Side by Side

by Jenni L. Walsh

  I ask, “What’s that saying? Red sky at night…”

  “Sailor’s delight,” Clyde answers.

  Then, we ain’t moving anymore; the mud gets us before we can see if the gravel will give us a flat.

  Clyde’s door squeaks open, and he circles the car. Henry joins him. I turn in my seat, following whichever way they go. Soon, they’ve got both hands on the trunk, and I’m rocking forward and back, barely so. Seems their feet keep slipping. I get out of the car, as if my weight will matter much. It doesn’t. With one hand sliding down the car, I hobble to help. Each hop is precarious, the mud slick and squishy, but I make it, frowning ’bout our newest ridiculous debacle.

  I get to pushing, if what I’m doing with two hands and one leg can be called that. I’m more leaning against the thing—before I slip, both palms and a knee leaving indentations in the mud. Clyde gets me ’round the waist and back to the mud-free passenger seat, where I shake out my hands. “What now?”

  He sighs. “I ain’t keen on trucking through those fields.” He scours the other side of the road. A few buildings and some machinery dot the top of a hill. “An old mining company looks to be that way.”

  “Clyde,” Henry calls. “We’ve got company coming.”

  “Law?”

  “It’s hard to tell.”

  I peer over the seat, out through the back windshield, and I can’t tell either. It ain’t like patrolmen get special automobiles, unless you count the P.D. or POLICE that’s sometimes painted on the sides.

  “Don’t see any writing,” I say. “But it’s getting dark.”

  Clyde removes his hat, wipes his brow, puts his hat back in place. “Bonnie, hold my Browning in your lap, will ya? Give it here if it looks like I’ll need it.”

  I cradle the rifle like a baby, ready for Clyde to snatch it.

  Feels like an eternity before the car rolls up on our left. Clyde’s on my side of the road, his left hand on the roof, his right hand dangling by me.

  “Stuck?” the driver calls.

  “Yeah, got ourselves bogged down,” Clyde says.

  I angle myself away, giving the passerby a view of my back and not Clyde’s gun. But when I glance over my shoulder, the man’s standing on his running board, both hands on the roof—and his eyes ain’t on me. They’re on the seat behind me, where we’ve got a few guns in plain sight.

  Clyde’s voice booms, demanding the man’s attention. “We could really use another hand.” The man’s eyes flick to Henry. But Clyde, he scrutinizes. By the way his mouth drops open, but no words come out, it’s clear the caper is up. This man knows he’s two car widths from the now infamous Clyde Barrow.

  Clyde says, “We’ll be on our way after that. You go yours, we’ll go ours.”

  Meaning, We don’t have a reason to hurt ya.

  Fumbling, the fella’s butt first goes in the mud before he climbs into his driver’s seat. We get a clear view of his taillights after that.

  “This ain’t good,” I say.

  “If I were a betting man, he’ll go straight to the law. He’s too spooked not to.” Clyde jiggles his fingers, and I hand over his Browning. “Get your pistol, Bonnie.”

  That’s when I realize it’s not here to get. My head’s been all clouded up. I close my eyes, picturing the dang thing on the hotel bed. “Left it at the stockyards,” I say.

  “Grab one from the back,” Clyde says to me. “Henry, you watch the north. I got the south. Fire at anything that comes our way. Straight off. You don’t wait for shots to be fired. You hear?”

  Henry nods and trudges through the mud toward the front tire. The boy swallows with each step. Adrenaline drove his trigger finger before. This’ll be different for him. It’ll be different for Clyde, too. He doesn’t like to shoot first but—I suck in air, feeling as if electricity is laced through it—whatever semblance of a moral code Clyde’s lived by doesn’t matter anymore. It stopped mattering Easter morning.

  “Bonnie,” Clyde says, “I want you down on the floorboard as small as you’ll go.”

  I don’t want to hide down by our trash and road maps. I want to stand by my man. What I realize, though, is that Clyde needs for me to be safe. So, my heart pounds into my thighs, my head rests on my knees, and I pray headlights don’t come our way.

  Night could fall. The mud could harden. It could happen.

  33

  I listen for any indication someone’s headed our way, but it’s quiet. Over time, my pulse ain’t racing, but it still lets me know it’s there.

