Red Grass River

NINE

February 23, 1915

THEY GOT OUT OF THE CAR AT THE BEND IN THE HIGHWAY AND then Frank and Ed Ashley drove off to wait for them at the junction of the Lake Okeechobee Road. The four then walked the last quarter-mile into town on this midmorning of a brightly blue-skyed and cloudless Tuesday. The pinewoods fell away at the edge of town and they walked down the main street and nodded to storekeepers at their doors and tipped their hats to women on the sidewalk and paused to scratch the ears of friendly dogs. They waved casually to acquaintances driving past. All the while looking about for police cars or cops afoot and seeing neither.

There were three customers in the bank lobby and two tellers at work behind the cage and the manager sat at his desk behind a waist-high partition at the far end of the room. A pair of overhead fans hung motionless in the near-cool of this winter’s day. None looked up nor noticed the four men until Bob Ashley shut the door hard enough to rattle the glass. Kid Lowe went to the windows and drew the curtains. Bob turned the little cardboard sign hanging on the glass front door so that the “Closed” side faced outward and then he pulled down the rollered shade and stood with his back to it. His grin was titanic.

John Ashley withdrew a .44 caliber revolver from under his loose shirt and grinned at the uncomprehending faces turned his way and announced, “Gentlemen, this is a robbery. Do like we say and nobody gets hurt. Why hell, you all gonna have an adventure to tell all your friends.” His heart was at a gallop and he felt like laughing and thought maybe he was going crazy but so what. Claude Calder went to stand by the far wall with a pistol in his hand and his grin mirrored John Ashley’s.

“All right now. folk,” John Ashley said, gesturing at the customers, “sit on the floor. Sit on your hands.”

There was no guard. The Stuart bank had been in business for years and never before been robbed. In this region, all notion of bank holdups was yet the stuff of Wild West stories, of Jesse James and his ilk, not any part of real life.

Kid Lowe moved to the other end of the room and vaulted the low partition and put his pistol to the bank manager’s ear and told him to put his hands under his ass. The manager’s name was Ellers. He appeared mildly dazed and his mouth moved as though speech were but an untried concept. Kid Lowe smiled and said, “Just stay hushed, mister. We’ll tell you when to talk.” He picked up the telephone on the desk. “This the only one?” The manager nodded. Kid Lowe yanked the line out of its connection and lobbed the instrument clattering into the corner.

The two tellers were Wallace and Taylor and both of them knew the Ashley boys and Claude Calder. Wallace said, “John…you boys…why are you all doing this?”

John Ashley laughed. “Well, shit, A.R., why you think? Open up the gate.”

Wallace hastened to unlock the wire gate to the teller cage and John Ashley entered and handed him a croker sack and said, “Hold this open wide for Mister Taylor. Mister Taylor sir, you just empty all them little money drawers in the bag, hear? Do it now, sir, and do it quickly.”

“Sorry, mam,” Bob Ashley said loudly through the glass of the closed front door, holding aside slightly the roller shade and speaking to a woman insistently rapping on the doorglass with the handle of her parasol. “We’re closed up a few minutes. Doin a inventory. Be open again shortly.” The woman scowled and again rapped on the glass. Bob Ashley smoothed the roller shade back in place and turned his back on the door and shrugged at Claude Calder.

As Wallace and Taylor emptied the cash drawers John Ashley went into the bank’s small vault and searched it and discovered but a half-dozen packets of twenty-dollars bills. He came out and dropped the packets in the croker sack. Taylor was redfaced and whitehaired, big-bellied, breathing like a man at hard labor. John Ashley patted him on the shoulder and told him to take it easy, everything was going to be fine.

“Tell me somethin, A.R.,” John Ashley said, “is it true George and Bobby Baker keep their money in this bank?”

A. R. Wallace looked at him for a moment as though he didnt understand the question. Then said: “Well, they do keep an account here, but I believe their main bank is in West Palm Beach.”

