On the Run With Bonnie & Clyde

by John Gilmore

  W.D. later said, “I saw Blanche and Buck were hidin’ a ways from an old baseball field. Buck had one of the .45s with him, but if he started shootin’ they’d have us for sure. We were hidden in the pricklin’ brush full of stickers and thorns on some of them weeds, and Bonnie was lookin’ damn near dead. I said, ‘Sis, are you hearin’ me?’ She kind of nodded, so I said, ‘I don’t like bein’ in a bad pickle like this—cornered like turkeys if they get up here. I’m damn scared and bleedin’.’

  “There was some shootin’ down by the bridge where Clyde had gone, and both of us started shakin’. She had a hard time sayin’ somethin’ and asked if my gun was still loaded. I said it was. She said, ‘If that was Bud gettin’ shot again and them laws get up here, you put one of them shots right in my head. Don’t mess it up goin’ in sideways or somethin’—just shoot it right in the back of my head.’

  “I said, ‘Sis, I ain’t gonna leave you and I ain’t gonna end your life. You gonna die, I’m gonna die with you, ’cause they find out who I am, I’m goin’ to that electric chair.’

  “We heard someone pushin’ through the weeds and Bonnie was clutchin’ at me, but I said, ‘Sis, our prayers’ve been answered!’ It was Clyde, crawlin’ into the brush and sayin’ the bridge was blocked with laws. He said they looked like farmers, only all of them had guns. They hadn’t seen him, he said, and our only chance of gettin’ a car was makin’ it across the river, all of us bleedin’ like pigs that’d been beaten near death. Bud and Sis and me made it down the hill to what’s called the Raccoon River, me carryin’ her like piggyback. We must’ve looked like shot-fucked raccoons bleedin’ and leavin’ trails of blood in the water as we swam across—Bonnie’s arms around my neck, near chokin’ me. Clyde goin’ ahead with that pistol in one hand, tryin’ to keep it out of the water.

  “We swam across, doggy paddlin’, Sis near dead when we got across. Bud got us into a cornfield where we lay on the ground gaspin’ underneath all them stalks. I was thinkin’ if that corn was only ripe and I had me a wad of butter. I was havin’ deliriums, what it was. Clyde said, ‘I’m goin’ for a car, so stay here waitin’ till I call you to come followin’ where I’ve gone.’ Bonnie was hearin’ a dog now and she was scared, and so said to Bud, ‘They comin’ over here with them dogs?’ He said it was a dog at the farm he was goin’ to. He said, ‘Stay quiet.’

  “What about Buck and Blanche? I didn’t know what was goin’ to happen. I knew Bud would look those eyes at me that always made you feel funny when you said somethin’ you were out of line sayin’. I figured he say somethin’ like, ‘If my brother ain’t dead by now he’ll be so before the sun’s shinin’ tomorrow.’”

  The big brown barking dog was edging into the cornfield as Clyde emerged from the field, covered with blood, and the gun aimed at the dog.

  A man had followed the dog to the edge of the field to see what it was barking about. Clyde said, “Get that dog back or I’ll kill it.”

  Pulling the dog back, the man raised one hand, holding the dog’s collar with the other. “Who else you got here?” Clyde asked.

  “Two other fellows. One’s my son. Don’t shoot, mister—”

  “—laws been shootin’ the shit out of us. I want a car.”

  The man said, “We’ve got three but there’s only one that’s runnin’; a Plymouth.”

  “Get those other men out here so I can see what they’re up to,” Clyde said, then whistled loudly.

  No sooner had the two other men showed when W.D., carrying an unconscious Bonnie in his arms, emerged from the cornfield like a blood-spattered ghost.

  The youngest of the two men approached W.D. and looked at Bonnie. He said, “This girl’s dead.”

  “She ain’t dead,” W.D. said.

  Clyde told the young man to put Bonnie on the backseat of the Plymouth. The man gave Clyde the keys to the Plymouth, saying, “There ain’t a whole lot of gas in it.…”

  Clyde shook his head. He took the car keys from the older man and said, “You won’t be shootin’ us in the back while we’re tryin’ to get out of here, will you?”

  “No, sir,” he said. “Y’all been shot up enough.” The three men stood on the narrow road watching as Clyde drove away in their car.

  Thirty-Three

  The Plymouth started smoking bad, and W.D. said, “A cylinder’s blown, Bud. We’re in trouble.” Clyde didn’t answer, just kept the gas pedal close to the floor. W.D. looked at him. “You hear somethin’ makin’ a noise under us?”

