Red Grass River

SIX

July 1914

ON A CLEAR HOT SUMMER SUNDAY JUST DAYS AFTER JOHN ASHLEY debarked at Tampa and was driven home to Twin Oaks by his brother Bob, the family celebrated his return with a great feast and invited every friendly acquaintance in the county. In the shade of the wide live oaks whole pigs crackled and dripped from their spits above open fires tended by Old Joe’s Negro help. Huge racks of beef ribs sizzled on thick iron grills over firepits. Puncheon tables held heaping platters of smoked mullet, roast backstrips of venison, fried catfish, skin-crisped sweet potatoes. There were huge steaming kettles of clams, of oysters, of corn on the cob, of seasoned swamp cabbage which is the heart of palm. There were pots of grits and of greens of several kinds, bowls of hush puppies, baskets of boiled turtle eggs. There was cornbread, flour biscuits, Seminole bread made of coontie starch. There were jars of molasses, jellies of guava and strawberry and seagrape. There were barrels of mangoes and limes. Several tables held kegs of beer and Old Joe had brought in a wagonload of his best jugged whiskey.

The huge party ate and drank, talked and laughed and told tales of every sort. It danced to the music of a string band out of Stuart and Old Joe took a turn with them on his fiddle and Bill Ashley plunked his banjo for several sets. Children ran about in shrieking play or danced at the periphery of the packed-dirt clearing where the adults reeled and waltzed and square-danced and dogs ran yapping through the crowd. A dozen smoking smudge pots stood at intervals between the house and the surrounding swamp to keep down the mosquitoes.

John Ashley sat at one end of the family table and Old Joe at the other. Bob Ashley sat by John and told him about Bob Baker’s recent marriage. “She’s a Georgia girl,” he said. “They say she’s real nice. I saw her in West Palm one time. Goodlookin thing—way too goodlookin for the likes of him. I figure she musta took pity on him is why she married him. Maybe she figured a one-legged man wouldnt never get nobody to marry him and she just felt good and sorry for him.”

“Maybe she was just good and drunk,” John Ashley said.

“Maybe she’s just good and dumb,” Bob said. He leaned closer and lowered his voice and said, “But look here, Johnny, tell me more about Aunt July’s.”

With them sat their twelve-year-old nephew Hanford Mobley who idolized both these uncles who treated him like the young man he believed he already was. Earlier that day they had let him go with them into the pineywoods to watch them have a shooting contest. They had fired twelve shots each at pine cones they lined up on a fallen trunk and John had won by a score of twelve cones to eleven and laughingly claimed that all the pussy he’d had these past two years had made his shooting eye even sharper than it always was. John then let Hanford Mobley have a turn with his pistol and the brothers stood astonished to discover that their slight small-boned nephew who had to use both hands to aim the big. .44 was a natural-born deadeye. The boy hit all twelve cones he shot at and didnt stop beaming the rest of the day. When they told old Joe about it he said of his grandson, “Hell yeah that sprout can shoot. Been thataway since he was eight or so. He’s a good one, that little fella. Aint afraid a the devil hisself neither. You ought see how he can use a knife.”

Now John Ashley grinned at his brother’s insistence on hearing more about his lickerish life at their aunt’s house in Galveston. “Hell, brother,” he said, “I done told you all there is to tell.” He ran a hand over the unfamiliar feel of the exposed back of his neck, which showed as pale as the narrow strip of shaved skin above each ear. The first thing Old Joe had said on seeing him after his absence of nearly two years was, “Boy, I dont what-all they think of hair like that on a man in Texas, but round here they wont know whether to kick your ass or kiss you. Ma! Get me the shears and razor!”

John Ashley had also told Bob earlier about the Galveston bank robbery. His brother had whooped and clapped him on the shoulder and called him a laying sack. John then took him into his room at the rear of the house and pulled a suitcase from under the bed and opened it and showed his brother the more than one thousand dollars that yet remained of the take. Bob’s big-eyed flabbergast struck him as comic and he laughed and said, “Lying sack, hey?”

