My Life with Bonnie and Clyde (15 page)

Bonnie jumped out of the car. She wanted to show how tough she thought she was. Clyde made the man get in our car.
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Bonnie cursed the woman and told her to do the same. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the man and woman. They looked so frightened. Clyde took the keys to the coupe and made the man and woman sit on the front seat with Bonnie and him.
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We began looking for W. D. again. Again, we tried to follow his tire tracks but we couldn’t tell whether or not he’d turned onto other roads. We rode for a long time looking for him, and then finally gave up hope.

We rode into Arkansas. Clyde meant to keep the man and women until after dark. They told us who they were and Clyde told them who we were. They seemed to be more frightened than ever. The man was an undertaker.
The woman was a radio announcer, something about recipes or how to can fruit.
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They begged Clyde not kill them. Clyde told them if they were careful and didn’t try any funny stuff they would be released unharmed.

That afternoon Clyde drove down a country road and parked far away from the nearest house. He told the man and woman he was going to free them if they would promise to keep their backs turned until we were out of sight. They promised they would. Clyde asked the man if he had any money. He said he only had twenty-five cents. Clyde did not shake him down to see if he had more. He gave them five dollars to help them get back home or to use to wire home for more money.
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Clyde asked the man if he would like to embalm him when he died. The undertaker said he would not, that he hoped Clyde lived a long time. Clyde only laughed because he knew the man would like to embalm him that very minute, but was afraid to say so.
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Clyde also said he was sorry if he hurt the man very bad. We left them there in Arkansas, but as we drove away, they turned around just enough to get our license number.
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We knew we would soon be as hot as we were two weeks before.

I’d gotten over being so afraid every time something happened. But whenever I thought about the possibility of losing Buck, I burst out crying. I was an awful crybaby and must have been a burden to all of them. But I would have rather been shot through the heart than to have lost Buck. And I was still unsure about whether I could shoot anyone down, even if it meant their life or mine. I just didn’t have the courage to fight back, even though fate had dealt me a terrible blow. I was too softhearted to take a human life. I just couldn’t do it.

And I wanted to never see another gun. We couldn’t sit comfortably in the car because of all the guns—guns everywhere! I got a lot of razzing because I hated guns so much. I had never been afraid of them before we got into trouble, but I knew someday they would take Buck away from me. I didn’t think about what they may do to me. I didn’t care. Life wouldn’t mean anything to me anyway if Buck were killed. I suffered a million deaths and the very tortures of hell, day and night, with fear of losing him. Sometimes when my aching heart seemed as though it would burst, I thought of killing myself. That awful pain of fear was like a million devils tearing me apart. I was happy just to be near Buck, but if anyone can live in heaven and hell at the same time, I did. Certainly few will understand how I felt, and many may not be able to understand why I didn’t fight back, loving Buck as I did and knowing some officer would shoot him down
sooner or later. Buck worried a lot too. He often cursed himself for not listening to me. Now we were in over our heads.

After the man and woman were released, late in the afternoon, we got on the main highway near Hope, Arkansas.
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We had a choice of crossing into Louisiana by way of a toll bridge near there or using the one at Shreveport. Clyde said it would be better to cross near Hope, because he thought it would be safer. But as we entered Hope, we saw a squad car leaving town. Clyde turned down a side street so he wouldn’t meet them. We were sure they were looking for us. But they saw us anyway and turned onto the same street. One of the officers put his rifle out the car, around the windshield. Clyde stepped on the gas and started cutting corners. He told Buck to shoot them through the back window. Buck raised his rifle. They were close to us and could have easily been shot, but Buck didn’t fire. Neither did the officers. Clyde soon lost them by simply outdriving them.
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Again, we hit muddy country roads. Some were even worse than the ones we had traveled earlier in the day. We could hardy make it through the mud in some places. The ride was plenty rough, but if the officers had caught up with us, their bullets would have been worse.

