Red Grass River (20 page)

Now lightning flared in white jagged branches and thunder cracked and blasted as though the sky were breaking apart. The ocean seemed bent on detaching itself from the earth.

Again and again the waves carried the boat up and up as though to crush it against the sky—and then fell away beneath it to bring it skidding down the steep black walls of water to such depths as made the dark surrounding ocean seem to John Ashley the very maw of the world.

He clung with both arms to the port gunwale and swallowed seawater with every gasping breath and the boat pitched and swayed as though drunk on its own cargo. Each smash of water over the port side pulled his legs out from under him and had stripped him of his shoes—and then the vessel would abruptly reverse its yaw and slam him against the bulwark as the water rushed out the scuppers and he several times almost rolled over the side.

Through the wind’s howling he faintly heard laughter and wondered if he’d gone insane. He looked to his brothers in the blurring rain and saw Ed clutching to the wheel as though to a hard-dancing woman and Frank gripping the starboard gunwale and trying vainly to gain his footing and both of them laughing wildly into the teeth of the storm. Thunder persisted in its roll and boom across the darkness, lightning in its flickering blue casts which made his brothers’ movements awkward and unreal and made deathly hollows of their eyes and mouths.

Ed turned to him, his mutilated mouth moving as though in shouts, but John Ashley could not make out what he was saying and he shook he head. And now his belly spasmed and the swallowed seawater roiled by the boat’s undulant antics and in mixture with the lunchtime dolphin came surging up and out his gaped jaws and the wind smacked a good portion of the vomitus back in his face and some of it streaked over his cheekbone to fill his ear. Ed and Frank showed all their teeth in laughter. He was enraged that they though this was fun—and terrified he would any moment be swept into the rioting black sea.

The storm seemed to him to rage for hours but not twenty minutes passed before the wind fell to fitful gusts and the driving rain reduced to drizzle. The cloudmass broke and the sky lightened to gray and the sea slowly settled to a high gentle roll. Frank and Ed were exhilarated in their sodden dripping state. John Ashley worked his grip free of the gunwale and washed his face with the rainwater running from his hair.
And reflected that his daddy was right—these two were the sailors in the family. He stood up carefully, unsteady on his feet.

“Goddamn man—this smugglin business is
fun
, aint it?” Ed said, standing easy at the wheel now and grinning his wide maimed grin. Frank sat on the cabin roof with his legs dangling and smiled at John.

John Ashley glared at them and they both started laughing hard and then he was laughing too.

“
Whoooo-eee!
” Ed said. “Aint no storm can get the best of
us!
Not the fucken Ashleys!”

Coughing for all his laughter, his hair yet shedding water in his face, Frank said, “Tell you true, it was a minute or two there when I thought we might were goin down certain sure.”

“
You
thought?” Ed said. He cackled. “You see
Johnny?
He looked like a decked snapper the way his mouth was goin gulp-gulp-gulp. You
see
him?”

“I’ll tell you all what,” John Ashley said. “I was wishing I
was
a fucken fish. I was wishin for goddamn
gills
what I was wishin!”

Their laughter was hard and lasting and they all three clutched their stomachs against the aching cramping pleasure of it.

The storm had carried them several miles north of their intended latitude and the Gulf Stream was running even stronger now and they had to buck the brunt of it as they mended their course to southwestward. They made the bar off West Palm barely an hour before sundown. The sky was clear and the easterly breeze at their backs soft and cool. And now they saw that they were being watched by four men standing beside a pair of large motor launches beached in the shadow of a long ridge of dunes showing patches of sea oats and backed by the reddening western sky. John Ashley passed his binoculars over the rest of the long strip of beach. To the horizons north and south in stood deserted.

“Can see anything coming at us by water from north or south for a long way before they get to us,” Ed said. “No wonder these boys wanted us here before nightfall. I’d say they knew what they doin when they picked this spot for the transfer.”

