Red Grass River

shoulder some fifty yards up the road to feed on the crushed and moldering carcass of a possum whose stench came faintly to the men where they stood,.

John Ashley and Hanford Mobley again brandished their guns and the man in the Sox cap said, “What is this, a robbery? You want our money?” He was a tall lean man with prematurely gray hair cropped close as a convict’s. A short but vivid purple scar curved from the corner of him mouth to just under his chin.

John Ashley laughed at him. He went to the truck and loosened the rope holding a trap cover across the back of the enclosed bed and he lifted a corner of the tarp and looked in and gave a low chuckle. He asked the driver how many cases it was. The driver glanced at the man in the Sox cap and John Ashley looked at him too and the man hesitated and then said fifty. Hanford Mobley and Clarence Middleton grinned.

Now the main in the Sox cap spotted Roy Matthews and looked at him hard and said, “Well hell now, look who’s here. I heard you and your Scotchman buddy had a fatal accident down in Miami.”

“I’d say you heard half-wrong, White,” Roy Matthews said. He was smiling broadly.

“So now you’re in with these jackers? Bellamy’ll have your ass for breakfast.”

“Bellamy best pray he dont never see me again.”

The man called White gave a derisive snort. “Bold talk.” He looked around at the others. “Must be all these hillbilly guns makes you so bold.”

“Who you callin hillbilly, you son of a bitch?” Hanford Mobley said.

“Hell, it aint hardly a hill in Florida,” Clarence Middleton said. “Everbody knows that except dumbass Yankees.”

White smiled and said, “Sorry, friend. I guess Roy’s just feeling brave because he’s in your company. I think I know who you gents are, but I’d rather not guess.” When he smiled the scar on his chin went thinner and lightened almost to blue.

“Name’s Ashley,” John told him. “Palm Beach is our grounds. You ask anybody. Any whiskey you bring through this county anymore is gonna cost you a tax of ten dollars a case. It’ll cost you five hundred dollars to take these here fifty cases on through.”

“A tax?” White said. He looked around as if suddenly unsure of where he was or if he ought to laugh. “Listen,” he said, “if I had the fucken money on me I wouldnt pay it, not to you guys. This here’s a public road, brother. We got as much right to use it as anybody.” He smiled at the folly of his own argument.

“I aint your brother,” John Ashley said. “And considerin how much you stand to make on this load in Miami, I’d say five hundred is a fair cut to us for lettin you take it by. It’s anyway cheaper than losin your whole entire load like you gonna do.”

White heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Do you know whose booze you’re stealing?”

“Sure do,” John Ashley said. “A fella’s who wouldnt pay us the tax on it.”

White showed a wry smile. “Say your name’s Ashley?”

“That’s right.”

“Which one are you?” White said.

“John. You heard of us, huh? What’s your name?”

“James White,” the man said. “Some people as soon as you’re introduced to them as James think it’s all right to call you Jim, but I let them know pretty quick I dont care much of that name. Care even less for Jimmy.”

“Where you from, Jimmy?”

James White laughed. “Chicago.”

John Ashley said, “Ah.”

“You heard of it, huh?” James White said. “Listen, you gonna take the truck too?”

John Ashley spat to the side and grinned. “Well you dont reckon I’m gonna bust a sweat hauling all that booze out of your truck just to heave it up on mine?” He gestured at Hanford Mobley and the boy hastened to the truck cab and set the levers and got out the crank and went around to the front of the vehicle and cranked the motor and it fired up on the first try. He got in the driver’s seat and tooted the Klaxon in sheer exuberance, then put the truck in gear and it lurched into motion and he wheeled out onto the road. They all watched it move away down the highway until it clattered around a bend and was gone.

James White let another long sigh. “How far to the nearest depot?”

“Olympia station, back the way you came,” John Ashley said. “Aint but a few miles.”

White tugged his White Sox cap low on his eyes and put his hands in his pockets. “You know, John: there’s people in Miami gonna be real unhappy about his. I’m responsible for the transfer of our Georgia stuff. I’ve got other drivers working for me. I got a half-dozen trucks to keep track of. You’re making me look bad at my work is what you’re doing.”

“Damn if that aint a sad story, Jimmy,” John Ashley said. “But the plain and simple of it is, we cant have somebody else making money by running whiskey through our territory without us gettin a share of it. I know you can understand that.”

“Oh hell yeah, John, I understand it just fine. But I dont think my bosses are gonna be near so understanding.”

“You explain it to them real good and maybe they will be,” John Ashley said. “They’re businessmen. They know taxes is part of doin business. They dont wanna pay the tax they can either take their hooch around Palm Beach County or they can lose it to us.” He headed for the Ford. Clarence Middleton was already behind the wheel and Roy Matthews in the backseat.

James White morosely shook his head. “You’re fucking with the wrong people, John.”

“Tell Bellamy I said his momma sucks nigger dicks,” Roy Matthews called back to him.

“You always been a silvertongue, Roy,” James White said.

Then Clarence Middleton was accelerating the Ford down the road and all three of them were laughing and James White and his driver stood in the raised dust and watched them go.

The next one came through at night and didnt even slow down nor try to go swerve around Clarence Middleton who stood stark in its headlights and was obliged to dive off the road and into the palmettos to avoid being run over. As the truck roared past them John Ashley and Hanford Mobley and Roy Matthews opened fire on its wheels and the flaming rifleshots blew out three of its tires. The truck veered and then straightened out and tried to go on with its useless tires flapping and its rims cutting rasping grooves in the whiterock road but the engine was laboring hard and now it began stuttering under the heavy drag and the truck slowed steadily and finally stalled. And here came John Ashley and Hanford Mobley and Roy Matthews on the run through the dust with Clarence Middleton behind them and cursing the bastards who’d tried to run him down but by the time they got to the vehicle the driver and shotgun rider had fled into the woods.

They repaired the flattened tires and took turns on the air pump and when all the tires were inflated Clarence got in the truck and drove the load of booze to Twin Oaks with John Ashley and Hanford Mobley following close in the Ford touring car.

Some weeks later, on a cool January evening, John Ashley and Hanford Mobley lay hidden among the sea oats on the crest of a Jupiter Island sand dune and watched a whiskey sloop bobbing easily on the swells fifty yards offshore as it unloaded its cargo. Although the bigger rumships that could carry several thousand cases were now careful to conduct their load transfers outside the three mile limit of the Coast Guard’s legal authority, the captain of this sloop obviously had no fear of doing business so close to shore. A trio of large motorboats operating without running lights was nestled against the sloop’s hull and taking on the booze. The Ashley gang had pulled a half-dozen road hijackings by now but this was their first beach job.

They could see that the booze was in sacks instead of wooden crates. The smugglers were always learning new tricks for their trade and this was a recent one in the way they packed whiskey for transport. The bottles were now commonly packed in burlap sacks jacketed with straw—three to six bottles to the sack—and the sack tied tightly to hold the bottles snugly together. Because of the resemblance, these booze sacks were called hams. They made for easier handling and more compact loading. Twice as much liquor could be put in a cargo hold when it was packed in hams rather than crates, and pairs of hams tied together with lengths of cord could be hung around a man’s neck for portage from beach to trucks. Frank and Ed Ashley themselves now insisted that the whiskeyloads they took aboard the Della in the Bahamas be packed as hams.

The Ashleys had also adopted another common rummer’s trick, one intended to avoid capture with a load of booze. They securely glued a light ball of cork about as big as a baseball to a fist-sized bag of salt, then tied one