Red Grass River (37 page)

Ten minutes later the Broward County Sheriff led a posse of police cars north on the Dixie Highway, hopin to pick up the trail of the robbers and they did. About a mile south of the Palm Beach County line they saw the taxi abandoned by the side of the road. They pulled over and examined the area and saw tires tracks leading off down a dirt and limerock road heading west into the pinewoods. They followed it and about a quarter-mile farther along they found a Nigra man tied to a pine tree. Turned out it was his taxi the gang had stolen for the bank robbery. The Nigra said they came tearing back down the pineywoods road in a truck they’d left parked alongside the highway and waved at him as they went by. One of them hollered to him that somebody would be right along and set him loose. The sheriff told the Nigra to get in the car with him and the posse moved on for another mile or so before it came to where the road ran out at the edge of a cypress swamp and they found the truck—which had also been stole of course—bogged in muck to the wheel wells. There wasnt nothing in front of them but the Everglades. Nothin but the Devil’s Garden. The Ashley gang must of had dugouts waiting for them.

On the drive back out of the swamp the Nigra told the sheriff that John Ashley told him to deliver a message to Sheriff Bob Baker of Palm Beach County. The sheriff said the Nigra looked scared to say what it was and scared of what might happen to him if he didnt. Everbody knew the Broward sheriff couldnt stand Bob Baker, especially not after Bobby’s called him a dump peckerwood right in his own office in front of his own men. But when he heard the message John Ashley was sending Bobby he personally drove the Nigra up to West Palm Beach to deliver it. He said he wanted to see Bob Baker’s face when he got it.

A half-dozen witnesses saw the Broward sheriff stand in front of Bobby’s desk and say to him, “Fella here’s got somethin for you from John Ashley.” The Nigra was scared shitless, naturally, being in a room fulla nothin but cops, but the Broward sheriff told him, “Go on, boy, give it to him.”

Sheriff Bob put his hand out and the Nigra put a rifle cartridge in his palm. A Winchester .30-30 round.

“Mistah Ashley say give you that,” the Nigra said. Bobby had a .30-30 of his own and always kept it in his car, but they say he looked at that round like it was the strangest thing he’d ever seen.

The Broward sheriff told the Nigra to go on and say the message
that went with it, told him dont be afraid, he would only be repeating what Ashley had told him to say and the Palm Beach Sheriff wouldnt hold it against him personal. They say the Broward sheriff was just grinning and grinning.

And so the Nigra told Bob Baker that John Ashley said to come and get him if he was man enough. Told him he’d be waiting in the Devil’s Garden with another bullet just like that one with his name on it. Said he wanted to deliver it to Bob Baker personal. Deliver it right in his heart.

October—December 1923

T
HEY TRIED HARD TO BELAY THEIR DESIRE UNTIL NIGHTFALL BUT
shortly before supper they could stand it no longer and slipped away to the sidehouse so ravenous for each other they did not take time to remove their clothes except for her overalls so she could open herself to him. They tried to mute themselves with kisses but their concupiscent groans and outcries carried around to the porch where Old Joe sat in his rocker and sipped from his cup of shine and grinned. Ray Lynn and Ben Tracey sat in cane chairs facing him with their cups in hand. Ma Ashley and her two youngest daughters, twelve-year-old Jaybird and thirteen-year-old Scout, were setting the table and plying between the house and the kitchen out back and each yelp from the sidehouse tightened the mother’s lips and widened the sisters’ blushing smiles. Ray Lynn seemed undecided whether the caterwauling was funny. Ben Tracey looked becrazed by it. His glance kept going past Joe Ashley to the Scout girl whose breasts were already bloomed and filled her shirtfront snugly. Ray Lynn wanted to tell him to quit his gawping before Old Joe caught him at it but Joe Ashley was absorbed in the lovers’ loud likerish reunion and far enough in his cups to be unlikely to notice.