  Clyde glanced at him. “A fuckin’ bad wheel in the rear,” he said.

  Their shoes and legs were caked with mud from the river they’d trudged across, Bonnie hanging to W.D.’s back while he struggled to keep his head above the water, and her head higher than his. Once he got across the river, he realized he’d lost the gun. He’d said to Clyde, “I’ve lost my gun!”

  “Fuck it,” Clyde said. “We gotta get outta here.”

  The only route away from the farm, where they were driving the Plymouth, ran towards the town of Panora. Clyde said they needed gas. “Grab that old blanket on the floor and cut a hole in it,” he told W.D. “Stick your head through it like a Mexican, so all that mud and blood on you ain’t showin’.” Clyde handed him several wet bills. “You drive and I’ll be in the back. Get a couple gallons of gas ’cause we’re needin’ another car, and get water.”

  “We’re needin’ oil, Bud. We’re losin’ oil all over the place.”

  Clyde said, “A car’s what we need—a V-8’s what we need, and no damn Plymouth.”

  Soon as W.D. got gas in the car, checked the water, then bought two soda pops, he got back into the car, saying, “My legs’re still feelin’ dead.” Clyde had assured him when they’d staggered out of the river, that soon as the buckshot was out, he’d feel okay. It was the cold water and the buckshot, he’d said. Bad news to be wounded and “soppin’ around in a muck river.”

  He told W.D., “We’ll get it out of you, boy, but I gotta get it outta Sis or we’re gonna lose her. I’m glad she didn’t drown.” He smiled a little. “I’d’ve had to shoot you.”

  W.D. figured Clyde wouldn’t shoot him, as they had no bullets for the only gun between them. Clyde kept it out of sight against his leg on the car seat. W.D. said, “I don’t know what I woulda done if she’d drowned, Bud. She’d’ve sunk—maybe pulled me down with her.”

  W.D. turned around in the passenger seat and adjusted the blanket on Bonnie laying curled on the back seat. He felt her face. “She’s got a fever,” he said. Clyde said it was from the lead she was carrying. “She’s bleedin’ some more,” W.D. said.

  “Ain’t a bad sign,” Clyde replied, “long as she doesn’t bleed it all out.”

  “Poor Sis,” W.D. said. “Buckshot’s got her same as me. Lucky those guns weren’t right on top of us. She’s conked out, but her eyes’re open a little.” Sitting back, he asked, “How much blood can you bleed before you croak?” Clyde didn’t answer. “I feel like I got toothpicks holdin’ my eyes open. How’s your arm, Bud?”

  Bent on bouncing the car the length of the country road, Clyde said, “We get on the other side of this town, we’ll get a car or bust our butts gettin’ over the line. We’ll get the plate off and junk this heap in Nebraska. Get us a V-8 and we’ll get where we gotta be.”

  W.D. said, “You think that posse’s got Buck and Blanche?”

  Clyde didn’t answer right away, then said, “I don’t know if they got ’em. They coulda got you, boy. They coulda got Sis, and maybe they did if we can’t save her. You got her across that fuckin’ river, Boy, and nothin’ you’ve done’s been anythin’ but right for her.”

  “Ain’t there nothin’ we can do to help her until we get where we’re goin’?”

  “With what?” Clyde said. “We got nothin’! Haven’t even got a fuckin’ slug of ammo. Look’t you and me—mud and blood like a pair of clowns. Everythin’ we had’s gone in that damn car they shot the shit out of.” Turning west, he crossed a pa
ved road, and cut sharply south onto a back road. He said, “We’re the hell outta there, boy. Them hillbillies’re still lookin’ for us ’cause they hadn’t finished shootin’ by far.”

  “I don’t want to get shot no more,” W.D. said. “I feel I’m sick—like I’m full of holes. Damn slug in my chest feels like a poker. How much blood did you say you lose before you croak?” Clyde glanced at him but didn’t say anything. W.D. said, “I got to look it up—see how long you live with a bunch of bullets’n’ buckshot from a bunch of fuckin’ hillbillies shootin’ the hell out of us.” He glanced at Clyde again. “How the hell they knew where we were, Bud?”

  “They fuckin’ knew,” he said. “Those folks in Dexter called out their own damn army.”

  “Sorry I’m groanin’,” W.D. said, “but I’m just plain sick’n’ achin’. Fuckin’ feel like I’m gonna die.”

