by John Gilmore
Clyde was aware of what was happening, but admitted to his sister Marie and to Bonnie that when he brought up that his sentence might be reduced to two years, he was laughed at. “They say it’s crazy,” he wrote to Bonnie. “Maybe they’re right.”
No one mentioned Big Ed. The law understood that Ed had attacked Aubrey in the latrine, cut him with a shank, and tried to kill him. They knew Big Ed had always bragged he’d put Aubrey in the ground. They’d struggled for seconds before Big Ed slipped in his own piss, fell, hitting his head, the shank in hand sinking into his chest. Over in seconds. Though it made the newspapers, nobody cared. Eastham farm was worse than hell—the work details kicking off before daylight, prisoners squinting to find their way to the fields, then shutting down only near dark. Despondent, sick, plagued with fever and lack of sleep, Clyde was denied medical attention and quickly learned that the only way to get out of Eastham and sent back to the Walls was if something disabled him, losing a leg, a foot or an arm, or if he suffered such an infection as to be near death.
Riddled with hopelessness and despair, believing Cumie’s crusade had stalled or was being turned down, Clyde decided to amputate a part of his foot. He needed his hands, his fingers, and he still had to drive a car, so he couldn’t lose a leg or a whole foot. Toes were a different matter. He could lose toes and still walk. Maybe he’d have a kind of limp, but he could force that—make it worse. He’d be taken off work details and sent back to the Walls.
He struck a deal with a fellow convict, asking that part of one foot be chopped off with an ax blade. He’d claim he had done it himself by accident. The convict said, “Gotta take the shoe with it,” then gave a hard fast blow with the ax, severing two toes from Clyde’s left foot.
Nine
Sadly for Clyde, the amputation took place before he learned that a pardon was, in fact, in process. He’d later say it didn’t matter. He could walk, run, and once clear of the Walls and “nine hundred miles from Eastham,” he’d dance a jig on eight toes instead of ten. A “stupid accident,” he wrote to his mother, that maybe if he’d known his pardon was on someone’s desk, he might’ve been able to be somewhere else—doing something else instead of getting his foot in the way of an ax.
He hobbled out of prison on crutches, rode a bus from Huntsville north to Dallas, and sat for an hour in the Dallas bus depot waiting for Nell to meet him. He said little on the way to West Dallas, and once in his family’s Star Service Station, he sat with his bandaged foot propped on an orange crate, eating doughnuts and listening to the radio. He’d later tell Bonnie, “I was just sittin’ tryin’ hard as I could to not to be thinkin’ about anythin’.”
Things had changed. The West Dallas shack they’d lived in had spawned two extra rooms and a canopy over the front of the structure. Gasoline pumps has been installed. And Henry Barrow told his son that oil was everything. “Everybody will be operatin’ an automobile,” he said. “Everybody will be buyin’ gasoline.” Whispering, he said, “Oil’s takin’ the place of God Almighty.” Then he said, “This here where we’re livin’ is not so bad, son, and while you were gone locked up, I sat outside on a box like your foot’s restin’ on, and I was countin’ automobiles drivin’ on the road. I figured your mother and I can be taken care of by what we’re gonna earn from the gasoline that’s sellin’.”
What was once the small front room in the Barrows’ shack had been made into a shop for selling doughnuts, soap, different kinds of candy, coffee, and soda pop.
Clyde confessed the grub in prison hadn’t been too good, and once he’d been shipped from Eastham, the only thing he’d thought about was sitting down to a meal made by his mother.
He was still on crutches when he went to see Bonnie, apologizing for his lameness. She silenced his words with her lips. She said if they’d cut off his legs she’d have carried him in her arms the rest of her life. Clyde said, “You’re too little to do that,” and picked her up in his arms, throwing all his balance to the foot with five toes.
“From the minute he got home,” his sister Marie said later, “him smilin’ and sayin’ nice things, I had the feelin’ he was fakin’ the good thoughts he was comin’ up with. He’d get a look—you didn’t know what he was thinkin’—the next minute his face’d be hard as a skillet bottom, the same way he’d look when sayin’ something’ about bein’ locked up those two years. Mostly he wouldn’t wanna talk about it, and wouldn’t let you know what he was thinkin’.”
He said he wasn’t ever going to prison again. He’d rather be dead, he said. When Cumie and Marie spoke up, saying to be dead was the worst that could happen, the worst you could possibly be, Clyde remarked, “Like hell it is. Unless you’ve lived in a rat hole where I have, you can’t know what I’m sayin’. Dyin’ is what we’re all gonna do one of these days, you just get it over with one time. But bein’ back there you’re dyin’ every day, and knowin’ it when you wake up from bein’ dead the day before.”
