Red Grass River

because they could not. When Loretta May announced one morning that John had been released from isolation, albeit he was now swinging a sledgehammer all day, Laura pulled her from the bed and danced her around the room as she sang, “Johnny’s in the sun again, Johnny’s in the sun again.” But another day when Loretta related the dream of seeing him stabbed, Laura was beside herself and demanded more details and grabbed the blind woman by the shoulders and shook her hard before collapsing in tears on her lap.

“He’ll be all right, honey,” Loretta May had crooned to her, stroking her hair. “It’s all I know for sure but it’s enough. He’ll be all right.”

“I made up my mind,” she said. “I’m moving to Jacksonville. Going next week.”

“That so?” Roy Matthews said. They lay naked under the bedsheet, the glowing tips of their cigarettes alternately brightening and dimming, a steady baybreeze belling the gauzy curtains of her bedroom window against which was framed a bone-white gibbous moon.

“My best girlfriend Rose Sharon says I can easy get me a job at the insurance company where she works because I know how to use a typewriting machine so well.”

“I thought you liked Miami. I thought you said it’s lot more lively than Jacksonville.”

“Yeah, well, it’s gettin a little too lively, you ask me. Hardly a week goes by there’s not a shooting or some other kind of murder going on. There’s no being safe here anymore, not for any respectable girl, anyhow. You can’t even walk down the street anymore without total strangers giving you the wolf whistle or saying something so awful nasty you just cant believe your ears.”

“That’s what I hear,” Roy Matthews said, snuffing their cigarettes in a bedside ashtray. “Damn town’s just chock fulla criminals and bad actors and no-counts of all kinds. It’s no place for a right citizen like me or you to live.”

“Ho ho, look who’s talkin,” she said.

He kissed her shoulder and said, “You gonna give me a number so I can call you I’m ever up there?”

“Oh you with all your girls. You wouldnt call me.”

“Sure I would. I’m gonna miss you plenty, sweetheart.”

“Oh, you.”

They lay facing each other and he slid his hand under the sheet and held her breast. “Does he know you’re goin?”

“Well of course he does. He’s not real happy about it, naturally. I told you he wants to marry me.”

Roy Matthews chuckled and lightly tweaked her nipple and she slapped at his hand through the sheet. “If he wants to marry you why you goin to Jacksonville?”

“Cause he says he doesnt wanna live nowhere except down here in South Florida is why. You know he built a house up there where the Ashleys live?”

“Sure. For his momma and daddy. Cleared and filled some ground a quarter-mile from Twin Oaks and built the place and laid down a trail and everthing. He lives there too. So what?” His feigned puzzlement was belied by his grin.

“Dont you shine me, mister,” she said. “When I first met him all he talked about was how much he wanted to travel around and see the country. That’s exactly what I always wanted to do—travel around, see things, do things, you know, while I’m still young, damn it. For more than two years he’s told me it’s what he wanted to do too. Now he tells me he wants to stay where his roots are. His roots!” She snorted with disgust. “I told him, ‘You know what I want and you know where I’ll be. You got Rose Sharon’s address and I guess you know how to write. I guess you know how to get to Jacksonville from here if you want to come see me.’ That’s exactly how I told him.”

Roy Matthews laughed and said, “Good for you, girl. Hell, you dont need that peckerwood no way. I’ll go up and see you now and then and help you keep your mind offa him.” He squeezed her breasts and nuzzled her neck.

“Oh you.” She pushed his hands out from under the sheet and drew it around her breasts and made a face at him. “You’re such a liar. You and all your girls.”

He grinned and tried to insinuate his hand under the sheet again but she rolled onto her back with the sheet held to her chest under her crossed arms and affected to glare at the ceiling. “And I used to think you were a nice fella. Jeepers!”

“I am a nice fella,” he said, kissing her bare shoulder. He pulled the sheet off her breasts and she said, “Oooo, chilly,” and put her hands over them. He pushed one hand aside and ran his tongue over the erect nipple and prickled aureole and she made a low purr and rolled into his embrace with a smile.

TWENTY

September 1923

THEY HIT THE STUART BANK FIVE MINUTES AFTER IT OPENED FOR business on a warm and humid morning. Although Hanford Mobley was disguised as a woman his voice and demeanor identified him to the two tellers on duty who had done business with him in the past. A bank patron who ran a haberdashery and had once sold Mobley a pair of trousers recognized him as well. The tellers were also certain that one of the other two robbers—both of whom wore bandanna masks—was Clarence Middleton. Neither the tellers nor the customer were so foolish as to let the bandits know they’d been recognized. The identities of the third robber and the getaway driver were yet mysteries.

They rushed from the bank with guns in hand and people fell away from their path. A rumbling green Dodge sedan waited at the curb, Laura at the wheel in overalls and large sunglasses and with her hair tucked up under a highcrowned hat of wide floppy brim. The holdup men tumbled into the car and she gunned it away northbound on the Dixie Highway.

Sheriff Bob Baker was attending an outdoor inauguration ceremony for a new circuit judge in West Palm Beach when Deputy Henry Stubbs sidled up to him and whispered that the Stuart bank had been robbed ten minutes ago. The sheriff made apologies to the judge’s party and took his leave. As they hurried to Sheriff Bob’s unmarked car Stubbs told him that Hanford Mobley and Clarence Middleton were among the robbers. “I knew that little son of a bitch would be trouble,” Sheriff Bob said. “Knew it the first time I laid eyes on him.”

He strove to affect a cool demeanor but his blood was in a fury. He had been fair with them, damn it. More than fair. After he’d put John away he’d let that peckerwood family be. He hadn’t bothered their moonshine business since way before John went back to prison. Hellfire, he’d let them hijack other bootleggers at will. He was no friend of the Ashleys and never would be (never again, anyway) but what was past was done with, and his past troubles with John hadnt kept him from doing the smart thing, which was to let the Ashleys go about their whiskey business any way they wanted, so long as they didnt upset the good citizens of Palm Beach County. As long as the Ashleys didnt make him look bad as sheriff he’d cut them slack. They knew that. It was a condition unspoken but understood. And now look how they’d gone and broken their side of the bargain. And for what? For putting John back in the pen? For not bothering to keep his pleasure a secret when he heard two of the Ashley boys got drowned during a least. Why would they wait so long to do something about it? But if thats why they’d done it—if they’d put personal feelings above good common sense, if they couldnt see that bygones were bygones and live and let live was the way to go—then they were just plain damn stupid, thats all, so damn stupid they were dangerous. Crazy goddamn swamprats. Hell, you didnt see him going around eating himself up with wanting to get even with John Ashley, and he sure enough had plenty of reason. Whoever lived in the past was dead to the present—he’d heard that somewhere and thought it was sure enough true. If he could let the past go, why in the purple hell couldnt they? (He had the briefest flash of a thumb gouging an eyeball, of a dick at a dead man’s mouth—and instantly had to remind himself of being stripped