August-September, 2017
n August 2017, JFK was a few months past 100, slowing down, I but still ambulatory. For the last five years, JFK Jr. had been driving hard, searching for the mysterious face he had sketched after holding JFK’s legal pads. He spent most of his time traveling. Preparing to leave on his next trip, John stopped in JFK’s study to say goodbye. His father surprised him by handing him pad number one.
Many times, over the past few years, John had tried to talk JFK
into letting him take a portion of the first pad with him on his search journeys. He didn’t think it would hurt to split the pad and take only the inactive half. But JFK was adamant the pad stays intact.
They had long ago determined that copies were inert, useless.
“It’s lost relevancy since Heaven dedication, last spring,” JFK
said, referring to pad one. “It can still show me things. Lost opportunities, mostly. If you find the face, if he is meant to inherit this…
marvel, the pad should explain more than your words alone.”
Six weeks later, in September, John was in Brasilia International Airport when he received the call he’d been expecting, but dreading. His father had taken to bed and refused any extreme measures to keep his body alive. The rest of the family was already there, and JFK was asking for John.
He tried to charter a plane, but learned it would have taken longer to put that plane in the air than if he just booked a seat on the next scheduled flight to Washington, DC. He booked the seat and called ahead to charter an eight passenger microjet to take him from DC to Hyannis Port. He had to wait four hours for his flight to leave.
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Wandering in the Airport, he grew despondent. Not only had he failed, he believed the search had been a pointless waste of time, compounding his sense of failure. To distract himself, he began recording 360-degree video sweeps of his surroundings as he walked.
He’d begun doing it a long time ago. He reviewed the video on long plane rides or evenings spent in hotel rooms, searching for anything he may have missed with his own eyes.
The airport wasn’t busy. He found an area where he could sit, alone with his thoughts. He browsed through the pages of the pad JFK had given him. He worried over what might become of his father’s pads, once he was gone. He worried he would arrive late to his father’s bedside.
The airport began preparing for a cultural celebration of some sort. Workers were hanging banners and flags. They used mobile lifting platforms, and it got noisy. Somewhere behind him, John heard two people arguing. One kept saying, “Aw you dup,” repeatedly, while the other tried to quiet him.
John had enough. Perhaps the loading gate area would be quieter. He stood and made one more sweep with his camera, and when he finished, he looked for the first time at the two people arguing.
They passed from left to right, fifty yards away. For a moment, one of them turned his head toward John, and he nearly stopped breathing as he stared directly at the face he’d been seeking for so long.
At first, he only stared, speechless, afraid to breathe. They turned and moved away, and he began doubting what he’d seen. He looked down and saw the camera in his hands. He scanned through the video he’d just recorded. It was so fleeting he almost missed it, perhaps only one or two frames, less than a tenth of a second. Two workers were using ropes to raise national flags from the first floor to a second story railing. John had captured the instant when the flag of Lichtenstein had passed behind the person in his sketch. That frame of video was an exact match for his sketch. He didn’t even need to remove the sketch from his backpack to confirm.
Heart pounding, wondering what he would say to them, he gathered his belongings and ran to catch up. When he hailed them 344
from ten yards behind them, they both stopped and turned around.
John hadn’t mentioned it to his parents, but after drawing the first sketch 37 years ago, he had recognized that the face had characteristics associated with Down syndrome. He had prepared for this, had even read several books on the disorder. He had decided he would not be disappointed if the face he sought turned out to be a person with DS. He even wondered if the special, and not completely understood, attributes of DS might somehow make sense of the jumble of characters on JFK’s pads.
The face he had sketched 37 years ago was a male who looked to be between 17 and 25 years old—how was that possible? About five foot seven inches tall, and 190 pounds. The woman traveling with him was about 45 or 50 years old, two inches shorter and slim of build. He was still searching for the first words he would say to the pair, when the male spoke first.
“Aw you dup,” he said, pointing in John’s general direction.
When John only looked confused, the man’s face took on the look of someone who is dealing patiently with a frustrating situation.
Pointing again, this time at the bag John carried, he spoke slowly, enunciating each word, “AW… YOUD… UP.”
“My bag? Aw you dup? You dup… Used up? All used up? Is that what you mean?” John said, reaching into his bag and pulling out the pad.
The woman looked a little worried, but the male began nodding vigorously and pointed again, saying, “Up. Yup. Aw you dup.”
John had walked a few steps closer, and now, from three feet away, he said, “Madam, Sir, my name is…”
“I know who you,” the woman said, sternly. “You Kennedy.
