Jeff Guinn Read online

  Unlike Buck, Clyde didn’t promise his parents he’d give up crime, but he did start spending time again with old West Dallas friends who were better influences than sinister Frank Clause. One of Clyde’s rediscovered pals was Clarence Clay, who on January 5, 1930, invited Clyde to a party. With his spirits at their all-time low, Clyde went with Clarence to 105 Herbert Street, a boxy little residence a few blocks away from the campground, and that was where he met her.

  CHAPTER 4

  Bonnie

  On the day she met Clyde Barrow, nineteen-year-old Bonnie Parker’s life was also in complete shambles. Everything that could be wrong in it, was. She’d lost her job and couldn’t find another. The handsome young husband she’d expected to make all her romantic dreams come true was gone for good. After years of predicting she’d be a famous star on Broadway, or perhaps a renowned poet, she was still a nobody in the Dallas slums. It was enough to make her cry, and she frequently did. But after each temporary surrender to the blues, she came back strong. A bone-deep belief that great things were in her future kept Bonnie going. The worse her circumstances were in life, the grander her fantasies became. Something amazing was going to happen because she was Bonnie Parker. She just had to be ready when it did.

  Bonnie learned unshakable self-esteem from her mother. All Bonnie’s life, Emma Krause Parker believed—and acted like—her family was better than everyone else’s. It began in the little West Texas town of Rowena where Bonnie was born. Most of the men who lived there were farmers, but Bonnie’s father, Charles Parker, was a brick mason. As far as her mother, Emma, was concerned, that placed the Parkers at the top of the social ladder. Charles had a trade, unlike the sodbusters whose yearly fortunes depended on enough rain to coax cotton out of the dry West Texas soil. Emma had an equally high opinion of her two-year-old son, Hubert, nicknamed Buster, and the baby daughter she delivered on October 1, 1910. In Fugitives, a family memoir published a quarter-century later, Emma approvingly described Buster as “sober,” an appropriate personality for a boy who was destined to go far, and infant Bonnie inspired her mother to descriptive heights. Bonnie, Emma gushed, “was a beautiful baby, with cotton colored curls, the bluest eyes you ever saw, and an impudent little red mouth.”

  Rowena’s community life revolved around its First Baptist Church, and Emma made certain the Parkers were in the middle of it—“socials, box suppers and the like.” She took every opportunity to show off her children, and from the time she could toddle, Bonnie thrived as the center of attention. Sunday School provided an early example. Three-year-old Bonnie was one of several children selected to stand on a platform and take solo turns singing favorite hymns to the congregation. Emma thought her daughter looked “resplendent in starched bows and ruffles,” but when precocious Bonnie took the stage she shocked the crowd by belting out the honky-tonk tune “He’s a Devil in His Own Home Town.” Afterward, Bonnie was thrilled. She’d wanted extra attention, and she got it.

  In 1913 Emma gave birth to her third child, a daughter named Billie Jean. Bonnie enjoyed her new sister, but she found special pleasure in expanding her own vocabulary. One of Charles Parker’s brothers came to Rowena for a visit, and he delighted his feisty little niece by teaching her to swear. Bonnie immediately addressed her father in salty language. Charles spanked Buster for even the slightest use of questionable slang—“darn” was forbidden—but he couldn’t bring himself to paddle Bonnie. She was just too cute.

  Then, in December 1914, Charles Parker died. There is no record of the cause, but it seems to have been unexpected. Emma described herself as “left with three small children and the problem of providing for them.” There were no jobs for young widows in Rowena, so Emma packed up her three kids and moved 240 miles east. Her parents, Frank and Mary Krause, lived in Cement City across the Trinity River from Dallas. Frank had been a farmer, and now he worked in a mill. Like everyone else in Cement City, the Krauses were barely getting by, but they didn’t hesitate to take in their daughter and grandchildren. Many Cement City and West Dallas households included two or even three generations. Family loyalty was strengthened by poverty. When relatives had nothing else, they had each other.

