Red Grass River

THIRTEEN

January 1920

ON NEW YEAR’S DAY BILL ASHLEY AND HIS PRETTY BUT RETICENT wife Bertha took supper with the rest of the family at Twin Oaks. The Volstead Act, by which the Eighteenth Amendment would be enforced, was within three weeks of passage. During the meal the talk was of family matters, of Butch and Daisy’s new baby—about whom Ma had lots of news by way of a recent letter from Daisy—and of which neighbors had married and which had died. When everyone had done eating, the women cleared the table and left the room and the men rolled cigarettes and fired up pipes.

Bill beamed at Old Joe and said, “I told you a long time back this Prohibition business was coming, didnt I? Well, pretty soon now we’re gonna be makin so much money we’re gonna need up a whole bunch of wheelbarrows to carry it all in.”

Old Joe puffed his pipe and nodded without expression.

“We’re still doin good with the shine,” Bill said, addressing the table in the manner of a finance manager at a stockholders’ meeting. “We’re selling more to the Indians than we ever did and we put up two new camps since Bobby Baker last busted one up. That gives up six in operation. We’re makin enough of the stuff to supply our regular customers all up and down the coast.” He paused to sip at his cup of shine, the only one he would drink all night. “The thing is, we ought to be sellin more to the townfolk, specially to them down in Miami, and it’s two reasons we aint. One is, they been stockpilin the factory stuff since before the Eighteenth got passed, and the other reason is they know can still get the factory liquor they used to drinkin and they dont care they got to pay way more for it than they did before. It’s a lot of money to be made off an attitude like that.”

“By smuggling, you mean,” Frank said, his smiling face brightly eager.

“That’s what I mean,” Bill said. He took off his rimless spectacles and cleaned the lenses with a bandanna and put the glasses back on and adjusted them carefully and then looked at them all and said, “Soon as we start bringin factory stuff over from the islands we’ll be makin some real money.”

“Damn right,” Ed said. The scarred grin pale against his brown face.

“I believe it’s real money we been gettin from the banks, aint it?” John Ashley said, irritated that Bill should neglect to mention the family’s most lucrative source of income these past sixteen months. “Aint you the fella who once upon a time didnt think bankrobbin was such good business? Guess maybe you weren’t real right about that, huh?”

“It’s been a payin proposition, I’ll admit,” Bill said, his tone patient. “But you been luckier’n any bankrobber I ever heard of. I always said the returns on bankrobbin werent worth the risks and I still dont think so. The longer you keep at it, the less money you’re like to get from any one bank and the more chance there is you’ll get caught or shot, one. On account of you robbin them, none of the banks are carryin as much money as they used to and so the take’s been gettin smaller. And now every town between Fort Pierce and Miami and all the way over to Fort Myers has got an armed guard in it. The local police everwhere are keepin a closer eye. They’re all just hopin you’ll try robbin them next so they can shoot you dead and get a reward. Truth be told, Johnny, bankrobbin’s about the worst business there is right now in terms of risk against likely reward. Smugglin aint near as much risk, not yet anyway, and it pays as good as banks and it’s gonna way pay better still when all that booze they’re stockpiling in Miami starts running out.”

Old Joe looked at John Ashley. “Man’s got a argument,” he said.

John Ashley drummed his fingers on the table. Something there was about his elder brother that irritated him every bit as much as it had his brother Bob. He couldnt say what it was exactly but it was always there. Just the same—and as much as he hated to admit it—he could not deny that Bill was making sense.

“Yeah,” he said, “he’s got a argument.”

Some of the bank loot had gone to the cops on Old Joe’s payroll, some to the women of the family to cache in the house and use as they saw fit for coal oil, housewares, for clothes and pretties for themselves. But the bulk of the take from the robberies had gone to Frank and Ed that they might buy the forty-foot trawler Joe had long had his eye on. The money had also gone toward the best materials and for the hire of the best boatworkers and mechanics in the Indian River region to help them refit the vessel and make of it a proper rumboat.

Frank and Ed had narrowed the trawler’s prow slightly to cut down on water resistance and add speed. They sanded and planed and caulked and painted, replaced every cleat and fitting. They removed some of the bulkheads belowdecks for greater cargo capacity and to allow for easier loading. They installed additional fuel tanks and beefed up the lower decking from bow to stern. They reworked a brace of new engines, refitting them with stronger main bearings and higher-lift cams and more powerful magnetos, then mounted and turned the powerplants as precisely as bank clocks. They installed heavy-duty drives and screws. When Ed said the boat’s name was Della, Frank and John smiled at each other and raised no objections.