  So does the sun, though barely.

  Henry repositions. The mud squelches.

  I tap my foot and cringe at the pricking sensation. A pen, or something sharp, pokes into my rear.

  Clyde hollers, “Look alert. Got eyes on someone headed this way.”

  Suddenly, my pulse is at it again. Knees to my chest, I breathe out so long it’s like I’m breathing fire straight into my legs. I ain’t sure what Clyde’s waiting for. Maybe he’s had a change of heart. Then, no, it’s like firecrackers go off. My heart flutters, panic seizing me, then it’s over. In less than three seconds, a twenty-round clip can release from a gun like Clyde’s—and it did.

  I pop my head up. Clyde’s waving away smoke, crouched down. Maybe thirty yards ahead there’s a copper’s car.

  “Henry!” Clyde sweeps his arm, motioning him over.

  The boy’s feet look like they’re stuck in the mud. He’s proven he can handle a gun. Henry was in the pen for armed robbery, after all. But here he is, with both his hands slack at his sides, a gun dangling at the end of one hand, and I reckon he’d be happy to never hold a firearm again.

  “Henry,” Clyde demands. “Go on and check our handiwork.”

  The boy starts going.

  Clyde says, “Hurry now.”

  Henry runs, slipping in the muck. Casually, Clyde takes another clip from his pocket. Turns out, he doesn’t need it. Into our backseat, Henry leads an officer, with a head wound I need a better look at. A second patrolman is left behind, good as dead. Henry’s words, not mine. And I’m reminded again how badly I want out of this world.

  With my pistol propped on the back of my seat, I kneel, and keep an eye on … “What’s your first name?”

  “Percy.”

  Squinting through the darkness of the car, his badge fills in the rest. I keep an eye on Percy Boyd, Police Chief.

  The car rocks forward, back, forward once more. Clyde and Henry ain’t having better luck this time.

  “And yours?”

  I sigh. “I think you know my name.”

  For a man bleeding from his head, his expression is one of a cocky son of a gun. “Bonnie Thornton.”

  “No,” I say reflexively; I expected to hear Parker, not Thornton, and I glance at my wedding band. “That’s nothin’ more than my legal name.” My gaze dances to my right hand, and my heart sinks to the floorboards. My serpent ring is gone. In the mud? Maybe when I shook off my hands.

  I breathe out sharply.

  Percy asks, “Everything all right?”

  I regrip my gun. “Are you all right? I ain’t bleeding from the head.”

  “Bumped it, is all.”

  I resist the urge to jump from the car and paw through the mud. I overcompensate, staring hard at Percy. His eyelids aren’t quite even. One droops lower than the other. His nose is crooked, as if he’s broken it before. Looks to be in his thirties.

  I say, “You don’t look scared.”

  “I am.”

  “You don’t look it.”

  “So you’ve said.”

  I twist my lips. “Take off your tie.”

  He does, no questions asked.

  “Now,” I say, “you move quick or put your hand on me, I’ll scream. If I scream, you’ll be able to count your last breaths on one hand.”

  With that, I crawl from the front to the back, no small feat while keeping my gun on the man. “Remember what I said.” I discreetly pull up the side of my skirt and tuck the gun u
nderneath, then I wrap Percy’s tie ’round his head wound. “Too tight?”

  “Nah.”

  I’m back up front, gun back on Percy. Ain’t the smartest thing I’ve done, making myself vulnerable and all that, but it felt like the right thing to do.

  “Got some eyes on us,” Clyde calls. “Lots of ’em.”

  It’s as if, all at once, the nearby town has come out to see the results of Clyde’s gunfire. Up on the hill by the mine, a group of people loiters, pointing. No doubt, speculating. And coming toward us is a big ol’ truck with tires large enough to make me jealous. At gunpoint, Clyde flags down the fella, a farmer.

  The situation is giving me the shakes. All we need is for the farmer to think himself a hero or any one of the people up above to liken himself a desperado, and any of us could end up dead.

  Like so many times before, it’s as if a thought passes from my brain to Clyde’s as he hollers, “Folks, a good lad has already died today, and if this here car don’t get moving again, more good lads will die. I suggest you keep your feet planted and your consciences clean. And you,” he says to the farmer, “get whatever wire you got ’round our bumper.”

