by John Gilmore
Alonzo hurried into the house and shut the back door. W.D. was holding Bonnie up while Clyde got into the car. He quickly started the engine, and as he backed up away from the house, Bonnie slipped against Clyde. “She’s shivering,” W.D. said.
“There’s a blanket in the trunk,” the sheriff said.
Clyde looked around at the sheriff, nodded, then told W.D., “Go get the blanket the sheriff’s talkin’ about.”
“What about what we got in the wreck?” W.D. asked. “You think it’s all burned to shit?”
Clyde put his arm around Bonnie, her head cradled at his shoulder. “I don’t think she’s wantin’ to smell any smoke, boy.”
W.D. took the keys and went around to the trunk. The sheriff said, “That girl’s in a bad way. What’re you gonna do? She needs help—she could die.”
“I’m fixin’ it soon as we get where we’re headed,” Clyde said. “I won’t let her die.” The trunk lid closed and W.D. got into the car with the blanket. “Get it around her good so she’s warm. Give me this side of it, and we’ll get her covered up. You hold her so she don’t fall over. Any trouble either of these boys give us, you finish them both off.”
W.D. smiled, turning on the seat to stare at the two lawmen.
Twenty-Six
Clyde’s eyes darted to the rearview mirror as the two lawmen shifted nervously. “Just take it easy back there,” he said. “Enjoy the ride.”
“Where are we goin’?” the sheriff asked.
“Got a meetin’ in a spell,” Clyde said. “A fella who hates talkative laws.”
“We gonna shoot ’em?” W.D. asked. Clyde glanced again at the lawmen, their eyes glued to the mirror. “I don’t mind none,” W.D. said. “Shoot their balls off first.”
“Shut up,” Clyde told him as Bonnie stirred, moaning. She pressed her face against Clyde’s shoulder, muttering that her body was burning. “Daddy,” she said, “I’m burnin’ on every part of my body.” Her eyes opened wide as a car approached from the opposite direction, the headlights cutting across Clyde’s windshield. He veered deliberately to the left, edging into the oncoming lane. He heard one of the laws gasp.
“Where do you suppose that bastard ran off to?” W.D. asked.
“You can ask these boys,” Clyde said casually. “They’re the ones he shot his mouth off to. If I ever see him, I’ll kill him.”
“You’ll never see that son of a bitch,” W.D. said, tensing as the oncoming car swerved right to avoid a collision. It always worked, forcing their attention to the right side of the road instead of getting a glimpse of a face behind an approaching windshield.
Bonnie used to laugh about it. Now, eyes squeezing shut again, she kept moaning that the pain was turning her inside out. “If we weren’t havin’ to run our asses off,” Clyde said, “we wouldn’t be in this fix and she wouldn’t be hurtin’ so bad.” Again he glanced into the mirror. “You boys’re gettin’ a nice ride, aren’t you? Sure wouldn’t want to see no discomfort comin’ your way.”
The marshal nodded vaguely. He cleared his throat, and said, “These handcuffs are shuttin’ off my blood.”
“Probably won’t matter none,” Clyde said, “least where you’re goin’.”
W.D. chuckled. “He won’t need nothin’ but some feather wings like you shake off a chicken.”
“Stop alarmin’ these boys,” Clyde said, slowing to the far right side of the road. A quarter mile further and he turned off the highway onto the dirt apron of an all-night gas station. “You boys don’t hold to keepin’ much in a fuel tank, do you?” he said.
The sheriff said, “We weren’t plannin’ on a trip tonight.”
“This whole time,” Clyde said, “shows a body how you never know what’s comin’ your way.…” To W.D., he said, “Go get us some gas, then take the handcuffs off these fellas.” W.D. got out, and as the tank was getting filled, Clyde said to Hardy, “Soon as he gets the gas and unlocks you, you’re gonna get up front and you’n’ the boy move this girl in the back so she can get her leg off the floor.” To Corry he said, “You’re gonna move over or get her feet up on you.”
W.D. and Hardy lifted Bonnie from the front seat. “Real easy with her, boys,” Clyde said. They placed her onto the rear seat lengthwise, her feet on the sheriff’s legs, and covered her carefully with the blanket.
The marshal sat uncomfortably alongside Clyde, and said, “What’re you fixin’ on doin’ with us? Why are you kidnappin’ us?”
