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| Saint Sebastian River Bridge [Click image to call up all published instalments] |
Monday,
July 17, 1922,
continued
Lilly Owens drew back as from a rattlesnake, her face a mask of real fear. She whispered “dios mio” and dropped the pitcher of tea on the floor. It shattered with a sound like a pistol shot, splashing Red’s boots, and several customers just coming in the door stopped and stared. To their common knowledge Lilly Owens had never dropped a damn thing to do with food or cooking in her life. It didn’t happen.
Red was looking at his Brogues, thinking that with all the sugar in it that tea was going to be sticky as hell to get off his work shoes.
The Judge was concerned. “Why, Lilly my dear, what in the world is the matter?”
Jimmie was coming out from behind the counter, and Red was shocked to see him grab his sawed-off shotgun. Guess I would too if it was my wife, he thought.
“Un brujo, un demonio! El mismo diablo!” |
It was Red’s turn to recoil. The Devil Himself? A sorcerer, a demon?
Greyson Stikelether stood, wiping his face with his napkin, and put a hand on her shoulder to calm her. “My dear, Mr. Dedge has been under tremendous strain recently, and he could stand to put some meat on his bones, but I can assure you he is no devil. He’s a decent young man who’s been severely mistreated and his brother direly injured. Please, my dear, just bring us some fried catfish and hushpuppies?” He seemed genuinely concerned that Lilly understood this battered young man and his situation.
She seemed to accept his words, but kept uncertain eyes on Red as Jimmie turned without a word, put the shotgun back under the bar, and went back into the kitchen, shaking his head. He’d never seen Lilly spooked like that, not even when confronted by a black bear. She’d talked to the bear, in a rather scolding voice, with her unique mix of Creek and Spanish, and it had slunk away without a sound. Now she was afraid of a kid still wet behind the ears? Jimmie, however, had learned not to dig too deeply into Lilly’s mind. There were some things he would never understand about his wife; it was just something he’d accepted.
Lilly bent down to Red, a young man as humiliated as he’d ever been, but she didn’t apologize. She wouldn’t touch him, but leaned on the table and looked in his eyes. “I will serve jou, but if, only if, you never smile at me that way again.”
Red had no idea what smiling had to do with the price of tea in China, but he nodded dejectedly.
“And,” she started again, and the boy’s head sank just a bit lower. “J’ou will never speak Español to me again. I cannot stand to hear it in j’our mouth.”
This time Red didn’t answer, just looked at his lap, and she finally went to the kitchen for their lunch.
The gathered workers almost cheered; their own lunches had been held up while this boy, lately their hero, was now on Lilly Owens’ bad side. It was not a place any of them cared to share with him.
When they had returned to Stikelether’s office, on the back corner of the building that overlooked the little alley behind this block of offices, just south of and parallel to 20th Street, the Judge motioned Red to a chair and fished a flask out of the same drawer as earlier. He took a long gargle, watching the farm boy over the neck of the bottle. Without a word he handed it over to Red, who did it justice as well. A bit of good hooch went down just fine over a good lunch, as disturbing as that lunch had been.
“What should we do now?” |
Stikelether reclaimed the flask and finished it off, and his eyes were just a tad fuzzy when he looked back at his young client. That look became even a touch sentimental, and then the old man shook his head. He wasn’t grinning now.
“‘We’ aren’t going to do anything, son. You are. You and your brother. Christ Almighty kid, do you have any idea how many enemies you’ve made for yourself here? Hell, today alone could be a record for a young fella pissing off powerful people so badly they now want him dead! You need to do something, all right. You need to collect your money and your no-account brother and get the hell out of this town for a good long time.”
He opened the drawer and pulled out a heavy sheaf of bills. “After my fee of three hundred sixty dollars, you have three thousand, two hundred and fifty dollars on paper. I propose to buy that paper, and I’ll give you a dollar fifty on the Sheriff’s one thousand shares in the Sebastian Ranch Company. They’ll be worth two by the end of the year, so don’t worry I’m losing money or anything. So your end comes up to three thousand, seven hundred and fifty dollars. Here’s thirty-seven hundred forty-seven; there’s three dollars owing the court for seals and stamps.”
