“They’ll think you eat like a horse,” Clyde said. “Get me chicken, if they got it. I want baked. And some peas and mashed potatoes. I’m starving.”
“You look in the bathroom, Blanche?” Bonnie said. “You seen the soap? It’s shaped like a seashell.”
Blanche sighed. “I hardly even got a chance to get in my cabin yet.”
“And beer, Blanche,” Clyde said. “Better get us some beer.”
Reclining on the pink candlewick bedspread where Clyde had laid her, Bonnie pushed her fingernails into the healthy flesh along the inside of her ruined leg. The mild pain helped to distract her from the deeper pain that, even when she hid from it for awhile, always found her again. “I need my medicine.”
Clyde opened the doctor’s bag. “This is the last.”
“There’s no point saving it. I’m not going to need it any more later than I need it now.”
She leaned back against the pillow as the drug melted the pain, and watched W.D. pin newspapers over the window shades, deepening the dimness and furring the walls with words. They hadn’t had to run since Fort Smith, and they had money; they could afford to relax. “It’s like we’re in a fairy tale,” she said, lighting a cigarette. “Two perfect cabins, waiting just for us.”
Clyde had stripped to his undershirt and shorts and stretched out beside her. He balanced a glass ashtray on his stomach, so she could reach it. It was that kind of considerate gesture that made her love him, Bonnie thought, tapping her cigarette to cause the tobacco she’d burned through to collapse into a mound of velvety crumbs.
* * *
The following morning, Blanche awoke at about what she guessed was ten o’clock, and, as she had nearly every morning since they’d run from Joplin, felt a dart of anger at the thought that her watch was gone forever. She was irritated, too, that the habits of her companions had so degraded her that it seemed natural to awaken so late. She flung the blanket off and washed and dressed as noisily as possible and, finally, snapped the latches on the suitcase shut, but Buck slept on. Finally, she shook him. “Shouldn’t we be getting going?”
Buck rolled onto his back with a grunt. Comfortably asleep on an actual mattress, he was loath to emerge into another day of cramp and disquiet. “C’mere.”
“Daddy, we stayed too long already. Let’s get going.”
Buck turned over. “Ain’t up to me, Baby. You know that. Go on and talk to Clyde. See what he says.”
She had to knock hard before W.D.’s voice came through. “Who is it?”
“Who do you think?”
W.D. opened the door, first half an inch, and then wide enough to let her into the darkened room. Clyde lowered his gun. Even Bonnie, sitting up in the bed, had been ready with her whipit.
“Dammit, don’t point them things at me! I just come over to get y’all going. It’s going on noon.”
Clyde rummaged on the floor for the sack of coins. “Go on and pay for another day, Blanche. We like it here. Don’t you like it?”
“I like it all right, but we liked it in Joplin.”
“We’re not staying weeks. Just one more night.”
“I told you, I don’t like the way that manager looked at me yesterday. Buck says that Jelly Nash thing is sure to have got everyone spooked around here,” Blanche said.
The pain in Bonnie’s leg poked its head up and looked around, wondering where to start gnawing first. Bonnie opened the aluminum tin that had recently been full of vials and stared at the useless syringe. “Leave us alone, Blanche. Clyde needs a rest. He keeps you two alive, and all you ever do is say black when he says white and generally throw sand in the gears. If anyone’s going to do something stupid and get us caught, it’s your husband. Look what happened in Fort Smith.”
“We’re hardly any distance from Leavenworth,” Clyde said. “No one’ll believe a crook could be stupid enough to stop here.”
* * *
“Busted your kid’s piggy bank?” the manager asked, as Blanche laid four dollars in nickels and pennies on the counter.
She scowled, although it was Clyde she was angry with, not this fellow, who was closer to the truth than he realized with his stupid joke. The coins had come from a gumball machine; that was the kind of big-time crook Clyde was. “That’s right,” she said. “There’s a depression on. Or haven’t you heard?”
