Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (35) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
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all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

Thursday,
August 31, 1922,
morning

Despite having killed a man for the first time in his life, Red Dedge couldn’t remember when he’d slept so well. It probably didn’t hurt that he was in the best bed, with the cleanest sheets, where he’d ever laid his head. Or that thing Jenny had done with her mouth; Red reckoned he’d have to tell Guy he was right, as much as it pained him to admit it.
    He awoke deep in the night, lit the lantern with a lucifer from the small box on the nightstand, and found someone had left him a clean suit of clothes. A pair of slightly worn, clean Levi’s, a well-laundered union suit, and a brand-new, crisp, white, long-sleeved shirt. Clean socks and a pair of decent, well-broken-in boots completed the set.
    As usual, neither the jeans nor the shirt were quite long enough for his stringy frame. The jeans his daddy would have called “high-water” were bad enough, but his wrists stuck so far out of the sleeves he just rolled them up.
    When he was dressed, he took up the lantern and went to the hall to go downstairs. He knew he should go see Guy, but he was starving, and besides, he figured it was around four in the morning. He hoped to find something in the kitchen, maybe some leftovers.
    To his surprise, as he reached the head of the steps, he heard “Yelping Hound Blues” by The Louisiana Five Jazz Orchestra trilling from the Victor-Victrola.
    He came down into the front foyer and entered the sitting room to the back of the stairs, on his way to the kitchen, which he’d located by smell the first time he’d walked in the door. Even at this hour, when most farmers were just pullin’ on their boots or still sawin’ logs, four men still lounged about the big round mahogany card table in the center of the room.
    Unlike upstairs, the sitting room was indeed “sumptuous”; red velvet walls descended to a dark scrolled wainscoting at waist height, in turn supported by lighter panelling down to the polished hardwood floor. Small electric lamps with thick shades backlit the room with a golden red glow. Large paintings of women he considered a bit too heavy, in various stages of undress, hung on the walls.

Three nattily- dressed men played poker

    Three nattily-dressed men played poker at the table, their coats hanging on chair backs and their ribbon-bow ties askew. They smoked cigars and sipped brandy from snifters while the fourth man sat at one of the side tables, his laced cuffs and satin jacket glaringly gaudy even in the Palace.
    As Red walked in, that dandy put his head down and sniffed something off of the tabletop with a rolled-up ten-dollar bill. One of the poker players, in a brown suit vest and an old-style wide-brimmed Stetson hat looked over at him with disdain. “Phil, you best stop putting that China shit up your nozzle, you ain’t gonna sleep for a week.”
    So that’s what China was, Red thought; a white powder the man poured from a small, corked bottle of dark blue glass. The man’s eyes stood wide, like he’d just had a terrible fright.
    Every man there looked up at the boy in clothes that didn’t fit. The man sniffing China put his hand on a pistol on the table.
    “Whoa, mister,” Red said, his left hand out and his right instinctively snaking to the back of his belt where, he realized with a sleepy shock, his own Smith & Wesson wasn’t.
    The poker player who had spoken first raised a hand, without taking his eyes off of his cards. “Hold up there, Phil, boy don’t look so danger’us ta me…”
    He looked across the table at the oldest of them, a man with a jolly face, a formidable handlebar mustache and a suit that had gone out of style twenty years ago. Half of a fat Cuba in his yellow teeth stung his eyes with smoke, but he only squinted.
    “I see ya and raise ya twenty,” the gambler in the big hat said.