Clyde turned his head and looked at him. “Would’ve had to shoot you if I’d left you back with those folks. You’re doin’ alright so far, aren’t you? Long as you sit quiet without pullin’ any shit.”
“I’m not pullin’ any shit,” Hardy said. “I don’t want to get shot—”
“—that makes two of us,” Clyde said. “But any shootin’ to be done, it’s better I’m doin’ it than you. You see how it is.”
Hardy said, “I know who you are,” and said nothing further.
W.D. got back into the car, stinking of gasoline, and Clyde said, “Open your window and get blown off so the smell of you don’t make her any sicker. She’s the one we’re worryin’ about first.”
“She needs to get to a hospital,” the sheriff said.
“Then we’re all takin’ a trip to your stinkin’ jail,” Clyde said. “You probably got a wife, and would you dump her somewhere and run off into the night—go hidin’ somewhere? You know damn well you wouldn’t. So just shut up and maybe you’ll get out of this stayin’ alive.”
Close to three in the morning, Clyde stopped the car before an old road leading across the Oklahoma state line. He followed the road to a narrow bridge on wooden piers and honked the horn. Moments later, another horn honked the signal, and the lights flashed. “That’s him,” Clyde said, returning the flash.
He ordered the two lawmen out of the car as a second car came forward, the headlights off, slowly crossing the bridge. “What’re you goin’ to do?” Hardy asked. “Who’s this comin’ at us?” Clyde told W.D. to handcuff the two laws, and then raised the shotgun. The sheriff’s face flashed a look of fear.
Buck brought the roadster to a stop, climbed out, and seeing the lawmen, said, “We gonna shoot ’em?”
“I don’t think so,” Clyde said. “Get Blanche in this sheriff’s car ’cause Bonnie’s hurt. We’ll take care of the fellas. They aren’t half bad, but let’s walk ’em a ways under the bridge.” He told W.D., “Go find something to bind these laws.”
Buck said, “There’s cuttin’ pliers under the seat.”
Motioning with the shotgun, Clyde moved the handcuffed sheriff and marshal off the road, and down to the bottom of the bridge, at the edge of a narrow river. He then pointed the men toward some trees. “That’s far enough,” he said. The men stopped walking. Both looked sick as Clyde stared at them. He said, “What’re you gonna do if I let you go?”
After a tense moment, the marshal said, “Find our way out of here.”
“You’d run your ass to the nearest phone!” Buck said. “We oughta shoot ’em. It won’t make much difference—they’re gonna be in our hair. Should’ve shot ’em and let the coyotes fuckin’ pick ’em clean.”
Hardy said, “You don’t have to shoot us. You got the drop on us—”
“—that’s for damn tootin’ sure!” Buck said, hands antsy with the shotgun. He looked around quickly as W.D. trudged down the slope, half-tripping on a long length of barbed wire.
“We can wire these fellas to the tree,” W.D. said.
Buck pressed the barrel of the shotgun up beneath Corry’s neck as W.D. and Clyde strung the wire around the men to the trunk of the tree. “You’re two lucky laws,” Buck said. “I’m personally itchin’ to shoot you full of fuckin’ holes.”
Clyde grunted, “Leave ’em be.” He came face to face with the men, and said, “Ain’t any graces we’re showin’,” he said. “You can thank that achin’ girl I’m walkin’ away instead of doin’ what this boy’s all itchin’ to do
.” Neither of the lawmen spoke. Clyde’s face came within inches of the sheriff’s. “If she wasn’t hurt and bleedin’ and sick,” Clyde said, “I’d probably as soon let him put you in the mud, but like this boy’s said, you haven’t got any drop on us, and I’ve never put a body on the spot who hasn’t.” He stepped back, nodded to Buck and W.D., and said, “Leave ’em. Let’s go.”
Bonnie was still curled on the backseat of the sheriff’s car, moaning with each breath. Blanche had climbed into the car and was holding Bonnie’s head on her lap, stroking her hair. She said, “She’s all congested, Clyde. What’s gonna be done about her leg? That’s somethin’ frightful.”
He said, “She’s burned bad, and I’d as soon cut off my own leg and give it to her if I could, but I can’t, Blanche, and you know it. We’ll get her fixed soon as we get far away from here.”
Blanche said, “I know it, but we don’t want her gettin’ pneumonia. Where’d you take those laws?”
“They’re wired to a tree,” he said. “Let ’em start hollerin’ in the mornin’.” He told Buck, “Let’s get our ass outta here before a posse gets on out lookin’ to hang us.”