She’d counted it out ahead but wasn’t surprised that he was the kind who had to check the count. She stood waiting, curling and uncurling her toes inside her boots, while he slid the pennies two at a time over the edge of the counter into his palm. “You don’t have to pay until four o’clock, you know.”
“That’s all right. We want the rooms.”
“Well, if you change your mind, I’ll give you your money back. Long as it’s before four.”
* * *
“It was like he was warning me not to stay,” she reported to Clyde and Bonnie.
“I thought you said he was the type that’d report the least little suspicion to the laws,” Bonnie argued. She had unfolded all of their maps on the bed, as if she were planning an emigration or a military campaign.
“He is.”
“Well, why’s he warning you, then?”
Blanche had to admit that her theories didn’t make sense. But to her mind, the whole place was too busy, with cars constantly driving in and out of the lot. Holed up in their dark, sweltering room, Clyde and Bonnie had no idea how much traffic ran through here and how exposed they were. “It’s a damn oven in here. And you’re just advertising with that paper over the window. Who covers up their windows, besides people on the lam?”
“People who wanna sleep,” Clyde said.
“When we get caught, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“If we get caught, we’ll be dead,” Bonnie said. “So we won’t have to listen to you say ‘I told you so.’ ” Honestly, Bonnie thought, today she’d just as soon be caught and shot. Her leg felt like it was burning up all over again. “Clyde, you got to get me something.”
“Blanche’ll have to stay with you, then.”
Blanche directed a sigh toward a papered window.
“Don’t worry,” Bonnie said, “I won’t be talking to you. I’ve got to concentrate on not screaming.”
Blanche understood that pain made Bonnie angry at whoever was closest, but she was sick of always being that person. “Just hurry up.”
* * *
The pain wasn’t all that bothered Bonnie. In the car, she’d hardly noticed how her leg was bent, but now that she could stretch out on a bed, she found that she couldn’t unfold it. As she had on and off all day, she tried again to push her knee straight, but her flesh felt stiff and clotted and the joint refused to open, as if the tendons under her coagulated skin had thickened and fused together. The effort made the burning worse and started an ache in her hip and back. She moaned. Blanche rolled her eyes.
“Why don’t you just go?” Bonnie said.
“You heard Clyde. I gotta stay. In case you need anything.”
“I mean you and Buck. Why don’t you go off on your own? We’re just making each other miserable.”
“Buck’s not going to leave his brother. Not when he’s in trouble.”
“You were going to leave us in Joplin. Seems to me the only difference is now you’re in as much trouble as we are.”
“Where do you suggest we go? Just drive around the countryside forever, like you and Clyde, except on different roads? What’s the point of that?”
“I think you should go to Canada.” From her blanket of maps, Bonnie shook North America free. “Look, Blanche, if you could get here, couldn’t you lose yourselves?” With her index finger, she made loops around the vast white space, drawing an invisible sign of infinity. “No one would ever find you.”
“But there’s nothing there.”
“That’s what you want, Blanche. A clean page. A chance to start fresh.”
Blanche scooted onto the bed beside Bonnie and leaned over the ma
p, as if a scene might reveal itself if she concentrated hard enough. She smoothed a wrinkle near Hudson Bay. “I suppose Buck could hunt.”
“And you could fish.”
“Ugh. I’ll leave that to Buck. I could plant me some vegetables, though. Tomatoes and such.”
“You could have flowers.”
Blanche nodded. The two women always worked well together on this sort of exercise, imagining scenarios in enough detail to make them feel real but not probing so hard as to puncture a delicate membrane.
“Maybe once we get us a little place,” Blanche added, “we can help y’all get a start there, too.”
But Bonnie shook her head. To pursue that line would be to admit that it was all a fiction. Weeding beans and scaling trout, holding still in some place where wind made the only sound, wasn’t for her and Clyde. They were doomed to circle the edges of civilization and snap up scraps, like feral dogs. She wiped her eyes impatiently, half-conscious that the medicine—or her need for more of it—was making her emotions deeper and darker than they might otherwise have been.
