Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (56) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

Sunday,
March 31, 1918,
continued

Marcus was on the ground, gasping, his breath knocked from him. The horse had jinked sideways and thrown him, and likely on purpose. The shotgun had gone flying into the grass somewhere. That old bitch knew he was a shitty rider. He didn’t like horses, never had, and in his limited experience the feeling had been universally mutual. Horses scared him.
    He started to get up when the flat of Tom Maddox’s shovel smacked into the side of his head, from out of nowhere. Marcus was laid out flat, but he wasn’t out. He blinked at the sky, saw the mare ploughing back through the grass towards the road, and Tom Maddox standing over him.
    “Now Marcus, just you relax now, and you’re gonna be fine. I’m gonna help ya out, but it’s gonna hurt some.”
    Belvedere, still fighting for breath, wheezed, “Wha…what,” but Tom pulled him arms out, palms down, and Marcus couldn’t stop him. Maddox raised the shovel and carefully slammed the flat bottom onto the gang boss’s left hand, mashing it against the ground.
    Belvedere let out a screech, and Moses sang out loudly. “My sister taught me how to pray!”
    The boys bellowed out the answer, “My sister taught me how to pray!”
    “If I fail to pray, and my soul be lost, it’s nobody’s fault but mine!”

“You’re  gonna kill me!”

    The gang boss flailed about on the ground, blood now running down his scalp from the first hit, and dripping from his battered left hand. “You’re gonna kill me!” he whined.
    Tom shook his head, frowning, waving a friendly hand. “No, no, no, last thing we want ta do is ta kill ya, y’know. This is just a jailbreak. If we kill ya, that’ll be murder. Oh heck no, don’t want that. There’d be cops comin’ out our ears, ya know?”
    Maddox jockeyed around so he could take a shot at Belvedere’s other hand, but as he swung, the man on the ground snatched it away, and the shovel thumped into the sandy soil.
    Tom shook his head. “Lookie here, Marcus, I said we’re tryin’ ta help ya here, don’t’cha know?” His Midwestern twang seemed to steady Belvedere a bit.
    “What…what…”
    Tom kneeled down by his head. “Ya fought, old feller, ya understand? Ya fought hard. There ya go. All the boys heard it, they’ll vouch fer ya. That’s yer story, fer sure. We ganged up on ya, beat the livin’ shit out a’ ya, y’know?”
    Marcus tried to get up on his elbows, and in a shaky old-man voice, asked, “We?”
    Maddox nodded, enthusiastic now. “Oh yah, me’n Johnny Boy, y’know. Johnny Boy Ashley.”
    Marcus Meriwether Belvedere slumped back with a groan. “Jesus, Mary and fuckin’ Joseph,” his Cajun Catholic coming out among the curses. “John fuckin’ Ashley too? I let th’ King of the God damn Everglades get away? I’m a dead man…”
    Tom was shaking his head, grinning like they were friends or something. “That’s what I’m tellin’ ya, ya tell ’em how ya fought us off but couldn’t stop us, and ya got hurt pretty bad a’doin’ it, y’know. Ye’ll be a fuckin’ hero. Ol’ soldier goes out tough, one more good fight, eh? And if ya play it square, Johnny Boy’ll make it worth yer time for that retirement ya got comin’, don’tcha know. Ever’body knows ya never took a dime from Johnny, now did’ja?”
    Belvedere shook his head, rubbing what was left of his hair into the sand.
    “Well, there ya go!”
    Marcus considered for a moment. “So…I got hurt purty bad, huh? An’ I’m a hero?”
    Maddox was nodding with that boyish grin again.
    “Uh…just how bad…?”

“Well, I did tell ya it was gonna  hurt, ya know?”

    Tom shook his head, not grinning now, almost apologetic. “Well, I did tell ya it was gonna hurt, ya know? Yep, well, there ya go…” He positioned himself on Marcus’ right side, lifted the shovel, and raised his eyebrows.
    Marcus looked away to his left, leaking tears, and put his hand out. His scream this time was as genuine as the first.
    Then the bank robber lifted Belvedere by the collar and punched him in the face and chest, again and again.
    The Redbone, howling in pain the whole time, was yanked about like a rat in the jaws of a terrier, flopping like a dead man. The meaty thuds of Maddox’s fists sounded like somebody chopping up a hog. The grim noises made by Tom Maddox beating the living shit out of Marcus Belvedere indeed, as promised, carried clearly to the rest of the road crew, who sang low to be sure they could indeed hear it.
    Later, they could all tell Big Boss Blitch with absolute honesty that they had heard what must have been an epic battle, between one old man and two young convict runaways, a valiant but futile effort that had cost the old man a prolonged and terrible beating.
    “My Daddy taught me to believe,” Moses sang out, as the thumps from the tall grass continued, and the boys followed, “My Daddy taught me to believe.”
    Marcus roared in agony.
    “If I fail to believe, and my soul be lost, it’s nobody’s fault but mine…”
    After the blows had stopped sounding from out in the switchgrass, and the last chorus of “It’s Nobody’s Fault,” Moses began another song. “Lord, I feel like goin’ home…” and the boys broke off the work for the first time that day.
    “I tried and I failed, and I’m tired and weary…”
    An escape didn’t matter; if you were on a trustee gang you worked, or you went back on the rock, a trustee no longer. An hour a day in the yard, if you were lucky and could pay, and twenty-three hours a day in the stifling cells, day or night.
    The boy who had called out the “rabbit,” Gaius Julius James of Lake City, Florida, got the reins of the old mare, who had taken to chewing on the switchgrass. “C’mon Josey old gal, dat shit be give you da colic. You eat dat, I gotta gib’ you Momma’s Voodoo Cure, an’ you be shittin’ fer a week.”

