A Dust Bowl Tale of Bonnie and Clyde (4 page)

Bonnie and her friends drove away with Raymond behind the wheel. One of them spat
on Grandfather. In the shadows I couldn’t tell who it was, but I saw the spittle come
out of the window like wet string and stick on Grandfather’s shirt. In seconds the
Chevrolet was going up a dusty rise between the trees, the sunlight spangling on the
windows.

I let the holster and belt slide free of the revolver and pulled back the hammer and
aimed with both hands at the back of the automobile.

“Don’t do it, Weldon,” Grandfather said.

I didn’t aim at the gas tank or a tire or the trunk. I aimed ten inches below the
roof and squeezed the trigger and felt the heaviness of the frame buck in my palms
and heard the .44 round hit home, whanging off metal, breaking glass, maybe striking
the dashboard or the headliner. Inside the report, I thought I heard someone scream.

The car wobbled but kept going forward and was soon gone. I shut my eyes and opened
them again, unsure of what I had done, my ears ringing.

“Why didn’t you listen to me?” Grandfather asked.

My right ear felt like someone had slapped it with the flat of his hand. I opened
and closed my mouth to get my hearing back. “I didn’t think. Was that a woman who
screamed?”

“No, it was not. You heard an owl screech. Do you understand me?”

“I heard a woman scream, Grandfather.”

“The mind plays tricks on you in a situation like that. That was a screech owl. They’re
blind in the daytime and frighten easy. Get me up.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell me what you heard.”

“An owl. I heard an owl.”

“From this time on, you don’t look back on what happened here today. It doesn’t mean
a hill of beans. Don’t you ever stop being the fine young man that you are.”

T
HE FOLLOWING WEEK,
three of Grandfather’s old friends came to our house. They were stolid, thick-bodied
men who wore suits and Stetsons and polished boots and had broad, calloused hands.
One of them rolled his own cigarettes. One of them was a former Texas Ranger who supposedly
killed fifty men. They sat in the kitchen and drank coffee while Grandfather told
them everything he knew about our visitors. He made no mention of me. I was in the
living room and heard the former Texas Ranger say, “Hack, I’d hate to bust a cap on
a woman.” But he smiled when he said it.

Grandfather glanced up and saw me looking through the doorway. Something happened
in that moment that I will never forget. Grandfather’s eyes once again were filled
with a warmth that few associated with the man who locked John Wesley Hardin in jail.
The lawmen at his table were killers. Grandfather was not. “Go upstairs and check
on your mother, will you, Weldon?” he said.

I read later about the ambush in Louisiana. Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were blown
apart with automatic weapons fire. Later, their friend Raymond would die with courage
and dignity in the electric chair at Huntsville. His girlfriend, Mary, would go to
prison. None of them was struck by the bullet I fired into their automobile.

It rained that summer, and I caught a catfish in the river that was as reddish-brown
as the water I took it from. I slipped the hook out of its mouth and replaced it in
the current and watched it drop away, out of sight, an event that was probably of
little importance to anyone except the catfish and me.

The story of Weldon Holland continues in James Lee Burke's atmospheric thriller
Wayfaring Stranger

“Burke’s evocative prose remains a thing of reliably fierce wonder.”—
Entertainment Weekly

Wayfaring Stranger

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ISBN 978-1-4767-6985-1