The addict stared at Red like a madman

    Money clinked. The Victor-Victrola skritch-skratched the end of the record. The addict—any fool could see he was an addict—sat bolt-upright, motionless as a statue, at the side table. He stared at Red like a madman, his eyes big as saucers in the soft electric light.
    The older gambler frowned a bit, eyeing his cards skeptically, head sideways, but it all looked fake to Red. He dropped his money in bills on top of the pot.
    The third card-player hadn’t said a word. He was in a new-fangled button-down shirt with an ugly orange necktie, brown pants with belts and braces but no vest. He looked to be drunker’n Cooter Brown, and it took a minute for him to get that it was his call. “Ah…ah fold.” Then he did just that, face-down on the table, and began to snore like a buzz saw with a dull blade.
    The other two at the table snorted laughter, swept his small pile of money into the pot, and looked each other in the eye. “I call,” the first man said.
    The older player shook his head. “Shit.” He laid down his cards. A pair of fives, a diamond and a spade. The king, queen and ace of hearts. It was shit.
    Big Hat shook his head, grinning like an egg-suckin’ hound. “Georgie, Georgie, when will you ever learn? You can’t bluff me! Never…” and the other nodded sourly, pushing the pot across the table.
    “Yeah yeah yeah, never bullshit a bullshitter.”
    Big Hat just grinned wider. Without looking around he said, “Phil, why don’t you stop sticking that shit up your nose and make yourself useful? Go turn off that God damn Victrola. Phil!”
    Still looking the older man in the eye, he scooped about as much gold and paper as the drunk had left on his way to dreamland. “Take that for a stake. I want you to have some more money to lose to me when I see you again.”
    The other glared at him, sitting there with his shit-eating grin, but still gathered up the small portion. “Fuck you. And thanks.”
    Red cleared his throat.
    They looked at him sideways. “You still here?” the winning player asked, in a sneering way.
    Red’s eyes narrowed, he tensed, and the man saw it. His right hand brushed his coat back and grasped the grip of his pistol. “What do you want?”
    Red finally put his left hand down. “I just want to get by you to the kitchen and find something to eat. Without your crazy friend here,” he nodded at the fourth man, “shooting me in the back.”

“Phil ain’t gonna shoot nobody”

    The man in the big hat looked around at the sniffer. “Phil? Phil ain’t gonna shoot nobody, are ya Phil?”
    Phil shook his head.
    “See? Wha’d I tell ya?”
    Red kept his eyes on Phil. “I’d take it awful neighborly if’n your friend took his hand off that hog leg.”
    The man in the hat kept his eyes on Red. “Phil. Put the God damn gun away. Phil!”
    Phil jumped, finally looking away from Red.
    “Snort some more of that shit if you want, but put the God damn gun away. And turn off that fuckin’ Victrola like I told you!”
    Phil put it away, looking around like he’d been startled out of a deep sleep.
    Red touched his forehead—he didn’t have his hat either—and nodded. “Much obliged gentlemen,” Red said, surprised at how calm he sounded. He slipped around the table and through the kitchen doors, which swung closed behind him.
    He set the lantern on the counter—he’d forgotten he still held it—but the kitchen had electric lights too. Inside the door on the right was a bakelite panel the size of a playing card with two round buttons, one on top of the other. Wires held by hefty staple nails ran from the panel to the door jamb, then continued upward into the ceiling.
    He pushed the top one in, the bottom one clicked out, and bright lights shone down from the ten-foot ceilings. A few palmetto bugs scurried out of sight. No food was ever left out on a counter in Florida; the ants and roaches would cart it off before you got up in the mornin’. Rats too.
    He looked in the bread box and found one of yesterday’s loaves, still in pretty good shape. The heat and humidity kept it soft, even though it went bad quicker’n you could say shit. Best eat it up.
    He looked in the icebox and found a haunch of what looked and smelt like pork. A round of cheddar sat on the counter next to the cutting board, on a little glass stand under a cake cover.
    He rifled through a few likely drawers, and as expected found knives and large forks near the butcher’s block. He sliced the bread, nice and thick. He likewise cut thick slabs of roast pork and one big pie-shaped hunk of cheese.
    A bit more rummaging turned up butter in another dish tucked behind the ceramic rooster that held bacon grease, and a small jar of mustard. Mustard had only been introduced to America in the last twenty years or so, and Red had only had it twice. The last time had been at Z Zeuch’s social, and he still hadn’t been able to decide if he liked it or not.
    Right now, it didn’t matter. He was so hungry, he could’ve eat a horse between two mattresses. He slathered the butter, runny in the June heat, on one piece of bread, and mustard all over the other.
    In no time an impressive sandwich was created, and Red went back to the icebox, where he’d spotted a couple of Moerlein Lager beers when he got out the pork.
    The cool, hefty bottles clinked in his hands as he carried them and the sandwich to the big kitchen table, one of those with the natural wood top, heavily finished and thoroughly scarred with use, and the frame and legs painted white. A battered collection of mismatched Windsor and ladderback chairs gathered around the table like piglets in a littler, squirming for a teat.
    Red reckoned it’d be as busy as a pigpen come breakfast time, which in most whorehouses was usually around noon; later on a Saturday or Sunday. All the girls would be there. It was part of their pay. More than one woman had took to whoring just to keep from starving.
    The rest of the “staff,” the two addicts and a couple drunks who were pretty much the same as the other two, and whatever customers were left over, having paid extra to bunk with their girls or they’d have woke up in the road.
    They’d be wrasslin’ over the scraps once they’d dragged-ass out of bed, but before that Red had plans to be long gone. He chewed the sandwich as fast as he could, wincing at a molar that was already going bad. He gargled the beer to help the food go down, and its cool bite had him feelin’ considerable better in no time.