Twenty-Seven
Not long after Clyde followed Buck’s Ford convertible away from Erick and the laws wired to a tree, he found another car and ditched the lawmen’s vehicle off a Texas highway.
It was Sunday. The two cars had driven back roads deep into the Texas panhandle. They stopped at roadside diners and highway markets, sending in W.D. to stock up on supplies. To Clyde, the important thing was relieving Bonnie’s pain. She was in a bad way, crying, “Shoot me!” and “Cut my leg off!” and, “Oh, daddy, put me out of my misery!”
There were few options to ease her suffering without seeing a doctor. Kidnapping one crossed Clyde’s mind more than once, but when he voiced the plan, Bonnie shrieked, “No! We can’t do that!” Taking her to a hospital was out of the question, though Clyde knew it could come to that very soon.
Late that night, both cars pulled off the highway onto a side road that led them a mile into the woods. Clyde held the bottle of whiskey to Bonnie’s lips and coaxed her to swallow as much as she could. W.D. stood guard while Clyde cleaned Bonnie’s injury with hydrogen peroxide and alcohol. Then, soaking the string in alcohol and heating the turkey needle with matches, he attempted to stitch a deeper part of Bonnie’s wound while she squeezed Buck’s and Blanche’s hands in each of her own. They kept her covered, warm, and supplied with whiskey the rest of the night. By morning she appeared to be sleeping quietly.
Two days later, the cars crossed into Kansas. On Wednesday, four days since the wreck, Clyde got rid of the car he’d picked up in Texas, and stole a Ford V-8 sedan in the town of Hutchinson, then drove straight through to Arkansas.
Blanche said, “Bonnie isn’t sleepin’. She only looks like she’s sleepin’, but she’s got her eyes closed and she’s sufferin’ and droppin’ in and out of bein’ awake. She won’t eat and if we don’t take care of her soon, she’s gonna up and die on us.”
“She ain’t gonna die!” Clyde said. “Don’t worry. We’re gonna take care of her.” He looked around, saying, “You’re doin’ a good job, Blanche, and she’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna be okay—”
Blanche was shaking her head. “Unless we do somethin’ pretty damn soon, it’s the shock gonna kill her. She keeps passin’ out.”
“We’re gonna get us somewhere to get settled,” he said. “We’ll get her taken care of soon as we get settled. You’re a blessin’, honey, and we couldn’t do this without you.”
Bonnie let out a shriek as the morning sun struck the windshield. Soon as they hit Van Buren, crossing the bridge over the Arkansas River, Clyde pulled to the side of the road. Buck eased to a stop behind him, as Clyde climbed out and walked back to the car window where Buck asked, “What’s wrong, brother?”
“Bonnie’s not good,” Clyde said. “She’s not eatin’. Just wants those popsicle ice sticks. This is damned Thursday already, and we gotta get a cabin fast—lay low so she can get on her feet.”
Buck nodded, saying, “I seen that sign the other side of the bridge—cabins with indoor plumbing and hot plates—”
“—mattresses on the beds,” W.D. said.
“And closed garages,” Clyde said. “We’ll get us one. I’m sayin’ we’re a family that’s campin’, and a stove blew up and hurt her leg. No one gets confused.” He climbed back into the car, then pulled ahead as Buck followed.
Not far from the county line was the Twin Cities Tourist Camp. Clyde told the manager, “We got others in our party and we’re needin’ two cabins—side by side. My wife’s had an accident with a damn camp stove that blew up. Burned her leg bad and she’s in need of attention. I’d be thankful for your steerin’ me to some help.”
The manager introduced himself as Sid, and came out to the car with Clyde to look at Bonnie’s leg. “My, my!” he said. “That’s bad. I know Doc Walter Eberle, and I’ll ask him to come see her, but maybe the hospital—”
“She won’t go to any hospital,” Clyde said. “She’s got religious qualms.”
“Then she ought to have a nurse,” Sid said. “You don’t want her gettin’ infected, and let’s hope she hasn’t got any yet.” He told Clyde he and his wife, Ida, had a daughter who’d worked in a hospital attending burn patients. “She’ll be more than happy to change that dressin’ on her and see what can be done.”
Clyde sighed. “That would be a blessin’, sir. I’d be indebted to you.”
