Red Grass River (11 page)

“You seen who? Bobby?” John Ashley said. “What was he up to? Still running his mouth about what a sumbitch I am to of run off and what a good man he is for not shooting me?”

“Like usual, yeah,” Ed said. “Told me to tell you again, when you ready to meet him face-to-face just the two of you, you let him know.”

“Face-to-face, my ass,” John Ashley said. He spat. “You know as well as I do, he’ll say he’s gonna meet me just us two and then have a dozen damn deputies hid all around to jump me soon’s I show up. Man’s a born liar. If he said the ocean’s made of salt water I’d expect it to taste like sugar. I tell you, I’m of a mind to slip up to his house one a these nights and call him out, just us two, and see what happens.”

“I told him I’d take him on anytime,” Ed said, “but he gimme a shit-eatin grin and said it’s been between him and you. Before I could say another word he went on in the bank to add to his pile of money.”

“I bet it
is
a pile, too,” Claude Calder said. “Only I hear it’s Sheriff George raking in the money, not Bobby. They say Bobby just runs it to the bank for him. But I bet anything he gets a cut.”

“It’s always been talk Sheriff George takes money, but I never heard anybody but a known liar say Bobby does,” John Ashley said. “But he’ll for damn sure do whatever his daddy tells him, and if Daddy says pick up money from someplace or take money to the bank, thats what he’s gonna do.”

“I heard from Miss Lillian that Sheriff George takes a cut from every gambling joint and whorehouse in the county—nigger and white both,” Ed Ashley said. “She said he’d jacked up his cut to twenty percent and she cant hardly make a profit anymore unless she raises her own prices. Said she called him a thief and he laughed at her and said it aint thievin to steal from criminals.”

“He got some interestin notions of justice, Sheriff George,” John Ashley said. Nobody spoke for a moment and then he said, “They really keep their money in the Stuart bank? Maybe Bobby was just seeing to some kind of police business.”

“Hell, John,” Ed said, “he had a damn bag right there in his hand and if it wasn’t fulla money I’ll kiss your ass.”

“How you know it was money in it?”

“Cause I seen him take it to the teller and hand it over to him and stand there while the fella went off with it to someplace in back and in a minute the fella comes back and hands him a piece of paper and Bobby sticks it in his shirt, thats how come I know it. I was waitin for him to come out. I said, ‘Let’s you and me step around back in alley and you take off that badge and we’ll see whose ass is the blackest.’ He just give that smile some more and said to tell you he’s waitin on you, and off he went, the chickenshit son of a bitch.”

For a minute none of them said anything, each man drifting on his own thoughts. Then Kid Lowe said: “You know, somebody ought rob that bank and all them Bakers’ money in it.”

Ed Ashley grinned his wretched grin and glanced at John, who smiled and cut his gaze to the fire. Bob had told the other Ashley brothers about John’s Galveston bank job and John had then sworn them all to keep it secret from their father. Still, all of the brothers had a feeling their father somehow knew about it. “Hell, boy,” Ed said, turning back to the Kid, “what-all
you
know about robbin a damn bank?”

Kid Lowe turned to him with a glower, then looked around at the others, then behind him, then spat into the fire. “I guess it’s all right
to tell you boys something.” He looked around again as if checking the surrounding shadows for signs of spies. “The thing is,” he said in lowered voice, “I’m a bank robber is what I am.” He smiled with shy pride. “Dont guess any you all’s gonna turn me in, are you?”

The others exchanged looks. Claude Calder chuckled. Ed Ashley snorted and said, “
Shiiit!
You never.”

“Hell I aint,” the Kid said. “It’s how come I’m here. I robbed four banks all told in Chicago and was doing all right, if I say so myself, till I robbed this one bank on State Street. There was a dumbshit guard just couldnt do like I told him to put his hands behind his head and so he got himself shot.” He paused to spit and take a sip of whiskey.

“You shot a bank guard?” Ed Ashley said. “You
kill
him?”

“Oh
hell
no,” the Kid said. “Wasnt aimin to. All I did was wound him in the gut a little bit. He didnt die till long after, about two weeks later. Caught the pneumonia in the hospital and died.”

“Well hell,” John Ashley said, “he caught the pneumonia because he was bad wounded, thats what happened.”

