'Marina and Lee'
Priscilla Johnson McMillan
[EXCERPTS]One evening during the last week of August, she and June went for a stroll. Arriving home about twilight, they found Lee on the porch perched one one knee, pointing his rifle toward the street. It was the first time she had seen him with his rifle in months?and she was horrified.
?What are you doing?? she asked. ?Get the heck out of here, he said. ?Don?t talk to me. Get on about your own affairs.?A few evenings later she again found him on the porch with his rifle.
?Playing with your gun again, are you? she said, sarcastically.
?Fidel Castro needs defenders,? Lee said. ?I?m going to join his army of volunteers. I?m going to be a revolutionary.? After that, busy indoors, Marina frequently heard a clicking sound out on the porch while Lee was sitting there at dusk. She heard it three times a week, maybe more often, until th middle of September. Often she saw him clean the rifle, but this did not worry her because she knew that hw had not taken it out of the house to practice. ?So it?s Cuba this time. If he?s got to use his gun.? she thought to herself, ?let him take it to his Cuba. They?re always shooting down there anyway. Just so he doesn?t use it here.? But just in case, she exacted a promise from him that he would not use the rifle against anybody in the United States. ?Ya ne budu???I won?t??he promised her in a quiet voice. Marina felt reassured
[4]4. Footnote "Many questions have been raised about Oswald?s dry-firing in New Orleans, since it was the only time between the attempt on Walker in April and the shooting of Kennedy in November that he is known to have handled his rifle. One question is whether he pulled the trigger rapidly at high speed. Marina believes the answer is no. She recalls a considerable interval between clicking sounds. Another question is whether he took the metal barrel and wooden stock apart when he cleaned the rifle. Marina does not remember. She remembers that he oiled and polished the rifle often and put it back in the closet, but she so disliked the sight of it that she watched as little as she could. Another question is whether he had a bench or some other sturdy rest to which he could clamp the rile as he sighted it. Again, the answer is no. Marina remembers the porch as unfurnished. She thinks there was nothing on which he could have rested the gun. It might be added that, so far as is known, Oswald was then practicing to fight for Castro, not preparing for a particular murder." ---PJM
A ginormous, enormous, tremendous, humongous, colossal, monumental, whopping, gigantic, considerable, vast, sizeable, astronomic, epic, jumbo, mammoth, massive, monster, prodigious, mega, behemoth, Bunyanesque shoutout goes from the three of us (me, myself and I) to Steve Galbraith for his kind assistance.