We traveled south to Louisiana and crossed over to Shreveport by way of the toll bridge there. It was pretty risky, but we had to take lots of chances. From Shreveport, we continued south. It was past midnight when we stopped in the pinewoods and slept for a few hours.
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Buck, Bonnie, and I took turns keeping watch while the others slept. We always tried to let Clyde get as much sleep as he could, because he did most of the driving.

We felt better after a little sleep. We would have to drive to Dallas to see if W. D. had gone home, or if he had been captured, or maybe killed.
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Clyde was worried about him because the wound he’d received in Joplin had not yet healed completely. When we drove through Palestine, Texas, we bought a newspaper. Our names were in big headlines.
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6

Friction

Editor’s Note: May 1933

May was relatively quiet for the Barrow brothers. They were involved in at least two bank robberies, both rather bizarre and both attributed to others. Apart from those incidents, they apparently roamed at will through a large number of states and visited the Dallas area at least once. Otherwise, storms, more crime, and economic relief dominated the news of the month
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On the second, eighty-nine people were reported killed and another thousand injured by tornadoes in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi. On May 10, storms killed sixty-seven in Tennessee and Kentucky. On the twelfth, the day the Barrow gang sprayed Lucerne, Indiana, with automatic weapons fire following a failed robbery, flooding in central Indiana was reported as the worst in twenty years. A week later, on the very day the Barrow brothers robbed the First State Bank of Okabena, Minnesota, six were injured by heavy rain and lightning overnight. Fourteen people died when tornadoes swept through Kansas and Nebraska on the twenty-third. Two days later heavy thunderstorms struck Dallas, Texas, swelling the Trinity River to flood stage. The month closed with tornadoes touching down in rural Dallas County
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A number of banks were robbed in May. In addition to those in Lucerne, Indiana and Okabena, Minnesota, already mentioned, banks in St. John, Missouri; Prague, Oklahoma; and several other cities were also looted. In Lucerne it was reported that two women, “one of them a blonde armed with an automatic rifle,” fired several volleys from a moving car as they and their cohorts escaped. “This’ll learn ya!” one of the women reportedly yelled from the speeding car
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Apart from Nazi book burnings in Germany, the Japanese army’s push toward the Chinese capital, and the opening of the Chicago World’s Fair, the rest of the month’s news was economic. On May 12, while the Barrow gang was shooting up Lucerne, Indiana, President Roosevelt signed the Farm Currency Act, extending immediate relief to the agricultural industry. Roosevelt also urged mortgagers to suspend farm foreclosures. Nevertheless, on the same day 900,000 independent farmers joined in a general strike, which had originated in St. Paul, Minnesota. On the fifteenth, dairy farmers blocked roads in Wisconsin and Illinois to stop milk shipments until wholesale prices rose. Two days later Roosevelt submitted a $3.3 billion employment plan to Congress
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The last week in May saw J. Pierpont Morgan, described as “the world’s most powerful banker,” appearing before the U.S. Senate Banking Committee to explain, among other things, why he had paid no income tax in 1931 and 1932. Reportedly “sweating profusely,” Morgan also had to answer questions regarding an alleged list of “preferred customers” to whom he would sell securities at below-market value. Among the names on the list: World War I hero General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing and former President Calvin Coolidge. Two days later, it was revealed that partners in Morgan’s firm had issued themselves loans from company assets. Such revelations only served to galvanize public opinion against the banking industry and big business in general
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On the next-to-last day of May, Barrow cohort Raymond Hamilton was in the Hill County (Texas) jail facing his second trial for the April 30, 1932, murder of Hillsboro store owner John N. Bucher. The night before, Mark Kitchen, a key witness against Hamilton, was abducted by two men who beat him, tied him up with barbed wire, and threatened to kill him if he testified
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I
N
D
ALLAS, WHEN WE
saw Mrs. Barrow, we learned that W. D. had not been there and that nothing had been printed in the papers about him.
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Clyde left word for W. D., saying that he would be back for him soon. Then we started driving day and night again. We traveled so fast and through so many towns and states that I lost all track of time. I often didn’t even know what day it was. We lived in the car day and night with very little sleep, just driving like mad, going no place. We had to keep ahead of the cops. If we stayed in one place very long they would catch up with us, although we did stay at a lake near Warsaw, Indiana, for a few days.

