They left everything in Joplin. Every suitcase, every dollar bill, every gun they were carrying and all of their ammunition. Al's guitar and Duncan's saxophone too. Courtney has only her wedding ring and her nightgown to her name, not even underwear. She left her folder of Duncan Clyde clippings and her book of poetry, her lucky string of pearls and her camera full of all their silly pictures. Harold left his collection of clippings too.
Al doesn't talk about anything he misses, but Heather mentions that she hates herself for having gone out to smoke in her cheapest coat, and a cloud passes over her eyes anytime someone mentions the apartment itself.
They abandon the shot-up Ford convertible on the side of the road, and Duncan looks at it just a second too long as they drive off in their new car.
On the second night after the shooting, the gang knocks over a general store so they can stop driving around in their nightwear. As her crew ransacks the place, Courtney stands guard outside, waiting her turn, turning her wedding ring anxiously and shivering in the fall air.
She hadn't eaten since the afternoon before the speakeasy. When she tried, she couldn't hold anything down. The bullet graze in her side had taken hours to stop bleeding, and the dried blood still pulls at her skin a little every time she moves. Trying to sleep had been hell when even the slightest noises sounded like gunfire.
Duncan comes out from the general store, still in his briefs, a bedsheet draped over his shoulder and hydrogen peroxide in one hand. Getting on one knee, he pushes up the tattered, bloodied fabric of her nightdress.
"You killed that officer," Courtney says. "In front of the car."
Duncan rips a strip of linen between his teeth. "Yeah."
She holds up her nightdress so Duncan can work. "He was gonna kill us," she says without inflection.
Duncan feels around her midsection. They'd spent the day picking shards of glass out of her stomach. He pours the peroxide on a bundled strip of linen and starts dabbing at her wounds.
"Yeah."
Duncan covers her front and side in the rust brown liquid. Then he rips several long strips from the bedsheets for bandages.
"That makes seven," he says.
Courtney looks down at the hard line of his mouth, the linen in his hands and only three strips over his shoulder. She shuts her mouth and waits for the others to come out so she can get out of her bloodied clothes.
Something is knocked over inside followed by a harsh "Shhh!" from Al.
"Yer clean, love," Duncan says, wiping at the dried trails of blood down her leg. "Ya didn't kill any of those officers."
"I shot at them," she says. "You don't know."
He starts to wrap her midsection, slowly passing the fabric around her waist. "You did what ya had to, to help save our asses. There ain't no regret in that."
"Do you regret it?" she asks. "Killing people?"
"Sometimes."
"When?"
Duncan tucks the end of a strip into the beginning of another, careful not to press. "When people don't deserve it. When they try to take back things that ain't worth dying for." He rips another strip between his teeth. "Most of the time, they do deserve it, like when they try to put me back in prison. When they think I'm just a kid they can have their way with 'cause I'm spry and pretty and don't know how to—"
He stops short, nostrils flaring as he grips a wad of linen in red hands. For a moment, he only gulps down air. Then he keeps wrapping Courtney up in silence.
She stays quiet as he works. There are no more clatters from inside, just light shuffling.
"The world just got a whole lot meaner for us, baby," he says. "We've gotta get a whole lot meaner too."
Duncan pulls her gown back down just as Heather and Al emerge. Heather wears a plaid dress she normally wouldn't be caught dead in and Al lumbers out wearing a shirt and slacks one size too big. He carries a collapsible tent under one arm and a bag of soup cans. Duncan leads Courtney by the hand inside to scavenge.
They rob a Kansas armory in the middle of the fifth night to restock on weapons and ammunition. The boys pick up cartridges for their Brownings and their Colts, as well as some old school Winchester repeating rifles. Heather replaces her Colt .38s, and Duncan gets Courtney a top-break pocket pistol, smaller than the one she'd had before. It packs a hell of a punch, and Duncan engraves it for her with a switchblade.
"To Bonnie," it says, "I owe you one."
On day eight, when they've been driving through Oklahoma for hours without a destination, and the long ride, normally a cesspool of frustration and indignancy by this point, is unbearably quiet, Duncan has Harold make a sudden turn at the interstate.
"That's it," Duncan says. "Fuck it. We're going back to Texas."
They'd been sleeping in the car, but at the news, everyone is alert, including Courtney. "What?"
"We ain't hardly stopped since Joplin. I'm fucking homesick. I know I can't be the only one. Turn here."
"But the coppers," Harold begins to say.
"Fuck the coppers. I miss Texas. I'm going home."
Courtney raises a brow. When Duncan doesn't say anything else, she leans her head back against his shoulder, closing her eyes.
When she wakes up from an uneasy sleep filled with gunfire and moonlight, Harold is complaining of a need to pee, and after some arguing with Duncan, the former pulls into a convenience store.
"Mandatory pit-stop, everybody out," Duncan declares, getting out and opening Courtney's door. "Even you."
He holds his hand out to help her, but she ignores it and limps out by herself.
Al groans, tipping his fedora back over his eyes. Duncan shakes him, disturbing Heather napping on his lap.
"Oy! I ain't stopping us again 'til we reach Dallas, so if you can hold yer piss that long, be my guest."
