The Day the Sky Turned Blue

The story behind the story: The Governor

Something is about to happen. You know it in your mind, in your heart, and in your gut. By some cosmic scheme it seems it must happen, for reasons neither you nor anyone else can fathom. But for a few seconds, you think you can stop it. You can alter what you know of as history from that very second onward to eternity. But you can’t. And you know it.

One morning, just before waking, I had what I call a “dreamlet”: one of those disjointed few seconds of sights and random sounds my brain flashes across my eyes and through my ears as my internal rhythms start their waking program. In the dreamlet I am stepping into a car to sit in a jump seat in front of the most powerful man in the world. We are at Love Field in Dallas, Texas. It is November 22, 1963. I am Governor Connelly. With a word I can stop the motorcade. But I can’t and I don’t.

“The Governor” was my first published story, a flash piece of about 700 words appearing on www.365Tommorrows.com back in 2008. It was pretty much a transcript of the dreamlet, but with the conversation bits added to keep the story moving. The dreamlet ended, as it did in the story, with me sitting on a park bench miles away, listening for the sounds of shots and screams and racing engines coming over the trees and buildings. I didn’t hear any, and for the last second of the dreamlet I hoped and believed that perhaps it didn’t happen. But deep down I knew it did, because it couldn’t not happen. I was glad I wasn’t there.

Today is, of course, the fifty-year anniversary of the Kennedy assassination. It’s difficult, if not impossible, for me to say anything meaningful about that event because I wouldn’t be born for another seven years and some months. So—to me—a time does not exist when it hadn’t happened. It would be like asking me to understand how shocking it was the day the sky turned blue. To the however many percent of the population who were not yet around and the much smaller percentage alive but too young to remember it, the Kennedy assassination is immutable and timeless. I for one have trouble picturing what the world would be like without it. Not that I’m glad it happened, but, just like in the dream and story, it’s easy to believe the events of that day were, in some twisted sense, necessary. For my and the following generations, it’s part of us in a way that it isn’t for those who remember it. We can’t not have it happen.

On September 11, 2001, it seemed like so much could have gone right that didn’t. If this person had done that, if that person had done this, if hundreds of random things had or had not happened, then the however many percent of the population who were not yet born—or the smaller percent who were born but too young to remember it—would be able to imagine a world where it hadn’t happened. It’s part of them in a way it never will be for me. We might as well ask them to understand our shock the day the sky turned blue.