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| Saint Sebastian River Bridge [Click image to call up all published instalments] |
Friday,
July 28, 1922,
8:00 AM
Red was shaving by the little creek with his Army-issue Gillette shaving kit, his button-down open and hanging around his waist, when he heard the deep burble of the G-10 Dodge. He’d driven a galvanized spike into a palm tree and hung the steel mirror from the kit facing east, so he and Guy could shave with the rising sun.
He hurriedly finished up, nicking his chin, and bent and scrubbed his face with the clear water. He shrugged his arms into the sleeves of his shirt, then buttoned it up, leaving only the top button open. He buttoned his cuffs, and turned to face the day.Jennie was cooking fresh fat pork in a frypan with some of the fatback from Ma Middleton’s bag of goodies. It wasn’t bacon, but it’d do until they could make their own. They had no eggs, but somehow Jenny had made pancakes, and they had some jars of jam from Senegal’s supplies to sweeten them.
The aroma of coffee grabbed his nose, and he forgot the truck for a minute and poured himself a cup. He dug in the bag from Ma and found a paper sack of sugar, gravelly and gray, clearly homemade. Good, he thought, that pure-white store-bought shit just didn’t have the same flavor. He took a hefty pinch and dropped it in his cup, then picked up a tiny branch from the ground and stirred it.
Her back to him, Jenny stirred the pork and said, “We have spoons, you know.”
Red frowned at the back of her blue dress. How the hell did women do that?
“I’m lookin’ ’round for my mamma, but I don’t see her nowheres. Reckon she’s still up Jasper way.”
Somehow Jenny’s back radiated annoyance.
Guy had been watching the approaching truck as it curved slowly around the rutted sandy roads, bouncing into the mudholes and over the bumps. Anyone going more than about 10 miles an hour was in for a busted axle. He turned to them and said, “Now, boys and girls, don’t fight, it’s too late for that.”
Jenny and Red both snorted |
Guy threw his head back and laughed, just like it was the old days, just like he really believed he’d ever win a fight again with one leg.
It was good to see him getting along, Red thought, but that ugly black shadow was always there in the back of his mind. He was too proud to admit it was fear, but as long as one Ashley lived…well, he gritted his teeth, then his job wasn’t done.
Rosalijo pulled into the clearing, driving carefully and stopping the Dodge well back from the lean-to. The rear canvas cover flapped open and five men hopped out of the back.
Red’s eyebrows went up. He’d expected a truck and some equipment for a still; he wasn’t expecting an army. Two were younger, slimmer versions of Rosalijo, and though solid, came just above Red’s shoulder. They wore decent overhauls over their loose, white, long-sleeved shirts, sported monstrous bandanas at their necks, and held sombreros respectfully in their hands. They were trying, and failing, to grow mustaches, and Red figured them to be fifteen or sixteen at the most. Two were black, clearly brothers, rangy and raw-boned, maybe seventeen and nineteen. Both were in well-made if faded blue gingham flour-sack shirts, also long-sleeved, and unlike the Mexicans theirs had proper cuffs, collars and buttons. Their overhauls were more worn than the Mexican boys, but their boots were good and solid. The last one was a young Indian, but not as young as the others.
Striding forward, Red called out. “Hola, Rosalijo, quien diablos es todo esto?”
“Who-all the hell is this?” Guy and Jenny followed and stood by Red.
Rosalijo started the introductions. “Boys, this is Mr. Red Dedge and his brother Guy, and Miss Jenny. If I hear of you getting fresh with Miss Jenny, Ma has told me I may take your cojones and use them for ’gator bait.”
They all nodded sharply.
“These are my cousins, Miercole and Jueve. Son estupidas como cabras pero trabajan muy duro! They are stupid as goats, but work very hard!”
The boys both slapped at him, shouting “Maricon!” and “Chinga su Madre!” Asshole! Fuck your mother!
“Callat’ las bocas chingas!” Rosalijo shouted at them, and they shrunk back and “shut their fucking mouths.” It sounded to Red like the two had been named for the days Wednesday and Thursday in Spanish, and that the cursing back and to was, like with Red and his brothers, more affection than anger.
“My name Rufus, so I reckons I’m Red, jus’ like you” |
Red looked back at him, knowing Rufus waited for the new white boss to jump on his ass for talkin’ smart right off.
“Rufus, huh? Reckon you’re right, Rufus means Red too. This your brother? What’s his name?”
Red could see Rufus relax just a bit, and he put a hand on his brother’s back to push him forward. The brother wouldn’t take his eyes off the ground, and threatened to wring the straw hat in his hands to death like the neck on a Sunday chicken. He was shorter than Rufus but heavier, and his shoulders and arms strained the thin cloth of his shirt.
Rufus said, “He name Jasper, like de rock. He don’t talk much, he slow, but he work hard, he do anythin’, an’ you give him time, he do it better’n anybody. Even me.”
Taken back a little, Red had his mouth open, but couldn’t think of what to say.
Rosalijo pointed to the Indian, who Red figured to be a few years older than himself, maybe twenty or twenty-five. With Indians, it was hard to tell. They looked old when young, and inexplicably young when older.
“This is Joe.”
Guy stifled a snort. “Injun Joe?”
Joe was as tall as Red, and wore traditional Seminole clothing, a brilliant print shirt, soft and voluminous, gathered at the wrists, and baggy pants of red and brown stripes held up with a length of cloth that looked like scarlet silk. His head was wrapped in a cloth of dark purple that held his shoulder-length hair, and he wore a green sash over his left shoulder to his right hip, which held a long hunting knife in an alligator-hide sheath. His hair was dark, but not Indian-black; it was clear the man had some white in him. He stepped right up to Guy and held out his hand.
