Along for the Ride
Page 18
“Shhh…”
Clyde frowned at Bonnie over his shoulder. “Quit shushing me. We’re waking ’em when we get up there anyways. Buck!”
A small white dog with disordered fur barked at them from the landing.
Bonnie’s toe caught the edge of a step, and she stumbled and grabbed at Clyde to catch herself. The silk of his shirt was slick as Crisco between her fingers. He stopped to steady her but freed himself in a hurry. His impatience made her so mad. When he had plans, he behaved like nothing else mattered. “I might as well get back in the car, for all you care!”
“Boy!” Clyde hissed. “Can’t you help her?”
“Boy’s happy to help his Sis, ain’t you, sugar?” she slurred, letting her arms be transferred to W.D’s neck.
She couldn’t remember whose house this was. She’d thought he’d said Blanche’s mother lived here, but the old man wasn’t Blanche’s father, she knew that much. Blanche’s father lived in Oklahoma, and they were definitely still in Texas. She was sure of that, not because she kept close track of the states they drove in and out of, but because she was always aware when they were in Texas, close to her mama, even if they couldn’t manage a visit.
Buck, his hair sticking straight up in back, was letting Clyde into a room at the top of the stairs. Bonnie had never met Marvin Ivan Barrow, who’d been in the Walls or on the lam pretty much all the time she’d known Clyde, and she was predisposed to hate him, knowing that some caper of his had been the cause of Clyde’s being nabbed off her mama’s davenport in the first place. But she forgave him when she saw the way he grabbed Clyde and held on, as if reunited with half of himself.
The brothers hadn’t seen each other since the night of that joyride more than two years ago, when Buck had been shot in the leg and caught, and Clyde had escaped—for a few weeks, at least—by hiding under a house. If anyone had predicted then which brother would be in more trouble with the laws now, it would have been Buck, who, as Nell once said fondly, had nothing on a possum when it came to quick thinking. But as of three days ago, Buck was free to go wherever he liked, using his real name. Cumie never stopped talking about how Blanche had convinced him, after he’d escaped Huntsville, to turn himself in and serve out his time.
The preacher’s daughter was reclining on the bed that took up most of the little slope-ceilinged room. The white dog gave up barking and retreated to a position against her flank. Blanche pulled the sheet and blankets decorously over her breasts, even though she was wearing a man’s rumpled shirt over her nightgown. That was Blanche all over, Bonnie thought, making out like they’d violated the royal bedchamber.
But when Blanche saw Bonnie, she relaxed and patted the space beside her. Bonnie cast herself off from W.D., pushed past Clyde and Buck, and fell onto the bed. “You don’t know how good it is to see another woman!” She leaned to stroke Blanche’s hair back from her face. “You oughtn’t to let it hang forward like that. You ought to show your pretty eyes.”
“I was sleeping! My eyes were closed!” Blanche protested. “And you’re drunk.” But she tugged the blankets from under Bonnie and held them open. “Take off your shoes and come on in here. You look like you could use a little sleep.”
“You got a lemon? I like to chew a little bit of the peel. No one knows you been drinking, you chew a little lemon peel.”
“You need more than a lemon, honey. Now come on in here.”
“I’ll have plenty of time to sleep when I’m dead. Right now I have me a girl to talk to. Oh, Blanche, you must be so happy.”
“I am happy,” Blanche agreed. “I’ve got my daddy back. Look here.” She unhooked a tooled leather purse from the bedpost and drew from it three papers, which she unfolded and flattened with her palm. “We’re all legal.” The certificate documenting the marriage of Marvin Ivan Barrow and Iva Bennie Blanche Caldwell was nearly transparent where it had been folded. The other two papers were Buck’s pardon from the governor of Texas and the title to their car.
“Are you going to keep on at the Cinderella?”
“Oh, no.” Blanche replaced the documents in her purse as she spoke. “Buck wasn’t at all pleased that the Barrows made me work outside the home. That was never what he wanted for me. I know Clyde feels the same.”