They hove to and dropped anchor a hundred yards offshore to avoid the tumult of the breakers and make easier work of the unloading. The men on shore shoved off in the long launches and the rapping of their engines came to the Ashley brothers as they checked their .45’s to ensure full magazines and chambered rounds. John and Ed stood their .44 Marlin rifles close to hand against the cabin bulk
head. Frank set his brother Bob’s old Winchester atop the cabin with the stock jutting out for easy grasp.

The men in the launches had taken precautions of their own—each carried a revolved in his waistband. The launches made fast against the
Della
’s port side and a husky blond man came aboard and introduced himself as Morris. His quick eyes inventoried each Ashley in turn and he saw their . 45’s and the rifles at the ready and he stared for a moment at John Ashley’s bare feet. No one made to shake hands Morris said he wanted to have a look at the cargo and John Ashley took him belowdecks. When Morris was satisfied, he handed John Ashley a small cloth bag containing the rest of their money and called for two of the other launchmen to come aboard and they set to relaying the cases from the hold to topside to the gangway and then down to the man in the forward launch. When the Ashleys made to lend a hand, Morris did not object.

The launches had been smartly adapted for their present purpose. Each could carry forty cases and its gunwales yet stand a half-foot above the waterline, and even with a full load they could skim the water as smoothly as an eel. As soon as the first one was loaded it headed for shore and the other launch moved up in its stead under the gangway and began taking on cases from the relay man. In the gathering twilight, the Ashleys now saw other men hastening from behind the dunes and splashing into the surf to meet the first launch. They pulled it up on the beach the began relieving it of its cargo, working like a team of ants to bear the whiskey into the shadows.

Though the work went swiftly, nightfall was almost on them when the last launchload was ready for shore. “Luck to you,” John Ashley called out as the Morris fellow dropped down into the launch and nodded at the helmsman and the launch swung about to port as its prop churned up a forth and the bow rose slightly as the boat made away. If Morris heard John Ashley’s last remark he gave no notice of it.

And now Ed had the
Della
underway too and heading for the St. Lucie Inlet and home to a father they knew would be pleased to learn they had made $2,500 on a trip they had all supposed to be nothing more than a shakedown run.

“You know,” Frank Ashley said to his brothers above the rumble of the
Della
’s engines, “I believe Bill’s right and this smugglin business gonna work out just fine.”

“I kindly agree,” Ed said. He showed his twisted smile. “But I aint too sure about Johnny here. You reckon that little breeze and
drizzle we went through back there mighta sopped some a his enthusiasm for bein out of the salt?” He winked at Frank and both brothers grinned at John Ashley.

“I reckon it mighta,” Frank said. “I mean, a fella pukes in his own face, he cant be havin a
real
good time.”

“You damn mulletheads,” John Ashley said, and spat over the side. “All you can do better’n me is swallow down your own puke, and hell, a goddamn
dog
can do that. And you maybe can handle a damn boat better’n me. But
on land
where all normal people belong anyway I’m twice the man of either of you any damn day of the week.”

And then they were all three laughing hard once again and showing their teeth white in their sun-darked faces, punching playfully at each other, their jaws aching with their laughter, their eyes burning with the joy of being alive and in their own company, these brothers Ashley.