John Ashley smiled and said, “Just so they got some here.”

The woman at the door was rapping harder now, her angry voice carrying through the doorglass: “…open this door, you…” The silhouette of a man in a suit and hat appeared beside her, the man trying to peek in through the slight gap between the roller shade and the frame of the door. Bob Ashley sidestepped over so as to block the man’s view with his back.

Now Wallace handed the sack to John Ashley who hefted it as though trying to determine the sum of its contents by its weight. “How much you figure?” he asked.

“It’s about seven thousand dollars you all got there,” Wallace said.

“Seven thousand!” Kid Lowe said. “I know it’s a lot more money than that in this place.”

“There isn’t any more,” Ellers the manager was able to say. “This is a small bank. We never have much cash on hand.” Kid Lowe put the muzzle of his .38 just under Ellers’ right eye and the man’s voice went high: “I swear to you it’s all there is!”

Kid Lowe said, “You banker sonofabitches dont do nothing but lie about money.”

“I swear…” Ellers said, his eyes shut tight but his head full of the terrible visions Kid Lowe’s pistol pressed into it.

“Leave him be,” John Ashley said. “He’s too scared to be lyin. I checked the vault myself. It’s no more money in there.”

“You lucky I aint in charge of this operation,” Kid Lowe said to Ellers and jabbed him hard in the forehead with the gun muzzle and raised a red spot there. “You be a dead man already for bein such a damn liar.”

John Ashley ordered all the people on the floor to lie down on their bellies with their faces in their hands. “You too, Mister Ellers, get on down there. Mister Taylor, sir. You, A.R., I know you got a motorcar. Where’s it at?”

“Around back.”

John Ashley nodded at Claude Calder who went out the rear door of the bank. Two minutes later Bob Ashley peering out the front window said, “Here’s Claude with the car.”

Another man had now arrived at the door and both men and the woman were trying to peek past Bob and into the bank lobby and the woman all the while tapping on the glass with the whalebone grip of her parasol.

“God damn that racket,” John Ashley said. “Get them sumbitches in here, Bob.”

Bob Ashley unlocked the door and swung it open and said, “All right, then, come on in.” But the three now saw the others on the floor and their faces went slack and they stood fast. One of the men started to turn away and nearly walked into Claude Calder who had come out of the Ford touring car idling in the street and stood before him, grinning wide and with a hand on the pistol butt jutting above his waistband. A pair of boys went running past, dodging the two men as unerringly as bats. Their mother came stalking behind, calling, “Albert! Samuel! You two are just askin for it!”

Claude Calder nodded toward the door and the two men and the woman went into the bank. The woman was middle-aged but not unattractive and Bob puckered his lips at her. She blushed and jerked her gaze away from him and he laughed. John Ashley told them to lie down in the same manner as the others. He asked Bob how things looked outside.

“Aint nobody noticin nothin,” Bob Ashley said, looking out to the street. “I dont believe most people would take notice of a flyin elephant lessen it shit on their heads.”

“All right, then, let’s go,” John Ashley said. He tucked the sack of money under his arm like a tote of groceries. “Listen, you folk—there’s a fella with a rifle watching this door from the roof across the street. Anybody goes out that door before fifteen minutes gone by, you gone get a bullet in the brainpan and thats a promise. So you all wait, you hear? Fifteen minutes. And listen A.R., we’ll leave your car out by the Okeechobee Road, you hear?”

Wallace said he much appreciated it, his voice muffled for his face being in his hands.

They went out all together and Claude Calder got behind the wheel of the Ford and the Kid got in the front passenger seat with him. Bob and John Ashley got in the back and pulled the cartop up and Claude and the Kid fastened it in place on the windshield frame. Then Claude released the brake and pulled on the throttle lever as he stepped on the low-speed pedal and the car lunged into motion. They were all of them but the Kid grinning and Bob Ashley’s grin was the widest of them. “This how it felt in Texas, Johnny?” he wanted to know. “Good as this?”

