Ozzie and Bobby

When I was reading the section where Lee Harvey Oswald and Bobby Dupard plot to kill General Walker, I was struck by the way they were talking about it. They were both talking about the reasons for killing Walker, but they seemed to be talking past each other the entire time. Dupard is focused on Walker's relation to black people while Oswald is focused on Walker's anticommunism.

The first time is when they are talking about Walker making a tour through Dallas. Dupard speaks first:
"What's he doing, the kill-a-nigger tour?"
"Operation Midnight Ride. The dangers of communism here and abroad. It's going to be pure Cuba. He loves to hit at Cuba. If we have to wait till April, let's make it worthwhile. We get him on the seventeenth. The second anniversary of the Bay of Pigs."
"Who is the shooter?"
"I am," Oswald said.
"You sure about that."
"If it's the seventeenth, I have to see if there's class."
"What do you mean?"
"It's a question do I want to cut class."
"I will need an accomplice, Bobby. This is not just walk in and shoot him. The house is located in such a way. There's an alley. We may need a car."
"I can get a car. I can always borrow a car. I don't know about dependable running. Just so we put him on the ground. That man got to taste blood."
"They have a phrase they use in Russian for assassinations that involve blood being spilled. Mokrie dela. Which is wet affairs. Like the ice pick they used on Trotsky."
"Just so we do it to him," Bobby said.

They are obviously talking past each other in terms of motivation here. Bobby fails to see the significance of April 17 and they have wildly different interpretations of Walker's tour.

This miscommunication continues when they actually set out to kill Walker. Dupard says that they are going to do this "For Mississippi, for John Birch, for the KKK, for every fucking thing." Meanwhile Oswald says that "They'll appreciate in Havana that we did it April seventeen. Two years to the day. The invasion was the thing that produced a General Walker, more than any other events."

I'm not really sure what to make of this except that it's kind of humorous. I guess it also shows that they are both so obsessed with their own narratives that they oversimplify things to suit the narratives. Bobby sees an evil racist in Walker while Lee sees an evil anticommunist. He seems like he is a little of both, but the point is that they judge him and try to make him fit into their boxes.