by Emma Parker
"Let him try to get smart again and I will, too, come home to my mama," Bonnie said.
"You try it, old sugar, and if the law doesn’t kill you, I will," Clyde promised. But he kissed her as he said it. He knew, just as we all knew, that he’d never have to kill Bonnie for leaving him because she wasn’t going to leave him.
Another story that set us off into gales of mirth was Clyde's yarn about buying red beans for Bonnie. "We'd stood up under canned stuff as long as we could," Clyde said, "when one day we were driving down a country lane and our noses told us that somebody was cooking red beans inside. Red beans and corn bread. Bonnie said she just had to have them, so I got out and went in and asked the farmer's wife if she'd sell us some. She immediately started setting the table and urged me to bring Bonnie right in and draw up a chair and set, but I told her no, we just wanted the beans, not the whole dinner.
"She kept insisting and I began to get nervous for fear some of the men folks would come in from the fields and recognize us, so I said firmly: ‘No, thank you. Just give me a half-gallon jar full of those red beans and I’ll pay you whatever you think it’s worth — a dollar — two dollars. We’ll take them with us.’
"She looked like she thought I’d lost my mind," Clyde went on: "She was still standing there in the door looking that way when we drove off, Bonnie hugging that jar of beans like it was full of gold dust. And boy, did we eat beans! We were both stuffed like pigs when we finally downed the last bean, but we never enjoyed anything as much in our lives."
Blanche, still smarting from the ragging she'd evidently been getting ever since the Joplin affair, told us one on Bonnie then. It seemed that during the night of the terrible hail storm in March, the two girls had been left parked in the car on a deserted road all night long. Buck, Clyde, and W. D. had gone to get some money — I believe they were going to rob a bank somewhere, only it didn't come off. At any rate the two girls were left all night in the car alone. Hail and thunder and lightning came, followed by a terrific downpour. Bonnie, who was always afraid of a storm, had hysterics. She covered her ears, she put her head between her knees, she wept and she moaned and prayed, and begged for Clyde or her mama. She said she knew they'd both be killed and never live to see day again. "In fact," Blanche said wickedly, "she behaved much worse than I did in the Joplin battle. She got down on the back seat at last and made me pile all the pillows and blankets on her head, and then she wanted me to sit on top of them! I never heard such goings-on as Bonnie did that night. I felt sorry for her, but I had to laugh. The idea of not being scared of bullets flying right and left, and then yelling her head off at a little hail."
"I was scared at both places," Bonnie interrupted. "Only at Joplin I knew I was going to be killed if I didn’t run, and in that hail storm I couldn’t run. I just had to sit still and let it hail."
It was during this day near Commerce, which passed all too quickly for us, that we got the particulars of the Malcolm Davis killing, the Doyle Johnson murder, the kidnapping of Officer Persell, the New Mexico kidnapping, the trap on the bridge at Wharton and the Joplin battle. Also the story of the kidnapping of the undertaker, D. D. Darby, and his girl friend, Miss Sophie Stone at Rushton, Louisiana, on April 27, soon after the Joplin raid.
"Our own car was sunk, and we were practically afoot," Clyde told us. "Darby’s car was sitting out in front and we went and climbed into it. We were just driving away from the curb when Darby and Miss Stone both popped out the door, looking rather surprised. W. D. waved his hand and said, ‘Thanks for the buggy ride.’ Then we beat it.
"Darby didn’t mean to let us get away with it. He jumped in Miss Stone’s car, she came along, too, and they started chasing us. But Darby was afraid to drive as fast as we were going. Near Hico, they began falling behind and finally turned around and started back to Rushton.
"‘Let’s go take ’em,’ I suggested, for a lark. We’d been chased so much, it was a new experience to start chasing somebody else. We turned around and took in after them.Boy, were they scared when they saw us coming! Darby did his best to outrun us, and it was really pitiful how frightened they were when we finally caught up with them and ran them to the side of the road. But that wasn’t anything compared to how white they turned after they got in the car with us and found out who we were. We didn’t realize till then how the name of Barrow could frighten people out of their wits. We never intended harming them and we never did do them any hurt, but we certainly got the slant of the other person during that ride. We learned that all the South was scared to death of us, and that officers would no more think of trying to take us single-handed than they’d think of jumping off Washington monument. Later, we learned this was true by experience, when they came after the five of us with posses 200 strong, armored cars, and steel shields, and enough machine guns to have stopped the Germans at the Marne.
