My Life with Bonnie and Clyde (13 page)

That night Clyde cut the barrel and stock off one rifle. He thought it would be much easier to handle, but when he tried it the next day, it wouldn’t work right. It would only shoot once instead of twenty times.
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Everything continued in about the same way for the next few days. Buck and I still had a few dollars left, enough to get us back home to Dallas, but Clyde’s bankroll was getting low. One day he left and came back with some money. He did not say where he had gone or what he had robbed and I didn’t ask any questions because I thought if they wanted me to know they would have told me. Anyway, I didn’t want to know where he went or what he did.

On April 11 or 12, Clyde and W. D. left for some unknown place in Oklahoma. Clyde wanted us to stay a few days longer. Buck told him we would, but Buck had already promised me we would go home that Friday, April 14. He wanted to do a little work on our car and get it in good shape for the trip. Clyde and W. D. returned late that afternoon, but instead of one car, they had two. They had seen a Ford V-8 roadster, thought it was pretty, stole it, and put it in the garage. Surely, someone saw them drive it into the garage, I thought. Bonnie told Clyde he was crazy for doing anything like that. She said if he kept the car there, she would leave because she knew someone would call the law out to investigate. But Clyde said he would only keep it there that night, then use it the next day for a robbery and leave it some place else. They kept arguing until they both were mad enough to fight, which is what they did. And Clyde wasn’t very easy with her either. He knocked her across the bedroom a couple of times but she
got up and went back for more. Bonnie had tried as best she could to keep the place from getting hot. She did not want Buck and I to get into trouble and have to live the life she and Clyde were living.
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I asked Buck if he meant to go home Friday as he had promised. He said he didn’t know. He had promised Clyde we would stay a few days longer. I wasn’t very pleased about Clyde stealing another car and bringing it to the apartment. That would surely get heat on the place. I told Buck that it seemed like Clyde was just trying to get him into trouble so he would have to stay with him until he was shot down by officers, which would certainly happen to Clyde sooner or later.
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And I told Buck that maybe he did not know whether he was going home or not, but I did! I had taken all I could stand. If he wanted to stay with his beloved brother Clyde, then he could. He could just choose between the two of us because I was leaving with him or without him! With that, he made up his mind quick, because he thought I would go alone if he didn’t go with me.

Thursday morning, April 13, Buck began getting the car ready for us to leave early the following day. He worked most of the day, had the oil changed, and filled the tank with gas. Although we didn’t get up early that day, we did get up earlier than usual. But Bonnie stayed in bed until noon. She didn’t feel very well after the fight the night before, although she and Clyde had made up and everything was back to normal between them.

Clyde was going to take the roadster away someplace and rob something. Bonnie wanted to go with Clyde, but because she didn’t feel well, Clyde wanted her to rest in bed. So she decided to stay behind. Clyde and W. D. would go alone.

All of us had the jitters and felt as if a bomb was about to explode. None of us felt good about staying in the apartment another night. Before he left, Clyde told us where we could find a good tourist park to stay and that he and W. D. would meet us there when they got back. Early Friday morning Buck and I could load our car and get ready to leave for home. The other three would watch the apartment and go someplace else if it was hot. They would be able to tell if anyone had been there.

Clyde said he and W. D. would be back sometime Thursday night and would see us before we left. He said we could draw what was left of the deposit for the lights, water, and gas, about twenty-five dollars.

I cleaned up our bedroom, the living room and bath, and had almost all our clothes ready so it would only take a few minutes for me to pack them. I cooked our lunch, but did not have the kitchen all cleaned. I also wanted
to wash some of our clothes before we left for home. I would do that in the kitchen sink.

About four-fifteen or five o’clock that afternoon, Buck was just finishing the work on the car and had driven it around to the back to put it in the garage until we were ready to leave the apartment. Bonnie was sitting in the center of the living room rug recopying some of the poetry she had written. She still had on her kimono, nightgown, house slippers, and no hose. I was wearing a blue crepe dress that had once been an evening gown. I had hemmed it at the bottom to make it into a housedress to wear around in the apartment while we were there. The shoulders were lace and the back was low-cut. Like Bonnie, I wore no hose. But I did have on a pair of black kid pumps.

I was letting the clothes soak for a few minutes in the kitchen sink. I had taken my watch off and laid it in the cabinet so it wouldn’t get wet. I did not want to lose or break it because Buck had given it to me just before we were married. I wanted to keep it always.

I was nervous that afternoon. I felt as though I couldn’t stay in one place long. Bonnie wanted me to boil an egg for her. While it was on the stove, I took a deck of cards out and tried to settle myself down by playing solitaire before I washed the clothes. But I had no luck. Old Sol would beat me every time.

I went to see about Bonnie’s egg. It was done. I broke the shell and gave it to her. My dog was at my heels wherever I went. About this time, we heard someone say, “Stop!” Then one of the garage doors opened. I looked out the living room window and saw Buck opening the other door of the garage for Clyde and W. D. I told Bonnie who it was. She said she wished she had gone with them the first time, that something must have gone wrong, or maybe they had come back after the other car. She said she would go with them now.

