Red Grass River

July’s.

On the way there Hanford Mobley asked about the police raid on the Crossbones camp. John Ashley said they could talk about it another time but assured Hanford that his parents were well and living comfortably in a new cottage Bill Ashley had bought for them just down the road from his own house in Salerno. As the cab turned onto Aunt July’s street John Ashley asked Hanford with happened with Roy Matthews. Hanford smiled and said, “Roy who?” and laughed and said no more.

They had not seen each other in ten years, John Ashley and his aunt. She’d gone to corpulence but seemed at ease with her fleshiness and less given to general fret. She was thrilled to see him and remarked that he was even handsomer then he’d been a decade ago. When he introduced Laura, Aunt July said, “So this is the girl who won the heart that couldnt be won,” and hugged her to her copious bosom. She could not stop smiling at John Ashley and made him sit beside her on the parlor sofa so she could pet him as they talked. Laura took immediate liking to her as had to Ella, and the three women were as easy with each other as longtime friends.

When Aunt July questioned him about her brother’s death John Ashley recounted how Old Joe had been killed. Aunt July began to cry and Laura hastened to her side and put her arm around her and told of the dignified funeral Ma and Bill Ashley had arranged for him. “They told me there was just a whole hill of pretty flowers on his grave,” Laura said. Aunt July apologized for her tears, saying she had sworn she would not cry about it anymore, not in front of them, and now she meant it, by God. She dried her eyes with a lace hanky and called for one of the maids to turn on the radio to a music program.

That evening the five of them went to supper at a bayside restaurant and caught each other up on things still further. Aunt July said that none of the girls who’d worked in the house at the time John had lived there were with her any longer—a revelation prompting Laura to give John Ashley a smiling sidelong look. Some of the girls had married, some had gone to bigger towns in chase of bigger money. Some had gotten mixed up with criminals and were likely now in jail. Some had simply disappeared and none knew whereto or why. Roan-haired Sally who’d been one of John’s favorites had developed a cancer in her breast and died within six months of its discovery.

“Nineteen years old,” Aunt July said sadly. “So many old people doing nothing but meanness in the world and such a sweet pretty thing has to die so young. If there’s a God in heaven He sure aint much of a one for fairness.”

John Ashley said he was surprised to hear such a commonplace sentiment from someone so experienced with the world as his aunt. “Well,” she said, “I expect it’s exactly because of people’s experience with the world that such notions get to be so common.”

Cindy Jean, whose sweetness on the eve of his departure from Galveston John Ashley well recalled, had married a wildcatter and gone with him to Texas where he struck oil six months later. “She wrote me a letter,” Aunt July said. “She said, ‘Maylon struck oil so I guess I for damn sure struck gold.’” She laughed along with the others and said, “I just love a story about hard work paying off, dont you all?”

They all laughed too at Hanford’s account of wanting to be the man of the house just as his Uncle John had been when he’d lived in Galveston. On his arrival at Aunt July’s Hanford had followed John Ashley’s example and challenged the resident houseman to a fistfight for rights to the job. But Hanford lacked both the size and the fistic talent of his uncle, and the houseman, a big quick man named Mack, had in short order beaten him insensible. Hanford claimed to hold no hard feelings. In truth Mack was a pleasant man who was always ready with a joke and the two had become friends. Hanford had since been earning his keep as Aunt July’s general handyman, tending to small repairs around the house and keeping up the yard and garden. This position did not, however, carry the houseman’s perquisites, and whatever pleasures Hanford desired from the girls in residence he’d been required to pay for like everybody but Mack, albeit he got a discount price of a dollar and a half.

Ella had been the only one not to charge him. “I cant even say what, but it’s something about this boy,” she said. He sat next to her and she patted his arm. She said she had fallen in love with him the minute they met but it had taken him a while longer to reciprocate. “I guess because of havin so many pretty girls under the same roof,” she said. “I guess being a man he had to try everything in the candy store before he could settle for just one kinda treat.” Aunt July and Laura smiled knowingly at John Ashley but he affected to be engrossed in the condition of his fingernails. Once Hanford realized the prize the had in Ella they started spending most of their free time together, going to the beach and sailing on Hanford’s dinghy and watching movies in the coolness of the local moviehouse. Three months later he proposed marriage on the condition that she give up the whoring life and she said it was the easiest deal she ever made. They’d since been living together in the small gardner’s cottage behind the main house. They planned to wed on Thanksgiving Day.

