The Love of a Bad Man Read online

  ‘I don’t know how they can stand them briny hogs’ feet,’ Clyde commiserates with me one night while I’m slicing potatoes in the kitchenette. He’s leaning against the doorjamb in his shirtsleeves and vest, looking spiffy for someone who hasn’t left the house in days. ‘Can I lend a hand with the cooking there, Blanche?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ I tell him. ‘You go right on back to your card game.’

  But Clyde just grins like he knows better and eases up to the counter. ‘If I keep staring at them cards, I’m gonna go cross-eyed. Honest.’ He rolls up his sleeves and takes the knife from my hand. ‘What’re we making here? French fried?’

  ‘French fried and chipped beef with cream and onions.’

  As it turns out, Clyde is pretty handy with a knife and cutting board. And he likes things nice and neat, same as me. A little while into cooking, W.D. comes in to see what’s going on. He doesn’t like being apart from either Clyde or Bonnie long, if he can help it, and even sleeps on the floor of their room rather than alone on the sofa.

  ‘Oh, boy, you make it with onions?’ he asks. ‘My ma never done that.’

  From that night on, Clyde usually gives me a hand in the kitchen. It’s not the same as having another woman to help, but it does make me a little sweeter on him, and less bent up about their bad habits. For folks trying to keep a low profile, they sure do make a lot of noise playing poker and drinking till all hours.

  Though I do more than anyone around the apartment, I’ve never felt lazier in my life. Not a day goes by that we don’t stay in bed past midday. Buck is to blame, always waking up so warm and smoochy. I feel bad because the walls are so thin, but certain things just happen between married people. One day we end up rising later than the rest and they’re all lounging around already on the hooch. I ask how they slept and they say ‘Swell!’, but when my back is turned, Bonnie whispers, ‘… if it weren’t for all your darn baby-making.’

  Well, Buck knows that’s a sore point for me. Right away, he spirits me out of the room and tries to calm me, but he has a hard time getting me to stop crying.

  ‘Shh, baby. Bonnie don’t know no better. She don’t know you or me,’ he says. ‘She’s probably jealous her and Clyde aren’t so close as us. They always got W.D. with them.’

  ‘At least they c-can h-have a baby!’ I sob.

  ‘In this life? Like heck. They wouldn’t know what to do with it.’ Buck hugs me. ‘Besides, baby, you’re the only one I need. I don’t want some goo-goo ga-ga kid getting all your attention.’

  Buck keeps saying sweet things till the tears stop. Then he just holds me for a while. After that, he kisses my hot forehead and tells me to get myself cleaned up. ‘Thank you, Daddy,’ I say when he’s at the door.

  I can hear voices coming from the other room and know they’re talking about me. A little while later, Bonnie raps on the door and asks if she can come in. By then, I’m sitting at the vanity powdering my face. She sits down beside me. She doesn’t say anything about babies nor does she apologise, but I can tell she’s trying to make it up.

  ‘Blanche, you’ve got the loveliest skin. I’m so darn freckle-faced and I don’t know what to do with myself,’ she marvels, though I can’t see a single spot on her face. ‘I don’t know how you do it!’

  ‘Oh,’ I say coolly. ‘It’s just a matter of having a good regime.’

  ‘Regime? What kind of regime?’

  Despite myself, I tell her: Pond’s cold cream, a tonic of witch-hazel and rosewater, and regular home remedies for blemishes. There’s a complexion mask made of lemon and baking soda that I like to use weekly. Bonnie smiles and nods in all the right places and keeps asking questions, and even jokes that we should test it on W.D., who’s got the worst skin of anyone. When she suggests I do her makeup, I agree quicker than I mean to. I’d never tell Buck, but some days I miss the Cinderella.

  ‘Gee, it’s a pity to look this good with nowhere to go,’ Bonnie says later, when we’re both blinking in the mirror like a pair of kewpie dolls, one light and one dark. ‘Maybe we should hit the town.’

  ‘We can’t do that —’ I begin. She cuts in.

  ‘Why not? Heck, the guys won’t miss us, and I’m sick to death of being all cooped up. It makes me cuckoo! Come on …’ I shake my head but she keeps talking me over. ‘Nobody’s gonna recognise me, if that’s what worries you. Clyde’s the one with his mug plastered everywhere. Me? I’m in-cog-ni-to.’ Again, she primps in the mirror. ‘They’re more likely to mistake me for Jean Harlow than Bonnie Parker.’

