My Life with Bonnie and Clyde (16 page)

I asked him about his legs. He said he thought he had some buckshot in his hips and legs, but that they were not deep. He thought I could cut them out as soon as we stopped. I was relieved to know he wasn’t hurt badly. Buck told me Clyde had been shot too.

We stopped when we found a place to leave the sedan with the bullet holes. We put everything in the coupe and all crowded in. I knew we could not ride like this for long. They began talking and laughing about what had happened. They told me the whole story.

They had robbed a place and taken a hostage, walking the man out to the street.
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They told him to keep walking but the man ran into another store, got a shotgun, and started shooting at them. Bonnie was in the sedan,
behind the wheel.
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Clyde jumped on the front fender and told her to start driving. She did, but almost left Buck. He caught the back fender and somehow jumped on the moving car. Clyde and Buck were shooting with their pistols but didn’t hit anyone.

The First State Bank of Okabena, Minnesota, 1933. “[T]he glass was all shot out of the coupe, but no one was hurt.” (Courtesy of the First State Bank, Okabena, Minnesota)

Clyde was lying across the hood. Bonnie said she could hardly see the road because of him climbing around on the car like a monkey. Bonnie kept laughing at Clyde because he looked so funny on the hood of the car. The man with shotgun was shooting at him. Most of the buckshot hit him in the hips. One hit his left arm but had only gone under the skin. They were well on their way before either of the boys got in the car.

We soon stopped to cut the buckshot out of Clyde and Buck and to treat their wounds. I didn’t like that job because I was so afraid I may cut too deep. The small surgical knife we had was very sharp. One false move would have done more harm than if we had left the shot in. I cut nearly all of the slugs out of Buck’s hips and legs. Two were so deep in the muscles of his leg that I could not get to them. Buck said they would eventually work their way out, to just leave them. He said they didn’t hurt much anyway.
Clyde wouldn’t let Bonnie or Buck take the buckshot out of him. He said they could just stay in. And they did!

Rear of the old First State Bank building, Okabena, Minnesota, 2003. A gunfight erupted at the back door (lower left) on May 19, 1933, when the Barrow brothers robbed the bank. (Photograph by Esther L. Weiser)

It only took a few minutes to treat the wounds. Soon we were on our way again, driving through state after state. It was always the same thing over and over. Eventually they stole another car. They were going to use it to rob something then leave it, but we traveled in the second car for a few weeks. At least we weren’t so cramped anymore.

Then Clyde and Buck spotted another small-town bank and decided to try their luck again at bank robbery. Bonnie and I were left in the country with the new car. Clyde and Buck took the coupe into town. They stayed in the bank from about one o’clock in the morning until the employees arrived and it was time for the vault to open.
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While we were waiting for them, it began raining. Soon a hailstorm developed. The wind blew, lightning flashed, and the thunder was so loud you couldn’t hear anything else. Several times the car felt as though it would be blown over. Bonnie was so frightened she hardly knew what to do. She
covered her head with pillows so she couldn’t see the lightning and started crying, saying she wanted to be home with her mother.
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I wasn’t afraid of storms at that time and laughed at her fears, as they had laughed at me for being afraid of machine gun fire. Of course, it wasn’t that I was afraid for myself; it was that I feared Buck would be killed. I couldn’t understand why Bonnie would be so afraid of storms. She didn’t act that bad when she was in a gun battle, but she feared God’s work more than machine-gun fire.
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The storm lasted about three hours as best as I can remember. The next morning the sun was shining bright. We waited and waited for what seemed like a hundred years, like the way someone would feel waiting to be hung.
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I had to wash my face and eyes many times to keep awake. We had tried to let each other sleep a few minutes at a time after the storm had stopped, but we couldn’t sleep much. We were so worried about Clyde and Buck.

When Clyde and Buck finally arrived, the glass was all shot out of the coupe, but no one was hurt.
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They left the coupe behind and got in the new car with us. We drove to another small town and stopped to eat breakfast. Afterward we filled the car with gas and oil. I sat on the floor most of the time. I was afraid of Clyde’s fast driving, especially when we had to make a lot of turns, so I stayed on the floor, where Buck first made me sit, so I couldn’t see.

They got about $100 from the bank, the most money they had made from one robbery since we had been with them. Clyde didn’t like robbing banks. He thought it was too risky.
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Instead, he liked robbing three or four filling stations, even if it meant having a bigger battle than he would have had at a bank. Buck told Clyde he would rather try and get enough money to live on for a couple of months, instead of having to rob something every day or two. But Clyde couldn’t see it that way.

We started for home, Dallas, to see Mrs. Barrow. And Clyde still wanted to get W. D. back with him. The country roads we drove on were very dusty. The car was soon filled with dust. We were so dusty you could hardly tell who we were. That afternoon they decided to stop and clean up. They found a small creek far enough from any town to be safe for a couple hours. We cleaned the car, took baths, and put on what few clean clothes we had. Then we drove to a nearby town to buy food and more clothes.