Bob asked what in purple hell had possessed him to rob a damn bank, and John tried to explain about the mixed-up feeling he’d had when he was fishing on the beach one day and thought about Bobby Baker holding a lifetime grudge and maybe even wanting him dead. Tried to explain his frustration over not knowing what to do about it but that he felt he had to do something, something daring, even though he couldn’t say why. “Hell, I dont know,” John Ashley said. “I dont know why I did it. All I know is I felt pretty damn good after.”

“You just up and decided that robbin a bank was a way to make yourself feel better, hey?” Bob said, grinning. “Shitfire, I guess it’s lots of fellas’d feel better about things if they got away with robbin a bank.”

John Ashley said, “Well…yeah.” He was not sure he could ever explain the thing clearly even to himself. And so he changed the subject: “Let me tell you about somethin that damn sure makes any man feel a whole lot better, bubba. I mean, it’s some nice little business Aunt July’s got there….”

And now Bob still had not heard enough about their aunt’s establishment in Texas and his brother’s time in it. “Was you tellin me true?” he said in low voice, glancing down the table to ensure no ear other than young Hanford Mobley’s was listening in. “About havin run of the place? You really and truly could have any them girls you wanted?”

“Any damn time they wasnt workin on the house clock,” John Ashley said.

“You lyin sack,” Bob Ashley said, grinning hugely.

“I had me my first piece last month,” young Hanford Mobley said. “Wasnt nothin so dang special.”

His uncles turned to him and said together, “You lyin sack!” and the boy reddened with his lie and he shrugged and could not restrain his grin.

At the other end of the table Old Joe as holding forth about the stupidities of the legal system. He had over the past two years grown steadily angrier that his son was being forced to live apart from his family for no reason but having killed some Indian. “The law,” Old Joe said, “is a goddamned horse’s ass.”

“Hear, hear,” said Gordon Blue, raising his glass in a toast. The dapper goateed lawyer was the only person present wearing a suit and tie. The day before, he and Old Joe had explained to John Ashley how they intended to get him out from under the law’s deep shadow.

“If your daddy here hadnt kept it from me for so long that he knew where you were and how much he wanted to have you back home,” Gordon Blue had said, “we wouldve had you back long before now.” He gave Old Joe a sidewise look. “But nooo. Joe couldnt bring himself to trust anyone, not even Old Gordy, no matter that I’ve helped him a time or two in worse trouble than this. Couldnt tell me about it till a few weeks ago, could you Joseph?”

Old Joe’s smile was small. “I dont know why the whole thing wasnt plain to me as the nose on my face till I talked to Gordy about it,” he said to John Ashley. “The simple fact is, they got to give you a jury trial—and what jury’s gonna convict you in Palm Beach County? Besides, the state’s havin trouble findin their main witness, aint they? The only ones to testify against you will be Sheriff George and them who heard the breed accuse you. But aint nobody seen that breed since you been gone—or goin to, neither.”

Bob Ashley chuckled and said, “I dont guess he’s gonna do any testifyin, no sir.” On the drive home from Tampa, he had proudly recounted to John Ashley how he’d tracked down Jimmy Gopher in the Everglades and put a round through his head at nearly two hundred yards. John Ashley had looked at him partly in surprise that he could speak so easily of having killed a man and partly in admiration of the same thing—and of his utter confidence in having done the right thing. Bob said, “Hell man, he’d of spoke against you in court. It wasnt nothin else to do. What the hell, man, he anyway had it comin.”

“The point is,” Old Joe now said, “most ever man in the county’s on our side in this thing and thats a fact. Aint none at em gonna say you guilty if they get on the jury.”

John Ashley looked at his brothers gathered by the door and listening and all of them grinning except Bill the elder who never was one to smile except sometimes when playing his banjo. He turned to his father and said, “Not everybody in the county’s our friend, Daddy. What if some of them get on the jury?”

“I wouldn’t be too concerned about that,” Gordon Blue said. “There’s a story been going around for months that this Gopher fellow who accused you to the police was set upon in the Everglades by persons unknown who were sympathetic to your cause. Supposedly he was dismembered with an ax and his remains fed to the alligators.” Gordon Blue made a face of distaste and gave a little theatrical shiver and then smiled widely. “Although the story isnt true, it is true that this person seems to have fallen off the earth, and I suspect that no potential juror will be able to completely ignore the possible implications of the tale.”

