Red Grass River (19 page)

Loretta May laughed. “It’s always a woman in what men dream. Either that or somebody dead or somebody chasin after them. Men’s dreams either give em a hard cock or a cold sweat.”

He leaned over and kissed her breast and tongued the nipple and felt it go rigid, then did the same with the other, then looked up and saw that she was smiling happily. Her hand sought him out and closed around his hardness and she made a face of mock astonishment and said, “Oooh. Sometimes they aint even got to be dreamin, do they?”

He laughed with her and mounted her in a smooth practiced mo
tion and began rocking and rocking into her as she grinned up at him clutching tight to his shoulders.

They entered the Avon bank with .45’s in hand just before closing on a Friday afternoon and relieved the guard of his revolver before he fully comprehended what was happening. They did not wear masks. The customers’ mouths hung open but the gang assured them nobody would be hurt if they all just stayed put and did as they were told. John Ashley went to the head teller’s window and asked his name.

“George Doster, sir,” the teller said.

“I’m John Ashley, George. Open the cage.”

The teller did so, and while Clarence Middleton and Hanford Mobley kept the patrons under watch, John Ashley went around behind the tellers’ windows and himself emptied all the cash drawers into a gunnysack. He then went into the vault and filled another sack with all the paper cash he found in there. The bags now held about eight thousand dollars. Then he came out and asked the manager, a balding man named Weatherington, if there was any more money in the bank and the manager said there wasn’t.

John Ashley grinned at him. “I heard that song before, bubba. Cost me ten thousand dollars to believe it.” He turned to the head teller and said, “George, is he tellin me true? Is it any more money in this bank?”

“I…I dont know, sir.”

“Listen, George,” John Ashley said. “If I read in the newspapers that you boys cheated me, I’m gone be mad, you hear? I’m gone be
real
mad. I’m gone come back and see all of you one by one and aint none of you gone be happy to see me. So now—one last time—any more money in this bank?”

George Doster licked his lips and glanced sidelong at the bank manager who kept his eyes on the floor. “Mister Ashley, sir,” he said, “I
think
there might be some money in Mister Weatherington’s top desk drawer.”

John Ashley went to the manager’s desk and in the top drawer found an envelope from the Tarpon Construction Company containing nearly twenty-five hundred dollars. He stepped up to the bank manager and hit him across the bridge of the nose with the pistol barrel and his nosebone cracked like a nutshell. The manager let a yelp and sagged to his knees with blood spurting bright from his nose onto his white shirtfront and spattering the floor.

“Damn, but I hate a liar.” John Ashley said. He gestured for Mid
dleton and Hanford Mobley to go out ahead of him and then he pushed at the door and said, “Listen, Weatherington, I dont want to hear that George lost his job for tellin me the truth. You understand?”

The bank manager had both bands to his nose and blood ran through his fingers and into his shirtsleeves and his eyes were red and flooded with tears. He nodded vigorously and blood shook from his hands ion thick drops.

Three months later they ranged back to the central highlands once again and this time hit the bank in Sebring, announcing themselves loudly as the Ashley Gang. They were in and out in less than ten minutes and took seven thousand dollars. Four months after that they drove down the coast and robbed the Boynton Beach bank of sixty-five hundred. People came out on the sidewalks to watch them make their getaway and some of them waved to the bandits as they went by. Hanford Mobley tooted the horn and waved back.

They let pass another three months and then again picked a job west of Lake Okeechobee and well away from their own territory, this time robbing a bank in Fort Meade of a little more than five thousand. Their reputation had spread and some of the patrons seemed thrilled to be part of an Ashley Gang holdup. “I do believe that teller was about to ask you for your autograph,” Clarence Middleton said to John Ashley as Hanford Mobley steered with one hand and worked the levers with the other and his foot danced on the Model T’s left pedal. They made away into the pinelands on the Frostproof Road. “You all see that pretty thing was standin near the door?” Hanford Mobley said happily. He was sixteen years old this day and feeling very much a man. “I thought she was gonna kiss me on my way out. I shoulda slowed down for a minute and give her the chance, what I shoulda done.”