John Ashley laughed. “About like this, yeah.”

Claude Calder eased up on the throttle and worked the clutch pedal and the planetary transmission shifted with a lurch and the car rattled down the street. Kid Lowe turned around in his seat and said, “I dont know what-all you think’s so damn funny. We didnt get but seven thousand dollars and I know there was more money in that bank—I know there was.”

“I’ll be go to hell,” Bob Ashley said, suffused with good cheer. “Aint this the same little fella told us he never made more’n two thousand dollars from any of his big-time Chicago bank holdups—and here we get seven thousand and he’s complaining it aint enough.”

“Two thousand I get by myself is two thousand all for me,” Kid Lowe said. “Seven thousand I get with six other fellas aint but…I dont know what it is, but it aint no two thousand.”

They were almost to the end of town now and Claude Calder said, “Oh hell.” All eyes in the car followed his gaze ahead to the left side of the street and saw parked there in front of Wilson’s Cafe a county sheriff’s car and a Stuart Police Dept. car and standing in the doorway of the cafe was Bob Baker. He was not in uniform and was saying something to someone inside and laughing and turning now and stepping out on the sidewalk and putting a toothpick to his mouth. As their car came abreast of him two uniformed sheriff’s deputies and two Stuart policemen came out behind him. Bob baker looked at their passing car and then at its occupants and his smile held for a moment longer and his eyes followed after them. They all looked back at him and Bob Baker’s smile vanished.

“Kick this thing in the ass, Claude,” John Ashley said.

And here came one of the bank customers on the run and behind him came Ellers as Claude’s fingers busied themselves with the spark and gas levers and his foot worked the control pedal to drop the car into low gear and wind the engine higher and then he worked the pedal again and the motor issued a deep fluffing note and the car lunged forward and accelerated steadily. Even over the increased clatter of the Model T they could faintly hear the bankers shouting holdup, holdup, holdup. Women pulled small children to their skirts and hurried indoors as men came hustling out of the cafe and the barbershop and the hardware store.

Bobby Baker ran out to the middle of the street and raised his revolver and the other cops were pulling their weapons and now came the popping of pistols and bullets thonked into the back of the car and two rounds whooked through the car top and made starholes as they smashed through the windshield. Bob Ashley leaned out the right side of the car and fired back at the cops and they scattered in search of cover—all but Bobby Baker who stood his ground and aimed and fired as if he were taking target practice. Kid Lowe leaned over the front seat and fired at Bobby Baker in the receding distance through the cartop’s open rear window and John Ashley was firing as well but the car was jouncing so much he could not have said where his bullets homed. Kid Lowe’s pistol was inches from his ear and its reports deafened him to all else in the world.

Claude Calder hunkered over the steering wheel as if peering into bad fog, one hand on the wheel and the other still at the spark and gas levers. The Model T was now moving at thirty-five miles per hour and still gaining speed even as it shuddered so hard John Ashley was certain it was about to shake itself to pieces. A bullet ripped through the back of the cartop and flicked away a portion of Claude Calder’s right ear lobe and fashioned another starburst in the glass before him.

The pinewoods again loomed high on both sides of the road as the Model T sped into the curve and out of sight of the shooting policemen. The car leaned hard to the left and raised a tall roostertail of lime dust as it swung out wide to the edge of the highway at the top of a grassy incline and its right wheels almost left the ground as Claude Calder fought to keep it on the road. Just as the curve began to straighten out and the car leaned back toward a level pitch its left front wheel dipped into a hole in the shoulder and the car bounced high and yawed sidewise with the wheel fluttering wildly and everyone rose and fell and Kid Lowe’s head bounced against the cartop and his pistol discharged and the bullet angled into John Ashley’s head at the juncture of his left eye socket and the nosebone and passed through the hard palate and struck his lower right jaw and instantly filled his mouth with blood and bits of teeth and bone.

