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A Friend in Need. Oswald took his wife and his baby to a $59-a-month apartment ten blocks away. Later on, he moved his family to Dallas, where he got another job, this time in a photoengraving plant. Last February he and Marina met Ruth Paine, 31, mother of two children and an energetic Quaker with a deep interest in furthering U.S.Soviet relations. Ruth wanted to learn Russian, and Marina helped her. The two women became close friends.
Ruth and her husband, Michael, 35, were separated, though Michael visited the house frequently. A research engineer with the Bell Helicopter Co., Michael was active in liberal causes, recalls that he and Lee Oswald disagreed on a variety of subjects. Says Paine: "His view of the world seemed to be that the world should fit his view rather than the other way around. He had a certain picture of the world, which he insisted on defending irrespective of evidence. He had little tolerance. He had no respect for religion or the values taught by religion. He wouldn't let his wife talk about actual life in Russia. He was nice to Marina so long as she didn't think counter to him. One time I took him to a meeting of the American Civil Liberties Union. It took him by surprise that people could be concerned about the concepts of freedom of speech. He said, 'I couldn't join such an organization. It isn't political.' It struck me that he hadn't really met people who stuck by the values stated in the Bill of Rights. He didn't treasure values and concepts except as they were convenient to him."
During this period, Marina recalls, Oswald's personality changed for the worse. He beat Marina at least once, criticized her, ordered her about, even demanded that she run his bath. She told Ruth, after one quarrel: "I often feel as if I am caught between two fires —mezh dvukh ognei. This is not the first time." Says Ruth: "She meant these fires to be her sense of loyalty and her sense of what was right to do." Oswald also became increasingly secretive. He rented a post office box under the name of "A. Hidell," wrote to U.S. Communist headquarters in New York to request information, subscribed to the
Daily Worker and the Militant, a Trotskyite paper. In March, "A. Hidell" bought a 6.5-mm. Mannlicher-Carcano rifle and telescopic sight from a Chicago mail-order house for $19.95.
Dogged Loyalty. On the night of April 10, Lee Oswald rushed home, exultantly told Marina that he had just killed ex-Army Major General Edwin A. Walker, the right-wing extremist who lives in Dallas. Sure enough, Walker was shot at that night. He had been working on his income tax return. Just as the shot was fired, Walker bent over —and the bullet narrowly missed killing him. Marina now knew that her hus band was terribly sick. But she never told, until much later, that Oswald had fired the shot. Hers was a dogged loyalty. "I am wife," she said simply.