Red Grass River

croker sack. Taylor was redfaced and whitehaired, big-bellied, breathing like a man at hard labor. John Ashley patted him on the shoulder and told him to take it easy, everything was going to be fine.

“Tell me somethin, A.R.,” John Ashley said, “is it true George and Bobby Baker keep their money in this bank?”

A. R. Wallace looked at him for a moment as though he didnt understand the question. Then said: “Well, they do keep an account here, but I believe their main bank is in West Palm Beach.”

John Ashley smiled and said, “Just so they got some here.”

The woman at the door was rapping harder now, her angry voice carrying through the doorglass: “… open this door, you…” The silhouette of a man in a suit and hat appeared beside her, the man trying to peek in through the slight gap between the roller shade and the frame of the door. Bob Ashley sidestepped over so as to block the man’s view with his back.

Now Wallace handed the sack to John Ashley who hefted it as though trying to determine the sum of its contents by its weight. “How much you figure?” he asked.

“It’s about seven thousand dollars you all got there,” Wallace said.

“Seven thousand!” Kid Lowe said. “I know it’s a lot more money than that in this place.”

“There isn’t any more,” Ellers the manager was able to say. “This is a small bank. We never have much cash on hand.” Kid Lowe put the muzzle of his .38 just under Ellers’ right eye and the man’s voice went high: “I swear to you it’s all there is!”

Kid Lowe said, “You banker sonofabitches dont do nothing but lie about money.”

“I swear…” Ellers said, his eyes shut tight but his head full of the terrible visions Kid Lowe’s pistol pressed into it.

“Leave him be,” John Ashley said. “He’s too scared to be lyin. I checked the vault myself. It’s no more money in there.”

“You lucky I aint in charge of this operation,” Kid Lowe said to Ellers and jabbed him hard in the forehead with the gun muzzle and raised a red spot there. “You be a dead man already for bein such a damn liar.”

John Ashley ordered all the people on the floor to lie down on their bellies with their faces in their hands. “You too, Mister Ellers, get on down there. Mister Taylor, sir. You, A.R., I know you got a motorcar. Where’s it at?”

“Around back.”

John Ashley nodded at Claude Calder who went out the rear door of the bank. Two minutes later Bob Ashley peering out the front window said, “Here’s Claude with the car.”

Another man had now arrived at the door and both men and the woman were trying to peek past Bob and into the bank lobby and the woman all the while tapping on the glass with the whalebone grip of her parasol.

“God damn that racket,” John Ashley said. “Get them sumbitches in here, Bob.”

Bob Ashley unlocked the door and swung it open and said, “All right, then, come on in.” But the three now saw the others on the floor and their faces went slack and they stood fast. One of the men started to turn away and nearly walked into Claude Calder who had come out of the Ford touring car idling in the street and stood before him, grinning wide and with a hand on the pistol butt jutting above his waistband. A pair of boys went running past, dodging the two men as unerringly as bats. Their mother came stalking behind, calling, “Albert! Samuel! You two are just askin for it!”

Claude Calder nodded toward the door and the two men and the woman went into the bank. The woman was middle-aged but not unattractive and Bob puckered his lips at her. She blushed and jerked her gaze away from him and he laughed. John Ashley told them to lie down in the same manner as the others. He asked Bob how things looked outside.

“Aint nobody noticin nothin,” Bob Ashley said, looking out to the street. “I dont believe most people would take notice of a flyin elephant lessen it shit on their heads.”

“All right, then, let’s go,” John Ashley said. He tucked the sack of money under his arm like a tote of groceries. “Listen, you folk—there’s a fella with a rifle watching this door from the roof across the street. Anybody goes out that door before fifteen minutes gone by, you gone get a bullet in the brainpan and thats a promise. So you all wait, you hear? Fifteen minutes. And listen A.R., we’ll leave your car out by the Okeechobee Road, you hear?”

Wallace said he much appreciated it, his voice muffled for his face being in his hands.

They went out all together and Claude Calder got behind the wheel of the Ford and the Kid got in the front passenger seat with him. Bob and John Ashley got in the back and pulled the cartop up and Claude and the Kid fastened it in place on the windshield frame. Then Claude released the brake and pulled on the throttle lever as he stepped on the low-speed pedal and the car lunged into motion. They were all of them but the Kid grinning and Bob Ashley’s grin was the widest of them. “This how it felt in Texas, Johnny?” he wanted to know. “Good as this?”

John Ashley laughed. “About like this, yeah.”

Claude Calder eased up on the throttle and worked the clutch pedal and the planetary transmission shifted with a lurch and the car rattled down the street. Kid Lowe turned around in his seat and said, “I dont know what-all you think’s so damn funny. We didnt get but seven thousand dollars and I know there was more money in that bank—I know there was.”

“I’ll be go to hell,” Bob Ashley said, suffused with good cheer. “Aint this the same little fella told us he never made more’n two thousand dollars from any of his big-time Chicago bank holdups—and here we get seven thousand and he’s complaining it aint enough.”

“Two thousand I get by myself is two thousand all for me,” Kid Lowe said. “Seven thousand I get with six other fellas aint but…I dont know what it is, but it aint no two thousand.”

They were almost to the end of town now and Claude Calder said, “Oh hell.” All eyes in the car followed his gaze ahead to the left side of the street and saw parked there in front of Wilson’s Cafe a county sheriff’s car and a Stuart Police Dept. car and standing in the doorway of the cafe was Bob Baker. He was not in uniform and was saying something to someone inside and laughing and turning now and stepping out on the sidewalk and putting a toothpick to his mouth. As their car came abreast of him two uniformed sheriff’s deputies and two Stuart policemen came out behind him. Bob baker looked at their passing car and then at its occupants and his smile held for a moment longer and his eyes followed after them. They all looked back at him and Bob Baker’s smile vanished.

“Kick this thing in the ass, Claude,” John Ashley said.

And here came one of the bank customers on the run and behind him came Ellers as Claude’s fingers busied themselves with the spark and gas levers and his foot worked the control pedal to drop the car into low gear and wind the engine higher and then he worked the pedal again and the motor issued a deep fluffing note and the car lunged forward and accelerated steadily. Even over the increased clatter of the Model T they could faintly hear the bankers shouting holdup, holdup, holdup. Women pulled small children to their skirts and hurried indoors as men came hustling out of the cafe and the barbershop and the hardware store.

Bobby Baker ran out to the middle of the street and raised his revolver and the other cops were pulling their weapons and now came the popping of pistols and bullets thonked into the back of the car and two rounds whooked through the car top and made starholes as they smashed through the windshield. Bob Ashley leaned out the right side of the car and fired back at the cops and they scattered in search of cover—all but Bobby Baker who stood his ground and aimed and fired as if he were taking target practice. Kid Lowe leaned over the front seat and fired at Bobby Baker in the receding distance through the cartop’s open rear window and John Ashley was firing as well but the car was jouncing so much he could not have said where his bullets homed. Kid Lowe’s pistol was inches from his ear and its reports deafened him to all else in the world.

Claude Calder hunkered over the steering wheel as if peering into bad fog, one hand on the wheel and the other still at the spark and gas levers. The Model T was now moving at thirty-five miles per hour and still gaining speed even as it shuddered so hard John Ashley was certain it was about to shake itself to pieces. A bullet ripped through the back of the cartop and flicked away a portion of Claude Calder’s right ear lobe and fashioned another starburst in the glass before him.