Red Grass River

thing neither. Lord knows how many times we run into the palmettos on either side of that little-bitty trail getting back to the main road in the dark. We was bouncing all over hell and I about got throwed right out the damn car more’n once, I mean to tell you.”

It was early in the new year and their breath showed vaguely gray on the dark chill air. They were at the whiskey camp in the Hungryland Slough and about fifteen miles west of Juno Beach—John and Ed Ashley, Kid Lowe and Claude Calder, a rough and rangy bucktoothed youth, a longtime friend of the Ashleys and Old Joe Ashley’s main deliveryman to most clients north of Fort Pierce. On this night Bob and Frank Ashley were helping their father out at the Sand Cut camp on Lake Okeechobee.

John Ashley spat into the fire and laughed with the others at the memory of that wild night ride. “Bet when Ma let go with that shotgun,” he said, “then police in the bushes pissed their pants.”

“They say Sheriff George about had a fit when he heard about it,” Claude Calder said.

“He surely did,” Ed Ashley said. “Came out to the house next day and told Ma she could get in trouble for aidin and abettin a fugitive from the law. Ma just looked at him like he was simple and said she didnt know nothin about no abettin nor any such gamblin talk, she’d just been shooting at some old hooty owl been tryin to get at a new litter of pups under the front porch.”

“Them damn Bakers,” Claude said. “You all heard Sheriff George done made Bobby his chief deputy?”

“I know it,” Ed Ashley said. “That sumbuck Bobby’s gonna be the sheriff before you know it, just watch and see.” Even in the vague and shifting light of the fire, the cordlike scar across his mouth was visible and made him look about to laugh or about to cry, you couldnt be sure which. An Okeechobee catfisher had cut him with a filleting knife in a fight over a Hardieville whore named Della. Ed Ashley had then beaten the man senseless with a spitoon and had just snatched up the man’s dropped knife and was set to shove it into his heart when he was pried away by the bouncer and a sheriff’s deputy. He spent the night in jail and his father bailed him out the next day. He waited a couple of weeks until his wound was partially healed before he went back to Miami to see Della again but by then she had departed for places unknown. Another of the girls tried to console him by pointing out that he likely wouldnt have won her over anyway, not now, not with that awful scar, since Della always had been one to prize handsomeness. Ed Ashley had not spoken of her since, not even to Frank, but not a day passed that he did not think of her.

“Maybe Bobby’ll become sheriff before Sheriff George knows it,” Claude Calder said, and everybody laughed.

“I seen him up to Stuart just the other day,” Ed Ashley said as he worked open a fresh jar of whiskey. He took a tentative taste and worked his tongue around it and considered and then nodded his approval. “You know, I do believe daddy’s still gettin some better at his business, I truly do.”

“You seen who? Bobby?” John Ashley said. “What was he up to? Still running his mouth about what a sumbitch I am to of run off and what a good man he is for not shooting me?”

“Like usual, yeah,” Ed said. “Told me to tell you again, when you ready to meet him face-to-face just the two of you, you let him know.”

“Face-to-face, my ass,” John Ashley said. He spat. “You know as well as I do, he’ll say he’s gonna meet me just us two and then have a dozen damn deputies hid all around to jump me soon’s I show up. Man’s a born liar. If he said the ocean’s made of salt water I’d expect it to taste like sugar. I tell you, I’m of a mind to slip up to his house one a these nights and call him out, just us two, and see what happens.”

“I told him I’d take him on anytime,” Ed said, “but he gimme a shit-eatin grin and said it’s been between him and you. Before I could say another word he went on in the bank to add to his pile of money.”

“I bet it is a pile, too,” Claude Calder said. “Only I hear it’s Sheriff George raking in the money, not Bobby. They say Bobby just runs it to the bank for him. But I bet anything he gets a cut.”

“It’s always been talk Sheriff George takes money, but I never heard anybody but a known liar say Bobby does,” John Ashley said. “But he’ll for damn sure do whatever his daddy tells him, and if Daddy says pick up money from someplace or take money to the bank, thats what he’s gonna do.”

