Red Grass River (45 page)

John Ashley hesitated. Then said: “No. If he aint there his wife’ll tell him about the strange car that come up to the house today. I dont want him on his guard. Besides, when I do him we’re gonna have to haul ass. Best we go see Ma and the girls now, while everything’s nice and quiet. We’ll see does Clarence want in on it and we’ll plan the thing out and see about when Bobby’s gonna be home.”

“What if he’s home tonight?” Hanford said.

“Then tonight’s it,” John Ashley said.

Hanford Mobley thumped his fist on the steering wheel and grinned.

So they drove on. And five miles away Bob Baker—who’d been up late the night before investigating an abandoned rum truck his deputies had discovered by the side of the highway with half its load missing and blood on the cab seat—napped soundly in his front porch hammock and without dreams and with no firearm to hand while his wife and daughters tended the flower garden in the backyard.

Ma Ashley had rarely been demonstrative in her affections but she wept happily to see her son John whom she thought she might never behold again and she hugged him hard to her breast. His sisters held to him one on either arm and petted him and laughed delightedly at every wisecrack he made. Clarence Middleton came up and clapped him on the shoulder and said, “I guess I know why you come back.”

Ma and the girls got busy preparing dinner while the men sat out on the little front porch and formed a plan. They had earlier stopped at a filling station near the Olympia depot and John Ashley used the telephone there to call the sheriff’s office in Stuart and ask for deputy Abner Franks, long a friend and a valued informant to the family. He told Abner what he wanted to know and Abner said to call back in twenty minutes. They bought bottles of beer from the filling station’s backroom and sipped them slowly and remarked on the prettiness of the day. When John Ashley called Abner again the deputy was craftily circumspect in his end of the conversation, surrounded as he was by
other cops in the office, but in his careful way he was able to tell John Ashley that, yes, it seemed the sheriff would be at home this evening and, no, there was no likelihood that any other policemen would be there. John thanked him for the information and told him to forget this conversation had taken place. Abner Franks said, “What conversation?” and rang off.

Now John Ashley told Clarence Middleton what he had in mind and Clarence said he was in. “Your daddy was never nothin but good to me and I’ll be proud to help you see that Baker sumbitch dead for killin him. truth to tell, Johnny, I was sore disappointed the last time I saw you and you were off to Texas without settlin accounts with that damn sheriff.”

“I was sore disappointed too, Clarence,” John Ashley said. “I just didnt know it yet.”

But Clarence declined John’s invitation to go back to Texas with him. He’d recently spoken to his brother Jack by telephone, their first exchange in years, and Jack’s offer of a partnership in the nightclub still held if Clarence gave up his life of crime. “I believe I’ll take him up on it,” Clarence said. “I’ll go with you boys on this one out of respect for Old Joe, and then I’m out of it.”

Their plan was simple. They’d wait until late that night and then drive out to Bob Baker’s house and park the car a ways from the house and John Ashley would sneak up and slip inside and kill him. Ben and Ray would stay with the car and keep an eye out for anyone coming down the road. Clarence would keep watch outside the house. Hanford would go in with John to guard his back. As soon as Bob Baker was dead they’d set the place afire and get out of there before the flames lit up the night and drew notice.

“What about his family?” Clarence wanted to know.

“We’ll put em outside and leave em to watch the place burn down like Ma and the girls had to watch Twin Oaks burn,” John Ashley said. Besides, Bobby’s family would be a help to them in their getaway. “We’ll drop a coupla loud hints about goin to Key west,” John said. “The cops’ll be two weeks findin out we aint there. By then we’ll be long gone and forever.”

They would take a rest in Vero, at Wayne Lillis’s piling house at the marina where he kept his charter boat. Then they would push on to Jacksonville and take Clarence to his brother’s club. John and Hanford and Ray would visit with Daisy and Butch for the night and the next day head for Pensacola and a steamer to Texas.

“And then what?” Hanford Mobley said.

“And then we live happily ever after,” John Ashley said with a grin. “What else?”

“Sounds pretty fucken fine to me,” Ray Lynn said.

They told the plan to Ma Ashley over dinner and she got wet-eyed with gratitude that she would not go to her grave with her husband unavenged.

