Red Grass River (17 page)

As they ate he told John Ashley all about Bob Baker’s continuing was against their whiskey camps. His most recent raid had been two months ago when he and his boys swooped in on Joe’s camp in the palm hammocks a few miles north of the railroad tracks running from Lake Okeechobee to Fort Pierce. They’d reduced it to crushed metal and busted glass and charred wood and made off with more than twenty cases of bush lighting. Joe now had but four camps in operation, fewer than half the number of stills he’d been running two years earlier. So deeply had the raids cut into his profits he could no longer pay off all the lawmen on his bribery list and so had lost much of the protection he’d enjoyed for a time.

“That damn Bobby’s cost me a ton of money and trouble,” Old Joe said. “I strained my brain a hundred times tryin to figure how in the hell he was findin out who my lookouts were. I knowed the lookouts was how he’d been doin it. He’d been catchin them some kinda way and gettin them to tell where the camps are at. I’ll wager he got some interestin ways to get a fella to speak up. Anyhow, he wont be—”

“I’m meanin to pay Bobby a visit real soon,” John Ashley interrupted. “It’s a few matters we got to settle between us.”

“
No!
” Joe Ashley said. “Now you listen good, Johnny: you aint payin Bobby Baker no kinda visit. If we do harm to Bobby Baker right now it wouldnt do nothin but bring police from everywhere down on us like a bad rain. It’s too much at stake to fuck er up by putting away Bobby Baker over somethin personal.”

“Hell, Daddy, it aint just personal—he’s tearin up our camps!”

Joe Ashley paused to light his pipe and pour himself a cup of his own whiskey. He eyed John Ashley closely as he sipped, then he said: “Dont bullshit me, boy. It aint the camps got you bothered about Bobby Baker. You two aint never unlocked horns since the business with that little Morrell girl. I dont know what else it is between you, but seems to me you done got the better of him a lot more than he
ever did of you. I dont see what-all
you
got to settle with
him
. Maybe you wanna tell me.”

“It’s between him and me,” John Ashley said, and shifted his eyes from Old Joe’s intent stare. The others at the table were looking on with interest.

Joe Ashley sighed. “Well, whatever it is, you cant be doin nothin about it right now. I mean it, you hear? We cant have every cop on the coast coming down on us and thats exactly what’ll happen you do any harm to either George or Bobby Baker right now. Bobby’s time’ll come, boy, dont think it wont. Could be you’ll be the one to see to it. But the time aint now. You listenin to me, boy?”

John Ashley stared at the bowl of cooter stew congealing before him for a long moment before he nodded.

Old Joe banged his palm on the table and grinned through a cloud of violet smoke and said, “Old Bobby’s anyhow gonna play hell findin any more my camps to tear up from now on, because this fella here”—he nodded at Hanford Mobley, who grinned proudly—“just this mornin told me somethin thats gonna put an end to it. I tell ye, boys, it’s a damn fine day when you get a son back from prison
and
you find out who’s been playing the rat on you, all in the same twenty-four hours.”

What Hanford Mobley told Joe Ashley was how Bob Baker had been learning who the lookouts were. The night before, Hanford had been out netting mullet in the Indian River till around midnight. After getting back to the Stuart docks he sold some of his catch to the night dockmaster and left the rest in a tin tub of saltwater outside the door of the dock baitshop and wrote in chalk on the slateboard fixed on the wall, “U owe me—Mobley.” He then headed for the train station where he’d parked the car in the shade of a huge live oak that afternoon. As he turned the corner two blocks from the depot he saw Bob Baker entering Molly’s Cafe, an all-night eatery, on the opposite corner of the street. Curious, Hanford Mobley crossed the street and walked up to the cafe’s front window and peeked inside. And saw Bob Baker taking a seat at a table in the corner. And sitting at the table with him was Claude Calder.

“I never figured Claude for the balls to do it,” Old Joe said, “but when Hannie told me what he’d seen, well, it all fell in place. Claude knowed where the Hungryland camp was and he told Bobby—and he told him Seth and Scratchley were the lookouts for it. Bobby had to get them out the way before he could sneak up on the camp. I figure Claude’s heard us mention a bunch of the lookouts by name sometime or other and he’s told those names to Bobby Baker is what he’s done.
All Bobby’s had to do is track down the lookouts or lay for them somewhere or wait for them to come home sometime and then make em tell where the camps was at.”

