“Nope.”
Clyde laughs at my confidence. It’s there, even if I do worry what the future will bring. I know it won’t be behind bars, though; Clyde would never let it come to that.
That means we can keep on living, so close to having the deed in our hands that’ll officially make this life ours. Clyde’s words, even morbid with his mention of death, are a hell of a lot more positive than how I ended my poem.
I pull my journal from beneath my seat, wanting to read my poem to not only retrace how we got here, but also chase away my final words: but it’s death for Bonnie and Clyde.
Someday. But for now, we found our way out.
“Sun is bright, ain’t she?” Clyde slides on sunglasses as we bump ’round a bend. “Well, I’ll be,” he says.
“What’s that?”
“If I ain’t mistaken, that’s the same truck that barely made it down our drive.”
Up ahead, off to the side of the road, I snort at the blue truck Henry borrowed from his daddy. Now it’s tilted to one side.
I say, “Flat tire.”
“Looks that way. Don’t see Mr. Methvin, though,” Clyde says under his breath.
I shrug, figuring the old man slipped into the woods to find some shade.
“Something ain’t right,” Clyde says.
While searching for Mr. Methvin in the tree line, I blindly reach for my makeup kit, intent on powdering my nose. I say, “Honey, quit being paranoid. We did it. We’re not runnin’ no more.” The sun flashes against something silver. “And I for one—”
Am a goddamn fool.
I see it, barely, as if my mind’s conjuring the scene from a memory. But this is the here and now, and a row of men wait with guns, crouched amidst the undergrowth. I let out a cry, clawing at my skirt, trying to get to the gun Clyde taped there. He yanks his foot off the pedal. Neither will do us any good.
We lock eyes. His, mine, they both say one thing: It’s too late for us.
He cries, “Bonnie.”
I breathe, “Clyde.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Bonnie and Clyde were killed in an ambush on May 23, 1934. Bonnie was twenty-three, and Clyde was twenty-five. When the shooting stopped, it’s said that both were shot more than fifty times. After the infamous Eastham breakout, Colonel Lee Simmons made good on his word, meeting with Frank Hamer, a retired Texas Ranger, and telling him, “I want you to put Clyde and Bonnie ‘on the spot’ and then shoot everyone in sight.” It’s in part because of Henry Methvin and his father, who researchers say Clyde was purchasing land from, that Hamer and his team knew where to find Bonnie and Clyde that Wednesday morning. In exchange for Henry’s pardon from the state of Texas, the Methvins agreed to deliver Bonnie and Clyde to the authorities. In the 1934 footage of their funerals, the voiceover claims Bonnie was the only woman ever to be shot down by officers of the law.
I’m often asked what inspired me to write a story about Bonnie and Clyde. My curiosity stemmed from wondering what made this duo tick and become so accepting of a life of crime, especially Bonnie, who came from a wholesome upbringing. While emotionally and morally difficult to write, I wanted to tell the story through Bonnie’s eyes, speculating on her thoughts, reactions, motivations, and remorse. W. D. Jones, who I refer to simply as Jones, is quoted as saying Bonnie never fired a gun at anybody. Others say she did, but historians tend to agree that Bonnie was never responsible for any deaths during their twenty-seven-month crime spree. Clyde is a different story, some saying he was responsible for at least six of the thirteen victims of the Barrow Gang.
Often, the media and films have presented Bonnie as someone who sought celebrity above all else, and while I found instances of Bonnie adoring films, liking to sing, and enjoying the spotlight, I didn’t get an overwhelming sense that Bonnie’s motivation was fame. Bonnie’s desire to be someone is speckled throughout this novel and its prequel, Becoming Bonnie, but I didn’t make it a central theme. Instead, I concentrated mainly on Bonnie’s dreams, which evolve with her experiences, and also her desire to remain with Clyde during their life on the lam.
To bring their crime spree to life, the events, people, and general timeline within this novel are inspired by real life. Any historical inaccuracies are my own, as storytelling was my main objective, and also due to the fact that there are various accounts of Bonnie and Clyde’s life of crime. The Eastham breakout is one such example, where I found varying accounts from James Mullen, the Dallas Police Department, and various Bonnie and Clyde experts.
