Red Grass River

and she had hold of his hand at her breath but John Ashley could see that she was not trying to push it away. Now Ben removed his hand to fumble at the fly of his trousers and then took her hand and put it to himself and her eyes went huge and she looked sidelong at the thing in her grip as though she were afraid to look at it directly and yet she permitted him to move her hand on him in a stroking motion and thats when John Ashley came charging out of the bushes.

Scout shrieked and leaped away from Ben and yelled, “No, Johnny!” Ben was up and shoving his penis back in his pants and saying something but John Ashley wasnt listening. his punch caught Ben on the nose and broke it and sent him tripping backward over the log. As he scrambled to hands and knees Ben yelled “She didnt mind, man!” and John Ashley kicked him in the ribs with enough force to lift him partway off the ground. Ben fell over on his back and could not catch his breath and John Ashley stepped up to him and brought the heel of his brogan down squarely in his face and felt bone and teeth give way.

Now Scout had him by an arm and was pulling at him and crying, “Stop! Stop it!” He grabbed her by the shoulders and pitched her aside and turned back to Ben who again was risen to all fours and pouring blood from his mouth and nose. He kicked him in the side of the head and blood slung as Ben fell over and tried to scrabble away and John Ashley followed after and kicked him in the face and Ben fell on his side and curled up tight with his arms around his head.

A pistolshot cracked and Scout’s wails cut short and John Ashley whirled in a crouched to Ray Lynn at the edge of the clearing with a revolver cocked and pointed at him.

“No more, Johnny, you’ll kill him,” Ray Lynn said. Jaybird stood back of him and partly behind a pine with her hands to her mouth and tears running down her face.

John Ashley straightened up and stared at Ray Lynn. Ben Tracey lay on his side gasping wetly and unevenly. And now here came Clarence and Hanford with guns in their hands and they took in the scene at a glance and Hanford aimed his pistol at Ray Lynn’s head and said, “Get that off him, bubba.”

“Hannie,” John Ashley said. he gestured for him to put his gun down.

“Him first,” Hanford said.

Ray Lynn sighed softly and put his pistol in his pants pocket. Hanford stepped back from him and lowered his own gun but kept it in hand. Scout shouted, “Damn you, Johnny!” and ran off toward the house with Jaybird right behind her.

Ben Tracey coughed and choked and turned onto his stomach with a loud groan and braced himself on his elbows and spewed blood. Clarence squatted beside him to examine his injuries. One side of his face was already enpurpled and grossly swollen and he lacked most of his top row of teeth. Each time he coughed he grimaced and expelled a mist of blood a little brighter than that running off his broken mouth. “I’d say his ribs’re all busted up and could be one nicked a lung,” Clarence said. “I knew a fella one time got a rib though his lung and drowned in his own blood.”

John Ashley looked on Ben Tracey with disgust. “She’s but barely fourteen, you son of a bitch.” Ben Tracey did not even try to look up at him.

“Let me get him to the hospital, Johnny,” Ray Lynn said. “It’s no need t let him die.”

“That dick of yours gone get you killed,” John Ashley said, still glowering at Ben Tracey. “I ever see you again—anywhere—I’m like to rip it off and shove it down your throat. You understand?”

Ben Tracey nodded awkwardly.

“Get his worthless ass out of here,” John Ashley said, and started back for the house with Hanford right behind.

Clarence helped Ray to get Ben Tracey back to a car, Ben crying out at every misstep or sudden jolt. As they drove him to the hospital at Stuart, Ben kept fading in and out of consciousness. The woods along the highway were already in deep twilight. They parked at the emergency entrance door and left the motor running while they supported him on either side and walked him inside and turned him over to a pair of nurses. Clarence told them he’d fallen off a scaffolding. One of the nurses said they’d have to fill out a form at the admitting desk and Clarence said, “Sure, just let me move my car from blocking the emergency entrance.” Then he and Ray Lynn went out and got in the car and drove away.