Al swears at his brother in Spanish and, grumbling, gets Heather out of the car. Courtney passes by them and into the store. She walks straight to the soda machine at the back to buy a Coke with the nickel she'd found in their stolen car.
Duncan grabs her hand just as she's about to put her coin in the machine.
"It's on me," he says, pulling out his own nickel. He grabs the bottle for her, pops the lid on the handle, and hands it to her. "You haven't said more than five words to anyone in as many days, doll. I'm starting to worry."
"I know," Courtney says. She winces. "Sorry. Two words."
He brushes some hair out of her face. "Dallas will cheer you up. You'll see. You won't even remember what happened."
Al walks in at that moment, Heather on his arm, and Courtney can't suppress the twist in her stomach at the sight of him.
"Can we visit my mother?" she asks, staring into her coke bottle.
Duncan kisses her forehead. "Of course. We'll meet up with my Ma too. I'll introduce you to her, how about that?"
Courtney takes a sip of her Coke, wiping her mouth on the sleeve of the brown blouse she'd acquired.
"I can't even wrap my head around the fact that you're from Dallas too, let alone that you have a mother. It's entirely possible that you were raised by a pack of gun-wielding coyotes."
Behind her, Heather snorts.
"Nah, I love my Ma," Duncan says without a hint of bashfulness. "She raised us right. Ain't her fault the career Al and I ended up in."
"I'll ring her up," Al offers, walking to the back of the store where a rotary phone sits.
"Is it safe? Visiting our families?" Courtney asks.
Duncan and Heather exchange a look.
"Ma's used to it already," he says.
"We don't meet in town," Heather explains. "We set something up on the outskirts so none of our fire comes down on her."
"Then how am I supposed to see my mother?" Courtney asks, panic slithering into her veins. "How am I supposed to visit anyone ever again?"
"Easy now. We'll give her a call too," Duncan assures her. "We'll have yer ma meet us outside of town, at our usual spot. How's that?"
Rubbing her forehead, Courtney shuffles away from them, debating. She glances at the papers on the newsstand and stops cold.
"Your mother does know you're running with criminals, doesn't she?" Heather hedges.
"...if she didn't before, she does now," Courtney says, picking up the newspaper on the top of the pile. It's one of the national papers, the ones they put out from New York to Los Angeles. And on the front page…
She turns so Duncan and Heather can see it. The headline reads, "Barrow Gang Treasure Trove Discovered in Joplin." On the cover is a large picture of Duncan holding up Courtney in front of the Ford V8, one of the many pictures taken on Courtney's camera.
"Al better hurry up with that phone call," Duncan mutters, eyeing the man behind the counter, far more menacing-looking than Owen had been.
"I'll be in the car," Heather says and slips out.
Courtney glances over the article. In addition to the picture, the newspaper had published one of the poems from her notebook, the one she started writing with Duncan in Tulsa. She puts the paper back on the rack. It rustles with the tremor in her hands.
Al returns, ready to say something, but Duncan juts his head in the direction of the newsstand. His brother notices the picture right away and sees the man behind the counter staring at him intently, over the brim of glasses too small for his face. Al leaves without a word.
"Call your ma quickly," Duncan advises. "Tell her to meet us at the Devil's Back Porch at noon tomorrow."
Courtney turns the numbers on the rotary phone too quickly for it to register. She turns the numbers again, slower. She asks the Operator to connect her to her mother's house, then waits, stomach clenching and unclenching.
The line rings twice. Three times.
"Hello? Mrs. Bons speaking."
"...Mama?" Courtney whispers. "Mama, it's...it's Bonnie. How are you?"
There's silence on the other end of the line. "Mama?"
"Bonnie… Oh, my dear girl," her mother says breathlessly. "I'm so relieved to hear from you! Where are you?"
"I'm at a gas station in Oklahoma. I'm on my way towards Dallas."
"Praise the Lord!" her mother cries, sounding like she's close to tears. "How ever did you get away?"
Courtney's brow furrows. "Get away?"
"From your kidnappers! That dreadful Duncan Clyde and the Barrows!"
Courtney feels her stomach go hollow, her fingers swelling. "Mama…"
"No, no, you don't have to explain a thing! You've been through a terrible ordeal. I'll call Justin to lend me the car, and we'll come pick you up. Where are you?"
Her hands gripping the phone, Courtney finds her voice with her anger.
"Mama, listen to me very carefully. I wasn't kidnapped, and I didn't escape. I'm still with Duncan and his family. We're passing through Dallas to see his relatives, and I wanted to see you too."
Now it's her mother's voice that sounds hollow. "What?"
"I want to see you, Mama. I do. I miss you," she says. "If you want to meet me, go to the Devil's Back Porch by the Trinity River outside of Dallas tomorrow at noon. By yourself. No coppers and absolutely no Justin. If these people think we're being double-crossed or ratted out…"
Courtney glances at Duncan over her shoulder. He's examining a lighter from the counter, watching the teller out of the corner of his eye. He's got one hand on the gun at his waist where the man can't see him.
"Bonnie," her mother says brokenly, "dear, I don't understand—"
"I'll see you tomorrow. Only you, Mama." Courtney takes a deep breath. "I'll explain everything to you then."
Before her mother has a chance to answer, Courtney slams the receiver down.