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19
We’re going to take another leap forward in time (narratives also contain rabbit-holes, when you stop
to think of it), but I need to recount one more thing from 1960, first.
Fort Worth. November sixteenth, 1960. Kennedy the president-elect for a little over a week. The
corner of Ballinger and West Seventh. The day was cold and overcast. Cars puffed white exhaust. The
weatherman on KLIF (“All the hits, all the time”) was forecasting rain that might thicken to sleet by
midnight, so be careful on the highways, all you rockers and rollers.
I was bundled into a rawhide ranch coat; a felt cap with flaps was jammed down over my ears. I was
sitting on a bench in front of the Texas Cattle Raisers’ Association, looking down West Seventh. I had
been there for almost an hour, and I didn’t think the young man would visit with his mother much
longer than that; according to Al Templeton’s notes, all three of her boys had gotten away from her as
soon as they possibly could. What I was hoping was that she might come out of her apartment
building with him. She was recently back in the area after several months in Waco, where she had
been working as a ladies’ home companion.
My patience was rewarded. The door of the Rotary Apartments opened and a skinny man who bore
an eerie resemblance to Lee Harvey Oswald came out. He held the door for a woman in a tartan car
coat and blocky white nurse’s shoes. She was only shoulder-high to him, but solidly built. Her graying
hair was scrooped back from a prematurely lined face. She wore a red kerchief. Matching lipstick
outlined a small mouth that looked dissatisfied and pugnacious—the mouth of a woman who believes
the world is against her and has had plenty of evidence over the years to prove it. Lee Oswald’s elder
brother went quickly down the concrete path. The woman scurried after and grabbed the back of his
topcoat. He turned to her on the sidewalk. They appeared to argue, but the woman did most of the
talking. She shook her finger in his face. No way I could tell what she was scolding him about; I was a
prudent block and a half away. Then he started toward the corner of West Seventh and Summit
Avenue, as I had expected. He had come by bus, and that was where the nearest stop was.
The woman stood where she was for a moment, as if undecided. Come on, Mama, I thought, you’re
not going to let him get away that easily, are you? He’s just half a block down the street. Lee had to go all the
way to Russia to get away from that wagging finger.
She went after him, and as they neared the corner, she raised her voice and I heard her clearly. “Stop,
Robert, don’t walk so fast, I’m not done with you!”
He looked over his shoulder but kept walking. She caught up to him at the bus stop and tugged on
his sleeve until he looked at her. The finger resumed its tick-tock wagging. I caught isolated phrases:
you promised, and gave you everything and—I think—who are you to judge me. I couldn’t see Oswald’s face
because his back was to me, but his slumped shoulders said plenty. I doubted if this was the first time
Mama had followed him down the street, jabbering away the whole time, oblivious of spectators. She
spread a hand above the shelf of her bosom, that timeless Mom-gesture that says Behold me, ye thankless
child.
Oswald dug into his back pocket, produced his wallet, and gave her a bill. She stuffed it in her
purse without looking at it and started back toward the Rotary Apartments. Then she thought of
something else and turned to him once more. I heard her clearly. Raised to shout across the fifteen or
twenty yards now between them, that reedy voice was like fingernails drawn down a slate blackboard.
“And call me if you hear from Lee again, hear? I’m still on the party line, it’s all I can afford until I
get a better job, and that Sykes woman from downstairs is on it all the time, I spoke to her, I gave her a
real piece of my mind, ‘Mrs. Sykes,’ I said—”
A man passed her. He stuck a theatrical finger in one ear, grinning. If Mama saw, she took no
notice. She certainly took no notice of her son’s grimace of embarrassment.