Red Grass River

Hicks to effect Hanford Mobley’s and Roy Matthews’ escape from the Broward jail and they all laughed when he recounted how Bob Baker had been so hot about it he’d cussed out the Broward sheriff in his own jail and damn near beat the shit out of Hicks in the hospital. Albert Miller had waited most of the night at Massey’s fishcamp for Hannie and Roy to show up before Hannie finally camp poling out of the mangroves just before sunup and eaten raw by mosquitoes. Roy Matthews wasnt with him.

“Hannie said the Matthews boy done got out the boat back by Coconut Creek,” Old Joe said. “Said he asked where he was goin but Matthews never said a word, just got out in the shallows there and waded ashore and got himself gone. I could see right off he was lyin.” He took a sip of shine to ease the passage of a mouthful of yam. “He was just too shamed to tell the truth of it.”

“What’s that truth of it?” John Ashley said.

“He got the horns put on him is the truth of it.”

“Joseph,” Ma Ashley said, and gain him a reproving stare which he fully ignored.

“How you know that?” John Ashley said. He gave his mother a sidelong look and saw her staring tight-lipped at Joe Ashley.

“When they caught the Matthews boy in Jacksonville, that’s who he was with.”

“Glenda?” John Ashley said.

“The very one,” Old Joe said. “They was in what’s called a compromisin position at the time.”

John Ashley and Laura raised their eyebrows at each other. His mother shook her head in exasperation and bent to her supper.

Old Joe gestured for Scout to serve him another portion of ham. “I dont reckon we’re like to see Roy anytime soon,” he said. “But I’ll tell you what. Hannie was wrong to blame him. Ye cant fault a fella for trying a gal. It’s natural as the rain for a feller to try. It’s up to the gal to say yay or nay.”

Nobody saw Ben Tracey wink at Scout except her sister and the girls looked at each other and blushed.

“You sayin he took his displeasure out on the wrong party?” John Ashley said.

“All I’m sayin is Hannie’s young yet. Still got things to learn. Specially about women.”

“Joseph! Now thats enough!”

Old Joe narrowed his eyes at Ma Ashley. “Talk a little blue for you, old woman? It’s you said the women ought sit to the table with the men tonight since it’s Johnny’s homecoming and all.” Ma Ashley glared. Old Joe smiled at his daughters and they looked down at their plates to hide their smiles from their momma.

He told John Ashley he had sent Hanford to Texas. He’d offered to sent Clarence too, and Clarence asked his girl to go with him, but Texas sounded like the far end of the earth to Terrianne and she persuaded him to stay with her in St. Lucie. A friend of the Ashleys had driven Hanford Mobley in his truck to St. Marks where another of Old Joe’s bubbas kept a fast sloop and in it carried Mobley to Pensacola. There the boy boarded a steamer to New Orleans and from there voyaged to Galveston.

“You sent him to Aunt July’s?” John Ashley said with a wide grin.

“Said he’d long wanted to make his aunt’s acquaintance,” Old Joe said. He cut a sidelong glance at his wife. “I guess he’ll be outa harm’s way over there.”

“I know whose acquaintance he wanted to make at Aunt July’s,” John Ashley said.

Ray Lynn and Ben Tracy chuckled lewdly. John Ashley had told them all about his Galveston days in his Aunt’s establishment. The daughters had long heard whispers of their notorious Aunt July and they gave each other knowing smiles and giggled. Laura looked askant at John Ashley and said, “Who’s Aunt July?”

Ma Ashley let her fork clank to her plate and her hip jarred the table to she abruptly stood and turned from the room and Old Joe just did manage to catch his jug before it toppled.

After supper the men and Laura Upthegrove repaired to the table outside and the talk turned to business. Old Joe said they were damn near broke. The payoffs to Hicks and Webb had nearly cleaned out the family treasury and there was little money coming in. A few months after Frank and Ed got killed he finally bought another rumboat and Clarence and a young fella named Register made a couple of runs to West End in it before the Coast Guard happened on them one night. Clarence tried to run for it but the Guard shot up the boat offshore and Clarence dove overboard and swam all the way in under a moonless sky without the cutter’s light finding him. But neither Joe nor Clarence had wanted anything more to do with rumboats and that was the end of the Ashley smuggling business.

