Red Grass River (6 page)

Even as the teller’s eyes widened and his mouth came open John
Ashley smiled and said softly, “Everything’s just fine, bubba, you do like I say. Act natural and don’t holler. Make me any trouble I’ll shoot you graveyard dead. Now gimme it.”

The teller did it. He handed over a banded pad of twenty-dollar bills with “$400” imprinted on the band and then several handfuls of loose paper currency of various denominations. John Ashley casually put it all into his overall pockets with the insouciance of a man reaping his just desserts. The teller handed him yet another small stack of bills and said in a quavering whisper, “That’s all I have in my cash drawers, sir, really it is.”

John Ashley grinned under his bandaged nose and said, “Well, then, bubba, thats all I’ll take.” The teller looked dazed and for a moment John Ashley thought the man might faint. “Sit down at that desk back of you and just stay there and don’t say nothin to nobody for five minutes, you hear?” He said all this in a low conversational tone and with a broad smile and anyone looking their way would have seen a friendly farmer with an injured nose chatting with a teller who looked but a little more out of sorts than usual.

As the teller turned and went to the desk John Ashley left the bank, whistling lowly and waving so long at the guard and feeling his heart banging against his ribs as if trying to make its own wild escape ahead of him. He steeled himself to walk at a normal pace as he made his way along the serpentine route he’d laid out through the alleys. At every step of the way he expected to hear police whistles suddenly shrilling behind him and shouted commands to stand fast and put up his hands.

And then he was back in the shed and the gauze was off his face and he quickly changed into his white suit and stuffed the overalls and the hat in the paper sack and hid it behind a nail barrel in the corner. He put the money in his coat pockets and then went into the house and up to his room. In response to the look of curiosity he received from the cleaning women on the stairs he said, “Forgot my pipe.”

He counted the money out on the bed—one thousand two hundred and seventy-two dollars, most of it in twenties and tens and no bill larger than a fifty, of which there five. He counted all of it again and laughed out loud. He felt better than he had in weeks—even as his heart yet pounded and he tasted now the brassy flavor of the apprehension he’d been holding in tight check all morning. He wanted to howl his elation. He divided the money into four even piles and rolled them tightly and stuffed them into a spare pair of boots and then went for a long walk on the seawall. He could not stop grinning.

By the time the house sat down to dinner that afternoon the news of the robbery was all over town. The talk at the table was all about it and the bold broken-nosed farmer who’d done it and got away. The most popular sentiment among the girls was the hope that the hayseed would come to the house to spend some of his loot.

“I’ll show him how to do a damn
stick-up
like he aint never done,” Cindy Jean said, and all the girls laughed.

John Ashley laughed with them. The girls had several times remarked on his high spirit all afternoon and some now wondered aloud as to its cause. He told them he just felt good being in their company, that was all, and they grinned and blew kisses at him. It was all he could do to keep from bragging to them that he’d committed the crime. But he knew too well the whores’ love of gossip and knew that if he confided in even one of them about the holdup they would all soon know the story and so would others outside the house. He felt cheated that he could not crow about it to anybody.

Two months later his euphoria from the robbery had ebbed and he found himself standing across the street from a Broadway Avenue bank and considering the possibilities. He decided that yes, he could take this one too. He thought about it for the next few days and was almost decided on doing it when a telegram arrived from his father: “Get home. Gordy says all will be well.” Gordy was Gordon Blue, attorney-at-law with offices in Palm Beach and Chicago and an occasional partner of Joe Ashley dating back to their days in Lee County.

The girls were sorry to see him go. The night before his departure Aunt July threw a party and hired a dance band to play in the crowded parlor and each girl in turn took him aside and kissed him goodbye and petted him and whispered endearments. He three times went upstairs with a different girl each time including Cindy Jean who said she didnt care anymore how much he looked like her brother.

When he boarded the steamer next morning he was redeyed with hangover and exhausted to the marrow and his flayed peeter pained him in his pants. Yet he grinned wide as he stood at the rail in the cold wind and returned the goodbye waves of the girls on the dock. Then the ship cleared the channel and entered the silver-green Gulf and he watched Galveston recede in the wake and he told himself that if he should ever have to live someplace other than Florida he would come back to this old island. Under a sunwashed sky laced with white clouds a school of dolphin rolled up beside the ship like old friends attending him home.

