by John Gilmore
Ralph wanted to know what kind of safe it was, but whatever it was wasn’t going to make much difference since he’d bust it either way—chisel or blow it.
Ray Hamilton confessed he knew nothing about breaking into a safe, but was taking on the job as long as he could get enough to get out of Texas. His eyes lit up when he saw the gun Clyde borrowed from Blanche, and he said, “We’re splittin’ three ways, aren’t we? An even split, I take it?”
“Like the fuckin’ holy trinity,” Ralph said.
“We’re poolin’ for the raid on Eastham,” Clyde said. “This job’s for financin’ the raid.”
“Should be plenty for what we’ll need,” Ralph said.
Though nodding, Ray didn’t look convinced. “Just that I don’t know about this raid you’re talkin’ about. Why are you gonna get a bunch of guys out we don’t even know?”
“’Cause that’s what we’re gonna do,” Clyde said. “We’ll have us an armed posse that’s on the other side, and operatin’ like a team. You don’t wanna do what we’re gonna do? Nobody says you gotta do it, Ray.”
“That ain’t it,” Ray said. “Just no damned money like we should be gettin’ for bustin’ a safe. I don’t even know nothin’ about this safe-crackin’ business, and we don’t have any guys for the team.”
“I’ve told you what I got planned,” Clyde said. “You don’t have to know any more. Just hold the fuckin’ gun on who’s there—if anyone’s there.”
“They’ll be there,” Ralph said. “We’ll take care of them when we get there.”
The three struggled cutting the chain link at Simms, sweating until Ralph finally broke through. Clyde felt dumb about the wire cutters, not the grip he intended. The rest of the tools for the job would do.
“What’re we gonna do with these people?” Ray whispered.
“We’re not gonna do anythin’,” Clyde said, “unless they wanna get shot full of holes.”
Ray carried the bag of tools through the fence. The car he’d stolen was hidden off Eagle Ford by the tracks, and the three made their way across the refinery grounds.
Once inside the building, they tied bandanas across the lower halves of their faces. Heading to the company office, they encountered a watchman, and Ray said, “Don’t move, pop. We got guns.” Clyde told the watchman to walk ahead of them as they moved to the office.
Three employees were working the night shift as the three men entered the office. “This is a stickup!” Clyde announced. “Let’s open that safe.”
One lady cried out, “There isn’t any money in here!” She protested opening the safe, told Clyde they couldn’t, that only the manager was able to open the safe and that he wasn’t due until morning. “But there isn’t any money in there tonight.”
“You’re payin’ people tomorrow, right?” Clyde said.
The lady said, “The payroll doesn’t come in till morning.”
Clyde and Ray tied up two of the hostages and gagged them with hand towels and tape around their faces, while Ralph went to work on the safe, quickly chipping at the tumblers.
Ray, sweating and nervous, made Clyde uneasy. “Stand still and quit peein’ in your pants,” Clyde told him.
Fifteen minutes later, Ralph had opened the door to the safe and was digging into it. Pulling back, he blinked and said, “It’s empty! That lady’s right.”
Clyde said, “What do you mean ‘empty’?”
“Papers and shit. No cash. Not a goddamn dollar.”
The bookkeeper cried, “I told you there wasn’t any money until tomorrow!”
Clyde peered into the safe. “Let’s get outta here,” he said.
In the car, Ralph said, “If we gotta shoot anybody, it better be the fuckin’ fool tellin’ you about a payroll that isn’t there. Now we’ll have the laws on us and we’re broke!”
They drove north, heading for Sherman. With Clyde at the wheel, the car would be in Oklahoma in less than two hours. They needed money. Ray talked about hitting banks. “If Floyd can do it, we can do it.”
“Pretty Boy’s got a few guys with him,” Ralph said, “like what Clyde was talkin’ about, and he’s got a hell of a lot more ammunition.”
“There’s three of us,” Clyde said. “We’ll get all the ammo we need.”
“I’m okay with a bank job,” Ray said. “I’ve had enough of petty ante crap, and at least a bank’s got money in a fuckin’ drawer.”
“And a lot more in a safe,” Clyde said.