The car plunged down the roadside slope into the brush and went snapping through a half-dozen saplings before crashing into a thick pine—and all in the same moment Claude Calder’s forehead shattered the windscreen and the right front door slung open and Kid Lowe catapulted from it and just did miss hitting a tree and lit in a clump of palmettos and Bob Ashley lofted over the front seat and struck against the dashboard and felt one of his ribs stave and John Ashley slammed against the back of the front seat and crumpled to the floorboard.

He was yet conscious but his head felt strangely stuffed, his skull somehow askew. Blood overran his mouth and rained to the floor-board. He felt the vaguest pain. There was a loud hissing from the front of the car and now he remembered where he was and why. Claude Calder groaned. Bob Ashley grunting and cursing now and getting out of the car. Kid Lowe’s voice at the car door, saying, “You hit?” Bob Ashley saying, “I’m all right. Claude? Claude, you?” Claude saying he didnt think he was hit. Bob Ashley saying for Claude to get up on the road and see was anybody coming after them. Now the rightside rear door sprang open and Bob said, “Oh shit. Help me with him.”

Hands at his armpits. Lifting him, pulling him out of the car, turning him over and easing him to the ground on his back and he choked on the blood of his wound and turned his head to let the blood gush onto the grass. Then Bob was dragging him by the armpits to a pine tree a few yards away, helping him to sit up with his back against the trunk. Blood running off his chin and sopping the front of his shirt. His left eye throbbing now, its vision redly hazed but functioning. Bib looking close at it—then touching his jaw and pain bursting incandescent in his skull and he flinched from Bob’s hand.

Bob asked if he was hit anywhere else and he was able to say quite clearly, “No.”

“July missed that eye,” Bob said. “Dont know if you been hit twice or one bullet went through your whole entire head to end up in your mouth like that.” He smiled weakly. “Lucky for you it was in the head, hey? Not much to hit in there.” And then: “That goddamn Bobby Baker!”

“Wasnt Bobby’s doin,” Kid Lowe said. He stood over them and told what happened.

“Well, God damn it,” Bob Ashley said, glaring up at him. Kid Lowe looked off to the woods.

“Aint his fault,” John Ashley said. His voice deeply nasal, his tongue clumsy and feeling like an alien appendage. He marveled that he could talk at all, never mind with clarity.

And now here came Claude Calder on the run and shouting, “They’re coming! Both damn cars!”

“Let’s get our ass in the swamp the other side of his pineywood,” Bob Ashley said. He tried to help his brother to his feet but John Ashley felt the ground undulate and he almost passed out from the effort of trying to stand. He slumped back against the pine trunk and waved his brother away. “Go! Go on!” he said, his voice gargled with blood. “I be arright, Go!”

“I aint leaving you!” Bob Ashley said. They could hear the police cars closing in.

“GO!” John Ashley said. “Won’t help nothin they catch you too. GO!”

“Come on, Bob,” Kid Lowe called from the edge of the pines. He held the croker sack of money. “Cant help him if you aint free. Come on!” And now Claude Calder was beside the Kid and the two of them turned and vanished into the trees.

“Go on, bubba—Goddamn it, GO!” John Ashley said, pushing at his brother. The police cars came shrilling around the curve into view and Bob Ashley said, “Shit!” and bolted for the trees.

The cop cars braked hard to a halt, raising a cloud of limerock dust. The driver’s door of the sheriff’s car swung open and the driver came out with a pistol in hand and from around the other side of the car came the other deputy and Bob Baker and both of them with shotguns. Now the Stuart policemen got out of their car too and stood beside the county officers and all of them looked down the grassy incline at the figure of John Ashley watching them from where he sat under the pine. John Ashley raised his hands slightly to show them he was not armed. He was sure they were going to shoot him anyway. He was conscious of the feel of the ground under him, the swell and fall of his chest with each breath, his heartbeat pulsing steadily against his ribs. He brushed the blood from his eye.