July 1914

O
N A CLEAR HOT SUMMER
S
UNDAY JUST DAYS AFTER
J
OHN
A
SHLEY
debarked at Tampa and was driven home to Twin Oaks by his brother Bob, the family celebrated his return with a great feast and invited every friendly acquaintance in the county. In the shade of the wide live oaks whole pigs crackled and dripped from their spits above open fires tended by Old Joe’s Negro help. Huge racks of beef ribs sizzled on thick iron grills over firepits. Puncheon tables held heaping platters of smoked mullet, roast backstrips of venison, fried catfish, skin-crisped sweet potatoes. There were huge steaming kettles of clams, of oysters, of corn on the cob, of seasoned swamp cabbage which is the heart of palm. There were pots of grits and of greens of several kinds, bowls of hush puppies, baskets of boiled turtle eggs. There was cornbread, flour biscuits, Seminole bread made of coontie starch. There were jars of molasses, jellies of guava and strawberry and seagrape. There were barrels of mangoes and limes. Several tables held kegs of beer and Old Joe had brought in a wagonload of his best jugged whiskey.

The huge party ate and drank, talked and laughed and told tales of every sort. It danced to the music of a string band out of Stuart and Old Joe took a turn with them on his fiddle and Bill Ashley plunked his banjo for several sets. Children ran about in shrieking play or danced at the periphery of the packed-dirt clearing where the adults reeled and waltzed and square-danced and dogs ran yapping through
the crowd. A dozen smoking smudge pots stood at intervals between the house and the surrounding swamp to keep down the mosquitoes.

John Ashley sat at one end of the family table and Old Joe at the other. Bob Ashley sat by John and told him about Bob Baker’s recent marriage. “She’s a Georgia girl,” he said. “They say she’s real nice. I saw her in West Palm one time. Goodlookin thing—way too goodlookin for the likes of him. I figure she musta took pity on him is why she married him. Maybe she figured a one-legged man wouldnt never get nobody to marry him and she just felt good and sorry for him.”

“Maybe she was just good and drunk,” John Ashley said.

“Maybe she’s just good and
dumb
,” Bob said. He leaned closer and lowered his voice and said, “But look here, Johnny, tell me more about Aunt July’s.”

With them sat their twelve-year-old nephew Hanford Mobley who idolized both these uncles who treated him like the young man he believed he already was. Earlier that day they had let him go with them into the pineywoods to watch them have a shooting contest. They had fired twelve shots each at pine cones they lined up on a fallen trunk and John had won by a score of twelve cones to eleven and laughingly claimed that all the pussy he’d had these past two years had made his shooting eye even sharper than it always was. John then let Hanford Mobley have a turn with his pistol and the brothers stood astonished to discover that their slight small-boned nephew who had to use both hands to aim the big. .44 was a natural-born deadeye. The boy hit all twelve cones he shot at and didnt stop beaming the rest of the day. When they told old Joe about it he said of his grandson, “Hell yeah that sprout can shoot. Been thataway since he was eight or so. He’s a good one, that little fella. Aint afraid a the devil hisself neither. You ought see how he can use a knife.”

Now John Ashley grinned at his brother’s insistence on hearing more about his lickerish life at their aunt’s house in Galveston. “Hell, brother,” he said, “I done told you all there is to tell.” He ran a hand over the unfamiliar feel of the exposed back of his neck, which showed as pale as the narrow strip of shaved skin above each ear. The first thing Old Joe had said on seeing him after his absence of nearly two years was, “Boy, I dont what-all they think of hair like that on a man in Texas, but round here they wont know whether to kick your ass or kiss you. Ma! Get me the shears and razor!”

John Ashley had also told Bob earlier about the Galveston bank robbery. His brother had whooped and clapped him on the shoulder and called him a laying sack. John then took him into his room at the
rear of the house and pulled a suitcase from under the bed and opened it and showed his brother the more than one thousand dollars that yet remained of the take. Bob’s big-eyed flabbergast struck him as comic and he laughed and said, “Lying sack, hey?”

