Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (67) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
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all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

Friday,
September 1, 1922,
concluded

He came up to the north side of the culvert and saw Jueve down in the canal, holding Jumper above the black water in the culvert pipe. The truck they had shot up was still tilted over the canal with the left front wheel hanging over the edge. Blood was dripping heavily from the front seat, puddling on the roadway and trickling into the canal.
    Damn, Red thought, that’ll bring the ’gators for sure and for certain.
    Joe pounded past Red like he was standing still, leapt into the canal and gathered Jumper in his arms. Red scrambled down the side of the ditch through the scrub brush and waded into the pipe.
    “He’s alive, help me get him out!”
    Red was right there, saw Jumper was conscious, his face white, teeth clenched, and said, “We can hand him up to the road from here.” They were only in about three feet of water. Rosalijo and Ramon charged up and Red yelled, “Get on the culvert and take him from us!”
    They lifted Jumper by shoulders and knees, and the other men grabbed his clothes and dragged him onto the roadway, just in front of the truck full of dead men. They hoisted him and ran for the house. Red could see a patch of red on his upper right side.

Jueve was shaking

    Jueve was shaking, and he hugged the boy to his side, one-armed. “You did good, son, you did good.”
    The boy wasn’t quite crying, and Red understood. He was pretty shaky himself.
    Joe was up the canal bank and hotfooting it towards the house. “You saved us, Senor Roja. That man would have killed us, I was loading the shotgun, and, and…”
    Red was nodding, and held the boy’s arm as he led him up the bank. “Let’s go see how Jumper’s doing. And son, I saw you stand your ground and kill those bastards that shot him, and it was about the bravest thing I ever did see. Your uncle Skeeter’ll be bustin’ his buttons over it when I tell him.”
    That seemed to stiffen the boy’s spine a bit, and they crawled out of the canal wet to the waist, boots squelching mud.
    A wailing that sounded like Rosalijo came from the house, and Red thought for sure Jumper was dead. They ran, thumping up the steps, across the porch and in the open front door.
    Ramon had joined in the crying, and as they came in the kitchen they saw why. Guy was standing there, still holding the Parker, and Jenny was behind him, crying quietly into a frilly hankie. Rosalijo and Ramon were huddled over Luis, both still keening in sadness. Luis had taken a high-powered .50 caliber bullet right through the chest. The entry wound was ugly, mashed in and bloody, the size of an orange, but the hole in his back was a gaping crater. What was left of his ribs stuck from the awful, chewed meat of his back like broken twigs, and an entire section of his spine was gone. Blood and tissue had splattered on the back wall.
    Ma Middleton was crying too, and said “I was behind th’ stove, I tol’ him them big guns would tear right through, he wouldn’t listen…don’t know for sure he even heard me it was so loud…so loud…”
    Red left Jueve there and went into the rooms on the east end of the house. The first door on his left was a sitting room, and it looked like where Guy had set up. Two couches had been piled atop one another, and shoved against the north wall. Bullet holes riddled the walls, and as he had predicted, they went right out the other side of the house. Chips of wood, plaster, and couch stuffing littered the floor.
    The end room, more of a screened porch, had its heavy cypress furniture pushed to the north end, and Harlan was sitting on a rocker, beside Skeeter Willis in a straight chair, and had a dirty towel with bright red blood on his left arm.
    Both held 1903 Springfields, ammo boxes crowded around their feet, and the room stank of burned gunpowder, sulphury and rank. The surplus Army rifles didn’t share the smokeless ammo with the Gewehr, and a haze of it still hung near the ceiling.

“We sure gave them boys a warm welcome”