  It was a difficult adjustment for Emma. Back in Rowena she had been a lady of considerable substance, but in Cement City she was just one more flat-broke woman scrambling to support her children. Staying home to care for them wasn’t an option—Frank Krause didn’t make enough to feed four more dependents. So Emma looked for work, and eventually found it as a seamstress in a factory manufacturing overalls. The work was hard and tedious. Based on average salaries in the area for “garment workers,” Emma probably earned about nine and a half dollars a week.

  Like West Dallas, Cement City was a dirty, boisterous place. It was slightly farther away from the Trinity River and downtown Dallas, and most of the adults living there worked at menial jobs in the various factories and foundries that lined the dirt streets. Chalk Hill Road separated the white and black neighborhoods. The smokestacks of the Trinity-Portland Cement Company and other manufacturers towered over everything. Air pollution made it hard to breathe. The stink of industrial fumes clung to skin and hair.

  Yet Emma Parker did not surrender her opinion of herself and her family as high-class. Circumstances might have forced her to move to a slum and work sewing overalls, but she still carried herself like a queen. Every Sunday morning, she and the children walked several miles to church, ignoring the dust that swirled up when the weather was dry or the mud coating their shoes if there had been recent rain. Cumie Barrow made family church attendance mandatory because that was what Jesus wanted. Emma Parker marched her brood to church on Sunday because that was what the best people did.

  While Emma was at work, her mother cared for the Parker kids, as well as for Bonnie’s cousin Bess, who was three years older than Bonnie. Mary Krause did her best, and Buster and Billie Jean usually behaved. But Bonnie was an adorable terror. Emma wrote that Bonnie kept the household “generally in a stew from morning to night,” often in tandem with Bess. There was nothing mean-spirited about the little girl. From setting small fires because she liked the pretty flames to raiding her grandfather’s stash of wine—she passed out—Bonnie did what she wanted without regard to consequences. No punishments could deter her.

  That trait carried over when six-year-old Bonnie began attending Cement City School. She was cute, and undeniably bright. School pageants included Bonnie Parker in featured roles. But on any public occasion, Bonnie was liable to do something outrageous to make herself stand out from everyone else. One of the most memorable moments came during an elementary school program. Blackface performers were the rage in vaudeville, so Bonnie and her classmates had their faces darkened with powder and were sent on stage to play “pickaninnies.” Bonnie had a stocking cap covering her blond hair. During the show, one of her classmates pulled the cap off Bonnie’s head, revealing her light curls. The audience laughed, and the little girl felt humiliated. She began to cry, the dark makeup on her face streaked, and there was more laughter. According to Emma, “it gave her a new idea.” Tears still dripping down her cheeks, Bonnie started doing somersaults and cartwheels. The laughter turned to cheers, “and the program broke up in a riot.”

  Bonnie had a hot temper. Even genteel Emma admitted her daughter “fought her way” through school. She was willing to slug it out with boys as well as other girls over stolen pencils or perceived snubs. But many of the little boys in Cement City School developed crushes on her, which she encouraged. Even at an early age, Bonnie always liked to be someone’s girlfriend. Gifts of candy and gum were expected from her prepubescent beaus.

  She expected special consideration from her family, too. On weekends, the Parker girls would often be sent out to fish. Anything they caught was a welcome addition to their dinner table. Billie Jean loved fishing, but Bonnie found it boring. While Billie Jean waited silently for a bite, Bonnie sang at the top of her lungs. Billie Jean recalled that when she tried to hush
her sister, Bonnie’s usual reply was, “When I’m on Broadway and I have my name in lights, you’ll be sorry you talked to me like this.” Besides Broadway tunes, Bonnie liked to serenade the fish or anyone else who’d listen with popular hits of the day. Her absolute favorite performer was Jimmie Rodgers, the “Singing Brakeman.” Bonnie loved Rodgers songs like “My Old Pal,” “T for Texas” (also known as “Blue Yodel”) and, prophetically, “In the Jailhouse Now.”

