Bonnie and Clyde by Karen Blumenthal

Author:Karen Blumenthal [Blumenthal, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2018-08-14T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Where were Clyde, Bonnie, and W. D.?

Just about everyone in Iowa was asking, and many claimed to have seen them right after the shoot-out. But airplane surveillance, searches of abandoned farmhouses, and extensive monitoring of the roads didn’t kick up anything but rumors.

Still in the Dallas jail, Raymond Hamilton predicted that Clyde and Bonnie would be tough to catch. One reason, he told reporters, is that the couple was determined to avoid capture—so much so that they had an agreement to kill each other if they thought their freedom was at stake.

“Bonnie and Clyde are in love,” Raymond said. “She is jealous of him and he is jealous of her. Clyde doesn’t ‘gal around’ any at all. Bonnie is the only girl he ever thinks about.

“They’re saying they’ll catch them before the end of the week,” he added. “I say they’re dead wrong.”

Not surprisingly, Clyde was back behind the wheel. Shortly after their escape, he, Bonnie, and W. D. switched cars at a filling station, stealing a Chevrolet, which was later abandoned in Nebraska. As time passed without new crimes, some began to think they had died from their injuries. In truth, they found quiet places to camp and nursed their many wounds, which were painful but not life threatening.

In August, they replenished their arsenal by removing weapons from an Illinois National Guard armory they had robbed once before.

Sometime after that, they traveled to Mississippi, where W. D. decided he was done as an outlaw. Over eight months, he had seen a lifetime’s worth of violence and crime, including five murders. “I’d had enough blood and hell,” he said later. When he saw a chance, he took off alone for Texas and found work picking cotton.

For a while, W. D. later said, crime had seemed exciting and fun, but in truth, “It was torment.”

Whether Clyde expected W. D.’s departure isn’t clear, but this time he didn’t go looking for his young accomplice. Clyde and Bonnie would stay on their deadly course without him.

Years later, those who survived would reflect on why Clyde was so quick to shoot. Clyde “never wanted to kill. He’d kidnap the police instead of killing them, if he could. But he killed without hesitation when he had to,” W. D. said. “Clyde just wanted to stay alive and free, and Bonnie just wanted to be with Clyde.”

Blanche saw another reason: “Fear. They weren’t naturally mean. But they were afraid,” she said. In fact, she added, “both Bonnie and Clyde were likeable. It was a terrible kind of life they lived. Bonnie wouldn’t have done it if she hadn’t loved Clyde so.”

Without W. D. to help, Bonnie and Clyde survived mostly on the take from small robberies, as well as the pillows, blankets, food, and clothing that their families could provide. Bonnie was still twenty-two and Clyde was a year or two older, but both were thinner and much older looking than they had been only three months before, and there were no longer any silver dollars in their pockets.

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