Surprised, Guy took it, and they shook. “My name is Joseph Bainbridge Sumner the Third,” he said with a slight British-sounding accent. “Pleased to meet you.”
Guy’s mouth hung open now |
Red was secretly smug that he’d pegged her accent as Old Dominion, but he had his doubts about whatever Brainards she claimed to spring from.
“It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Sumner, I’m sure. This is Mr. Guy Dedge, my…beau.”
Sumner took her hand, bent low, didn’t quite brush her fingers with his lips, but breathed warmly on them, and Jennifer Brainard, of the Richmond Brainards, batted her eyes at the handsome Indian in the early morning light.
“Encantado,” he said, tilting his head in the Latin manner.
Guy’s mouth slammed shut.
Red saw it and threw his hand out to shake with the Indian before a row started. “I’m Red Dedge, and it’s awful nice to meet all you folks, but,” and he turned to Rosalijo, “but what the hell are y’all doing here?”
Rosalijo, who Red could now see was older than he appeared at first, spread his hands out, as if it was obvious. “Tio Skeeter needs you to cut a shit-load of lumber in un tiempo corto, and you do not have the men even to start in such a short time. He is expecting a large herd of vacas soon and needs at least three miles of fence and fence posts by the end of Noviembre to hold all these cattle. He is these mens’ patron, but he does not demand part of their wages as most do. He is…a very good patron. And a good father. So, these are as his own children. He expects you to employ them, pay them, and take care of them as he would, and has, and does. I am telling you, this Skeeter is the very best of men, and his friend, my Tio Harlan, is the same. So, these four,” and he pointed out the Mexicans and the blacks, two pairs of brothers, “are your workers. And Joseph,” and he grinned at the Seminole, then stared straight at Guy, “is the best sawman, and the smartest lumber man, in nineteen counties, and an accountant to boot.”
Joseph looked aside at Rosalijo, and said, “I shall thrash you soundly when next we meet; you should have given my references ahead of time. Injun Joe indeed…” but he was smiling.
They hugged, and Rosalijo turned to the truck. “Vamos chicos, saquemos estas mierde del camion!”
They all jumped up and ran to the truck |
Rosalijo came back to talk to the brothers Dedge while the boys set up a camp with tents from the truck. “Tio Skeeter says, you should build houses for everybody first, because you’re going to need ’em. That should still give you eight weeks or so to get the fences cut before the herd gets here. We’ll need to feed them up for a few months, then we’ll drive them through Estero to Punta Gorda, for shipment to Cuba.” He pronounced it “Coo-ba.”
“Rosalijo, you do know the whole damn Ashley gang is looking fer us, and’ll likely kill anybody they find with us, too, don’t you? Did Uncle Skeeter mention that?”
Guy and Jenny looked at Rosalijo, their faces questioning. The Mexican shook his head. “Don’t worry, we have our eyes out there. They don’t know anything about this place, at least not yet, and if they find out, we’ll know. Mire, Senor Roja, look, Tio Harlan is a Middleton. He has, ah, un Puerta trasera, a back door? to the family of el Bandido Malo, Clarence. His sister is close with sus primas, her girl-cousins on the Bandido’s side of the family. They like to brag on what Clarence does, so we usually know what they’re up to, within a few days.”
“Well God damn, Rosalijo, y’all know what the hell you’re doing, fer sure and fer certain.”
To Red’s surprise, the Mexicans, the Indian, and Jenny the prostitute all crossed themselves at his blasphemy. He thought right then that they’d best get over that. If they were going to work together, they were gonna hear a lot more cussing from him, and Guy too, if he wasn’t mistook, and he wasn’t.
He decided to make the best of it |
A quick nod. Good; no bullshitting around at work.
“You’re a sawman, right? You know these boys?”
Another nod.
“Which of them would do best at cutting trees? Which hauling, trimming?”
Rosalijo spoke up. “I can tell you that. Rufus is your tree man. Honestly, my cousins Wednesday and Thursday would be best hauling logs. They’re only fifteen, clumsy as bulls, and if you give them sharp things, they will only hurt themselves. I would recommend Jasper to trim and feed the logs to the sawman, he’s smarter than he looks, and strong as an ox. Joe has another job first. We need to prove we own this land.”
Red looked sideways at him for a second. “I thought Harlan said…” but now Joe was nodding.
“I know, Mr. Red, that Mr. Howey claims to own this land, but there are no survey maps to prove it. We will produce some that indicate his land stops several miles north of here, and file them with the clerk of the court in Fort Pierce. I happen to know the clerk, and pre-dating them to before Mr. Howey’s purchase, to assure our claim is valid, will not be a problem. While Mr. Howey has quite a bit of money and influence, Mr. Middleton and Mr. Willis are not without…assets, of their own. Since they are here, and Mr. Howey is not, has in fact never set foot on this land, the clerk is more than happy to accommodate us, for certain considerations.”
Red hadn’t heard so much bullshit since the last time he’d talked to Greyson Stikelether, but it made him feel better about the situation, knowing he had somebody sharp on his side. He’d never have thought to just up and claim several square miles of land, let alone expect to get away with it.
Not for the first time, he thought there were just people in this world that were smarter than him.
| Copyright © 2022 by Roger Owens |
Those images of an “Army-issue Gillette shaving kit” render this installment so real!
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