Red Grass River (43 page)

John Ashley shook his head.

They sat silent for a long minute.

“She sure did love us, didnt she, Johnny?”

He nodded and dug at his eyes with the heels of his hands.

“Oh God
damn
it, Johnny!” She waited into her hands.

They held each other close all through the night and wept together for her whom they both loved, she who had loved them both. They whispered of her and after a time could not help but smile at some of their shared memories. And after a while longer they were chuckling at recollections of the wonderful times they’d all three had together. And in the red light of the rising sun they made love once again and kissed each other goodbye for their lost Loretta May.

They poled up the sawgrass channels and adjoining creeks to Lake Okeechobee and then up along its coast to Pahokee and were met there by Henry Quickshoes. He drove them over the rugged backroads all the way up to Fort Pierce. John had wanted to see his mother one more time but the house where she was staying in West Palm Beach was still too closely watched by Bob Baker’s men. She sent word through Bill for him not to try to see her, to just get clear of the region and be safe. Bill had arranged for a new Model T to be waiting for them at a filling station owned by a family friend. they tanked Billy Quickshoes and said so long and then drove up to Vero to visit with Clarence Middleton and Terrianne at their rented cottage overlooking the Indian River Lagoon.

Clarence was overjoyed to see them but Terrianne was terse and little more than polite. She was lean and honeyhaired and had pouty lips and quick dark eyes and she had always thought Clarence’s troubles with the law would be over if only he would break away from the Ashley bunch—though she’d never said so to anyone but Clarence and said so only once. It was the only time he’d ever been openly angry with her. Her argument that they would be so much safer and in better position to start a family had carried little weight against his loyalty to the Ashleys, and she’d not mentioned the matter again. When they first heard the news of the Crossbones camp raid, both Joe and John Ashley were supposed to have been killed, and Clarence
went into a deep gloom. She tried to comfort him—but in truth she’d felt that they were at last free from the dangers attached to that criminal bunch. Then Bill Ashley sent word that John was alive and safely hid-out in the Devil’s Garden and Clarence showed his first smiled in nearly two weeks and Terrianne cursed under her breath. Now here John Ashley was, right in her house, laughing and carrying on as though he had not a care in the world—and every cop in South Florida ready to shoot him dead and anybody they found with him.

They had a fish-fry that evening and were joined by Clarence’s charter boat friend Wayne Lillis and his wife Marie. Near midnight they were all a little drunk and Terrianne grew more sullen and Clarence upbraided her for it and she stalked away into the house. Clarence said for them to ignore her, she’d been out of sorts lately. But he seemed distracted and Wayne and Marie took their leave shortly after.

John and Laura had a nightcap with Clarence and told him he and Terrianne were always welcome to come visit or even to live with them after they got settled in Texas. Clarence said he couldnt speak for Terrianne but he just might take them up on the offer. Then again he might see about going to work for his brother Jack in Jacksonville Beach. John and Laura looked at each other. Neither had known Clarence had a brother.

“Jack’s never much cared for me livin on the wrong side of the law,” Clarence said. He’d recently trimmed his beard to a close goatee and was now in the habit of stroking it when he mulled. “Owns a damn nightclub but he aint crooked, if you can believe that. He’s long been after me to quit the criminal life and go to work with him. I got so tired of hearin it I pretty much kept my distance from him these last few years. Now I just dont know. He’s all the kin I got. Maybe I’ll go see him.”

Laura put an arm around his shoulder and kissed his cheek and said not to be too hard on Terrianne. “Dont matter what she thinks of me and Johnny,” she said. “Whatever you do decide to do, I think you’d be wise to take her with you,” She hugged him tight and then he showed her and John to the spare room where a bed had been made up.

When the sun broke over mangroves across the narrows in the morning they were already on their way to Jacksonville.

Daisy and her husband Butch were doing well—he had been a foreman at the shipyard for nearly three years now—and John’s nephew Jeb was grown to a husky nine-year-old who loved to fish and
to shoot his daddy’s shotgun. There had been two new additions to the family since John’s last visit—your-year-old redhaired Janie, pretty and shy, and two-year-old Eddie Frank, who loved to gnaw things with his new teeth. They barbecued ribs on the backyard pit that evening under a blazing bone-white moon and drank beer and later on danced to the radio in the living room.