Why you want my son?”
“Madam, I don’t,” he began, and then realized he’d been about to tell a lie. “Well, actually, I do want your son. I… I think he may be able to read, or understand, the writing on this pad. If he can, he will be a very special person.”
“He already very special. Brain is big map. Go anywhere, know where he at, like GPS thing.”
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John thought he knew what was about to happen, because he had noticed the son inching closer, and because he appeared to focus on the pad John held. When he lunged forward and snatched the pad from his hand, John allowed it to happen. He’d even held the pad in front of him, rather than at his side, to make it easier. He felt it would save a lot of time.
The mother saw the snatch as a terrible indiscretion. She barked a loud exclamation and stood frozen, with her hand over her mouth and a look of disbelief on her face.
The son greedily held the pad close to his face while he scanned the first page, an involuntary “Aw,” escaping his lips. He flipped to the next page and then flipped a dozen pages all at one time. He spoke the same word as before, only this time it was long, drawn out, and spoken with unmistakable reverence.
He was drawn into the page, slipped between two of the characters, then deeper, slipping between more characters, again and again. Seven pages deep, he leveled out. He was light, floating, slipping as thought between words and phrases. All around hung gauzy white veils, suspended between characters, motionless, save for the movement caused by his passage. Veils of Time, he thought; partitioning the text, hiding emerald cities and war-ravaged landscapes; copious plenitude and grey, barren waste; joyous crowds and for-lorn, weary faces. Stringy trails of myriad colors slid under or around veils, connecting cause with consequence, with thousands of branches leading to yet more shining rewards and humbling punishments. He panicked, thinking he’d gotten lost for the first time in his life, but then he saw his own trail, the pure white one with no branches. Giddy with delight, he dived deeper, lost himself in Time.
In mere minutes he’d traveled through hundreds of tyrannic tangles and saintly successes. He knew only one of those countless paths had been traveled, and he worried that the man his mother called Kennedy would ask him to look at another pad, one where the path had not yet been chosen, and ask him to choose. The responsibility frightened him more than forgetting where he’d put his favorite 346
shirt. Then, overlying all the veils and trails, he saw a single, gigantic word, and he realized he could die here.
Rousing herself from the horror she felt for her son’s rudeness, she began slapping his arm, “Shame you Chen! Give back paper!
Give back paper!”
“Madam,” John said, “I planned to give it to him. Please don’t punish him. The tablet is why I came to find you.”
She stopped hitting her son on the arm. “Name not Madam,”
she said. “Please forgive impoliteness. Name Chou Lan. Son is Chou Chen. So very please meet you, Mr. Kennedy.”
“I’m pleased to meet you, as well, Mrs. Chou. He seems absorbed by the pad, doesn’t he? Let’s allow him to study it for a few minutes. Is that ok?”
“Ok. Maybe now you tell why want my son?”
They sat on a bench a few steps away. In the twelve minutes they talked, John learned that Lan had been born in China, but moved to England with her parents when she was a young woman.
She’d married a Brit who took the first opportunity to disappear when their son was diagnosed with Down syndrome and mild autism. Chen had a long list of health problems associated with DS, and she was prepared for him to die young. She was 52 years old and Chen was 21. They lived in the house she inherited from her parents, and they both worked; she as an editor for a Chinese-language book publisher, he as a quality inspector for a garment manufacturer. They were heading home now, after visiting her sister in Brasilia.
Lan knew all about JFK and the CASE Foundation. She’d always admired JFK and had read with interest any news stories about him. John tried to explain the pads, without telling her everything he knew. He told her of his search, the state of JFK’s health, and that he hoped Chen could help him carry on his father’s work. He thought he was close to convincing her to go to Hyannis Port with him, when he looked at Chen and noticed he was turning blue.
“Mrs. Chou, I… I don’t think he’s breathing.”
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They tried to rouse him by shaking him, pinching him, slapping his face, but he stood like a rock, unfazed, his grip on the pad un-breakable. After fifteen or twenty seconds, John was desperate.
Grabbing Lan by both shoulders, he turned her to him and asked,
“Does he read English?”
“YES,” she replied impatiently, then returned to attempting to rouse her son.
He fished a black marker out of his bag and stood to Chen’s right. Across the page Chen stared at he wrote, in large block letters, the word ‘BREATHE.’
He did it all the time. Got so involved in a task he forgot all about time, eating, sleeping, almost everything. He’d never forgotten to breathe before. The word descended on him like a furious downdraft, stripping away the other words, phrases, veils and trails, left him alone, but breathing, in a sea of white.