Marie told Cumie she believed Clyde had changed, “and not for the better.” She said, “Whatever they’d done to him in there, they might as well’ve poured him full of concrete as far as anyone shakin’ it loose. They made him a different person who can’t see nothin’ except the bad side of everythin’. How’s he gonna live a life that way?”
Days later, in an attempt to cheer him up, Cumie and Marie took Clyde to downtown Dallas to shop for some new clothes. Marie would recall Clyde being “finicky and particular. Wantin’ a silk shirt like a rich man wears, then wantin’ kid leather gloves that cost more than an entire box of work gloves.…” Half the day was spent, she said, “goin’ from store to store, and Clyde on those crutches, lookin’ for what he wanted, like hungry as a dog wantin’ his dinner, but nothin’ seemed to suit him except the fancy stuff he said he had to have.”
Dressed in his suit, a silk shirt, and fancy silk necktie, he took Bonnie into Dallas for a Chinese dinner. Over chop suey, he asked if she’d been out with other guys while he was locked up. She said she’d dated a couple fellows, “just someone to talk to or see a movie,” maybe for a chance to turn her head from the misery she felt over Clyde’s absence. She said, “I got to thinkin’ you’d be gone a long, long time, and my life would just be over if that were true, honey. There’s nobody but you that’s ever comin’ close to being anythin’ to me—only you and no one else....”
Clyde told Bonnie he’d thought of her every day, every night, despite each tomorrow that was nothing less than being shoved into a torture chamber. “It’s the worst place in the world,” he said. “Somebody gets murdered in there, they shrug it off—no one cares, ’specially if the son of a bitch deserved to get himself killed. What I’m gonna do someday is get fellas outta there by bustin’ into that hole.” She looked surprised. he laughed. “I’m not jokin’. I’ll free as many as I can ’cause they’re livin’ in a graveyard—just haven’t had the dirt tossed over ’em yet.” He stared at her and said, “Sugar, I’ve never seen it so clear in my mind—bustin’ into Eastham and gettin’ them guys free.”
After a moment, Bonnie said, “As long as I’m with you, I’ll do whatever you want to do. That will be my life. My life bein’ with you.”
Clyde’s sister Nell told him, “I got Buck’s wife a job at the beauty parlor. Blanche likes workin’ there and is gonna be doin’ more.” Nell had a friend on a construction job in New England, she said, if she talked to him he could probably put Clyde on the payroll.
Staring at her, Clyde said, “I can hardly walk, Nell. How am I gonna be doin’ much construction work?”
There was no plumbing in the Barrow house. The family used an outhouse and newspapers or a roll of paper hanging from a sink chain. On the inside of the wood slat door was a tin crucifix with Jesus nailed to it with cotter pins.
Sitting on the crapper, his crutches propped against the door, Clyde was tearing off hunks of newspaper when his eye caught the mention of Simms Oil Refinery, a short distance from where Clyde was sitting. The ad talked about the
increased demand for gasoline, the success of Simms refinery, and the increase in their payroll. More employees meant more payroll.
Alvin Sinclair, an employee of Simms, occasionally stopped at the Barrows’ pumps to fill the tank of his Ford coupe. He’d say hello to Marie, giving her a wink, and he’d ask Blanche about Buck, still “cooped up” in the Walls. Late one afternoon, Clyde hobbled to Sinclair’s car and the driver said, “How’s it feel wakin’ up to find you’re outta hell?” Clyde shrugged. Sinclair said, “You got anythin’ planned for what you’re gonna do?”
“I’m not nursin’ any plans,” Clyde replied. “My sis’s got some ideas on me workin’ up in Yankee country. Some contractor she knows up there.”
Sinclair said, “Soon as you’re off those crutches, you oughta come over to Simms and see about gettin’ to work.”
“You must be makin’ a lot of money, buyin’ yourself a new Ford,” Clyde said. “I can see myself in one of these—except I’m an ex-con.”
“Shit,” Sinclair said, “Simms has got a con or two workin’—givin’ guys a break. They’re hirin’ right now. You oughta go see ’em.”
“How often you get paid over there?” Clyde asked. “I got no bank account, you know.”
Sinclair said, “The dough comes in every other week, and most get paid in cash.”
“Sounds like a good deal,” Clyde said, nodding. “Guess we’ll see what happens.”