  The only fella who dares to move is the farmer. I light a cigarette, alternating between watching the farmer and the people up on the hill—whispering, pointing, thinking they know the first thing ’bout the road that brought us here.

  Thankfully, in no time, the farmer’s big tires do the trick and yank us free. Clyde tips his hat and we’re gone, the beams from our headlights bouncing.

  I’ve done my fair share of watching our hostages. “Henry,” I say, “you watch him.” I face forward and tell Clyde, “That’s Percy back there.”

  “Don’t be afraid to get some shut-eye, Percy,” Clyde says. “We’ve got some miles to put behind us.”

  * * *

  Clyde isn’t lying. He drives all night. It isn’t ’til the sun shows its face that I see how red his eyes are. Mine can’t look much better. I tried to stay up, to keep him company. Won’t lie, though, I dozed off a time or two.

  A stop at a filling station or a bump in the road always brought me back.

  One time, Clyde chuckled, and I wouldn’t put it past him to have aimed for whatever jostled our automobile.

  Soon, Clyde pulls over, and we take turns by a tree. He finds us a café after that, and Henry brings back sandwiches and soft drinks. Not the most normal of breakfast foods, but we missed dinner and all of us had a hankering for some chipped beef.

  I save the newspaper Henry brought me ’til after I eat, but my eyes keep going to it. I force down my last bite, barely chewing, and toss my sandwich wrapper aside in exchange for details on our latest incident.

  “Jesus,” I say, “it’s a whole spread.” I skim, knowing I’ll pour over each word later. There’s mention of my marriage to Roy again, and more of our lives are exposed this time. Details you’d think nobody would care ’bout. My daddy dying when I was young. Clyde chopping off his toes in prison. The poems I left behind at Oak Ridge. Our crash into the dry riverbed. Buck’s death. I got to close my eyes after that and count to ten. With photos of Raymond and Joe Palmer, in connection with the prison farm breakout, I’m relieved Buck’s face ain’t staring back at me. There’s the photo of Clyde and me, though, where I playfully pointed a gun at him. Hard to believe, and also accept, all that’s happened since then.

  “They’re calling us partners in love and crime,” I say to Clyde.

  He flips a hand. “Now, that ain’t half bad. Better than being called a pair of human rats like last time.”

  “This time, too.” I growl. “And there’s that photo of me with the cigar again.”

  “Bonnie, darling, why do you let that get to you?”

  “’Cause, Clyde, and Percy you listen, too. You tell ’em, Percy, that it ain’t true. You tell ’em that nice girls don’t smoke cigars.” I look back at our hostage. “That ain’t the start of a smile I see on your face?”

  Percy says, “Funny that’s what you’d like to refute in all you’re reading.”

  Clyde laughs. “He’s got a point.”

  I cross my arms. Sure, I know it doesn’t make full sense, but that cigar may be the only absolute thing I can hang my hat on as being untrue.

  I read on. “Henry, you’re in here.”

  He starts to speak, then has to clear his throat. “I’d rather not hear any more ’bout that morning.”

  I twist my lips. Me, too. Then, I come to last night. The dead fella’s name was Cal, a widower and father of seven. He’d been a contractor ’til he lost it all when the depression hit him square in the face, so he took a job as an elected constable.

  We’ve been known, Clyde ’specially, to cover all lawmen in the same blanket. The law, who shook him down to wear him down, who staged fights to get him fingered, who brutalized him in a prison yard, who looked the other way when footsteps followed him into a dark corner. Who shot at our families.

  All those faces became the same, became one.

  But constables, like Cal, aren’t professional lawmen. They’re only doing it for the fifteen bucks a week, which ain’t even a lot for a family Cal’s size.

  I fold the newspaper, tapping it with my finger; ain’t feeling good in my gut.

  Clyde asks me, “What’s eating ya?”

  “Fella from last night was a constable.”

  He clucks. “Percy.” Clyde pauses, wipes his mouth. “Sorry ’bout the old man.”