  Puberty brought with it an obsession with clothes and makeup. The teenaged girls in Cement City yearned to look like the glamorous movie stars they saw in the picture shows. Thanks to films and magazines, the “flapper look” that dominated East Coast fashion extended its influence to Texas. Even in the Dallas slums, girls wanted to wear cloche hats over short permed hair, and slenderizing long skirts with jersey tops. Makeup was essential, too—lots of eyeliner, rouge, and lipstick. Bonnie and her friends all undoubtedly acquired the latest cosmetic must-have, a newfangled rouge holder known as a “compact.” When they felt properly attired and made up, many of the girls rushed to Fair Park to capture their magnificence in the three-for-a-nickel photo strips. That wasn’t good enough for Bonnie Parker. When she was about fifteen, she scraped together the money to pose for a studio “glamour shot.” In it, the heavily made-up girl tilts her head alluringly, eyes gazing up and off-camera toward dreams she’s certain will someday come true.

  And that was the problem for Bonnie. Most of her dreams had to remain fantasies. The grandest of them—singing in Broadway musicals, acting in Hollywood movies, writing best-selling volumes of poetry—were virtually impossible, even if she refused to accept it. Broadway and Hollywood producers didn’t scout for talent in Cement City. Publishers didn’t seek out the next Emily Dickinson there. Perhaps, with her dedication to endless self-promotion and a degree of talent, she might have become a star if she went to California or New York, but Bonnie wasn’t going anywhere. She had no money to make such a trip, let alone to live on while she made the rounds of auditions.

  There wasn’t even a realistic chance for her to become somebody special in Cement City. Bonnie was one of the best students in her high school, where she won a spelling bee. That was a source of considerable pride to Emma. But it made no difference. Smart slum girls still had limited career opportunities. Staying in school, getting a high school diploma, wouldn’t have improved Bonnie’s prospects. College was out of the question. Emma Parker barely made enough to feed her children, let alone pay tuition. Whether Bonnie left high school as a graduate or a dropout, if she worked for a living she would still have to choose between becoming a factory line worker, a maid, a waitress, or a clerk in a shop. Those were the professional options for Cement City girls.

  But there was another kind of option with the possibility of at least temporary joy. A vivacious teenaged girl like Bonnie could do more than dream about meeting and marrying a wonderful man. She could actively go out and try to find one. Marriage itself didn’t promise much. Cement City girls usually married young, were soon pregnant, and ended up like their mothers, raising children in poverty with no chance for anything better. But between puberty and marriage there was the potential for at least a few brief years of coquetry and romance before a poor girl’s life became as hard and hopeless as her mother’s. Bonnie, who never let evidence to the contrary spoil a good fantasy, believed she would be the exception to the rule. Her romance would equal or surpass the happily-ever-after love stories that mesmerized her at the movies. All that was necessary was the right man, and when she was fifteen she decided she’d found him.

  Bonnie met Roy Thornton in high school. He was big, good-looking, and well dressed—appearance always mattered to her. And Roy was fun. He had money for dates, and it didn’t matter to Bonnie where he got it. The timing was just right in her life. There was no sense staying in school, she didn’t want to work in a factory like her mother, and Roy seemed like he could support a girl in style. So Bonnie fell in love, going overboard as she did in everything else. Roy was perfect. No criticism of him was permitted. She ran out and got a tattoo high up on the inside of her right thigh. It had two red hearts connected by arrows, and the hearts were labeled “Bonnie” and “Roy.” She insisted she had to marry him right away—true love couldn’t wait. Emma Parker wasn’t in favor of the marriage, but Bonnie was headstrong and wore her mother down. She became Mrs. Roy Thornton on September 25, 1926, just a few weeks before her sixteenth birthday.

  The young couple found a place to live near Emma’s house, and their problems began almost immediately. Roy had mysterious ways of making money to pay the bills, and didn’t confide in his new wife. Bonnie suddenly couldn’t stand being apart from her mother. Every night she made Roy take her over for a visit, or else she’d insist that Emma spend the night with the newlyweds at their place. Emma couldn’t help feeling sorry for the new son-in-law who “was having a lot of difficulty with his honeymoon.” Finally, she told Roy they might as well move in with her.