Bonnie’s pregnancy is another element that has been debated. I chose to side with the researchers who believed Bonnie was with child when she was slain during the ambush. In order to heighten that moment, I speculated the possibility of Bonnie being pregnant prior to that moment. While Bonnie did fall into a coma and became handicapped after Clyde crashed into a dry riverbed, it’s my fictional addition that she also miscarried.
Another fictionalized element is Clyde’s close partnership with Pretty Boy Floyd. There is documentation of Clyde contacting him in hopes of them working a job together, but Pretty Boy Floyd has been quoted as saying he didn’t want to get mixed up with “those Texas screwballs.” I chose to embellish this connection as a plausible resource for information. However, Clyde was involved with Pretty Boy Floyd’s brother, staying with him and recuperating at his home after the Sower’s ambush, where Bonnie and Clyde were both shot after a family friend betrayed them.
As far as the fates of the other characters within this book, W. D. Jones was arrested only a few weeks after leaving Bonnie and Clyde. He was paroled after six years. After the Eastham breakout, Raymond Hamilton and Joe Palmer were recaptured separately. Later, they escaped again, further embarrassing Simmons. They were recaptured again and both died in the electric chair. Raymond’s brother, Floyd Hamilton, initially received two years for harboring Bonnie and Clyde. After continuing his career of crime, he ultimately spent twenty years at Alcatraz. While Henry Methvin was pardoned for previous crimes, he ultimately was convicted due to the death of Cal Campbell, a murder that occurred after the pardon agreement was in place. Eventually, Methvin was released. An unknown person, knowing Methvin informed on Bonnie and Clyde, knocked him unconscious and left him on a railroad track, where he was cut in half.
Blanche Barrow received a ten-year sentence. She underwent a number of operations to save her injured eye, but none of them was successful. After six years, Blanche was released and went on to remarry. At the age of seventy-seven, she died from cancer. Much of Blanche’s character in the novel is fictionalized, as her storyline greatly affected Bonnie’s storyline in the prequel, Becoming Bonnie. Blanche, and Bonnie and Clyde’s crime spree in general, is also greatly fictionalized in the 1967 film, where Blanche was depicted as an over-the-top preacher’s daughter. In real life, her father was a logger and farmer. On occasion, he acted as a lay minister.
Billie Parker is quoted as saying about her sister and Clyde, “The kids led a rough life, and they wouldn’t want anyone—then or now—to follow in their footsteps.” In Bonnie’s last poem, written a month before their final ambush, she wrote:
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.
Bonnie never received her last wishes, as she and Clyde were not buried side by side. And while I gave Bonnie a happy ending within the final chapter, I ultimately had to take it away.
Within my novel, the poems written by Bonnie are her own words. The poem by Blanche was written by the real-life Blanche. The poem submitted to a newspaper by Mabel K. Moore was inspired by a poem submitted to a Dallas newspaper by Myrtle J. Potter. The song lyrics are my own.
For nonfiction accounts of Bonnie and Clyde’s escapades, I’d recommend Blanche Barrow’s memoir, edited by John Neal Phillips, and also Go Down Together by Jeff Guinn. If you, like me, were cur
ious what made a wholesome girl like Bonnie Parker turn to a life of crime, I’ve explored Bonnie and Clyde’s possible backgrounds, beginning in 1927, in the prequel Becoming Bonnie, the untold story of Bonnie before Clyde.
READ ON FOR A SNEAK PEEK OF
JENNI L. WALSH’S
BECOMING
BONNIE
Copyright © 2017 by Jenni L. Walsh
1
But I, being poor, have only my dreams.
Hands in my hair, I look over the words I wrote on the Mason jar atop my bureau. I snigger, almost as if I’m antagonizing the sentiment. One day I won’t be poor with dreams. I’ll have money and dreams.
I drop my hair and swallow a growl, never able to get my stubborn curls quite right.
My little sister carefully sets her pillow down, tugs at the corner to give it shape, the final touch to making her bed. “Stop messing with it.”
“Easy for you to say. The humidity ain’t playing games with your hair.”
