by Emma Parker
Where we went I don't recall. We lived in little ravines, secluded woods, down side roads for days that stretched into weeks. We were all so sick that time went by without our knowing it. We lost track of the days. Eventually our wounds began to heal. W. D., sick of the whole business, left us as soon as Clyde was able to drive again. We learned that Buck was dead and that Blanche was in prison. We knew our people must be frantic with worry about us so Clyde and I started to Texas soon after that. It was the middle of August. We felt that the end of the trail was near and we wanted to be close to home when death came out to meet us.
Mrs. Parker's Story of Buck's Death
When word came over the wire that Blanche and Buck had been captured and that Bonnie and Clyde had escaped, horribly wounded, my heart stood still. I felt that they had crawled away to die. I craved to learn all news of them. When Clyde's mother, and his younger brother, L. C., started to drive to Perry, Iowa, Billie and I went with them. We left home at 1 o'clock on Tuesday morning, drove all that night and arrived at the King's Daughters Hospital in Perry at noon Wednesday.
The place looked like an armory. Guns fairly bristled about it. Perhaps the reader will doubt me when I tell the precautions that were being used in Perry to assure the officers that Buck was going to stay in that hospital, although he was plainly unable to get out, and had no place to go if he did get out. He had but four more days to live. The great doors of the hospital were barred; his door was securely locked and only nurses and doctors went in and out. Officers stood guard at the hospital doors; officers patrolled the halls; officers sat on the back porch. I know this, for I spent most of my visit there, trying to learn from them what I could concerning the Dexter battle. I was frantic for news from Bonnie and these men had seen her last. I talked with the men, too, who had helped Clyde put her in the car when they fled, after swimming the river. These men assured me she couldn't be alive — that she was like one dead when they lifted her from W. D.'s arms.
I learned many surprising things from these officers. They attributed supernatural powers to Clyde Barrow. Despite the factual evidence of their own eyes as to the desperately wounded condition of Clyde and Bonnie, these men — and all the rest of Perry — were positive that Clyde was likely to return any minute and snatch Buck from his hospital bed right under their very noses. A constant ripple of terror was over the townspeople; the very name of Barrow was a crawling fear. It would have been laughable if it hadn't been so tragic. Buck was dying; Blanche was in prison; Clyde and Bonnie, when last seen, were bloody and half crazy with pain, Clyde with a useless arm and Bonnie unable to walk. Yet they expected them back to rescue Buck Barrow — from what? The grave?
Billie and I rented rooms in a house across the street from the hospital. When we went over to the place that night, we were escorted by a police guard, whether for their safety or ours, I could not know. The woman who owned the place, after a whispered conference with the officers, came upstairs and asked me if I wanted to lock myself in, or would I prefer that she lock the door on the outside? I replied that if there was any locking to be done, I'd use the key, since I didn't relish being on the second floor of any building and unable to get out the door. She went back and again conferred with the officers. She turned on the front and back porch lights so that the house was a blaze of electricity. Billie became nervous because of all these precautions and wanted to go back to the hospital and sit up all night, but I was tired and worn out. No matter how insane the rest of the town seemed to be about the Barrows, I was going to get some sleep.
When we came downstairs Thursday morning, the woman who wanted to lock us in was waiting for us. "I was scared to death last night, Mrs. Parker," she said. "Weren't you?"
"What was there to be scared about?" I inquired.
"I thought the kids would come back," she whispered.
I hadn't had any coffee yet, and the strain of grief and worry made my temper rather short. Her attitude seemed silly and I had little patience with it. "What kids?" I demanded tartly.
"I mean — Bonnie — and Clyde," she whispered, glancing hurriedly over her shoulder as she spoke, as if she expected them to pop out on her with a machine gun at any minute.
"They’re probably lying dead somewhere in some ravine," I told her grimly. "And if they’re alive, why should they come here to be shot at again?"
"Oh, they’ll come and get Buck away from the officers," she insisted. "Everybody thinks so. Even the police. They put extra guards around the hospital last night. They’re expecting them."
