wasting good blackberries: “What do you think you are doing? Ruining all this.” He defended himself and stubbornly continued, but the next day he threw all the wine out.

Ruth walked through the French Quarter with them and the children one day, but she was too aware of the tension between the Oswalds and it made her uncomfortable. The presence of three outsiders wasn’t helping matters. She drove back to Texas a day earlier than planned, on May 14, leaving the Oswalds to sort out their problems.
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D
uring the early New Orleans days, the Oswalds’ marriage, though always peppered with verbal bickering, was more harmonious than it had been for some time. Marina would later write that although “the mosquitoes are terribly vicious” and she could “hardly stand the humid and hot weather…our family life in New Orleans was more peaceful. Lee took great satisfaction in showing me the city where he was born. We often went to the beach, the zoo, and the park. Lee liked to go and hunt crabs.” She added, however, that “it is true he [Lee] was not very pleased with his job…We did not have very much money, and the birth of a new child involved new expenses…As before, Lee spent a great deal of time reading.”
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Marina told Priscilla McMillan that she and Lee were happy to be together again—“‘I’ve missed you so’ Lee said again and again.” Though the Oswalds’ sexual intimacy bloomed during this early New Orleans period, much to Marina’s satisfaction, even that had its trials. Lee liked to watch them making love in a mirror at the foot of their bed, but that made Marina, thinking that the mirror excited him more than she did, uneasy. At the beginning of their marriage, Lee had wanted sex more than she, but the reverse was now true—she, threatened with being sent back to Russia, needed constant reassurance from him, and sex seemed to fill that bill. At the same time, their marriage was no more peaceful than before. Volatility had become the essence (could it have been the sine qua non?) of their relationship, and Marina said that the marriage was a succession of “tears and caresses, arguments and reconciliations.” The arguments often turned ugly, enough to annoy the neighbors, as they had in Dallas, although Lee, perhaps out of respect for Marina’s advancing pregnancy, no longer physically abused her. Marina simply did not know where she stood.
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The relatively good New Orleans days ended no later than May 25, just two weeks after they had arrived in the Big Easy, when Marina wrote to Ruth in Russian: “Here it is already a week since I received your letter.
*
I can’t produce any excuses [for not responding earlier] as there are no valid reasons. I’m ashamed to confess that I am a person of moods and my mood currently is such that I don’t feel much like anything. As soon as you left all love stopped and I am very hurt that Lee’s attitude toward me is such that I feel each minute that I bind him. He insists that I leave America which I don’t want to do at all. I like America very much and I think that even without Lee I would not be lost here. What do you think?…Lee has said to me that he doesn’t love me…It is hard for you and me to live without a return of our love—interesting, how will it all end?”
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From his first day at the Reily coffee company, Lee regarded the new job as an annoying distraction from what appeared to be his true mission: striking a spectacular blow for Marxism or Castro, or both, that would propel him to celebrity and, probably in his mind, an honored position as a Fidelista in the new Cuba. The experienced maintenance man who was charged with teaching Lee the job at the coffee company noticed the indifference his pupil couldn’t be bothered to mask. Charles Le Blanc testified, “Well, when they first hired him, they brought him to me, because I was to break him in on his job.” Le Blanc said he started to show Oswald how to grease the machines. But “the first day, I mean when I was showing him, it looked like if he caught on to it, all right, if he didn’t, it was still all right. It looked like he was just one of these guys that just didn’t care whether he learned it or he didn’t learn it.”

Not that there was much to learn. Le Blanc expected anyone “with any mechanical knowledge” to get it within a week. You found the grease and oil fittings on every machine and you then greased and oiled them. There were five floors of machinery on one side of the building, four on the other, and you started on the fifth floor and worked your way down. For those who couldn’t remember the fittings, there was a check list to follow and initial. But as soon as Le Blanc left Oswald to do the job on his own, which was after about a week, Lee would just disappear. “I would take and put him up there,” Le Blanc said, “and about a half hour or forty-five minutes or so, I would go back up and check how he is doing…and I wouldn’t find him…So I would start hunting all over the building…I would cover from the roof on down and I wouldn’t locate him, and I asked him, I said, ‘Well, where have you been?’ and all he would give me was that he was around. I asked him, ‘Around where?’ He says, ‘Just around,’ and he would turn around and walk off.”