  We have a real gals’ day: the new Clark Gable matinee and, after that, pie and shopping at the five-and-dime. We buy matching finger-rings and ear-screws, only twenty cents together. ‘Do you ever feel like you’re living in a movie?’ Bonnie asks me, twirling her ring. I don’t know what she means, and I wonder if she’s still jazzed from earlier, but I just tell her, ‘Maybe when I’m real dolled up.’

  It’s almost dark by the time we come up the stairs. I can’t hear the usual noise of poker and radio music. When Bonnie unlocks the door there’s no sign of the guys, and the only smoke I can smell is stale, like they stubbed out their cigars hours ago.

  ‘Don’t get in a stink.’ Bonnie’s eyes squint out from her makeup: two mean, pale slivers. ‘They probably had some business to do.’

  The guys get back early that morning with a bag of stolen guns — and drunk, to boot. Bonnie actually squeals when she sees the machine gun and jumps right into Clyde’s arms, smooching him all over like she wants to start some baby-making of her own. Buck looks guilty when he gets to the bottom of the bag and says, ‘Don’t think I’ve forgotten you, baby.’ Then he pulls out a pair of field glasses.

  ‘You’re our lookout, Blanche-baby!’ Clyde calls out between Bonnie’s kisses.

  It’s near five o’clock on our last night in Joplin and I’m fixing to do a big load of washing. The guys are down in the garage readying the cars. The last I saw of Bonnie, she was in her kimono, smoking a Camel cigarette and writing poetry. She’s been in a quiet mood since Buck and me said we’re leaving; I don’t know if she’s glad or sour about it and, honest to God, I don’t care.

  I dump the clothes in the water with some soap powder. Through the floor, I can hear the guys slamming shut the trunk. Then there’s a different kind of slam outside the garage. Before I can go to the window to look, the ground starts rumbling beneath me and Bonnie flies past the kitchen with her gun drawn. ‘Get a move on, you!’ she screeches. ‘Get everything, now!’

  It’s hard to know which way to run or what she means by ‘everything’. I’m scrambling around for our purses while Bonnie fires shots from behind the curtains. Then W.D. rushes up from the garage holding his side and crying, ‘I’m dyin’! I’m dyin’!’ I take him by the waist and crouch with him in a corner, his blood seeping into my sprigged cotton dress. When the shooting stops, Buck charges upstairs. His shirt is splattered red, but he doesn’t seem to be hurting.

  ‘We have to go, baby! This instant!’

  ‘Is Clyde shot?’ Bonnie grabs his sleeve. Buck shakes her off.

  ‘Baby, now! Bonnie, help us with W.D., will you?’

  We all stumble downstairs together, W.D. still crying about the wound in his side. The garage is full of bullet holes and on the floor is a man in a blue suit with a red mess where his head should be. At first, I think it’s Clyde and I guess so does Bonnie because she gives an awful sob. But then we see Clyde crouching behind the sedan with his rifle pointed at the street. He’s got a look on his face that I’ll never forget — like he’s a few pieces away from finishing a jigsaw puzzle.

  ‘Gals, go in the back with W.D.,’ he whispers. ‘Buck, help me move this thing.’

  We do as he says, helping W.D. into the back as Buck pushes and Clyde keeps his rifle pointed. When the sedan starts rolling downhill, they dash to the front, outrunning a new hail of bullets. I’m holdi
ng my head and screaming, ‘Daddy!’ and W.D. is crying, ‘I’m dyin’! I’m really dyin’!’ Buck’s got the wheel and is hurtling down the street as Clyde aims and shoots, aims and shoots.

  I never thought things were perfect in Joplin, but being on the road makes me realise how good we had it. At least in Joplin we were living like human beings. But this life is no better than an animal’s, just running and hiding and hungering and dirt.

  We even fight like animals. There’s hardly an hour when one of us isn’t at another’s throat, and the rest of us trying to keep them apart. Clyde and Buck are always arguing about the way to do things I’d rather we didn’t have to do, and I argue with Buck about going home, and Bonnie argues with everyone about darn near everything. Honest to God, I’ve never met such a hellcat. She even picks on W.D., once he’s healed.

  ‘Stop your drooling!’ She shoves him off her shoulder where he’s fallen asleep, one afternoon. ‘Can’t you even sleep without being a darn slob? You’re dumber’n a dog, you are!’