“Claude ratted our lookouts for no reason but Daddy give him a whuppin for runnin out on Bob in Miami,” Frank said to John Ashley. “A whuppin he damn well had comin.”

“I shoulda kilt the sonofabitch the minute he come back here.” Old Joe said. “I meant to.”

“We shouldnt of pulled you off his sorry ass, Daddy,” Ed said.

“Well hell,” Hanford Mobley said. “Let’s set the business straight right now. I know for a fact he’s over to the Yella Creek dock right this minute sandin a skiff bottom.”

Old Joe looked at Hanford Mobley and grinned. “I want you all to just listen to this one here. Fifteen year old. Aint he a bull gator though!”

“Let me set it right, Gramps,” Hanford Mobley said. Old Joe looked around the table at the other grinning men, then smiled and nodded at his grandson.

Hanford Mobley beamed. “Yall excuse me,” he said and stood up and pushed his chair in under the table and adjusted the pistol under his shirt. Then skipped down the porch steps and jogged out to the sidetrail leading though the pinewoods and down to Yellow Creek, about a quarter-mile away.

The men passed the bowls and platters around the table for third helpings and they poured more ice water and Old Joe served himself another drink and told John about a boat he had his eye on, a forty-foot trawler for sale in the Stuart boatyard.

“She’ll make a fine rummer we fix er up right,” he said. “But she’ll cost a pretty penny and the work she needs wont come cheap neither.” He took a slow sip of whiskey and eyed John Ashley intently. “Frank and Ed, they always was the best of us with boats, so they gonna be my main whiskey runners,” he said. “I dont want them goin in no banks, you hear? I dont want no warrants on them.”

“Banks?” John Ashley said as though he’d never heard the word before. “What-all banks you talkin about, Daddy?” But he could not keep the smile off his face.

“Whatever ones you and Clarence and young Hannie was whisperin about when you all was over there fishin in the creek. Hell, boy, I aint gonna object. We need money to get the boat and fix er up right if we ever gonna start running booze from the islands. All I’m sayin is Frank and Ed wont be havin nothin to do with it. I want them able
to come and go and take care of business without havin to look over their shoulder for the law all the time.”

“How could you tell what we was talkin about from way over here?”

“Boy,” Joe Ashley said with mock tiredness, “I known the lot of you since you was whelped. I can look at any a you from a quartermile off and know exactly what the hell you got on your mind, so dont play the innocent with me.” His grin was as wide as his son’s.

A pistolshot sounded from the area of Yellow Creek and the crows fell mute in the pines. All heads at the table turned in that direction as a second sharp report carried to them. And then only silence.

And then Joe Ashley said, “Damn pretty day, aint she?”

A month later deputy sheriff Bob Baker drove out to the Ashley homestead. He let the motor idle as he got out of the car and was met at the porch steps by Ed and Frank Ashley and Hanford Mobley, each of them with a .45 automatic snugged out of sight at the small of his back, the pistols only recently presented to them all by Clarence Middleton.

A lookout had come running to tell them Bob Baker was coming and that he was alone. John Ashley had gone upstairs to his father’s bedroom where Old Joe lay abed with one of his chronic attacks of ague. John positioned himself with his automatic in hand to peek out from behind a curtain and Old Joe, brighteyed with his fever, had slipped his pistol out from under his pillow and sat up so he could peek out too.

In the three years since John Ashley had last seen him, Bob Baker seemed to have grown even larger, wider of shoulder, deeper of chest. Even his hands looked bigger, of a size unreal. He put his booted wooden foot up on the bottom step and hooked a thumb in his gunbelt and rested the heel of his other hand on the butt of his pistol. He told Ed and Frank Ashley that lawmen all up and down the Florida east coast were on the alert for sightings or reports of John Ashley as an escaped convict who was armed and dangerous and they had orders to shoot to kill if he attempted to resist arrest. He advised them to tell John to keep to the Devil’s Garden if he knew what was good for him.

“My boys’ll throw down on him the minute they see his face in public,” Bob Baker said. “He even looks like he’ll make a fight of it, they got orders to shoot him where he stands. And those’re Daddy’s orders, not just mine.”

“Well now, Bobby,” Ed said, rolling a toothpick in his twisted
mouth, “we’ll be sure and tell what you said if ever we see him, though we aint seen hair of him since he got sent to Raiford, no thanks to you and your daddy.”