Soon as he was off the crutches, and to please Cumie, he reluctantly accepted Nell’s idea of going for a job in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her friend had relocated to operate a company, and guaranteed he could get Clyde a job. “Of course,” Nell was told, “with the understanding your brother can give us a good day’s work.”
During another Chinese dinner in downtown Dallas, Clyde broke the news to Bonnie about the trip to Massachusetts. Bonnie panicked, saying the thought of another separation was too painful to consider.
“It’s Nell’s idea,” Clyde said. “I don’t wanna go do any damned job.” He said while his sister had talked Cumie into appreciating the plan, the “plain truth” was that he didn’t want to be away from Bonnie or his family, his mother in particular, since she’d worked so hard at getting him out of prison. “I’d still be locked up,” he said, “if she hadn’t done what she did.”
Bonnie said, “But I don’t know what I’m gonna do if you’re gone. I’ve only been countin’ each day until you got here.”
“Maybe you can go with me,” he said. “Can’t go as my wife since you aren’t divorced, but you could get some work in the town maybe—wherever the hell it is.”
“Honey,” she said, “I’d go if I could, but my momma’d be so worried she’d be jumpin’ outta of her skin.” Hugging him, she said, “I love you, you don’t even wanna go away.…”
“You’re right, but I’m doin’ it for Momma and so they don’t think I’m just plain loco,” he said. “I don’t reckon I’ll be stayin’ long up there anyway since you can’t be with me. It’s not doin’ me any good seein’ you here and bein’ off somewhere else without you.”
“I’ll be here waitin’ for you,” she said. “I won’t be goin’ anywhere without you.”
With as much interest in construction work as an alligator in a desert, Clyde found himself in Massachusetts, unable to shake his longing for Bonnie or the ideas he toted to do with Simms Oil Refinery, and that fat cash payroll waiting to be plucked like feathers off a chicken.
Avoiding as much work as possible, Clyde quickly arrived at his plain truth: Massachusetts was a stupid mistake. It was a stupid place to be. Since the long bus ride to Worcester, his lack of sleep had intensified his visions of Bonnie. He could smell her hair and her skin as clear as if she lay naked against him, and all he had to do was touch her—his fingers gliding down her back and around her waist.
There were other pictures rotating in his head of a raided Eastham burning to the ground. Torch it! He could see charred bodies, skin sizzling and bones turning black. The cons would have crashed out—free—thanks to Clyde Barrow, though he knew he’d only be able to round up a few. Half asleep, he’d wonder where the hell he was. Massachusetts? Where the hell’s that?—and to hell with it anyway.
Ten
In less than two weeks Clyde was on a bus heading back to Texas and breathing easy.
To convince his family of the difficulties he would’ve faced by remaining in New England, he claimed he couldn’t take the eastern weather. He’d freeze to death, plus his teeth were killing him. He’d developed “impacted molars,” he said, and the pain was as bad as his foot with the missing toes. He said sometimes he could hardly stand.
Despite his mother and Nell’s concern, his quick decision to dump the job and get back to Bonnie unnerved them. Nell said, “Trouble’s written all over Clyde, and he ain’t never gonna straighten it out.”
The reward for Clyde’s abandonment of New England was Bonnie’s open arms. She’d stayed awake, she said, every night he’d been gone. She’d suffered awful pictures in her mind. She said, “Once I dreamt you’d fallen into quicksand and I couldn’t get you out of it.… They threw a rope but it turned into a snake. The only thing to do was jump into it myself.”
Clyde said he hadn’t slept either. “I felt like I was back in the jug. I’d wake up thinkin’ I was gettin’ pushed around, thinkin’ I hadn’t got outta that rat hole—none of it bein’ true that I was here. I was still there—dreamin’ I was here, but I’m not ever gonna be locked up again. They’ll have to shoot me first and bury me in a garbage can or that quicksand you’re dreamin’ about, long before they’re gonna get me into any cage.”
“Any door they’re gonna lock on you,” Bonnie said, “they’ll be lockin’ on me at the same time.”
Except for his folks, he said, Bonnie was all that made any sense or meaning to him. The rest of the world meant nothing. “It’s crap,” he said. There was no hope in any way, except by doing what you had to do. No hope except to get all you could as fast as you could get it.
Bonnie squeezed his hand and said she understood.
Two of Clyde’s past pals were especially glad to see him. Ralph Fults, released from prison, had returned home to McKinney where another associate of Clyde’s—Ray Hamilton—was jailed on car theft. He’d soon cut his way clear by using hacksaw blades supplied by Fults, who’d hidden them in the spine of a magazine.
