“You damn mulletheads,” John Ashley said, and spat over the side. “All you can do better’n me is swallow down your own puke, and hell, a goddamn dog can do that. And you maybe can handle a damn boat better’n me. But on land where all normal people belong anyway I’m twice the man of either of you any damn day of the week.”

And then they were all three laughing hard once again and showing their teeth white in their sun-darked faces, punching playfully at each other, their jaws aching with their laughter, their eyes burning with the joy of being alive and in their own company, these brothers Ashley.

FOURTEEN

April 1920

ONE WARM FORENOON IN LATE APRIL JOHN ASHLEY AND HANFORD Mobley sold three skiffloads of gator hides to a dealer named Phil Dolan on the Salerno docks and then repaired to the backroom of Toomey’s Store down the street to drink a few mugs of cold beer before heading for home. Frank and Ed Ashley and Clarence Middleton were away on another liquor run to Grand Bahama. They’d made more than a dozen such trips now, no longer transporting for Richardson or anyone else but buying loads on behalf of Old Joe to resell to backroom buyers for hotels and restaurants and groceries all along the southeast coast but chiefly in Miami. Old Joe also continued in the moonshine trade, selling most of this product to Indians, though business had grown too large to assign deliveries to the various villages directly anymore and he now dealt with middlemen in Pahokee and at a central waycamp in the Big Sawgrass Slough. The profits were streaming in. Frank and Ed were buying cases of island rum for as little as six dollars each and selling them for sixty in Pahokee, for eighty-five in Miami. They’d fast become old hands at the business. And Clarence Middleton had proved to be as capable at handling a boat and running whiskey as he was at so many things else. The only thing he could not do well was the only thing he would not do at all— take charge of men. Whenever Joe Ashley needed someone to supervise an immediate enterprise and his sons were all occupied with other duties, he gave the charge to young Hanford Mobley who relished the authority and exercised it well. And though Mobley was barely seventeen, Clarence Middleton liked him and admired his grit and willingly accepted his leadership in the absence of the Ashleys.

As always before he went into a town in Palm Beach County John Ashley first checked with his local informants on the whereabouts of the Bakers. Old Joe had made John swear not to show himself anyplace where Sheriff George or Bob or Freddie Baker might be. “Whyever it is you champin to get at him, you keep a tight leash on it,” Old Joe had told him. “I want you to stay wide of the Bakers till I say different and I dont want to hear you didnt.” For months now John Ashley had not laid eye on Bob Baker nor Bob Baker on him. On this day all the Bakers were about their business in West Palm Beach, where they usually were.

Toomey’s backroom was cool and pleasant and smelled of fresh sawdust and seafood and beer. A single paddle fan revolved slowly from the ceiling. They took a foamy pitcher and two mugs and a big iced tray of unshucked oysters to a table against the wall opposite the bar and sat there shucking with their knives and slurping oysters and sipping their beer. A friend known to them as Shadowman Dave sat on a bench next to the pool table at the far end of the room and softly plunked his five-string. Toomey’s trade was strictly crackers—fishermen and trappers, mostly—who were friendly to the Ashleys and took pride in one of their own being such a notorious public figure. Whenever John Ashley stopped in for a quick one, those in attendance would greet him in raucous fellowship and Toomey would nod at his young son and the boy would happily leave off sweeping up shells and go sit in front of the store and whittle and keep an eye for any show of county lawmen not known to be Ashley friends.

The place was nearly empty at this morning hour and Toomey came to the table to sit with them and gossip over a mug of beer. John Ashley had just poured a second mug for himself and young Hanford when the door swung open and someone entered carrying a twin-barreled shotgun and wearing baggy overalls and brogans and a faded black slouch hat. It took a moment for John Ashley to realize he was looking at a darkhaired woman of hard sunbrowned face. As she went to the bar she glanced at them without expression. Her eyes were moistly red and the underside of the left one was slightly swollen and discolored. She was not truly pretty and he would not have argued that she was, yet something in her aspect deepened his breath. She leaned the gun against the front of the bar and slid up onto a stool and the seat of the overalls abruptly snugged into a configuration to engage John Ashley’s full attention. He thought that an ass that looked so fine in overalls must be a marvel in the flesh.