Bob Baker glanced up at the second-floor windows and then spat off to the side. A horsefly bigger than a bumblebee lit on his arm—purpleheaded ugly and amber-winged, with a bite like a cigarette burn that could raise a welt the size of a clamshell. Bob Baker smacked it hard with the flat of his hand and the horsefly dropped to the ground and lay still for a moment and then fluttered its wings tentatively and then flew off so fast none of them saw the direction it went.

“Them sumbitches are some hard to kill, aint they?” Ed said. “Damn near everything out here is.”

Bob Baker spat and looked at him.

“If we ever
do
see Johnny sometime,” Frank said, “you bet we’ll tell him what you said.”

Bob Baker now inquired after Claude Calder. No one had seen him in well nigh a month or so, he said, and some people couldnt help wondering what might’ve become of him. “Everbody knows he been living out here with you all.”

Hanford Mobley chuckled and Bob Baker fixed his gaze on him. “Is it somethin funny, boy?”

Hanford Mobley smiled and said, “I just remembered me a joke I heard is all.”

“That a fact? I like a good joke my ownself. Tell me it.”

“Damn if I aint just this second forgot it,” Hanford Mobley said.

Frank and Ed snorted and smiled. At the window upstairs Old Joe grinned and nudged John Ashley and whispered, “Aint he a damn pistol!”

Bob Baker’s eyes narrowed. “You way too runty and wet behind the ears to think you so tough, sweetpea. You sass me again I’ll come up on that porch and slap you sillier than you already look.”

Hanford Mobley lost his smile and pushed off the porch post he’d been leaning on and stood with legs apart and a hand behind his back.

“Whatever you got there, boy,” Bob Baker said, “dont show it to me unless you want it way up your ass.”

“Oh hell now, Bobby, he’s just funnin,” Frank said as he gave Hanford Mobley a sharp look and came halfway down the porch steps to stand between them. “Truth is, Claude went off to Atlanta nearbouts a month ago. Said his sister was real poorly and he wanted to see her one more time fore she passed on. Hell, we didnt even know old
Claude had him a sister. We anyhow aint heard a word from him since—have we Ed?”

Ed allowed they surely had not.

“Wish we could be more help to you, Bobby,” Frank said, “but thats all we know about ole Claude.”

“Could be ole Claude was lyin about havin a sister,” Ed said. “Hell, he mighta been lyin about goin to Atlanta. That Claude, he was bad to tell lies. Aint that right, Frank?”

Frank Ashley allowed he surely was.

Bob Baker spat again and worked the spit into the dirt with the toe of his boot. Then scowled and said, “You tell John we aint foolin. Your daddy too. Tell em I’m gonna find ever one of his stills sooner or later and tear em all down and I dont need Claude Calder to do it.”

He looked up at the curtained window and then at Frank and Ed Ashley and Hanford Mobley. “You tell em I said so. Tell em both.”

As Bob Baker got back in the car and wheeled it around and headed back for the narrow pineywoods trail to the Dixie Highway, Old Joe turned to John Ashley and said, “It’ll be ass-deep snow in hell before he finds another one of my stills. But goddamn I hate that son of a bitch standin on
my
property and talkin about tearin em up.”

He looked out the window again as Bob Baker’s car vanished into the trees. “I surely hope I dont never regret not putting a bullet in that fucker’s brainpan just now.” He held up his thumb and forefinger a quarter-inch apart. “I mean, I was
this
close.”

John Ashley was still staring at the trailhead where Bob Baker had driven out of sight. “Tell me about it,” he said. And let a long breath. And reset the .45’s safety with his thumb.

As he’d walked back to his car he’d felt the sweat rolling coldly down his sides. He’d half expected to get a blast of buckshot in the back from the upstairs window. He knew John Ashley was up there, he could feel he was. The old man too most likely.

And after those pictures…

The eye was fair desserts for Johnny backjumping him and smacking his head on a wall and near busting out his brains, damn if it wasnt. For breaking his worthless Ashley word and escaping and making him look so bad. For stealing his gun. For…lots of things. A damn eye was letting him off
light
.

But those pictures…

He figured John wouldnt have shown them to his daddy or anybody else. He’d want to keep them secret. Who wouldnt? Jesus. He
could not have said then or now what had possessed him to do such a thing. The mean shame of it had been welling under his ribs like a poison gas ever since he awoke one night with the thought that John Ashley wouldnt have done anything like that and probably saw it as cowardly. The notion that John Ashley saw him as a coward was enraging and added weight to his shame.