“Just get back on 80 here, heading east. You’re going to intersect I-271 right away. Head south on 271, and it will take you right back down to I-71. You’ll be in Columbus in two hours.” And with that, and a little wave, the clueless old man rolled up his window and rumbled down the road.
Clyde and Bonnie watched him go, their hands pressed into their pockets, their eyes trained on the Dodge 4X4 stenciled across his tailgate. They watched until he was out of sight. Then Bonnie turned on him.
“You’re an ex-con?” she asked flatly.
“Yeah. I am,” he said swinging around, arms folded against the cold. “And apparently, I ran off with a cute, helpless, little country singer, and everybody’s looking for me!” Finn kicked the tire of the Blazer with his soggy boot, wincing as his frozen toes connected with the hard surface.
“Son of a bitch!” He yanked the driver’s side door open and climbed in, slamming the door behind him. He glared at Bonnie through the broad windshield, challenging her, knowing he wouldn’t leave her, knowing she knew it too.
She walked slowly to the passenger side and climbed in. The Blazer was warmed up now, blasting heat in their faces and urging them to resume their journey. But they sat, unmoving, and not surprisingly, Bonnie was the first to speak.
“You said you would tell me about that tattoo. That swastika. You never did. You didn’t tell me because you would have had to tell me you’d been in prison.”
It wasn’t a question. She’d put two and two together pretty quickly. Who says she wasn’t good at math?
When Finn didn’t reply to her opening statement, Bonnie tried again.
“The old guy said they were looking for an ex-con. Not an escaped convict. So I’m assuming you did your time. Did you violate your parole? By leaving the state, I mean.”
“No. I didn’t. And I don’t owe you an explanation, Bonnie.” And he didn’t. He didn’t owe her anything. At this point he figured she owed him. Big time.
“What did you do?” she asked, undeterred.
“I killed a famous country singer.”
Bonnie didn’t laugh. He didn’t blame her. It wasn’t very funny.
“How long were you there? In prison, I mean.”
Finn gripped the wheel and tried to rein in the helplessness that filled his chest and made the palms of his hands sweat. He didn’t want to talk about this.
But Bonnie did.
“Come on, Clyde. Tell me. You’ve heard my sad tale. Let’s hear yours.”
“Five years. I’ve been out for a year and a half,” he said, relenting, the response short and sharp, a verbal whip that left Bonnie temporarily stunned. But she was silent for all of five seconds.
“And you’re twenty-four?”
“Turned twenty-four in August. Eight, eight, remember? Heil Hitler.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bonnie hissed, offended, just like he’d intended. He was angry. He wanted her to be angry too.
“You didn’t notice? I have a swastika on my left pec, and a double eight on the right. H is the eighth letter in the alphabet—Heil Hitler, HH, 88. The Aryan Brotherhood has all kinds of cute little symbols like that. It just so happens to correspond with my birthday. Nice, huh? Convenient too.”
“What did you do?” She went back to her previous question. Maybe the Hitler stuff was too much.
“My brother robbed a convenience store. To this day, I don’t know what he was thinking. I was in the car. I didn’t know he had a gun, and I didn’t know he was going to rob the store. Unfortunately for Fisher, the owner had a gun too. And he knew how to use it. Fisher got blasted. He ran out of the store, but not before he pulled the trigger too. I don’t know how he managed to get a shot off, because he had a huge hole in his stomach. But I heard the shots, and I saw him fall. I grabbed him, got him into the car. Took him to the hospital. He died on the way. And I went to prison.” Finn kept his voice clipped, his answers short, making it seem like it was no big deal, just water under the bridge.
“Your brother?” Bonnie sounded as stunned as he had been when she told him about her sister.
“My twin brother,” he answered, not looking at her. But after a few seconds of silence he had to look. She was staring straight forward, but tears streamed down her face, and her hand covered her mouth like she was trying to hold something in. He turned off the key, climbed back out of the Blazer, and shut the door behind him. He had to. He had to get away from her. Just for a minute. He knew he should have told her about Fish when she told him about Minnie. But he’d been too stunned. The similarities had felt wrong, strange, and even false somehow, and telling her then would have felt like he was trying to one-up her story after she’d bared all.
Fish had always done that. From the time they could talk, Finn would share something, and Fish would immediately have to top him. Finn would finish his dinner, and Fish would ask for seconds he was too full to eat. Finn would get a solid double in baseball, and Fish would kill himself trying to hit a home run. He kept track of all their stats, their grades, their girlfriends. Finn would tell him something, and Fisher would always come back with, “Oh, yeah? Well . . .” And Finn had hated it. He’d hated how competitive Fish was. How animated, how bossy. He’d hated how Fish could always wear him down. He hated how he always gave in to whatever Fish wanted. But most of all, he hated how much he loved him, and he hated how much he missed him.