Wailing, Blanche covered her face with her hands and ran upstairs. It took the rest of them several trips to move everything into the apartment, where they deposited the weapons and their accessories higgledy-piggledy on W.D.’s divan and the floor around it. No point trying to fit all of that into the closet.
Blanche was still crying and shaking her head at Buck. “You promised.”
“Blanche,” Clyde said patiently, as if he were reasoning with a child, “what are you going on about?”
“You shut up, Clyde Barrow!” Blanche was practically choking with the effort to utter quietly words that she wanted to scream. “You said you weren’t going to take him on a job. You said you just wanted to spend time with your brother. You don’t care about your brother! You don’t care if you get him kilt!”
“Now, Blanche,” Buck said, “no one’s gettin’ kilt.” He tried to put his arms around his wife, but she wrenched her shoulders free.
A bottle of beer emitted a sigh as Clyde opened it. “I know how you feel, Blanche,” he said, his voice smooth as cream cheese, “because I feel just like you do about Buck. And that’s why, while W.D. and me did all the dirty work out there, Buck was off yonder, just keeping the car seat toasty. He didn’t have a thing to do with this.
“And I picked these up for you,” Clyde said, bowing his head so he could slip over it the strap from which a pair of US Army issue binoculars hung. “So you can keep an eye on our young Buck.”
Bonnie felt sorry for Blanche, but she also felt slightly—meanly—triumphant. Now Blanche must see that it wasn’t as easy to get her way as she’d made out. Not if she wasn’t prepared to give up what she loved most. Blanche was sewn to Buck and Buck was sewn to Clyde, and Blanche and Buck both might tug and squeal, but unless they tore those stitches out of their flesh, they had to go whichever way Clyde decided.
But Blanche quit crying. “We’re leaving tomorrow,” she said.
CHAPTER 49
In the end, Blanche agreed to stay until Friday, which would give her time to organize and pack the housewares they’d collected and Buck time to make some repairs to the Marmon. The following afternoon, Bonnie lay in bed long after she’d awakened, trying to sponge through her pores the stillness that remained. She could reach the window shade, but she needn’t look out to picture the tidy scene in which she nestled, the rows of paint-box red tulips glowing against the clean yellow boards of the house behind, the neatly coiled garden hose, the white rectangular sheets and dish towels drying in the neighbor’s yard. If she’d had a child with Roy, she would be old enough now to go to school. She might be walking home now with Liza from next door, her yellow hair escaping from the braids Bonnie would have tied it in that morning.
Slowly, so as not to disturb her vision, she slid her legs out from under the sheets and stepped into the living room, which Blanche was already restoring to its original state. The guns had disappeared, as had the empty beer bottles. On the coffee table, the Perfect Picture Puzzle had progressed. Bonnie began searching for the bits of pink that would form the tongue of a reproachful cocker spaniel in the bath.
“Good,” Blanche said, when she and Snowball came in from their walk. “I want to get that finished up and put away. Only three more days.”
Around eight o’clock, the men stumbled up the stairs, having spent the afternoon shattering beer bottles and tree limbs, as they tested the weapons they’d taken from the armory.
“One of ’em wouldn’t quit!” W.D., so excited he could not contain his saliva, wiped the escaping drip from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. “And it wasn’t one of them BARs, either. It was just a riot gun. Clyde was popping off at some bottles and all of a sudden pow, pow, pow, pow!” W.D. gestured wildly around the room with one finger, like a little boy playing cowboys and Indians.
“I thought he was acting all crazy on purpose,” Buck said, “so I’m yelling at him to quit fucking around. I had to pull W.D. down. We messed up our shirts good.”
“And Clyde’s yelling, ‘I ain’t doin’ it! She’s firing on her own!’ ” W.D. said.
Clyde smiled. While shooting wound the others up, it seemed to calm him. “I finally thought to chuck her in the creek.”
“I bet it took out a dozen fish!” W.D. said. “That fucker was hopped up!”
* * *
Blanche had been right; the guns made it impossible to sustain the illusion that they were normal people. The following afternoon, one of the BARs went off while Clyde was cleaning it in the garage and sprayed seven or eight bullets around the room.
