Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (13) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
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By Roger Owens

Sunday,
June 18, 1922

Red and Guy looked around in the last of the day’s sun at the clearing where Guy’s still had set, according to him, just a few days before. He hadn’t wanted to ’fess up about it at all, but after Red had clouted him upside the head a few dozen times he’d relented. Guy could fight but Red had a good four inches of reach on him, and, as Guy liked to say when he was beaten, “About fifty pounds of mean.”
    It was true. Red had never lost a fight, and there had been a lot. Fighting was just what young men did. Young men who did not were considered sissies, homos, no account, or the worst: cowards. Almost rather folks thought you were a homo than a coward, Red had considered once. Guy could take a beating, couldn’t deny it, but Red Dedge just never cared how bad you hurt him. He kept coming until you were down, period, that was it.
    They now looked over a ravaged lean-to hut, half burned and collapsed, and not much else. The water sluice was smashed and some of the wood had fed the fire on the hut. Of the mash tub, the boiling pot, the cooling coils, and the receiver tank, there was nothing but a black firepit, a circle and a square in the dead grass where the receiver and mash tub had stood.

Guy seemed astonished

    Guy seemed astonished, as if he never expected trouble from fucking around with the Ashleys. And God damn it, Red steamed; from the size of the fire, the distance through the coils to the receiver and the five-foot circle it left behind, he could tell this was an operation that could produce plenty ’shine enough to piss off the Ashleys to no end. The honey pit dug downwind of the shack was big enough to explain Guy’s recent absences; everybody needed a latrine.
    And selling to Couch and Canova, both rich and both known to be the Ashleys’ customers, now that was pretty stupid. He knew nothing about Canova, but that Couch character was a well-known crackpot. He drank too much, talked too much, and was a loud obnoxious drunk, so everybody in whatever dive he staggered into heard whatever he was raving about that particular night. No way on God’s green earth where he was gettin’ his latest high-octane ’shine could have stayed a secret for long, and by God, from the looks of the place it had not.
    “Jesus. The Ashleys,” Red said under his breath. Just then Guy, kicking through the ashes of his hut, swung around spitting mad.
    “It’s them God damned Frankenfield boys what done this! I knew they was greedy bastards, but God damn it!” He wrung his new hat in his hands, staring around like a boy done lost his puppy. “Took my still, best God damned still I ever made. I cut down a ninety-gallon diesel tank to make that mash tub, cost me twenty fuckin’ dollars….”
    Red walked calmly over to his brother, still twisting that sissy hat like an old lady with a wet washrag.
    Guy looked at him, hang-dog eyes staring into his.
    Red punched him in the mouth as hard as he could.
    Guy hit the ground like a sack of corn. Blood poured from his mouth and nose. “What the fuck…?”

“They’re on to you”

    “You fuckin’ idiot! It was the Ashleys, you stupid son of a bitch! They’re on to you, and we’re in the pig shit for sure!”
    Guy was shaking his head, blood streaming down his chin. He didn’t even wipe it off. Gettin’ your ass whipped was just a fact of life. “I’m tellin’ you, it’s the Frankenfields, from over Hutchinson Island.”
    Red was rolling a cigarette, and he had always been pretty bad at it. A good quarter of his tobacco fluttered away on the southeast wind, and he wound up with a spindly smoke with pointy ends. He frowned at the effort, then bit one end off and lit up. “I told ya you’re a stupid son of a bitch, and y’are. Kenny Frankenfield’s been on the Ashleys’ payroll since they busted his daddy Frank out of Union Correctional two years ago.”
    Frank Frankenfield had been hauled in by the St Lucie County sheriffs for armed robbery. He’d taken such a beating at their hands that he was infit to be farmed out as a work detail prisoner, so he’d been placed in the infirmary institution in Union County. That was the year, 1920, that Prohibition had criminalized booze. Neither the Ashleys nor the lesser known but still notorious Frankenfields had wasted any time cashing in on the new business opportunities.
    And, as if Guy’s rampage at the Zook’s social hadn’t been enough trouble in high places, he’d undercut John Ashley’s price on moonshine with the very public figure of Roy Couch. Red looked suspiciously around the river clearing. “He sent the Frankenfields here to bust up your still, and you’re jus’ lucky you wasn’t here when they come, you dumb fuck. They’d’a kilt you fer sure.”
    And they lived practically within sight of the mouth of this Saint Sebastian River, which opened into the Indian River. Across a narrow few miles of flat water to the south stood the homes of the Frankenfields, on some islands in a little spot called Wabasso. An ornery clan of river rats who liked folks messin’ in their business about like a rattlesnake likes bein’ stepped on.