Kid Lowe flung his arms wide in exasperation. “That’s just
exactly
what the damn cops in Chicago told everybody including the newspapers.” The bitter memory gave his voice an edge. “Sorry sonofabitches. How do
they
know the fella didnt catch pneumonia for some other reason? How do
you
know he didnt? Maybe somebody with pneumonia sneezed on him. Maybe he wasnt warm enough in that damn hospital and he caught a cold and it got worser till it became pneumonia. That
could of
happened. They dont
know
thats not what happened. But
noooo
, they right away say he got pneumonia because he was wounded. And because
I’m
the one wounded him
I’m
the one to blame he’s dead. Makes me so goddamn mad I wish the sumbitch was alive so I could shoot him again.”

“So you down here hiding from the Chicago police?” Ed Ashley said.

Kid Lowe shrugged, spat, took another sip of whiskey, looked around at nothing in particular.

“How much did you get from these here bank robberies?” Claude Calder said. “You must got yourself a rich stash someplace, eh?”

“Dont I wish,” Kid Lowe said. “Most the jobs didnt get me even two thousand dollars. And the way I was living—you know, girls, the racehorses, nice clothes—well, the money went pretty damn quick, you bet.”

He took a drink of whiskey and looked sharply at Ed Ashley. “So dont be asking me what
I
know about robbing banks. I’m the only
damn one here knows
any
thing about it because I’m the only damn one here ever
done
it.”

Ed Ashley met his stare for a moment, then turned to John and raised his eyebrows. John was grinning at the Kid and the Kid looked at him sharply and John Ashley said, “Well boy, that aint exactly right.”

They hadn’t been at all sure what Old Joe would think of the idea. While John Ashley explained it to him a few evenings later, all of them sitting around the firepit back of the Twin Oaks house, Old Joe gave no sign of his inclination as he listened without expression, puffing his pipe and sipping his whiskey and occasionally spitting into the fire. And when John had explained everything in detail and sat back to hear what his father thought of it, he who might dismiss the whole thing with a shake of his head, Old Joe did not answer right away but refired his pipe and refilled his cup and sat smoking and drinking and staring into the fire.

Nobody spoke for five minutes. And then, his eyes still on the flames, Joe Ashley said: “I don’t understand it. All this trouble because of some worthless Injun. That goddamn George Baker’s been a real mullethead recent and thats a fact. I hear tell he’s drinkin moren usual. He looks it. Startin to get that yellow look around the eyes. But whatever’s botherin him aint no good excuse for takin hisself so damn serious as he’s been. I heard tell he said if he ran you down he’d take you in any way he had to. Heard tell those were his exact words: any way he had to. When I saw him up to Blue’s store last month I went over and asked was it true he said that. He said it was. I said the day he did serious harm to any of you boys was the day I’d lay him in his grave. He knew I meant it. Bobby was there and started to run his mouth at me but George told him shut up.” He looked skyward and regarded the stars. “You know Freddie Baker, Bobby’s cousin? He’s a deputy too.”

John Ashley nodded. “More like brothers than cousins, some say. Spose to be a good old boy and a rough one, but he aint never looked all that rough to me.”

“I heard tell,” Old Joe said, “Freddie was in the Doghouse Bar the other night saying his Uncle George is gonna run the Ashleys out of Palm Beach County or know the reason why. Saying it like it’s somethin good as done.”

“I heard that talk,” John Ashley said. “We all have. We waitin to see them try.”

“Them damn Bakers are kindly startin to irritate me,” Old Joe said. He spat hard into the fire.

They all sat silent and the minutes passed. Then Old Joe said: “You sure they keep they money in that bank?”

“Yessir.”

Joe Ashley sighed and stared into the fire. “Cant imagine why
any
body’d trust his money to a damn bank.”

John Ashley laughed. “Me either. Somebody’s like to steal it.”

Old Joe nodded in the manner of one being told something he already knew. “Bill says the fedral govment’s sooner or later gonna pass the law against alcohol,” he said. “Probly not for a coupla three four years yet, he dont think, but he says a smart man would start getting ready right now. Says the demand’s gonna be way more than we can ever fill with just our own operation. Says if we get us a good fast boat and rig it proper we can bring in ever kind of labeled hooch when the time comes. Bring it from the Bahamas. Course now, a good boat costs plenty, and riggin it up for our purpose gonna cost more.” He paused and spat. Then said: “I guess what I wanna know is, is it a
lot
of money in that bank?”

John Ashley shrugged. “Dont know, Daddy.” He smiled. “But if it aint, there’s plenty more banks.”

Old Joe returned his smile for a moment, then his aspect went serious. “They already got so many warrants on you I guess it dont matter much if they add any more, even for a damn bank. But I dont want you takin no chances you aint got to. You see any police around before you go in, you forget the job. Wait and do it another time. You hear?”