  We drive up to Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, back down through Kansas and home-state Texas. I use some cash from one of their stickups to buy hats for the men, breeches for me and Bonnie, boots for us all. Wherever we can, we pick up newspapers. The laws found some film in the camera Bonnie left back in Joplin and now they have a mug to print next to her name, along with some pictures of the two of them clowning with their guns. I’m still ‘unidentified female’, but they’ve got Buck’s name and seeing it is like losing him to the joint all over again.

  ‘You should go home while you can, baby,’ he tells me at a camp outside Waco. ‘I’ll put you on a bus right now. You’ll be back with your folks by nightfall.’

  I think of my poor old pa, deaf in one ear, and the little Okie church where he preaches to other farmers. But there’s no leaving Buck, no matter how much he tries to baby me, no matter how much bickering, dirt, and tears. This is the life we’ve been given, and if anything makes us better than animals, it’s each other.

  Things start looking up when Buck steals a Ford coupe for the two of us. It sure is good not to be crammed in with the others all the time, and the car is small enough that I can drive it, letting Buck get some shut-eye for a change.

  With Buck snoring beside me, and their car just a speck on the horizon, I sometimes think how easy it would be to lose them. Slow right down and find another road, because no road can be worse than the one we’re on. But my hands stay glued to the wheel, and we keep eating their dust. I guess I don’t like the thought of betraying anyone’s trust, whether they’re deserving or not.

  Clyde trusts us so much that he even gets us to wait across the state line while they do a job in Wellington. It’s an hour’s drive of mostly red dirt, and we make it to the bridge where we’re fixing to meet with no cash and a long time to spare. Buck parks a little way off and we take a walk by the dry creek bed, pitching stones across it.

  ‘Want to lie in those bushes a while, baby?’ he asks me. I look at the low, prickly bushes he means and say, ‘Nuh-uh, Daddy.’ Further up the path, we see a copperhead sunning itself and turn back.

  By dark, there’s still no sign of the others. We park closer to the bridge and take turns with the field glasses, but there’s nothing to see. After some time, we wrap ourselves in a picnic blanket and fall asleep. Then it’s late and there’s a horn honking and a pair of headlights flashing on the bridge. ‘Jeepers,’ Buck coughs. He starts rolling the car forward. I wipe the sleep from my eyes and pick up the field glasses.

  ‘Clyde,’ I say softly.

  Through the dark, I can see him running with his shotgun, away from what looks like a law car. He reaches us and starts banging on our window, his eyes big and crazy. There’s blood coming from his nose, and his face is all cut up.

  ‘Bonnie’s dyin’! We gotta move her! I killed two laws! There’s two more tied up we gotta get rid of!’

  Buck rushes out. I start to do the same and Clyde stops me. ‘Not you. They ain’t seen you yet.’ He leans his bloody face against the door. ‘See if you can’t find something to make Bonnie comfortable. Oh, God, she’s gonna die …’

  He’s back at their car as quickly as he came, and Buck and W.D. are bearing Bonnie across the bridge. I get out to help them lay her down and it’s bad — she doesn’t look like Bonnie so much as a mess of cuts and burns. Her leg is the worst, black and bubbly like a toasted marshmallow.

  ‘Keep fightin’, sis,’ Buck whispers to her. Then he gallops back over the bridge to help Clyde with the laws.

  I remember Pa telling me how they used to put blankets on the soldiers who’d been blasted in the trenches, to keep them from catching fever. So I spread that picnic blanket over Bonnie. As I’m doing it, my fingers brush against her half-melted high heel, and I know it’s mean, but I can’t help flinching.

  In a small-town drugstore, I buy us some tape, bandages, and medicine. Clyde won’t go to a hospital or even send for a doctor till the heat is down, though he stands to lose the most if Bonnie dies. She’s in and out of sleep, and moaning, and even gets the shakes overnight. We keep driving through to Arkansas. In Fort Smith, Clyde finds a backstreet doctor who cleans out the black skin and gives her a tetanus shot and some Amytal for the pain.

  I guess the dope gives Bonnie something to live for. She starts talking after that, first just asking for her ma, then telling Clyde how much she loves him. Her voice doesn’t sound any more like her than her face looks it, but thankfully there’s more that he loves about her than her face and voice. ‘Doll, you’re love itself,’ he says, stroking her hand — one of the few parts of her not burnt or cut up.