Oswald was preoccupied with weightier matters. “On one occasion when I was in the shop and I was working on some sort of piece of machinery…,” Le Blanc recalled, Oswald came in the shop “and he was standing there by me and watching me and I asked him, I says, ‘Are you finished [with] all your greasing?’ He said yes. So he stood there a few minutes, and all of a sudden he says, ‘You like it here?’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He says, ‘Do you like it here?’ I says, ‘Well, sure I like it here. I have been here a long time, about eight and a half years or so.’ He says, ‘Oh, hell, I don’t mean this place.’ I said, ‘Well, what do you mean?’ He says, ‘This damn country.’ I said, ‘Why, certainly, I love it. After all, this is my country.’ He turned around and walked off.” Le Blanc quickly came to the conclusion that Oswald was a “crackpot.” Apart from his inattention to his work, there was one thing that Oswald did that unnerved Charles Le Blanc more than anything else: he had a habit of walking past Le Blanc and, “like a kid playing cowboys,” lift his “finger like a gun” and go “pow.” Le Blanc said, “When he would do it he wouldn’t even crack a smile. That is what used to get to me.”
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Le Blanc told the FBI that on several occasions Oswald overstayed his scheduled fifteen-minute break by “20 to 30 minutes,” and was a “loner,” even during the lunch period.
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On May 12, the first Sunday after he had started work, Oswald sent a change of address to the Dallas postmaster and asked for his mail to be forwarded to his Magazine Street address.
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*

Lee did not immediately rent a post office box in New Orleans as he had done so quickly after he moved from Fort Worth to Dallas. However, while he had tried in a number of childish ways to conceal his presence in Dallas, most likely from the FBI (but as we have seen, the FBI did learn about Oswald’s presence in Dallas, at two different addresses, although they were at sea on his current whereabouts), he now tried to establish an overt presence in New Orleans. On his application for work at the Reily coffee company he had given his Aunt Lillian’s address as his own, and, to the question how long he resided there, he crowded the words “23 yrs. CONTINU” into the tiny space provided—essentially claiming that he had lived his whole life in New Orleans, except perhaps for his last employment, which he gave as “Active duty USMC.”
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Neither the Soviet Union nor his recent sojourn in Dallas figured in this new scenario. Part of what lay in his mind may have been a desire to erase all traces of Dallas—where he had attempted to commit a murder—from his life story.

Two days later, he mailed a change-of-address card to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New York, again giving his Magazine Street address.
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On that same day, Oswald visited the New Orleans Public Library, applied for a card, and took out his first book,
Portrait of a Revolutionary: Mao Tse-tung
, by Robert Payne. Marina told Priscilla McMillan that Lee identified with the great men he read about and genuinely believed he was one of them, but his interest in Chairman Mao may have been inspired by an article in the April 29, 1963, edition of the
Militant
, which was about the possibility that Castro, disappointed with the support he was getting from the Soviets, might turn to—and even visit—China. The article’s author denied, however, that Castro had become a Maoist.
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On May 26, two weeks after starting work, Lee wrote what he must have felt was a very important letter to Vincent Lee at the FPCC. He wanted to formally lead a group in the fight against the foes of Castro.

Dear Sirs…

I am requesting formal membership in your Organization.

In the past I have recived from you pamplets ect., both bought by me and given to me by you.

Now that I live in New Orleans I have been thinking about renting a small office at my own expense for the purpose of forming a F.P.C.C. branch here in New Orleans. Could you give me a charter?

Also I would like information on buying pamplets ect. in large lots, as well as blank FPCC applications ect.

