Red Grass River

and fit herself onto him and brought his hands up to her breasts as she slowly rolled her hips. he groaned with pleasure.

“I guess,” she said, “I won me a bet.”

“Lord girl,” he gasped, “I believe you sure enough got what they call the sight.”

She giggled and worked herself hard against him. They laughed and made love deep into the night.

And in the morning he went to jail.

The jailhouse was a single-story stone-and-concrete structure surrounded by a fence of chickenwire eight feet high and set thirty yards from the building all the way around. Sheriff George Baker met them at the gate. He and Gordon Blue exchanged a few official words and each man signed a paper and then the sheriff smiled at John Ashley and said, “How do, John. Been a while. You lookin fit.”

“What say, Sheriff George,” John Ashley said. He reached into the motorcar and withdrew the freshly cleaned white suit he would wear in court. Then he stood before his father and they looked at each other for a moment and then Old Joe turned to Sheriff George and said, “You wont to takin him to court in handcuffs you said. It’s the deal.”

“Not as long as he gives me his word he wont try and escape,” Sheriff George said.

“You got it, sir,” John Ashley said.

Sheriff George nodded and said, “Well then, let’s get inside.”

John Ashley looked at his father and Old Joe said, “Go on now. You’ll be out quick enough and we’ll be done with this horseshit.” John Ashley nodded and then followed the sheriff up the walk to the jail. Sheriff George rapped on the heavy front door with its iron knocker and there came the sound of metal sliding on metal and a loud clack and the door swung open.

The entered into an administration room containing a few scattered desks and filing cabinets. There were two uniformed policemen in the room. One was a clerk working at a typewriter, and the other, sitting in a swivel chair with his booted feet crossed on the desk, was Bobby Baker. He was smoking a cigar and grinning at John Ashley.

“That’s Norman,” Sheriff George said, indicating the clerk. “Hang your suit on that wallhook yonder and empty your pockets on Norman’s desk. We’ll give you the suit in the morning for court.” He saw John Ashley staring at Bob Baker and said, “Bobby’s jailer now.”

“Hello, John,” Bob Baker said. “How you keepin?”

“Just fine, Bobby. How about youself?”

“Well hell, never better,” Bob Baker said.

He saw that Bob Baker’s brown boots were new and low-cut in the style that civil engineers favored and each was embossed with a white star on the instep. A portion of wooden ankle was visible under the real ankle crossed over it. He seemed to have grown larger since John Ashley had last seen him—not fatter but thicker through the chest and arms. His face looked harder, his eyes. His hair was thick as ever. He held the cigar in his right hand and the knuckles were freshly skinned. He laughed at John Ashley’s scrutiny of him. “By the way, John,” he said through a blue billow of smoke, “you owe me a gun.”

“Any man loses his gun to another aint never owed it back,” John Ashley said.

Bob Baker’s smile held but his face assumed a rosy tint. Norman the clerk looked over and saw their eyes and quickly looked away. Sheriff George glanced at them with his brows raised. “Do like I said, John.”

John Ashley hung up his suit and then emptied his pockets on the desktop—some coins, seven dollars in bills, a sack of tobacco and cigarette papers, a box of matches, and a pocket knife. Norman pushed the tobacco and papers and matches back to John Ashley and carefully counted the money and entered the total amount on a property slip and made notation too of the pocket knife. Then he took a large brown envelope from a desk drawer and wrote John Ashley’s name on it in tall letters with a fountain pen and put the money and the knife in it and sealed it and put it back in the drawer.

Sheriff George headed for a door on the other side of the room and said, “Come along here, Johnny.” John Ashley followed and Bob Baker got up from the desk and came behind.