Laura said that was just the sweetest story. She shook a finger at Hanford Mobley across the table and said, “You best treat her right, you hear?” Hanford grinned and said, “Yes, mam, I aim to.”

Aunt July asked about John’s plans and he told of his intention to go into business through he hadnt yet decided what sort. If he caught any of the looks of doubt that exchanged around the table he did not give sign of it. Aunt July then expounded on her growing boredom with whoring business and recited a litany of complaints—the greedy policemen, the extortionist politicians, the ever-higher taxes, and the ever-lower quality of whores come looking for a house to work. “Present company excepted,” she said to Ella, who smiled and blushed and said, “Oh, I know.”

They stayed at Aunt July’s for more than a week before they found a rental house they liked just a block from the beach. She had insisted they should save their money and continue living under her roof, but they as vigorously insisted they would not impose upon her hospitality any more than they already had. They signed a lease on the house, paid the first month’s rent and moved in.

Nearly every morning they packed a picnic basket and went to the beach to swim in the Gulf, nap on the sand under an umbrella, fish for snapper from the jetties. The rainy season was on them and every afternoon raised huge indigo thunderheads off the Gulf that blackened the entire sky and then the storm came crashing down. They’d sit on their little porch with cold beer in hand and watched the play of pale lightning over the sea while thunder crackled and rain hammered the roof and poured off the gutters and the wind blew cool and fresh. Sometimes they’d lie in bed under a partly open window and let the rain spatter them as they made love.

Bertha sent letters with news. Ma Ashley and the girls had recently moved into the new house she had contracted to have built at Twin Oaks. It was a little smaller than the old house but spacious enough for the three of them. It had a little sidehouse for guests and Clarence Middleton was now living there. Terrianne had left him, just up and run off—some said to Miami, but no telling if that was true. If Clarence knew where she’d gone he wasnt saying. He’d gone to see Ma Ashley and asked if he could pitch a tent at Twin Oaks till he decided what to do. She said she’d be proud to have him there but she insisted he make himself at home in the sidehouse.

A good bit of the news in the paper lately, Bertha informed them, was about Bobby Baker. He’d finally called off the search for Johnny and publicly proclaimed that John Ashley was either dead in the Everglades or run off to somewhere else for good. He’d also announced he was running for reelection. The newspapers were backing him all the way and praising him as the lawman who busted up the Ashley Gang. They were calling him the best sheriff in South Florida, maybe the best in the state. For the first time in ages he was showing his family in public. At recent official ceremonies his wife had been at his side, and every Saturday afternoon he was spotted with her and his daughters at some restaurant or moviehouse somewhere in the county. “The man seems pretty well satisfied with himself,” Bertha wrote.

They took long walks around town and admired the ornate architecture. He took her to the theater to see her first play ever and she was enrapt and insisted they thereafter go at least twice a week and they did. On Sunday afternoons they went to a park frequented chiefly by Germans and from a vendor they bought grilled sausages on bread with mustard and ate them while they listened to the polka bands. Galveston had changed but little in the ten years John Ashley had been gone. The main difference was in the greater volume of auto traffic. Cars were now everywhere. Laura noted that the weather was much like back home but she admitted she sometimes missed having the wildness of the Everglades hard by. “Back home you could always run into the Glades if there was need to get hid,” she said. On a little island like this there was nowhere to hide. John laughed at her comparison and said she had a naturalborn criminal mind. She punched his arm and said she certainly was not a naturalborn criminal, she’d had to learn every bit about being an outlaw from him.

For all their larking and carefree living, she sensed that he was restless. Not that he didnt laugh or smile very often, because he did. Not that he lacked his usual robust appetite, because he didnt. Not that his enthusiasm for