Red Grass River

to give John privacy while he bathed. Bill had brought in a quart bottle of beer he’d pulled up from the well and now poured two glasses and handed one to his brother, then lit two cigarettes and passed one of these to him also. They looked at each other a long moment. In a tight voice Bill Ashley said: “I thought they’d killed you too for sure.”

He told John that Ma and their sisters were living with the Pattersons in West Palm Beach for now but it would be too risky for him to try to sneak over there to see them. Their mother had cursed Bob Baker publicly as the murderer of her husband and destroyer of her home and told the newspapers she hoped Bob Baker got paralyzed and had to be fed from a spoon for the rest of his life. She had sworn to build a new house on the ashes of Twin Oaks. “She can afford to do it, too,” Bill said. “Daddy buried money all over the place and she knows where a good bit of it is.”

What about their daddy’s grave, John Ashley wanted to know. Could he go to it? He wanted to say goodbye to him.

Bill told him to forget it. Bob Baker still had the posse on duty and had deputized what seemed like half the men in the county. Cops were everywhere. Thinking John might try to visit his daddy’s grave, Bobby was keeping it under close watch by deputies armed to the teeth.

He told John of the rumor that Ray Lynn and Ben Tracy were in Miami, but nobody knew it to be true for sure. Clarence Middleton hadnt shown a hair of himself since the news of the raid and was likely still in St. Lucie. Bertha had written a note to Hanford Mobley telling him what happened and to stay put right where he was. She’d mailed it by way of a friend in Pensacola who relayed the letter to Galveston—just in case the cops were checking the mail going out through the local post offices. As for Laura, Bill said, Bobby’d given up trying to stick even an attempted murder charge on her and wouldnt be able to convict her for anything more than a misdemeanor or two and she wasnt likely to serve more than a few months at the most.

John Ashley stared at him and the stub of his cigarette fell from his mouth into the tub water now thickly purpled with dirt and old blood. He put his head in his hands and sobbed so loudly Bertha came running with face afright.

He slept all the next day and despite his exhaustion he came awake on the instant that afternoon when he heard a car pull up in front of the house. He peeked from behind the curtain and saw two cops in the car, the driver talking to Bill Ashley who was wearing a straw hat and had gardening tools in his hand. Bertha knelt at her nearby flower bed and trimmed weeds. Bill was talking amiably and one of the cops smiled and shook a finger at him. Then both cops grinned and waved so long and the car wheeled around and left. John Ashley once more checked the .45 under the pillow to ensure a round in the chamber. He lay back and thought to himself, She’s alive, oh yes she is, and smiled so wide it hurt mouth and he happily drifted back to sleep.

That evening Bertha served a supper of fried chicken and cornbread, rice and greens, and John Ashley had second helpings of everything and then two huge wedges of pineapple pie for dessert. Over coffee and cigarettes Bill told him the best thing to do was go away to Texas. He would make all the arrangements for him.

“The law’s on you for killing a policeman now,” he said. “They figured they got a score to settle and they wont never let it lay and you know it. You stay round here and sooner or later they’ll catch up to you and if they dont shoot you dead on the spot they’ll sure’s hell see you hang.”

“Well goddamn, Billy, I figure we got a few scores to settle our ownselfs, dont you?” John Ashley said. “What about Daddy? Dont you figure thats a score needs settling? Hell, men, it’s lots of damn scores I still got to settle with that fucken Bobby, scores nobody even knows about but me and him. Scuse my language, Berty.”

Bill Ashley heaved an enormous sigh. “All this”—he gestured vaguely—“this shit about settlin scores. It’s too damn many people with too damn many scores to settle in this world, Johnny. If we dont start lettin go of some of these damn scores, thats all we’ll be doin the rest of our days, tryin to settle em. That aint no goddamn way to live. It’s just a way to not live long.”

John Ashley set down his cut and stared hard at him. “What the hell you talkin about? The son of a bitch killed my daddy.”

“Our daddy.”

“Well you damn sure dont act like he’s any daddy of yours. I seen you out there talking to them cops today, jokin with them like they was just a coupla old boys.”

“They are a coupla old boys. Christ, Johnny, they didnt shoot Daddy. They didnt have a thing in the world to do with it.”

“It was cops killed him and they’re cops, aint they? Anybody who can smile at cops thataway aint no son of—”

“Goddammit, dont talk to me like that! He was as much my daddy as—”

“Billy, you stop now!” Bertha said. “The both you—stop!”

Bill Ashley glared at John and looked at Bertha and then made a half-growl in this throat and looked off to the window.

Bertha turned to John Ashley who lit a cigarette and angrily exhaled. She said softly, “Can I say somethin? I promise I’ll only say it once and then I’ll keep my trap shut and go back to mindin my own business.”

He looked at her. “You can always say anything you want, Berty, you know that.”

“Just last night you thought Laura was dead, didnt you? You’d thought it for days. You felt like there wasnt a reason in the world to go on living except to get even with Bobby Baker for her and your daddy. Then you found out she was alive and it made you so happy you cried—yes, you did, John Ashley, I saw it and you know I did, and there’s nothin in the world wrong with that. Knowin she was alive made the world a whole lot better in a hurry, didnt it? But now just listen to you. Here you are all over again talkin about gettin even with Bob Baker for your daddy and you know it wasn’t even him that killed him, you said so yourself—no, wait, let me finish…You figure Bobby’s responsible no matter who did the shootin, but what difference does it make anymore, Johnny? I swear, you and that damned Bobby Baker sound exactly the same. He’s sayin in the newspaper he wants to even things with you for killing his cousin Freddie. How two men who already suffered and caused as much pain as you two can talk about nothing but causin more pain is something I’ll never understand. How I pity that man’s poor wife and children. But you! Even if you cant think of yourself or of your own brother here, cant you at least think of what you’d be doin to Laura? That girl loves you so much. Why in the world do you want to take a chance on getting killed or goin back to prison and makin the rest of her life so miserable? Why do that when you and her can just go away somewhere and be happy together? Why cant you just quit all this awful business? I’m sorry to sound like Little Miss Know-it-all, because I surely aint any such a thing, but if I was you I’d just want to get away from all this meanness and sadness and trouble and so someplace where I could live a peaceable life and wake up happy ever day because I’m with somebody I love and who loves me back and I’d try and remember how damn lucky that makes me.”

She was crying as she rushed from the table into the bedroom and shut the door behind her.

“The brother sat in silence for a moment without meeting each other’s eyes. Then Bill looked at him and showed a small crooked smile and said: “Now look what you done. She’ll be at least a week blamin me for any pain any man’s ever caused a woman.”

John Ashley chuckled softly. “Sometimes just havin a dick means we’re guilty, dont it?”

They fell quiet again. After a time John Ashley said, “You say she’ll do about three months in the lockup?”

“Three, four, wont be much. He aint got much on her.”

“They mistreatin her?”

“Hell no. I know that for a fact. I talked to her before I got let go. She’s lookin fine, I swear. Luckiern hell that bullet only scraped her skull. And the leg would wasnt much. She was already gimpin around in the cell a coupla days after. Bobby told them to treat her right, she heard him say it herself.”

John Ashley looked at him. “Why would he do that? I thought he wanted to hang her?”

Bill Ashley shrugged. “He wanted somebody hung for Freddie. Anyway just cause he wanted to hang her dont mean he cant be a gentleman to her. Hell, I dont know. I quit tryin to figure why people do any the things they do. It only tired my mind to try.”

He stayed with Bill and Bertha two days more and then was sufficiently rested to slip out in the late darkness of the following night. He made his way through town and into the pineland swamps and on to a creekside