"And just what," I replied, "would Bonnie and Clyde be wanting with Buck, knowing he’s dying?" She shook her head knowingly. "They’re expected anyway," she said.
The constant and heavy guard proved that they were, but we weren't expecting them.
Although Buck had recognized his mother and brother when they arrived Wednesday, by Thursday his mind was wandering and he became confused. L. C. was Clyde to him; Billie became Blanche. He kept begging Clyde to run — run — and take Blanche with him. He'd be quiet only when his mother or Billie held his hand. I remember when we started to lunch, Billie was sitting there holding his hand, and his mother said: "We're only going to get something to eat. We'll be back, Buck."
"Take Blanche with you," he begged. "Don’t leave her.
"Blanche isn’t here, honey," she replied.
"Please take her — she’s hungry," he muttered. "Poor little Blanche — take her with you, mother." Knowing where Blanche was and her sad condition, it was no wonder that his mother broke down in the corridor and wept.
He grew steadily worse, raving for Clyde and Blanche all day Friday. At 2 o'clock on Saturday, July 29, Buck Barrow died. We prepared to bring the body back to Dallas.
The law had never once relaxed its vigilance where we were concerned. Guards still paced up and down; police followed our every move, even when we went out to make funeral arrangements. The officers had told me that they were sure Bonnie and Clyde were hiding in a vacant house on the edge of town. They kept constant watch on it, they said, and no one came or went. I asked an officer why they didn't go in and find out if they were there. He made some evasive reply, but I knew the answer: They were afraid.
I said: "Good heavens, if they're in there and you're watching the house, and nobody comes or goes, it stands to reason they're dead. Why don't you go and find out?"
They didn't, though. Instead they put police on our trail to follow us out of town, thinking we'd go by if they were really there. They seemed to believe that Clyde used mental telepathy to communicate with us, or sent us wireless messages. How they figured that we could hear from them, I don't know, since we were under police surveillance from the day we arrived till we departed.
It was many weeks before we had any word from Bonnie and Clyde, long after we had come home and buried Buck. There were stories printed to the effect that Clyde would return for his brother's funeral; that he did return, disguised as an old woman, and wept beside the grave. In fact, by this time nothing was too wild, too fantastic and too unreal to be chalked up against Clyde Barrow. They made him a superman, gifted with super-human powers, beyond the reach of ordinary human beings. They made him a modern Frankenstein and fled in terror before the thing they had created.
Clyde and Bonnie showed up September 7, 1933. We had not seen them for four months, and what horrible and heartbreaking things had happened in those four months! Bonnie was still unable to walk without help. She was miserably thin and much older. Her leg was drawn up under her. Her body was covered with scars. Clyde also showed signs of what he had undergone. But they tried to make light of their condition. Clyde put a quilt on the ground and lifted Bonnie out of the car. I sat down beside her and held her thin hands and tried to keep the tears back. They talked of many things, but it was impossible to learn everything in one evening. It took many evenings.
They'd like some pillows, they said. They were living entirely in the car now, and they needed more pillows and some blankets,
since the air was getting chilly. I suggested bringing Clyde's crutches out for Bonnie to use. We stayed late, and Clyde promised to meet us the next evening on the Eagle Ford Road. After we came home I took the pillows and blankets and crutches back to them.
They had not slept in a bed since July, or been inside a house. They had lived entirely in the car. At night they'd draw up in some side road and sleep, often being awakened by highway patrols and bawled out. On these occasions, Clyde would explain that they were touring and were so sleepy that they stopped for a nap. They were always believed, and sent on with a warning not to do it again, for fear somebody would run into them or hold them up.
On one occasion, Bonnie said only the fact that Clyde had become ill in the night had saved them from capture. He awakened her and after he felt better and dozed off to sleep, she heard a car coming. Something warned her that it was danger, so she stepped on the starter and swung off down the road driving. Looking in her rear vision mirror, she saw that the car was filled with policemen. She put on all speed, as they were definitely chasing her car. She called out to Clyde. Bonnie never learned to handle a car with the speed and daring that was Clyde's. Few people could.