It was growing light by the time he heard two cars start up out under the oaks, and putter off into the disappearing shadows. Red figured it would be a few hours before anyone was up and about except maybe for the gamblers. The fella sniffin’ that white shit hadn’t looked sleepy to him at all. He found a cheesecloth bag and stuffed the rest of the pork in it, along with a huge slice of the cheddar and the little jar of mustard.

Red found a full bottle of rum under the sink

    He lamented the absence of any more beers in the icebox, but he did find a full bottle of rum under the sink, probably for the cook. He was turning with it to slip out the back door when a booming voice stopped him in his tracks.
    “Well good mornin’, brother Dedge!”
    Red damn near dropped the rum. “Jesus, Senegal, you scair’t th’ shit out of me!”
    Johnson’s face went from smile to frown in an instant. He locked one eye on Red. “You ain’t studyin’ on runnin’ out on me now, are ya brother?”
    Red was backing up, shaking his head. “I figured I was a danger to you an’ Guy, an’ your folks…”
    Senegal Johnson’s eye only got wider, his eyebrow so high Red thought it might run off into his gnarled and braided hair. “Me an my folks? You ain’t in this up to yo’ fuckin’ eyeballs? Y’all are my folks. Yo brother here, boy, an’ if’n you got a single hair on yo’ ass you’ll stay right here and defend him.”
    Senegal Johnson was eight years older than his friend, and knew just what to say to get under the young man’s skin.
    Red only bowed up a little. Then he shrugged. “Since ya put it that way, reckon you’re right.”
    Johnson’s face backed up in a caricature of surprise, both eyes staring now. He shook his head, moved towards the icebox, talking low to himself. “Gon’ hafta write dis day down on de calendar, Red Dedge admittin’ he be wrong…”
    Red was actually relieved. He hadn’t had the slightest idea where he was going to go.

“I need to go meet the Judge”

    “I do need to go meet the Judge in the village for lunch. He’s my lawyer now.”
    Senegal stood at the gas stove with his back to Red. Bacon sizzled on the griddle to the left front of the huge enameled expanse, while a cast-iron skillet the size of a truck tire heated on the far right of the four burners. Senegal mixed flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, and a pinch of salt, then mixed in milk, eggs and melted butter. The resulting batter took up the rest of the griddle.
    The huge black man took the head off the ceramic chicken and grabbed a pair of pink lace panties from inside. They were gathered in the middle with a bit of tie wire, but off to one end so it had a small end to grab and a bigger, bushier end to dip the congealed grease. He rubbed the cloth in the bacon grease and swabbed it in the black pan. It started to hiss and pop, and he slopped on more grease.
    He then began deftly cracking eggs one-handed, with both hands, over and over until the pan was full of bubbling egg whites and sunny yolks.
    There must have been thirty eggs, and plopped in the grease slicker’n eel snot, in Red’s opinion. Those slabs of hands helped, he figured, but they were thick as thumbs and he wouldn’t have guessed the big man was so agile. His own hands and fingers were impressively long, and not nearly as stubby as Senegal’s. Red decided he would steal this trick, for no better reason than he liked it. He knew he could do it.

Copyright © 2022 by Roger Owens