He handed the stack across his desk to Red, but the young man just sat in the rolling chair with his mouth open. “Close j’our mouth, chico, you gone catch flies…” Lilly’s remembered words jolted him from his wonderment over having more money than he’d ever seen before stuck in his face. Slowly, he reached out and took the stack of bills in his hands. He still couldn’t speak.
The Judge pulled the same trick he’d done with the Sheriff, sliding a sheet of fancy paper over to Dedge and handing him the same pen he’d handed Merritt. “Sign here. Gather your belongings, but remember, if it’s a risk, you can always buy more. You have a little money now, and many young men like you don’t realize the power that gives you. Especially if you need to run. Speaking of, the good Reverend Ezra Stone would like to buy your truck. Seems he needs it to help run the farm he bought from you; without the house and outbuildings he’s looking to make a sweet profit off your now-conveniently empty land. He’s authorized me to offer you six hundred dollars for it.”
Red frowned. “It’s not worth…” but the Judge held up a hand.
“Seriously, Red, he will profit handsomely from your land, and you may be unable to come around for a while to collect your seventy percent.”
Dedge knew by now not to be surprised at what the old pirate knew or how; he just twisted his lips and said, “I suppose you have something for me to sign.”
Like magic, another sheet of fancy paper appeared, was signed, and another stack of bills was handed over.
Red now grinned grimly |
The Judge grinned that grin again, but this time Red didn’t like it much at all. “It won’t be for long. Who do you think men like J.R. Merritt and ‘Z’ Zeuchs are going to send against you, now all the gun-toting members of the Frankenfield clan are dead? They won’t risk their own necks, you know.”
Red watched a tiny spider up in the corner behind Stikelether, thinking that she might be starving soon. Just like every farmer who ever lived, she was gambling her future on this being a good place for a spider like her to settle down. Red hoped that, with the windows open to the myriad flying bugs most of the year, even despite the screens, she would do well in her efforts. Build a family. Have a life. Like he and Guy had wanted, right here in the Village of Vero.
From the looks of things, that dream was never going to come true. How in the hell could he marry Lola Bostich if he had to go on the run? And for who knew how long? Those God-damned Ashleys would never give up gunning for him. Never. He knew it was either them, or him and Guy, and there was a whole lot more of them. Was it possible that all a man’s dreams could die at once?
“Put your money away and come with me.”
Red packed his cash in various pockets and followed the Judge out a side door he’d never noticed. It opened into a dark, narrow passage that the boy quickly realized was the space between two buildings that had been built over. There was no entrance or exit other than the Judge’s side door. Red had to turn sideways to navigate it; his shoulders were too wide to walk it straight. The plain stark cinder blocks on the wall of the next building told Red that no one had ever bothered to paint them, because they knew this wall would never be seen again. These days, blocks with sand and gravel or even crushed shells or coquina had replaced the old blocks that used cinders and clinkers from coal-fired steam engines.
Red could see a splinter of bright sunlight |
“Look right, across on the corner of 14th.”
Red did. A man loitered on that corner, trying not to look down the shaded walkway that led to the old man’s back office. He wore a short white Union Suit under grubby overhauls, with a slouch hat just like a thousand other farm boys, but this farm boy had a bulge in his overhauls’ belly pocket that looked suspiciously like a hogleg pistol .
“That will be ‘Z’’s straw-boss, R.D. Carter. He acts tough but he’s a sneaking back-shooter, so you look out for him. That fraudulent toad hasn’t worn overhauls for twenty years. Look at his shoes.”