With his trance broken, he collapsed. But John had anticipated it. He caught him and lowered him to the floor without serious in-jury. After gasping for a few seconds, he calmed, his breathing evened out, and he was fine.
John took the pad back and stashed it in his bag. He then spent a frustrating hour asking Chen about what he had seen in the pad.
He couldn’t get anything specific, but Chen was patient and continued trying to answer John’s questions. In the end, John decided he’d just have to take a chance. In the worst case, Chen would not be able to glean enough from the pads to offer solid guidance, but there would be no harm in trying. It was all he had; he’d have to go with it. Then he had to convince Lan all over again.
After seeing what had happened to her son, Lan was no longer keen to follow John to the U.S., nor to have her son involved with that pad again, even if it meant giving up the chance to meet JFK in person. He finally convinced her to go with him now, with the stipulation that she could decide later whether to allow Chen to work with the pads. Then they had to convince Chen.
He’d had to interrupt his routine to go to Brazil with his mother, 348
and the only way she’d gotten his agreement was to make a schedule of how they would spend every minute of every day. To go with John now, he’d have to interrupt that schedule, and replace it with the unknown. He wasn’t having any of it. With less than forty minutes left to buy their tickets and get to the departure gate, John played his trump card. He told Chen there was a fresh pad in Hyannis Port, where John wanted to take him.
“Not you dup?”
“Not used up. Promise,” John said. “And once we’re on the plane, I can show you the schedule for our charter in DC. Our plane leaves in thirty minutes. We have to leave now to keep that schedule.” That convinced him.
22 hours later, the bedraggled trio arrived at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port.
His eyes were closed when John walked alone into the room.
The Kennedy clan was there, including Bobby, now 92 himself.
“Is he…” John began. JFK interrupted him. In a weak voice, he said, “Just… resting… m… eyes, John.” He opened his eyes, and said, “You… made it. Sorry for… short notice.”
“I was… That doesn’t matter. I’ve brought someone to meet you.”
“So I… hear. Better get… h… in… here quick.”
“I’ll be right back,” John said. In the hallway outside, John said to Chou Lan, “I can take you in first, if you’d like to meet him.”
Standing with her back against a wall, eyes reddened from tears, Lan said, “No, I no import. You go, you take Chen.” Looking at her son, she said, “You be nice to Kennedy man. Go. I be right here.”
John held Chen’s elbow and guided him to JFK’s bedside.
Chen could only stare, and try to remember everything his mother had told him about how to behave on this very important day.
JFK opened his eyes again and smiled weakly upon seeing Chen. “Tell me… how it is… for you… how you see… in them…”
Chen looked confused and frightened. “Aw? Aw?”
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“Time… soon. Maybe… take m hand… please… John?”
Knowing what his father wanted, John gently took Chen’s left hand and guided him to grasp JFK’s left hand. After a few seconds he groaned, opened his eyes wide and, in a stronger voice, said,
“Oh… … why…” He opened his eyes even wider, “Why, you can soar through time, son… see it all at once. You’ll do well. John will help you… There are others; you know how to find them? Others…
will see in different ways?”
Chen looked confused again for a few seconds, then he nearly shouted, “Aw, umbers? Looooonnnng umbers?”
“Yes, son. Give John the long numbers. He’ll find the others.”
Chen began dancing excitedly on his toes, making writing motions with his hands and saying, “Long umbers long umbers long umbers,” repeatedly. The rest of the family exchanged concerned looks as John pulled open the drawer of the nightstand closest to him, relieved to find several small paper tablets and pens there. He grabbed one of each and thrust them into Chen’s hands, whereupon Chen stopped all movement except for his hurried writing, still repeating the two words, just barely audible now. It took a minute, during which time JFK closed his eyes again. Chen finished and proudly held the tablet out to John. John accepted it and looked only briefly before saying to JFK, “They’re Earth coordinate numbers, Father. Six of them. Precise, down to a meter.”
Opening his eyes one last time, JFK turned his head to find John, and said, “You’ve done well, Son. I… never doubted… you.
Legal has …everything prepared for you. You can ask… help from… anyone in this room. Great… things… Wish… could…
stay… watch…”
With that, JFK’s doctor stepped forward and said, “I think he’s left us.” He checked for a pulse on wrist and jugular. “Yes, JFK has left us. Sep 10, 2017, 20:40”
Everyone was weeping. Tears streaming down his own cheeks, John felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned his head and saw that it was Chen’s hand, tears in his eyes too.
“Chen sad,” he said. “Chen sad.”
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