While waiting for Sid’s daughter, Bonnie whispered to Clyde, “Maybe I’m dyin’, honey. My whole body’s burnin’, even in my arms and my ribs. I don’t even feel like I’ve got a leg on my body. I’m scared, daddy.”
Outside the cabin, Clyde said to Buck, “This fella’s daughter comin’ to take care of her could be liable to get wise to us, so you and Dub better lay low. Bonnie’s gettin’ outta her mind and could be talkin’ about stuff.”
Blanche said, “I can’t tend her no more. I don’t know how. You say this girl’s worked with burns, so let her do it.”
For three days while W.D. and Buck kept the cars closed in the garages, Clyde stayed close to Bonnie. Sid’s daughter, Hazel, changed the bandage, treated the burn with medication, and said the “emergency stitches” were “pretty well done.” Clyde said some hunter “that’d had medical trainin’ did it.”
Bonnie never left the cabin. Hazel brought her lemonade and ice cream to cope not only with the heat of the burn and fever, but of the cabin itself, holding at one hundred degrees from morning on.
Though low on money, Buck and Clyde drifted into town to buy a fan to keep the room cooler, also checking the town bank. But Clyde said, “Can’t do nothin’ here. Too close. We’ll get over to the next county to be makin’ any withdrawals.”
Edgy and concerned, Buck told Clyde, “That Hazel’s gonna get smart, brother. She’s no cluck and she’s gonna know who we are if we hang around much longer.”
“She’s not gonna know,” Clyde said. “She’s too busy bein’ Florence Nightingale, and not around us that much anyway. I don’t like sittin’ anymore than you do, but that’s what we gotta do.”
“Each mornin’ while Bonnie was laid up,” W.D. would later say, “Clyde and Buck drove into the town for supplies, Clyde worryin’ about the cabins and scared to be movin’ Bonnie in her condition. He got the idea that Pretty Boy Floyd could get us all a hideout and fix it so we’d all be taken care of. Clyde wanted to see Floyd and make contact, anythin’ to find a place for Bonnie bein’ on the mend.
“Then we found out Floyd wasn’t in the area, and on top of that, the worst part, Floyd wasn’t goin’ to give Clyde any help. The rotten guy was tellin’ all the people he knew not to help Clyde, and I thought it was pretty bad of Floyd to say that Clyde was a punk goin’ around shootin’ everyone. I got to thinkin’ that the way the newspapers were talking about Clyde, it was takin’ a little shine off Floyd, least that’s how I saw it, so we we
ren’t gettin’ any help and damn fast feelin’ like a bunch of sittin’ ducks.”
Two days later, Bonnie’s condition grew worse. Clyde told Buck and Blanche that “Florence Nightingale’s sayin’ she’s done all she can, and now seems drawin’ up into herself, like suspicious of us holin’ up. Somethin’ has to be done to take care of Bonnie until she’s better. Cryin’ half the time to see her mother. Wants to be with her mother—have her takin’ care of her. We can’t do that, but I’ve gotta go home and see what can be done.”
Buck said, “The law’s gonna be all over her mom’s house as well as our folks’. They’re stickin’ like bees to a honeycomb. They’re perched on the damn roof waitin’ for you or me.”
“Laws don’t worry me,” Clyde said. “Not half as much as Bonnie bein’ hurt. I’m goin’ back down and see what I can fix.”
That afternoon, Clyde took off for West Dallas, alone in the Ford with the shotgun at his left side, a .38 on the passenger seat, and a .45 automatic in a paper sack on the floorboard. All he could think about was Bonnie. Every pain she felt ricocheted inside him. He said he loved her more than anything, maybe even more than his own life. Nothing was going to be right until Bonnie was okay, up on her feet, no pain grabbing her body and mind. Clyde kept his foot pressed on the gas, closing the gap between Arkansas and Texas.
He saw one law car. It came approaching in the opposite lane, hitting a good pace. His left hand inched for the shotgun, but the cop didn’t even notice Clyde’s car. The sun was down and he felt better. Nobody was going to stop him.
By eight o’clock he was cutting over the dirt roads heading to Dallas. Ditching the car where no one would spot it, he stuck the .45 into his belt and snuck into West Dallas to meet with his folks.
Cumie, surprised to see him, said, “The laws have been here today, lookin’ for you.” She said she’d go back to Arkansas with him. “My two boys bein’ trapped in Arkansas, and poor little Bonnie hurt and sufferin’, needin’ her own mother or myself.”
