gelded.”
So they went to The Palmetto House Inn, and even though the others made fun of him and said Laura had him damn well pussy-whipped, John Ashley just grinned and remained in the parlor to smoke and talk with some of the girls while his friends had their lark upstairs.
Quite early the next morning they drove north out of town on the Dixie Highway. They pulled in at a Fort Lauderdale roadhouse for a breakfast of eggs and pork chops and grits. Their plan thus far was vague. They would first of all have to find out when Bob Baker would be home. That much John Ashley had decided: he would kill him at home and then burn down his house as Bobby had burned his. He had not dreamt again of his daddy since deciding on his course of action.
Late in the forenoon they came to West Palm Beach and all pulled their hats low and tried to keep their faces averted from the street and any who might recognize them. John Ashley pointed down a dirt road branching off the highway into a woodland and said, “That’s the way to Bobby’s house. Bout five miles yonderway.”
Hanford Mobley slowed the car. “You wanna go on over there and see if he’s home? He might be sitting in his easy chair this minute and reading the newspaper and smokin his pipe and feelin on top of the damn world. We can hide the car in the trees a ways from the house and sneak up on him. If he’s there you can settle the thing right goddamn now.”
John Ashley hesitated. Then said: “No. If he aint there his wife’ll tell him about the strange car that come up to the house today. I dont want him on his guard. Besides, when I do him we’re gonna have to haul ass. Best we go see Ma and the girls now, while everything’s nice and quiet. We’ll see does Clarence want in on it and we’ll plan the thing out and see about when Bobby’s gonna be home.”
“What if he’s home tonight?” Hanford said.
“Then tonight’s it,” John Ashley said.
Hanford Mobley thumped his fist on the steering wheel and grinned.
So they drove on. And five miles away Bob Baker—who’d been up late the night before investigating an abandoned rum truck his deputies had discovered by the side of the highway with half its load missing and blood on the cab seat—napped soundly in his front porch hammock and without dreams and with no firearm to hand while his wife and daughters tended the flower garden in the backyard.
Ma Ashley had rarely been demonstrative in her affections but she wept happily to see her son John whom she thought she might never behold again and she hugged him hard to her breast. His sisters held to him one on either arm and petted him and laughed delightedly at every wisecrack he made. Clarence Middleton came up and clapped him on the shoulder and said, “I guess I know why you come back.”
Ma and the girls got busy preparing dinner while the men sat out on the little front porch and formed a plan. They had earlier stopped at a filling station near the Olympia depot and John Ashley used the telephone there to call the sheriff’s office in Stuart and ask for deputy Abner Franks, long a friend and a valued informant to the family. He told Abner what he wanted to know and Abner said to call back in twenty minutes. They bought bottles of beer from the filling station’s backroom and sipped them slowly and remarked on the prettiness of the day. When John Ashley called Abner again the deputy was craftily circumspect in his end of the conversation, surrounded as he was by other cops in the office, but in his careful way he was able to tell John Ashley that, yes, it seemed the sheriff would be at home this evening and, no, there was no likelihood that any other policemen would be there. John thanked him for the information and told him to forget this conversation had taken place. Abner Franks said, “What conversation?” and rang off.
Now John Ashley told Clarence Middleton what he had in mind and Clarence said he was in. “Your daddy was never nothin but good to me and I’ll be proud to help you see that Baker sumbitch dead for killin him. truth to tell, Johnny, I was sore disappointed the last time I saw you and you were off to Texas without settlin accounts with that damn sheriff.”
“I was sore disappointed too, Clarence,” John Ashley said. “I just didnt know it yet.”
But Clarence declined John’s invitation to go back to Texas with him. He’d recently spoken to his brother Jack by telephone, their first exchange in years, and Jack’s offer of a partnership in the nightclub still held if Clarence gave up his life of crime. “I believe I’ll take him up on it,” Clarence said. “I’ll go with you boys on this one out of respect for Old Joe, and then I’m out of it.”