The Ashley men all looked at one another and grinned. Gordon Blue smiled and poured a touch of bourbon from his gilded flash into his cup and then took a small sip. He cleared his throat and said to John Ashley: “It’s all arranged. Tomorrow your father and I deliver you to Sheriff George Baker at the county jail in West Palm. The trial opens on Tuesday, so you’ll be there only one day before is starts and then for only as long as it lasts, which I dont believe will be very long. Sheriff George has also agreed that you wont be handcuffed on your promise not to attempt escape.”

He paused to light a cigarette, one of the tailormade Chesterfields he bought by the case in Chicago. He exhaled a blue plume of smoke and smiled at John Ashley. “In a week, two at the most, you’ll be free and clear.”

And so Old Joe had laid out that Sunday’s repast at Twin Oaks for all local friends of the family, all of whom were in John Ashley’s jury pool. And on that Sunday afternoon John Ashley ate and drank and danced and swapped stories with his brothers. And after sundown he and Bob drove to West Palm Beach and went to Miss Lillian’s.

The madam was surprised to tears to see him again and greeted him like the Prodigal returned. Then he went upstairs and tiptoed to Loretta May’s room and looked in the open door and saw the tub of steaming water before he saw her sitting in a yellow shimmy at the window and facing out into the darkness. Her blonde hair had grown to below her shoulder blades but the breeze through the window carried to him her familiar smell of peaches. He thought her more beautiful than ever and was content to stand there in silence and look upon her.

Without turning she said, “About time you got here, you bad ole gator-skinner you.”

He grinned and felt himself flush, as though she’d caught him at something sneaky. “How’d you know I was standin here? How’d you know it was me?”

She laughed like a small bell and stood and turned smiling and opened her arms to him.

After the bath and the powdering and after they’d made love twice they lay entwined and smoked cigarettes and spoke very little. When they’d first met he’d asked her what pleasure she got out of smoking since she couldn’t see the smoke and she’d said, “I cant?”—a response that so confused him he let the question go. Now he was surprised that she did not ask where he’d been these past two years. And yet, somehow, he felt she knew.

“I done somethin while I was away,” he whispered, feeling strangely as if he were asking a question of her as much as telling her something. “Somethin I hadnt ever done before.”

She nuzzled his neck and murmured, “I know. Made the world spin a little faster for a while, huh? Made everything a little more excitin.”

He drew back so he could look into her face in the weak reflected light of the torches in the courtyard below the window. Her eyes were shut. “You know what I done?” he said. “You dont know what I done.”

She opened her eyes and turned her face toward him. “Yes I do—and I know more than that, boy. I even know what you’re gonna do. Bet you a dollar I know what you gonna do.”

“Cant nobody shine the future. That ain’t but swamp nigger hoo-doo.”

She felt for his face and put her fingers to his lips and said, “You’re gonna have a real good time with a blind girl real soon is what you’re gonna do. Now, you think I’m wrong?” He grinned under her fingers and then she grinned too.

She sat up and straddled his thighs and her hands stroked him and in an instant he was ready. She moved up and fit herself onto him and brought his hands up to her breasts as she slowly rolled her hips. he groaned with pleasure.

“I guess,” she said, “I won me a bet.”

“Lord girl,” he gasped, “I believe you sure enough got what they call the sight.”

She giggled and worked herself hard against him. They laughed and made love deep into the night.

And in the morning he went to jail.

The jailhouse was a single-story stone-and-concrete structure surrounded by a fence of chickenwire eight feet high and set thirty yards from the building all the way around. Sheriff George Baker met them at the gate. He and Gordon Blue exchanged a few official words and each man signed a paper and then the sheriff smiled at John Ashley and said, “How do, John. Been a while. You lookin fit.”

“What say, Sheriff George,” John Ashley said. He reached into the motorcar and withdrew the freshly cleaned white suit he would wear in court. Then he stood before his father and they looked at each other for a moment and then Old Joe turned to Sheriff George and said, “You wont to takin him to court in handcuffs you said. It’s the deal.”

“Not as long as he gives me his word he wont try and escape,” Sheriff George said.

