“Buck,” I yell. “He’s outnumbered. He won’t be able to hold them—”
A bloody hand appears on the top step, then dark hair, and finally Jones’s face, etched with pain.
I’m halfway on my way to hell for letting out an exhale that it’s not Clyde.
Jones half stands, falling forward, his arms folding ’round Blanche’s neck. “Help me,” he pleads. Blanche looks like she’d like to drop him right then and there, but her arm’s wound ’round him.
It dawns on me it’s quiet. No one’s firing.
“Clyde,” Buck says under his breath, then he practically falls down the stairs. I’m sobbing by the time I rush by Blanche, still holding up Jones, that blasted dog still bouncing at her feet, whining nonstop. My sob turns to a wail when I see a body in a blue suit lying in the garage, a circle of red expanding on all sides of his head.
“No, no, no, no,” I cry.
“Bonnie,” I hear.
At first I’m certain it’s in my head, a voice I’ll be hearing ’til I take my own last breath. Then, Clyde steps out from behind the Ford. Blood’s splattered on his face. He lunges for me, catching me as my knees give way from relief. Somewhere along the way I lost my slippers. Clyde’s lips are against my ear. “Get in the car,” he says. “Get her started.”
“But,” I say, not even sure how I’m going to finish, yet needing a moment to fully appreciate that it’s not Clyde’s head leaking all over the cement.
He says, “I got to cover you all.”
With that, Clyde steps through the open garage door and over the second dead officer in the driveway, spraying bullets.
I fumble to the car just as Jones appears in the garage, flanked on either side, Blanche doing half the work of Buck. He takes all of Jones’s weight, dragging him to the rear seat.
Through the windshield I realize we got nowhere to go, unless we drive straight through the officers’ car in the driveway.
Clyde’s firing stops and I call to him. I rev the engine and point to the abandoned car. His mouth forms a profanity. I hold my breath as he hobbles to the police car’s driver’s seat, then to the front bumper. I curse, too, and flick my attention ’cross the street for any movement, then back to Clyde, whose gun hangs from a strap ’round his neck. He uses both hands to push the car. Being Blanche is one second from losing her mind, I can barely believe when she puts her own hands on the bumper, the back of her ball-gown-turned housedress cut low, lace cap sleeves trailing over each shoulder.
Together, they push, the wheels turning achingly slow. Too slow, and I wait for the law to fire again. I search the front seat for a gun, realizing I must’ve dropped my rifle upstairs when I thought Clyde had been shot.
I curse, then watch as the police cruiser Clyde and Blanche are moving starts rolling down the hill on its own accord. They’re left standing there.
An officer fires a shot. Clyde uses his body to shield Blanche, fumbling to gain control of the gun dangling from his neck.
The other officers’ heads poke up like gophers, their guns trained on Clyde and Blanche. He shoves her toward the garage and returns fire, meeting their revolvers with his automatic shotgun. They duck.
“Baby!” Buck calls. “Hurry!”
But no, Blanche doesn’t start running back to us. The girl’s running down the street, her arms flailing on either side, only steps behind the driverless police car.
A flash of white fur escapes from the garage. But once Snow Ball gets to Blanche, he doesn’t stop at her heels. That dog keeps on runnin’.
16
Clyde stands dumbfounded for a moment, staring. At Blanche? At Snow Ball? I don’t know which. Maybe both.
Then, his body rocks. Once. He folds in half, clutching his chest, and staggers to the ground.
My mind screams no faster than any bullet that’s ever left a gun.
The quickest way I can think to get to him is in this here Ford. I press on the pedal, putting every ounce of my hundred pounds into the motion.
The officers take aim at us.
In the rear seat, Buck’s already got his door open to retrieve Clyde.
I’m dizzy, barely breathing. Clyde’s form in the driveway shimmers, like he’s part of a mirage. I slam on the brakes, getting the car as close as possible without clipping his foot. The car blocks my view of him.
“No,” Buck says. “Keep ’er moving. Slow.”
I feel the ridges of the accelerator under my bare foot again. My stomach is hot, the sensation traveling up my throat. A shot cracks the passenger side of the windshield. The car lurches forward. I swear I can hear Blanche screaming even though she’s not even here.