Gaius Julius loved horses

    Gaius Julius, named after Caesar himself, had been convicted of aggravated assault on a white man in Jacksonville that Gaius claimed had been beating a horse to death. He loved horses and despised anyone who abused them. He had worked at Camp Johnston, the Army base training thousands of recruits for the coming war. He had been a private employee of the contractor that ran the huge stables there, which was a damn good thing for Gauis Julius; had he worked directly for the Army, he would have been summarily executed. Gaius claimed Raiford was about the best place he’d ever lived. But then, they let him take care of the horses. Naturally.
    Having given Ashley and Maddox time to make their getaway, Moses led the other convicts into the grass to find Marcus Belvedere. It wasn’t hard; the Redbone Cajun was still making a considerable amount of noise, hacking and spitting, crying out when he moved.
    Moses took Gaius aside, speaking low. “See if you c’n fin’ dat shotgun, ’fo some stupid nigga do, an’ think ’bout gittin’ away hisself an’ messin’ us up. Dey see a gun, we all dead.”
    They took two shovels, and three of the bigger men took off their shirts and threaded the sleeves onto the shovel handles. This meager stretcher carried the injured man back to the road, where the wagon they had all come in was drawn up, the mule pulling it dragging in the heat as badly as the poor old nag. They racked the shovels and sledgehammers into the wooden holders on the side, then placed Boss Man Belvedere in the bed, and made as good as they could to sit in the wagon without stepping on him.
    Moses and Gaius were the last out of the bush. Gaius had shown the older man where the shotgun had fallen, and the trampled grass that clearly showed two men had been stepping around on it. One path led from where they had found Marcus to where the gun had landed, while another, larger path led from there to the woods north of the road, indicating two men making away, with the shotgun. In an hour, the grass would stand itself back up and not a trace of the escapee’s tracks would be visible. Not a word passed between them. No words were needed. Prison taught men to communicate in many silent ways.
    Moses mounted the wagon seat, snapped the reins and whistled the mule. “Gidap!” and the wretched animal slowly lifted his feet. The wagon jerked into motion, the men’s heads swaying with the motion, like cornstalks in the wind.

Belvedere let out a loud gasp

    Belvedere let out a loud gasp, then seemed to fall unconscious again. It didn’t surprise any of the men; they worried Maddox had killed the poor bastard, and they would get the blame.
    Gaius walked alongside, leading the old mare, whistling along with Moses’ singing. “Lord, I tried to see it through, but it was, too much, for me…”
    “Whyn’choo ride dat ol’ bag a’ bones, y’ dumb ass nigger?” one convict said. “Fer once yo’ wuthless life ever, you ain’t gotta walk, you walk anyhow?”
    Gaius just shook his head. “No suh. Gaius Julius James don’ ride no hoss, never did ride no hoss, never will ride no hoss. I just takes care of ’em. I done take care a’ my part a’ one thousand an’ six hunn’erd hosses at Camp Johnston, had sixty a’ my own babies, an’ I kep’ ’em fed, watered and looked after better’n any nigga there. I took what I needed for my babies, I stol’ what I needed if I had to, an’ ain’t nobody c’n take care of a hoss better’n Gaius Julius James, and dat’s dat.”
    The older men on the wagon all laughed. “Got you dere man,” one joked.
    Marcus groaned from the wagon bed.
    The same man remarked, “Dey done fucked up po’ ol’ Marcus but good, ain’t dey?”
    The laughter slowed. They liked Marcus; he wasn’t a bad man at all. He just wanted to go home, like everybody else.
    The first man said, “Hey Gaius, what be dat ‘Momma’s Voodoo Cure?’”
    Gaius grinned his big grin, looked down at the dust and rock, and said “Don’t you worry none ’bout dat, nigga. You jus’ get on yo’ knees tonight an’ pray I never gotta use it on you.”

The easy laughter was back

    The easy laughter was back. “I got de Voodoo Cure for yo’ momma,” said the second man, and another kind of chorus went around the singers.
    “Yo mamma.”
    “No, yo mamma.”
    “Yo’ momma, mutha’fucka…”
    Moses’ fine baritone seemed to mix with the afternoon, the cicadas screaming, the horse and mule clopping slowly through the humid air, barely stirring the dust with their weary, dragging hooves.
    “Everything I ever done was wrong, and I feel like goin’ home…”

Copyright © 2022 by Roger Owens