Grunting, Ralph said, “One that ain’t empty.”
Ray laughed.
They drove all night.
Near dawn, the three abandoned the car in a private driveway, stole another vehicle and crept down an alley behind a hardware store. While Ray sat waiting behind the wheel, Clyde and Ralph entered the store through a rear window.
Within minutes, the trunk of the stolen car was being loaded with shotguns, pistols and boxes of ammunition. They even lifted hunting hats and three mackinaws. By morning they were driving slowly on the icy Missouri streets. The roads proved wrong for a fast getaway. “Ice—snow,” Ralph said. “We bog down in here, we’ll be back in the joint. Maybe they’ll get us sent to Texas and we’ll be back in Eastham.”
Clyde said. “We’ll be goin’ there just one more time, and we’ll be on the outside of that stinkin’ hole—not inside.”
“Whatever we’re doin’, we’re splittin’ three ways,” Ray said. “I don’t know what you’re expectin’ cuttin’ loose a bunch of cons that’s got no business with us.”
“They’re gonna have business with us,” Clyde said. “We’ll get a handful of banks and be sittin’ pretty. Should be plenty for what we’ll need, and plenty goin’ around between us. We get a few guys out you’ll be sittin’ on that mountain you’re always dreamin’ about.”
An old ex-convict who claimed he knew Ray Hamilton in the Walls said, “That boy never had any serious intent in bustin’ fellas out with Barrow and Fults. What the hell for? A gang? Guys at Eastham were a sorrowful lot, and once outta there, they’d be takin’ off—gettin’ lost. The first job Ray joins up with Barrow and Fults was just a bust—runnin’ them outta Texas. They went north, all three of ’em, stopping to knock over a couple small lunch joints and a slew of gas stations. But it was corn money and drinkin’ it on the run. Ray stuck with the two because he believed he was a born bank robber, and that’s the reason he rode along with Clyde Barrow. He’d never had that experience and Barrow was keen on this kind of doin’s. Knockin’ over small stuff, small joints, was just to keep gas in the cars and for grub, long as you’re runnin’ on the road. Ray later on told me about women he was chasin’ while the three of them bedded down in hotels or flops around Missouri and Kansas, and up in the south part of Nebraska. He bragged he’d had a gorgeous redhead in Lincoln, but Clyde chased her outta their camp, sayin’ she had a mouth as big as her milk-jug tits, and no brains in her head. Ray said he didn’t care about brains in a broad. Clyde warned him if he chased and bragged to tramps with twats as big as their mouths, they’d wind up back in Eastham.
“Ray’s trouble was he thought of himself as a ladies’ man. He wanted to have the same thinkin’ as Clyde, but Clyde didn’t have any care about any other girl except the one he had, though how much is gospel I’d have no idea.
“Clyde was a prude, Ray said—wasn’t after any women and claimed he had all he wanted waitin’ for him in West Dallas, and sayin’ how eager he was to be there soon as things blew over. What he meant was the job they’d tried in East Dallas that’d got them on the road goin’ north—too far from Texas.
“Hamilton wanted the dough they’d be pullin’ in from hittin’ a few small banks and joints, like he was after doin’ more than one job in a day. Makin’ a heyday of it since he didn’t see himself in any long partnership with Clyde and Fults. I gather Ray was hoardin’ what he could so he could live high on the hog soon’s he took off, movin’ to jobs on his own, or with a partner where Ray wasn’t low man on a pole.
Ray had ideas about bein’ a top man, but he told me Clyde’s always the top man, and somehow you knew that’s what he was.
“So the story goes that food poisonin’ hit Ray in Oklahoma and laid him up shittin’ all over while Clyde and Fults pulled a job that brought in nearly six grand. Ray said Fults wasn’t keen on divvyin’ the score, but Clyde insisted on Ray gettin’ his share because, as Clyde put it—and this is accordin’ to Ray—the same could be true the other way around if Clyde or Fults took a sick shit and couldn’t stick it out.
“Back on the road, the three got as far as Minnesota, but the ice caused problems. They took flophouse rooms while casin’ jobs, or on the move, the wheels never seemin’ to stop. Ray admired Clyde’s knack for handlin’ almost any kind of car, though he was partial to Fords with the big V-8 engines. Sometimes he drove with one shoe off the foot he’d lost those toes on.”