For a moment, Blanche pressed her shoulder against Bonnie’s, but it was far too hot to stay that way for long; sweat formed instantly wherever their skin touched.
“I don’t think we’d better leave you,” Blanche said quietly. “What if Clyde gets killed?”
“If something happens to Clyde, I’m doing the Dutch act. Same for him, if something happens to me. We have a pact.”
Blanche recoiled. “But God won’t ever forgive suicide. I tell Buck he mustn’t ever kill himself if something happens to me.”
She looked so troubled that Bonnie stroked her arm tenderly but with authority. “God isn’t going to forgive me and Clyde anyway, Blanche.”
* * *
Trying to keep cool that night, Blanche spread herself fully on the bed, so no stretch of her skin touched any other. Displayed like that, she knew she was an inducement to Buck, who’d spent the hour she’d been with Bonnie drinking beer, but she pushed his hands away. “Honey, you know I love you, but you got to wait until it cools down. I couldn’t stand it right now.”
So he occupied himself with her boots instead, applying polish with firm, circular strokes and then rubbing it away from instep to knee and back again, sweat sheening on his arms and face. He vowed he would indeed take Blanche to Canada and assured her of his ability to trap and skin any kind of animal that grew fur. Tomorrow, as soon as they got well out of Kansas City, he’d have his eye out for a good car that could take them up there.
“It didn’t seem right to leave them when Bonnie was doing so poorly,” he said, getting into bed beside her, “but she’s better now. Better enough, anyway.”
Blanche nodded. Bonnie still couldn’t walk normally, but she could certainly ride around in the car as well as ever. “Besides, they got W.D.,” she said.
“Oh, I expect he’ll run out on them again. You can’t blame him. He’s just a kid. But this ain’t no life for you, honey. I’m so sorry I got you into this.”
He’d become maudlin, his voice nasal with the clot of mucus that had filled his nose, and Blanche was surprised to find that apologies that had once given her at least a modicum of satisfaction no longer moved her. Her husband’s expressions of sorrow now struck her as no more meaningful than those of a baby crying itself to sleep.
“Quit being sorry and do something to get us out of this mess.” She sat up abruptly and pushed her arms back into the sleeves of her blouse. “I need a shower. I’m going for more soap and towels.”
* * *
Outside, the crickets’ vibrato assailed her. Generally, Blanche savored the chirp of crickets, which she liked to think of as the musical pulse of summer. In reminding her of the wealth of God’s creatures, the sound reassured her of her own insignificance. For this same reason, she tried to lose herself in the stars during her night watches. Tonight, however, the chirping was oppressive. “Get out, get out, get out,” the insects warned, as she threaded her way through the crowded parking lot.
The inside of the Red Crown Tavern was also humming and buzzing, as excited voices around crowded tables topped one another. But while Blanche stood at the counter, the boisterous sound seemed to fade. Had she grown accustomed to the noise or were people modulating their voices at the sight of her?
The manager that Blanche had paid earlier had been replaced by a girl who was talking on a telephone with her back turned to the room. When she hung up and turned to see Blanche waiting, she jumped. Was she merely surprised to find someone at the counter or was she alarmed by Blanche in particular?
“Uh, good evening,” the girl stuttered. And then, recovering herself, added with exaggerated courtesy, “May I help you?”
“I’d like another bar of soap, please. And two fresh towels.”
“Of course.” The girl started off, then stopped. “I’ll be right back.” She started away and then stopped again. “You wait right here.”
Blanche dropped a coin in the penny scale beside the counter. She was shocked to discover how much flesh she’d lost—at least twenty pounds since Joplin. This life was eating her up.
Behind her, a man who’d slunk over from one of the tables clucked his tongue and looked pointedly at the seat of her jodhpurs. “Ninety-one pounds! You ain’t no bigger’n a minute. I wouldn’t mind being your horse.”
“You can’t be my horse,” Blanche said, stepping off the scale. “Because you’re a jackass.”