Daisy was glad to hear they were leaving South Florida for good, although she wished they would settle in Jacksonville rather than move all the way out to Texas. “I dont like to say I tole you so, Johnny, but way back when you were last here I tole you there wouldnt be nothin but trouble if you went back to Twin Oaks. Last time it was three others with you and now all of em dead. My heart just broke when I heard about Frank and Eddie three years ago and I dont know if it was an accident like they say or not but I still cry most ever time I think about them. But I aint grieved about Daddy for a minute and I never will. The only think I’m sorry about him dead is Momma—though why she ever loved that son of a bitch is a mystery I will never understand.” She and Old Joe had never made their peace. Ma Ashley had told her that Joe always regretted not being able to see young Jeb, but her mother could not deny that he’d had no interest whatever in the next two of his grandchildren by her.

Butch asked what John intended to do for a living in Texas and John said he didnt know yet but he was thinking of going into some kind of business for himself. Maybe a gun shop or a fishcamp. He didnt see the look Daisy gave him, as though she thought he had to be joking. She then turned to Laura who just smiled slightly and shrugged.

They all went to the beach next day and got sunburned and halfdrunk on beer. The following night they went to a moviehouse in town and laughed all through a swell Chaplain double-feature and when they came out of the theater they all tried to outdo each other at walking like the Little Tramp and they agreed that Laura could do it the best. The next day Daisy left the kids in a neighbor’s care and the four of them went canoeing on the St. Johns. Butch took his throw net and they caught a mess of mullet and filleted them and baked them in palm fronds in a firepit in the sand. Afterward while Daisy and Butch napped John and Laura went into the pines and found a soft bed of needles and there made love with hordes of dragonflies bobbing in the still air.

The next morning they said goodbye. John shook young Jeb’s hand as manfully as he did Butch’s and he picked Janie up and swung her around and Laura cuddled Eddie Frank one more time and there were
hugs and kisses all around. Butch reminded John that he and Laura and any of their friends always had a place to stay when they needed it, and John thanked him but said he didnt think he’d be back this way again. Then they got into the Model T and set off for Pensacola.

They took their time about getting there and after their arrival they passed a few days playing in the gentle Gulf waves on beaches with sand as find and white as talcum powder. They sold the car and bought passage to New Orleans and there they stayed a week. They every night dined on Cajun or Creole cooking and they walked all about the exotic French Quarter and drank pitchers of beer as they tapped their feet to the music of Dixieland bands. They rode a sidewheeler up the Mississippi to Baton Rouge and back. Just before they departed New Orleans John sent a telegram to Aunt July notifying her of their arrival date.

Their ship docked in Galveston on a sweltering later afternoon of heavy humidity. Hanford Mobley was there to greet them. He looked fit and was sportily dressed in blue-striped seersucker and a white boated with a black band. When he grinned he showed a new gold canine. He was accompanied by a pretty and sweet-natured brunette named Ella whom he introduced as his fiancée. John whooped his congratulations and hugged Ella tight and patted her behind and kissed her on her forehead, then grabbed Hanford in a bear hug and swung him around. Debarking passengers passing by smiled at the happy sight of them. Hanford kissed Laura’s hand in greeting and she blushed and said, “Declare,
somebody’s
sure picked up some fancy manners in Texas.” The girl Ella smiled and took Hanford’s arm and he beamed upon her. They all got into a cab and repaired to Aunt July’s.

On the way there Hanford Mobley asked about the police raid on the Crossbones camp. John Ashley said they could talk about it another time but assured Hanford that his parents were well and living comfortably in a new cottage Bill Ashley had bought for them just down the road from his own house in Salerno. As the cab turned onto Aunt July’s street John Ashley asked Hanford with happened with Roy Matthews. Hanford smiled and said, “Roy who?” and laughed and said no more.