“He does,” Bonnie said solemnly, as if she were in a position to refuse a job setting hair at a beauty parlor. Then, overwhelmed with envy for Blanche and sorrow for herself, Bonnie pressed the edge of the blanket to her eyes. “You are so lucky.”
Typical of Bonnie, Blanche thought, not to recognize that this state of affairs had been deliberately arranged. “Clyde ought to have gone straight.”
“You know he tried. They wouldn’t let him alone.” Just like a preacher’s daughter to be so holier-than-thou, Bonnie thought. Sure, Buck had done what Blanche wanted. From what Bonnie had heard, she judged him a born follower, easily swayed. Bonnie told herself that she would rather have a man with backbone, even if that meant he didn’t bend the way she wanted him to.
“C’mere, baby.” Bonnie fit her hands under the little dog’s forelegs and dragged him into her lap. “Who’s this little fella?”
“That’s my Snowball. My mama’s been keeping him for us.”
“I wish we could have us a soft little sweetheart like this.” Bonnie pressed her cheek against the dog’s head. “It’s funny,” Bonnie said, her words slurred from the drink, “you’d think me and Clyde were the ones who could go wherever we want, live however we want. But it turns out we can’t do hardly a thing but run and hide. And you and Buck were the ones who bowed down and buckled under, but now you’re free.”
“Buck never bowed down,” Blanche said. “He just paid for what he done.”
“There’s no payment for what Bud’s done, except the chair. I don’t guess we’ll be offering that.”
“We can’t hardly live in Dallas no more, thanks to Clyde,” Blanche complained. “Just the day before we left, Buck and L.C. were drug down to the station. I had to drive myself after them and the greasy wheel in Buck’s old car ruint a brand-new pair of white gloves.”
“I got a sweet yellow pair down in the car,” Bonnie said. “I want you to have ’em.”
Blanche noticed that W.D. had not stepped away from the window. If he was worried about the laws showing up way out here, Clyde must be plenty hot. She didn’t like the uncertain look on Buck’s face or the way Clyde kept touching his brother’s arm. “What’re you two talking about?”
“I’m just asking Buck to take you on a little drive,” Clyde said, with that innocent smile he could turn on like a goddamned light bulb. “Here, let me show you.”
He took a map from his jacket and spread it on the quilt.
Blanche frowned. “What do you want with Eastham?”
“We got a nice piece of money the other week. Gonna use it to break Raymond out.”
“He’s going to get even with those guards down there,” Bonnie said. “Break out as many as he can.”
“Buck and me can’t have nothing to do with a breakout.”
“Of course not,” Clyde said. “I wount put you and Buck in any danger. You oughta know that,” he added, in a tone tinged with outrage and hurt.
“What I know is that W.D. is standing in that window watching for the half a dozen police who’re going to come blasting into my mama’s house,” Blanche said.
“The laws don’t want you,” Clyde said.
“They do, baby,” Bonnie said, quietly. From the bed, she reached for him and drew her fingers down his arm suggestively. “They want anyone who has anything to do with Clyde Barrow.”
The booze had made her miscalculate her charms and his mood; he moved impatiently out of her reach.
“You just need to tell Ray when we’re coming and where we’ll be hiding the guns. All you’re doing is visiting a con, Blanche. You ain’t going to get into any trouble.”
“Where you going to hide them?” Buck asked.
“Buck!” Blanche turne
d on her husband. “I’m not fixing to lose you again.”
Clyde spoke directly to his brother, as if Blanche weren’t sitting right there. “I can give you some money to get you started living straight. You can buy into a secondhand car lot like you wanted and get you and Blanche a little house. It’s what you need to help you live straight.”
Buck looked at Blanche. “Baby…”
“I don’t want money that’s come by the way you get it. That’s living crooked from the get-go. Besides, Daddy, they ain’t just going to let us waltz into Eastham. We can’t drive two miles without the laws stopping us. I’m sorry, Clyde, but we’re not going to help you. If you want my advice, you wouldn’t do this thing yourself. You’re liable to get yourself killed and Raymond, too.”
“If I don’t get him out, he’s better off dead,” Clyde said.
“You don’t do this, Blanche,” Bonnie burst out, “if you don’t want to.”