They’d lost other sources of income as well. When they settled accounts for Frank and Ed they of course put an end to the Bellamy payoffs. They’d expected the Chicago bosses to figure out who’d put the pick to Bellamy and send somebody to see them. But the weeks went by and nobody came. Either Chicago never figured out who did it or they knew who it was but didnt think it worthwhile to come after them in the Everglades Or they knew who it was and didnt give a damn. Old Joe had heard that the Chicago bosses never much liked Bellamy and thats why they had sent him to Miami, which they saw as nothing but a sweaty swamptown. For whatever reason, Chicago let things lay. But they no longer drover loads through Palm Beach County or unloaded any boats off the county’s shores. Hardly anybody else did either. And so hijack pickings had gone slim.

The whiskey camps had continued to bring in steady money until the gang hit the Stuart bank the month before. “Bobby musta took that robbery even more personal than I thought he would,” Joe Ashley said. Since the robbery two of his whiskey camps had been found out and destroyed, one of them just then days ago. Another camp had been leveled by a bad storm just a few days before that. “We down to two camps,” Joe said. “A little one we set up just last year we call Gumbo, about a mile-and-a-half southwest of Hobe, that one and the Crossbone.” The Crossbone camp was so-called because it was set never Crossbone Creek which ran into the south fork of the St. Lucie River. Though it was within three miles of Twin Oaks it had never been found out by searchers. It was their oldest camp and had long been their most productive.

“It’s got right damn serious now,” Old Joe said. “The sumbitches who busted up them camps didnt just scare way my help like Bobby done when you was in the jug the first time. No sir, they did in both my niggers at the little Loxahatchee camp. Sam and Rollo, remember them? Good boys the both. Killed stone dead. You could see they’d shot the Rollo boy from close up after he’d already been shot in the knee and couldnt run nowhere. When I found them they were half eat up by varmints and were startin to turn, so I buried them right there in the muck and weighted down the graves with big chunks of limestone. When I told Sambo’s wife what happened to him and her boy she cried like she was gone die of sorrow.”

The more recent attack was on the camp in the Hungryland Slough. “They killed another my niggermen and a good cracker boy name of Lee wasnt but fourteen-year-old and didnt have no livin kin. Jaybird seen him shiverin in the streets in Stuart one day last winter with no shoes nor even a long-sleeve shirt. She talked your ma into bringin him home with them and asked me would I do something for him, so I give him a roof and put him to work. It was another nigger workin that camp too, Mage Livermore, you know him. He got shot in the leg. Told me the men who did it was a breed and a fullblood Indian. Said the breed told him he was lettin him live so he could give me a message. Know what the message was? ‘Your time has come.’”

John Ashley said it sounded like that breed called Heck Somebody who’d lived on the Baker place off and on and had been a county deputy for a time. “I never did meet him myself but everybody always said he’s spose to be so damn scary. The one they say Bobby uses when he dont want to dirty his own hands..”

“It’s him for sure,” Old Joe said. “I’d dearly like to make his acquaintance. He’s cost me money and some damn good men.”

“It’s Bobby put him up to it,” John Ashley said. “Listen Daddy, I been keepin off Bobby a long time cause you said to, but I got things to settle with that son of a bitch and I aim to settle them.”

“Then goddamn do it, boy! I aint sayin keep off him, not no more. He sure aint keeping off us, is he? I swear I truly have had my fill of Bakers, by Jesus.”

“All right then,” John Ashley said. “Just wanted you to know where I stand on it.”

“I know where you stand. I’m standin there too.”

“All right then.”

But before they did anything else, they needed to come up with some operating capital, on that they were agreed. Old Joe had been tipped that the bank in Pompano had lately grown fat with farm money. According to his source there stood at least twenty-five thousand in that bank every working day of the week, sometimes more. “We’ll check is it true,” Old Joe said, “and if it is, I’d say thats the place to start.”