And Little Billie’s hair is down. Smooth and straight. Mine is pinned back into a low bun. Modest and practical.
Little Billie chuckles. “Well, I’m going before Mama hollers at me. Church starts in twenty minutes, and you know she’s got to watch everyone come in.”
I shake my head; that woman always has her nose to the ground. Little Billie scoots out of our bedroom, and I get back to taming my flyaways and scan my bureau for my favorite stud earrings, one of our few family heirlooms. Footsteps in the hall quicken my fingers. I slide in another hairpin, jabbing my skull. “I’m coming, Ma!”
A deep cough.
I turn to find my boyfriend taking up much of the doorway. He’s got his broad shoulders and tall frame to thank for that.
I smile, saying, “Oh, it’s only you.”
Roy’s own smile doesn’t quite form. “Yes, it’s only me.”
I wave him off, a strand falling out of place. Roy being ’round ain’t nothin’ new, but on a Sunday morning … That gets my heart bumping with intrigue. “What ya doing here so early? The birds are barely chirpin’.”
“It ain’t so early. Got us less than twenty minutes ’til—”
“I know.”
“Thought I could walk you to church,” Roy says.
“Is that so?” My curiosity builds, ’specially with how this boy is shifting his weight from side to side. He’s up to something. And I ain’t one to be kept in the dark. Fingers busy with my hair, I motion with my elbow and arch a brow. “That for me?”
Roy glances down at an envelope in his hand, as if he forgot he was even holding it. He moves it behind his back. “It can wait. There’s actually something else—”
I’m across the room in a heartbeat, tugging on his arm. “Oh no it can’t.”
On the envelope, “Final Notice” stares back at me in bold letters. The sender is our electric company. Any excitement is gone.
“I’m sorry, Bonnelyn,” Roy says. “Caught my eye on it in the bushes out front.”
My arms fall to my sides, and I stare unblinking at the envelope, not sure how something so small, so light, could mean something so big, so heavy, for our family. “I didn’t know my ma hadn’t been paying this.”
Roy pushes the envelope, facedown, onto my bureau. “I can help pay—”
“Thanks, but we’ll figure it out.” I sigh at my hair, at our unpaid bill, at the fact I’m watching my sister after church instead of putting in hours at the diner. Fortunately, my brother’s pulling a double at the cement plant. Ma will be at the factory all afternoon. But will it be enough?
I move in front of the wall mirror to distract myself. Seeing my hand-me-down blouse ain’t helping. I peek at Roy, hoping I don’t find pity on his face. There he goes again, throwing his weight from foot to foot. And, sure, that boy is sweet as pie, but I know he ain’t antsy thinkin’ my lights are suddenly going to go off.
“Everything okay, Roy?”
“Yeah.”
That yeah ain’t so convincing.
“You almost done here?” he asks. Roy shifts the old Mason jar to the side, holds up the earring I’d been looking for.
I nod—to the earring, not to being done—and he brings it to me. Despite how this morning is turning out, I smile, liking that Roy knew what I was looking for without me having to tell him.
“Ready now?” he says.
I slide another pin into my hair. “Why’s everyone rushing me?”
Roy swallows, and if I had five clams to bet, I’d bet he’s nervous ’bout something. He edges closer to my bureau. He shakes the Mason jar, the pieces of paper rustling inside. “When did you write this on the outside?”
But I, being poor, have only my dreams.
I avert my eyes, being those words weren’t meant for Roy’s. “Not too long ago.”
“Ya know, Bonnelyn, you won’t always be poor. I’ll make sure of that.”
“I know I won’t.” I add a final pin to my hair. “I’ll make sure of that.”
“So why’d you write it?”
“I didn’t. William Butler Yeats did.”
Roy shoves his hands in his pockets. “You know what I mean.”
I shrug and stare at my reflection. “It inspires me, wanting to be more than that line. And I will. I’ll put a white picket fence in front of my house to prove it.”
“Your house?”
I turn away from the mirror to face him. His voice sounded off. Too high. But Roy ain’t looking at me. He’s staring at the wall above my head. “Our house,” I correct, a pang of guilt stabbing me in the belly ’cause I didn’t say our to begin with. “That jar is full of our dreams, after all.”
