Red Grass River

every bit as much as it had his brother Bob. He couldnt say what it was exactly but it was always there. Just the same—and as much as he hated to admit it—he could not deny that Bill was making sense.

“Yeah,” he said, “he’s got a argument.”

Some of the bank loot had gone to the cops on Old Joe’s payroll, some to the women of the family to cache in the house and use as they saw fit for coal oil, housewares, for clothes and pretties for themselves. But the bulk of the take from the robberies had gone to Frank and Ed that they might buy the forty-foot trawler Joe had long had his eye on. The money had also gone toward the best materials and for the hire of the best boatworkers and mechanics in the Indian River region to help them refit the vessel and make of it a proper rumboat.

Frank and Ed had narrowed the trawler’s prow slightly to cut down on water resistance and add speed. They sanded and planed and caulked and painted, replaced every cleat and fitting. They removed some of the bulkheads belowdecks for greater cargo capacity and to allow for easier loading. They installed additional fuel tanks and beefed up the lower decking from bow to stern. They reworked a brace of new engines, refitting them with stronger main bearings and higher-lift cams and more powerful magnetos, then mounted and turned the powerplants as precisely as bank clocks. They installed heavy-duty drives and screws. When Ed said the boat’s name was Della, Frank and John smiled at each other and raised no objections.

On a warm January morning they took the boat on her maiden run. They put her in the river behind the boatyard and chugged down to the Stuart harbor and into the blaze of a mountainous orange sunrise. They ran through the trickily narrow St. Lucie inlet and the bore east-southeast for Grand Bahama Island some seventy-five miles distant as the crow flies. They would in fact have to cover about one hundred miles because of the Gulf Stream, the great river of northbound current flanking the length of Florida’s east coast. As the land fell from view behind them the turquoise water gradually darkened to a blue the same shade as the sky’s and when they were about seven miles offshore the seabottom abruptly plunged and the water went to dark royal blue and they knew they’d arrived at the fast depths of the Stream. It was usually running strong by this time of year but it flowed gently on this windless day as unseasonably warm as early summer. To maintain his true course against the Stream’s northward push Ed had to hold the wheel only slightly more to southward than his desired heading of east-southeast.

They were all three shirtless and bareheaded and wore rolled bandana headbands to keep hair and sweat our of their eyes. John stood at the stern and trolled with rod and reel and mullet chunks for bait and brought up three flashing blue-yellow bull dolphin in quick succession. He filleted them and roasted the meat on a makeshift charcoal grill set on the deck and fashioned of a wire screen over the shallow sawn-off end of a metal barrel and they ate the fish with their fingers. A pod of dozens of porpoises appeared off both sides of the boat and like sailors everywhere the brothers were glad to be accompanied by these creatures of good luck. The porpoises leaped and ran with them for miles before suddenly veering away and out of sight as though to some urgent summoning in some other region of the sea.

The Gulf Stream’s breadth varied from one locale to another and sometimes from day to day within the same latitude. At some points it might be fifty miles wide one day and constrict to thirty the next. By the increasing pressure against the wheel under his hands a seasoned skipper could sense when he’d reached the strongest vein of current and thereby know when he was halfway across the stream. When Ed reckoned they were at the current’s midpoint he opened up the throttles and the engines roared and the bow rose smoothly as the boat surged forward and the wake behind them fanned white and thick.

“Whooooo!” Frank hollered, all of them with their faces windward and their hair slicked back by their swift passage.

“She’ll do!” Ed yelled, “She’ll do!” He stroked the wheel as he might the bare arm of a favored woman.

They held their course and speed for the next hour and a half before they cleared the eastern edge of the stream and found themselves less than four miles from their destination of West End at the tip of the island. Ed cut back on the engines and his brothers clapped him on the shoulders for his expert navigation and piloting and he showed his about-to-laugh-or-cry smile.

“Daddy’ll be proud to know she’s a worthy boat,” John Ashley said. “And even he dont say it, he’ll be just as proud to hear how good you can cross the Blue River.”