April 1920

O
NE WARM FORENOON IN LATE
A
PRIL
J
OHN
A
SHLEY AND
H
ANFORD
Mobley sold three skiffloads of gator hides to a dealer named Phil Dolan on the Salerno docks and then repaired to the backroom of Toomey’s Store down the street to drink a few mugs of cold beer before heading for home. Frank and Ed Ashley and Clarence Middleton were away on another liquor run to Grand Bahama. They’d made more than a dozen such trips now, no longer transporting for Richardson or anyone else but buying loads on behalf of Old Joe to resell to backroom buyers for hotels and restaurants and groceries all along the southeast coast but chiefly in Miami. Old Joe also continued in the moonshine trade, selling most of this product to Indians, though business had grown too large to assign deliveries to the various villages directly anymore and he now dealt with middlemen in Pahokee and at a central waycamp in the Big Sawgrass Slough. The profits were streaming in. Frank and Ed were buying cases of island rum for as little as six dollars each and selling them for sixty in Pahokee, for eighty-five in Miami. They’d fast become old hands at the business. And Clarence Middleton had proved to be as capable at handling a boat and running whiskey as he was at so many things else. The only thing he could not do well was the only thing he would not do at all—take charge of men. Whenever Joe Ashley needed someone to supervise an immediate enterprise and his sons were all occupied with other duties, he gave the charge to young Hanford Mobley who rel
ished the authority and exercised it well. And though Mobley was barely seventeen, Clarence Middleton liked him and admired his grit and willingly accepted his leadership in the absence of the Ashleys.

As always before he went into a town in Palm Beach County John Ashley first checked with his local informants on the whereabouts of the Bakers. Old Joe had made John swear not to show himself anyplace where Sheriff George or Bob or Freddie Baker might be. “Whyever it is you champin to get at him, you keep a tight leash on it,” Old Joe had told him. “I want you to stay wide of the Bakers till I say different and I dont want to hear you didnt.” For months now John Ashley had not laid eye on Bob Baker nor Bob Baker on him. On this day all the Bakers were about their business in West Palm Beach, where they usually were.

Toomey’s backroom was cool and pleasant and smelled of fresh sawdust and seafood and beer. A single paddle fan revolved slowly from the ceiling. They took a foamy pitcher and two mugs and a big iced tray of unshucked oysters to a table against the wall opposite the bar and sat there shucking with their knives and slurping oysters and sipping their beer. A friend known to them as Shadowman Dave sat on a bench next to the pool table at the far end of the room and softly plunked his five-string. Toomey’s trade was strictly crackers—fishermen and trappers, mostly—who were friendly to the Ashleys and took pride in one of their own being such a notorious public figure. Whenever John Ashley stopped in for a quick one, those in attendance would greet him in raucous fellowship and Toomey would nod at his young son and the boy would happily leave off sweeping up shells and go sit in front of the store and whittle and keep an eye for any show of county lawmen not known to be Ashley friends.

The place was nearly empty at this morning hour and Toomey came to the table to sit with them and gossip over a mug of beer. John Ashley had just poured a second mug for himself and young Hanford when the door swung open and someone entered carrying a twin-barreled shotgun and wearing baggy overalls and brogans and a faded black slouch hat. It took a moment for John Ashley to realize he was looking at a darkhaired woman of hard sunbrowned face. As she went to the bar she glanced at them without expression. Her eyes were moistly red and the underside of the left one was slightly swollen and discolored. She was not truly pretty and he would not have argued that she was, yet something in her aspect deepened his breath. She leaned the gun against the front of the bar and slid up onto a stool and the seat of the overalls abruptly snugged into a configuration to
engage John Ashley’s full attention. He thought that an ass that looked so fine in overalls must be a marvel in the flesh.

Toomey got up and went behind the bar and said, “Yes mam?” She murmured and Toomey nodded and set to drawing a mug of beer. He cut the head with a spatula and flicked the foam on the floor and finished filling the mug and set it before her. He poured a doubleshot of Joe Ashley’s shine in a glass and placed it beside the beer and scooped up the money she’d put down. He nodded to her and put the money in a box on the backbar and then came back to join John and Hanford.

“They lord Jesus,” John Ashley whispered. “Who’s
that
?” Hanford Mobley grinned at his uncle.

“Name’s Upthegrove,” Toomey said softly. “Dont sound real, do it? Dont know her first name—nobody does. They say she lives with her daddy way to hell and gone south of Okeechobee in what they call the Thousand Hammocks.”

“I know the place,” John Ashley said. “Naught out there but sawgrass and so many hammocks look alike even a Indian can get lost in em.”

