My Life with Bonnie and Clyde (21 page)

“That’s why Clyde went after him,” she said. “So he would have some help, someone he could depend on when he got in a tight spot.”

Buck told her she knew better than that! He said if anything should happen she knew she would be the first one put in the car and that he would fight for her just the same as he would for a sister, because Clyde loved her. Then he said she should be ashamed of her outburst.

Bonnie told us to get out and leave her alone with W. D., that he could take care of her until Clyde came back. When she jumped off the bed earlier, her burns started bleeding and hurting her again. She had to have more Amytal to put her to sleep. She told us to leave them now, because she would see to it that Clyde left us when he came back, so why wait? Buck said we
would not leave them until Clyde came back, but we would rent another cabin. They would need another cabin anyway when Clyde came back with her mother, not knowing then that Billie would be arriving instead. Regardless, the situation would be the same. So, Buck rented a single and we moved in. We left the car in their garage, though, so it would be easier to put Bonnie in it if we should have to leave there in a hurry. We saw that Bonnie had every care we could give her, even after the argument.

Bonnie told Clyde everything that happened, and a lot more that she made up. I still kept on cooking their meals at their cabin, even after Billie came. I helped her cook. She didn’t say anything about what Bonnie had told her, but I knew she had been told a lot because she acted so indifferent toward me, but not toward Buck.
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Billie never started anything, so I didn’t say anything about it either. I wasn’t looking for trouble with her, but I wasn’t running from her either. I showed her I was just as indifferent as she was. Soon she became more friendly.

Clyde started trying to get Bonnie to quit taking so much dope. They got into an argument. Clyde told us if she was still taking dope after she was well that Billie could take her back to her mother, where she apparently wanted to go. He would not stay with her now if she kept getting crazier on that stuff.
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Bonnie wouldn’t let him put medicine on the burn to heal it. She wouldn’t allow anything on it but Unguentine. But it was keeping the burns too soft for them to heal. Clyde finally got some kind of acid solution that helped.
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One day Buck and W. D. had to go someplace and rob something. They went to Fayetteville, Arkansas. When they left they said they would be back before dark. That afternoon, when the time came for them to return, they were nowhere in sight. I couldn’t help but worry about Buck whenever he was gone, but when he failed to return on time I began to worry even more. I feared he may be lying someplace in a pool of his own blood, dying. And here I was, helpless to do anything about it.

I sat by the window, watching the cars go by, but I never saw one that Buck was driving. I saw an ambulance go by, its shrill siren blowing. “Oh, God,” I thought. “Could it be going after him?”
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Darkness was slowly coming on. I could no longer see the occupants of the cars. I began to walk the floor of the small cabin. Soon Clyde came in and told me to pack up and put our bags in the roadster that was parked in our garage.

“Don’t get excited now,” he said. “Buck is alright! He is in our cabin, but they had to kill an officer and leave the car. They walked in and come in
the back window.
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Both of them are alright, except they are shook up a bit. They had a wreck.

Fort Smith and Alma, Arkansas; scale: 1 = 8 mi. Based on a contemporary map in the editor’s possession.

“We will have to leave, so put your bags in the car before you come to our cabin. I will drive the car in our garage and load Bonnie and our things in it. Don’t act as though you are in any hurry when you are walking to our cabin.”

I got everything in the car in a very short time but it was so hard for me to keep from running to Clyde’s cabin to see Buck. When I got inside and saw Buck had blood on his face, hand, and arm I rushed to him. Seeing blood on him would almost drive me crazy. I knew he was hurt more than he would say.

My first words were always the same, “Oh, Daddy, are you hurt badly? “No, Baby,” was the reply from him.

I was so glad to see him again and feel his arms around me. It was heavenly to be near him and know he was alive. His lower lip was busted and his face was cut in several places. One of his hands was swollen and bleeding. He said he wasn’t shot, just cut up from the wreck.

“Oh, honey,” Buck said. “I believe I killed a man.
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I sure do hate it. I hope he doesn’t die. I never wanted to have to kill anyone, but I am afraid this man might die if he is not already dead. I don’t know if I killed him or if W. D. did it. We were both shooting at him and the other one. So if he dies, I’ll be just as much to blame as anyone. I never thought I would have murder on my soul, but now I guess I will have.”

He was that way. It hurt him. It was almost as if some of his own people had been shot. He loved life and didn’t want to take it away from others.
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After getting everything in the small roadster, Clyde, Bonnie, Billie, and I drove away, leaving Buck and W. D. at the cabin.
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Clyde would go back for them as soon as he got us out of town and hidden someplace in the woods. Buck and W. D. had stashed their rifles near Van Buren and wanted to go back for them. I wanted to stay with Buck, but he sent me on with Clyde and the others.