The sun was hot and bright and the eastern horizon now marked by distant cumulus clouds rising like dense white smoke off great distant fires. The waters about the island were glasstop smooth and shimmered brightly green. As the Della closed on the mouth of the harbor Ed cut the engines down to just above idling speed and they eased into port. Dozens of boats were tied up at the docks and dozens more lay at anchor in the bay and all of them taking on liquor for the mainland. The imminence of the Volstead Act had every drinking business in South Florida dealing frantically for factory stock to hoard against the coming dearth. Every day the West End harbor saw more rumboats than the day before. Within weeks and for years to come the harbor would be jammed around the clock.

They had intended to tie up just long enough to go into the baithouse and drink a cold beer before heading back home to report to their father on the boat’s performance. But even as Ed carefully steered his way through the busy harbor and made for the dock, there came a small launch toward them and a corpulent whitebearded man in shirtsleeves and white skimmer stood at the bow and hallooed them. “Say, you boys!” he called out. “Are ye negotiable for carrying a load across?”

The brothers looked at each other, all of them grinning. “Load of what?” John Ashley called to the man. “And to where?”

The man scowled and spat and said, “Of what’d ye think, bucko—sassafras tea? It’s a hundred and fifty cases of prime Irish whiskey and another hundred of the queen’s best gin I need to have carried across to West Palm Beach—and I’m needing it carried today. I had a deal with a fella but the bloody fool got drunk last night and opened his hull on a reef this morning. I’ll pay ye seven dollars a case. Are you my men or not?”

John Ashley looked from Ed to Frank. “What you boys say?”

“Gordy said ten’s the usual rate,” Ed said softly.

“Wouldnt Daddy be tickled if we run a load our very first time?” Frank Ashley said.

“Be tickled by the money we hand over for it is what he’d be tickled by,” Ed said.

John Ashley called to the man: “Ten dollars and it’s a deal!”

“Ten?” The man looked stricken. “Ten’s what I pay experienced hands. You boys and yer craft there look like ye might be equal to the job, but ye aint never carried booze, have ye? I’ve an eye for it and I can tell. Prove yourselves to me this time and next time we’ll talk ten.”

“We dont carried plenty a loads,” John Ashley said. “But even if we hadn’t—if we hadnt, mind you—we’d still be takin the same chance as anybody who has and we ought be paid the same.”

The man spat and looked glumly all about at the other boats taking on their cargo. “Nine dollars,” he said. “That’s more than fair now, you got to admit.”

“Ten,” John Ashley said. His brothers chuckled.

“Goddamn it,” the man muttered. He checked his pocketwatch and swore again. “All right, ye cockers, ten it is—but it’s got to go out right now, do you hear me? There’s people’ll be waiting for this shipment on the West Palm bar and they want it before dark.”

“You got a deal, mister,” John Ashley said.

An hour later the last of the 250 cases was taken aboard at the docks and lashed down in the hold and the Della’s gunwales still rode well above the waterline. The boat could have taken 400 cases if the man but had them. His name was Leonard Richardson and he said he’d have at least 350 cases for them next time and would try for more. He gave them $1,250 and said they would get the rest from the people waiting for the shipment.

“They aint gonna try and crawfish on us, are they, Leonard?” John Ashley said. World’s just fulla dishonesty, now aint it?”

Richardson snorted. “If anybody’s got cause to be leery it’s me. I dont know you boys from Adam’s wild-oat sons and can only hope ye aint such fools as to try to make off with me booze. Whatever ye sold it for would be the last money ye made in the trade out of West End, thats certain sure.” His arm swept the harbor and he said, “These fellas’ll steal from anybody but each other, and you know why? Because it’s bad business to cheat them ye want to keep doin business with. You’d be killing your own goose, you see? Better we stay straight with each other and we can make plenty for years to come.”

“We’re good for our word, Leonard,” John Ashley said.