They had not seen each other in ten years, John Ashley and his aunt. She’d gone to corpulence but seemed at ease with her fleshiness and less given to general fret. She was thrilled to see him and remarked that he was even handsomer then he’d been a decade ago. When he introduced Laura, Aunt July said, “So
this
is the girl who won the
heart that couldnt be won,” and hugged her to her copious bosom. She could not stop smiling at John Ashley and made him sit beside her on the parlor sofa so she could pet him as they talked. Laura took immediate liking to her as had to Ella, and the three women were as easy with each other as longtime friends.

When Aunt July questioned him about her brother’s death John Ashley recounted how Old Joe had been killed. Aunt July began to cry and Laura hastened to her side and put her arm around her and told of the dignified funeral Ma and Bill Ashley had arranged for him. “They told me there was just a whole
hill
of pretty flowers on his grave,” Laura said. Aunt July apologized for her tears, saying she had sworn she would not cry about it anymore, not in front of them, and now she meant it, by God. She dried her eyes with a lace hanky and called for one of the maids to turn on the radio to a music program.

That evening the five of them went to supper at a bayside restaurant and caught each other up on things still further. Aunt July said that none of the girls who’d worked in the house at the time John had lived there were with her any longer—a revelation prompting Laura to give John Ashley a smiling sidelong look. Some of the girls had married, some had gone to bigger towns in chase of bigger money. Some had gotten mixed up with criminals and were likely now in jail. Some had simply disappeared and none knew whereto or why. Roan-haired Sally who’d been one of John’s favorites had developed a cancer in her breast and died within six months of its discovery.

“Nineteen years old,” Aunt July said sadly. “So many old people doing nothing but meanness in the world and such a sweet pretty thing has to die so young. If there’s a God in heaven He sure aint much of a one for fairness.”

John Ashley said he was surprised to hear such a commonplace sentiment from someone so experienced with the world as his aunt. “Well,” she said, “I expect it’s exactly because of people’s experience with the world that such notions get to be so common.”

Cindy Jean, whose sweetness on the eve of his departure from Galveston John Ashley well recalled, had married a wildcatter and gone with him to Texas where he struck oil six months later. “She wrote me a letter,” Aunt July said. “She said, ‘Maylon struck oil so I guess I for damn sure struck gold.’” She laughed along with the others and said, “I just love a story about hard work paying off, dont you all?”

They all laughed too at Hanford’s account of wanting to be the man of the house just as his Uncle John had been when he’d lived in
Galveston. On his arrival at Aunt July’s Hanford had followed John Ashley’s example and challenged the resident houseman to a fistfight for rights to the job. But Hanford lacked both the size and the fistic talent of his uncle, and the houseman, a big quick man named Mack, had in short order beaten him insensible. Hanford claimed to hold no hard feelings. In truth Mack was a pleasant man who was always ready with a joke and the two had become friends. Hanford had since been earning his keep as Aunt July’s general handyman, tending to small repairs around the house and keeping up the yard and garden. This position did not, however, carry the houseman’s perquisites, and whatever pleasures Hanford desired from the girls in residence he’d been required to pay for like everybody but Mack, albeit he got a discount price of a dollar and a half.

Ella had been the only one not to charge him. “I cant even say what, but it’s
something
about this boy,” she said. He sat next to her and she patted his arm. She said she had fallen in love with him the minute they met but it had taken him a while longer to reciprocate. “I guess because of havin so many pretty girls under the same roof,” she said. “I guess being a man he had to try everything in the candy store before he could settle for just one kinda treat.” Aunt July and Laura smiled knowingly at John Ashley but he affected to be engrossed in the condition of his fingernails. Once Hanford realized the prize the had in Ella they started spending most of their free time together, going to the beach and sailing on Hanford’s dinghy and watching movies in the coolness of the local moviehouse. Three months later he proposed marriage on the condition that she give up the whoring life and she said it was the easiest deal she ever made. They’d since been living together in the small gardner’s cottage behind the main house. They planned to wed on Thanksgiving Day.

Laura said that was just the sweetest story. She shook a finger at Hanford Mobley across the table and said, “You best treat her right, you hear?” Hanford grinned and said, “Yes, mam, I aim to.”