Red Grass River

first thing Old Joe had said on seeing him after his absence of nearly two years was, “Boy, I dont what-all they think of hair like that on a man in Texas, but round here they wont know whether to kick your ass or kiss you. Ma! Get me the shears and razor!”

John Ashley had also told Bob earlier about the Galveston bank robbery. His brother had whooped and clapped him on the shoulder and called him a laying sack. John then took him into his room at the rear of the house and pulled a suitcase from under the bed and opened it and showed his brother the more than one thousand dollars that yet remained of the take. Bob’s big-eyed flabbergast struck him as comic and he laughed and said, “Lying sack, hey?”

Bob asked what in purple hell had possessed him to rob a damn bank, and John tried to explain about the mixed-up feeling he’d had when he was fishing on the beach one day and thought about Bobby Baker holding a lifetime grudge and maybe even wanting him dead. Tried to explain his frustration over not knowing what to do about it but that he felt he had to do something, something daring, even though he couldn’t say why. “Hell, I dont know,” John Ashley said. “I dont know why I did it. All I know is I felt pretty damn good after.”

“You just up and decided that robbin a bank was a way to make yourself feel better, hey?” Bob said, grinning. “Shitfire, I guess it’s lots of fellas’d feel better about things if they got away with robbin a bank.”

John Ashley said, “Well…yeah.” He was not sure he could ever explain the thing clearly even to himself. And so he changed the subject: “Let me tell you about somethin that damn sure makes any man feel a whole lot better, bubba. I mean, it’s some nice little business Aunt July’s got there….”

And now Bob still had not heard enough about their aunt’s establishment in Texas and his brother’s time in it. “Was you tellin me true?” he said in low voice, glancing down the table to ensure no ear other than young Hanford Mobley’s was listening in. “About havin run of the place? You really and truly could have any them girls you wanted?”

“Any damn time they wasnt workin on the house clock,” John Ashley said.

“You lyin sack,” Bob Ashley said, grinning hugely.

“I had me my first piece last month,” young Hanford Mobley said. “Wasnt nothin so dang special.”

His uncles turned to him and said together, “You lyin sack!” and the boy reddened with his lie and he shrugged and could not restrain his grin.

At the other end of the table Old Joe as holding forth about the stupidities of the legal system. He had over the past two years grown steadily angrier that his son was being forced to live apart from his family for no reason but having killed some Indian. “The law,” Old Joe said, “is a goddamned horse’s ass.”

“Hear, hear,” said Gordon Blue, raising his glass in a toast. The dapper goateed lawyer was the only person present wearing a suit and tie. The day before, he and Old Joe had explained to John Ashley how they intended to get him out from under the law’s deep shadow.

“If your daddy here hadnt kept it from me for so long that he knew where you were and how much he wanted to have you back home,” Gordon Blue had said, “we wouldve had you back long before now.” He gave Old Joe a sidewise look. “But nooo. Joe couldnt bring himself to trust anyone, not even Old Gordy, no matter that I’ve helped him a time or two in worse trouble than this. Couldnt tell me about it till a few weeks ago, could you Joseph?”

Old Joe’s smile was small. “I dont know why the whole thing wasnt plain to me as the nose on my face till I talked to Gordy about it,” he said to John Ashley. “The simple fact is, they got to give you a jury trial—and what jury’s gonna convict you in Palm Beach County? Besides, the state’s havin trouble findin their main witness, aint they? The only ones to testify against you will be Sheriff George and them who heard the breed accuse you. But aint nobody seen that breed since you been gone—or goin to, neither.”

Bob Ashley chuckled and said, “I dont guess he’s gonna do any testifyin, no sir.” On the drive home from Tampa, he had proudly recounted to John Ashley how he’d tracked down Jimmy Gopher in the Everglades and put a round through his head at nearly two hundred yards. John Ashley had looked at him partly in surprise that he could speak so easily of having killed a man and partly in admiration of the same thing—and of his utter confidence in having done the right thing. Bob said, “Hell man, he’d of spoke against you in court. It wasnt nothin else to do. What the hell, man, he anyway had it comin.”