"The going was pretty crowded with seven of us in the car, so we didn’t keep them long. At Magnolia, Arkansas, we gave them $5 expense money and put them out about 8 o’clock that night. The fun we’d had with them had been worth more than $5, but we didn’t happen to have any more to spare just then."
Other robberies credited to them following this, were not true, Clyde said. They did not rob and brutally beat the filling station attendant at Broken Bow, Oklahoma. Neither did they rob the filling station in Fort Dodge, Iowa. They did hold up the First State Bank at Okabena, Minnesota, on May 16th. That was the place where the whole town turned out to catch them — they committed the robbery in broad daylight — and Clyde was amused at Bonnie because she wouldn't shoot an old man who tried to wreck their car as they dashed down the square.
"Blanche refused to have anything to do with any robberies," Clyde told us, "so we had to leave her out of town waiting for us. The three of us went in and Bonnie stayed in the car in front of the bank. We locked the people in the vault and got away with $2500, but everybody in town seemed to know about the hold-up before we did, and there was a regular reception committee waiting for us when we came out, everybody shooting right and left. I was driving with Bonnie beside me ready to hand me freshly loaded guns; Buck was in the back seat, and I couldn’t depend on him to do any shooting, so when I saw this old man running out toward us carrying a great big log — he was on Bonnie’s side of the car — I said, ‘Honey, shoot him before he wrecks us.’
"Bonnie just sat there, and when I saw she wasn’t going to do anything, I had to jerk the car away over to one side to keep from hitting him and the log, which he tried to throw under our front wheels. I almost turned the car over. ‘Why in the name of God didn’t you shoot him?" I demanded. ‘It’s a wonder we weren’t all killed^’
"‘Why honey, I wasn’t going to kill that nice old man,’ Bonnie told me. ‘He was white headed.’
"Well, I felt like I was white headed too, before we got out of that town, and I told Bonnie that nice old man would have just loved to see us lying cold and dead, but she didn’t seem to mind that part at all. I’m not trusting Bonnie to shoot any more than Buck after this."
In spite of Clyde's joking, the thing he was most worried about, and about which he spoke most often, was the spot Buck was now in because of the Joplin fight. Clyde blamed himself for Buck's predicament. He said over and over: "And just think — they had planned to leave us the next morning! I still believe if Buck had used his head and run downstairs with both hands up and surrendered, he'd be all right now. I think he could have told them that he was just visiting with me and had nothing to do with the things I'd been doing. I think they'd have believed him and let him go if he'd done that."
"Things happened too fast for me to figure that out," Buck explained slowly. "You don’t think good at a time like that. Suddenly the cops were there and everybody was shooting and running. I didn’t think — I just ran."
Clyde talked it over with us all rather soberly before we left. "Suppose Buck goes back in with you tonight and you call the cops over and tell them the whole truth," he said. "Tell th
em Buck never fired a shot — that W. D. and I did it all — don't you think they'd believe him?"
Buck, after thinking this over while Blanche watched him tensely, shook his head at last. "No, they wouldn't believe me," he said. "They might if I didn't have a prison record already, but I have. I'd get the chair, Clyde. It's no use. I've got to stick with you now — the four of us together till they get us, I guess. Don't take it so hard, kid." Blanche was crying and I saw my mother was ready to break down. It seemed a good time to turn the conversation elsewhere. Besides, it was getting dusk.
We had spent the whole day parked on the bridge, for there had been a heavy rain the night before and the roads were terribly muddy. I remember that Clyde had to back his car off the bridge every time anybody came along. We stayed in the cars almost all day, except for a little while when Bonnie and her mother walked down the road for a talk. I didn't hear what they said, but Mrs. Parker told me afterwards she had been trying to persuade Bonnie to come in and give up before it was too late.