  Clyde ain’t big on apologies, and despite today’s weather being as good as it comes, a dark cloud might as well hover over us. We ended a marriage a mere eleven days before it began. And now we took down someone else who’s a product of these here depression days. That man didn’t deserve to die that way. Buck didn’t deserve it. Blanche shouldn’t be in jail. None of this, not a single bit, would’ve made my daddy proud.

  But so much of what they’re saying ’bout us ain’t true, either. We ain’t out to get people. My daddy would understand that, too.

  I search by my feet ’til I find a pen, and in the margin, I get out my guilt and fears the best way I know how, a poem. This one, I decide, will be the story of Bonnie and Clyde.

  34

  There’s something magical ’bout words filling a page, a photograph of sorts, capturing moments of time. Now those words pour out of me ’til I have a poem that’s nearly a hundred lines long and the margins of the newspaper are filled.

  After all that’s happened, the last lines feel inevitable.

  Some day they’ll go down together

  they’ll bury them side by side.

  To few it’ll be grief,

  to the law a relief

  but it’s death for Bonnie and Clyde.

  These last lines will haunt me.

  I set my poem aside and rest my head against the window. I crack it open for air. A building reads FT. SCOTT LAW, and I open a road map to get a sense of where we are. I find us, up in Kansas, and trace my finger back to where we began in Oklahoma. If I got the spot correct, we couldn’t have gone more than sixty or seventy miles north, but Clyde drove us ’round all of God’s kingdom to get us here.

  He pulls over and retrieves a spare shirt from the trunk. Clyde’s only got a few, but the one Percy’s wearing is stiff with blood from where he sliced open his head while dodging Clyde’s bullets.

  “Out ya go.” Clyde hands Percy the shirt. “Wish I could say it’s been a pleasure.”

  Stubble coats the bottom half of Percy’s face. “Likewise.”

  And that’s that. It’s back to only Clyde, Henry, and me.

  We’re runnin’ again, and I bite my bottom lip, my finger following our path on the map, ’til we start heading south—toward the farm?

  My poem’s dark with my regrets bringing me down and the walls closing in, but here we are, still alive and free. I still have a sliver of hope, like the last slice of the moon before it all goes dark, that we’ll get out of this with air in our lungs.


  With a quick yank on the steering wheel, Clyde pulls us over again. “Henry, this is where we part ways.”

  “What?” he says. Both Henry and I sit up straighter. He surveys ’round us. A bus stop ain’t more than ten paces ahead. Farther off, the start of a small town.

  “Clyde, I know I messed up, but I thought—”

  “For now. That land won’t do Bonnie and me any good if the law tracks us there. We’ll meet you there in a month. Make it a month and a half, whatever that Sunday is.” Clyde reaches into his breast pocket and pulls out a few bills, offers them to Henry. “How’s that sound?”

  Henry licks his lips, nods, and—once again—that’s that.

  Instead of going into town, Clyde turns us ’round, finding a different way on the backcountry roads. I relax into my seat, as relaxed as I can be out here on the road, where there’s always the threat of the bogeyman leaping out to surprise us.

  “And then there were two,” I say softly. Clyde takes my hand. I can’t help asking, “Where we going now?”

  One side of Clyde’s mouth turns up. “To the farm, of course.” He laughs. “Bonnie, you should see that reaction of yours.”

  “You mean my confusion? You just got done telling Henry we wouldn’t see him ’til next month.”

  “And we won’t, but I want to be on our land.”

  “You don’t trust him anymore?”

  “Ain’t many people I trust now. Present company excluded. Luck’s gotten us plenty far. Farther than it should’ve. ’Bout time we slow down and use what’s between our ears. It’s back to the woods.”

  “The woods?” I groan.

  Clyde runs his finger down my nose, right over the creases I’ve put there while scrunching in dismay. “Aye, but the woods on our very own land.”

  * * *

  Clyde starts using his noggin right away. We steal cars, one after another, not far from the last. It’s a different pattern, but a clear pattern in the direction we’re headed. Which, of course, ain’t the direction we’re actually headed.

  But we also don’t want to lead the law way up north then sneak way down south. So we create a path of stolen cars to Fort Smith, that being a central location between all our normal haunts: Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Kansas, and Missouri.