  Grinning, Clyde said, “You’re pissin’ your pants ’cause you didn’t eat that last hot dog. Ain’t that the truth? Look me in the eye and tell me it ain’t the truth.”

  W.D. nodded, gradually, and returned the smile. He then asked Clyde, “How’s your arm?”

  “Dead,” he said. “No fuckin’ feelin’ ’cause nature’s takin’ her course.”

  “What’re we gonna do?” W.D. asked.

  “Get another car fast ’fore we dump this heap. Get Sis taken care of the other side of the line. Find this old dame Buck talked about. Knew her husband bein’ in the Walls. Told me about her in case Blanche got knocked up.”

  “You mean while Buck was doin’ time?”

  Clyde said, “Scarin’ her, he figured.” W.D. was about to say something but broke into a half-choking cough. “Settle down,” Clyde said. “You drank fuckin’ water from that coon river. I’m gonna pull over and you get out—puke it up.”

  “I don’t think I can puke.”

  “Get rid of it, boy! Put your head down and stick your fingers in your throat. Get that shit out of your guts or you’ll get infected, and I got no way of fixin’ that.”

  Clyde eased to the side of the road and W.D. got out. He leaned against a tree, choking and throwing up as best he could. “I was drained—weak,” he said later. “When I turned around I said, ‘Holy shit!’ The fuckin’ rear tire’d gone almost flat. That was the noise we’d been hearin’. Clyde got out and opened the trunk at the rear of the car. I said, ‘Air’s leakin’ slow but we’ve been runnin’ hard....’”

  Searching into the trunk, Clyde was doubtful he’d find a spare. He wasn’t surprised. No spare tire. No jack or lug wrench. Under an old blanket, he found a tire pump that seemed to work. He handed the pump to W.D., saying, “Pump this son of a bitch up so we can get us another car.”

  “I’m sicker’n shit,” W.D. said.

  “Enough pukin’, boy,” Clyde said, “let’s pump ’fore a fuckin’ cornhusker highway laws wants to help you.”

  “We in Nebraska?” W.D. asked.

  “That’s what I said. Damn cornhuskers—bohunks. Let’s pump, boy! We gotta go.”

  Recalling that stop on the desolate road and not knowing if Bonnie’d stay alive or was maybe already dead beneath that blanket, W.D. pumped, up-down, up-down, blood from the buckshot and slug in his chest popping blood out of his skin. “It was like bein’ tortured,” he says, “and knowin’ you ain’t in for a happy dyin’. Clyde’s standin’ there smokin’ and lookin’ around while I pumped and bled till we got that fuckin’ tire full of air.”

  Clyde said, “Bring that pump and get in the back with Sis. Keep her okay.” They rolled off onto the dirt road, picking up speed, smoke blowing out of the car. W.D. started choking, feeling like throwing up again. He said to Clyde, “It’s shits not knowing if any minute the fuckin’ laws’ll be runnin’ at us, shootin’ some more. You think they got Buck and Blanche? What’ll happen if they don’t shoot ’em, Bud? I heard one of them old boys sayin’ about bein’ vigilantes.”

  “What the fuck!” Clyde said. “My brother’s shot to shit and he ain’t goin’ nowhere except to be gettin’ buried.”

  “What about Blanche? She gonna get killed, too? Bein’ vigilantes, you think they’d hang her?”

  “They don’t hang nobody. Laws does it. If they don’t shoot her, she’ll get jugged. Probably rat the hell outta us.”

  “Tell ’em who I am?” W.D. asked. “I keep readin’ in the papers them callin’ me Jack or somethin’. Y’figure she’ll say that name’s the picture of me? All of us bein’ together?”

  Clyde looked at him. “How the fuck would I know? Ain’t nothin’ I can do if she does rat, except what I’m already doin’.”