“You got it, sir,” John Ashley said.

Sheriff George nodded and said, “Well then, let’s get inside.”

John Ashley looked at his father and Old Joe said, “Go on now. You’ll be out quick enough and we’ll be done with this horseshit.” John Ashley nodded and then followed the sheriff up the walk to the jail. Sheriff George rapped on the heavy front door with its iron knocker and there came the sound of metal sliding on metal and a loud clack and the door swung open.

The entered into an administration room containing a few scattered desks and filing cabinets. There were two uniformed policemen in the room. One was a clerk working at a typewriter, and the other, sitting in a swivel chair with his booted feet crossed on the desk, was Bobby Baker. He was smoking a cigar and grinning at John Ashley.

“That’s Norman,” Sheriff George said, indicating the clerk. “Hang your suit on that wallhook yonder and empty your pockets on Norman’s desk. We’ll give you the suit in the morning for court.” He saw John Ashley staring at Bob Baker and said, “Bobby’s jailer now.”

“Hello, John,” Bob Baker said. “How you keepin?”

“Just fine, Bobby. How about youself?”

“Well hell, never better,” Bob Baker said.

He saw that Bob Baker’s brown boots were new and low-cut in the style that civil engineers favored and each was embossed with a white star on the instep. A portion of wooden ankle was visible under the real ankle crossed over it. He seemed to have grown larger since John Ashley had last seen him—not fatter but thicker through the chest and arms. His face looked harder, his eyes. His hair was thick as ever. He held the cigar in his right hand and the knuckles were freshly skinned. He laughed at John Ashley’s scrutiny of him. “By the way, John,” he said through a blue billow of smoke, “you owe me a gun.”

“Any man loses his gun to another aint never owed it back,” John Ashley said.

Bob Baker’s smile held but his face assumed a rosy tint. Norman the clerk looked over and saw their eyes and quickly looked away. Sheriff George glanced at them with his brows raised. “Do like I said, John.”

John Ashley hung up his suit and then emptied his pockets on the desktop—some coins, seven dollars in bills, a sack of tobacco and cigarette papers, a box of matches, and a pocket knife. Norman pushed the tobacco and papers and matches back to John Ashley and carefully counted the money and entered the total amount on a property slip and made notation too of the pocket knife. Then he took a large brown envelope from a desk drawer and wrote John Ashley’s name on it in tall letters with a fountain pen and put the money and the knife in it and sealed it and put it back in the drawer.

Sheriff George headed for a door on the other side of the room and said, “Come along here, Johnny.” John Ashley followed and Bob Baker got up from the desk and came behind.

The door opened to the jail’s cell block in the center of which was a single steel-barred cell that looked exactly like a cage about the size and shape of a railroad car. It was illuminated from above by three dangling electric light bulbs and contained a row of double-tiered bunk beds and a two-hole board over low rough-hewn cabinets in which the shitcans were set. In addition there were a half-dozen smaller cells built into the rear stone wall, the door to each one open wide and showing them to be empty. The room smelled of waste and disinfectant and was ventilated only by whatever fitful breezes might come through the small barred windows set high in the walls. At the moment only two other prisoners were in the main cell. The sheriff unlocked the door and John Ashley entered the cage and the sheriff locked the door behind him.

“Breakfast six o’clock, Johnny,” she sheriff said as he started for the door. He paused and looked back at Bob Baker, who was lingering near the cage.

“I’ll be along, Daddy,” Bob Baker said.

“Dont devil the boy, son,” Sheriff George said, and then went out in the front room.

John Ashley stood near the bars with his hands in his pockets and watched Bobby Baker roll a cigarette and light it. One of the other prisoners was standing against the far wall of bars, smoking and gazing at his hand closed around a bar and paying them no attention. The other inmate lay in an upper bunk with an arm over his eyes.

Now Bobby leaned on one elbow against the cell bars and smiled at John Ashley. “Tell me somethin, Johnny: you ever see a man hung?” he asked.

“Yeah I have,” John Ashley said. “Just after, anyway.”

“A nigger, right?”

“Hard to say. By the time I saw him he’d been burned up so bad he didnt look like much of anything but a big chunk of charcoal.”