On a warm January morning they took the boat on her maiden run. They put her in the river behind the boatyard and chugged down to the Stuart harbor and into the blaze of a mountainous orange sunrise. They ran through the trickily narrow St. Lucie inlet and the bore east-southeast for Grand Bahama Island some seventy-five miles distant as the crow flies. They would in fact have to cover about one hundred miles because of the Gulf Stream, the great river of northbound current flanking the length of Florida’s east coast. As the land fell from view behind them the turquoise water gradually darkened to a blue the same shade as the sky’s and when they were about seven miles offshore the seabottom abruptly plunged and the water went to dark royal blue and they knew they’d arrived at the fast depths of the Stream. It was usually running strong by this time of year but it flowed gently on this windless day as unseasonably warm as early summer. To maintain his true course against the Stream’s northward push Ed had to hold the wheel only slightly more to southward than his desired heading of east-southeast.

They were all three shirtless and bareheaded and wore rolled bandana headbands to keep hair and sweat our of their eyes. John stood at the stern and trolled with rod and reel and mullet chunks for bait and brought up three flashing blue-yellow bull dolphin in quick succession. He filleted them and roasted the meat on a makeshift charcoal grill set on the deck and fashioned of a wire screen over the shallow sawn-off end of a metal barrel and they ate the fish with their fingers. A pod of dozens of porpoises appeared off both sides of the boat and like sailors everywhere the brothers were glad to be accompanied by these creatures of good luck. The porpoises leaped and ran with them for miles before suddenly veering away and out of sight as though to some urgent summoning in some other region of the sea.

The Gulf Stream’s breadth varied from one locale to another and sometimes from day to day within the same latitude. At some points it might be fifty miles wide one day and constrict to thirty the next. By the increasing pressure against the wheel under his hands a seasoned skipper could sense when he’d reached the strongest vein of current and thereby know when he was halfway across the stream. When Ed reckoned they were at the current’s midpoint he opened up the throttles and the engines roared and the bow rose smoothly as the boat surged forward and the wake behind them fanned white and thick.

“Whooooo!” Frank hollered, all of them with their faces windward and their hair slicked back by their swift passage.

“She’ll do!” Ed yelled, “She’ll do!” He stroked the wheel as he might the bare arm of a favored woman.

They held their course and speed for the next hour and a half before they cleared the eastern edge of the stream and found themselves less than four miles from their destination of West End at the tip of the island. Ed cut back on the engines and his brothers clapped him on the shoulders for his expert navigation and piloting and he showed his about-to-laugh-or-cry smile.

“Daddy’ll be proud to know she’s a worthy boat,” John Ashley said. “And even he dont say it, he’ll be just as proud to hear how good you can cross the Blue River.”

The sun was hot and bright and the eastern horizon now marked by distant cumulus clouds rising like dense white smoke off great distant fires. The waters about the island were glasstop smooth and shimmered brightly green. As the Della closed on the mouth of the harbor Ed cut the engines down to just above idling speed and they eased into port. Dozens of boats were tied up at the docks and dozens more lay at anchor in the bay and all of them taking on liquor for the mainland. The imminence of the Volstead Act had every drinking business in South Florida dealing frantically for factory stock to hoard against the coming dearth. Every day the West End harbor saw more rumboats than the day before. Within weeks and for years to come the harbor would be jammed around the clock.

They had intended to tie up just long enough to go into the baithouse and drink a cold beer before heading back home to report to their father on the boat’s performance. But even as Ed carefully steered his way through the busy harbor and made for the dock, there came a small launch toward them and a corpulent whitebearded man in shirtsleeves and white skimmer stood at the bow and hallooed them. “Say, you boys!” he called out. “Are ye negotiable for carrying a load across?”

The brothers looked at each other, all of them grinning. “Load of what?” John Ashley called to the man. “And to where?”

The man scowled and spat and said, “Of what’d ye think, bucko—sassafras tea? It’s a hundred and fifty cases of prime Irish whiskey and another hundred of the queen’s best gin I need to have carried across to West Palm Beach—and I’m needing it carried today. I had a deal with a fella but the bloody fool got drunk last night and opened his hull on a reef this morning. I’ll pay ye seven dollars a case. Are you my men or not?”

John Ashley looked from Ed to Frank. “What you boys say?”

“Gordy said ten’s the usual rate,” Ed said softly.

“Wouldnt Daddy be tickled if we run a load our very first time?” Frank Ashley said.

“Be tickled by the money we hand over for it is what he’d be tickled by,” Ed said.

John Ashley called to the man: “Ten dollars and it’s a deal!”

“Ten?” The man looked stricken. “Ten’s what I pay experienced hands. You boys and yer craft there look like ye might be equal to the job, but ye aint never carried booze, have ye? I’ve an eye for it and I can tell. Prove yourselves to me this time and next time we’ll talk ten.”

“We dont carried plenty a loads,” John Ashley said. “But even if we hadn’t—if we hadnt, mind you—we’d still be takin the same chance as anybody who has and we ought be paid the same.”