“The point is,” Old Joe now said, “most ever man in the county’s on our side in this thing and thats a fact. Aint none at em gonna say you guilty if they get on the jury.”

John Ashley looked at his brothers gathered by the door and listening and all of them grinning except Bill the elder who never was one to smile except sometimes when playing his banjo. He turned to his father and said, “Not everybody in the county’s our friend, Daddy. What if some of them get on the jury?”

“I wouldn’t be too concerned about that,” Gordon Blue said. “There’s a story been going around for months that this Gopher fellow who accused you to the police was set upon in the Everglades by persons unknown who were sympathetic to your cause. Supposedly he was dismembered with an ax and his remains fed to the alligators.” Gordon Blue made a face of distaste and gave a little theatrical shiver and then smiled widely. “Although the story isnt true, it is true that this person seems to have fallen off the earth, and I suspect that no potential juror will be able to completely ignore the possible implications of the tale.”

The Ashley men all looked at one another and grinned. Gordon Blue smiled and poured a touch of bourbon from his gilded flash into his cup and then took a small sip. He cleared his throat and said to John Ashley: “It’s all arranged. Tomorrow your father and I deliver you to Sheriff George Baker at the county jail in West Palm. The trial opens on Tuesday, so you’ll be there only one day before is starts and then for only as long as it lasts, which I dont believe will be very long. Sheriff George has also agreed that you wont be handcuffed on your promise not to attempt escape.”

He paused to light a cigarette, one of the tailormade Chesterfields he bought by the case in Chicago. He exhaled a blue plume of smoke and smiled at John Ashley. “In a week, two at the most, you’ll be free and clear.”

And so Old Joe had laid out that Sunday’s repast at Twin Oaks for all local friends of the family, all of whom were in John Ashley’s jury pool. And on that Sunday afternoon John Ashley ate and drank and danced and swapped stories with his brothers. And after sundown he and Bob drove to West Palm Beach and went to Miss Lillian’s.

The madam was surprised to tears to see him again and greeted him like the Prodigal returned. Then he went upstairs and tiptoed to Loretta May’s room and looked in the open door and saw the tub of steaming water before he saw her sitting in a yellow shimmy at the window and facing out into the darkness. Her blonde hair had grown to below her shoulder blades but the breeze through the window carried to him her familiar smell of peaches. He thought her more beautiful than ever and was content to stand there in silence and look upon her.

Without turning she said, “About time you got here, you bad ole gator-skinner you.”

He grinned and felt himself flush, as though she’d caught him at something sneaky. “How’d you know I was standin here? How’d you know it was me?”

She laughed like a small bell and stood and turned smiling and opened her arms to him.

After the bath and the powdering and after they’d made love twice they lay entwined and smoked cigarettes and spoke very little. When they’d first met he’d asked her what pleasure she got out of smoking since she couldn’t see the smoke and she’d said, “I cant?”—a response that so confused him he let the question go. Now he was surprised that she did not ask where he’d been these past two years. And yet, somehow, he felt she knew.

“I done somethin while I was away,” he whispered, feeling strangely as if he were asking a question of her as much as telling her something. “Somethin I hadnt ever done before.”

She nuzzled his neck and murmured, “I know. Made the world spin a little faster for a while, huh? Made everything a little more excitin.”

He drew back so he could look into her face in the weak reflected light of the torches in the courtyard below the window. Her eyes were shut. “You know what I done?” he said. “You dont know what I done.”

She opened her eyes and turned her face toward him. “Yes I do—and I know more than that, boy. I even know what you’re gonna do. Bet you a dollar I know what you gonna do.”

“Cant nobody shine the future. That ain’t but swamp nigger hoo-doo.”

She felt for his face and put her fingers to his lips and said, “You’re gonna have a real good time with a blind girl real soon is what you’re gonna do. Now, you think I’m wrong?” He grinned under her fingers and then she grinned too.

She sat up and straddled his thighs and her hands stroked him and in an instant he was ready. She moved up