- GOD HAVE MERCY ON HIS SOUL, SOBS
MOTHER
-
- "I knew it was coming - I just
felt it last night when I stayed on my knees and begged God to let
me see my baby alive one more time - God, please have mercy
on his soul....."
- Walking the
floor of the bare living room in the rear of the little service
station she and her aged husband operate on the Eagle Ford rd.,
Mrs. Henry F. Barrow, mother of the southwest's No. 1 bad man,
wrung her hands and wept bitterly when told the details of the
slaying early Wednesday of Clyde and Bonnie Parker.
- Mrs.
Barrow, frail, gray and heavily lined, said she "must go at
once to my baby - don't care where he is - he's my baby - all I
had."
-
- "Just a Relief"
- Outside,
his gray head bowed and his eyes filled with tears, the old father
of Clyde went about his duties of servicing cars that stopped in
front of his station.
- "I
guess it's a relief - I knew it was coming pretty soon," he
said when a reporter for the Dallas Dispatch talked with him.
- "How
long has it been since you and Mrs. Barrow talked with Clyde or
Bonnie?" he was asked.
- "Oh,
some time - a long time, I guess - seems longer, I suppose than it
really is." he replied.
-
"Clyde's mother --" the reporter started to say---.
-
"That's the hard part of it - she's always believed in him -
knew he was wrong, but like me, she wanted to stick with her
child."
- About that
time a crippled boy in a Ford roadster drove up. "Heard
the news?" he asked Barrow. "Yes, I guess it's
so." Barrow replied. "It's him and
her." The officers didn't give 'em a chance, I
hear," the boy continued. "Shot 'em down
without Clyde getting a chance to do a thing."
- In the
house Mrs. Barrow continued her walking.
- On the
table beside the little iron bed was a Bible and beside it a
picture of Clyde and Buck, her other son shot down as a bandit by
the law.
- "I
wanted to see him one more time - wanted to kiss him and tell him
mama loves him," Mrs. Barrow cried. "He was good -
good to me and pa - never abused us like some boys do."
-
- Several Cars Stop
- Several
cars stopped at the station during the few minutes newspaper men
were there.
- None seemed
to know the sadness that had suddenly descended upon the little
house.
- None seemed
to know that old man Barrow's heart was heavy as he filled
radiators and gas tanks, thanked purchasers courteously for their
patronage and welcomed them back.
- From the
house came again the loud weeping of the mother. "What
have done, oh God, to deserve all this?" she cried.
"They killed Buck and now they've killed my baby - oh did
ever a mother suffer as I have!"
- Old man
Barrow went about his work filling tanks.
"When they bring him back, we want him buried like anybody
else," Barrow said. "We don't want folks to crowd
around and look at the boy like he was a show. He was just a
human - went wrong, that's all."