Newspaper accounts of the robberies used such phrases as “bad actors” and “desperadoes” in describing the Ashley Gang. They referred to the “menacing Wild West deportment of these fearless outlaws.”

When they walked into the Avon bank for the second time they did not even take out their guns. The customers nudged each other and whispered, “It’s them! It’s them!” as Hanford Mobley and Clarence Middleton stood by the door with their hands in their pockets and smiled pleasantly at everyone. John Ashley walked past Weatherington at his desk and nodded at him and the manager nodded jerkily in response and dropped his eyes back to the open ledger in front of him.
George Doster had seen them come in and had already put all the paper money into two bags by the time John Ashley arrived at his window.

“Hey George,” John Ashley said.

“Good afternoon, Mister Ashley, sir.” The other teller had seen what was happening and now hastily filled a bag with the contents of his cash drawer and handed it to George Doster. Doster pushed the three bags of money across the counter to John Ashley.

“How much, George?”

“About four thousand five hundred, Mister Ashley. We dont keep as much on hand as we used to before your visit last time.”

“You aint lying now are you, George?”

“Nossir, I wouldnt lie to you, Mister Ashley.”

“How about the vault, George?”

“There’s only about fifteen hundred back there, sir, and, well, I was hoping you might let us keep that so we could at least stay open for business through the rest of the day. If we have to close up for lack of money I dont get paid for the lost time, sir, and, well…I’ve got a family, Mister Ashley. Surely you understand.”

“Got kids, George?”

“A boy and a girl, sir. And one on the way.”

“Oh hell, George, keep the damn fifteen hundred.” John Ashley picked up the bags of money and headed for the door. As he passed Weatherington’s desk he said to the manager, “You ought give that Doster fella a promotion, saving you money like he just did. Got a good head on his shoulders.”

Shortly before Christmas John Ashley walked by himself into the bank at Delray with no intention but to exchange a sack of one hundred silver dollars for a hundred in paper money. The silver had come to him in payment for a load of Old Joe’s bush whiskey from a longtime customer who owned a grocery store at the edge of town. The bank manger glanced out the front window and recognized John Ashley coming across the street and he ordered the head teller to empty the cash drawers into a sack and do it quick.

Now John Ashley came inside but before he could say a word the manager handed him the bag and said, “That’s most of the paper money, Mister Ashley, a little more than four thousand dollars. I swear I’m not lying. There’s about five hundred left in the vault and I wish you’ll leave us with that, Mister Ashley—like you let that other bank keep some. To stay open for business.”

The man was near breathless and his face shone with sweat despite the cool dryness of the winter morning. John Ashley stroked his chin and peeked into the bag and saw the money in there and he smiled at the manager whose left eye was twitching.

“Well now, sir,” John Ashley said, “thank you kindly.” He walked out with the bag of silver dollars in one hand and the sack of paper currency in the other and went across the street to his car. Albert Miller cranked up the engine while a Delray policeman stood on the corner not twenty feet away with his hands behind him and stared up at the sky as though utterly entranced by the blueness of it. Now Albert got behind the wheel and they chugged on out of town. As the car passed by, people heard them guffawing.

January 1920

O
N
N
EW
Y
EAR’S
D
AY
B
ILL
A
SHLEY AND HIS PRETTY BUT RETICENT
wife Bertha took supper with the rest of the family at Twin Oaks. The Volstead Act, by which the Eighteenth Amendment would be enforced, was within three weeks of passage. During the meal the talk was of family matters, of Butch and Daisy’s new baby—about whom Ma had lots of news by way of a recent letter from Daisy—and of which neighbors had married and which had died. When everyone had done eating, the women cleared the table and left the room and the men rolled cigarettes and fired up pipes.