“That’s a nigger lynchin sure,” Bob Baker said. “I mean you ever seen a white man hung?”

“Guess not.”

Bob Baker smiled and took a drag on his cigarette. “I have,” he said. “Up in Saint Lucie County Jail, about a year ago. They hung a old boy for murder. Killed his partner in a moonshine business—cut his head off with a cane knife—and they gave him the rope. They built a gallows back of the jailhouse and before dawn they stood the fella up there and asked him did he have any last words and he just shook hid head. I’d been told he was a rough old boy but up on that gallows he didnt seem all that tough. Looked too scared to open his mouth—like he might of started cryin if he did. They put hood over his head and you could see the cloth suckin in and out against his mouth he was breathin so hard. His neck was sposed to break when they dropped him through the door but it didnt. They say thats what happens more than half the time, the neck dont break like it ought, and what happens then is the fella chokes to death. You shoulda seen the way he was jerkin and kickin ever which way, just like a damn fish on a hook. Makin sounds all wet and choky like water going down a mostly clogged drain. I bet he was gaggin and kicking for five minutes before he finally give up the ghost. And the smell! Lord Jesus! He couldnt help but shit his pants—I’m told they all do. But that aint the half of it, listen to this: the sumbuck got a hard on! I aint lyin. He got this boner in his pants you could see from all the way cross the room. They say some of em even shoot off and you can see the stain on their pants. Aint that a hoot? I mean to tell you, Johnny, hanging is just about the most godawful humiliatin way in the world for a man to die.”

Bob Baker leaned closer against the bars and said softly: “When they find you guilty, John, that’s what’s gonna happen to you.” He smiled genially, his aspect all bonhomie, then took a deep pull on his cigarette and dropped the butt on the floor and ground it under his heel. “Thought you might wanna have somethin to think about between now and then,” he said through an exhalation of smoke.

“Well dont get too way ahead of youself, Bobby,” John Ashley said, forcing a grin. “I aint hung yet. But I tell you what—even if they did hang me, leastways I’d still be able to stand up there on my own two legs, which is more than I can say for some.”

Bob Baker’s smile twitched and he blinked quickly several times. He stepped back from the bars—and then suddenly laughed like he’d been told a good joke. He put a fist to the side of his neck and then jerked the first straight up as though yanking on a noose and he crooked his head and struck out his tongue and crossed his eyes. He was still laughing as he went out the door.

The morning dawned hot and humid. To either side of the rising sun low heavy clouds looked streaked with fire. The courtroom filled early and the small room was murmurous with excitement as spectators fanned themselves against the heat. A weakling breeze sagged through the courtroom’s tall windows. A growing line of prospective jurors was already crowding the hallways and many of the veniremen were forced to wait outside in the shade of trees. Now the bailiff announced that court was in session, the Honorable H. P. Branning presiding.

Gordon Blue had informed the Ashleys that Circuit Court Judge Branning had a reputation for no-nonsense legal proceeding, a factor in their own favor. “Gramling’s going to challenge so many of the jury candidates,” Blue had told Joe Ashley, referring to John Gramling, the state prosecutor, “that he’ll use up all his peremptories by tomorrow. In the meantime Branning will get his fill of him for slowing things down so much. By the time the jury’s seated we’ll have them and the judge on our side.”

And so did the first day of the trial go. Of the twenty juror candidates questioned, Gramling challenged seventeen and did not seem happy with the other three. Gordon Blue challenged none. Near the end of the day Judge Branning called both lawyers to the bench and asked the state’s attorney whether he intended to continue to weight down the proceedings with still more challenges tomorrow. “The peremptory is not an infinite privilege, Mr. Gramling,” the judge said. Gramling said he was fully aware of that—and aware as well that every potential juror so far, with a single exception, was a friend of the Ashleys, and the one exception was so clearly intimidated by the family he couldnt even look the defendant in the eye and could hardly be relied on to be impartial. The judge looked at Gordon Blue who shrugged in the manner of one baffled utterly by the state’s argument. After warning Gramling not to test his patience the judge adjourned court for the day.