"It’s the law," she cried. "And they’re gaining on us."
Clyde climbed over the seat, slipped under the wheel while going fifty. He raised the speedometer to seventy, and shut off his lights. Trusting to luck, he roared along in the dark and turned up a gully. The officers, half a mile behind by now, passed by and lost him.
Bonnie said their best stunt was to drive into a town and run their car up on somebody's drive for the night.
This was their safest bet, for here they could sleep in security all night long. Cruising cops would deduce that the car belonged there and leave them alone. They used this means many times and were never caught but once. One night they had just stretched out nicely when they heard a wrathful feminine voice in the window above their heads: "John Jones, those lousy, whiskey- drinking, poker-playing friends of yours are parked out there in that drive again, but if you think you're going to sneak out of this house tonight — They never heard the rest of the dressing-down Mrs. Jones gave John, because they didn't wait.
One incident which amused Clyde greatly was the story of a Texas ranger, who with his wife, decided one night to run across the Red River bridge at Denison for a couple of bottles of beer. It was late and the ranger suggested that his wife go in her negligee. The man at the other end of the bridge sighted the ranger's guns lying in the back of the car and saw the woman in negligee. Before the ranger and his wife could get back across, the story was all over Denison that Bonnie and Clyde had just crossed Red River into Oklahoma.
Another night Clyde and Bonnie were at a sandwich shop getting their supper, when a car drove up containing four boys, who had obviously been imbibing a little too freely. One of the crew, a blustery sort of fellow, finally said: "If you all don't stop ragging me, I'll sic Bonnie and Clyde on you."
Hearing their names called like this, both Clyde and Bonnie leaned out, startled, and looked at the occupants of the other car. The speaker, seeing them, motioned largely with his hand and yelled: "That looks like Clyde and Bonnie there." Of course he was only joking, but Clyde thought he'd joke a little, too. He called out: "Come here, guy. I want to talk to you." The man climbed from the car and swaggered over. "What can I do for you?" he asked.
Clyde leaned close to him and spoke softly: "You can close your face," he said. "And keep it closed. I am Clyde Barrow and this is Bonnie Parker, and if you mention our names again, we'll drill you full of holes." The effect was startling. The man's mouth hung open, his eyes popped out, and he couldn't speak except to gurgle: "No, sir — no, sir." "You go back and get in the car and finish eating your order," Clyde told him. "Don't make a move and don't tell anything to anybody. If you do — !"
"But he was so scared he couldn’t eat," Bonnie finished the story. "He just sat there with the sandwich in his hand, swallowing like he had a rock in his throat." I had moved into West Dallas now, and during the entire months of September and October, and up until Smoot Schmid tried to trap them on November 22, the kids came in to see us every single night except five. They’d either drive by the house or the filling station. Often they’d stop. Twice Clyde went in. If we didn’t talk with them there they’d tell us where to meet them, and we’d drive out and be with them several hours. One evening Billie and I were sitting on the front porch chatting with a neighbor when Clyde and Bonnie came by. I didn’t make any sign, but Billie got up and went into the house and out the back. My neighbor arose and said she’d better be getting on home. We walked down the alley and talked with Clyde and Bonnie for about thirty minutes. After they were killed my neighbor told me that she recognized them, but didn’t want us to know she did, for fear something might happen and we would think she had turned them in.
It seems to me that it would have been such a simple matter to catch Clyde and Bonnie. All the law needed to do was to watch our houses, for they came in all the time, and we went out to see them. Of course, I didn't want them caught and I'm glad the officers were not smart enough to do it. For instance, there was Nell running a beauty parlor in the Sanger Hotel, headquarters for the Texas Rangers. Nearly every night for three months Nell drove to meet Clyde; almost every time he and Bonnie visited Dallas for two years, she was with them. Yet the rangers didn't even know that she was Clyde Barrow's sister till after his death, and I believe that she told them then. Clyde called Nell over long distance through the hotel switch board time after time, till she got frightened and made him use the shop number. If they had taken the trouble to find out that she was his sister, what would have been easier than tapping the telephone wire or checking up on Nell's long distance calls? But, who am I to tell the police how they could have captured my daughter and Clyde? They got them in the end.