"You’ll get only a prison sentence if you come in now," Mrs. Parker explained. "And while that’s bad, still and all, it’s nothing compared to what may happen before this is over. You’re not made for this sort of life, Bonnie. The strain is going to kill you if a bullet doesn’t. I’d be happier with you in prison than like you are, honey."
Bonnie wouldn't hear to it. "Clyde's name is up, mama," she said. "He'll be killed sooner or later, because he's never going to give up. I love him and I'm going to be with him till the end. When he dies I want to die anyway. Let's don't be sad. I'm in as big a spot as Clyde is. My name's up too. And though it may sound funny to you, I'm happy, just being with Clyde, no matter what comes."
We came home very soberly and quietly. None of us there that day were ever to see Buck and Blanche again till we met over Buck's deathbed in Iowa, and visited poor timid little Blanche, who was so afraid of guns. I think all of us prayed on that homeward trip. I know I did. I prayed that they'd stay out of trouble and live a few years longer. They were so young to die. Buck had only two more months to live, and Bonnie and Clyde had but a year.
As for their staying out of trouble, I guess it wasn't in the cards. It was only a month until they were in headlines again. Bonnie was lying at death's door in a tourist camp in Ft. Smith, Arkansas, in her delirium begging and crying for her mother who dared not go to her. Those are the untold tragedies of the relatives of fugitives. We dared not go to them when they had need of us — for fear we would reveal their whereabouts.
Immediately after this meeting near Commerce, Blanche and Buck slipped away to Missouri to visit with Blanche's parents. Bonnie and Clyde took to the road alone, and we had no news of them for several weeks. During this time W.D. Jones showed up at my mother's house. He said he had become separated from Clyde and Bonnie in Oklahoma. He went to steal a car, an officer had spotted him, Bonnie and Clyde ran for it and he'd beat it back to Dallas. Now he wanted to know where Clyde was and how he could find him again.
This was along about the first week in June, the 8th, if I remember correctly, because when the story about the accident in Wellington broke on June 1 Oth, an unidentified man was again with Clyde and Bonnie. He had shot off a woman's hand in a farmhouse near Wellington. That sounded about like W. D., who always had an itchy trigger finger. I telephoned my mother. "That couldn't be W.D., could it?" I said. "He's still in Dallas."
"Oh, no," my mother replied. "Clyde came after him yesterday. They’ve gone to meet Buck and Blanche. That’s where they were headed when the accident happened."
For a week we had no way of knowing anything except what the papers told us. Then Clyde came for Billie to be with Bonnie when she died, and when Billie came home we heard the whole story.
Clyde, Bonnie, and W. D. were speeding along over the West Texas roads, headed for Erick, Oklahoma, where they were to meet Buck and Blanche. I told you that Clyde always drove like a devil. He was making about 7 0 miles per hour. A bridge was out and he didn't see it till it was too late to stop. They hit the place, turned over twice, and rolled to the bottom of the ditch, with Bonnie pinned underneath the car.
Clyde, thrown clear, pulled W. D. and the guns out. Then the car caught on fire. The flames were all around them and Bonnie began screaming and begging them to do something for God's sake, and if they couldn't do something, to shoot her. W. D. said Clyde seemed like an insane person, who couldn't feel fire. He kept going back into the flames, tugging, swearing, and crying as he worked. About this time two farmers rushed up from the fields. "Help us," Clyde begged them. "For God's sake, help us."
Between the four of them they got the burning car off Bonnie and lifted her out. She was horribly burned, her face blistered, her arms badly seared, and her whole right leg a mass of cooked flesh. She was in great agony, too. Newspaper reports stated that Clyde threw a gun into Pritchard and Carter's (Editors's Note: Instead of Carter, this was actually Alonzo Cartrwright) ribs and demanded that they carry Bonnie up to the house. Both Clyde and W. D. told us this was not true. "With Bonnie hurt like she was, would I be fool enough to start brandishing a gun?" Clyde demanded. "Hell, no. Those newspapers make me sick, always looking for some wild story. All I was thinking about was getting relief for the kid. I didn't know that she was hurt as badly as she really was. I thought the women up at the farm house could fix her up. My only trouble was a car to get away. I figured I could get one somewhere after they'd made Bonnie comfortable. Common sense would tell you, Sis, that at a time like that I had nothing to gain and everything to lose by brandishing a gun.