As Bob Baker led John Ashley by an arm toward a side exit, John Ashley looked over at his family seated behind the defense table. His father nodded to him and his mother and sisters blew kisses and the twin brothers Frank and Ed each showed him a fist of encouragement. Bill was scribbling in a notebook—having been recruited as a secretarial assistant by Gordon Blue. Bob Ashley shouted, “We gone beat em, Johnny!”

Then he was outside and in Bob Baker’s Model T and they were clattering down the road on the short drive back to jail. As when they’d come to court in the car that morning—he in his fresh white suit and Bob Baker in a starched uniform and wearing his holstered and strapped-down pistol on the side away from John Ashley—they made the ride in silence.

The following day was mostly a repetition of the first—one venire-man after another was eliminated from the jury pool by Gramling’s peremptories. Judge Branning’s irritation grew. When he recessed for lunch he brought the gavel down like he was trying to break it. The early afternoon saw still more candidates dismissed by Gramling’s challenges. The judge drummed his fingers.

The sky framed in the windows began to darken with gathering clouds. The wind kicked up and carried on it the smell of the coming storm and brought to the courtroom some relief from the stifling heat. Thunder rolled in the distance. The first scattered raindrops were smacking the roof and the raised shutters when Gramling at last used up the last of his peremptory challenges. The judge heaved a theatrical sigh and said perhaps they could now proceed at quicker pace.

But Gramling then filed a motion for change of venue, citing the pertinent statutes permitting the action. He wanted the trial moved to Dade County, where, he argued, there was much better chance for the state to seat an impartial jury.

Judge Branning rubbed his face with his hands and said he’d take the motion under advisement and rule on it first thing in the morning. Gordon Blue muttered. “Damn!” and the look on his face made John Ashley’s chest go tight. The judge motioned the bailiff to the bench for a private word with him. John Ashley wondered if Blue had considered that the judge might get so fed up with Gramling he’d let the trial go elsewhere.

His father was whispering to Bill in obvious agitation as his other three sons leaned in to listen. Blue patted John Ashley’s shoulder and said, “Don’t worry, they cant do this.” He began gathering his papers. “I’m going to talk with your daddy. I’ll see you in the lockup later.” The judge banged his gavel and adjourned for the day.

In the clamor of voices that rose behind the judge’s exit from the room, John Ashley was suddenly certain the trial was going to go to Dade County—to Miami—to a jury of complete strangers. His mother scowled at John Gramling who took no notice as he gathered his papers. Old Joe was listening to Bill. Bob waved to catch John Ashley’s attention and pointed at Bob Baker who was talking to the bailiff. John Ashley did not understand what Bob was signifying but Bob and Frank and Ed were already hastening from the courtroom.

Bob Baker came over and took him by the arm and said, “Let’s go.”

The rain was coming down hard now and they were sodden by the time they reached the open-sided Ford. John got in and Bob Baker cranked the motor and then got in and adjusted the spark lever and they started back to the jail. The air shook with thunder and the sky was rent bright with lightning. The trees whipped in the wind. They drove along in the jouncing car with mud slapping up under the floor-boards. John Ashley stared glumly at the gray world passing and felt that all matters of import to him had already been decided and none of them in his favor.

With the storm had come an early twilight. Sheets of water swept across the narrow road and soaked them all the more in the open car. The jailhouse came into view, the light above the door already on and glowing hazy yellow in the gloom. John Ashley cut his eyes everywhere but saw no sign of deliverance.

Bob Baker parked the car alongside the fence gate and cut off the motor which chugged for several more revolutions before shutting down. Wisps of steam issued from under the hood covers. John Ashley slid out of the car and scanned the area as Bobby worked a key into the gate lock.

“Come on!” Bob Baker hollered through a crash and roll of thunder, beckoning irritably as he swung open the gate. John Ashley entered the compound and Bobby re-locked the gate and they slogged through the mud up to the jailhouse which loomed now in John Ashley’s eyes like an enormous crypt.

As Bob Baker reached for the iron knocker to summon Norman to unlock the door John Ashley acted on his impulse of the moment and grabbed him from behind in a headlock and wrestled him away from the entry.