“I heard nobody
but
Indians ever seen their house,” Toomey said. “She got a brother used to bring Phil Dolan a load of hides ever month or so, but the word is he got sent to Raiford last year for killing a fella in a fight. About five-six months ago she started bringing in skins. Dolan says she brings in ever kinda hide—gator, otter, deer, bobcat. Brung in four goodsize painter skins one time and one of em black as ink and of a size to cover the most of a pool table, Dolan says. He asked her did she kill them big cats her ownself and she give him this
look
. Said to him, ‘Well, mister, they didnt none of them say goodbye cruel world and shoot
theirselfs
.’ Got a mouth on her. Just as well she dont talk much.”

“I aint never known a woman to come in here before,” John Ashley said.

“Aint her first time,” Toomey said, “About a month ago she brung Dolan a load of hides and then instead of gettin in her boat and heading right back downriver like she always done before, she comes in here and sits herself right there where she is now and says to me to give her a pitcher and a shot. Place was about half full and you shoulda seen the jaws hangin open. Hellfire, I been runnin this place for five-six years and never had no woman come in here. Shadowman back there was grinnin and pickin and that banjo was the only sound in the place. I musta stood there gawpin at her for a full minute before
she say, ‘
Well?
’ I finally think to tell her this aint no place for ladies, and she says thats just fine because she
aint
no lady and to hurry up about that pitcher. Well, I’ll admit to you boys I didnt know whether to shit, spit or go blind. Understand now, she’s settin there with that shotgun acrost her lap and lookin like the last thing she’s gonna do is anything she dont want to. So I think it over for about two seconds and figure the hell with it, man or woman makes no difference to me as long as they puttin up cash money. So I pull a pitcher for her and put a mug next to it but she just goes ahead and drinks from the pitcher like a lot of old boys do. I bet she didnt take two breaths before she finished off the half of it. She sits there a minute and then lets go with a burp to rattle the windows. It aint that many
men
I ever heard burp like that, never mind no woman. Everbody was lookin at her like she was some kinda show but she wasnt payin nobody the least notice. Just drinkin her beer like she’s the only one in the place. Well sir, she’s startin in on the rest of the pitcher when Harvey Roget leaves off his pool game and comes up behind her with a shit-eatin grin. He says loud enough for everbody to hear how her ass looks ripe enough to take a bit out of and he grabs a handful of it. If he’d been figurin to charm her some more he never had the chance to do it because she come around on that stool and laid that half-full pitcher upside his head like she was thowin somethin sidearm. Pitcher didnt bust—just
WHONK!
—and beer goes everwhere and old Harvey goes quicksteppin off to the side like a man doin a jig and he didnt hardly get his balance before she was off that stool and had the shotgun by the barrels in both hands and smacked him over the head with the flat of the stock like she was drivin home a railroad spike. I tell ye, ole Harv went down like a killed man. Turned out he was only coldcocked but it’s another dent in his headbone he’ll carry to the grave for sure. The one half of his face was swole up all red and ugly and he lost him a eyetooth. By the time he come around she was long gone. The boys naturally give him a pretty good ribbin about getting the shit beat out of him by a woman. Harv got all blackassed about it and cussed a blue streak and stomped on out. Aint seed him since. Dont know where-all he’s been doin his drinkin lately.”

They had all three been furtively eyeing the woman at the bar as Toomey told his story. Now she shifted her weight on the stool and John Ashley felt his cock stir and he sucked a breath between his teeth.

“Just last week she brung Dolan another boatful of hides and then come in here again,” Toomey whispered. “She’d just recent got that shiner under her eye and it was lots worse-lookin than now, I’ll tell
ye. That eye was swole near shut. Some of the boys thought maybe Harvey give it to her but I misdoubt it. Harvey aint
so
dumb he dont know he’d only make hisself look worse if he was to beat up on her. All he can do is hope that after a time nobody’ll remember much about what she done to him. But like they say, hope in one hand and shit in the other and see which fills up first. Wont nobody who saw it ever forget the way she laid him out nor ever quit tellin about it. Anyhow, this last time, she had herself a pitcher and a coupla shots of your daddy’s good stuff and then left. Never said a word except to order the spirits. And didnt nobody get bold with her neither. Hell, nobody come within four feet of her, not after how she done poor Harvey.”