The next day they were going to get another car, or maybe two. Clyde spotted a Ford V-8 roadster; he wanted it. Buck told him they should try to get a sedan so we could all be in the same car in Dallas. But Clyde said
he had been looking for a roadster like that for a long time and it was too good-looking to leave. So he took it and we followed. That afternoon we changed everything to the roadster. Buck drove the sedan into the woods, some distance from the highway, and set fire to it.
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They thought they had gotten everything out of it, but later found out they had either lost twenty-five or fifty dollars in silver, or had left it in the car.
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Buck hadn’t found a car for us yet, so we all had to ride in the roadster. We had not been riding more than a couple hours before Buck and Clyde got into an argument about it being so crowded in the car. Buck was driving to give Clyde a chance to rest. He also wanted to drive to relieve himself from the cramped conditions. We were having to sit in each others’ laps, but Buck could hardly stand it because his legs were shot up so badly. Then Bonnie started getting tired of sitting in Clyde’s lap, and he was getting tired of holding her. Buck started complaining about all of us having to ride that way. Soon the argument came to blows. I was sitting between them and got hit more than they did. I was also trying to get them to stop fighting but there wasn’t anything I could do.

Buck stopped the car and told Clyde to get out, that he would show him what he could do. But Clyde wouldn’t fight fair. He grabbed his shotgun, the one he had killed most of his victims with. He had done that before, during an argument, so I knew he wouldn’t fight fair. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have tried to stop them from fighting because I thought Buck could have whipped him in a fair fight. But Buck would have never grabbed his gun. He didn’t want to kill Clyde. But Clyde would shoot him if he got mad enough, and he usually got that mad. But he didn’t shoot Buck that day, even though he said he was going to.
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If Clyde had shot Buck, he would have had to kill me too. Of course, I think that would have been a pleasure to him.
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Anyway, it looked as though Buck and Clyde could no longer get along. And sooner or later, Clyde would kill Buck, because Clyde wouldn’t fight without a gun.

When the argument was over, I asked Buck if we couldn’t ride in the rumble seat. He said it would be almost as bad, but I asked him to try. It was much better than all four of us riding in one seat.

7

Mother’s Day

T
HEY WANTED ME TO
go Dallas alone on Mother’s Day. Originally, they had meant for all of us to drive in, but if we did that they couldn’t go by and see Bonnie’s mother. Bonnie and Clyde had a fight about that. She was going to shoot him, but Buck grabbed the gun out of her hand, threw it back in the car, and told her she was crazy. He always tried to separate them when they fought, especially if one of them got too rough with the other. And likewise, if Buck and I got into a fight, Clyde would butt in. But Buck and I never thought of guns when we got into an argument. If one of us had shot the other, the survivor would have committed suicide. Clyde and Bonnie would have probably done the same thing. They loved one another too much to live without each other.

So after the fight it was decided only one of us would go in to Dallas. Neither Clyde nor Buck could go and Clyde was afraid for Bonnie to go. So Buck said I could go. He knew I wouldn’t be afraid. He would worry about me and hated to see me go without protection, but he knew I would be careful and not be afraid. I dressed and got ready to make the trip.

They drove me to Muskogee, Oklahoma. I could take a bus from there. They would get a cabin in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and rest up. I asked Buck not to get drunk while I was gone. He promised he wouldn’t. He said they would get a good night’s sleep and then drive to the spot where they were supposed to meet me, Mrs. Barrow, Mrs. Parker, and W. D. (if I could find him and he wanted to come back to Clyde). We were to meet them in
northeast Texas between Commerce and Cooper at two o’clock the next day.
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I was told to pay someone fifty dollars to drive all of us out to meet them.

They drove me to Muskogee, gave me about four hundred dollars, and told me again what to do if I should be unlucky enough to get thrown in jail. They said they would come and get me or see that I was soon released. Buck kissed me goodbye, told me to be careful, and to be sure to be at the meeting place on time. If I was more than two hours late they would know I was in jail or that something else had gone wrong. They would drive in to see Mrs. Barrow and find out what had happened. I told them I would be on time if nothing happened to me. I told them to be on time as well because I would be worried about them anyway, although I wouldn’t worry so much if I knew they were not going to start drinking and get drunk. I feared what might to happen to them if they did.

They left me. I waited until they were out of sight, then called a taxi from a nearby store. At the bus station I learned that a bus had just left for Dallas. I would have to wait until about nine o’clock that night for the next one. I had the whole afternoon to myself and didn’t know what to do.

I went to a show and stayed until 8:30. When I came out, I called a taxi, went back to the bus station, and waited. No one seemed to notice me. I guess I wasn’t much different from anyone else. I wasn’t worried about myself, but I did worry a lot about Buck. So many things could happen while I was away from him. But I believed they would do as they promised, get some sleep and get cleaned up. They really needed baths and clean clothes. And Buck and Clyde each needed a shave and a haircut.

I was glad when I got on the bus. I knew I could finally get a little sleep. In fact, I hadn’t been on board long before I fell asleep. The bus driver had to wake me up when we changed buses at some town. I was so sleepy; I don’t even remember where it was. I didn’t even care. I could hardly wake up.

The layover there was only about ten or fifteen minutes. I went into the station cafe, ate a piece of coconut pie, and drank a glass of milk. Then I stepped into the restroom, washed my face, and put on fresh makeup. That woke me up.

When I got on the second bus, the driver from the first one came to see about me. He said he just wanted to be sure I did not miss my bus. He laughingly told the other driver to take care of me and see that I was awake when we arrived in Dallas.
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He said I had been sleeping like a baby and that I still looked sleepy. If they had known how much sleep I had lost and how tired I really was, they would have understood why I was such a sleepyhead.