The man spat and looked glumly all about at the other boats taking on their cargo. “Nine dollars,” he said. “That’s more than fair now, you got to admit.”

“Ten,” John Ashley said. His brothers chuckled.

“Goddamn it,” the man muttered. He checked his pocketwatch and swore again. “All right, ye cockers, ten it is—but it’s got to go out right now, do you hear me? There’s people’ll be waiting for this shipment on the West Palm bar and they want it before dark.”

“You got a deal, mister,” John Ashley said.

An hour later the last of the 250 cases was taken aboard at the docks and lashed down in the hold and the Della’s gunwales still rode well above the waterline. The boat could have taken 400 cases if the man but had them. His name was Leonard Richardson and he said he’d have at least 350 cases for them next time and would try for more. He gave them $1,250 and said they would get the rest from the people waiting for the shipment.

“They aint gonna try and crawfish on us, are they, Leonard?” John Ashley said. World’s just fulla dishonesty, now aint it?”

Richardson snorted. “If anybody’s got cause to be leery it’s me. I dont know you boys from Adam’s wild-oat sons and can only hope ye aint such fools as to try to make off with me booze. Whatever ye sold it for would be the last money ye made in the trade out of West End, thats certain sure.” His arm swept the harbor and he said, “These fellas’ll steal from anybody but each other, and you know why? Because it’s bad business to cheat them ye want to keep doin business with. You’d be killing your own goose, you see? Better we stay straight with each other and we can make plenty for years to come.”

“We’re good for our word, Leonard,” John Ashley said.

“That’s fine, lad,” Richardson said. “So are the boys who’ll be meeting you. Good to know we can all trust each other now, aint it?”

The sun was past its zenith as they made ready to slip their mooring and head out of port. The clouds in the east had now grown to massive black thunderheads and were coming in a rush.

“Looks a mean storm building,” Richardson said. “I was told it never rained here this time of year.”

“Nothin to fret,” John Ashley said. “West Palm’s but a hundred miles and just about dead-west across the stream, so we aint got to buck much and she’s runnin real soft today anyhow. I figure us to easy outrun them clouds. Hell, Leonard, like as not we’ll be unloaded at the West Palm bar before the first drops hit the deck.”

But as they quickly found out when they reached the deeper blue, the Gulf Stream was running stronger now, as though energized by the force of the encroaching storm. Ed had to hold the wheel hard to port to keep from drifting off course. And though he held her throttles open wide and the bow was reared high they were but a few miles past the stream’s midpoint when the storm overtook them.

All in the same abrupt moment the wind struck like a thing becrazed and the sky went black and the sea began to heave and plunge. The rain slung sidewise in dense flailing sheets. Waves burst over the deck in stinging drenching spray.

Now lightning flared in white jagged branches and thunder cracked and blasted as though the sky were breaking apart. The ocean seemed bent on detaching itself from the earth.

Again and again the waves carried the boat up and up as though to crush it against the sky—and then fell away beneath it to bring it skidding down the steep black walls of water to such depths as made the dark surrounding ocean seem to John Ashley the very maw of the world.

He clung with both arms to the port gunwale and swallowed seawater with every gasping breath and the boat pitched and swayed as though drunk on its own cargo. Each smash of water over the port side pulled his legs out from under him and had stripped him of his shoes—and then the vessel would abruptly reverse its yaw and slam him against the bulwark as the water rushed out the scuppers and he several times almost rolled over the side.

Through the wind’s howling he faintly heard laughter and wondered if he’d gone insane. He looked to his brothers in the blurring rain and saw Ed clutching to the wheel as though to a hard-dancing woman and Frank gripping the starboard gunwale and trying vainly to gain his footing and both of them laughing wildly into the teeth of the storm. Thunder persisted in its roll and boom across the darkness, lightning in its flickering blue casts which made his brothers’ movements awkward and unreal and made deathly hollows of their eyes and mouths.

Ed turned to him, his mutilated mouth moving as though in shouts, but John Ashley could not make out what he was saying and he shook he head. And now his belly spasmed and the swallowed seawater roiled by the boat’s undulant antics and in mixture with the lunchtime dolphin came surging up and out his gaped jaws and the wind smacked a good portion of the vomitus back in his face and some of it streaked over his cheekbone to fill his ear. Ed and Frank showed all their teeth in laughter. He was enraged that they though this was fun—and terrified he would any moment be swept into the rioting black sea.

The storm seemed to him to rage for hours but not twenty minutes passed before the wind fell to fitful gusts and the driving rain reduced to drizzle. The cloudmass broke and the sky lightened to gray and the sea slowly settled to a high gentle roll. Frank and Ed were exhilarated in their sodden dripping state. John Ashley worked his grip free of the gunwale and washed his face with the rainwater running from his hair. And reflected that his daddy was right—these two were the sailors in the family. He stood up carefully, unsteady on his feet.

