Nov 25, 1980, Hyannis Port
shouldn’t have left that lying out. May I have it back please, I John?” JFK said, holding his hand out as he walked into his study.
“I’d forgotten about this,” JFK Junior said, without looking up, and making no move to return the legal pad to his father. He sat behind JFK’s desk. He’d come looking for JFK, found the door to his study open, and a yellow legal pad sitting in plain view on JFK’s desk.
“Well, like I said. I shouldn’t have left it out,” JFK said, as he walked closer, hand still held out.
“I remember looking at this when I was little. You didn’t seem to mind then.”
Deciding not to press the issue, JFK dropped into another chair, positioned to the side of the desk. “You seemed to take an interest,”
he said, “from the first time you saw it. You were only three, but I wondered if you were somehow making sense of it. Every year or so I’d leave it where you would see it, and I’d watch. You’d study it so intensely, in the early years. By the time you were six you were no longer interested. Wouldn’t even pick it up.”
“Can you really see the future in this thing?”
JFK looked up, startled. “Where’d you get that idea?”
“Mom told me. When I was six or seven.”
“Oh. She shouldn’t have.”
“No harm was done. I was kind of a pest about it. Kept asking about the funny writing on the pads. She finally said you could see 255
tomorrow, but I had to pretend not to know. Funny thing is, I forgot all about it after that. Until I walked in just now, and saw this on your desk.”
“Still looks like gibberish, right?”
John got up and walked toward the door, casually tossing the pad onto the desk. “Still gibberish,” he said, continuing out the door.
“Except for the face.”
“What? What do you mean?” JFK got up, started toward the door, and paused in the doorway.
John walked a few steps down the hallway, then turned and walked two steps back, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand, thinking.
“You didn’t answer my question. Can you see tomorrow, or not?”
“Yes. No, maybe, sort of, sometimes. It’s complicated.”
“This is stupid,” he said, facing JFK from six feet away. “This is why you won’t let me take flying lessons, isn’t it? These stupid pads!”
“I… I can’t let you fly. I can’t. It’s too dangerous.”
“It won’t always be your choice.”
“True. What did you mean about a face?”
John turned to walk away, then stopped and turned back. JFK
could tell that his son wanted to show insolence by leaving, but something held him here. A stronger feeling, a duty, perhaps. One he felt was more important than their argument about flying.
“Looking at the pad earlier, when I first picked it up, I saw a face. It felt like the scribbles rearranged themselves for a few seconds. I blinked, and it was gone. But I can still see the face. What’s it mean? What’s going on?”
“Come here,” JFK said, as he hurried back to his study. He picked up the pad and handed it to his son, who had followed him into the study. “Do you still see it?”
John looked at the pad. “No, I can’t see it on the pad any more.
I knew that before you walked in.”
“Can you draw it?
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“I suppose.”
Using a typing paper tablet, John drew a quick pencil sketch of a face from the front profile. It was a full, round face, with wide-set eyes, a short neck and wide shoulders. The bottom of the drawing ended at mid-chest, a few inches below the chin.
“I’ve never been much of an artist.”
“You’ve picked up some skills from somewhere. This is pretty good.”
“Yeah, you’re right. It is good”
“Is it accurate?”
“It matches what’s in my head, yeah.”
“I can’t tell. Is this a child, or a man?”
“How should I know? This is creepy. Is this what you’ve been doing, all these years?”
“No, son. It’s been different for me. But creepy. Creepier.”
“Then why not just throw it away? Jeez…”
“Because so much good has come from it. All the advances.
Heaven project. The Foundation…”
Dumbfounded, John said, “What? All those things came from that pad? You’re not serious! All along you’ve taken credit, and it’s been coming from this creepy thing?”
“I’ve taken nothing, John. I stay out of the spotlight as much as I can. Only Cavett interviews, and only when it serves a purpose.”
“So, what is it then? What kind of voodoo put that face in my head? What the hell kind of demon did you sell out to? Wait! Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I’m getting out!”
John turned to stomp out of the room, but his mother, standing in the doorway, blocked him.
“They tried to assassinate him, John. Just before your third birthday. That’s when it all started, and why this all happened. Your father didn’t ask for this. He’s only using it to do as much good as possible.”
Looking at Jack, Jackie said, “You have to tell him. Everything.
I don’t know how you came to this point, but now you must tell him. He has to know.”
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Looking at John, she said, “You have to listen. Forget the child-ish arguments you two have had and listen like an adult. You’re twenty today. Listen.
“Guests are arriving. I can buy you 30 minutes,” she said to father and son. “When you leave this room, I want you both on the same page. Do you both understand?”
She accepted the resignation showing on their faces as agreement. Pulling the door to her she said, “Keep this door closed.”
Reaching to the inner knob, pushing the button there, she added,
“And locked.” She pulled the door closed and left.
It was a little after midnight. All the guests had left. John’s sister Caroline attended college in Cambridge. Except for security personnel, they had the house to themselves. Father and son followed Jackie to the study.
“Tell me,” she said, after they had all taken seats. “Give me the short version.”
“There’s no need for all the drama, Mother,” John said. “He told me. The cop in Dallas, twelve legal pads filled with gibberish, and this future vision stuff. I don’t… I can’t, believe a word of it.”
They told Jackie about the face John had seen in the pad. They showed her the sketch. “Weird thing is, I think I can find him. That face. I think he can read the pads.” John said.
“Why would you think that?” Jackie asked.
