Red Grass River

“That’s fine, lad,” Richardson said. “So are the boys who’ll be meeting you. Good to know we can all trust each other now, aint it?”

The sun was past its zenith as they made ready to slip their mooring and head out of port. The clouds in the east had now grown to massive black thunderheads and were coming in a rush.

“Looks a mean storm building,” Richardson said. “I was told it never rained here this time of year.”

“Nothin to fret,” John Ashley said. “West Palm’s but a hundred miles and just about dead-west across the stream, so we aint got to buck much and she’s runnin real soft today anyhow. I figure us to easy outrun them clouds. Hell, Leonard, like as not we’ll be unloaded at the West Palm bar before the first drops hit the deck.”

But as they quickly found out when they reached the deeper blue, the Gulf Stream was running stronger now, as though energized by the force of the encroaching storm. Ed had to hold the wheel hard to port to keep from drifting off course. And though he held her throttles open wide and the bow was reared high they were but a few miles past the stream’s midpoint when the storm overtook them.

All in the same abrupt moment the wind struck like a thing becrazed and the sky went black and the sea began to heave and plunge. The rain slung sidewise in dense flailing sheets. Waves burst over the deck in stinging drenching spray.

Now lightning flared in white jagged branches and thunder cracked and blasted as though the sky were breaking apart. The ocean seemed bent on detaching itself from the earth.

Again and again the waves carried the boat up and up as though to crush it against the sky—and then fell away beneath it to bring it skidding down the steep black walls of water to such depths as made the dark surrounding ocean seem to John Ashley the very maw of the world.

He clung with both arms to the port gunwale and swallowed seawater with every gasping breath and the boat pitched and swayed as though drunk on its own cargo. Each smash of water over the port side pulled his legs out from under him and had stripped him of his shoes—and then the vessel would abruptly reverse its yaw and slam him against the bulwark as the water rushed out the scuppers and he several times almost rolled over the side.

Through the wind’s howling he faintly heard laughter and wondered if he’d gone insane. He looked to his brothers in the blurring rain and saw Ed clutching to the wheel as though to a hard-dancing woman and Frank gripping the starboard gunwale and trying vainly to gain his footing and both of them laughing wildly into the teeth of the storm. Thunder persisted in its roll and boom across the darkness, lightning in its flickering blue casts which made his brothers’ movements awkward and unreal and made deathly hollows of their eyes and mouths.

Ed turned to him, his mutilated mouth moving as though in shouts, but John Ashley could not make out what he was saying and he shook he head. And now his belly spasmed and the swallowed seawater roiled by the boat’s undulant antics and in mixture with the lunchtime dolphin came surging up and out his gaped jaws and the wind smacked a good portion of the vomitus back in his face and some of it streaked over his cheekbone to fill his ear. Ed and Frank showed all their teeth in laughter. He was enraged that they though this was fun—and terrified he would any moment be swept into the rioting black sea.

The storm seemed to him to rage for hours but not twenty minutes passed before the wind fell to fitful gusts and the driving rain reduced to drizzle. The cloudmass broke and the sky lightened to gray and the sea slowly settled to a high gentle roll. Frank and Ed were exhilarated in their sodden dripping state. John Ashley worked his grip free of the gunwale and washed his face with the rainwater running from his hair. And reflected that his daddy was right—these two were the sailors in the family. He stood up carefully, unsteady on his feet.

“Goddamn man—this smugglin business is fun, aint it?” Ed said, standing easy at the wheel now and grinning his wide maimed grin. Frank sat on the cabin roof with his legs dangling and smiled at John.

John Ashley glared at them and they both started laughing hard and then he was laughing too.

“Whoooo-eee!” Ed said. “Aint no storm can get the best of us! Not the fucken Ashleys!”

Coughing for all his laughter, his hair yet shedding water in his face, Frank said, “Tell you true, it was a minute or two there when I thought we might were goin down certain sure.”

“You thought?” Ed said. He cackled. “You see Johnny? He looked like a decked snapper the way his mouth was goin gulp-gulp-gulp. You see him?”

“I’ll tell you all what,” John Ashley said. “I was wishing I was a fucken fish. I was wishin for goddamn gills what I was wishin!”

Their laughter was hard and lasting and they all three clutched their stomachs against the aching cramping pleasure of it.

The storm had carried them several miles north of their intended latitude and the Gulf Stream was running even stronger now and they had to buck the brunt of it as they mended their course to southwestward. They made the bar off West Palm barely an hour before sundown. The sky was clear and the easterly breeze at their backs soft and cool. And now they saw that they were being watched by four men standing beside a pair of large motor launches beached in the shadow of a long ridge of dunes showing patches of sea oats and backed by the reddening western sky. John Ashley passed his binoculars over the rest of the long strip of beach. To the horizons north and south in stood deserted.

“Can see anything coming at us by water from north or south for a long way before they get to us,” Ed said. “No wonder these boys wanted us here before nightfall. I’d say they knew what they doin when they picked this spot for the transfer.”

They hove to and dropped anchor a hundred yards offshore to avoid the tumult of the breakers and make easier work of the unloading. The men on shore shoved off in the long launches and the rapping of their engines came to the Ashley brothers as they checked their .45’s to ensure full magazines and chambered rounds. John and Ed stood their .44 Marlin rifles close to hand against the cabin bulkhead. Frank set his brother Bob’s old Winchester atop the cabin with the stock jutting out for easy grasp.

The men in the launches had taken precautions of their own—each carried a revolved in his waistband. The launches made fast against the Della’s port side and a husky blond man came aboard and introduced himself as Morris. His quick eyes inventoried each Ashley in turn and he saw their . 45’s and the rifles at the ready and he stared for a moment at John Ashley’s bare feet. No one made to shake hands Morris said he wanted to have a look at the cargo and John Ashley took him belowdecks. When Morris was satisfied, he handed John Ashley a small cloth bag containing the rest of their money and called for two of the other launchmen to come aboard and they set to relaying the cases from the hold to topside to the gangway and then down to the man in the forward launch. When the Ashleys made to lend a hand, Morris did not object.

The launches had been smartly adapted for their present purpose. Each could carry forty cases and its gunwales yet stand a half-foot above the waterline, and even with a full load they could skim the water as smoothly as an eel. As soon as the first one was loaded it headed for shore and the other launch moved up in its stead under the gangway and began taking on cases from the relay man. In the gathering twilight, the Ashleys now saw other men hastening from behind the dunes and splashing into the surf to meet the first launch. They pulled it up on the beach the began relieving it of its cargo, working like a team of ants to bear the whiskey into the shadows.

Though the work went swiftly, nightfall was almost on them when the last launchload was ready for shore. “Luck to you,” John Ashley called out as the Morris fellow dropped down into the launch and nodded at the helmsman and the launch swung about to port as its prop churned up a forth and the bow rose slightly as the boat made away. If Morris heard John Ashley’s last remark he gave no notice of it.

And now Ed had the Della underway too and heading for the St. Lucie Inlet and home to a father they knew would be pleased to learn they had made $2,500 on a trip they had all supposed to be nothing more than a shakedown run.

“You know,” Frank Ashley said to his brothers above the rumble of the Della’s engines, “I believe Bill’s right and this smugglin business gonna work out just fine.”

“I kindly agree,” Ed said. He showed his twisted smile. “But I aint too sure about Johnny here. You reckon that little breeze and drizzle we went through back there mighta sopped some a his enthusiasm for bein out of the salt?” He winked at Frank and both brothers grinned at John Ashley.

“I reckon it mighta,” Frank said. “I mean, a fella pukes in his own face, he cant be havin a real good time.”