Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (34) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
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all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

Wednesday,
August 30, 1922,
concluded

Bobby Frankenfield stepped from the mangroves with a pistol in both hands. Big, silver automatics. Both were pointed at Red Dedge. Son of a bitch. They’d all forgotten about Bobby.
    “You kilt my family. My whole family. You kilt ’em all!”
    Red wasn’t going to cringe. “You shot off my brother’s leg, and would’a kilt us both. You stole his still, burned our farm. We never done nothin’ to you, we was mindin’ our own God damned business! I ought to kill you right now.” Red leaned back on his right leg.
    The Deacon, to Red’s right, shifted a foot and Bobby whipped the second pistol around at him. He was shaking now and sweating in the muggy air under the trees.
    Red had seen to it he’d reloaded with buckshot the second he’d picked up his Parker and brushed the sand off of it. No way to treat a good gun, but he was sure that if he needed to kill Bobby the sweet old Parker would do just fine.

He really didn’t want to kill Bobby

    Problem was, he really didn’t want to kill Bobby Frankenfield; the man seemed too stupid to bother killin’. Besides that, Bobby had a gun trained on him and his was pointed at the ground.
    The Deacon, on whom Bobby’s other pistol was trained, had a similar problem, but Red didn’t think the Deacon was the one Bobby wanted to kill. Red had beaten and humiliated Bobby when he’d caught him trying to burn the farm. In his simple mind, that made Red at fault for all that had happened this hot morning.
    The black men had gathered around Bobby and were inches from having their weapons aimed. They would kill him, for sure and for certain. He’d have so many holes in him you could read the newspaper through him.
    But there seemed to be no way that they could do it before he shot Red Dedge dead in his tracks. The pistol steadied and Bobby took aim.
    Red squeezed his eyes closed and felt a tear trickle down his cheek. When the shot came, he jumped a foot at least. He felt no pain and wondered if that was because he was already dead.
    But nothing happened, and he opened his eyes, to see Bobby laying sideways with a big hole in his chest. Twenty feet behind him stood Senegal Johnson, with that rifle Red had seen earlier, still pointed Bobby’s way. His eyes were wide, staring like he always did.
    “He be there, Brother Dedge. Reverend tol’ me, but I had my boys watchin’ too. You turn’t ’im loose like a good Christian, an’ he be right there settin’ fire to your farm next day. Now, God damn it, where I gonna get de good tomatoes an’ cukes? My greens an’ de gumbos?”
    Red tried to laugh but couldn’t.
    Senegal came right up to him and said in his face, “He was there.”
    Red nodded. “Thank you, Brother Johnson. The retribution of the Lord is irrefutable.”

“Amen, Brother Dedge”

    Senegal glared for a second, then gave a quick nod. “Amen, Brother Dedge. Amen.”

They collected the burned man, who was getting drunk on his buddies’ flasks and seemed to be all right. The man hit by the machine gun was the man with the baseball bat he’d never gotten to use. He had died and was being carried by two friends.
    “His momma gon’ kill us…” Red heard one say down low. The other whispered back, “She my sister…ain’t never gon’ hear the end of it…”
    On their way back to the boats they passed Bobby’s shack, sitting empty just under the trees, up from the little beach. Red stalked off in that direction, and when one of the addict boys went to follow him, Senegal waved him off.
    “Somethin’ he needs to do.”
    Senegal Johnson knew Red Dedge was a proud young man, and he’d been humiliated. In front of black men, no less. Senegal didn’t hold that against his friend. It was just how things were. Maybe burning Bobby’s place would help him get over it. They went on to the boats.

In a few minutes Red caught them up. Senegal looked sideways at him. “You set dat place on fire?”
    Red shook his head. “Nope. I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t of had him kilt either, but I know you had to. That boy didn’t have the sense God give a dumb piss-ant. His folk let him live like a damn animal. You should’a seen it, the filth…”
    Red looked a little green around the gills to his friend. Probably more from killing his first man, Senegal thought, than the condition of Bobby’s shack.
    “They dragged him along on jobs he had no business doin’. What, that brainless little piece of shit? Burnin’ farms and such? More like to get hisself burnt up or shot dead than anythin’ else.”
    He looked to the rising sun for a second. “An’ now look, that’s just what happened. God damn sin to treat a child like that. And he was a child.”
    Senegal was impressed, and a tad surprised. Red Dedge had not only regained his pride, he’d found some compassion as well. That was rare in a man as young as Red.