By now Billie had two children, Buddy, aged 4, and his sister, Jackie, who was 2. Jackie didn't remember much about Bonnie, as she was only a year old when Bonnie went away with Clyde. Buddy was very fond of her and talked of her often. When Jackie would start crying, Buddy used to say consolingly: "Don't cry, Jackie. Never mind. Bonnie's coming after awhile and sing the Craw Dad Song." We took Buddy to see Bonnie several times, and he was very wise for one so small. He said: "I shall tell my mother I have been with Bonnie, but nobody else." He never did, either.
On Christmas Clyde and Bonnie sent toys for the children. The Christmas of 1932, they bought a tricycle for Buster. Their funds were low, and driving along through a small town, they sighted a toy automobile on the lawn. Clyde got out and swiped it for Jackie. They hadn't gone a block before Bonnie asked: "How do you reckon that little kid will feel when he finds out his car is gone?"
"I guess he’ll feel pretty bad," Clyde replied, and drove on a block. "I bet he’ll cry," he said, and drove another block. Then: "Hell, we’ll take it back!" They did.
On October 11, little Jackie took sick very suddenly. Two days later she died. I didn't go to meet Bonnie that night, but I was with them again on the following evening. Bonnie was heartbroken over the news. Sunday evening when I went to meet them I reported that Buddy was ill with the same strange malady — a stomach disorder. Monday night I reported that he was at Bradford Memorial Hospital, some better. I missed Tuesday night. When I met them Wednesday, Bonnie, her face white and tear-swept, said: "Don't tell me, mama. I know. Buddy's dead. I dreamed it last night. It was so real I knew it was true, and when Clyde started to buy toys to send him today, I wouldn't let him for I knew he wasn't alive any more."
Billie went all to pieces over this double tragedy. Our home was a bleak place indeed with the babies gone. Added to everything else, it seemed to us both that life wasn't worth the living any more. November 21 was the birthday of Clyde's mother. We took a birthday dinner and spent the day with Clyde and Bonnie up in Wise County, close to the Shannon farm. We were to meet them the next night at the place where Sheriff Smoot Schmid was to trap them. It w
as the first, last, and only time that we made the same meeting place twice. Just who knew and turned us in that night is still a mystery, but I'll never believe that the police: found out for themselves.
We drove to the spot just about dark. We could still see everywhere, but of course we couldn't see officers with machine guns hidden in a ditch. We were parked on the side road about seventy-five feet from the main highway. The officers were thirty feet away, concealed in the gully. In order to understand what I'm going to tell, the reader must try to get a mental vision of the lay of the land. We were parked facing away from the pike on the right side of the road. Before us this country road curved downward toward a little bridge, so that a car going down the road away from the highway would be out of range within a few seconds. It was still light enough for us to recognize Clyde and Bonnie when they drove along the pike. They started to turn in, but Clyde's sixth sense warned him.
"How do you feel about it, honey?" he asked. "It seems phony to me tonight."
They drove on down the pike a little way, but when we did not follow them, Clyde turned and came back, hesitated, and then cut into the lane. He had recognized us all right. He drove past us and started to turn around and come back and park beside us, as he said afterwards, but we didn't know this. We thought he wanted us to follow him, so we turned on our lights, making his car a direct target.
Something began popping. I said rather inanely: "Listen to the fire crackers." Then we saw the flame shooting out of the guns along the ditch. There was no word of "Halt!"— no warning given — nothing. They just began firing as Clyde was preparing to turn. Clyde stepped on the gas and shot away down the hill toward the bridge. We saw Bonnie break the back glass out of the coupe with her gun, although the officers said they shot it out. But she said when she did this, she cried out to Clyde: "I don't dare shoot. I'll kill my own mother if I do."