But they had not thought to relieve Ben Tracey of the pistol tucked snugly in his waistband under his loose shirt, and when the nurse undressing him found it she did not even touch it but hastened bigeyed to her supervisor who returned with her to the ward and took the pistol from unconscious Ben and then telephoned the police.

Sheriff Bob Baker arrived home a little after dark in a sporadically gusting wind and under a roiling sky of gathering stormclouds. His wife and daughters met him at the door and after receiving her kiss he bent to the girls so they could kiss him in their turn. The girls then repaired to their room and Annie went into the kitchen to fetch for him a glass of iced tea. He hung up his gunbelt in the den and took off his boots then went to the dining room where Annie had set the tea on the table. He laced the drink strongly with some of the dark Jamaican rum from the jug he kept in the sideboard, then went to the parlor and settled into his rocker with the latest issue of the American Mercury. He was glad to be indoors and out of the bad weather bunching up. He lit his pipe and added the roasted-nut smell of its smoke to the redolence of a pot roast nearly ready.

He was the picture of contentment, but in truth he had in recent months been visited by a chronic and awful dream—a vague vision of John Ashley looming over him with one eyesocket dark and empty, and sometimes at his side his brother Bob, naked and ghostly pale. He would come awake in a gasping lurch that would wake his wife as well. She would hold him close until he recovered his breath and his tremors eased. But she never asked to know the dream and he never offered to tell it.

Sometimes he’d sit at his desk in the den and take out the bullet John Ashley had sent him. He’d hold it in his palm and roll it under his finger and a great smothering rage would close upon him so tightly he could barely draw breath. But those moments—like the unsettling dream—had of late become less frequent, and he was confident they soon would cease altogether. There had not been a single reliable sighting of John Ashley anywhere in Florida in more than three months. According to some of Bob Baker’s informants, John Ashley had been badly wounded in the whiskey camp fight and his arm had since been amputated. He was gone to Georgia or Texas, maybe to California. And the rumor was he was sworn not to return.

Bob Baker was eating his supper when the telephone rang. Annie got up to answer it in the parlor. He heard her soft muted voice and then she was back to tell him it was Deputy Elmer Padgett on the line. Elmer apologized for interrupting his supper but just a few minutes ago there had been a head-on collision on the Dixie Highway about four miles north of town. Two carloads of kids. Three dead, four injured—two of them in awful bad condition. Both cars reeking of hooch.

“Slim called it in from Riviera,” Elmer Padgett said. “He’s back at the scene waitin for an ambulance. He thought you’d want to know one of the criticals is Commissioner Jensen’s daughter. Slim says she was in the backseat of one of the cars and, ah, her skirt was up around her waist and she wasnt wearin no underpants is what he said. The boy back there with her, his pants was wrapped around his ankles. He’s dead with a broke neck. Slim says it sure enough looks like they was goin at it when the cars hit.” Elmer chortled. “Hell, man, I can think of worse ways to go.”

“Quit,” Sheriff Bob said. “It aint funny.”

“No sir, I’m sorry.”

Bob Baker sighed. Damn cars. Kids could go off to who knew where and do every kind of wickedness in them. The automobile was the ruination of morality in the young, no question about it. And now Commissioner Jensen’s daughter—a situation as much political as tragic. Elmer had been right to call him about it. He’d have to do it all himself, write up the accident report and go to the commissioner’s house to break the news to him in person and then visit the newspaper office and make sure that the business about drinking and nakedness and who knew what else did not get into print. It looked to be a long night ahead—and a nasty one, judging by the sound of the wind in the trees and the flicker of sheet lightning at the window.

Elmer said he was calling from headquarters and could stop by for him unless he wanted to take his own car. Sheriff Bob said to come get him, then hung up and went to the den to put on his boots and gun and get a rain slicker. Annie took his half-finished supper off the table and covered it and set it in the over. She asked him to call home before he started back so she could warm it up by the time he arrived.

“Probably be awful late before I get this wrapped up,” he said. “You’re like to be sleepin.”

“I dont mind,” she said.