    “We sure gave them boys a warm welcome, didn’t we?” Harlan said cheerfully.
    Skeeter wasn’t as bright; Luis had been one of “his” boys. Red saw tear tracks streaking through the gunpowder grime on Willis’ face, and he looked away. A man oughtn’t be ashamed to cry, but he didn’t need an audience while he did it.
    “We shore did, I think I got six myself.”
    Harlan jumped up, grabbed his hand and shook it. “Well hellfire and damnation, son, that’s some good shootin’!”
    Red nodded, still looking north, out through the screen. “Yeah,” he said grimly. “Yeah, it was.”
    Jumper was in the front room with Joe, laying on a heavy leather-and-cypress divan as long as the room. His beautiful paisley print shirt was in bloody rags on the floor, and Red thought it was a damn shame. He would have loved to wear clothes like that, with those kinds of colors and that kind of, well, life, but he would have been the butt of jokes among the whites, and that was one thing Red Dedge could never abide.
    Jumper’s upper chest was tightly bandaged, and only a small splotch of blood showed, under his arm on the right side. “He took a .45 that burrowed along the outside of his ribcage, and I think he probably broke a rib. Bruised up real bad, the inside of his arm, too. Much of the damage the .45 does is from the hydrostatic shock.”
    Red hadn’t the damndest idea what the hell hydrostatic shock was, but he wasn’t about to admit that. “Just glad you’re all right,” he said to Jumper, “and thank you. You and the boy did good.”
    Jumper nodded, grimaced, almost like he was annoyed. Like getting shot was…inconvenient, at the worst. “Hurts…talk…” He waved a slow hand at Joe.
    “He’s had a nice belt or six of rum, Harlan’s best, or, rather, Guy’s, I should say,” Joe said, smiling. “And I gave him an old Indian remedy-willow bark.”
    Red looked sideways at him, and Jumper smiled.
    Joe waited until the thought had fully formed in Red’s head: “I thought this was an educated Indian,” before he let him down. “It is called aspirin, Senor Roja. Aspirin is made from the bark of willows.”

Jumper gasped and groaned, holding his side

    Both the other men chuckled, then Jumper gasped and groaned, holding his side. Served him right, Red thought, his face turning red as his name. Joe saw his look and his face went soft.
    “Please, Red,” using his English name, “it is a private Indian joke. We would never tell this joke to any white man, unless we liked him very much.”
    Well, what man could be insulted by that? Red grinned, said, “It is purty funny, now you say it that way. I’m jus’ still jumpy I guess. Ain’t kilt but two men before, an’ I reckon I saw to six of ’em today. Makes a fella a might nervous in the knees, killin’ like this.”
    The Indians both stared at him, faces flat as a quiet pond, until Red squinted at them. Joe broke the silence. “You’ve killed eight men?”
    Red nodded, the grin gone. “Not like they gave me a lot of choice. I didn’t go gunnin’ fer them, they blew off my brother’s leg. They could’a just busted up his still, kicked his ass, but no. They burned my farm! Them crazy-assed swamp rats want us dead.”
    Joe looked at Jumper. Jumper looked at Red. Red looked at Joe, who looked back and said, “That’s six more men than me, and the second one was today.”
    Jumper was nodding, pale and shaking from shock and pain, but impressed. “First man…I ever killed, was…t’day.”
    Joe’s eyebrows went up. “What about that gambler fella, Lou’siana Jack?”
    Jumper snapped, “Never killed…that cheatin’ bastard, that was…Gopher Billy Knife.” His face twisted again, and he dragged a bottle of ’shine from under the divan, pulled the cork with his teeth, spit it on the floor, and took a long pull.

Joe seemed to believe him

    Joe seemed to believe him. “Gopher never could abide a cheat at cards, and he was good with a knife, too…that fancy gambling Negro got his gullet cut to the bone, so I hear.”
    Jumper tried not to cough from the liquor, but did anyway, grimaced, tucking his right arm against his side, eyes squeezed shut. “Yeah’e did…fucker…dezherved it too, but it waz’nme…Gover Billy nnn…”
    Red snatched the bottle before Jumper Chili Fish let it slip, his slurred words dissolving into a light snoring. He took a good guzzle, said “Ahhh,” and handed it to Joe. The Indian took it, sipped it a few times, and handed it back.
    “Don’t drink much?” Red asked. “Don’t like it?” It was still often taken for an insult if a man wouldn’t drink with another, although Red was just curious.
    Joseph Bainbridge Sumner the Third looked up at him from his seat on the arm of the huge divan, and once again decided Red was being straight with him. “I believe there was a discussion between General Robert E. Lee and the man later known as Stonewall Jackson. Lee wanted to know why Jackson did not imbibe, and if he did not care for it. Perhaps you’ve heard the story?”
    Of course he had; every Southern boy with a hair on his ass knew it. Lee asked Jackson’s reasons for being a teetotaler, and Jackson had replied that it was not because he liked it too little, but rather that he liked it too much, and Lee admitted that that was the case with him as well. Both were said to have been dyspeptic, and shared buttermilk as a toast when toasts were called for, as Red understood. Those who celebrated “Lee-Jackson Day,” and they were many in the South, celebrated with buttermilk on Lee’s birthday, January 19th, 1807, even though Jackson’s was seventeen years later on January 21st, 1824.
    “So you know how to stay sober. That’s good, ’cause soon as you get that land titled and I get that sawmill runnin’ smooth, you and me are gonna go hunt us some Ashleys. I’m tired of this shit, they done chased me far as I’m a’gonna go. And no way will we be able to fulfill the contract with Skeeter if those mercenary bastards keep comin’ at us. I have to make that money, I need to make that money. I got a lot at stake here.”     Joe smiled his thin, calming smile. “I understand there is a young lady involved?”