After dinner there was naught to do but pass the time until dark. Around midafternoon Ray put down for a nap on the front porch. Hanford and Clarence stretched out under one of the big oaks shading the house. Ben hiked down to Yellow Creek with a cane pole and a can of nightcrawlers. John Ashley watered and fed the milkcow in the makeshift stable Bill had put up and then he wrung the necks on three chickens for his mother to fry for supper.

Ma sent Scout and Jaybird to the creek to check the trotline and bring back any fish or cooters they found on it. She told them to pull a pailful of sweet potatoes from the garden on their way back. When John Ashley came into the kitchen minutes later with the three plucked hens she said his rattlebrained sisters had forgotten to take a bucket for the sweet potatoes and asked him to take one to them.

He found Jaybird on the path coming back from the creek. She was carrying a string of three catfish in one hand and held a headless snapping turtle by the tail in the other. She was looking back over her shoulder as she came and did not see him until he was almost to her and then she gave a startled gasp and stopped short.

“You best watch where you goin, girl,” John Ashley said, “before you step on somethin you wish you hadnt. Give me them and take this.” He took the fish and turtle from her and handed her the pail. “How’d you expect to bring back any sweet taters with no bucket?”

Only now did he notice her nervousness. She glanced back down the path again and then looked at him and everything in her manner bespoke unease. He looked along the narrow sun-dappled path flanked by moss-hung oaks and pine and dense palmetto shrubs. “What is it, girl?” he said.

Her eyes on him were large and fearful. He looked down the empty path again. “Where’s Scout?”

She shook her had and shrugged and glanced down the path and then said, “She’ll be along.”

John Ashley put the fish and turtle into the pail she held and started down the path and Jay came after him, saying with low-voice vehemence, “Leave her be, Johnny! She said she’d be along and to
leave her be!” He turned and pointed at her and said, “Get on up to the house, Jay. And dont forget the sweet potatoes. Go on now.”

Jaybird watched him go off and then turned and hurried for the house.

He went along the path without footfall nor rustle of brush, halting every few yards to listen intently. As he neared the creek he heard them in the woods to his right. Half-smothered laughter. He eased through the palmettos and wove through the tightly clustered pines toward where the trees opened up in a clearing beside the creek. He advanced in a crouch to a dense growth of bushes at the edge of the clearing and peered through the shrubbery and saw them sitting together on a fallen pine.

She sat with her knees drawn up and he was astraddle the trunk and had one hand around her waist and one at her breast and was kissing her cheek and neck and whispering in her ear. She was smiling and blushing furiously and she had hold of his hand at her breath but John Ashley could see that she was not trying to push it away. Now Ben removed his hand to fumble at the fly of his trousers and then took her hand and put it to himself and her eyes went huge and she looked sidelong at the thing in her grip as though she were afraid to look at it directly and yet she permitted him to move her hand on him in a stroking motion and thats when John Ashley came charging out of the bushes.

Scout shrieked and leaped away from Ben and yelled, “
No
, Johnny!” Ben was up and shoving his penis back in his pants and saying something but John Ashley wasnt listening. his punch caught Ben on the nose and broke it and sent him tripping backward over the log. As he scrambled to hands and knees Ben yelled “She didnt mind, man!” and John Ashley kicked him in the ribs with enough force to lift him partway off the ground. Ben fell over on his back and could not catch his breath and John Ashley stepped up to him and brought the heel of his brogan down squarely in his face and felt bone and teeth give way.

Now Scout had him by an arm and was pulling at him and crying, “Stop!
Stop
it!” He grabbed her by the shoulders and pitched her aside and turned back to Ben who again was risen to all fours and pouring blood from his mouth and nose. He kicked him in the side of the head and blood slung as Ben fell over and tried to scrabble away and John Ashley followed after and kicked him in the face and Ben fell on his side and curled up tight with his arms around his head.

A pistolshot cracked and Scout’s wails cut short and John Ashley
whirled in a crouched to Ray Lynn at the edge of the clearing with a revolver cocked and pointed at him.

“No more, Johnny, you’ll kill him,” Ray Lynn said. Jaybird stood back of him and partly behind a pine with her hands to her mouth and tears running down her face.