“I hear you, Daddy.” His heart jumped with excitement.

Old Joe turned to Frank and Ed and Bob. “But
you
boys, you aint none of you under warrant for a damn thing and I dont want you to be.”

Bob Ashley cut his eyes to John whose look told him to keep quiet. Frank and Ed dug at the dirt with sticks, ready as always to do without objection whatever their daddy said.

“Damn Bakers,” Old Joe said and spat hard into the fire. “They kindly irritatin hell outa me.”

February 23, 1915

T
HEY GOT OUT OF THE CAR AT THE BEND IN THE HIGHWAY AND
then Frank and Ed Ashley drove off to wait for them at the junction of the Lake Okeechobee Road. The four then walked the last quarter-mile into town on this midmorning of a brightly blue-skyed and cloudless Tuesday. The pinewoods fell away at the edge of town and they walked down the main street and nodded to storekeepers at their doors and tipped their hats to women on the sidewalk and paused to scratch the ears of friendly dogs. They waved casually to acquaintances driving past. All the while looking about for police cars or cops afoot and seeing neither.

There were three customers in the bank lobby and two tellers at work behind the cage and the manager sat at his desk behind a waist-high partition at the far end of the room. A pair of overhead fans hung motionless in the near-cool of this winter’s day. None looked up nor noticed the four men until Bob Ashley shut the door hard enough to rattle the glass. Kid Lowe went to the windows and drew the curtains. Bob turned the little cardboard sign hanging on the glass front door so that the “Closed” side faced outward and then he pulled down the rollered shade and stood with his back to it. His grin was titanic.

John Ashley withdrew a .44 caliber revolver from under his loose shirt and grinned at the uncomprehending faces turned his way and announced, “Gentlemen, this is a robbery. Do like we say and nobody gets hurt. Why hell, you all gonna have an adventure to tell all your
friends.” His heart was at a gallop and he felt like laughing and thought maybe he was going crazy but so what. Claude Calder went to stand by the far wall with a pistol in his hand and his grin mirrored John Ashley’s.

“All right now. folk,” John Ashley said, gesturing at the customers, “sit on the floor. Sit on your hands.”

There was no guard. The Stuart bank had been in business for years and never before been robbed. In this region, all notion of bank holdups was yet the stuff of Wild West stories, of Jesse James and his ilk, not any part of real life.

Kid Lowe moved to the other end of the room and vaulted the low partition and put his pistol to the bank manager’s ear and told him to put his hands under his ass. The manager’s name was Ellers. He appeared mildly dazed and his mouth moved as though speech were but an untried concept. Kid Lowe smiled and said, “Just stay hushed, mister. We’ll tell you when to talk.” He picked up the telephone on the desk. “This the only one?” The manager nodded. Kid Lowe yanked the line out of its connection and lobbed the instrument clattering into the corner.

The two tellers were Wallace and Taylor and both of them knew the Ashley boys and Claude Calder. Wallace said, “John…you boys…why are you all doing this?”

John Ashley laughed. “Well, shit, A.R., why you
think
? Open up the gate.”

Wallace hastened to unlock the wire gate to the teller cage and John Ashley entered and handed him a croker sack and said, “Hold this open wide for Mister Taylor. Mister Taylor sir, you just empty all them little money drawers in the bag, hear? Do it now, sir, and do it quickly.”

“Sorry, mam,” Bob Ashley said loudly through the glass of the closed front door, holding aside slightly the roller shade and speaking to a woman insistently rapping on the doorglass with the handle of her parasol. “We’re closed up a few minutes. Doin a inventory. Be open again shortly.” The woman scowled and again rapped on the glass. Bob Ashley smoothed the roller shade back in place and turned his back on the door and shrugged at Claude Calder.

As Wallace and Taylor emptied the cash drawers John Ashley went into the bank’s small vault and searched it and discovered but a half-dozen packets of twenty-dollars bills. He came out and dropped the packets in the croker sack. Taylor was redfaced and whitehaired, big-bellied, breathing like a man at hard labor. John Ashley patted him
on the shoulder and told him to take it easy, everything was going to be fine.

“Tell me somethin, A.R.,” John Ashley said, “is it true George and Bobby Baker keep their money in this bank?”

A. R. Wallace looked at him for a moment as though he didnt understand the question. Then said: “Well, they do keep an account here, but I believe their main bank is in West Palm Beach.”