“Is there anything you don’t know?”

    “God damn it! Is there anything you don’t know?”     Joe looked puzzled, seemed irritated but stayed calm. “There is almost everything I don’t know. I understand you have a girl, what a surprise that was!”     Red glared at him.     “I don’t even know her name, who she is. I just know you have someone else to lose to these murderers, just like we all do.”     His gaze added the sleeping Jumper Chili Fish, but Red thought bigger. The whole damn Cow Creek nation had lost a chief. Wait, though; those snake-in-the-grass Ashleys wouldn’t go after Lola, would they? Even they wouldn’t sink that low, would they?     As if he’d read his mind, Joe said, “If they know you’re sweet on her, they might try to get to you through her.” He could see Red’s jaw clench at the thought.     “Well, they can’t. She doesn’t know where we are, I’ve made sure of that.”     Joe looked on, calm as ever. “They don’t know that. And they’d expect her to say that if you two were an item and they questioned her. I doubt they’d be civilized about it either. Those men lying dead out there didn’t come to have a talk.”     Red tilted his head and stared at the Indian for a minute.
    “Well you’re just a God damn ray a’ sunshine, ain’tcha?”     For once Joe looked mildly uncomfortable; fluffed his Indian skirt around his pants, still wet from the canal. “Being right isn’t always…popular.”     Red had to agree with that. He’d told Guy umpteen times not to go messin’ with them Ashleys, but did he listen? Hell no. And Red had been right then, just like Joe was right now.     “All the more reason t’ exterminate them sons a’ bitches, like ’e said,” Harlan Middleton growled from the doorway. “You’re right, you need to make that money, and we need that lumber to make ours. So you gotta get that runnin’ a’fore you go huntin’ Ashleys. But right now let’s put the mule in front th’ wagon, boys. We got some grim work to do, some bad boys to dispose of. Then we need to get Luis buried, and that cain’t happen for a few days, until his momma and some other relatives can get here.”

Rosalijo’s face was red, his eyes swollen from crying

    Rosalijo stepped up beside Harlan, and he turned to the Mexican. Rosalijo’s face was red, his eyes swollen from crying.     “They gonna need to bring your priest, son, you know all we got ’round here, Baptists, Methodists, and some more Baptists.”     Rosalijo said, “Tio Harlan, Luis and Ramon’s family are not Catholics like most of us. They are members of La Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Ultimos Días. There are many up that way, east of the river, where they live.”     That was quite a surprise for Red; every Mexican or Cuban he’d ever met was a Catholic, and here these two were Mormons, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The river Rosalijo mentioned was the Kissimmee River, and the Mormons had staked out a big-ass ranch up that way, or so he’d heard. The land was, in his opinion, too swampy for really good cattle grazing, while admitting he was no cattle man. But cows could deal with it. They’d stand in the canal and eat lily pads, he’d seen it. Just wasn’t ideal, but you could beat a living out of land like that if you’d a mind. He thought of the stories of hard Mormons out west in the last century.     Maybe they did, but Red didn’t have such a mind. He didn’t like cows, or bulls, they were so big and stupid they could kill you and not even notice, and they stunk. He made his living growing the best crops and cutting the best timber, both plenty dangerous enough for any normal man, thank you very much.
    “His Mama will bring the Patriarch, he’s an Anglo but the Mormons are good people, they don’t care if you’re Mexican, black, whatever. They just want to save your soul. That is not so bad a thing, in my opinion. If you do not mind, I will help Ramon prepare his brother; his mother cannot see him this way. When we are done we will come help you dispose of those asesinar hijos de putas, que lo mataron,” and his teeth ground together as he spat the words out.     Red stepped over and put his hand on Rosalijo’s sleeve. “I’ll send one of the boys to the camp with Guy. We’ll have a cypress coffin you can put him in to hide his back in two hours. We’ll pad it good so he looks…normal. Dress him up real nice, you’re right, she shouldn’t see him like that. You can tell his Mama it won’t rot for a hundred years. And you might tell his male relatives, if he’s got them, that we intend putting the rest of those murdering sons of whores who killed him in the ground. And they won’t be gettin’ no fancy box, neither.”     He used Rosalijo’s exact words, only in English, a way, he felt, to assure him they had the same mission in mind.

Copyright © 2022 by Roger Owens