When we needed money, which was often, some filling station, grocery store, or drug store was robbed. Then we’d drive three or four hundred miles before stopping to rest for a few hours. Once Buck and Clyde robbed a small-town bank.
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They left Bonnie and me about eight or ten miles
outside of town, in the country. We were to drive into town in the morning and pick them up at a certain time.
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They stayed in the bank almost all night, waiting for it to open in the morning. They had hidden on top of the vault. When the banker came in to open the vault, he saw them. Before they could rob him, he jumped into the vault, grabbed a gun, and came out shooting. I don’t think anyone was shot. We never read anything about it in the papers.
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By then, we’d driven in to pick them up. I don’t even know what town it was, but as we rode through the outskirts an old man tried to stop the car. Clyde told Buck to shoot the man. Buck said he could not shoot an old man, or anyone else unless they were shooting at him and that it was his only way out.
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The old man threw a large chunk of wood in front of the car. Clyde almost hit it. If he had, it would have been too bad for all of us.
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Clyde laid one of the rifles across Bonnie’s lap, with the barrel sticking out the window. He told Bonnie to hold it up and shoot. She did. We heard later that a woman was wounded in the arm.
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I was so scared that Buck made me lie down on the floor between the seats. I couldn’t see out. That made me more afraid. In the end, they got no money and had to rob some other place before the day was gone.
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A few days later, Buck stole a Ford V-8 coupe so we could have our own car. He and Clyde were always arguing. They just couldn’t agree on anything. Clyde wanted to go back to Dallas and get W. D. Buck told him to leave the kid alone, that he was too young. Buck said he was sure that W. D. had wanted to get way from it all or he wouldn’t have kept on going after stealing the car in Ruston.

We mailed a letter to Mrs. Barrow and told her to write to us in Terre Haute, Indiana. We got a cabin there and stayed a few days until we heard from her. She told us she had heard that W. D. was home, but he had not come to see her.

We had already driven through ten or fifteen states. Now we started driving again. It was the same thing over and over. One time I was left in the coupe several miles outside of a small town while they went into town to rob a grocery store. I refused to take any part in any of the robberies. They could razz me about being afraid as much as they wanted to. I didn’t care. I refused to have anything to do with killing and robbing anyone. And besides, I was afraid Buck would be killed.

The three of them went to rob the grocery store. Buck told me what to do if he should be shot and killed, or caught. But if something ever happened
to him, I would not have left him to go home until I was able to see him and do all I could for him. I was always afraid Clyde would just run away and leave him if there was trouble.

Part of the time I spent driving back and forth along the road where they had left me. But mostly I just sat in the parked car and cried while they were gone. The minutes seemed like hours. I prayed Buck would be sent back to me alive and unharmed. But my prayers were not always answered.

Then I saw Clyde’s car coming over a small hill. He was driving like mad and did not slow up when he got near. I knew something had gone wrong. I already had the motor running. When they passed they waved to me to follow. I did. As they passed, I saw two or three bullet holes in the back window. I immediately thought Buck had been shot because he was in the back. I was so excited for those few seconds that I am surprised I did not wreck the car. At one point, I slowed down a little but Clyde started getting way ahead of me. I stepped on the gas. The speedometer climbed to seventy-five, then eighty, and ninety. It topped out at ninety-five. I couldn’t make it go faster, but I knew I had to keep up with them. The only time I took my foot off the gas was when I had to turn a corner. Clyde kept turning down side roads. I almost turned the car over a couple of times, but managed somehow to straighten out and keep up with them.
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Finally, Clyde thought it was safe enough to stop just long enough for Buck to get in my car. He took the wheel and was I glad!

I saw blood on his hands and face and on his shoes. I almost went into hysterics and began asking what had happened and if he was hurt badly. He said he was okay. He had only been nicked in the little finger. His ring had saved the finger from being shot off. There was a dent in the ring from the buckshot. The blood on his face had come from his hand.