“Got him!” Buck yells. “Go!”
He does. He’s got Clyde, his feet still sticking out of the car. I realize I’ve been gripping my throat, my nails digging into my skin. With both hands, I clutch the wheel, and I go, gunfire trailing us.
“Clyde,” I call over the engine, the gunshots, Jones’s moans. I forgot all ’bout the poor boy.
“I ain’t dead, Bonnie.”
My breath comes out with a hiccup in the middle. The car door slams. We pass the officers’ abandoned car, now nose-deep in thick shrubs.
“Just shook me, that’s all,” Clyde says. He crawls into the passenger seat, his hands bloody, his face bloody, a bullet hole in his chest.
“We got to find Blanche,” Buck says from the rear seat. “And a doctor for Jones. Fast.”
Clyde frees himself from his suit jacket and rips open his shirt, crying out with each movement. “I’ve got a mind to go right on by her like that dog of hers.”
Buck ain’t pleased with Clyde’s remark. But I ain’t listening, I’m gawking at Clyde’s chest, at the damage of a bullet to his ballistic vest, directly over his heart. I shake my head in disbelief, in relief, in thankfulness that Clyde’s paranoia had him putting on that extra layer.
At the bottom of the hill I slow and look for Blanche, ignoring the bickering of the boys. Jones is the one who says, “There she is.”
When I look back to see which way he’s pointing, I wish I hadn’t. I ain’t even sure what color his shirt was before, but now it’s red. All red.
“Enough!” I scream. “We’re getting Blanche, and we’re getting our boy some help.”
Both brothers wise up and shut their traps. The firing’s stopped, too, with us being at the bottom of the hill, out of their range.
When Blanche sees the Ford, I’m surprised she runs toward us. But when the door opens and she flings herself onto Buck’s lap, it’s clear she didn’t come back for the rest of us. It’s also clear she’s a blubbering mess.
Blanche yanks at her hair, going on and on ’bout how all her dreams have gone to hell, and all in the span of thirteen days.
“It’s okay, baby,” Buck says, trying to comfort her.
I make a turn, my hands trembling.
I shouldn’t be cross at her. Hell, I know the feeling of losing it all, but the noise she’s making is irritating as sin. And there’s Jones, of all people, also soothing her, also telling her it’s going to be okay. I make another turn, onto some country road.
“Tend to Jones,” I say to her between my teeth.
Then I glance at Clyde. With the way his knuckles are ghost white on the door’s handle, he’s trying to keep his anger in check.
When I look in the rearview mirror again, I only see the back of Blanche, and let my eyes fall closed for a moment in relief that she listened, even if she’s still wailing like a banshee.
“I can’t…” she starts. “The buttons are too slick.”
“Pull over the car,” Clyde says, just as Jones pleads, “Just yank it off. Please.”
Blanche tears Jones’s shirt, and my boy cries out.
I’ve barely pulled the park lever and let out a shaky breath before Clyde’s out of the car. For a moment, I think he’s the next to lose his mind when he starts jumping up and down under an elm. He reaches for the tree and lands with a br
anch in his hand. He snaps off a length of it. Back at the car, he tears his shirt and winds the strip ’round the stick.
To some, his face may appear cold and blank, but I see Clyde differently. I know he’s battling with himself—over something he’s ’bout to do—but he doesn’t want the world to know he’s struggling.
He nods for Jones to get out of the car. Buck and Blanche help him, propping him up, his shirt dangling open. On Jones’s right side, his flesh has been blown wide open.
“First things first,” Clyde says, talking low, like he’s trying not to scare Jones off. “We got to see if that bullet’s still inside ya, lad, or if it fired through ya.”
It takes my brain a spell to catch up to Clyde’s words, and by then, he’s already got the stick pointed at the wound. I may lose my egg breakfast when Clyde’s torn shirt appears from Jones’s back.
* * *
“Here you go, honey, take this.”
Jones’s eyes flutter open, and I push the aspirin between his cracked lips. I try to keep my eyes on his face, but my gaze flickers to the bandage ’round his stomach, a spot of red bleeding through. His skin’s covered in goose bumps. I reckon from the fact he’s only wearing Clyde’s torn suit jacket, his chest exposed, and also from the loss of blood.
