“Turn right!” I yelped, realizing I should have given Finn a better heads up. He turned without hesitation, and our back wheels squealed a little. The car behind us honked, but I laughed, and Finn lost the worried look he’d had since spotting the police car.
“What are we doing?” he asked.
“We’re sightseeing.” I peered down the street, doubtfully. It felt like spring in Joplin. Late winter could be like that in the south. The sun was shining, the trees looked like they were thinking about sporting some green, and 34th street looked sleepy and content, hardly the place where a shoot-out with a pair of bank robbers cost two policemen their lives eighty years earlier.
“Between Joplin and Oakridge on the right,” I said, repeating the directions the woman at the gas station had given me. “There!” I pointed at a boxy, light-colored stone home facing the street. A pair of large windows sat above two garage doors, just like in the picture. It was neat and well-kept, pretty even, with a side yard. But there was no sign indicating it was a historical landmark. There was a chain link fence around the yard, and the houses around it looked lived in—a tetherball pole with a faded ball stood in the yard of the house next door. It was just a demure house on an old street in a quiet neighborhood. I looked down at the book again to make sure we were in the right place.
“What are we looking at?” Clyde asked, parking in front of the two garage doors and staring up at the big windows above us.
“The infamous bank robbers lived over this garage for less than two weeks before the April 13, 1933 shootout with the authorities, who had been tipped off about the apartment hideout. Two officers died, and Bonnie and Clyde escaped,” I read out loud from the pamphlet.
“Here? This is their hideout?” Finn marveled and looked around once more at the surrounding homes. A boy of about nine or ten pedaled by on his bike, eyeing us curiously.
I lifted up the little paper book and showed him the cover. “I bought this at the gas station. The lady there thought I might want to see their love nest.”
Clyde took the book from my hands and opened it to the first page.
“You’ve read the story of Jesse James,
Of how he lived and died
If you’re still in the need
Of something to read,
Here’s the story of Bonnie and Clyde,” he read.
Apparently, Bonnie was a poet. She’d written two poems, stories really, and I could imagine them set to some bluegrass music, a little harmonica between the stanzas, maybe a fast fiddle in the getaway scenes. One poem was called “Suicide Sal,” about a woman who had loved a man who betrayed her, landing her in jail, and the other, “The Story of Bonnie and Clyde.” I started to read as Finn drove, leaving the inauspicious hideaway and merging up onto I-44, Joplin at our backs, but Bonnie and Clyde still very much with us as we headed toward Oklahoma.
I read for almost an hour, the account very detailed and elaborate, and obviously written by someone who cared for Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. I thought it was funny that Clyde’s middle name was really Chestnut—not Champion like some accounts claim—and resolved to add that to my list of nicknames for Finn. He only volunteered comment once, when I read about Clyde’s time in prison.
“Clyde was sent to Eastham Prison farm in April 1930. While in prison, Barrow beat to death another inmate who had repeatedly assaulted him sexually. This was Clyde Barrow's first killing. A fellow inmate said he ‘watched Clyde change from a schoolboy to a rattlesnake.’
“Paroled in February of 1932, Barrow emerged from Eastham a hardened and bitter criminal. His sister Marie said, ‘Something awful sure must have happened to him in prison, because he wasn't the same person when he got out.’"
Finn reached over, grabbed the book, and tossed it out the window. I watched it tumble behind the car before turning to Finn in astonishment.
“I wanted to see what happened next!”
“We don’t need to read that, do we Bonnie?”
“But . . .” I protested. I had several more copies. It wasn’t like I couldn’t pull another one out. “It’s fascinating.”
“I don’t find it especially fascinating,” he said, his eyes straight ahead.
“Oh.” I felt sick, and we sat in silence as I tried to figure out what to say. He glanced over at me eventually. I guess I was too quiet.
“You look like you’re going to cry, Bonnie Rae.”
“Did that happen to you, Finn?” I asked, sorrier than I’d ever been in my whole life. Finn cursed and shook his head, like he couldn’t believe I’d just come right out and asked him. But I didn’t know how else to do it. And because I cared about him, I had to know.
“No. It didn’t. But it happens. All the time. And it was the thing I was the most afraid of. The thing I was most desperate to avoid. So I feel for him even though I don’t like him very much.”
“Who, Clyde?”
“Yeah. Clyde. It makes a lot more sense why he lived his life the way he did after that.”
I pulled another copy of the book out of my grocery sack. Finn just shook his head, but he didn’t protest.
“Clyde had another inmate chop off two of his toes in an effort to get released from hard labor. Instead, he got paroled.”
“Holy shit.”
“He was desperate.” I couldn’t imagine that kind of desperation. Or maybe I could. I don’t know. Cutting my hair was one thing, cutting my toes off was another thing altogether.