Clyde refolded his map. “I ain’t going to force it. It’s a free country.”
He went to the door. “C’mon, Buck, let’s let these girls sleep and you and me’ll sit in the car awhile.” He leaned to kiss Bonnie and let her put her arms around his neck.
“Don’t go, baby,” she said. “C’mon in here and get warm. You said we could stay until dawn.”
“I’m not going anywhere, just downstairs. You’re wore out, Blue. You get you some sleep.”
“All right. I’ll stay here with Blanche.” Bonnie shut her eyes obediently.
When the three men had left the room, though, she rolled over and opened her eyes. “Let’s us talk, Blanche. I don’t get anything but ‘this gun shoots farther and this gun shoots truer and this car runs faster’ day and night.”
* * *
They were still talking at 4:15, when the men came back up the stairs, each deliberate footstep audible on the squeaky wooden stairs.
“We got us a new plan,” Buck said.
Bonnie could smell the bottle she’d left in the car on his breath.
“We’re going up to Joplin and renting us a place for awhile! All of us!” Clyde broke in, like a kid who couldn’t keep from tearing the wrapping off his Christmas present.
“We’re not hiding out with you,” Blanche said.
“We wouldn’t be hiding out,” Clyde said. “I mean, we got plenty of money, so we wouldn’t have to pull any jobs.”
“We’ll just be living there?” The pathetic eagerness in Bonnie’s voice made Blanche want to cry. “Like normal people?”
“Sure,” Clyde said.
“We’ll be keeping Bud out of trouble, Baby,” Buck said. “That’s the Christian thing to do, isn’t it?”
“We’ll be getting us into trouble,” Blanche said grimly.
“No we won’t,” Buck insisted. “Bud says he won’t do anything that would make the place hot.”
“Won’t need to,” Clyde said. “Like I said, we got plenty of money. You and Bonnie could buy whatever you want, fix the place up, and then when you and Buck get ready to come on back to Dallas, you could take the fixins with you.”
“Wouldn’t we have fun, Blanche?” Bonnie said.
“What we all need is a little vacation,” Clyde said. “Enjoy each other’s company.”
“Oh, Blanche!” Bonnie said. “Please.”
“I don’t like all them guns around,” Blanche said.
“We won’t keep but one or two in the house,” Buck said.
“No, Buck,” Clyde said reprovingly. “We won’t keep no guns in the house. It’ll be like Blanche wants. The guns can stay in the cars.”
Blanche looked silently down at the dingy quilt. Finally, she sighed. “Why Joplin?”
“It’s a nice town, ain’t it? Not so small that people notice you, not so big you don’t know where you are. Close to Oklahoma and Kansas, so we can run over the border, if we have to pull a little job sometime.”
“You said we wouldn’t be pulling jobs,” Bonnie interrupted. “We got plenty of money!”
“I know, and we won’t. But let’s just say,” Clyde insisted. “Well, then, we do it in another state, and we take all the guns with us. If the law gets after us, Blanche, you and Buck will just be rocking in your rocking chairs, knitting your afghans, like the good citizens you are.”
“Knitting!” Blanche had to laugh at this.
“I’ll get you a mess of wool, and Buck can wrap up his hands, the way they do.”
Blanche laughed again. “Well, I can’t knit, but I suppose I could crochet.”
Bonnie clamped both her hands around Blanche’s arm, which was smooth as a china cup. “We could make such a cozy little nest. It’s awful to ride around in the car all day, Blanche, day after day. You’d think it would be all right, just riding, but it wears you down somehow.”
Bonnie’s fingers felt oddly rough. Blanche turned her hand over and saw that the skin was peeled away in tiny shreds. “How did this happen?”
“I bite at my fingers once in awhile. It doesn’t hurt.”
Blanche rubbed her thumb gently over the corrugated flesh. “I don’t know. Buck and me’ll have to talk about it.”
“If we stick around,” Buck said, “maybe I can talk Bud into turning himself in, the way you did me.”
“Daddy, Clyde’s killed people. I’m not saying he wasn’t in a position where he didn’t have to, but the laws don’t want to put him in the pen. They want to kill him.”