Earlier that day, after they’d hidden the blue Chevy in the pines well back of the kitchen building, John Ashley had introduced Ray Lynn and Ben Tracey to his family and Laura Upthegrove. He could tell that Old Joe liked Ray right off but was unsure about Ben. Yet he
knew that any man who’d taken his side in a prison fight and maybe saved his life would receive the benefit of his daddy’s doubt.

Clarence Middleton was not with them. He was staying with his girl Terrianne in St. Lucie. Bill Ashley had been here earlier to greet John and meet Lynn and Tracey but had then gone home to Salerno to tend his wife Bertha who was down with a fever. Hanford Mobley’s parents, a polite but shy couple, had walked over from their shotgun house a quarter-mile from Twin Oaks to welcome John back. They smiled and nodded on being introduced to Ray and Ben and then took their leave and went home too. Joe Ashley had a half-dozen lookouts posted between the highway and the house with orders to come running the minute they saw anything that looked like it might be a posse. Every man at Twin Oaks went armed with a pistol. Their rifles and shotguns were stood all around the porch.

Now John and Laura came out of the sidehouse and around to the front porch and the men tried to restrain their smiles and then Old Joe laughed and Tracey and Lynn joined in. John Ashley grinned back at them. Laura blushed and put her fists on her hips and glared at them and said “
Well?
What of it? I aint seem this boy in about a lifetime is all! I’d say we’re entitled, wouldn’t
you
all?”

“You’d been in a fine fix if a posse’d come tearin in here when you all were in there foolin,” Old Joe said. “You’d been what they call caught with ye pants down.” He gave her a mock leer and waggled his brows. She stuck her tongue out at him and he chortled and slapped his knee. John Ashley hugged her around the neck and looked at her like the man in love he was.

It was a plentiful supper—the table laden with platters of fried ham and catfish filets and cornbread, with bowls of beans and greens and grits, roasted yams and molasses, rice and gravy. Old Joe told about paying off Hicks to effect Hanford Mobley’s and Roy Matthews’ escape from the Broward jail and they all laughed when he recounted how Bob Baker had been so hot about it he’d cussed out the Broward sheriff in his own jail and damn near beat the shit out of Hicks in the hospital. Albert Miller had waited most of the night at Massey’s fishcamp for Hannie and Roy to show up before Hannie finally camp poling out of the mangroves just before sunup and eaten raw by mosquitoes. Roy Matthews wasnt with him.

“Hannie said the Matthews boy done got out the boat back by Coconut Creek,” Old Joe said. “Said he asked where he was goin but Matthews never said a word, just got out in the shallows there and waded ashore and got himself gone. I could see right off he was lyin.”
He took a sip of shine to ease the passage of a mouthful of yam. “He was just too shamed to tell the truth of it.”

“What’s that truth of it?” John Ashley said.

“He got the horns put on him is the truth of it.”

“Joseph,” Ma Ashley said, and gain him a reproving stare which he fully ignored.

“How you know that?” John Ashley said. He gave his mother a sidelong look and saw her staring tight-lipped at Joe Ashley.

“When they caught the Matthews boy in Jacksonville, that’s who he was with.”

“Glenda?” John Ashley said.

“The very one,” Old Joe said. “They was in what’s called a compromisin position at the time.”

John Ashley and Laura raised their eyebrows at each other. His mother shook her head in exasperation and bent to her supper.

Old Joe gestured for Scout to serve him another portion of ham. “I dont reckon we’re like to see Roy anytime soon,” he said. “But I’ll tell you what. Hannie was wrong to blame him. Ye cant fault a fella for trying a gal. It’s natural as the rain for a feller to try. It’s up to the gal to say yay or nay.”

Nobody saw Ben Tracey wink at Scout except her sister and the girls looked at each other and blushed.

“You sayin he took his displeasure out on the wrong party?” John Ashley said.

“All I’m sayin is Hannie’s young yet. Still got things to learn. Specially about women.”

“
Joseph!
Now thats enough!”