Also, a picture of Fidel, suitable for framing would be a welcome touch. Offices down here rent for $30. a month and if I had a steady flow of litarature I would be glad to take the expense. Of course I work and could not supervise the office at all times but I’m sure I could get some volunteers to do it.

Could you add some advice or recommendations? I am not saying this project would be a roaring success, but I am willing to try…so here’s hoping to hear from you.

Yours respectfully

Lee H. Oswald
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Lee’s move to New Orleans not only had brought him closer geographically to Havana but also seemed to clearly signal an increased interest on his part in Castro and Marxist Cuba.

Three days later Vincent Lee sent him a membership card and the FPCC’s constitution and bylaws, and welcomed him to the organization. However, he made it clear that
only
if the national committee deemed it was “reasonable” to expect that there was enough interest in New Orleans in their activities would they “issue a charter” to Oswald “for a New Orleans chapter of FPCC.” So far they were not convinced. Nonetheless, Lee went on to advise Oswald: “You must realize that you will come under tremendous pressures with any attempt to do FPCC work in that area and that you will not be able to operate in the manner which is conventional here in the northeast. Even most of our big city chapters have been forced to abandon the idea of operating an office in public…Most chapters have found that it is easier to operate semi-privately out of a home and maintain a P.O. Box for all mailings and public notices…We do have a serious and often violent opposition and this procedure helps prevent many unnecessary incidents which frighten away prospective supporters. I definitely would not recommend an office, at least not one that would be easily identifiable to the lunatic fringe in your community. Certainly, I would not recommend that you engage in one at the very beginning but wait and see how you can operate in the community through several public experiences.”

Vincent Lee added a few elementary precautions, which Oswald, with his taste for spy-craft, surely found congenial to his instincts. (For example, “Note: When you contact people by mail we recommend that only first class be used and that no full name go on the return address on the outside of the envelope.”)
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The same day, May 29, that Lee wrote to Oswald, and hence, before Oswald received Lee’s letter, Oswald took matters into his own hands by going to the Jones Printing Company on Girod Street, where, under the fictitious name of Lee Osborne, he ordered a thousand copies of a handbill reading,

HANDS

OFF

CUBA!

Join the Fair Play for

Cuba Committee

NEW ORLEANS CHARTER

MEMBER BRANCH

Free Literature, Lectures

LOCATION:

EVERYONE WELCOME!

Two days later he returned to put down a four-dollar deposit, and on June 4, “Osborne” appeared to collect the handbills, for which he paid $9.89 in all.
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On June 3, Oswald also opened a post office box in New Orleans (number 30061) under the name L. H. Oswald. He listed his address as 657 French Street in New Orleans. (The Murrets lived at 757 French Street.)
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Also on June 3, Oswald visited the Mailers Service Company to order five hundred copies of an application for membership in the projected New Orleans chapter of the FPCC. Again, it was “Lee Osborne” who picked up the order and paid $9.34 in cash for it. According to the layout furnished by “Osborne,” an interested party could join the chapter for a one-dollar initiation fee and maintain membership by paying dues of a further dollar a month, or he could subscribe to “mailings” for five dollars a year, or he could make a donation in an amount to be determined by the donor. Several days later “Osborne” returned to order three hundred membership cards with spaces for the name and signature plus a third space to be signed by the “Chapter President.”
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*

On June 10, Oswald wrote to the
Worker
to apprise them of his activities:

Dear Sirs,

As a long time subscriber to the worker I know I can ask a favor of you with full confindence of its fulfillment. I have formed a “Fair Play for Cuba Committe” here in New Orleans, I think it is the best way to attract the broad mass of people to a popular struggle.

I ask that you give me as much literature as you judge possible since I think it would be very nice to have your literature among the “Fair Play” leaflets (like the one enclosed) and phamplets in my office.

Also please be so kind as to convey the enclosed “hounery [honorary] membership” cards to those fighters for peace Mr. Gus Hall and Mr. B. Davis.

Yours Faternally

Lee H. Oswald
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