Ain’t fair our boy is suffering like this.
“Sorry,” I say, for so many things, but in this moment ’cause he’s got to swallow the tablet dry. “This place doesn’t have any runnin’ water.”
The cabin doesn’t have much space either, and Clyde and Buck are filling up every available inch with hot air, arguing the way brothers do, ’cept this argument is more backbiting than bickering.
Sitting here, perched on the side of the twin bed, it feels like I’m in the eye of the storm.
In our wake, we left a hell of a mess at 3347½ Oak Ridge Drive. All our clothes and belongings. I mean, all of ’em. From my poems to Buck’s parole papers to Blanche and Buck’s wedding license to all those photos Blanche developed, right on down to our five toothbrushes sitting in a cup on the bathroom sink. We brought nothin’ with us, save what was on our bodies and the gun in Clyde’s hands.
It curdles my stomach to think of the wreckage that gun left in the driveway. Two bodies, the officers’ names still unknown to me, and it’ll stay that way ’til I read ’em in the paper, in the aftermath of everything we’ve done.
After our escape, we left a trail everywhere we went.
A tire with a puncture wound, probably nicked by a bullet.
A broken storefront window of a pharmacy.
A gas station trash can with Jones’s bloody shirt.
Muddy tracks, when the rain hit, leading away from our deserted car.
Clyde drove all night in the new Ford he stole—always a Ford—not stopping ’til daybreak, when all of our eyes were bloodshot, our stomachs growling, our nerves shot.
No one slept, not even Jones. That poor boy was afraid if he closed his lids for longer than a blink, he’d never open ’em again.
At daybreak, Clyde stopped driving. The SHAMROCK TOURIST CAMP sign told us we were in Shamrock, Texas. My best guess, based on how fast Clyde got the Ford going, is that we covered nearly five hundred miles since hightailing it out of Joplin, Missouri.
When we got here, Buck had to wake the owner to rent our two cabins. Blanche’s scowl would put that man’s to shame, though, and after Buck checked us in, she immediately slammed the door on her cabin. Buck helped carry Jones into ours, then stood there with his hands in his pocket, as if he were digging for gold.
“What is it?” Clyde asked him.
“Well, it’s just that I wasn’t thinkin’, ya know, and when I wrote down a name on the register, I put William Callihan.”
I bit my lip. No one in the room stated the very obvious mistake of Buck using the same name as from Joplin.
That started the argument. I slipped out for a minute to catch my breath, breathing deeply on the community John. I wasn’t gone long, but here we are, the boys still going strong.
“You didn’t hear those coppers yapping outside the garage,” Clyde says. “I did. And they thought we were bootleggers from Chicago.”
“Well, how’d they get that idea?”
Clyde throws up his hands, but his words are more pointed as he says, “I wager it didn’t help that Blanche—”
“Blanche?” Buck all but growls.
“Yeah, that lass of yours had a laundry list of items she needed to develop those photos of hers.”
“So!”
“So,” Clyde says, slowing the cadence of his voice, “our lad”—he nods toward Jones—“says paint thinner is used in bootlegging. And it’s not like anyone ever saw Blanche with her camera. Eyebrows were raised, Buck.”
“You did the raising, too, Clyde.”
I stand on the bed. “I don’t care who raised whose brows. We’re in this mess together.”
And what a mess it is. The cops may’ve been chasing us for the past year, but they were chasing a name. Clyde’s. Now, the law may know my name too. They certainly know Blanche’s and Buck’s. They’ll know we had chicken and beans for dinner last night, if they go snooping through our trash. They’ve got my poems. Those photos, the ones that were supposed to be just for us, are now in their hands. Hell, they’ll know my bra size is a 34A.
I’ve never felt so exposed. I’ve never felt so sick, knowing those officers will be yanking out our drawers, pawing through our things, discussing our personal items, making opinions and judgments about who we are, what we think, what we do, how we act, where we’re going next. And really, all they’ve got to do is follow that trail, a trail where our scent’s going to linger a lot longer, after our names and those photos appear in the papers. We killed two cops. A double murder. People are going to take notice of us, really take notice of us. Seeing us, telling the law which way we’ve gone.