Clyde got together with Ralph and passed the news about the oil refinery down the road. There was money in a safe every two weeks for a big payroll. As they walked along Eagle Ford, heading towards the refinery, Clyde said the guy who worked at Simms, and who bought Cokes and gas at the Barrows’ station, had recently “got to talkin’. He told me he’s got a cousin in the can who’d stuck up a joint downtown. This cousin’s belly-achin’ about bein’ in the joint, and this guy wants to know what I’m gonna do. I told him nothin’ except lookin’ for some fast scratch. He got all bushy, his eyes poppin’, and says he knows of a score and would I be interested. So I said, ‘Sure, whatcha got in mind?’ He says there’s a payroll put in a safe before it’s doled out. He says the safe’s no Fort Knox—just a straight tumbler deal, and says it’s old.”
“So we get into the place,” Fults said, “and crack the safe. That’s it? What’s this guy want?”
“He doesn’t want nothin’. He’s showin’ me what he knows—hotshot. That’s why I think it’s maybe a lot of bunk.”
“But what if it ain’t?” Fults said. “A payroll? That could be a lot of damned dough.”
“He says there’s folks workin’ the graveyard shift,” Clyde said. “This guy’s not sayin’ it’s an easy score, but could be enough to go around for everyone workin’ at Simms. He ain’t withholdin’ the information.”
“You don’t think it’s some setup?” Fults asked.
“He’s too dumb for that,” Clyde said. “He used to chew the fat with Buck. Practically pointin’ to it and lookin’ like a smart guy—a hotshot. I’m thinkin�
� we get Ray and that’s three of us for the job. See if it’s crap or not.”
“What about the people workin’ in there?”
“It’s only three or so, and one of us holds them off while we crack the safe.”
“Whoever’s holdin’ them has gotta have a gun,” Fults said. “I haven’t got one.”
“Blanche’s got Buck’s gun,” Clyde said. “Used to be Buck’s. I’ll get it. We’ve got all the tools we’d need right at the station.”
“A heavy hammer and cold chisels, dependin’ on what kind of safe it is,” Fults said.
“He’s sayin’ it’s a big cash payroll, Ralph. Not somethin’ to walk away from.”
“I hear you,” Fults said. “Let’s meet tonight. I’ll get Ray. The laws’re lookin’ all over for him, and talkin’ about that, you got your butt just about a stone’s throw from this refinery.”
“I figure we go in fast and get out,” Clyde said. “Head north and out of the state. The three of us can knock off a bank or two, and get raidin’ Eastham laid out. Get enough guns and ammo and bust that joint open. I get sick every time I’m thinkin’ about the wallopin’ we’ve had, brother. Maybe we’ll even wind up shootin’ a couple of those sons of bitches.”
“I’d like to go through there,” Fults said, “shootin’ every bastard that laid a club on me or givin’ me a goddamn whippin’.”
Clyde smiled a little. “Would you do that, Ralph? You think you’d go shoot them screws?”
“Makes me madder’n hell,” Ralph said. “That it does.”
Clyde kept smiling. “I know what you mean, partner.”
Years later, Sinclair would say, “I never told Barrow about a cousin in jail or how Simms could be robbed. He made that up. Barrow got all clever over us talkin’, and him askin’ me right out how the Simms payroll was delivered and what they did with it until handin’ it out, ’cause guys with kids must’ve been eager as hell to get paid. I told him far as I knew it came in a day or so before payday and was kept in a safe in the company office. I had an idea of what he was thinkin’ and I had qualms about passin’ to him what I’d heard. I knew about him from his sis and younger brother—even used to see him on Eagle Ford, and I didn’t give a damn what he did. I admired him. Clyde was a slick guy and smart, and fancied himself a notorious outlaw. He was smarter than his brother Buck, and I knew he’d never be changin’ his ways. Neither of them. I never liked Buck so much, a runt and lookin’ like a rat with him seein’ you straight on, his narrow eyes squintin’. He wasn’t smart. Clyde was different—he was smart. I knew the Parkers, and Bonnie Parker’s sis, and I’d say hello to her mom like I’d say hello to Clyde’s mom, a skinny old lady tough as any man. She could take a shovel to you. I felt bad for the Barrows, but I knew neither Clyde nor his brother were ever gonna make their folks happy or proud because both of them were born crooks who weren’t ever gonna get cured, and Clyde, bein’ the smartest one, was bound to kick up the most trouble. I knew what he had in mind about Simms. Only they got a hell of a surprise for all their trouble.”