The door opened to the jail’s cell block in the center of which was a single steel-barred cell that looked exactly like a cage about the size and shape of a railroad car. It was illuminated from above by three dangling electric light bulbs and contained a row of double-tiered bunk beds and a two-hole board over low rough-hewn cabinets in which the shitcans were set. In addition there were a half-dozen smaller cells built into the rear stone wall, the door to each one open wide and showing them to be empty. The room smelled of waste and disinfectant and was ventilated only by whatever fitful breezes might come through the small barred windows set high in the walls. At the moment only two other prisoners were in the main cell. The sheriff unlocked the door and John Ashley entered the cage and the sheriff locked the door behind him.

“Breakfast six o’clock, Johnny,” she sheriff said as he started for the door. He paused and looked back at Bob Baker, who was lingering near the cage.

“I’ll be along, Daddy,” Bob Baker said.

“Dont devil the boy, son,” Sheriff George said, and then went out in the front room.

John Ashley stood near the bars with his hands in his pockets and watched Bobby Baker roll a cigarette and light it. One of the other prisoners was standing against the far wall of bars, smoking and gazing at his hand closed around a bar and paying them no attention. The other inmate lay in an upper bunk with an arm over his eyes.

Now Bobby leaned on one elbow against the cell bars and smiled at John Ashley. “Tell me somethin, Johnny: you ever see a man hung?” he asked.

“Yeah I have,” John Ashley said. “Just after, anyway.”

“A nigger, right?”

“Hard to say. By the time I saw him he’d been burned up so bad he didnt look like much of anything but a big chunk of charcoal.”

“That’s a nigger lynchin sure,” Bob Baker said. “I mean you ever seen a white man hung?”

“Guess not.”

Bob Baker smiled and took a drag on his cigarette. “I have,” he said. “Up in Saint Lucie County Jail, about a year ago. They hung a old boy for murder. Killed his partner in a moonshine business—cut his head off with a cane knife—and they gave him the rope. They built a gallows back of the jailhouse and before dawn they stood the fella up there and asked him did he have any last words and he just shook hid head. I’d been told he was a rough old boy but up on that gallows he didnt seem all that tough. Looked too scared to open his mouth—like he might of started cryin if he did. They put hood over his head and you could see the cloth suckin in and out against his mouth he was breathin so hard. His neck was sposed to break when they dropped him through the door but it didnt. They say thats what happens more than half the time, the neck dont break like it ought, and what happens then is the fella chokes to death. You shoulda seen the way he was jerkin and kickin ever which way, just like a damn fish on a hook. Makin sounds all wet and choky like water going down a mostly clogged drain. I bet he was gaggin and kicking for five minutes before he finally give up the ghost. And the smell! Lord Jesus! He couldnt help but shit his pants—I’m told they all do. But that aint the half of it, listen to this: the sumbuck got a hard on! I aint lyin. He got this boner in his pants you could see from all the way cross the room. They say some of em even shoot off and you can see the stain on their pants. Aint that a hoot? I mean to tell you, Johnny, hanging is just about the most godawful humiliatin way in the world for a man to die.”

Bob Baker leaned closer against the bars and said softly: “When they find you guilty, John, that’s what’s gonna happen to you.” He smiled genially, his aspect all bonhomie, then took a deep pull on his cigarette and dropped the butt on the floor and ground it under his heel. “Thought you might wanna have somethin to think about between now and then,” he said through an exhalation of smoke.

“Well dont get too way ahead of youself, Bobby,” John Ashley said, forcing a grin. “I aint hung yet. But I tell you what—even if they did hang me, leastways I’d still be able to stand up there on my own two legs, which is more than I can say for some.”

Bob Baker’s smile twitched and he blinked quickly several times. He stepped back from the bars—and then suddenly laughed like he’d been told a good joke. He put a fist to the side of his neck and then jerked the first straight up as though yanking on a noose and he crooked his head and struck out his tongue and crossed his eyes. He was still laughing as he went out the door.

The morning dawned hot and humid. To either side of the rising sun low heavy clouds looked streaked with fire. The courtroom filled early and the small room was murmurous with excitement as spectators fanned