“You might have killed someone!” Blanche scolded.
“What are you doing cleaning that thing in the middle of the garage, where anyone can walk in anytime?” Bonnie said.
Luckily, none of their neighbors seemed to have heard the barrage. At least no one came out of any of the houses to investigate.
“Probably thought it was some automobile engine acting up,” Clyde said scornfully. “These people wouldn’t recognize a BAR if it bit ’em. Anyway, what does it matter if they get suspicious now? We’re getting out of here, ain’t we?”
* * *
After midnight W.D. parked a V-8 roadster with Oklahoma plates next to the sedan.
“What the hell are you doing?” Bonnie said, meeting him at the top of the stairs. “That’s Nose’s spot.”
In the living room, Clyde looked up from the whipit he was cleaning. “The Nose is going to park on the curb for a couple of days, while we use the garage. He don’t mind.” He’d disassembled the gun on top of the jigsaw dog, which by this time was embodied down to the bottom of his darling wooden bathtub. The oily parts were making a mess of the Perfect Picture.
“He don’t mind?” Bonnie opened her eyes wide to dramatize her disbelief. “You’re crazy, you know that? Crazy to bring that car here when we’re trying to hide. Someone’s going to call the law on us.”
Clyde shook his head, turning back to the whipit. “It’ll just be one night. We’re going to use it to pull a job tomorrow, and then we’ll ditch it. No one’s going to see it. It’s in the garage, remember.”
“You promised Buck and Blanche that you would keep this place from getting hot, and now you’ve gone and lit us on fire!” Bonnie, flouncing toward the bedroom, turned in the doorway for a final jab. “And it’s doesn’t—he doesn’t mind. Except you can bet he does!” She slammed the door behind her.
Though a rush of breath and blood filled her ears, she could hear the thud of the table overturning and his feet pounding across the floor. She gripped the knob, but it slid under her fingers when he turned it. She pressed her shoulder against the door and absorbed the impact of his body, as he slammed against the thin slab of wood. The final jolt catapulted her into the room, until she hit the mattress and spilled face first over the sloppy folds of pink and peach and the rumpled feather bed. He grabbed her wrist, yanked her up, and flung her, so that she smashed into the wall. The swift motion, over which she had no control, and the pain that instantly commanded her attention were a relief and a release. Angry words gushed over her tongue.
“You know you’re going to die, and you want other people to die with you!” She charged and overbalanced him, so that he tipped sideways onto the mattress. She threw herself on top of him and locked her hands around his throat. “You want us all to go down together.”
In an instant, he flipped her, but she kneed him in the stomach and slipped out of his grasp. He caught her again, around the waist, and threw her back onto the bed. And then his lips were on her neck and he was hard against her groin and she arched her back, offering her breasts to his mouth.
Afterward, they lay, spent and damp. This was the sweet time she could count on, Clyde nestling his cheek in the softness between her shoulder and collarbone, letting her hold him.
His eyes were glassy with tears, his voice uneven. “I wouldn’t hurt my brother for anything.”
“I know that.”
“Or you. Espe
cially you.”
CHAPTER 50
On Thursday morning, Clyde and Bonnie are still treating each other tenderly. He tries not to wake her as he slides out of bed, but she reaches her arms around his neck and pulls him back in.
“I’ve got to get us some money, so we’re ready to go tomorrow.”
“Wait,” she murmurs, her face half-muffled by the pillow. “I’ll come with you.”
“There ain’t nothing for you to do but sleep.”
She does love sleep, which blunts the fear that prods her whenever she’s conscious. But when he closes the door behind him, a dark, sad space yawns in her chest and behind her eyes, and she wishes she hadn’t let him leave without her. She concentrates on the sounds Blanche is making as she cleans, her kid pumps tick-tocking over the floor, Snowball’s toenails clicking after her. The wheels of the carpet sweeper roll over the rug, provoking Snowball’s bark; the chair legs scrape; water rushes into the bathroom sink. Bonnie considers removing the smeared plates and encrusted flatware from the floor and dresser top to the kitchen.