Bob asked what in purple hell had possessed him to rob a damn
bank
, and John tried to explain about the mixed-up feeling he’d had when he was fishing on the beach one day and thought about Bobby Baker holding a lifetime grudge and maybe even wanting him dead. Tried to explain his frustration over not knowing what to do about it but that he felt he had to do
something
, something
daring
, even though he couldn’t say why. “Hell, I dont know,” John Ashley said. “I dont know
why
I did it. All I know is I felt pretty damn good after.”

“You just up and decided that robbin a bank was a way to make yourself feel better, hey?” Bob said, grinning. “Shitfire, I guess it’s lots of fellas’d feel better about things if they got away with robbin a bank.”

John Ashley said, “Well…yeah.” He was not sure he could ever explain the thing clearly even to himself. And so he changed the subject: “Let me tell you about somethin that damn sure makes any man feel a whole lot better, bubba. I mean, it’s some nice little business Aunt July’s got there….”

And now Bob still had not heard enough about their aunt’s establishment in Texas and his brother’s time in it. “Was you tellin me true?” he said in low voice, glancing down the table to ensure no ear other than young Hanford Mobley’s was listening in. “About havin run of the place? You really and truly could have
any
them girls you wanted?”

“Any damn time they wasnt workin on the house clock,” John Ashley said.

“You
lyin
sack,” Bob Ashley said, grinning hugely.

“I had me my first piece last month,” young Hanford Mobley said. “Wasnt nothin so dang special.”

His uncles turned to him and said together, “
You
lyin sack!” and the boy reddened with his lie and he shrugged and could not restrain his grin.

At the other end of the table Old Joe as holding forth about the stupidities of the legal system. He had over the past two years grown steadily angrier that his son was being forced to live apart from his family for no reason but having killed some Indian. “The law,” Old Joe said, “is a goddamned horse’s ass.”

“Hear, hear,” said Gordon Blue, raising his glass in a toast. The dapper goateed lawyer was the only person present wearing a suit and
tie. The day before, he and Old Joe had explained to John Ashley how they intended to get him out from under the law’s deep shadow.

“If your daddy here hadnt kept it from me for so long that he knew where you were and how much he wanted to have you back home,” Gordon Blue had said, “we wouldve had you back long before now.” He gave Old Joe a sidewise look. “But
nooo
. Joe couldnt bring himself to trust
anyone
, not even Old Gordy, no matter that I’ve helped him a time or two in worse trouble than this. Couldnt tell me about it till a few weeks ago, could you Joseph?”

Old Joe’s smile was small. “I dont know why the whole thing wasnt plain to me as the nose on my face till I talked to Gordy about it,” he said to John Ashley. “The simple fact is, they got to give you a jury trial—and what jury’s gonna convict you in Palm Beach County? Besides, the state’s havin trouble findin their main witness, aint they? The only ones to testify against you will be Sheriff George and them who heard the breed accuse you. But aint nobody seen that breed since you been gone—or goin to, neither.”

Bob Ashley chuckled and said, “I dont guess
he’s
gonna do any testifyin, no sir.” On the drive home from Tampa, he had proudly recounted to John Ashley how he’d tracked down Jimmy Gopher in the Everglades and put a round through his head at nearly two hundred yards. John Ashley had looked at him partly in surprise that he could speak so easily of having killed a man and partly in admiration of the same thing—and of his utter confidence in having done the right thing. Bob said, “Hell man, he’d of spoke against you in court. It wasnt nothin else to do. What the hell, man, he anyway had it comin.”

“The point is,” Old Joe now said, “most ever man in the county’s on our side in this thing and thats a fact. Aint none at em gonna say you guilty if they get on the jury.”

John Ashley looked at his brothers gathered by the door and listening and all of them grinning except Bill the elder who never was one to smile except sometimes when playing his banjo. He turned to his father and said, “Not
everybody
in the county’s our friend, Daddy. What if some of them get on the jury?”

“I wouldn’t be too concerned about that,” Gordon Blue said. “There’s a story been going around for months that this Gopher fellow who accused you to the police was set upon in the Everglades by persons unknown who were sympathetic to your cause. Supposedly he was dismembered with an ax and his remains fed to the alligators.” Gordon Blue made a face of distaste and gave a little theatrical shiver and then smiled widely. “Although the story isnt true, it
is
true that
this person seems to have fallen off the earth, and I suspect that no potential juror will be able to completely ignore the possible implications of the tale.”