Really, it’s full of doodles, scribbled on whatever paper Roy had on hand. Napkins. Ripped corners of his textbook pages. The top flap of a cereal box. He shoved the first scrap of paper in my hand when we were only knee-high to a grasshopper: quick little drawings of me and him in front of the Eiffel Tower, riding horses with dogs running ’round our feet, holding hands by the Gulf’s crashing waves.
Our dreams. Plenty of ’em. Big and small. Whimsical and sweet.
But this here is the twenties. Women can vote; women are equals, wanting to make a name for themselves. I’m no exception. Sure, I’ll bring those doodles to life with Roy, but I would’ve added my own sketches to the jar if I could draw. Standing at the front of my very own classroom. At a bank counter, depositing my payroll checks. Shaking hands with a salesman, purchasing my first car.
Call it selfish, call it whatever ya like, but after struggling for money all my life, my dreams have always come before ours.
Still, I link our hands. “I’m ready to go.”
* * *
“Hallelujah!”
The congregation mimics my pastor’s booming voice. The women flick their fans faster with excitement. Pastor Frank shuffles to the right, then to the left, sixty-some eyes following his every movement. From the choir pews off to the side, I watch his mesmerized flock hang on his every word, myself included. My ma is amidst the familiar faces. She prefers to use Daddy’s brown hat to cool herself, holding on to him even after he’s been gone all these years. I can’t say I blame her.
“Amen!” we chime.
Pastor Frank nods at me, and I move from the choir box to the piano. I bring my hands down, and the first chords of “Onward, Christian Soldiers” roar to life. Every Sunday, I sit on this here bench, press my fingers into the keys, and let the Lord’s words roll off my tongue. Ma says Daddy would be proud, too. I sure hope that’s true.
It’s another reason why I’ll make something of myself. In our small town or in a big city, it doesn’t matter much, but Bonnelyn Parker is going to be somebody. Wherever life takes me, whatever final notice stands in my way, my daddy will look down on me and smile, knowing I ain’t struggling, I’m thriving. I’m more than poor.
I push my voice louder, raise my chin, and sing the hymn’s last note, letting it vibrate with the piano’s final chord.
The congrega
tion shouts praises to the Lord as Pastor Frank clasps his hands together and tells us all to, “Go and spread His word.”
Voices break out, everyone beating their gums at once. I slip off the bench, weave through the crowd. A few people are always louder than the rest. Mrs. Davis is having a potluck lunch. Mr. Miller’s best horse is sick. He spent his early morning hours in his barn, from the looks of his dirty overalls.
Ma’s got more pride than a lion and makes certain we’re dressed to the nines, even if our nine is really only a five. Still, my older brother’s vest and slacks are his Sunday best. And even though we’ve got secondhand clothes, my sister’s and my white blouses are neatly tucked into our skirts. We may be pretending to look the part, but our family always gets by. We find a way, just like we’ll make sure that electric bill gets paid. Though I don’t like how Ma let this bill get so late.
I rush through the church’s double doors, sucking in fresh air, and shield my eyes from the sun. A laugh slips out. There’s my brother, playing keep-away from my little sister with one of her once-white shoes. Buster tosses the shoe to Roy. Roy fumbles it. No surprise there, but part of me wonders if his nerves from earlier are sticking ’round. On the way to church, he wouldn’t let me get a word in, going on nonstop ’bout the weather. I reckon the summer of 1927 is hot, real hot, but not worth all his fuss.
“Little Billie, those boys picking on you?” I call, skipping down the church steps, keeping my eyes on Roy.
He takes immediate notice of me, missing my brother’s next throw. “Say, Bonnelyn.” Roy wipes his hairline. “I was hoping to do this before church, but you were having trouble with your…” He gestures toward his own hair, then stops, wisely thinkin’ better of it. “I’ve a surprise for you.”
“A surprise? Why didn’t you tell me so? I could’ve hurried.”
He also wisely doesn’t comment on my earlier irritation at being hurried.
“Follow me?” Roy asks, his brown eyes hopeful.
“Not today, lover boy,” Buster cuts in. “Bonn’s watching Billie.”
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