Her shoulder is sore where Clyde has wrenched it, and her hip black-and-blue where it collided with the wall. She manipulates these areas gently, deriving pleasure from the twinges of pain, proof of Clyde’s love. Emotionally, too, she feels bruised and delicate. Shrugging her limp red kimono over her nightgown, she makes her way gingerly into the kitchen.
“Blanche, honey, I don’t feel so good. Would you boil me an egg?”
Blanche sighs. She wants to say that the kitchen is closed, or that Bonnie can boil her own egg, for Pete’s sake. But she’s aware that when they part the next day, she and Buck will be free to begin their lives, while Bonnie will have to go back to living like a hunted animal. “Of course, sugar. You just sit down, and I’ll bring it to you.”
Bonnie drifts into the living room and sinks to the floor in front of her typewriter, where she’s left the start of a clean copy of “Suicide Sal,” one of the poems she’d composed in the Kaufman County Jail, rolled into the carriage. She pecks at it listlessly.
“Your egg is on.” Snowball follows Blanche from the kitchen—click, click, click. “He’s nervous. He can tell something’s up. He doesn’t want to be left behind.” Blanche picks up a deck of cards and begins to lay them out for solitaire.
Bonnie reaches to scratch behind the little dog’s ears. “I know what it’s like, Snowball.”
Outside, an engine slows to an idle and beneath them, the garage door creaks open.
“Damn it!” Bonnie jumps up. “I knew I should have gone with them. Something’s gone wrong.”
All three men are in the garage when Bonnie and Blanche get downstairs. Buck, who’d been tuning up the Marmon out on the curb, now has his head and shoulders under the hood of the roadster.
“Forget it,” Clyde says. “Damned motor’s burned out. We’ll have to take the sedan. Boy can drive this damn thing out of town and ditch it.”
Now Bonnie can go with them after all. She runs upstairs to change, while Clyde and W.D. transfer the guns to the sedan. Blanche follows Bonnie up to the apartment, where she goes to the kitchen to rescue the egg, which has boiled too hard already.
“Are you going to eat this?” she calls toward the bedroom, but there’s no answer.
Every step Blanche takes, the dog follows. “For heaven’s sake, don’t worry, Snowball,” she says, as she sits again at her solitaire. “We’ll be going soon.”
Blanche can’t wait until she and Buck and Snowball are packed into the Marmon and driving south. She’s had enough of the inconsistent hours and the relentless, almost aggressive untidiness. The men’s excitement over the guns has appalled her as much as the weapons themselves, and she hates the way Buck hangs on Clyde’s pronouncements, as if Clyde were his king.
A muffled sound of gunshots penetrates the apartment.
“Damn those guns.” Blanche carries the cards she hasn’t yet been able to play, shuffling them absently as she goes to the window. Why Clyde can’t be bothered to be more careful is beyond her.
Then, from the garage below, Clyde shouts. “Oh, Lordy, let’s get started!”
Feet pound up the stairs, and Buck shoots through the door. “Let’s go! It’s the cops!”
Blanche, unable to process this outrageous command, balks. She squeezes her playing cards until the deck bursts from her hand in a paper explosion. “We haven’t done anything!”
“We got to go!”
Buck disappears down the stairs again, but in a moment comes thumping back up with a shotgun in his hands. W.D. staggers through the door behind him, his shirt darkly, redly wet.
Bonnie, who’s managed only to remove her red kimono, pushes past Buck and W.D. in the doorway and runs down the stairs in her nightgown. “Clyde!”
Buck and Blanche follow, supporting W.D. between them. Snowball slips down with them, nearly tangling their feet.
Downstairs, Clyde peers out of the closed garage through a crack where the door meets the wall. Then he slides the door open to reveal a police car, studded with bullet holes, a front fender collapsed over a shredded tire, blocking their escape. Directly in front of the car, a man slumps like a pile of gory laundry. His head is misshapen, and his arm is barely attached to his shoulder.
“Help me!” Clyde shouts.
W.D., despite his bloody wound, darts forward, and he and Clyde plant their shoulders against the crippled car and shove, while Buck grabs the dead man by the ankles and starts dragging. The severed arm threatens to detach altogether, and what remains of the head tips back to open the mouth in grotesque, silent anguish.