Conveniently, the girl returned then with the towels, so Blanche was able to collect them smartly and march out of the place.
“I don’t like it,” she told Buck. “There’s too many people here. The girl behind the counter was acting funny. We should go while we can.”
Buck barely lifted his head off the pillow. “You know it ain’t my decision. Go tell Clyde.”
Blanche gritted her teeth. “You go tell Clyde,” she said to herself, as she crossed in front of the garage.
Clyde and Bonnie and W.D. were playing poker on the bed.
“We’ll be all right overnight,” Clyde said.
“You’re just jumpy, Blanche,” Bonnie said, her voice slurring. Clyde had not found any more of the drug, so she’d been drinking. “You gotta relax. If we ran every time we felt a little jumpy, we’d never sit still.”
“All right,” Blanche said. “I guess we’re no safer driving than we are in this place. But I want to go first thing in the morning. My first thing, not your first thing.” She paused at the door. “I’m going to do some wash. You want anything done, Bonnie?”
* * *
Blanche showered and did her bit of laundry in the sink and then rolled Buck’s shirt and her own and Bonnie’s graying underthings in a dry towel. Buck had put a pillow over his head to block the bathroom light.
“I don’t see how you can sleep,” she said, twisting the towel with all her strength.
Clyde knocked as she was hanging the clothes over the shower curtain rod. “How about getting us some sandwiches, Blanche? That place across the way is open. And some beer.”
“At this hour? I’m already in my pajamas. Get your own sandwiches.”
From the window a few minutes later, she watched W.D. cross the road toward the crenellated walls of Slim’s Castle and was reassured to see that many of the cars had left the lot and some of the lights had been turned off. The place was settling down.
“C’mon, Baby.” Buck raised the corner of the sheet. “If something’s going to happen, there’s nothing we can do about it until it starts. We might as well sleep.”
But nothing was going to happen. Blanche finally felt easy enough to enjoy the luxury of the good mattress and the smooth, clean sheets. She closed her eyes and let Buck’s hands excite her skin. If they found a car in the morning, they could be in Minnesota by this time tomorrow, just her and Buck, charting their own course. As she pushed against him, she imagined a log cabin—not like the ones they sometimes passed that looked as if they’d been heaved
up like fungi from a crevasse in some mountain but a clean place with straight and sturdy walls standing in a green meadow. She would keep a jug of yellow flowers on the table, and Buck would come in for coffee—there would be someplace to buy coffee—after a morning checking his traps. Doubts about where they would get the money to buy the traps and what they’d eat before her vegetables grew threatened to distract her, but Blanche concentrated, riding Buck into the open white space, where fear fell away and pleasure overtook them, and they could finally relax.
CHAPTER 58
The pounding on Buck and Blanche’s door jerks the occupants of both cabins awake. Sated with chicken sandwiches and beer, Clyde, Bonnie, and W.D. had fallen asleep in the stifling room and failed to hear the car being positioned in front of the garage to block their escape and the police arraying themselves in front of the cabins. The officers hold metal shields before their bodies, like ancient Greeks ready for battle. The police have learned to be prepared when they suspect the Barrow Gang.
W.D., who’s been sleeping on the floor, simultaneously draws his feet under him and a BAR into his arms and freezes in a crouch at the foot of the bed. Clyde pulls on his pants before joining him. Bright headlights penetrate the double layer of window shade and newspaper. They’re trained on the door of Blanche and Buck’s cabin.
After another burst of knocking, Blanche answers. “Who is it?”
Crazed with tension, Bonnie almost smiles at Blanche’s rendition of the perfect innocent.
“This is the sheriff. Send the man out!”
“There’s no man in here.”
Clyde, also gripped by nerves, smirks. “Wonder what Buck thinks of that.”
“Put them riding trousers on,” the sheriff says, “and come out yourself, then.”
Bonnie clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth. She’d predicted that Blanche’s shapely bottom in jodhpurs would draw attention. She longs to crawl between the bed and the wall, but stays still, waiting for Clyde’s instructions.
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