Old Joe narrowed his eyes at Ma Ashley. “Talk a little blue for you, old woman? It’s
you
said the women ought sit to the table with the men tonight since it’s Johnny’s homecoming and all.” Ma Ashley glared. Old Joe smiled at his daughters and they looked down at their plates to hide their smiles from their momma.

He told John Ashley he had sent Hanford to Texas. He’d offered to sent Clarence too, and Clarence asked his girl to go with him, but Texas sounded like the far end of the earth to Terrianne and she persuaded him to stay with her in St. Lucie. A friend of the Ashleys had driven Hanford Mobley in his truck to St. Marks where another of Old Joe’s bubbas kept a fast sloop and in it carried Mobley to Pensacola. There the boy boarded a steamer to New Orleans and from there voyaged to Galveston.

“You sent him to Aunt July’s?” John Ashley said with a wide grin.

“Said he’d long wanted to make his aunt’s acquaintance,” Old Joe said. He cut a sidelong glance at his wife. “I guess he’ll be outa harm’s way over there.”

“I know whose acquaintance he wanted to make at Aunt July’s,” John Ashley said.

Ray Lynn and Ben Tracy chuckled lewdly. John Ashley had told them all about his Galveston days in his Aunt’s establishment. The daughters had long heard whispers of their notorious Aunt July and they gave each other knowing smiles and giggled. Laura looked askant at John Ashley and said, “Who’s Aunt July?”

Ma Ashley let her fork clank to her plate and her hip jarred the table to she abruptly stood and turned from the room and Old Joe just did manage to catch his jug before it toppled.

After supper the men and Laura Upthegrove repaired to the table outside and the talk turned to business. Old Joe said they were damn near broke. The payoffs to Hicks and Webb had nearly cleaned out the family treasury and there was little money coming in. A few months after Frank and Ed got killed he finally bought another rumboat and Clarence and a young fella named Register made a couple of runs to West End in it before the Coast Guard happened on them one night. Clarence tried to run for it but the Guard shot up the boat offshore and Clarence dove overboard and swam all the way in under a moonless sky without the cutter’s light finding him. But neither Joe nor Clarence had wanted anything more to do with rumboats and that was the end of the Ashley smuggling business.

They’d lost other sources of income as well. When they settled accounts for Frank and Ed they of course put an end to the Bellamy payoffs. They’d expected the Chicago bosses to figure out who’d put the pick to Bellamy and send somebody to see them. But the weeks went by and nobody came. Either Chicago never figured out who did it or they knew who it was but didnt think it worthwhile to come after them in the Everglades
Or
they knew who it was and didnt give a damn. Old Joe had heard that the Chicago bosses never much liked Bellamy and thats why they had sent him to Miami, which they saw as nothing but a sweaty swamptown. For whatever reason, Chicago let things lay. But they no longer drover loads through Palm Beach County or unloaded any boats off the county’s shores. Hardly anybody else did either. And so hijack pickings had gone slim.

The whiskey camps had continued to bring in steady money until
the gang hit the Stuart bank the month before. “Bobby musta took that robbery even more personal than I thought he would,” Joe Ashley said. Since the robbery two of his whiskey camps had been found out and destroyed, one of them just then days ago. Another camp had been leveled by a bad storm just a few days before that. “We down to two camps,” Joe said. “A little one we set up just last year we call Gumbo, about a mile-and-a-half southwest of Hobe, that one and the Crossbone.” The Crossbone camp was so-called because it was set never Crossbone Creek which ran into the south fork of the St. Lucie River. Though it was within three miles of Twin Oaks it had never been found out by searchers. It was their oldest camp and had long been their most productive.