Toomey gave her a sidelong look and he leaned farther over the table as he said, “I tell you, boys, that aint no woman to get gay with. It’s things about her just aint natural.”

“It’s something about her,” John Ashley said.

“You right about that,” Toomey said. “And it sets on that stool real nice.”

Hanford Mobley chuckled and John Ashley said, “That aint what I mean.”

Toomey and Mobley grinned at him. He said, “Well, it
is
—but it aint
all
I mean.” He could not have said what he meant.

Now the woman drained the last of her beer and slid off the stool and took up the shotgun and headed for the door.

“She gonna make he getaway, uncle,” Hanford Mobley said, nudging John Ashley with an elbow.

John Ashley got up and went to the door and watched the woman cross the street to a battered Model T he guessed to be ten years old. It angled awkwardly on a bent frame and its top was in tatters. She laid the shotgun on the seat and adjusted the levers under the steering wheel and took the crank around to the front of the car and fitted it and gave it a hard turn as forcefully as most men might and the motor coughed several times but didnt ignite. She glared at the car and tried again and this time the engine did not even cough. She reset the spark lever and tried again. After she’d cranked the motor a half-dozen futile times John Ashley went across the street and gave her his best smile and asked if he might be of assistance.

She studied him narrowly. She was breathing hard and her shirt was darkly damp and sweat beaded under her chin and nose. Her mouth was set hard and her eyes were shadowed by her hatbrim though he could see they were brightly wet. She looked like she might
be resisting an urge to cry. Standing this near to her he was surprised to see she was almost as tall as he was. Now she held the crank out to him.

He used the marking stick to make sure there was gasoline in the tank and then checked to see that gas was getting to the carburetor. Whistling the while to convey an air of casually assured proficiency he made certain all ignition wiring was properly affixed and then went to the steering wheel and adjusted the spark level and throttle and then set himself in front of the car and readied the crank and gave it a turn.

The engine emitted a hollow rasp on each of the first four tries. Passersby averted their eyes when he turned his glare on them. He reset the spark advance. The woman looked on without expression, her arms crossed over her breasts. The motor hacked on the fifth and sixth and seventh attempts but still would not start. When it coughed not at all on the eighth try, he blew a hard breath and muttered “Son of a
bitch!
”

He was huffing hard and dripping sweat. The woman sat down on the edge of the sidewalk with her elbows braced on her knees and her chin in her hands. He rolled up his sleeves and gripped the crank as though he meant to strangle it. He turned to the woman and smiled and winked and she reacted not at all. He gave the crank a mighty turn but his sweaty grip slipped and he fell to his knees as the crank recoiled and clipped him on the chin and snapped his teeth together with a clack. He saw an instant’s darkness lit with sparks and swayed and nearly fell over but managed to keep his balance. He heard laughter from Toomey’s across the way and turned to glare over there but the door stood empty. He got to his feet and tasted blood and felt of his mouth and found that he’d bitten his lower lip.

The woman was laughing into her hands and he felt a rush of anger—and then pictured what he must have looked like when the crank hit him and he chuckled and shrugged and sat down beside her on the plank walkway. He mopped at his lip with his shirttail and said, “Bedamn if that car aint got it in for me.”

She laughed harder and covered her face with her hands and rocked to and fro and stomped a foot on the ground and people passing on the sidewalk glanced at them and gave them wider berth. He felt himself grinning. He looked across to Toomey’s and saw a pair of heads at the door pull back from sight.

And then she was crying. He gaped and wondered what he’d done to upset her so suddenly. He stammered, “What’s—what’re you—”
He put a hand to her shoulder and said, “Hey now, darlin, what’s all
this
? What’s the matter?”