  We stay more than a week in Fort Smith. I cook and shop and do laundry while Buck and W.D. do small-time jobs. By the end of it, Bonnie’s leg is looking brown and sinewy, like the mummy I once saw at a travelling freak show, and she’s got her fight back. More than ever, maybe.

  I’m getting breakfast ready one morning when I hear her cussing the guys through the walls. ‘Send that hellcat in!’ she’s screaming. ‘I’m gonna whip her! I hate her guts!’

  Well, I don’t know what I did to earn the name ‘hellcat’, but I go in, breakfast tray and all. Bonnie’s teeth show through the redness of her face. ‘You!’ she yells, leaping forward. ‘I hate you! I’m gonna whip you, this minute!’

  I look at our men, but they don’t seem to have any more idea than I do. ‘I ain’t fightin’ you,’ I tell her, putting down the tray.

  ‘That’s because you’re fraidy! Damn fraidy-cat!’ she jeers. ‘You can’t do nothing useful! You or Buck! You two are burdens, is what you are! Good for nothing, just complainin’, complainin’!’ Bonnie spits at her breakfast. ‘You’re like listening to a broken record! Baby-daddy, baby-daddy, baby-daddy. Clyde and me, we’d be better without you!’

  ‘Like heck,’ I say. Near dead or not, there’s such a thing as gratitude.

  ‘Baby-daddy, baby-daddy! Oh, it’s so hard being widdle baby me …’

  I turn to Buck and raise my hands. ‘Daddy, she’s crackers.’

  ‘Daddy, she’s crackers. What’d I tell you? You, you … baby! I’ll whip you! Clyde’ll whip Buck! Look! He’ll do it! He loves me!’

  ‘Buck loves me,’ I say. ‘He won’t let himself get whipped.’

  ‘You miserable sap! He’ll do it!’

  ‘Is this what you gals fight about?’ Buck shakes his head. ‘Lordy …’

  ‘You better close your head too, Buck! If it wasn’t for Clyde, you’d be nothing! You’d still be stealing turkeys!’

  She keeps screaming for some five minutes till I finally burst into tears. ‘I hope you choke!’ I tell her. Then I storm out of the room. Buck follows.

  ‘Baby, don’t fuss, you know she ain’t right —’

  ‘Oh!’ I sob. ‘She’s never been right!’

  One night Buck and W.D. do a job in Fayetteville.
It isn’t a big one, but they don’t get back till late and both are real shook up and bloody. ‘Daddy!’ I scream when I see them. Buck lets me throw my arms around him, but it takes some coaxing before he tells me, ‘Baby, I believe I killed a man.’

  We drive nonstop to Missouri with Buck and Clyde bickering all the way. Buck’s had it with Clyde’s bullying; he says he’s a rat, and we’ll go our own way as soon as it’s safe. Clyde smirks till Buck is out of breath. Then he calls him fraidy, and I swear they darn near kill us all, the way Buck goes for Clyde’s throat and the car swerving and Bonnie with her cut-up face screaming, ‘Let me out! I hate you all! I wish we were dead already!’

  At the motor court, we rent separate cabins with a garage between them. I don’t like the way people stare at my breeches and riding boots, but once we’re alone, Buck sits me on the bed and pulls the boots from my feet. Later, freshly showered and shining them in his undershirt, he asks me, ‘How’d you like to go to Canada?’

  ‘I’ll go anywhere that isn’t here,’ I say.

  ‘We’ll get us a log cabin and be fur trappers.’ Buck smiles. ‘Bears, beavers, coons …’

  ‘Sure, Daddy.’ But there’s something that’s been bothering me since Bonnie screamed at us in the car. ‘Daddy … if I got killed, what would you do?’

  He stops shining. ‘Why, baby, I couldn’t go on living.’

  That’s what I expected, but it doesn’t please me to hear. ‘I don’t want you to do that. I want you to leave me someplace where I’ll be found and given a proper burial, and then I want you to keep going —’

  ‘Baby, don’t let’s talk about this.’ Buck drops the cloth and comes to my side. ‘You know I couldn’t just leave you any old place.’

  Then he asks me what I’d do if it was him.

  ‘I’d stay with you as long as I’m alive,’ I say. ‘Till the laws come and separate us.’

  We sit quietly a while, Buck’s arms around my shoulders. I wish we weren’t so skinny. When we hear someone banging outside our cabin, we both jump, and I know he’s thinking the same thing I am: that the laws have come to separate us already.