Harvey Porter Does Dallas

by James Bennett

  “No,” Harvey answered quickly. “If you want the truth, this whole thing’s got me in a funk.” He was picking at blades of grass along the curb.

  “Why are you bummed?” asked Victor.

  “Think about it. I just found out that a scumbag, Lee Harvey Oswald, is probably my father.”

  “But we don’t know that for certain.”

  “Weren’t you listenin’ to me when I told you what the man said?”

  Victor was subdued. His quiet answer was, “Yeah, Harv, I was listening.”

  “There ain’t much room for doubt. It looks like my mother was an old Indian, or a half-breed or somethin’, and she didn’t even want me once I was born. And my father was one of the most famous dickwads there ever was.”

  None of them spoke for several moments. “Then I guess my name,” said Harvey, “is Lee Harvey Soft Feet.” But that sounded so crazy he couldn’t suppress a short laugh.

  Carmelita patted his shoulder. “There’s an old saying, Harvey: Be careful what you wish for ’cause you just might get it.”

  “Yeah,” he sighed. “I probably shoulduv let this whole thing alone.”

  “Not true,” said Victor. “If I didn’t know who my parents were, I think I’d do everything I could to find out.”

  Carmelita was nodding her head. “Yeah,” she agreed. “Victor’s got a good point.”

  17. HANDWRITING ANALYST

  The next day, Harvey was still disturbed. What he’d learned about his parents chilled him inside. He kept mostly to himself. He didn’t even listen in his favorite class, Mrs. Bert’s sociology.

  Instead, he was trying out different ways to sign his new name:

  Lee Harvey Oswald Soft Feet

  Lee Harvey Oswald Soft Feet

  Lee Harvey Oswald Soft Feet

  Lee Harvey Oswald Soft Feet

  Lee Harvey Oswald Soft Feet

  Enough, he decided. He crumpled up the paper. “Harvey, what are you doing?” Mrs. Bert asked him.

  “Nothin’ really, just throwin’ away some notes I don’t need to keep.”

  “We have a waste basket for that purpose.”

  It was a round metal one, up next to Mrs. Bert’s desk. Without moving from his desk, Harvey shot the wad of paper like a basketball; it landed right in the center of the basket.

  “Yesss!” exclaimed Victor Vice. “Ring it up!” He was mimicking some famous basketball play-by-play guy. Harvey didn’t know who.

  Later that afternoon, he was still brooding, sitting by himself on a Dealey Plaza park bench. It was now November, so the air was a little cooler; almost sweatshirt weather, but not quite. Victor came to sit beside him. “Still bummed out, Harvey?”

  “Yeah, mostly.”

  “You know who your parents were now, so you’re uptight.”

  “Wouldn’t you be? What if you found out that scumbag Oswald was your father?”

  “You’re completely convinced, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t have a doubt, not after talkin’ to Asa Barnacle. Why would Oswald even leave specimens in a sperm bank?”

  “Well,” said Victor, knitting his brow in a frown, “you said the date on the test tube was April of ’63.”

  “Right. So?”

  “That was probably when he was planning his assassination. He didn’t know if he’d survive or not.”

  Harvey thought about it. It made some sense.

  Then Victor turned their discussion in a different direction: “What you need to do now, is turn your attention to the part of Oswald that isn’t dead.”

  “What part would that be? He’s been in the ground for forty years.”

  “Aha. But his list is not dead.”

  “I thought you said eBay wouldn’t auction it unless we could prove it was the douchebag himself who wrote the list.”

  “You’re right. So it’s our job to find a handwriting analyst.”

  “You mean people do that for money?”

  “They do it for good money. Lots of times they’re hired by lawyers to testify in court. In one of the cases my father was involved in, he had to hire a professional hand-writing expert to testify in court. Some farmer was suing because he claimed he had a bigger inheritance coming to him than he got. His only evidence was some notes written on the back of a seed catalogue. He was tryin’ to prove the notes were written by his old man.”

  “How’d it turn out?”

  “I don’t remember. I just remember the seed catalogue part. It was too weird.”