Red did; the overhaul-clad “farm boy” was wearing gleaming black lowtop Redwings, hardly farming footwear. Rich man’s shoes. Red could almost swear he saw men’s stretch dress socks under the cuffs of those overhauls, like a fancy fellow like him probably wore every day. Carter had likely borrowed the stained outfit off one of the grove workers he ran for Herman Zeuchs.
“Next time you see him, he’ll be in a business suit. Now look left, over in the park beside the tobacconist’s shop.”
There Red spied another fellow that just seemed to be standing around, only looking at the building Stikelether’s office was in now and then. This was a little guy, wearing a fancy striped day suit and a straw boater.
“Now that boy, the one just looking at birds? That would be Roy Matthews, likes to go by ‘Young’, God knows why. He has come directly from Gomez and the very bosom of the Ashley family, with orders to shoot you down on sight.”
Two ideas came to Red’s mind at the same time: to demand of the Judge how in the living Hell he knew that, and the certain knowledge that it would be a waste of his own time to do so.
“Now turn ’round and head to the back of this little hidey-hole,” the Judge said quietly, and at the rear he found a flat plank blocking the way.
Stikelether sidled by him, looked through another peephole, then pushed on the door. With a click, the plank opened inward, revealing itself to be hinged and spring-loaded. “You can’t get back in once you go out, not without going back around to my office door. We’d better make sure there’s no more bushwhackers out there before you do.”
Red was in a war |
“Head west down the alley until you get to 20th Avenue, then go south. I told Donnie Marshbanks to expect you after lunch today, so you’ll have to cut back east towards the tracks and go in the back of the laundry. You’re going to need to clear out of here for a while, and I ’spect you’ll be wanting to talk to that nice Lola Bostich before you go.”
Red didn’t even look at the Judge at this remark; he was beyond wondering how the old pirate knew what he knew; he just did.
“Donnie will get you out of here and up to Senegal’s. Senegal is set to sell you a decent car, for exactly six hundred dollars. You better believe they know your truck by now, and it won’t be long before somebody tumbles to Guy being in Senegal’s attic. He sure has taken a shine to that Jenny.”
Stikelether rubbed his stubbled beard, grinned that grin of his, and said, “I can sure see why. She does know how to treat a man…”
Damn, thought Red, shaking his head. He knows everything.
“Just so’s I know, can you tell me who-all I might expect to come gunning for me? A’ course I know about the Ashleys, Z Zooks, Kimballs, and I guess Merritt. Don’t suppose I’ll need to worry about Fleming though…”
Stikelether actually broke out a laugh, slapping his knee. “Like they aren’t enough! Young Dedge, the list of mean-assed sons of bitches with more money than sense you haven’t pissed off is likely the shorter one! And if the Francis P. Flemings, father and son, aren’t likely to attempt revenge personally, their partners in the Sebastian Ranch Company might not be so fastidious in that regard. Bion Barnett, you don’t need to worry about, he’s a bookkeeper.
“The older brother, William Junior, now, that man is as hard and rough as the bark on a white oak. He moved to Jacksonville when it was a brawling port town just out of the Civil War and barged his way into the cut-throat local trade at about eighteen years old. He was the one convinced Daddy Bill and Brother Bion to close up shop in Hiawatha Kansas and come down here. William senior founded what wound up being Barnett First National Bank of Jacksonville.
“I think he enjoys it” |
Red turned to Greyson Stikelether and put out his hand. They shook, good and hard, both smiling.
Red had to speak first. “I jus’ don’t know how to thank you, Judge…”
The old pirate was grinning that grin, shaking his head, and he replied, “Just you go out there and see to them Ashleys, son, and I’ll keep working it from my side. One fine day we’ll see the end of that pernicious family, once and for all.”
Red gripped the old man’s hand once more, hard, and then he turned and stepped out into the searing, sun-dappled afternoon.
| Copyright © 2022 by Roger Owens |
Lily OWENS? Surely not only relatives of your mother appear in this fiction, but also of your father?! My anticipation of your Afterwords, in which you, hopefully, “explain all,” has grown to bursting!
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