Clyde took us to some isolated spot southwest of town and left us some distance from the road. We fixed a place for Bonnie to lie down and then we waited. The night was so dark we could hardly see each other, but we didn’t dare light a match for fear someone would see it and investigate. If a snake or lizard crawled by us, we would just sit as still as mice until they went on their way. There were mosquitoes and all kinds of other insects in the air. And the only light we had came from the lightning bugs flying around us.

Bonnie was afraid of the dark, as well as bugs and snakes. I wasn’t afraid of the darkness or the insects, but I was afraid of snakes. We waited. It seemed like hours passed before Clyde, W. D., and Buck came to get us. Then the six of us rode away in the small car. They had meant to get another car but couldn’t find one they could steal.

We hadn’t gone far into the mountains before we began having one flat tire after another. Late that night we stopped near Antlers, Oklahoma, and slept until daybreak. Then we drove within fifteen miles of Durant, Oklahoma, and stayed far back in the woods the rest of the day. Late that afternoon we got back on the highway and went to a tourist camp where we had stayed once before. We got a double cabin and stayed there that night. The next day a larger car was stolen and the roadster was left behind. They couldn’t keep two cars. Buck could not drive because of his hand and Clyde always wanted W. D. to be in the car with him.

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Platte City

Editor’s note: July 1933

During July, the Barrow gang engaged a number of Missouri officers in a vicious gun battle near Platte City, Missouri. The gang escaped but Blanche and Buck Barrow were both wounded. Five days later, the gang was discovered hiding near an abandoned amusement park near Dexter, Iowa. A gunfight ensued. Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker, and W. D. Jones, all wounded, escaped. Buck Barrow was wounded again and captured, along with Blanche, later in the morning. On July 29, Buck Barrow died in a Perry, Iowa, hospital. His wife was extradited to Missouri to face a charge of assault with intent to kill
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Apart from this, most of the month’s headlines focused on aviation news. On July 9, Amelia Earhart set a new record for U.S. transcontinental flight. Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh were reportedly mapping new aerial routes over Labrador and Greenland. And on July 23, the day before the shoot-out near Dexter, Iowa, Wiley Post completed the first solo flight around the world. That same day, in a statement to Dallas County Sheriff Richard Allen “Smoot” Schmid, Cumie Barrow said of her sons, Clyde and Buck, “They’re living on borrowed time. You know that as well as I do.”
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In Joplin, Missouri, Hollis Hale, an accomplice of Clyde Barrow, confessed to helping Barrow and Frank Hardy rob a bank at Oronogo, Missouri, on November 30, 1932. In addition, in July, two hurricanes struck the Texas coast, cotton prices rose steadily, and one of the most visible and powerful couples in Hollywood, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, divorced.
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Billie Parker Mace. “Clyde wanted to send Billie back home, but she didn’t want to go.” (Courtesy of the Texas/Dallas Archives Division, Dallas Public Library)

A
FTER LEAVING THE CAMP
near Durant, we started driving again, going no place in particular. When money was needed, some small place was robbed. When a car was needed, one was stolen. When guns and ammunition were needed, some armory was burglarized at night. We roamed over many states, leaving a trail of horror behind us, terrorizing those Clyde came in contact with and needed something from.

Bonnie was getting much better now and Clyde wanted to send Billie back home, but she didn’t want to go. She and W. D. had become sweethearts not long after Clyde brought her to Fort Smith.

On the Fourth of July, we were in Pueblo, Colorado. We had spent the previous day, July 3, in the mountains near there. Afterward, we drove to
Denison, Texas, and Billie went home.
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Clyde had enough money to buy her a new outfit and to pay for her fare home. But she didn’t want to take a bus or train so we drove to Denison and she caught the Interurban there.
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W. D. Jones. “She [Billie] and W. D. had become sweethearts.” (Courtesy of L. J. Hinton)

From Denison we started driving in circles again. It seemed as though we always drove in circles through many states—Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Nebraska, South Dakota, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kansas, Iowa, and back to Missouri.
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Some few days or weeks after we left Fort Smith, we stopped at a tourist camp about thirty-five miles from Enid, Oklahoma.
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One afternoon, Clyde and Buck drove away saying they would be back late that night. I later found out they drove to Enid and burglarized an armory there.
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But at that time, I didn’t know where they had gone. They returned at about four o’clock in the morning with more guns and ammunition than I had ever seen at one time in my whole life.
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They also had several pairs of field glasses. They said we needed the glasses to scan roads to see if they are blocked so we
don’t drive into a trap. And they could be used at night when the moon shone bright and one of us was on watch. We could see at great distances with them, leaving plenty of time to wake the rest before anyone got near enough to recognize us.