Bob Baker snarled a muffled curse under John Ashley’s arm and became a bucking writhing frenzy trying with both hands to break free. But John Ashley held the arm clamped round his head as hard as he could and they reeled and staggered and splashed about like mad dancers in the muddy rain. And now Bob Baker was clawing at John Ashley’s binding arm with one hand and trying to unholster his pistol with the other and John Ashley got the leverage and purchase he was struggling for and lunged toward the jail wall and rammed the crown of Bob Baker’s head against it. Bobby went slack and sagged full weight in the vise of his arm and John Ashley feared he might have killed him. So tightly was his arm locked that he had to force it open with his other hand before he could let Bob Baker fall.

He stood gasping, massaging his aching arm, watching the jailhouse door in expectation of Norman’s appearance, but the door remained shut. The wind had died of a sudden and the rain was falling straight down and spattering high and loud. He saw now that Bobby’s face was in the mud and if he was not already dead he was going to drown. He knelt and pushed him onto his side and Bob Baker sucked a huge muddy mouthful of air. He was yet unconscious and blood ran from his hair and rubied the mud under his head. The hold-down strap of his holster was unfastened and John Ashley for the second time in their lives relieved him of his gun, once again a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson. He checked the loads and then stuck the pistol in his waistband.

“Johnny!”

He looked to the yard gate and saw his brothers Bob and Ed coming on the run, each time pistol in hand, and behind them, in the driving rain, a shimmying Model T emitted vague smoke from its exhaust pipe and Frank was behind the wheel and was looking out for anyone coming from either direction in the road.

Bob kicked and kicked at the gate lock and John Ashley was about to yell out for him to hold on, he’d get the gate key out of Bobby’s pocket, but Ed was already backing up a dozen feet and now running at the fence and throwing his full weight against it and a fifteen-foot portion of chickenwire ripped off its support posts and scooped down into the mud as Ed sprawled on the fallen fence and regained his feet and here came Bob behind him laughing raucously and yelling, “Whooo! Some damn jail, aint it? Fucken Chickenwire!”

They clapped him on the shoulder and grinned hugely and he felt himself grinning back. “We’d been here waitin to jump the sonofabitch,” Ed said, “but Frankie run off the road about a quarter-mile back and it took a while to get the machine out the damn ditch.”

“He dead?” Bob asked, nudging Bobby Baker with his toe. Bob Baker groaned but his eyes were still closed.

“You all get back to the car,” John Ashley said. “Best he dont see you here. Go on now.”

“Hell, I aint scared of this mullethead,” Bob said. “Let him see me all he wants.”

“It’s got nothin to do with bein scared of him, Bob,” John Ashley said. “Right now he aint got a thing on any you, only me. Let’s keep it that way. Get on to the car and I be right there. I want a word with this sumbitch.”

“He’s right,” Ed said, tugging on Bob’s sleeve. “C’mon, let’s get.” Bob spat and hustled his balls and looked from one to the other of them and said, “Well all right, hell,” and went off with Ed through the rain and over the downed portion of fence and got in the car with Frank.

John Ashley knelt and turned Bobby Baker on his back and shook him by the shoulder and patted his face and tugged repeatedly on his ears and in a moment Bobby coughed wetly and choked and rolled toward John Ashley who jumped up and away to avoid the gush of vomit he heaved up.

Bobby gasped and opened his eyes and saw John Ashley grinning down at him. He started to sit up but John Ashley put his foot against his shoulder and pushed him onto his back again. “Just you stay there.”

“Son…bitch,” Bobby muttered. He managed to get up on all fours before John Ashley kicked him in the ribs and the air whooshed out of him and he fell on his side with eyes wide and blood running from his hair and down the side of his face and his mouth working for breath. John Ashley squatted and grabbed a fistful of his hair and turned his face up into the rain.

“So I’m gonna hang, hey?” John Ashley said. “Gonna shit my pants? I told you not to get so ahead of yourself, didnt I?” He yanked Bob Baker over onto his stomach and pushed his face into the mud for several seconds and then yanked his head up again by the hair. Bob Baker snorted and spat mud and tried weakly to wrest free and John Ashley punched him in the back of the neck. “I wouldn’t try and make a fight of it just now, I was you,” he said.