  Later, W.D. discovered the dirt on the windshield was making him sick. “I could hardly see out the front or the side window, and we had no water to drink. No guns except that empty automatic. ‘Wave it around,’ I thought, knowin’ I was dreamin’ up stuff. My head was foggin’ up. My throat so sore I could hardly suck air into me. It occurred I was gonna die. I kept sayin’ it to myself till a chill went runnin’ through me. I didn’t say it to Bud ’cause he’d’ve got mad, maybe wantin’ to kick me out, but he wouldn’t ’cause he’d have so much for me to do—maybe even buryin’ Bonnie in the woods if she’d croaked... So much more he didn’t want to do himself like pumpin’ up a fuckin’ tire. I knew if he kicked me out he’d be layin’ awake wonderin’ if I was gonna rat, and even though he might’ve been thinkin’ it, I wouldn’t have done it. But he’d have to finish me anyway in case the laws got me singin’ to save my own ass, so, sick as I was, it was a matter of me not bein’ dumb. Wasn’t that he had bad feelin’s for me, ’cause I knew I’d fitted in and he hated lettin’ go of that. Only thing I figured in that dirty Plymouth was him blowin’ the car apart by hittin’ a speed the car’d never seen. I hurt in every part and couldn’t keep my head up straight on the end of my neck, kept thinkin’ of Sis on that back seat and if she was dyin’ it wouldn’t bother me at all if Clyde found it fit to put a killin’ bullet in me. Why not? Right then it just didn’t seem to fuckin’ matter, and I figured I’d be lovin’ Sis the rest of my life as a dead man.”

  “This damn heap’s dyin’,” Clyde said as he drove off the road and parked behind an abandoned service station. W.D. wasn’t aware that he’d slept. More like he’d been being numb and in a coma, sliding between a general ache and sharp, throbbing pains.

  “What’re we doin’, Bud?”

  Clyde said, “Get that blanket you cut a hole in and stick it over your head again. There’s blood all over us, boy. I’m still bleedin’, but you’re gonna grab another car. There’s a cemetery back a ways—a quarter mile. You see that?” W.D. nodded vaguely. “A few houses down that hill, and there’s cars on the road. You get one and bring it back. Get the plate on it and stash this heap here. Get us a damned Ford, boy! We gotta get outta here.”

  W.D. said the walk was short—no cars came past. The cemetery was small, and he slowed down, gazing at the tombstones as he walked east on the downhill lane. He could see the cars Clyde had spotted on the short road, and he heard voices. Phonograph music. Up ahead was a tavern, an old wood frame building. Laughter and a couple women’s voices. Across the graveled road and to the south, past some small, railroad houses, he saw several more cars. He walked until he came to a good-looking Ford sedan. He stared at the silver V-8 insignia on the nose of the grill.

  Jittery and unsteady, he opened the car door and climbed up onto the red leather seat. He saw himself driving the Ford in downtown Dallas. Instead, here he was—not far from the graveyard. He sat wondering if he still thought he was dying. But what about Bud and Sis?

  He felt a shock, a jolt, and in seconds the car engine was running smooth, W.D. making a quiet turn on the street, heading back to the road facing the cemetery.

  Clyde was pissing against a broken station wall, peeing directly into the crack as the Ford slowed to a stop behind the station. W.D. got out as Clyde came to the car. “Let’s go,” he said. “Get her out of the heap and into the Ford, she’s
talkin’ now. Cover her good while I get this plate on.”

  W.D. pulled open the rear door of the Plymouth. “Sis?” he said. “Are you okay?”

  She stared up at him. “What’ve you got on?”

  “I’m makin’ myself a Mexican,” he said. “Come on, we got another car. A big, beautiful seat.” Still huddled, he got the blanket around her, half-sitting, and lifted her from the seat. He saw she’d lost more blood. “Can you walk?” She shook her head, and he felt a single sob jerk at his stomach.

  Clyde called over, “It’s gettin’ fuckin’ dark and cold, and she’s shakin’. We gotta get where I can fix all of us. Let’s go.”

  W.D. placed Bonnie on the rear seat of the Ford, and as she lay back breathing heavily, he asked again, “Are you okay?”

  She nodded a little. “Have I been knocked out long?” Since the morning, he said, tucking the blanket around her. Clyde started the car. Getting onto the passenger seat, W.D. told him Sis seemed in pretty bad shape. Clyde said he knew, then angrily maneuvered the car around the far side of the station, accelerating onto the narrow road heading west.

  “Gauge says we’re full of gas,” W.D. said as Clyde’s speed jumped from forty to sixty, then seventy-five. Then seventy-five to eighty-five as he raced west on the highway deeper into Nebraska.

  Thirty-Four

  He only remembered that it was dark, that the air was turning cold and he couldn’t keep his eyes open. Chuckling to himself a little, thinking how earlier he couldn’t keep his eyes shut, and now he couldn’t keep them open. Maybe that’s what dying was all about.

  They were traveling fast. He thought he heard Bonnie saying something. Was she talking to him? He said something but then wasn’t sure that he had. “Open your eyes,” he told himself. He couldn’t. Or did he have them open and had he gone blind?