John Ashley smiled and said, “Just so they got some here.”

The woman at the door was rapping harder now, her angry voice carrying through the doorglass: “…
open this door
, you…” The silhouette of a man in a suit and hat appeared beside her, the man trying to peek in through the slight gap between the roller shade and the frame of the door. Bob Ashley sidestepped over so as to block the man’s view with his back.

Now Wallace handed the sack to John Ashley who hefted it as though trying to determine the sum of its contents by its weight. “How much you figure?” he asked.

“It’s about seven thousand dollars you all got there,” Wallace said.

“
Seven thousand!
” Kid Lowe said. “I know it’s a lot more money than that in this place.”

“There isn’t any more,” Ellers the manager was able to say. “This is a small bank. We never have much cash on hand.” Kid Lowe put the muzzle of his .38 just under Ellers’ right eye and the man’s voice went high: “I swear to you it’s all there is!”

Kid Lowe said, “You banker sonofabitches dont do nothing
but
lie about money.”

“I
swear
…” Ellers said, his eyes shut tight but his head full of the terrible visions Kid Lowe’s pistol pressed into it.

“Leave him be,” John Ashley said. “He’s too scared to be lyin. I checked the vault myself. It’s no more money in there.”

“You lucky
I
aint in charge of this operation,” Kid Lowe said to Ellers and jabbed him hard in the forehead with the gun muzzle and raised a red spot there. “You be a dead man already for bein such a damn liar.”

John Ashley ordered all the people on the floor to lie down on their bellies with their faces in their hands. “You too, Mister Ellers, get on down there. Mister Taylor, sir. You, A.R., I know you got a motorcar. Where’s it at?”

“Around back.”

John Ashley nodded at Claude Calder who went out the rear door
of the bank. Two minutes later Bob Ashley peering out the front window said, “Here’s Claude with the car.”

Another man had now arrived at the door and both men and the woman were trying to peek past Bob and into the bank lobby and the woman all the while tapping on the glass with the whalebone grip of her parasol.

“God
damn
that racket,” John Ashley said. “Get them sumbitches in here, Bob.”

Bob Ashley unlocked the door and swung it open and said, “All right, then, come on in.” But the three now saw the others on the floor and their faces went slack and they stood fast. One of the men started to turn away and nearly walked into Claude Calder who had come out of the Ford touring car idling in the street and stood before him, grinning wide and with a hand on the pistol butt jutting above his waistband. A pair of boys went running past, dodging the two men as unerringly as bats. Their mother came stalking behind, calling, “Albert! Samuel! You two are just
askin
for it!”

Claude Calder nodded toward the door and the two men and the woman went into the bank. The woman was middle-aged but not unattractive and Bob puckered his lips at her. She blushed and jerked her gaze away from him and he laughed. John Ashley told them to lie down in the same manner as the others. He asked Bob how things looked outside.

“Aint nobody noticin nothin,” Bob Ashley said, looking out to the street. “I dont believe most people would take notice of a flyin elephant lessen it shit on their heads.”

“All right, then, let’s go,” John Ashley said. He tucked the sack of money under his arm like a tote of groceries. “Listen, you folk—there’s a fella with a rifle watching this door from the roof across the street. Anybody goes out that door before fifteen minutes gone by, you gone get a bullet in the brainpan and thats a promise. So you all wait, you hear? Fifteen minutes. And listen A.R., we’ll leave your car out by the Okeechobee Road, you hear?”

Wallace said he much appreciated it, his voice muffled for his face being in his hands.

They went out all together and Claude Calder got behind the wheel of the Ford and the Kid got in the front passenger seat with him. Bob and John Ashley got in the back and pulled the cartop up and Claude and the Kid fastened it in place on the windshield frame. Then Claude released the brake and pulled on the throttle lever as he stepped on the low-speed pedal and the car lunged into motion. They were all of
them but the Kid grinning and Bob Ashley’s grin was the widest of them. “
This
how it felt in Texas, Johnny?” he wanted to know. “Good as
this?
”

John Ashley laughed. “About like this, yeah.”

Claude Calder eased up on the throttle and worked the clutch pedal and the planetary transmission shifted with a lurch and the car rattled down the street. Kid Lowe turned around in his seat and said, “I dont know what-all you think’s so damn funny. We didnt get but seven thousand dollars and I
know
there was more money in that bank—I
know
there was.”