“Don’t, Buck!” Bonnie gasps.
“We ain’t going to run him over,” Buck grunts.
With a crack, another bullet slices the air and bores through the metal skin of the police car. Clyde and W.D. run back to the garage, Clyde twisting to squeeze off a couple of shots over his shoulder. Buck drops the feet and runs, too.
“Get in the car!”
Clyde’s command loosens Bonnie’s limbs, and she hurls herself into the front seat of the sedan. Through the windshield, she has a clear view of the ragged lake of blood between them and the street. And then she sees the long white V and blue lace of Blanche’s back.
“Blanche, come back!” Bonnie screams.
But Blanche, who’s made it to the street and is starting down the hill, keeps running.
The sedan rocks as the three men throw themselves into it and slam the doors. Clyde revs forward and slams into the police car, shoving it out of their way. They back up and are free, speeding down the hill after Blanche, who’s slowed to a trot, her head thrown back and her arms lifted to heaven. As they pull alongside her, Buck throws open the door, hooks his arm around her waist, and drags her in.
“Snowball,” she gasps, and then shrieks. “Snowball!”
Aside from her screams, the neighborhood is as quiet as ever. No gunshots, no sirens, no shouts follow them.
Bonnie squints, scouring the verge ahead for a flash of white, but Snowball might be anywhere. “We’ll come back later. We’ll find him.”
Everyone knows this is a lie.
Blanche, who has been draped over Buck’s lap, sobbing, recovers her breath and lifts herself, so that she’s sitting straight in the seat. She’s amazed to find a few playing cards still in her hand. Everything has happened too fast; she’s not been able to think and make the proper decisions. She reviews the items left undone: she’s not wearing hose; her underthings are tangled in a pan of gray water in the kitchen sink; the hard-boiled egg is still in the saucepan; the wristwatch that her father gave her for her graduation is ticking away in the kitchen cabinet, where she’d placed it for safekeeping. The car speeds her faster and faster away from all of this unfinished business. “We have to go back.”
No one responds. If anything, Clyde pushes the car even faster.
“No, listen to me. We have to back! Buck, we haven’t done anything! Let us out, Clyde. We have to go back and
explain that we were just visiting. We’re not Bonnie and Clyde! We haven’t done anything!”
Buck pats her awkwardly. “Shhh, Baby. It’s all right.”
His useless motions and empty words sicken Bonnie. “Oh, let her be! It’s not all right.”
“I wish I was dead!” Blanche wails. She paws at the door and rolls her head and kicks her feet in their kid pumps against the floorboards.
“No you don’t!” W.D. says. “Don’t say that!” Blood seeps between the fingers he’s pressed to his stomach.
“Baby,” Buck says, “I’m as sorry about this mess as you are.”
His words only make Blanche more desolate. He doesn’t understand how this has ruined everything forever, because he hasn’t shared her anxieties or her dreams. He’s never longed, like she did, for a life in which they could just walk in and out of their front door without worrying about who might see them. He never thinks about the future. He’s like a dog. Oh, Snowball!
“Blanche, kin you look at my gut?” W.D. slides his hands apart, exposing a soaked and brilliantly red patch of shirt. “Is the bullet in there?”
The fear in his shaky voice interrupts Blanche’s free fall. Although she gags as she leans over Buck to examine the hole from which W.D.’s blood leaks, this new experience of terror and revulsion relieves the panic that’s been overwhelming her.
“Am I going to die?”
Blanche’s fingers shake so much, she can’t unbutton his shirt, so she grabs two handfuls of material and yanks them apart. The buttons make a soft, popping noise as they fly off.
“I guess this shirt was pretty much done for anyway,” W.D. says.
Clyde shakes his head. “I don’t feel so good. Less stop a minute. We’ve gone far enough.”
He lets the car roll to a stop in a patch of weeds, not yet tall, but already thick and green. The trees have fulfilled their promise of two weeks before and reached full flower, the gray limbs shucking off all restraint and parading exuberant white masses before the brilliant blue sky.
Along for the Ride Page 20