John Ashley straightened up and stared at Ray Lynn. Ben Tracey lay on his side gasping wetly and unevenly. And now here came Clarence and Hanford with guns in their hands and they took in the scene at a glance and Hanford aimed his pistol at Ray Lynn’s head and said, “Get that off him, bubba.”

“Hannie,” John Ashley said. he gestured for him to put his gun down.

“Him first,” Hanford said.

Ray Lynn sighed softly and put his pistol in his pants pocket. Hanford stepped back from him and lowered his own gun but kept it in hand. Scout shouted, “Damn you, Johnny!” and ran off toward the house with Jaybird right behind her.

Ben Tracey coughed and choked and turned onto his stomach with a loud groan and braced himself on his elbows and spewed blood. Clarence squatted beside him to examine his injuries. One side of his face was already enpurpled and grossly swollen and he lacked most of his top row of teeth. Each time he coughed he grimaced and expelled a mist of blood a little brighter than that running off his broken mouth. “I’d say his ribs’re all busted up and could be one nicked a lung,” Clarence said. “I knew a fella one time got a rib though his lung and drowned in his own blood.”

John Ashley looked on Ben Tracey with disgust. “She’s but barely fourteen, you son of a bitch.” Ben Tracey did not even try to look up at him.

“Let me get him to the hospital, Johnny,” Ray Lynn said. “It’s no need t let him die.”

“That dick of yours gone get you killed,” John Ashley said, still glowering at Ben Tracey. “I
ever
see you again—anywhere—I’m like to rip it off and shove it down your throat. You understand?”

Ben Tracey nodded awkwardly.

“Get his worthless ass out of here,” John Ashley said, and started back for the house with Hanford right behind.

Clarence helped Ray to get Ben Tracey back to a car, Ben crying out at every misstep or sudden jolt. As they drove him to the hospital at Stuart, Ben kept fading in and out of consciousness. The woods along the highway were already in deep twilight. They parked at the
emergency entrance door and left the motor running while they supported him on either side and walked him inside and turned him over to a pair of nurses. Clarence told them he’d fallen off a scaffolding. One of the nurses said they’d have to fill out a form at the admitting desk and Clarence said, “Sure, just let me move my car from blocking the emergency entrance.” Then he and Ray Lynn went out and got in the car and drove away.

But they had not thought to relieve Ben Tracey of the pistol tucked snugly in his waistband under his loose shirt, and when the nurse undressing him found it she did not even touch it but hastened bigeyed to her supervisor who returned with her to the ward and took the pistol from unconscious Ben and then telephoned the police.

Sheriff Bob Baker arrived home a little after dark in a sporadically gusting wind and under a roiling sky of gathering stormclouds. His wife and daughters met him at the door and after receiving her kiss he bent to the girls so they could kiss him in their turn. The girls then repaired to their room and Annie went into the kitchen to fetch for him a glass of iced tea. He hung up his gunbelt in the den and took off his boots then went to the dining room where Annie had set the tea on the table. He laced the drink strongly with some of the dark Jamaican rum from the jug he kept in the sideboard, then went to the parlor and settled into his rocker with the latest issue of the
American Mercury
. He was glad to be indoors and out of the bad weather bunching up. He lit his pipe and added the roasted-nut smell of its smoke to the redolence of a pot roast nearly ready.

He was the picture of contentment, but in truth he had in recent months been visited by a chronic and awful dream—a vague vision of John Ashley looming over him with one eyesocket dark and empty, and sometimes at his side his brother Bob, naked and ghostly pale. He would come awake in a gasping lurch that would wake his wife as well. She would hold him close until he recovered his breath and his tremors eased. But she never asked to know the dream and he never offered to tell it.

Sometimes he’d sit at his desk in the den and take out the bullet John Ashley had sent him. He’d hold it in his palm and roll it under his finger and a great smothering rage would close upon him so tightly he could barely draw breath. But those moments—like the unsettling dream—had of late become less frequent, and he was confident they soon would cease altogether. There had not been a single reliable sighting of John Ashley anywhere in Florida in more than three
months. According to some of Bob Baker’s informants, John Ashley had been badly wounded in the whiskey camp fight and his arm had since been amputated. He was gone to Georgia or Texas, maybe to California. And the rumor was he was sworn not to return.