They had more sense than to burn the liquor

    The two men left behind, Goat and Eddie, had had more sense than to burn all of the liquor. There was an entire storage tank that had to hold a hundred gallons. They’d been filling jugs ever since they’d fulfilled their mission: to cause enough mayhem to distract the Frankenfields.
    Both were shocked when they saw the dead young man; apparently they were both relatives one way or another. Shaking their heads, they and the others packed as much liquor into the already overloaded boats as they could, and set the rest on fire.
    When they pushed off for the far western shore, they left behind five dead bodies, two crying widows, and a dozen columns of black smoke rising into the morning sky. The one from the still sheds was like a giant billowing beacon, visible for miles. They rose so high, the morning on-shore wind pushed the tops of the clouds of smoke to the west.
    The news that somebody had burned out the Frankenfields would be up and down the river, Red thought bitterly, quicker than you could say shit, and some folks wouldn’t be one bit happy about it.
    What worried him the most was that he’d shot Clarence Middleton and hadn’t killed him. And there was no chance in Hell that the connection to his farm and the raid would be overlooked. He hadn’t just made one enemy. He’d declared war on the whole damn Ashley Gang.

Until they’d gotten back to the trucks, Red Dedge had not considered that he was homeless. Senegal Johnson had. “You gon’ come stay wid’ us a day or two,” he said, and his tone allowed for no argument.
    Red was too tired to protest, and besides, he had no idea where else he could stay. They pulled up at Senegal’s Sumptuous Palace of Delights at about eight-thirty in the morning.
    Senegal had his boys start carting his and Red’s share of the moonshine they’d taken in the raid into the house. They’d just sniffed something up their noses in the truck, and it had sure made them lively. He tried to help, but he wasn’t much good. He hadn’t slept in almost two days.
    “Maggie!” Senegal hollered in the door. “Get yo’ ass down here, girl!”

Red’s eyes bulged a bit

    It was a good five minutes before the aging but still voluptuous prostitute came out. She wore a yellow silk nightgown that might as well have been made of window glass. Red’s eyes bulged a bit, but he was too exhausted to think about it much.
    “Git Mr. Dedge a room, an’ make sure it clean, you hear me?” Maggie rolled her eyes a bit but turned without comment.
    “You go wid’ Maggie, she take good care of you.” It seemed to be Senegal’s favorite saying.
    Maggie led him to a room that had already been prepared, opened the door and left him standing there without a backward look. The room was spare, but the bed was decent, and not worn out, as one might, he thought groggily, easily suspect.
    He was about to fall gratefully into the clean sheets when the girl Guy had talked about, Jenny, wasn’t it? She bustled in and grabbed his arm.
    “Let’s get you out of those soiled clothes, what do you say, sweetie?” She had a soft Southern accent, a touch of the Old Dominion if his muddled mind served him. Take his clothes off?
    He was about to protest when Maggie, now dressed like a Church matron, spoke from the door. “You ain’t studyin’ on sleepin’ in my clean beds in yo’ nasty rags? O’ yo nasty self. Hell boy, you got blood on you! Jenny take you to the tub and wash yo’ pathetic skinny ass. Maybe we find a man under all that dirt, maybe not. Nothin’ but a white trash boy, I ’spect.”
    Red stood blinking under this assault, and when Jenny began pulling his overhauls off, he didn’t stop her. She led him down the hall buck naked, and he didn’t care.
    In the spacious tiled bath, she sat him down in a claw-foot tub of hot soapy water and began scrubbing him from the head down. She washed his hair, what there was of it, his neck, his arms. She lifted his arm to scrub his right armpit and the smell hit them both. Jenny squinted like it was burning her eyes.
    Damn, maybe he should get a bath more often, Red thought.

“My, would you look at that”

    She came to his nether regions and wasn’t surprised by the reaction she got. “My, would you look at that,” she cooed. She rinsed him with a bucket of warm water, wrapped him in a towel, and led him back to the room. She pulled back the crisp white sheets and had him sit, then pushed him over onto the pillows with a finger.
    He was half asleep, but as he rolled on his back the evidence was plain; he had a hard-on any girl could fall in love with.
    Jenny looked on him with admiration. “Let’s just take care of that, then. I’ll tuck you in, and you’ll sleep so much better…”
    She lowered her head, and his eyes came wide open.

Copyright © 2022 by Roger Owens