Bill beamed at Old Joe and said, “I told you a long time back this Prohibition business was coming, didnt I? Well, pretty soon now we’re gonna be makin so much money we’re gonna need up a whole
bunch
of wheelbarrows to carry it all in.”

Old Joe puffed his pipe and nodded without expression.

“We’re still doin good with the shine,” Bill said, addressing the table in the manner of a finance manager at a stockholders’ meeting. “We’re selling more to the Indians than we ever did and we put up two new camps since Bobby Baker last busted one up. That gives up six in operation. We’re makin enough of the stuff to supply our regular customers all up and down the coast.” He paused to sip at his cup of shine, the only one he would drink all night. “The thing is, we ought to be sellin more to the townfolk, specially to them down in Miami, and it’s two reasons we aint. One is, they been stockpilin the factory
stuff since before the Eighteenth got passed, and the other reason is they know can
still
get the factory liquor they used to drinkin and they dont care they got to pay way more for it than they did before. It’s a lot of money to be made off an attitude like that.”

“By smuggling, you mean,” Frank said, his smiling face brightly eager.

“That’s what I mean,” Bill said. He took off his rimless spectacles and cleaned the lenses with a bandanna and put the glasses back on and adjusted them carefully and then looked at them all and said, “Soon as we start bringin factory stuff over from the islands we’ll be makin some real money.”

“Damn right,” Ed said. The scarred grin pale against his brown face.

“I believe it’s
real
money we been gettin from the banks, aint it?” John Ashley said, irritated that Bill should neglect to mention the family’s most lucrative source of income these past sixteen months. “Aint you the fella who once upon a time didnt think bankrobbin was such good business? Guess maybe you weren’t real right about that, huh?”

“It’s been a payin proposition, I’ll admit,” Bill said, his tone patient. “But you been luckier’n any bankrobber I ever heard of. I always said the returns on bankrobbin werent worth the risks and I still dont think so. The longer you keep at it, the less money you’re like to get from any one bank and the more chance there is you’ll get caught or shot, one. On account of you robbin them, none of the banks are carryin as much money as they used to and so the take’s been gettin smaller. And now every town between Fort Pierce and Miami and all the way over to Fort Myers has got an armed guard in it. The local police everwhere are keepin a closer eye. They’re all just hopin you’ll try robbin them next so they can shoot you dead and get a reward. Truth be told, Johnny, bankrobbin’s about the worst business there is right now in terms of risk against likely reward. Smugglin aint near as much risk, not yet anyway, and it pays as good as banks and it’s gonna way pay better still when all that booze they’re stockpiling in Miami starts running out.”

Old Joe looked at John Ashley. “Man’s got a argument,” he said.

John Ashley drummed his fingers on the table. Something there was about his elder brother that irritated him every bit as much as it had his brother Bob. He couldnt say what it was exactly but it was always there. Just the same—and as much as he hated to admit it—he could not deny that Bill was making sense.

“Yeah,” he said, “he’s got a argument.”

Some of the bank loot had gone to the cops on Old Joe’s payroll, some to the women of the family to cache in the house and use as they saw fit for coal oil, housewares, for clothes and pretties for themselves. But the bulk of the take from the robberies had gone to Frank and Ed that they might buy the forty-foot trawler Joe had long had his eye on. The money had also gone toward the best materials and for the hire of the best boatworkers and mechanics in the Indian River region to help them refit the vessel and make of it a proper rumboat.

Frank and Ed had narrowed the trawler’s prow slightly to cut down on water resistance and add speed. They sanded and planed and caulked and painted, replaced every cleat and fitting. They removed some of the bulkheads belowdecks for greater cargo capacity and to allow for easier loading. They installed additional fuel tanks and beefed up the lower decking from bow to stern. They reworked a brace of new engines, refitting them with stronger main bearings and higher-lift cams and more powerful magnetos, then mounted and turned the powerplants as precisely as bank clocks. They installed heavy-duty drives and screws. When Ed said the boat’s name was
Della
, Frank and John smiled at each other and raised no objections.