“Beats me. Why’d I see it in the first place?”
JFK snapped his fingers, “I wonder…” he said, as he stood and walked to his safe, the same one he’d had delivered to the Oval Office the Monday after Dallas. He opened the safe and took out another pad. “Here. This is the second one.”
John held the pad in front of him for a few seconds. He started speaking, then suddenly dropped the pad, as if it were hot.
“What happened?” JFK said, concerned.
“Nothing, nothing. It just surprised me. There was nothing, then suddenly, the face again. It startled me, is all.”
“Same face?” JFK asked, holding up the sketch.
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“Yeah, but something was different. Give me the typing pad.”
On a clean sheet of paper, John sketched the same face again.
It was a little smaller, and this sketch showed a curved line poised over the head, just barely touching it.
They tried the third pad, and this time John said, “I’ve got more to add to the top again. Might as well save some time.” He tore out the second sketch and a blank sheet and taped the blank sheet to the top of the second sketch. What he added to the sketch looked like parts of three objects, possibly square.
While Jackie watched patiently, they repeated the process with the remaining nine pads.
“A crown?” JFK said, after the tenth pad. After John finished the last two additions, all agreed it was indeed a head with a crown on top.
“So, you’re saying you saw the face while holding the first pad.
Then you saw a little more in each new pad you held?” Jackie said.
“Yep.”
“It makes no sense. If you were meant to see this, why not just show it to you with the first pad?”
“Beats me,” John said. “You guys are the experts on this stuff.
I just started today.”
“I might know the answer to that,” JFK said. “I’ve been thinking the pads represent a sort of overkill, a too-liberal application of whatever allowed me to see what would have happened after my death. It was a fluke, so there isn’t a logical structure to the information. If it were logical, as you pointed out, John would have seen the whole picture while holding the first pad. That he saw anything at all is another fluke, I’d guess, due to heredity.”
“Hm, and for that matter,” Jackie said, “why a picture at all? A name would have been more useful. We have no idea who owns this face. We don’t even know if we should seek him out. Or why.”
“We should. Or I should,” John said.
“You seem so certain,” Jackie said. “One minute you seem to believe, and the next you don’t.”
“Exactly! I couldn’t have said it better myself. I can’t explain 259
it. Intellectually, I think you’re both batty, and I wish I’d never picked up that pad. Emotionally, I feel I must find this person, because…”
“Go on,” JFK said. “Because?”
“Well, don’t take this the wrong way. I see from the signs of use that you’re only about halfway through that first pad. That means just one pad may span most of one person’s lifetime. You’ve got a dozen pads. If we don’t find someone else who can make sense of them, the last eleven will be useless.”
“I’ve thought about that,” JFK said. “The fact that you thought about it implies you have given this issue a good deal more consideration than you’ve let on.”
“It doesn’t mean that at all. It… I’m just stating the obvious, is all.”
Inwardly pleased, despite his son’s denial, JFK picked up the finished sketch. “It’s complete, as far as you know? You left nothing out, something you didn’t know how to draw, maybe?”
“Just the color.”
“What?”
“The background is two different colors. Here, do you have any colored pencils in here?”
“Try the file cabinet behind you.”
John selected two pencils from the pack he found. Using the wide edge of the sharpened points, he quickly scratched in a background, blue across the top half of the sketch, and red across the bottom half.
“The crown is gold. I’ll use yellow. There,” he said, when he’d finished.
“It’s a flag,” Jackie said. “Take away the face, and it’s Lichtenstein’s flag. I’m sure of it,” she added, when JFK and John both looked at her quizzically. “I toured there after high school.”
“John,” JFK said, “did you get any sense of where you should look for the owner of the face?”
“Only what you can see in this sketch. Lichtenstein is small.
Shouldn’t take too long to show this sketch around. Maybe during 260
“I want us together for Christmas,” Jackie said. “Besides, we don’t know how to interpret this. Are we to associate the face with the country of Lichtenstein, or will he be standing in front of a Lichtenstein flag when you find him?”
“Either way, he’d be in Lichtenstein,” John said.
“Or anywhere else displaying that flag. Most international airports, for instance, display flags of countries served by that airport.”
“Your mother’s right, John. He could be anywhere. How about this? We’ll copy the sketch. I’ll root through my Rolodex for someone in Lichtenstein I can prevail upon. Someone who’ll ask around for me without going public. We’ll decide what to do after that.”
Without waiting for John to answer, JFK said to Jackie, “We’d both like to see John throw in with me at the CF. I’m now even more hopeful he’ll do that, knowing he’s able to react with the pads. If he thinks he needs to find this person, I’m inclined to support him in that. Ok for now?” Nods all around.
For 25 years after JFK Jr. finished school, he would work with his father at the CASE Foundation just often enough to stay informed on the various enterprises his father supported. It would become an unspoken given between father, son and mother, that John was the logical person to take over someday for JFK.
The one constant in John’s life would become his search for the person he’d sketched after holding one pad. He became convinced his search would end in an airport. For three or four weeks each year he would walk the corridors of international airports, showing his sketch to people he met, paying extra attention wherever he encountered a Lichtenstein flag. It would become an obsession, worrying to his parents, especially Jackie. JFK would convince her that attempts to dissuade John would drive a wedge between them.
In 2005, with his father getting on in years, John joined his father full time at the CF. John was aware, as JFK grew older, that his time to find the mysterious face grew shorter with each passing day.
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