Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (71) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
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By Roger Owens

Monday,
October 17, 1921,
3:00 AM

Captain J. S. Blitch, Warden of Raiford State Prison, had enjoyed a hearty steak for Sunday dinner, even if it was from last year’s Angus steer culling. They had this freezing business down to a science, and this time of year there was fresh corn from up Tallahassee way, Vidalia Sweet onions from Vidalia Georgia its only self, a mere hundred and fifty or so miles away, and Cherokee tomatoes from North Carolina, in Blitch’s estimation the best God damn tomatoes in the whole wide world.
    His grandma on his momma’s side had been a Cherokee gal named Morning Star Hubley-Smith, and the seeds from those tomatoes had been handed down for generations of her family. His cousins in Franklin, North Carolina, never left him out when it came time to ship Cherokees; he kept them liberally supplied with John Ashley’s finest ’shine and his seemingly endless supply of Lemon Hart Royal Navy Rum just to make sure.
    He, his top men, and his wife Lula Lee, had all enjoyed a fine Sunday dinner indeed, which had lasted until well after nine o’clock.
    Two black women, in dark dresses and white headscarves that belonged in the last century, worked for Blitch in order to be near their men at the prison. They took the plates away and brought out brandy.
    The old tradition of the ladies retiring while the men drank and smoked cigars had gone by the wayside. Not only were there few women in the area other than Lula, or at least few who chose the coarse company of prison guards; Lula was one of a kind. She scorned the apple brandy and poured herself three fingers of Lemon Hart, and threw it back in one. She then drew a slim Hav-a-Tampa Jewel, “Mild as a Cigarette,” from a box on the table and put it to her lips.

    Blitch’s employees were absolutely taken with Lula Lee’s provocative ways, not to mention her prodigious bosom, and three matches were instantly held out to light it for her; but she chose to take flame from George Morford’s. She was showing such favors to Morford, Blitch thought, a bit too often these days, but there was nothing he could put his finger on.
    In any case, dinner had run long, the bottles had emptied swiftly, and James Simeon Blitch, aided by an equally staggering Lula Lee, had fallen into his bed about eleven of the evening, the next thing to dead drunk.
    So it was, that when Lee Compton, his Sergeant of the Guard, came banging on his door at some un-Godly hour of a Monday morning, he was not best pleased. In fact, he was barely conscious, and the particle of his mind that was functional bordered on the attitude of an enraged ape.
    Compton, equally drunk and in similar pain, cowered in the hallway as Blitch raged at him. He finally managed to explain to the warden that John Ashley, their most important prisoner, had gone even more berserk than Blitch himself.
    It was true. When Blitch got to Ashley’s cell, which was built for two but housed only John, the man was bloodied from head to foot. He was currently banging his head on the wall beneath the window that looked out onto the prison yard, and blood stained the wall, too.
    John had paid for a real bed, with springs and a mattress and everything. The mattress was now shredded into fluffy white bits, scattered around the cell and out into the hall, even out the barred window. The springs and bed frame were bent and smashed.
    Standing there barefoot, in his nightshirt, his work jacket and a pair of dirty uniform pants, Blitch couldn’t understand how a man could have ripped those springs out. The wounds on John’s hands explained most of the blood; he didn’t seem to be otherwise badly injured.

Blitch’s hair was all over his face

    Blitch’s hair was all over his face, sticking up, and he kept trying to brush it down with his fingers.
    Ashley screamed the whole time. “Frank! Look out! Ed, NO! Shoot those sumbiches! No! No! Don’t turn your back on those rats!”
    George Morford took it in first. “We have to go in there and stop him. He’s gonna kiIl his stupid self.”
    It took Lee Compton, Morford, Blitch, and two more deputies to get John Ashley in hand. By then the prison medic, Dr. Virgil Ransome, a spare little man in only his nightshirt, was there with a sedative shot. It was a good thing, because by then he had more than one patient to treat.
    Compton was bleeding from the nose and the younger of the deputies, a tall kid maybe nineteen years old named Branford Sykes, swore through tears he had a broken arm. Morford had a minor cut on his left forearm but shook the doctor off, the blood already clotting in the thick black hair on his massive arm.
    Ashley had fought like a madman, eyes firmly closed, clearly in the grip of some horrific nightmare. John wasn’t violent, Blitch knew; he never had been, in prison at least. Since he’d been nabbed again down in Wauchula and sent back to Raiford, he’d not so much as spit near a guard. As an escapee, he knew he was closely watched, and kept his nose clean. And he was, of course, still supplying the prison staff with the best liquor available. It made, Blitch considered as the sun lit the eastern horizon, for an interesting relationship.
    At four that afternoon, the doctor sent word that Compton was fine, his nose packed with clinical cocaine, his eyeballs wide as saucers and his hand on a bottle of Lemon Hart in the officer’s mess. Sykes was resting easily under the effects of morphine, with a cast on his indeed-broken left ulna, and John Ashley was awake.
    Blitch found the outlaw despondent. “They’re gone. I saw it all,” John said, almost like he was talking to himself. His eye was red and swollen, his shoulders slumped; his work-gang tan seemed to have gone pale.
    Blitch frowned, shaking his head. “Who’s gone? Saw what?”
    John sat on the edge of the infirmary cot, his head in his hands, and stared at the floor. “Ed. Frank. Ed and Frank. They’re dead. I saw it in a dream. I even saw who did it.” He was practically crying now.
    Still frowning, Blitch said, “Who?”
    John’s head snapped around and his good eye fixed the Warden with a mad glare. “Nobody. Nofuckingbody. Sons of bitches…” He was talking to himself again. “Dirty rotten sons of whores…I’ll show you, you rats. Oh, I will show you…”

John Ashley jumped up

    He jumped up, stalking around the small infirmary, gazing into corners with his teeth jammed so tightly together Blitch could hear them creaking. He scattered the small steel tables and folding chairs, the clash and clatter waking up Sykes, who was sleeping on a cot against the far wall and sat up with a wail.
    The doctor, eyes rolling like a spooked mule and sweat on his balding brow, made a run for the door. John beat him to it by two steps, slammed his arm across his skinny chest, showing the medic his teeth. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
    J. S. Blitch put his hand on his service pistol. “Now John…”
    That was all it took. Once again Ashley’s shoulders drooped, and he began to cry. He now hung on Ransom’s neck like a maudlin drunk, bawling into his shoulder like a lost ten-year-old.
    Dr. Virgil, terrified, looked behind John into the Warden’s face, his eyes pleading.
    Blitch’s eyebrows went up, and he shrugged. He stepped up behind Ashley, and between them they gently got John back on the cot. The doctor hurriedly prepared another shot that set the convict to dreaming again. Across the room, Branford Sykes let out a grating, penetrating snore.

Copyright © 2022 by Roger Owens