  Harvey sighed and slumped. “How do we find one of these handwriting experts?”

  “Well, the yellow pages worked for us when we wanted to find sperm banks. We could always start there.”

  Across from them, on his usual bench, the massive Oboe Meel was sprawling backward, head thrown back, his fingers knitted together on his jumbo stomach. “Maybe we could ask Professor Meel,” Harvey thought out loud.

  Victor nodded his head. “That might work. Wanna talk to him now?”

  “No,” Harvey replied. “He’s basking. It really pisses him off if you bother him when he’s basking.”

  “When does he do something else?”

  “Usually pretty early in the morning,” Harvey answered. “I think he’s usually over here reading. I don’t think it would frost him if you asked him a question then.”

  “We could skip Mrs. Bert’s class tomorrow morning.”

  Harvey had to admit, “I’m not doin’ that anymore. I cut so many classes in so many schools I always got expelled.”

  “How ’bout this?” asked Victor. “I’ll tell Mrs. Bert we need the time to do some research. Teachers are always impressed when you use that word.”

  “What kind of research would you tell her?”

  “I don’t think I’d have to. Just doing research would probably cut it with Mrs. Bert. Just leave this up to me.”

  “If it doesn’t work, you gotta tell me.”

  “Of course I’d tell you, Harv.”

  “Let’s say we find a handwriting expert. We’d have to pay the guy, right?”

  “Probably.”

  “I ain’t got no money.”

  Victor sighed. He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them. He looked embarrassed. “I’ve got plenty of money, Harvey don’t worry about it.”

  “You say.”

  “Yes, I say. But there’s another roadblock we could run into.”

  “What’s that?” Harvey wanted to know.

  “Well, this handwriting analysis expert will probably want a sample of Oswald’s real handwriting. Something that’s been authenticated beyond any doubt.”

  Harvey had to think it through. Why couldn’t any of this be easy? Oswald owes me. Then an idea popped into his head which he told to Victor. “I could get one. It’d be a little tricky, but not much. I could pick that sixth floor lock again. I could take a glass cutter with me. It wouldn’t be hard to cut a hole in that glass in front of the exhibits. Then I could just take one of Oswald’s real letters.”

  “A glass cutter? Where would you find that?”

  “Down the basement where the maintenance men keep all their tools. I wouldn’t even have to steal one. They’d probably give me one to borrow.”

  But Victor was shaking his head, even before Harvey finished. “It’s too risky,” he said. “You could get into a lot of trouble.”

  “Then what?”

  “We just wait. We wait until we find a handwriting expert, then take it from there. This plan of yours would have to be a last resort.”

  “All right. A last resort. But I could do it,” Harvey declared.

  “I don’t doubt that for a minute,” said Victor.

  The next morning, they got lucky. Mrs. Bert approved their research absence (she didn’t even ask what the research was for, just as Victor had predicted.)

  Then they got lucky again. They found Oboe Meel on his park bench, reading a recent copy of Harley-Davidson Motorcycle magazine. Harvey had to wonder what was up with that, so
he asked Oboe.

  Oboe’s eyes were wide open. They weren’t those little slits that characterized his basking mode. “Well, I’ll tell you.” He said. “I’ve been thinking about getting myself one of these big Harleys, and maybe even joining one of their motorcycle gangs. They do charity work, you know.”

  Harvey said he didn’t know that.

  Victor agreed, saying, “I never knew that.”

  “Well, now you do. I’d have to let my beard grow longer in order to fit in with one of the groups, but that’s no problem. According to this article here,” he continued, while flipping pages, “there are even nude Harley clubs. That could be invigorating too, but only in warmer weather.”

  Harvey tried to imagine Oboe, naked, riding on a big Harley hog. It turned his stomach.

  Victor asked him, “How’s your office working out?”

  “I don’t know yet, I haven’t seen it.”

  “You haven’t? But aren’t you the dean of students?”

  “I can’t remember for certain. Either the academic dean or the dean of students.” He waved his hand. “Oh well, what’s the difference? They tell me the office is very nice.”

  “That’s good,” said Victor.