Toomey got up and went behind the bar and said, “Yes mam?” She murmured and Toomey nodded and set to drawing a mug of beer. He cut the head with a spatula and flicked the foam on the floor and finished filling the mug and set it before her. He poured a doubleshot of Joe Ashley’s shine in a glass and placed it beside the beer and scooped up the money she’d put down. He nodded to her and put the money in a box on the backbar and then came back to join John and Hanford.

“They lord Jesus,” John Ashley whispered. “Who’s that?” Hanford Mobley grinned at his uncle.

“Name’s Upthegrove,” Toomey said softly. “Dont sound real, do it? Dont know her first name—nobody does. They say she lives with her daddy way to hell and gone south of Okeechobee in what they call the Thousand Hammocks.”

“I know the place,” John Ashley said. “Naught out there but sawgrass and so many hammocks look alike even a Indian can get lost in em.”

“I heard nobody but Indians ever seen their house,” Toomey said. “She got a brother used to bring Phil Dolan a load of hides ever month or so, but the word is he got sent to Raiford last year for killing a fella in a fight. About five-six months ago she started bringing in skins. Dolan says she brings in ever kinda hide—gator, otter, deer, bobcat. Brung in four goodsize painter skins one time and one of em black as ink and of a size to cover the most of a pool table, Dolan says. He asked her did she kill them big cats her ownself and she give him this look. Said to him, ‘Well, mister, they didnt none of them say goodbye cruel world and shoot theirselfs.’ Got a mouth on her. Just as well she dont talk much.”

“I aint never known a woman to come in here before,” John Ashley said.

“Aint her first time,” Toomey said, “About a month ago she brung Dolan a load of hides and then instead of gettin in her boat and heading right back downriver like she always done before, she comes in here and sits herself right there where she is now and says to me to give her a pitcher and a shot. Place was about half full and you shoulda seen the jaws hangin open. Hellfire, I been runnin this place for five-six years and never had no woman come in here. Shadowman back there was grinnin and pickin and that banjo was the only sound in the place. I musta stood there gawpin at her for a full minute before she say, ‘Well?’ I finally think to tell her this aint no place for ladies, and she says thats just fine because she aint no lady and to hurry up about that pitcher. Well, I’ll admit to you boys I didnt know whether to shit, spit or go blind. Understand now, she’s settin there with that shotgun acrost her lap and lookin like the last thing she’s gonna do is anything she dont want to. So I think it over for about two seconds and figure the hell with it, man or woman makes no difference to me as long as they puttin up cash money. So I pull a pitcher for her and put a mug next to it but she just goes ahead and drinks from the pitcher like a lot of old boys do. I bet she didnt take two breaths before she finished off the half of it. She sits there a minute and then lets go with a burp to rattle the windows. It aint that many men I ever heard burp like that, never mind no woman. Everbody was lookin at her like she was some kinda show but she wasnt payin nobody the least notice. Just drinkin her beer like she’s the only one in the place. Well sir, she’s startin in on the rest of the pitcher when Harvey Roget leaves off his pool game and comes up behind her with a shit-eatin grin. He says loud enough for everbody to hear how her ass looks ripe enough to take a bit out of and he grabs a handful of it. If he’d been figurin to charm her some more he never had the chance to do it because she come around on that stool and laid that half-full pitcher upside his head like she was thowin somethin sidearm. Pitcher didnt bust—just WHONK!—and beer goes everwhere and old Harvey goes quicksteppin off to the side like a man doin a jig and he didnt hardly get his balance before she was off that stool and had the shotgun by the barrels in both hands and smacked him over the head with the flat of the stock like she was drivin home a railroad spike. I tell ye, ole Harv went down like a killed man. Turned out he was only coldcocked but it’s another dent in his headbone he’ll carry to the grave for sure. The one half of his face

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