“What do you want to say things like that for, Blanche?” Bonnie threw off the covers and went to the window, but she could see only her own reflection in the glass.
“I don’t want to say it, but I got to look out for Buck.”
“Just a week, Blanche,” Buck said. “Nothing’s going to happen in a week.”
“We’re losing the dark,” Bonnie said.
No one who welcomed the daylight would call it anywhere close to morning, but the blackness was indeed thinning.
“We best get going,” Clyde said. He slung the cut-down Browning on its strap over his shoulder as casually as if he were sliding into a pair of suspenders, tucked his pistol into his belt, and put his coat on over both. “C’mon, Blue.”
Buck followed them down, and the brothers stood beside the car for several long minutes after Bonnie and W.D. got in, Clyde talking and Buck nodding. W.D. fidgeted with the Remington in his lap and kept his eyes on the drive. Once the dawn began in earnest, the sky’s brightening would be after them like a bloodhound.
Finally, Bonnie opened her door. “C’mon, baby, we’ve got to go.”
Through the murky morning, Bonnie, Clyde, and W.D. slid like ghosts. Bonnie thought about Blanche putting on smooth, fresh clothes when she got up, not standing beside a car, trying to shake the wrinkles from a crumpled dress that stank of French fry oil. Blanche would eat hot food off plates she took from a cupboard. She could look out a window and know where she was. Once Bonnie had despised such steadiness as the dull lot of those who had no ambition, but now she craved it. Perhaps those who stayed put weren’t going anywhere, but, as it turned out, constantly going didn’t amount to going anywhere, either.
“Did you mean it about Joplin?” she asked.
“I’d just as soon raid Eastham, but there’s time for that. I think we need a rest.”
“Blanche won’t do it.”
“Buck’s a wheedler. He’ll wear her down. And where else they got to go, honestly? Buck never can think what to do with hisself.”
CHAPTER 45
Four days later, Bonnie and Blanche were inspecting a bright, airy apartment above a two-bay garage in a decidedly middle-class Joplin neighborhood, better than any place Bonnie’s mother could afford and far better than any the Barrows could hope to set foot in. Its creamy yellow paint was hardly scuffed and the bathroom fixtures looked practically new. Big windows on all four sides afforded a long view of the street in front and the yards behind, which Clyde would certainly approve of.
“Does it come fully furnished?” Bonnie a
sked, admiring the way one of the radios—there were two radios!—had been tucked into a little alcove in the cunning kitchenette.
“It’s furnished, yes.” The landlord didn’t bother to hide his impatience. Obviously, he thought the place was beyond their means. “It’s twenty-one dollars a month, you know. Plus, a dollar for the night watchman.”
Bonnie flushed. “My husband said not to take any place that was less than thirty. But he’ll be glad to hear about the watchman.” She opened her purse and counted out the rent deliberately, so as to reveal that several bills remained.
Blanche looked away. She liked the place and the money wasn’t her concern, but Bonnie’s referring to Clyde as her husband always rankled. She and Cumie agreed that it wasn’t any of their business, but it certainly was a strange way for a Christian woman to conduct her life, staying married to a man she didn’t have anything more to do with, so she couldn’t marry the fellow she was running around with.
“You gave him twenty-two dollars,” Blanche said, when they were back in the car.
“That’s what he asked for, wasn’t it?”
“But we’re staying a week not a month.”
Bonnie shrugged. “He’s renting by the month. Asking for a week would make us look like we aren’t solid people. Besides, who knows how long we’ll stay?”
She started the car but gazed through the windshield for a few moments at the building constructed of irregularly shaped stones, glued together like a crazy quilt. It was like her house back in Rowena, a place that could be a home.
* * *
Like so many things, the apartment turned out to be not quite the treasure Bonnie had anticipated. The backyard was weedier than Bonnie and Blanche had remembered, and the furnishings had been reduced considerably. The beds remained but had been stripped down to thin, hard mattresses; the dishes and flatware had been removed from the kitchen, and the radios were gone.
“Guess we’re April fools,” Bonnie said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Clyde said. “We can buy whatever we want.”