  “Yes it is,” Oboe nodded his agreement. “When the weather turns cold I’ll probably have to spend some time in it.”

  Harvey couldn’t stand any more small talk. “What we really wanted to know is, d’you think you could help us find a handwriting expert?”

  “You mean like a professional? Somebody who’s actually certified as a handwriting analysis expert?”

  “Yes,” said Victor. “That’s what we mean.”

  “That’s no problem at all,” said Oboe. Harvey was surprised. Enthusiastic even. But he didn’t say anything.

  “There’s a man who works in the payroll department,” Oboe continued, “by the name of Mr. Weeble. He’s a certified handwriting analyst. He’s even testified in trials a few times when handwriting was an issue.”

  Weber Weeble?? thought Harvey. But he can’t even see without those Coke bottle lenses on. He said to Oboe, “I know the guy you’re talkin’ about. I borrowed a paperclip from him once. But he can’t even see without those thick glasses, and even then he has to use a magnifyin’ class half the time.”

  “Oh he can see all right, don’t doubt that for a moment.”

  “But are you sure? Are we talkin’ about the same guy?”

  “We are indeed. Now if you boys will please excuse me, I feel a basking mood coming on.”

  They thanked Professor Meel and then left, heading back toward the building. “Do you really know Weber Weeble?” Victor asked.

  “Yeah, I do. That’s why it all sounds weird.”

  “Well, we can probably find out this afternoon. We can ask him, and then we’ll know if Oboe’s been straight with us.”

  “Then we’ll know,” Harvey agreed.

  Unfortunately, Weber Weeble wasn’t in his office. A secretary told them he was away on business. “He’ll be back tomorrow, though.”

  Harvey was impatient; he didn’t want to wait. “Take it easy,” said Victor. “We can wait till tomorrow.”

  “What if the list is authenticized?”

  “You mean authenticated. If it is, your father, Lee Harvey Oswald, is going to bring you a lot of money.”

  “That would be way cool.”

  18. MRS. M. AND MR. WEEBLE

  The next morning, Harvey got a package in the mail. The first-floor counter people notified him. He sat restlessly through the Bonnie and Clyde by McMurtry class before he could go downstairs. A secretary gave him the package, a large cardboard box. He was puzzled; he looked at the return address on the box. It was sent to him by Mrs. Mushrush.

  He sat in one of the lounge chairs while he opened the package. He was very curious. There were some clothes inside, with a letter from Mrs. M. on top. The letter said,

  Dear Harvey, I know you don’t have many clothes, and almost none that are new. I have taken in some of Bobo’s nice shorts, which he can’t wear anymore. They are name-brand, very well made, but each time we bought him a pair he gained more weight. He couldn’t usually wear them more than a month or two, so they were basically new but not useable. I’ve taken them in so they have a 32-inch waist. I hope they’ll fit you now, but I had to just guess your waist size. I’ve also included a recent e-mail from my mother, which has some more information about out little “soft feet.” Thought you might enjoy it. Cheers, Mrs. M.

  Harvey looked at the pairs of shorts. They did look like high-priced clothes, but he’d never worn shorts before. On the street, especially if you were in a gang like Los Rebeldes, it just wasn’t done. Especially since you never knew when you might end up getting in a fight.

  He took the box to the boy’s bathroom next to 3A and tried them on. Mrs. M. must have been right about his waist size (even he had no idea what his waist measurement was) because they all fit perfectly. There were six pairs. He tried them all on. They reached down to about four inches above the knee. He looked at himself in the mirror; what he saw looked good, but it just wasn’t him. It was pure white bread.

  Returning to the 3A dorm, he put all the shorts in his hutch and locked up. Then he sat on his bed to read the e-mail, which had come from Mrs. M.’s mother.

  Dear Wilberta. I’ve done a little more digging about our little “soft feet.” I called my sister Evangeline in Seattle. She says the picture you’re talking about was probably taken in 1945 or 46. Soft feet was mostly Cherokee, but probably some Caddo Indian mixed in. There were lots of other small tribes there too, but only a few Cherokee left, since they were kicked off their reservation a long time ago by the government and sent to Indian Territory.