She and I ran down the stairs to find out why they had come back so soon. They told us they had burned the motor out in the roadster and had come back after the sedan. Clyde said Bonnie could go with them if she wanted to. W. D. could drive the roadster out of town and leave it.

Bonnie went back to finish recopying her poem.
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She was going to finish it, then get ready to go with them. I still had the cards in my hand but had gone in the kitchen for something. Clyde and W. D. were in the garage unloading the guns from the roadster and putting them in the sedan. All of a sudden, we heard something that sounded like someone had turned a
machine gun on the place. But the shots sounded muffled, as though they were in the garage, or behind it. I went to one of the kitchen windows but I couldn’t see anyone.

“We heard Clyde holler, ‘Oh, lordy! Let’s get started!’” (From the Blanche Caldwell Barrow scrapbooks, courtesy of Rhea Leen Linder)

We heard Clyde holler, “Oh, lordy! Let’s get started!”

At first, we thought he had just accidentally discharged one of the rifles and couldn’t get it to stop firing.
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Then Buck came running up the stairs without a gun or anything.
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He told us to get ready to leave, that the cops were there. I was still in the kitchen. Bonnie said later she fired a shot through
one of the living room windows but I did not see her, or hear the glass break.
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I didn’t even know the window was broken or that any shots had been fired upstairs. I didn’t know just what to do, but I didn’t see why Buck and I had to leave with the other three. We hadn’t done anything. But Buck said we must leave.

I thought of my purse in our bedroom. It had Buck’s pardon papers, my divorce papers, and our marriage license in it. I also thought of Buck’s coat with the title to our car in the pocket. I thought, “I must get those things! I cannot leave those here if we have to leave now!” But I forgot about my watch.
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The dog was running around as if he was trying to figure out what all the excitement was about, or what I was going to do next. He kept getting in my way. I picked him up and set him on a table in the kitchen and told him to stay there. But as I opened the swing door that led from the kitchen to the living room, he ran out and started downstairs.
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Then I ran into W. D. He was holding his right side. When he saw me, he caught me around the neck and then he almost fell to the floor. I nearly went down with him but I caught him around the waist and braced myself against the door jam and kept us both from falling.

He kept saying, “Blanche, they shot me! I am dying! Please do something for me!”

I had been on my way to the bedroom to get my purse and coat and Buck’s coat too but I couldn’t get there with W. D. holding on to me, begging me to do something for him and not to let him die. I didn’t know what to do for him. Poor kid. I guess he was in a lot of pain and thought he was going to die. That upset my nerves more than ever. They weren’t too steady anyway. I was too excited to know what to do next.

W. D. left Clyde alone in the garage. Buck started down the steps to see if Clyde was dead. I screamed for him not to go down. I thought he would be killed too. But he went anyway. The dog followed but came back.

By the time Buck got to the garage the shooting had stopped. Clyde hollered for us to come down so we could get away from there. Bonnie went downstairs first. I don’t remember how W. D. and I ever got down to the car. I helped him onto the backseat of the sedan.

I did not see Buck or Clyde. I was almost crazy with fear, scared of Buck getting killed. But when I started around the car to look for him, I saw him running toward me. I still did not see Clyde but I saw a man lying on the garage floor. He wore a blue suit like Clyde’s and his hair was brown. I thought at first that it was Clyde.
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Wes Harryman and his family. “I saw a man lying on the garage floor.” (Courtesy of Jim Hounschell)

Buck had just moved away from the man on the floor. I ran toward him near the door. Then I heard Clyde say, “Get in the car.” I don’t know where he came from. My memory is just a bit hazy but I thought he meant for us to get in the officers’ car that was about halfway in the door.
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He was standing near it.

I was so excited I didn’t know what I was doing. When I got to the car Clyde asked me to help him push it out of the way, so we could drive the
sedan out of the garage. I started to push it and saw another man just outside the door. Oh, what a horrible sight to see a human body torn apart like that by shotgun bullets. I shiver now as I think of it and can still see the vision of a man lying there with what looked like his brains blown out and running down his shoulders and onto the ground. It looked as if one arm had been torn off by bullets.
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All this I saw and more in just one glance.

Harry McGinnis. “Oh, what a horrible sight. . . . [I] can still see the vision of a man lying there with what looked like his brains blown out.” (Courtesy of Jim Hounschell)

As we were pushing the officers’ car out of the driveway, it started rolling backwards down the hill. Buck turned it loose thinking we would do the same, but the car seemed to pull me with it. By the time I was able to let go of the car Clyde and I were out in the middle of the street.
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I was only a few feet from him when someone started shooting from a corner of the building. I saw Clyde stagger. He had a rifle and was almost bent over double, shooting as fast as he could. I could feel bullets whiz by my head. I looked back at the garage. I didn’t think I would make it back there, where Buck was. Then I saw those dead men.