On a warm January morning they took the boat on her maiden run. They put her in the river behind the boatyard and chugged down to the Stuart harbor and into the blaze of a mountainous orange sunrise. They ran through the trickily narrow St. Lucie inlet and the bore east-southeast for Grand Bahama Island some seventy-five miles distant as the crow flies. They would in fact have to cover about one hundred miles because of the Gulf Stream, the great river of northbound current flanking the length of Florida’s east coast. As the land fell from view behind them the turquoise water gradually darkened to a blue the same shade as the sky’s and when they were about seven miles offshore the seabottom abruptly plunged and the water went to dark royal blue and they knew they’d arrived at the fast depths of the Stream. It was usually running strong by this time of year but it flowed gently on this windless day as unseasonably warm as early summer. To maintain his true course against the Stream’s northward push Ed had to hold the wheel only slightly more to southward than his desired heading of east-southeast.

They were all three shirtless and bareheaded and wore rolled bandana headbands to keep hair and sweat our of their eyes. John stood at the stern and trolled with rod and reel and mullet chunks for bait and brought up three flashing blue-yellow bull dolphin in quick succes
sion. He filleted them and roasted the meat on a makeshift charcoal grill set on the deck and fashioned of a wire screen over the shallow sawn-off end of a metal barrel and they ate the fish with their fingers. A pod of dozens of porpoises appeared off both sides of the boat and like sailors everywhere the brothers were glad to be accompanied by these creatures of good luck. The porpoises leaped and ran with them for miles before suddenly veering away and out of sight as though to some urgent summoning in some other region of the sea.

The Gulf Stream’s breadth varied from one locale to another and sometimes from day to day within the same latitude. At some points it might be fifty miles wide one day and constrict to thirty the next. By the increasing pressure against the wheel under his hands a seasoned skipper could sense when he’d reached the strongest vein of current and thereby know when he was halfway across the stream. When Ed reckoned they were at the current’s midpoint he opened up the throttles and the engines roared and the bow rose smoothly as the boat surged forward and the wake behind them fanned white and thick.

“Whooooo!” Frank hollered, all of them with their faces windward and their hair slicked back by their swift passage.

“She’ll do!” Ed yelled, “She’ll do!” He stroked the wheel as he might the bare arm of a favored woman.

They held their course and speed for the next hour and a half before they cleared the eastern edge of the stream and found themselves less than four miles from their destination of West End at the tip of the island. Ed cut back on the engines and his brothers clapped him on the shoulders for his expert navigation and piloting and he showed his about-to-laugh-or-cry smile.

“Daddy’ll be proud to know she’s a worthy boat,” John Ashley said. “And even he dont say it, he’ll be just as proud to hear how good you can cross the Blue River.”

The sun was hot and bright and the eastern horizon now marked by distant cumulus clouds rising like dense white smoke off great distant fires. The waters about the island were glasstop smooth and shimmered brightly green. As the
Della
closed on the mouth of the harbor Ed cut the engines down to just above idling speed and they eased into port. Dozens of boats were tied up at the docks and dozens more lay at anchor in the bay and all of them taking on liquor for the mainland. The imminence of the Volstead Act had every drinking business in South Florida dealing frantically for factory stock to hoard against the coming dearth. Every day the West End harbor saw more
rumboats than the day before. Within weeks and for years to come the harbor would be jammed around the clock.

They had intended to tie up just long enough to go into the baithouse and drink a cold beer before heading back home to report to their father on the boat’s performance. But even as Ed carefully steered his way through the busy harbor and made for the dock, there came a small launch toward them and a corpulent whitebearded man in shirtsleeves and white skimmer stood at the bow and hallooed them. “Say, you boys!” he called out. “Are ye negotiable for carrying a load across?”

The brothers looked at each other, all of them grinning. “Load of what?” John Ashley called to the man. “And to where?”