The Ashley men all looked at one another and grinned. Gordon Blue smiled and poured a touch of bourbon from his gilded flash into his cup and then took a small sip. He cleared his throat and said to John Ashley: “It’s all arranged. Tomorrow your father and I deliver you to Sheriff George Baker at the county jail in West Palm. The trial opens on Tuesday, so you’ll be there only one day before is starts and then for only as long as it lasts, which I dont believe will be very long. Sheriff George has also agreed that you wont be handcuffed on your promise not to attempt escape.”

He paused to light a cigarette, one of the tailormade Chesterfields he bought by the case in Chicago. He exhaled a blue plume of smoke and smiled at John Ashley. “In a week, two at the most, you’ll be free and clear.”

And so Old Joe had laid out that Sunday’s repast at Twin Oaks for all local friends of the family, all of whom were in John Ashley’s jury pool. And on that Sunday afternoon John Ashley ate and drank and danced and swapped stories with his brothers. And after sundown he and Bob drove to West Palm Beach and went to Miss Lillian’s.

The madam was surprised to tears to see him again and greeted him like the Prodigal returned. Then he went upstairs and tiptoed to Loretta May’s room and looked in the open door and saw the tub of steaming water before he saw her sitting in a yellow shimmy at the window and facing out into the darkness. Her blonde hair had grown to below her shoulder blades but the breeze through the window carried to him her familiar smell of peaches. He thought her more beautiful than ever and was content to stand there in silence and look upon her.

Without turning she said, “About time you got here, you bad ole gator-skinner you.”

He grinned and felt himself flush, as though she’d caught him at something sneaky. “How’d you know I was standin here? How’d you know it was
me?
”

She laughed like a small bell and stood and turned smiling and opened her arms to him.

After the bath and the powdering and after they’d made love twice they lay entwined and smoked cigarettes and spoke very little. When they’d first met he’d asked her what pleasure she got out of smoking
since she couldn’t see the smoke and she’d said, “I cant?”—a response that so confused him he let the question go. Now he was surprised that she did not ask where he’d been these past two years. And yet, somehow, he felt she knew.

“I done somethin while I was away,” he whispered, feeling strangely as if he were asking a question of her as much as telling her something. “Somethin I hadnt ever done before.”

She nuzzled his neck and murmured, “I know. Made the world spin a little faster for a while, huh? Made everything a little more
excitin
.”

He drew back so he could look into her face in the weak reflected light of the torches in the courtyard below the window. Her eyes were shut. “You know what I done?” he said. “You dont know what I done.”

She opened her eyes and turned her face toward him. “Yes I do—and I know more than that, boy. I even know what you’re
gonna
do. Bet you a dollar I know what you gonna do.”

“Cant nobody shine the future. That ain’t but swamp nigger hoo-doo.”

She felt for his face and put her fingers to his lips and said, “You’re gonna have a real good time with a blind girl
real
soon is what you’re gonna do. Now, you think I’m wrong?” He grinned under her fingers and then she grinned too.

She sat up and straddled his thighs and her hands stroked him and in an instant he was ready. She moved up and fit herself onto him and brought his hands up to her breasts as she slowly rolled her hips. he groaned with pleasure.

“I guess,” she said, “I won me a bet.”

“Lord girl,” he gasped, “I believe you sure enough got what they call the sight.”

She giggled and worked herself hard against him. They laughed and made love deep into the night.

And in the morning he went to jail.

The jailhouse was a single-story stone-and-concrete structure surrounded by a fence of chickenwire eight feet high and set thirty yards from the building all the way around. Sheriff George Baker met them at the gate. He and Gordon Blue exchanged a few official words and each man signed a paper and then the sheriff smiled at John Ashley and said, “How do, John. Been a while. You lookin fit.”

“What say, Sheriff George,” John Ashley said. He reached into
the motorcar and withdrew the freshly cleaned white suit he would wear in court. Then he stood before his father and they looked at each other for a moment and then Old Joe turned to Sheriff George and said, “You wont to takin him to court in handcuffs you said. It’s the deal.”