“I’ll be go to hell,” Bob Ashley said, suffused with good cheer. “Aint this the same little fella told us he never made more’n two thousand dollars from any of his big-time Chicago bank holdups—and here we get
seven
thousand and he’s complaining it aint enough.”

“Two thousand I get by myself is two thousand all for me,” Kid Lowe said. “Seven thousand I get with six other fellas aint but…I dont know what it is, but it aint no two thousand.”

They were almost to the end of town now and Claude Calder said, “Oh hell.” All eyes in the car followed his gaze ahead to the left side of the street and saw parked there in front of Wilson’s Cafe a county sheriff’s car and a Stuart Police Dept. car and standing in the doorway of the cafe was Bob Baker. He was not in uniform and was saying something to someone inside and laughing and turning now and stepping out on the sidewalk and putting a toothpick to his mouth. As their car came abreast of him two uniformed sheriff’s deputies and two Stuart policemen came out behind him. Bob baker looked at their passing car and then at its occupants and his smile held for a moment longer and his eyes followed after them. They all looked back at him and Bob Baker’s smile vanished.

“Kick this thing in the ass, Claude,” John Ashley said.

And here came one of the bank customers on the run and behind him came Ellers as Claude’s fingers busied themselves with the spark and gas levers and his foot worked the control pedal to drop the car into low gear and wind the engine higher and then he worked the pedal again and the motor issued a deep fluffing note and the car lunged forward and accelerated steadily. Even over the increased clatter of the Model T they could faintly hear the bankers shouting holdup, holdup, holdup. Women pulled small children to their skirts and hurried indoors as men came hustling out of the cafe and the barbershop and the hardware store.

Bobby Baker ran out to the middle of the street and raised his
revolver and the other cops were pulling their weapons and now came the popping of pistols and bullets thonked into the back of the car and two rounds whooked through the car top and made starholes as they smashed through the windshield. Bob Ashley leaned out the right side of the car and fired back at the cops and they scattered in search of cover—all but Bobby Baker who stood his ground and aimed and fired as if he were taking target practice. Kid Lowe leaned over the front seat and fired at Bobby Baker in the receding distance through the cartop’s open rear window and John Ashley was firing as well but the car was jouncing so much he could not have said where his bullets homed. Kid Lowe’s pistol was inches from his ear and its reports deafened him to all else in the world.

Claude Calder hunkered over the steering wheel as if peering into bad fog, one hand on the wheel and the other still at the spark and gas levers. The Model T was now moving at thirty-five miles per hour and still gaining speed even as it shuddered so hard John Ashley was certain it was about to shake itself to pieces. A bullet ripped through the back of the cartop and flicked away a portion of Claude Calder’s right ear lobe and fashioned another starburst in the glass before him.

The pinewoods again loomed high on both sides of the road as the Model T sped into the curve and out of sight of the shooting policemen. The car leaned hard to the left and raised a tall roostertail of lime dust as it swung out wide to the edge of the highway at the top of a grassy incline and its right wheels almost left the ground as Claude Calder fought to keep it on the road. Just as the curve began to straighten out and the car leaned back toward a level pitch its left front wheel dipped into a hole in the shoulder and the car bounced high and yawed sidewise with the wheel fluttering wildly and everyone rose and fell and Kid Lowe’s head bounced against the cartop and his pistol discharged and the bullet angled into John Ashley’s head at the juncture of his left eye socket and the nosebone and passed through the hard palate and struck his lower right jaw and instantly filled his mouth with blood and bits of teeth and bone.

The car plunged down the roadside slope into the brush and went snapping through a half-dozen saplings before crashing into a thick pine—and all in the same moment Claude Calder’s forehead shattered the windscreen and the right front door slung open and Kid Lowe catapulted from it and just did miss hitting a tree and lit in a clump of palmettos and Bob Ashley lofted over the front seat and struck against the dashboard and felt one of his ribs stave and John Ashley
slammed against the back of the front seat and crumpled to the floorboard.

He was yet conscious but his head felt strangely stuffed, his skull somehow askew. Blood overran his mouth and rained to the floor-board. He felt the vaguest pain. There was a loud hissing from the front of the car and now he remembered where he was and why. Claude Calder groaned. Bob Ashley grunting and cursing now and getting out of the car. Kid Lowe’s voice at the car door, saying, “You hit?” Bob Ashley saying, “I’m all right. Claude? Claude, you?” Claude saying he didnt think he was hit. Bob Ashley saying for Claude to get up on the road and see was anybody coming after them. Now the rightside rear door sprang open and Bob said, “Oh
shit
. Help me with him.”