Their plan was simple. They’d wait until late that night and then drive out to Bob Baker’s house and park the car a ways from the house and John Ashley would sneak up and slip inside and kill him. Ben and Ray would stay with the car and keep an eye out for anyone coming down the road. Clarence would keep watch outside the house. Hanford would go in with John to guard his back. As soon as Bob Baker was dead they’d set the place afire and get out of there before the flames lit up the night and drew notice.
“What about his family?” Clarence wanted to know.
“We’ll put em outside and leave em to watch the place burn down like Ma and the girls had to watch Twin Oaks burn,” John Ashley said. Besides, Bobby’s family would be a help to them in their getaway. “We’ll drop a coupla loud hints about goin to Key west,” John said. “The cops’ll be two weeks findin out we aint there. By then we’ll be long gone and forever.”
They would take a rest in Vero, at Wayne Lillis’s piling house at the marina where he kept his charter boat. Then they would push on to Jacksonville and take Clarence to his brother’s club. John and Hanford and Ray would visit with Daisy and Butch for the night and the next day head for Pensacola and a steamer to Texas.
“And then what?” Hanford Mobley said.
“And then we live happily ever after,” John Ashley said with a grin. “What else?”
“Sounds pretty fucken fine to me,” Ray Lynn said.
They told the plan to Ma Ashley over dinner and she got wet-eyed with gratitude that she would not go to her grave with her husband unavenged.
After dinner there was naught to do but pass the time until dark. Around midafternoon Ray put down for a nap on the front porch. Hanford and Clarence stretched out under one of the big oaks shading the house. Ben hiked down to Yellow Creek with a cane pole and a can of nightcrawlers. John Ashley watered and fed the milkcow in the makeshift stable Bill had put up and then he wrung the necks on three chickens for his mother to fry for supper.
Ma sent Scout and Jaybird to the creek to check the trotline and bring back any fish or cooters they found on it. She told them to pull a pailful of sweet potatoes from the garden on their way back. When John Ashley came into the kitchen minutes later with the three plucked hens she said his rattlebrained sisters had forgotten to take a bucket for the sweet potatoes and asked him to take one to them.
He found Jaybird on the path coming back from the creek. She was carrying a string of three catfish in one hand and held a headless snapping turtle by the tail in the other. She was looking back over her shoulder as she came and did not see him until he was almost to her and then she gave a startled gasp and stopped short.
“You best watch where you goin, girl,” John Ashley said, “before you step on somethin you wish you hadnt. Give me them and take this.” He took the fish and turtle from her and handed her the pail. “How’d you expect to bring back any sweet taters with no bucket?”
Only now did he notice her nervousness. She glanced back down the path again and then looked at him and everything in her manner bespoke unease. He looked along the narrow sun-dappled path flanked by moss-hung oaks and pine and dense palmetto shrubs. “What is it, girl?” he said.
Her eyes on him were large and fearful. He looked down the empty path again. “Where’s Scout?”
She shook her had and shrugged and glanced down the path and then said, “She’ll be along.”
John Ashley put the fish and turtle into the pail she held and started down the path and Jay came after him, saying with low-voice vehemence, “Leave her be, Johnny! She said she’d be along and to leave her be!” He turned and pointed at her and said, “Get on up to the house, Jay. And dont forget the sweet potatoes. Go on now.”
Jaybird watched him go off and then turned and hurried for the house.
He went along the path without footfall nor rustle of brush, halting every few yards to listen intently. As he neared the creek he heard them in the woods to his right. Half-smothered laughter. He eased through the palmettos and wove through the tightly clustered pines toward where the trees opened up in a clearing beside the creek. He advanced in a crouch to a dense growth of bushes at the edge of the clearing and peered through the shrubbery and saw them sitting together on a fallen pine.
She sat with her knees drawn up and he was astraddle the trunk and had one hand around her waist and one at her breast and was kissing her cheek and neck and whispering in her ear. She was smiling and blushing furiously