I roll my neck, feeling the tightness reaching into my shoulders and back.
“I’m going to go talk to Blanche,” I say, needing to move. “You two be civil and go fetch us some water.” Hands on my hip, I add, “Put it on the stove, we’ll need it rip-roaring hot to get Jones’s wounds cleaned up and the blood out of our clothes. You hear?”
The boys grow some sense and don’t object. Rightfully so; my stern words should alarm them. But there’s no mistaking, Blanche is the queen of stern when she’s been crossed, and I second-guess knocking on her door. She was silent the whole car ride after her wailing sputtered out, never getting out to stretch her legs. Then she went straight from the car to her cabin, with a thud of her door. One thing’s for sure, that girl’s bladder may be the only thing stronger than her will.
I lightly knock, then head inside her cabin, quickly closing the door. I’ll be honest, partly worried she’s going to chuck something at my head, I raise my arms to shield my face.
“I ain’t got nothin’ to throw,” Blanche says dryly. “It’s all back at Oak Ridge, all ’cept for this polka-dot dress.”
Being she had a blue housedress on earlier, I lower my arms to see what she’s talking ’bout. Blanche’s face is dead serious, her knees are pulled to her chest, and she ain’t lying, her dress may as well be polka-dotted from all of Jones’s blood.
“The boys are getting water so we can clean ourselves up.”
“Wonderful.” She scratches at one of the red splotches, now dry. “That’ll solve all our problems.”
I wring my hands but keep my feet planted exactly where they are. “I’m sorry, Blanche.”
Her head shakes slowly, her lips quivering before she says, “You two couldn’t leave us be, could you?” Blanche shifts her head toward the plastered wall, talks to it. “Ain’t life a son of a bitch. I get my act together. Buck gets his act together. We’re happy. Then poof”—she looks me in the eye—“it all goes to shit.”
“We’re going to be all right.”
That right there … that may be a lie.
Blanche straightens
her legs quick as a wink. “The hell we are. You don’t think I put the pieces together, Bonn? Buck’s pardon papers are ripped up by now. They’ve got my marriage license. Our names—all of ours—are going to be as familiar to the law as their goddamn kids’ now that we’re cop killers. Cop killers!”
I’ve had these same thoughts, but it stings to hear it verbalized. I risk taking a step closer, but Blanche opens her mouth again and I stop.
“I had dreams, Bonn. You should know something ’bout that. Being with Buck, starting a home and a family, being happy, being free. And you know what those dreams are doing now? After only thirteen days with you and Clyde, they’re tumbling down ’round me.”
“Clyde and I have a plan.” It sounds flimsy and quite frankly, not enough, even as I say it, but I push on, needing to hear it myself. “He’s got to take care of some personal business at a prison farm, getting back at the people who hurt him. Then we’re getting a farm of our own. It can be all of ours, that plan.” I inch forward and sit on the other side of the tiny bed, which means I’m close enough for her to swat. “Buck, a family, happiness. Being free. We can do that there.”
“Ya got me in a corner, Bonn. Where else do I got to go?” She scratches once more at Jones’s blood, then drops her hand. “Snow Ball’s gone.”
“Yeah, that dog was the fastest out of all of us, it seems.”
Tears well up in her eyes. “Don’t be smart.” She sniffles once, then blows out a long breath. “How’s everyone else?”
“Our boy’s hanging in there. His bleeding has mostly stopped.” I hesitate, not sure if Blanche wants to hear ’bout Clyde, but I selfishly need to say it aloud. “And Clyde’s fine. Got a wicked bruise over his heart where the bullet got him, but the vest … I’m mighty thankful he thought to put on that vest.”
“We’re in deep, aren’t we?”
I bite my lip. “The law won’t catch us.”
There’s a hint of a smile on Blanche’s face, but it’s one ya really got to look for. “I meant with the Barrow boys. I’d do anything for that fool.”
I nod. But her words make me wonder. “Blanche, why’d you run from us at Oak Ridge?”
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