"The men helped me carry her up to the house, while W.D. stayed behind to cache the guns, because I thought we’d be needing them later. Up at the farm house Mrs. Pritchard put mentholatum on Bonnie’s face. When she begged for something on her leg to ease the awful pain, Mrs. Pritchard looked at the seared flesh and shook her head. ‘I’m afraid to put anything on that,’ she stated. ‘That needs a doctor.’ She did put wet baking soda on her arms though."
All the while everybody was insisting to Clyde that they must get Bonnie into a hospital at Wellington at once, and were wanting to call an ambulance. Clyde begged them not to, and Bonnie in the midst of her terrible pain, added her voice to his pleading, for she realized as well as he did what it would mean. This refusal to send for medical aid when Bonnie was obviously so badly hurt, made the Pritchards suspicious. "Do what you can for her yourself," Clyde said. "I can't do anything more," Mrs. Pritchard replied. "She needs a doctor and she needs one right now."
Clyde ran out of the house, back to the burning car, and gathered up the guns. He didn't see any car about the farmhouse, and he was at his wit's end. Bonnie must be taken away immediately, but how? While Clyde was gone, Carter slipped out of the room, and at that W. D. whipped out his gun. I don't know whether he did it because he was afraid or whether he just liked to have a gun in his hand. He began brandishing the weapon and threatening to kill Pritchard because Carter had left. Mrs. Pritchard screamed and Mr. Pritchard protested that he had done nothing except be friendly and try to help. W. D. admitted this and subsided, the gun still in his hand. Bonnie's moans could be heard all over the house, and Mrs. Pritchard, despite her fears, never ceased doing what she could to help her. "They were so kind to me," Bonnie told us. "So very, very kind, and I was hurting so and wanting mama, and scared, too."
It was just at this moment that the door began opening, and W. D. whirled and fired. There was a feminine scream from the other side, and Mrs. Jack Pritchard, a relative, stagged into the room with her hand shot away. W. D., appalled by the mistake, saw there was nothing to do now but hold them all off with his gun till Clyde returned. Just how this was going to end was something none of them could figure out. Bonnie, despite her suffering, had leaped from the bed at the sound of the shot, and rushed into the yard.
Carter had slipped away and telephoned officers at Wellington. Their car was even now swinging into the farm house road. Clyde, down at the burning car, h
eard the shot and came on a run with the weapons. He took in the situation at a glance. Delay was unthinkable. There was only one way to get out of there alive and that was in the officers' car. He pulled W. D. into the hedge which grew around the house, threatening the Pritchards with instant death if they made any sound or gave warning. "These people aren't armed," Clyde said to W. D. "We'll take the officers."
They crouched and waited, while the policemen came in through the back and out onto the porch, walking carefully with drawn guns. Then Clyde and W. D. sprang at them, seized their arms, pinioned them against their sides and handcuffed them with their own handcuffs. Taking their guns from them, the two boys marched the men helplessly toward their own car. One was put in the front seat. W. D. and the other went in the back, and Clyde lifted the moaning Bonnie and laid her in their arms.
"You hold her easy," Clyde commanded. "Don’t you let her hurt any more than she’s got to hurt. Sorry about that hand, people. Let’s go." They tore down the road and onto the highway, headed for Erick, Oklahoma, Buck and Blanche.
It hurts me yet when I think of the agony that Bonnie must have suffered during that terrible ride, without medical attention, without a bed to lie on, without any opiate to ease her horrible pain. I'll say this for her: Right or wrong, she was the gamest, grittiest little kid that ever walked; she had only one ruling passion in her life now — love for my brother; she knew that he would get her aid as quickly as he could, and that he could do no more than he was doing, unless he gave both himself and her up to the law. Bonnie would have preferred any sort of death rather than see Clyde caught. She had said so, and her actions on this occasion proved it conclusively.