  According to Angeline, she and her husband Blowhard (sorry to call him that, but that’s all he was) raised the little girl when she was five, then up to age ten, in Wichita Falls. She got talked into it by a friend of hers who was a social worker. Then she went to live with your great-uncle Simon in Fort Worth and we think she stayed there all the way through high school. Then (God knows why) she went back to that miserable Indian settlement. It’s all very depressing: she ended up being a housecleaner for a couple of motels.

  That’s as much as I know. Hope it helps a little. Love, Mom.

  Well, it helped Harvey plenty. Now he could understand why the older Harvey Porter, his dodger, told him he was related to the Mushrush family. The e-mail letter also made him extremely curious. Where was that Indian settlement? Was it still there? Was it possible his mother was still living?

  Harvey brooded on all these questions for a while, then went down to lunch. After he loaded his plate with a Burger King Whopper, French fries and Doritos, he asked the woman on the other side of the serving line if they had any of the “healthy stuff” today.

  The woman in the white apron looked worn out and irritable. She put her hands on her hips and cocked to the left. “What kind of healthy stuff are you looking for?”

  “Oh, you know, just like the fruits and vegetables.”

  “I may have a couple of celery and carrot strips in the fridge back there,” she said, pointing with her thumb like an umpire calling an out on somebody. “God only knows how old they are. You want ’em?”

  Harvey wasn’t interested, especially if they were old and soggy. “No thanks,” he said, “maybe some other day.”

  “We used to have more of that healthy stuff on hand but the kids never ate it. Now we just keep some around until it goes bad. I can’t tell you how many rotten apples we had to pitch.”

  Harvey decided he didn’t want to waste any more time talking to this woman. He found a seat next to Carmelita and ate his lunch. He told her about his secret plan to use a glass cutter and get some of Oswald’s actual letters on sixth floor.

  “That’s a bad idea, Harv. Don’t do it. You could get in a lot of trouble.”

  “That’s what Victor said.”

  “Well, Victor’s right. Did you ever
find a handwriting analyst?”

  Harvey nodded as he chewed his fries. With his mouth full, he said, “Yeah, it looks like maybe we have.”

  “Oh, that’s like soooo exciting!”

  “Not yet, it ain’t. By tonight, though, I might have some inside stuff to tell you.”

  “I’ve got my fingers crossed, Harv.”

  That afternoon, during free time, Harvey and Victor found Weber Weeble in his office. They stood at the open door of his cubicle and asked if they could talk to him.

  Weeble pushed those ultra-thick glasses so they were tight against the bridge of his nose. “I’ve only got this one chair, though.”

  “That don’t matter,” Harvey said in a hurry. “I can just stand up.”

  Weeble was printing some pages from one of his computer files. “Well, I’ll pretty much be free till this print job is finished. What can I do for you?”

  Victor sat in the chair while Harvey just stood with his hands on his hips. He was counting on Victor to get this conversation started. Vice didn’t disappoint him. He said to Weber Weeble, “Mr. Weeble, we came to ask you a favor.”

  “And what would that be?” Weeble had a sort of wheezy voice; Harvey had never noticed it before.

  “Professor Meel told us you’re a certified handwriting analyst.”

  Nodding his head, Weeble answered, “That’s true.”

  “Do you ever testify in court cases?” In Victor’s mind, this was the ultimate test of a handwriting expert’s proof of his credentials.

  “I do, from time to time. Not often.”

  Then Harvey broke in, “No offense, bro, but your eyesight isn’t very good; how can you do this kind of handwriting stuff?”

  “It’s true my eyesight is poor,” Weeble agreed, while taking off his glasses. “But when I have this on,” he said, producing a jeweler’s eyepiece and wrapping his right eye around it, “it’s like I’m looking through an electron microscope.”

  Harvey could see the sense of it. Carlos Villanueva had one of these; Harvey had even looked through it a time or two. When you did, a piece of jewelry no bigger that a beebee looked like a skyscraper. He began to feel his excitement escalate but he was trying hard to keep a lid on it.