  Bonnie loved children and wanted a baby. Emma Parker and Marie Barrow hinted later that there were unspecified gynecological problems, and that some medical procedure left Bonnie unable to conceive. But the result was no children then or ever. Never mind that motherhood might have interfered with her dreams of stardom—Bonnie mourned. She had a talent for that.

  In August 1927, Roy disappeared for ten days. He didn’t tell Bonnie he was leaving, wasn’t in touch while he was gone, and offered no explanation after he got back. He started drinking heavily, and when Bonnie rebuked him for it he hit her. Things like that didn’t happen in the movies. Then in October he left again and stayed away nineteen days. Even a dreamer like Bonnie couldn’t avoid facing the facts: her grand romance wasn’t so grand after all. Emma counseled divorce, but Bonnie wasn’t ready for such a drastic step. When Roy vanished for the third time in December, she suspected he’d left her for another girl named Reba Griffin.

  Bonnie briefly began keeping a diary. Its entries alternated between righteous anger at Roy’s actions, moony declarations of endless love for him, and general frustration: when was something great going to happen in her life?

  In her first entry, dated January 1, 1928, seventeen-year-old Bonnie wrote, “I wish to tell you that I have a roaming husband with a roaming mind. We are separated again for the third and last time…I love him very much and miss him terribly. But I intend doing my duty. I am not going to take him back.” She added that she and her friend Rosa Mary “have resolved this New Year’s to take no men or nothing seriously. Let all men go to hell! But we are not going to sit back and let the world sweep by us.”

  In a second New Year’s entry, she noted she’d gone to see Ken Maynard in The Overland Stage that night and then “I got drunk. Trying to forget. Drowning my sorrows in bottled hell!” Prohibition was the law of the land, but a flirtatious girl like Bonnie could always get a drink.

  On January 2, she and Rosa Mary saw another movie, Ronald Colman and Vilma Bánky in The Night of Love. A boy she knew named Scottie came on to her, but she “gave him the air. He’s a pain in the neck to me.” The next day, believing Roy was gone for good, she went looking for work: “Searched this damn town over for a job…I guess luck is against me.” She hunted down Reba Griffin. Roy wasn’t with her, but Bonnie thought “she has taken my place in his heart.”

  Over the next ten days Bonnie had casual dates with boys named Lewis and Raymond, brushed off advances by a few other would-be suitors, frequently went to the movies, and confided that “Oh, God, how I wish I could see Roy! But I try my best to brush all thought of him aside and have a good time. If I knew for sure he didn’t care for me, I’d cut my throat and say here goes nothing! Maybe he does though. I still have hopes.”

  By January 11 Bonnie hadn’t found a job and asked her diary plaintively, “Why don’t something happen?” She repeated the question two days later. On January 16 she made her final entry: “Sure am blue tonight. Have been crying. I wish I could see Roy.”
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br />   Bonnie probably abandoned her diary because she found a job waitressing at Hargrave’s Café on Swiss Avenue in Dallas. It was several miles from Cement City in a neighborhood split between residences, small businesses, and the Baylor Medical College. Her outgoing personality was an immediate plus, since waitresses in 1928 received very small weekly salaries—no more than $3 or $4 a week—and had to rely on tips. Most of those tips were meager, a penny or two. Big spenders trying to impress their servers might leave a dime.

  She became special friends with the women who worked at a laundry behind the café. When it was time for their lunch break, they’d whistle and Bonnie would run around the building to take their orders. Sometimes, if business in the café was slow, she’d visit the laundry just to chat. The employees there thought she always seemed especially fresh and clean.

  She also dressed well, even though she made very little money at the café. Her wardrobe might have reflected income from occasional prostitution. If so, she wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary for working-class girls from the Dallas slums. If they were cute—and Bonnie was—they had to at least consider the option. Hargrave’s was in a much more affluent neighborhood than the greasy spoons of Cement City and West Dallas. As a waitress there, Bonnie would have been in position to judge prospects among the Hargrave’s patrons. If they were friendly and tipped generously, why not? Because of her infertility, there was no danger of pregnancy. Bonnie hadn’t given up on any of her big dreams, but until they came true a girl still had to eat and find a way to pay for her clothes. Circumstances forced her to have a practical streak.