Red Grass River

road ahead.

Clarence rummaged under the seats till he found the crank and then got out with it. He had to twirl the balky motor three times before it fired up.

“Hurry up, dammit!” Hanford said as Clarence held his hand to a headlamp light and examined a callus he’d ripped open with the crank.

Clarence got in and Hanford Mobley gunned the Model T ahead, smoothly and swiftly working leaves and pedals. The motor rapped sweetly and the car swayed as it picked up speed.

John Ashley laughed. “Whooo! Lookit this boy go! I hope you catch em, Hannie, but I hope they’re little fellas, cause you’re the one’s gonna brace em, you being the one who’s so hot to whip their ass and all.”

Hanford gave him a look. “I aint scared of em and I dont need you all’s help. I’ll brace their asses, you watch.”

“I got a dollar says old Hannie dont catch em before we hit the bridge,” Clarence Middleton said.

There were no takers and Hanford muttered, “You bastards, I’ll take the bet,” and the others laughed.

The road wound through the darkness and a heavy stand of pine and they had gone more than two miles before they caught sight of the single red taillight of the car ahead.

“There the sumbitches are!” Hanford said, and leaned forward on the steering wheel as if to lend more speed to the Ford.

“Damn if they aint movie right smartly their ownselfs,” Ray Lynn said. “They probably know Hardtime Hannie here’s after their ass.”

And now they saw a red light shining up ahead on the spit of land where the bridge began. The Dodge slowed as it went out onto the spit and its lights closed in to illuminate a red lantern fixed to a chain hang across the foot of the bridge. The car rolled up to within a few feet of the lantern and stopped.

Hanford Mobley was laughing as they reached the spit and he slowed the Ford. “You mulletheads sure missed the chance of a easy dollar,” he said. “Pay up, Ray!” He brought the car to a halt a few feet behind the Dodge. A pale of faces looked back at them though the car’s rear window.

“Whoever the hell closed off the bridge,” Ray Lynn said as he handed a dollar over the front seat to Hanford Mobley, “you oughta give em half this for the help.”

“Well now you caught em, let’s see you whip their ass,” John Ashley said. “They just sittin there waitin on you.”

The driver of the Dodge was a young man named Ted Miller and the friend with him was S.O. Davis, whom some called So-So despite his hatred of the nickname. They had been to a dance in Fort Pierce earlier that Saturday evening but were disappointed by the paucity of pretty girls and so decided to drive around and sip from their shine jug and see what adventures the night might bring. After an hour of aimless driving and talking about girls, they headed for home in Sebastian. They were almost to Davis’s house when So-So said maybe they ought pay Angie Cambone a visit. Angie Cambone lived in a shack across the river and was reputed to do the trick for a dollar. Neither of them had ever even seen her but they’d heard of her since early adolescence—and long heard the old joke that she was so ugly she had a sneak up on a glass to get drink of water. Miller gave Davis a thin look and said a man had to be hornier than a billygoat to go to Angie Cambone. Davis said he didnt know about Miller but he himself was about as horny as a damn herd of billygoat. They looked at each other and laughed and Miller admitted that he was so horny he didnt care if Angie did look like her momma’d sat on her face at birth, he was going to need a wheelbarrow to get his hard-on from the car to Angie’s door. He goosed the Dodge down the dirt road and made a tight turn onto the Dixie Highway and neither of them even took notice of the Ford that had to brake sharply to avoid hitting them.

They were arguing about which of them would go first with Angie when they saw the red light ahead. “What the hell’s this?” Miller said. He slowed the Dodge and as they drew closer they saw it was a red lantern hooked to a chain hung across the entrance to the bridge.

Davis groaned. “Of all the damn times to close the bridge.”

Miller braked the car a few feet from the chain. The headlamps cast their yellow beams onto the empty bridge planks beyond. “Shoot, I dont see nothin wrong with it, do you?” Miller said. “How come they closed it I wonder.”

Headlights fell over them from the rear and only now did they become aware of the car closing up behind them. “I want you to look here at this sumbuck who’s gonna have to back around before we can,” Miller said.

Davis looked back at the car coming to a stop directly behind them and said, “Might could be some ole boy even hornier’n us on his way to see Angie. Boy, is he gonna be chafed to find out he cant get across.”

The driver’s door of the car behind them swung open and a small vaguely silhouetted man stepped out.

Flashlight beams suddenly blazed from the shrubbery on both sides of the road and lit up the interior of the car behind them and Miller and Davis saw three men yet in the car and the small man outside—he looked hardly more than a boy—was wide-eyed and starkly illuminated and immobile as a jacklit deer.

“STAND FAST YOU SONOFABITCH OR WE’LL BLOW YOUR DAMN HEAD OFF!”

“Oh Jesus, what?” Davis said.

“PUT YOUR HANDS UP NOW! NOW!—OR WE’LL BLAST YOU TO HELL!”

The man outside the car raised his hands up high, his eyes still fixed hugely into the bright flashlight beam.

“OUT OF THE CAR—ALL YOU—OUT—NOW! HANDS OUT WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM. MOVE, GODDAMNIT!”

“It’s a damn holdup,” Miller said, his voice high and tight. He quickly stripped off his watch and put it under the car seat, then dug into his pocket for the few dollars he had and tucked them under the seat too. Davis immediately did likewise, saying, “Oh sweet Jesus, oh lord.”

Behind them the other three men in the car all got out on the driver’s side and put their hands up. Men emerged from the dark foliage on both sides of the road and two of them held a flashlight in one hand and a pistol in the other and the rest were armed with rifles and they formed a loose semicircle around the surrendered men who stood squinting into the blinding glare of the flashlights.

“STAND FAST!”

Two of the armed men hastened into the blaze of light and quickly relieved the surrendered men of their pistols and then backed out of the lights again. And now another moved in with a fistful of handcuffs and began to manacle the prisoners’ hands behind them.

Miller opened his door and stepped out into the glare of headlights and raised his hands. One of the armed men came toward him and in the peripheral cast of the Ford’s headlights he saw that it was the St. Lucie high sheriff.

“Is your name Miller?” Merritt said. “Dont I know your daddy?”

Miller nodded jerkily. “Yessir, it’s—you do—I mean, thats my name, and Daddy fixed your boat—your outboard—a coupla months ago.”

The sheriff smiled. “Why your hands up, boy? Is it somethin I ought arrest you for?”

Miller dropped his hands. “No sir, no. I—we—didnt know what’s happenin. We thought we was bein held up.”

The sheriff laughed. “We just nabbed the goddamn Ashley Gang is what we done.” He pulled a .45 automatic out of his waistband and looked on it as though it were a special gift. “this here’s John Ashley’s gun.” He looked back at the men holding their hands up and laughed again. “That’s him on the right. See how the light shines on that glass eye?”

With his good eye narrowed against the flashlight beam John Ashley appeared to be holding a wink. He looked to Miller to be irritated but not at all afraid. So did the others.

“My car’s at the other end of the bridge,” Merritt said. “How bout a ride over?”

Davis hurried around to the backseat of the Dodge so the sheriff could sit up front and then Miller drove over the river. His headlights camp up on a St. Lucie County police car blocking the end of the bridge. Leaning on a front fender was a St. Lucie deputy.

Merritt asked where they were headed and Miller said they’d just been taking a ride and would go on back home now. Merritt and the other office got in the police car, Merritt behind the wheel, and the sheriff backed out of