“Goddamn man—this smugglin business is fun, aint it?” Ed said, standing easy at the wheel now and grinning his wide maimed grin. Frank sat on the cabin roof with his legs dangling and smiled at John.

John Ashley glared at them and they both started laughing hard and then he was laughing too.

“Whoooo-eee!” Ed said. “Aint no storm can get the best of us! Not the fucken Ashleys!”

Coughing for all his laughter, his hair yet shedding water in his face, Frank said, “Tell you true, it was a minute or two there when I thought we might were goin down certain sure.”

“You thought?” Ed said. He cackled. “You see Johnny? He looked like a decked snapper the way his mouth was goin gulp-gulp-gulp. You see him?”

“I’ll tell you all what,” John Ashley said. “I was wishing I was a fucken fish. I was wishin for goddamn gills what I was wishin!”

Their laughter was hard and lasting and they all three clutched their stomachs against the aching cramping pleasure of it.

The storm had carried them several miles north of their intended latitude and the Gulf Stream was running even stronger now and they had to buck the brunt of it as they mended their course to southwestward. They made the bar off West Palm barely an hour before sundown. The sky was clear and the easterly breeze at their backs soft and cool. And now they saw that they were being watched by four men standing beside a pair of large motor launches beached in the shadow of a long ridge of dunes showing patches of sea oats and backed by the reddening western sky. John Ashley passed his binoculars over the rest of the long strip of beach. To the horizons north and south in stood deserted.

“Can see anything coming at us by water from north or south for a long way before they get to us,” Ed said. “No wonder these boys wanted us here before nightfall. I’d say they knew what they doin when they picked this spot for the transfer.”

They hove to and dropped anchor a hundred yards offshore to avoid the tumult of the breakers and make easier work of the unloading. The men on shore shoved off in the long launches and the rapping of their engines came to the Ashley brothers as they checked their .45’s to ensure full magazines and chambered rounds. John and Ed stood their .44 Marlin rifles close to hand against the cabin bulkhead. Frank set his brother Bob’s old Winchester atop the cabin with the stock jutting out for easy grasp.

The men in the launches had taken precautions of their own—each carried a revolved in his waistband. The launches made fast against the Della’s port side and a husky blond man came aboard and introduced himself as Morris. His quick eyes inventoried each Ashley in turn and he saw their . 45’s and the rifles at the ready and he stared for a moment at John Ashley’s bare feet. No one made to shake hands Morris said he wanted to have a look at the cargo and John Ashley took him belowdecks. When Morris was satisfied, he handed John Ashley a small cloth bag containing the rest of their money and called for two of the other launchmen to come aboard and they set to relaying the cases from the hold to topside to the gangway and then down to the man in the forward launch. When the Ashleys made to lend a hand, Morris did not object.

The launches had been smartly adapted for their present purpose. Each could carry forty cases and its gunwales yet stand a half-foot above the waterline, and even with a full load they could skim the water as smoothly as an eel. As soon as the first one was loaded it headed for shore and the other launch moved up in its stead under the gangway and began taking on cases from the relay man. In the gathering twilight, the Ashleys now saw other men hastening from behind the dunes and splashing into the surf to meet the first launch. They pulled it up on the beach the began relieving it of its cargo, working like a team of ants to bear the whiskey into the shadows.

Though the work went swiftly, nightfall was almost on them when the last launchload was ready for shore. “Luck to you,” John Ashley called out as the Morris fellow dropped down into the launch and nodded at the helmsman and the launch swung about to port as its prop churned up a forth and the bow rose slightly as the boat made away. If Morris heard John Ashley’s last remark he gave no notice of it.

And now Ed had the Della underway too and heading for the St. Lucie Inlet and home to a father they knew would be pleased to learn they had made $2,500 on a trip they had all supposed to be nothing more than a shakedown run.

“You know,” Frank Ashley said to his brothers above the rumble of the Della’s engines, “I believe Bill’s right and this smugglin business gonna work out just fine.”

“I kindly agree,” Ed said. He showed his twisted smile. “But I aint too sure about Johnny here. You reckon that little breeze and drizzle we went through back there mighta sopped some a his enthusiasm for bein out of the salt?” He winked at Frank and both brothers grinned at John Ashley.

“I reckon it mighta,” Frank said. “I mean, a fella pukes in his own face, he cant be havin a real good time.”

“You damn mulletheads,” John Ashley said, and spat over the side. “All you can do better’n me is swallow down your own puke, and hell, a goddamn dog can do that. And you maybe can handle a damn boat better’n me. But on land where all normal people belong anyway I’m twice the man of either of you any damn day of the week.”

And then they were all three laughing hard once again and showing their teeth white in their sun-darked faces, punching playfully at each other, their jaws aching with their laughter, their eyes burning with the joy of being alive and in their own company, these brothers Ashley.