A Dust Bowl Tale of Bonnie and Clyde Read Online Free PDF Page A

past the woods
     where our visitors had camped. Our telephone wire was hanging straight down on the
     pole. There was no tree limb on the ground. A dust devil spun out of a field and broke
     apart on the Model A’s radiator, powdering the windshield, almost like an omen. The
     crossroads store was still two miles away. I did a U-turn and headed back home.
    Grandfather owned two horses. The Shetland was named Shorty and was blind in one eye.
     When Grandfather rode Shorty through a field of tall grass, all you could see were
     his shoulders and head, as though he had been sawed in half and his upper body mounted
     on wheels. His other horse was a four-year-old white gelding named Blue who was part
     Arabian and hot-wired to the eyes. All you had to do was lean forward in the saddle
     and Blue would be halfway to El Paso. A man Grandfather’s age had no business on that
     horse. But try to tell him that.
    I parked by the barn. Shorty was in the corral. Blue was nowhere in sight. I looked
     in the kitchen closet, where I had replaced Grandfather’s double-barrel shotgun. It
     was gone.
    I took the holstered Colt from the drawer and walked into the woods and followed Blue’s
     hoofprints along the riverbank to the end of our property. Through the trees I could
     see the Chevrolet and four people standing beside it, all of them looking up at Grandfather,
     who sat atop Blue like a wood clothespin. They were all grinning, and not in a respectful
     way. None of them looked in my direction, not even Bonnie.
    Grandfather had bridled Blue but hadn’t saddled him. Blue was sixteen hands and had
     the big-footed, barrel-chested conformation of an Arabian, and he rippled with nervous
     power when he walked. If a blowfly settled on his rump, his skin twitched from his
     withers to his croup. I could hear Grandfather talking: “Times are bad. But that doesn’t
     mean you’re going to use my place for a hideout or be a bad influence on my grandson.
     I know who y’all are. I also know it was y’all cut my phone line.”
    “We’re plain country people, not no different from y’all,” Raymond said. “We’re not
     on your damn property, either.”
    “No, there’s nothing ordinary about you, son. You’re a smart-ass. And there’s no cure
     for your kind,” Grandfather said. “You’re going to end up facedown on a sidewalk or
     fried by Old Sparky. I’d say good riddance, but somewhere you’ve probably got a mother
     who cares about you. Why don’t you try to change your life while you got a chance?”
    “We’re leaving,” Bonnie said. “But don’t be talking down to us anymore. Your grandson
     told us what you let happen to your daughter.”
    “Enough of this. Let’s go,” the injured man said.
    “You’re Clyde Barrow, aren’t you?” Grandfather said.
    “I told you, the name is Smith.”
    “You were born in Telico. You tortured animals when you were a child. You got your
     brother killed up in Missouri. You’re a certified mess, boy.”
    “Yeah, and you’re a nasty old man who’s going to have tumbleweed bouncing across his
     grave directly,” said the man who called himself Smith.
    They all got in the Chevrolet, slamming the doors. That was when Blue went straight
     up in the air, his front hooves higher than the Chevrolet’s top. Grandfather crashed
     to the ground, the shotgun flying from his hands, his face white with shock, his breath
     wheezing from his throat. I thought I heard bones snap in his back.
    Bonnie and her friends drove away with Raymond behind the wheel. One of them spat
     on Grandfather. In the shadows I couldn’t tell who it was, but I saw the spittle come
     out of the window like wet string and stick on Grandfather’s shirt. In seconds the
     Chevrolet was going up a dusty rise between the trees, the sunlight spangling on the
     windows.
    I let the holster and belt slide free of the revolver and pulled back the hammer and
     aimed with both hands at the back of the