“It’s got right damn serious now,” Old Joe said. “The sumbitches who busted up them camps didnt just scare way my help like Bobby done when you was in the jug the first time. No sir, they did in both my niggers at the little Loxahatchee camp. Sam and Rollo, remember them? Good boys the both. Killed stone dead. You could see they’d shot the Rollo boy from close up after he’d already been shot in the knee and couldnt run nowhere. When I found them they were half eat up by varmints and were startin to turn, so I buried them right there in the muck and weighted down the graves with big chunks of limestone. When I told Sambo’s wife what happened to him and her boy she cried like she was gone die of sorrow.”

The more recent attack was on the camp in the Hungryland Slough. “They killed another my niggermen and a good cracker boy name of Lee wasnt but fourteen-year-old and didnt have no livin kin. Jaybird seen him shiverin in the streets in Stuart one day last winter with no shoes nor even a long-sleeve shirt. She talked your ma into bringin him home with them and asked me would I do something for him, so I give him a roof and put him to work. It was another nigger workin that camp too, Mage Livermore, you know him. He got shot in the leg. Told me the men who did it was a breed and a fullblood Indian. Said the breed told him he was lettin him live so he could give me a message. Know what the message was? ‘Your time has come.’”

John Ashley said it sounded like that breed called Heck Somebody who’d lived on the Baker place off and on and had been a county deputy for a time. “I never did meet him myself but everybody always said he’s spose to be so damn scary. The one they say Bobby uses when he dont want to dirty his own hands..”

“It’s him for sure,” Old Joe said. “I’d dearly like to make his acquaintance. He’s cost me money and some damn good men.”

“It’s Bobby put him up to it,” John Ashley said. “Listen Daddy, I been keepin off Bobby a long time cause you said to, but I got things to settle with that son of a bitch and I aim to settle them.”

“Then goddamn
do
it, boy! I aint sayin keep off him, not no more. He sure aint keeping off
us
, is he? I swear I truly have had my fill of Bakers, by Jesus.”

“All right then,” John Ashley said. “Just wanted you to know where I stand on it.”

“I
know
where you stand. I’m standin there too.”

“All right then.”

But before they did anything else, they needed to come up with some operating capital, on that they were agreed. Old Joe had been tipped that the bank in Pompano had lately grown fat with farm money. According to his source there stood at least twenty-five thousand in that bank every working day of the week, sometimes more. “We’ll check is it true,” Old Joe said, “and if it is, I’d say thats the place to start.”

John Ashley nodded, and Laura said, “I’m drivin.”

“No,” John Ashley told her. “You’re good, honeybunch, but you aint doin this one. You been lucky nobody recognized you with Hannie on them other jobs and they still aint got a thing on you. But they gone know me so easy it aint even worth wearin a disguise. If you with me they’ll know you too for certain sure.”

She argued about it for a while but he would not change his mind nor would Old Joe take her side. She finally heaved a huge sigh of frustration and sat back with her arms crossed and her face burning with anger and disappointment.

John Ashley said he only wished it was a Palm Beach County bank. “I want that goddamn Bobby to know the onlybody’s time has come is his.”

“Well then, leave him some kind a message when you do the Pompano, why dont you? A message he’ll for certain sure understand.”

Over the next weeks they moved cautiously and in pairs whenever they ventured from Twin Oaks into the towns. They drove most of the way to Pompano by backroad and scouted the bank. For a handsome recompense George Doster the Stuart banker made professional inquiries and reported to them that the Pompano bank’s cash and securities holding had indeed grown impressive in recent months due chiefly to the boom in local agricultural enterprise. Old Joe had apprised Bill Ashley of their intentions and Bill nodded more in resignation than
accord. As they crafted their plan John Ashley decided on his message for Bob Baker. When he told his father what it was, Old Joe smiled and said, “I’d say it’s clear enough.”

They hit the bank and made away clean. And that night celebrated at Twin Oaks with bottles of bonded bourbon and judge of Old Joe’s shine while the lookouts kept watch in the woods for encroaching agents of the law. Old Joe got down his fiddle and despite his opposition to bank robbery Bill Ashley had come to the party with his wife Bertha and his banjo, and the music swirled through the house.