While Ray was laid up with food poisoning, Clyde and Fults snaked through the city grabbing what they could. They hit one small bank, and a lawman said, “Two men, armed to the teeth and lookin’ mean as badgers, but smooth and fast, totin’ shotguns beneath their overcoats, and pistols in their pockets. Sweepin’ through so quick they were in and out fast as flies you’re tryin’ to swat, and you weren’t even sure what they’d done.”
They drove, sleeping in shifts or laying over in cornfields when none of them could stay awake. “Ray said they did one more job together,” the ex-con recalled, “and it brought a few hundred they split up. Ray said he’d had enough, was off for Michigan where his father lived. That’s how it went, Ray said, Clyde and Fults talkin’ all the time about their raidin’ Eastham, and Ray said he got sick of hearin’ it—damn near as sick as he’d been shittin’ out that poison. Finally comin’ to a showdown, Ray said he told Clyde he had no desire to get himself shot full of holes freein’ a bunch of bums he didn’t give a shit about. He said Clyde just looked at him cold—his eyes like ice cubes—and said, ‘No hard feelin’s, pal.’
“The big coincidence was that later, Clyde—and Bonnie—got Ray outta Eastham in the cockeyed raid, so Ray once again hooked up with Clyde. He says Clyde told him, ‘I was so pissed off at you, I scribbled your name on a ten-gauge shell and planned on stickin’ the barrel straight up your ass.…’
“There’s been more than a few who’ve said Barrow was like a dog that gets hold of your leg and never lets go. Couple or so years later, not long before Ray got sent to the electric chair, I heard that Ray told a guy after gettin’ back with Clyde—after Clyde and Bonnie had busted him outta Eastham—that Ray had a fling with Bonnie and was jokin’ that Clyde never knew about it. Ray was sayin’, ‘I got it over on Clyde, and Bonnie done fucked like a monkey on a bed of bananas.’
“Now, it’s safe to say that kind of talk was very dangerous, and would certainly have bought Ray that ten-gauge shell emptied up his ass and straight out the top of his head—that is, if the law hadn’t already fried him in the chair. You could only put limited stock in any of Ray’s talkin’, especially his braggin’ to do with females. He’d had his share of nickel and dimers, and maybe a looker or two chucked in, but lyin’ about Bonnie Parker was signin’ your own death warrant. And if Clyde wasn’t about to fill Ray full of holes for the liar he was, I believe Bonnie herself, who’d never shot a soul her whole life, would’ve taken up the shotgun and blown Ray’s head clean off his shoulders.”
Eleven
With Ray Hamilton having hightailed it north, Clyde and Ralph headed back through Texas to “corral a team,” as Ralph put it, acknowledging Clyde’s determination for staging the raid on Eastham. Later, he said, “Clyde was a fanatic about an assault. Havin’ spent my time in that rat hole, I could see his wantin’ to get back at those bastards, as risky as it was to be a sittin’ duck unless you had a helluva lot of surplus at your back.”
What was needed was artillery, and Clyde knew where to find it. He talked about the hardware and gun supply in the town of Kaufman. “I’ve been in there,” he told Ralph. “Seen what they’ve got. It’s what we need, and the extras we’ll stash.”
Ralph said, “His plan was to make a run from Dallas to Tyler, get rid of the car we’re drivin’, and grab two big ones—heavy, fast cars—get ’em in Tyler that night. A lot of fancy people had big cars sittin’, then we’d swing back and grab the guns in Kaufman. At around that same time, Ted Rogers and the other boys holin’ up in Lake Dallas are hittin’ Celina for weapons—the same we’re doin’ in Kaufman. Clyde’s seen the stock—ammo crates stacked in back. We’ll have two four-door cars with big trunks and floors, and a lot of room for company.”
While Clyde was planning “the run for guns” and the trip to Eastham, Bonnie had been telling her mother about a job at a cosmetic company “way west of Dallas,” and that very morning she was going in for work. “Gettin’ a lift with a friend,” she said. Hugging her mother, she said she’d get in touch with her later, and then hurried away for the meeting with her “friend” (who had nothing to do with a cosmetic company “way west of Dallas”).