“They don’t scare me none”

    “Them Frankenfields don’t scare me none,” Guy was saying, when a loud boom sent a shotgun ball into the burned palm log next to Red’s left foot.
    “Shit!” they yelled in unison and lit out for the road. Thank God, Red thought, as his feet pounded along with his heart, they came from the west, instead of the east, which would have cut them off from the truck. They sprinted up the dirt foot-track from the river to the Dixie Highway, cutting right to head for the high-top Ford just a dozen yards south of the Sebastian River bridge.
    Red was sure they’d got away clean when another shotgun blast exploded and Guy went down. Red could see his left leg was bloody, but they didn’t have no time to waste. He got an arm under Guy’s and mostly dragged him to the truck.
    As he was throwing him in the passenger side, another shot came but seemed to hit nothing. He’d left the old hoss cranked up tight and the spark retarded. As he ran around to the driver’s side, he prayed she wouldn’t give trouble starting up.
    The fourth shot—it sounded like an old broken-arm double-barrel—tore up gravel just behind the truck and pebbles clattered in the empty bed. He figured the fucker with the shotgun was reloading, took the chance to jump in the driver’s seat and hit the starter. Before the shotgun could get off another round he had the old truck started and headed away from the bushwhackers.

ba-bump ba-bump

    They heard one more shot, something lighter like a pistol, but it must have gone wide. The Dixie Highway here was made from slabs of coquina concrete. Between the slabs were joints, which went ba-bump ba-bump as you went over them. Now it was babumpbabumpbabump. He couldn’t push the gas pedal close enough to the floor.
    It wasn’t until they were a ways down the road that Red noticed the tide of blood from Guy’s leg staining the floorboard in the fading light. He’d been so quiet Red had thought he was all right. Now he saw that Guy was passed out. And he was losing blood fast. It was flowing out the open doors and onto the running boards, flying off into the wind of their passing.
    He considered pulling over when he saw headlights coming from behind in the dusk. “You got to hold on a while, Guy! Please, brother, hold on!”
    He pushed the truck up to full speed, nearly fifty miles per hour, babumpbabumpbabump, but still the headlights gained ground. In no time, a flashy black roadster passed him, leaving him behind like he was standing still.
    Shaking with relief, he pulled over onto the marl shoulder. He ran around to the passenger side but had to shift Guy so he could see his left leg, on the side away from him. He pulled on both Guy’s feet and was rewarded by a scream. Guy fell onto the floorboard, but at least his legs were out the door, and Red could see it was bad.

Guy was bleeding to death

    Looked like the guy with the shotgun had been loaded for game. His first round would have been a slug, in case he got a clear shot. That had hit the palm log smoldering at their feet. But any Florida boy knew that if you missed your first shot on a deer or a pig with a slug, your prey was a’gonna be runnin’ for cover, and your only chance in the tall brush was buckshot. So that was the second shell you would load. That second shot had scored on Guy’s left calf and mangled it. His brother was bleeding to death.
    He yanked his braces off at the shoulder and tied off the leg above the knee. He’d heard from the Great War veterans that stretchy suspenders were better than a hard leather belt for a tourniquet.
    Guy was moaning as he skinned out of them and grabbed a stick off the ground to twist it up. The Great War was only over these last four years, and every young man knew all about tying off a bleeding limb, their shell-shocked fathers having taught them with hard-eyed determination, in case they ever had to do it themselves.
    Red winced every time he looked at that leg but saw as he tightened the suspender strap that the blood slowed down to a sluggish seeping. He realized tears were running down his young face. God damn them Ashleys! And God damn Guy for steppin’ in their dinner plate! He’d known something like this would happen, there was just no way around it.
    Red reached over Guy’s head and pulled the jug from behind the seat. Guy was only half conscious, but when Red applied the neck of the jug to his lips he drank. Red kept pouring, only stopping when Guy began to choke. He hoped a good guzzle would offset some of the pain Guy was in for when they got back on the road.
    The truck was an old beater with a bad suspension and Dixie Highway from Sebastian to Vero was a potholed shambles, made of those old coquina slabs. Babumpbabump.
    He got in the driver’s seat and got Guy under the arms and pulled him upright and onto the seat. His brother woke long enough to gasp in pain, then mercifully went out again.

It would have to be Wild Wilbur

    Fear and anger battled in Red’s chest as he pulled back onto the worn highway and put the pedal to the floor. It was twelve or thirteen miles to Vero, and no hospital. The nearest one was probably Emergency Hospital in West Palm Beach, three or four hours away, and even that had only been there five or six years. It would have to be Wild Wilbur.
    Wilbur Sampson, MD, was a Vero legend. He was nearly as tall as Red at six-foot-two, barrel-chested and heavily muscled. He wore his black mane of hair down to his starched collar and sported a massive streetsweeper mustache over a heavy goatee. He dressed like a dandy gambler, which he was, but he was also the best doctor in fifty miles, and a hunter, fisherman and woodsman of famous repute.
    He practiced from his home not far from Miss Lottie’s, treating the working girls’ many ailments and doubling as a bouncer when necessary.
    Red drove grimly through the growing night, avoiding the worst potholes when he could, as Guy awoke to shout or curse then fall back into a merciful stupor.
    By the time they reached the doctor’s house, it was probably nine o’clock and just full dark. The sun set late in Florida in the summer, and Red was glad for the extra light to drive by.

Copyright © 2022 by Roger Owens