A piercing whistle he recognized as Bob’s cut through the rain and he looked at the idling Ford. The rain was falling harder now and he could see his brothers as only vague forms within the car and he knew Bobby would not recognize them if he should look their way. Bob Baker cursed lowly and tried to pull John’s hand off his hair and roll over. John Ashley released him and got to his feet and thought to kick him again but the sight of his bloody head and the sound of his gasping decided him against it. The man was beat, so let him lay. He turned and ran for the fence and clambered over the skewed chickenwire and loped to the car and the open door waiting for him.

And Bob Baker, bleeding and breathless in the mud, heard him laughing and laughing as he made away.

He confided the details of the escape to no one but his father, and in addition to the warrants on John Ashley for murder and escape from custody, Sheriff George Baker had also wanted one for assault on a police officer. But Bob Baker did not want the assault known publicly and his father had deferred to his wish that they keep it to themselves. In his official report Bob Baker asserted that John Ashley had broken his word not to escape and bolted away into the rainy darkness when they got back to the jailyard from the courthouse. He said he could have shot him down but he was not one to shoot an unarmed man, not even a fleeing prisoner, not if he had not yet been convicted of a crime. Because he did not remove his hat in public during the entire time he wore a bandage on his crown, no one but his father and his wife Annie—who’d been the one to tend his wound—ever saw evidence of the beating he’d taken.

As she ministered to his bloody scalp Annie had asked what happened but he’d only looked at her and she’d questioned him no further. She’d come to know him for a moody man best left alone when withdrawn into himself.

That night he made love to her despite the pain of his throbbing head—made love with a passion near to ferocity and the woman in his mind was not his wife but a girl long gone. Two months later Annie happily informed him that she was carrying a child. He was delighted and said they would name it after his father. Annie made a mock face of distaste but said all right, but if it was a girl she wanted to name it after her favorite aunt. Bob Baker said fine, whatever the name it was fine with him. Annie’s smile at him then had been wide and warm and full of love. “Good,” she said. “I just love the name Julie.”

Seven months later she gave birth to the girl. Bob Baker smiled on his wife in the hospital room and gingerly cuddled the infant in his arms and cooed to her and called her his pretty little bird and evermore called her by that nickname rather than her Christian name. If his wife or the girl herself were ever curious about that, they neither one ever said.

Although John Ashley remained in the region, the Palm Beach sheriff was hard-pressed to arrest him. When Dade County went dry the year before, Joe Ashley’s moonshine business boomed, and now John Ashley was making regular runs to Miami to deliver his daddy’s hooch. Sheriff George knew that. But he was not on friendly terms with the Dade County sheriff and the Ashley family was. And he’d heard enough tales about the corruption in the Miami Police Department to know it would be useless to ask for its help.

There were steady reports of John Ashley sightings in the local region too—mostly in its portion of the Everglades. He was seen at Indian villages and at fishing and hunting camps from the north shore of Lake Okeechobee to the south end of the Loxahatchee Slough. But Sheriff George knew there was as much chance of catching John Ashley in the Devil’s Garden as there was of catching a hawk on the wing. He figured his best chance for an arrest would at the Ashley homestead, and so he posted a continuous surveillance on the Twin Oaks house. His deputies made their way to the Ashley property on foot through the piney swamp and took up positions among the trees from which they had a good view of the front of the house some forty yards distant. They reported seeing all the other Ashleys come and go at irregular intervals but never spied John among them.

One late evening a pair of motorcar headlamps came waggling along the trail leading from the highway to the Twin Oaks property and the two mosquito-plagued policeman watching from their post in the pines nudged each other excitedly and jacked rounds into their rifles. Then the front door of the house swung open and laid out a shaft of yellow lamplight bearing the elongated shadow of Ma Ashley as she came out to the top of the porch steps. She raised a shotgun and discharged both flaring barrels into the sky as if bent on felling the bright crescent moon. The carlights halted and swung about through the trees as the car wheeled tightly in reverse and then the lights extinguished and the two cops stood in the darkness and listened to the motor fade into the distance. And they heard too Ma Ashley’s laughter as she went back into the house with her shadow following behind and the length of jaundiced lamplight scooted after her just ahead of the shutting door.