“When it gets dark,” Clyde told Ralph, “we’ll get the cars, you takin’ one and me and Bonnie in the other.” Though he fancied Ford V-8 sedans, he said they needed more room for guns and ammo and the guys’ break from Eastham. All part of a “strategy,” he said. “The guns in Kaufman and in Celina were enough to stock a small army. We hit Eastham and keep goin’ the rest of the year.”
Bonnie was driven to the prison, posing as a cousin to Clyde’s old friend, Aubrey. Waiting with the other visitors, she tried to look meek, though giving a smile to the guards.
Seeing Aubrey, she told him of Clyde’s plan, where pistols in paper sacks would be stashed, and where cars would be waiting for the getaway. “Clyde’s been studyin’ weather bulletins,” she said. “He’s countin’ on fog. Says soon as you’re marched out in the field, you’ll get a fix on where the guns are, and when the ruckus starts, you’ll make a break for the cars. He says he’ll be givin’ you cover, and for you to shoot over the guards’ heads. He says you’ll hear the horns blowin’.” At the end of the visit, she left Eastham with the other visitors.
Late the following afternoon, Bonnie made her way to the Star Service Station, and spent time with Clyde’s sister Marie, letting her know Clyde was sending his love to her and the family. Bonnie said, “He wants to see all of us soon. Gotta be in a place where he won’t be seen.”
“What about you?” Marie asked. “You’ve been with him so much, do you know if the laws know who you are?”
“They know nothin’ about me,” Bonnie said. “I’ve done nothin’ to be in trouble over, unless the laws say lovin’ a fella who’s wanted by ’em is now a criminal offense.”
Marie said, “Far as I know, l haven’t heard any new laws sayin’ you’re not allowed to love whoever you please—as long as you personally aren’t part of the goin’s on.”
“It’s a plain mystery to me,” Bonnie said. “I just shut it out of my thinkin’.”
Marie gave a knowing smile. “Clyde’s very persuasive, isn’t he? What you’re sayin’ is the best way to be, so just shut it all out.”
“You know how I’m feelin’,” Bonnie said. “You know I can’t see any other way for anythin’ to be other than what it is.”
“Come on, baby,” Clyde said. “We got us a load of shoppin’ to do.” As Bonnie climbed in alongside Clyde, Ralph was smiling from the rear seat, and biting into a banana. Soon as Clyde was rolling south, Ralph tossed the banana skin out the window, followed by the wrapper from a candy bar. He broke the bar in half and passed a hunk to Bonnie. Munching at it, she said, “What I’m starvin’ for is a stack of buckwheat cakes, poured all over with hot maple syrup and meltin’ butter.”
“Lord, that sounds good,” Ralph said. “I’m starvin’ myself, and this ain’t fillin’ me.”
“We’ll do all our eatin’ soon as we get rid of what we’re drivin’,” Clyde said. “And get us two others before we hit Kaufman.”
/> “Almost dark,” Ralph said. “Damn clouds’ve been dark all afternoon. Supposed to rain?”
Clyde said, “What if it does? I’m not in any rush for rain, but don’t want any laws sniffin’ behind us.”
It took less than thirty minutes in the town of Tyler. First to get another car—a Buick sedan, parked in the driveway of the Tyler Rest Home. Blocks later, they abandoned the car they had been driving, gathered the tools needed, and rode in the Buick until Clyde spotted a Chrysler on a dark street. “There’s a beauty!” Ralph said.
Clyde got out, looking up. “It’s startin’ to rain. That’s good. You take this one, and Bonnie can stay with you. Go on ahead now and I’ll follow you.” As Clyde crossed the street, Ralph turned the Buick north and cruised slowly on the dark street.
Bonnie poked at the windshield. “It is rainin’,” she said. “People’re gonna go hide in their houses.” In a matter of seconds, Clyde was behind the wheel of the Chrysler. He had the car started and closed in on the Buick, the windshield wipers wagging back and forth.