The man scowled and spat and said, “Of what’d ye think, bucko—sassafras tea? It’s a hundred and fifty cases of prime Irish whiskey and another hundred of the queen’s best gin I need to have carried across to West Palm Beach—and I’m needing it carried today. I had a deal with a fella but the bloody fool got drunk last night and opened his hull on a reef this morning. I’ll pay ye seven dollars a case. Are you my men or not?”

John Ashley looked from Ed to Frank. “What you boys say?”

“Gordy said ten’s the usual rate,” Ed said softly.

“Wouldnt Daddy be tickled if we run a load our very first time?” Frank Ashley said.

“Be tickled by the money we hand over for it is what he’d be tickled by,” Ed said.

John Ashley called to the man: “Ten dollars and it’s a deal!”

“
Ten?
” The man looked stricken. “Ten’s what I pay experienced hands. You boys and yer craft there look like ye might be equal to the job, but ye aint never carried booze, have ye? I’ve an eye for it and I can tell. Prove yourselves to me this time and next time we’ll talk ten.”

“We dont carried plenty a loads,” John Ashley said. “But even if we hadn’t—
if
we hadnt, mind you—we’d still be takin the same chance as anybody who has and we ought be paid the same.”

The man spat and looked glumly all about at the other boats taking on their cargo. “Nine dollars,” he said. “That’s more than fair now, you got to admit.”

“
Ten
,” John Ashley said. His brothers chuckled.

“Goddamn it,” the man muttered. He checked his pocketwatch and swore again. “All right, ye cockers, ten it is—but it’s got to go out
right
now, do you hear me? There’s people’ll be waiting for this shipment on the West Palm bar and they want it before dark.”

“You got a deal, mister,” John Ashley said.

An hour later the last of the 250 cases was taken aboard at the docks and lashed down in the hold and the
Della
’s gunwales still rode well above the waterline. The boat could have taken 400 cases if the man but had them. His name was Leonard Richardson and he said he’d have at least 350 cases for them next time and would try for more. He gave them $1,250 and said they would get the rest from the people waiting for the shipment.

“They aint gonna try and crawfish on us, are they, Leonard?” John Ashley said. World’s just fulla dishonesty, now aint it?”

Richardson snorted. “If anybody’s got cause to be leery it’s me. I dont know you boys from Adam’s wild-oat sons and can only hope ye aint such fools as to try to make off with me booze. Whatever ye sold it for would be the last money ye made in the trade out of West End, thats certain sure.” His arm swept the harbor and he said, “These fellas’ll steal from anybody but each other, and you know why? Because it’s bad business to cheat them ye want to
keep
doin business with. You’d be killing your own goose, you see? Better we stay straight with each other and we can make plenty for years to come.”

“We’re good for our word, Leonard,” John Ashley said.

“That’s fine, lad,” Richardson said. “So are the boys who’ll be meeting you. Good to know we can all trust each other now, aint it?”

The sun was past its zenith as they made ready to slip their mooring and head out of port. The clouds in the east had now grown to massive black thunderheads and were coming in a rush.

“Looks a mean storm building,” Richardson said. “I was told it never rained here this time of year.”

“Nothin to fret,” John Ashley said. “West Palm’s but a hundred miles and just about dead-west across the stream, so we aint got to buck much and she’s runnin real soft today anyhow. I figure us to easy outrun them clouds. Hell, Leonard, like as not we’ll be unloaded at the West Palm bar before the first drops hit the deck.”

But as they quickly found out when they reached the deeper blue, the Gulf Stream was running stronger now, as though energized by the force of the encroaching storm. Ed had to hold the wheel hard to port to keep from drifting off course. And though he held her throttles open wide and the bow was reared high they were but a few miles past the stream’s midpoint when the storm overtook them.

All in the same abrupt moment the wind struck like a thing becrazed and the sky went black and the sea began to heave and plunge. The
rain slung sidewise in dense flailing sheets. Waves burst over the deck in stinging drenching spray.