A CASKET AND A COFFIN are not the same thing. A casket is four-sided, with the traditional squared shape, averaging about eighty-four inches in length and twenty-eight inches in diameter. A coffin is most recognizable from vampire movies, wide at the shoulders, slowly tapering at the feet. Funeral homes still carry coffins. They are referred to as "spe­cialty items."

The Handley solid bronze casket was sold to the O’Neal Funeral Home in Dallas, Texas, on February 18, 1963, for a wholesale price of $1,031. It had a double-walled interior, something that would ensure protection from the geological pressures and shifts, as well as the day-to-day strains of the cemetery. It was top-of-the-line. But after the casket sat in storage for nine months, one wonders if Vernon O’Neal thought he might have made a bad purchase, overestimating the tastes of his higher-end clientele—or at least their willingness to invest that much in a casket. There must have been some secret relief when a call came in from Parkland Memorial Hos­pital with Secret Service Agent Roy Kellerman, saying, "Bring me your best available!"

Carolyn Hawkins’s brother, Aubrey Rike, who went by the name of Al, was sitting at Parkland Memorial Hospital when the motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza. As an ambulance driver for O’Neal Funeral Home, Al and his rider, Peanuts McGuire, had been at the parade route earlier, sent down to Houston and Elm to pick up a man who had suffered a seizure across from the School Book Depository. They’d taken him over to Parkland, per O’Neal’s con­tract with the city for ambulance services, and were standing around chatting when news of the shooting spread through the hospital almost as quickly as the president’s car arrived.

Within moments the ER was swarmed. The stink of rushing bodies. Al found himself jammed against a wall, shoved up beside an agitated police­man who kept looking down at his feet while telling Al to stay put. He might be needed.

People ran chaotically. Newspapermen scurried for telephones. Elected officials milled. Congressmen. Senators. A general stood with a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist, as though he might blow the whole place to smith­ereens. Dallas PD. County PD. Secret Service. FBI. At least fifty people smashed right into the entrance, with a whole lot more spilling into the waiting room. Outside, hundreds of people crowded the barricade. Men with submachine guns guarded the glass entry doors. More and more kept arriving. Not enough air to feed them all.

After about a half hour, Secret Service Agent Kellerman approached. His arms folded across his chest, crumpling his customary dark suit. Falsely composed. A bubble ready to burst. He said Mr. O’Neal would be bringing a casket down shortly and would need both Al and Peanuts to be ready to assist with the necessary details. Kellerman said to wait for O’Neal right outside the trauma room. Maybe Al heard wrong? Misun­derstood the part about the casket.

For Al Rike, the sense of history was overwhelming. His uncles Melvin and Leonard had driven the first ambulances in Dallas, and at one point Leonard had even opened up his own funeral home. Al had a sense for these kinds of things; he’d transported bodies back and forth as long as he could remember. But right now it felt as though the world had stopped, everything frozen in place, and he was the only one moving. It was so hec­tic that it felt slow. Like every movement mattered, engraving itself into the history books in real time.

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