Bob Baker said something to the others and they started down the grade, spreading out and moving slowly. All of them keeping their weapons trained on the wrecked Model T but for Bob Baker who held his twelve-gauge pointed at John Ashley’s chest.

“Anybody in that car?” Bob Baker said as he drew near. John Ashley shook his head and pain streaked through his skull like a cat afire.

Bob Baker gave a hand signal and the others began shooting the Model T. They stormed it with buckshot and .38- and .45-caliber rounds and they emptied their weapons into it and reloaded and continued shooting and shooting and the car seemed to flinch and sag under the fusillade and its glass flung in shards and John Ashley who sat but a few feet from the vehicle covered his head with his arms and reflected that A.R. was going to be mighty dismayed when next he saw his car. The cops fired on the Model T for a full minute before they finally stopped. John Ashley lowered his arms and saw that he’d been cut on a elbow and felt now a stinging on his neck and put his hand to it and his palm came away bloodstained.

The car listed like a ship afounder. Its tires were shot to ruin, its bodyshell pocked like something diseased, its glasswork reduced to sparse jagged remnant, its top in tatters. The two Stuart cops advanced cautiously through a thin haze of gunsmoke with their revolvers raised. They carefully peered into the car and now one of them jerked open each door in turn and then the cops lowered their pistols and one called to Bob Baker that the car was empty.

Bob Baker went to John Ashley and squatted down beside him and leaned on his shotgun like a staff. He pushed back his straw hat and mopped the sweat from his face with a bandanna and smiled at John Ashley. John Ashley smiled back and his whole face felt numbly weighted and overwide. One of the county deputies started to come their way but Bob Baker waved him off and the deputy shrugged and looked about and then headed into the woods.

Bob Baker smiled. “Guess you right there’s nobody in the car,” he said. His gaze moved over John Ashley’s bloody and distorted face. “How you been keepin?”

“Doin all right, Bobby,” John Ashley said. “How bout youself?”

“Lot bettern you, by the look of things.” He leaned forward for a close examination of the wounds and John Ashley felt his breath warm on his face. “Pretty good shootin, hey?”

“Wasnt your bullet done it.”

“Hell it wasnt,” Bob Baker said. “Your face in the back window like that, I couldnt hardly miss. Had you square in my sights. But it wasnt really good shootin. I was tryin to blow your brains out.” The yellow teeth of his closeup grin were huge. “I seen that Calder boy doin the drivin. And your brother Bob, seen him too. Who’s the other one? The little fella?”

John Ashley shrugged.

“Whoo! Would you just look at this eye! How you seein out that eye, Johnny?”

“Still seein all right with it, Bobby, thank you.”

“Well, I seen some bloodshot peepers before but nothin like this. Dont believe I ever seen a eye lookin so bad and still workin.” He put his fingers to the shattered and swollen jaw and John Ashley winced and sucked air through his teeth and Bob Baker said, “I bet that does smart.” He looked around and John Ashley followed his eyes and saw that none of the other policemen were about.

New Bob Baker leaned closer still and gently laid a hand on the left side of John Ashley’s face. “Who’d you say that other fella was?”

“Billy the Kid.”

“Oh yeah,” Bob Baker said. “I heard of him.” He slid his thumb up to the corner of the bloody eye and John Ashley locked his jaws against the pain and the surge of bile in his throat. Bob Baker’s teeth loomed large.

Came a whisper: “You ever even wondered what it’s like not being whole?”

“Like somebody we know, you mean?” His head now felt to be swelling with pain, the very skullbone itself.

“I reckon I owe you, Johnny.”

John Ashley tried to smile. “Ah hell, Bobby, forget it. I aint never been one to call a man’s marker if he’s down on his luck.”

Bob Baker’s thumb went into the socket and John Ashley screamed and saw behind the eye a radiant skyrocket burst of red light and then darkness.