“I heard from Miss Lillian that Sheriff George takes a cut from every gambling joint and whorehouse in the county—nigger and white both,” Ed Ashley said. “She said he’d jacked up his cut to twenty percent and she cant hardly make a profit anymore unless she raises her own prices. Said she called him a thief and he laughed at her and said it aint thievin to steal from criminals.”

“He got some interestin notions of justice, Sheriff George,” John Ashley said. Nobody spoke for a moment and then he said, “They really keep their money in the Stuart bank? Maybe Bobby was just seeing to some kind of police business.”

“Hell, John,” Ed said, “he had a damn bag right there in his hand and if it wasn’t fulla money I’ll kiss your ass.”

“How you know it was money in it?”

“Cause I seen him take it to the teller and hand it over to him and stand there while the fella went off with it to someplace in back and in a minute the fella comes back and hands him a piece of paper and Bobby sticks it in his shirt, thats how come I know it. I was waitin for him to come out. I said, ‘Let’s you and me step around back in alley and you take off that badge and we’ll see whose ass is the blackest.’ He just give that smile some more and said to tell you he’s waitin on you, and off he went, the chickenshit son of a bitch.”

For a minute none of them said anything, each man drifting on his own thoughts. Then Kid Lowe said: “You know, somebody ought rob that bank and all them Bakers’ money in it.”

Ed Ashley grinned his wretched grin and glanced at John, who smiled and cut his gaze to the fire. Bob had told the other Ashley brothers about John’s Galveston bank job and John had then sworn them all to keep it secret from their father. Still, all of the brothers had a feeling their father somehow knew about it. “Hell, boy,” Ed said, turning back to the Kid, “what-all you know about robbin a damn bank?”

Kid Lowe turned to him with a glower, then looked around at the others, then behind him, then spat into the fire. “I guess it’s all right to tell you boys something.” He looked around again as if checking the surrounding shadows for signs of spies. “The thing is,” he said in lowered voice, “I’m a bank robber is what I am.” He smiled with shy pride. “Dont guess any you all’s gonna turn me in, are you?”

The others exchanged looks. Claude Calder chuckled. Ed Ashley snorted and said, “Shiiit! You never.”

“Hell I aint,” the Kid said. “It’s how come I’m here. I robbed four banks all told in Chicago and was doing all right, if I say so myself, till I robbed this one bank on State Street. There was a dumbshit guard just couldnt do like I told him to put his hands behind his head and so he got himself shot.” He paused to spit and take a sip of whiskey.

“You shot a bank guard?” Ed Ashley said. “You kill him?”

“Oh hell no,” the Kid said. “Wasnt aimin to. All I did was wound him in the gut a little bit. He didnt die till long after, about two weeks later. Caught the pneumonia in the hospital and died.”

“Well hell,” John Ashley said, “he caught the pneumonia because he was bad wounded, thats what happened.”

Kid Lowe flung his arms wide in exasperation. “That’s just exactly what the damn cops in Chicago told everybody including the newspapers.” The bitter memory gave his voice an edge. “Sorry sonofabitches. How do they know the fella didnt catch pneumonia for some other reason? How do you know he didnt? Maybe somebody with pneumonia sneezed on him. Maybe he wasnt warm enough in that damn hospital and he caught a cold and it got worser till it became pneumonia. That could of happened. They dont know thats not what happened. But noooo, they right away say he got pneumonia because he was wounded. And because I’m the one wounded him I’m the one to blame he’s dead. Makes me so goddamn mad I wish the sumbitch was alive so I could shoot him again.”

“So you down here hiding from the Chicago police?” Ed Ashley said.

Kid Lowe shrugged, spat, took another sip of whiskey, looked around at nothing in particular.

“How much did you get from these here bank robberies?” Claude Calder said. “You must got yourself a rich stash someplace, eh?”

“Dont I wish,” Kid Lowe said. “Most the jobs didnt get me even two thousand dollars. And the way I was living—you know, girls, the racehorses, nice clothes—well, the money went pretty damn quick, you bet.”

He took a drink of whiskey and looked sharply at Ed Ashley. “So dont be asking me what