Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (72) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
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By Roger Owens

Monday,
October 17, 1921,
8:00 AM

Ed steered one of the Stoningtons, the one named by its former owners the Honoria Bertrand. The other, previously owned by men presumably less romantic than those of the Honoria, just read “R.L.Frank, T. Kessler” along the bows, and currently floated at the dock back in Manatee Pocket in Stuart.
    The “Honoria Bertrand” had taken all of two days to become the “Horny Bitch,” and soon her name was shortened to the “Horny B.,” just to be mysterious, or so the sniggering brothers told each other.
    Frank kept a lookout to the west from the spacious bow just ahead of the wheelhouse. They had elected to run a single load of Lemon Hart Royal Navy Rum, currently safely stowed in the hold, instead of each manning one of the Draggers as they did in the summer. It cut down on profits but the waters between Bimini and the Florida coast could kick up quick this time of year, and an extra hand was one hell of a lot safer. Frank said they might as well sell one boatload as lose two.

Frank had a squirrely feelin’ on this run

    Ed didn’t think his older brother Frank was exactly some brilliant fucking business brain, but knew his instincts were solid. Sometime your gut, their Daddy had told them, was smarter than your head. In any case, Frank had said he had a squirrely feelin’ on this run, and didn’t want to do it alone, and after all, they were brothers.
    Looking north into a twenty-five mile per hour wind, and seeing the clouds stretching all the way to Cape Canaveral, Ed was glad he’d agreed. The waves curling north in the Gulf Stream were ten feet if they were an inch, and the driving wind from the north blew into the faces of the swells and held them up, making them even taller. Frank, in a faded green Army-surplus slicker, was getting drenched with spray in the bow, the only part of the fishing vessel usually considered “wet.”
    The Stonington Dragger was good in confused water, but the best boat in the world would still roll, yaw and pitch horribly in conditions like this, and just staying upright on the moving deck was exhausting. Ed had pulled the window down on the port side to only a slit to the south to prevent the foaming swells from flying right in, and with the starboard side open for air the howling wind sucked at his eardrums until they hurt.
    They’d arrived the night before off Round Rock in South Bimini, only a few miles from Port Royal, before this morning’s blow was even on the horizon.
    The hold of the Horny B. had been loaded by convicts at the “secondary” British docks, under the sole command, not to mention knowledge, of the dockmaster. Two stout guards, each a black Adonis of muscle and ebony in a gleaming white uniform, hurried the prisoners on their mission with strokes of their short whips, kicks and curses. Small barrels of trade rum, wooden cases of sealed and bonded bottles of Lemon Hart Royal Navy Rum, and, as a little surprise to the brothers, fifty cases of Gordon’s London Dry Gin.

The dockmaster was as black as the night

    The dockmaster was a huge Congolese Bahamian, as black as the night, in a shining white uniform with gold and silver medals that glinted in the lamplight. Had it not been for his eyes and teeth, which teeth were perfect, he would have appeared like the Invisible Man, only his clothing to indicate his presence in the darkness. His name was Rolle Pinder, and Mr. Pinder took his position very seriously indeed, especially when it came to payment. Speaking the Queen’s English with a precision and elegance wasted on a couple of swamp rats from the Everglades, he had told Ed that Gordon’s was expanding its interest once more into the American trade, since with Prohibition, the profits were too good to pass up.
    The Lemon Hart Rum Company had been grown into an international business by Lemon Hart himself. From his grandfather’s original warehouses on the docks on the Isle of Dogs, between Greenwich and Rotherhithe in East London, he had gotten the first exclusive Royal Navy contract ever let for rum; it had been the making of the company. He’d expanded by selling to the British East India Company, whose dock road ran just north of their own facilities, from the Canary Docks, across the top of the Isle of Dogs, and straight into Blackwall.
    The next logical step was the West Indies and the Americas, and their operations in Bimini had been extremely profitable to them. In the early 20th century, it had also become of great profit to the Ashley Gang, especially since Prohibition.
    Lemon Hart didn’t make gin; their motto was “Rum always.” They distilled their rum in Guyana on the east bank of the Demerara River, from fermented molasses, producing a rich, dark, caramel-flavored 151-Proof rum famous the world over as “Demerara.” So, with no conflict of interest, they were distributing Gordon’s London Dry at a promotional price of fifty percent off.
    Ed and Frank figured the Lemon Harts were getting the gin for free, but who cared? Half off was half off.
    When the black convicts had finished stacking the liquor in the hold under Frank’s harsh direction, accompanied by punches and lashes from him and the two guards, they got to the “serious” part of Rolle Pinder’s occupation.
    The official payment for the rum was handed to Mr. Pinder in a fat waterproof canvas bag the size of a lady’s purse, which he immediately handed to one of the guards, and the guards immediately hustled off with the convicts in tow. Another waterproof canvas bag, smaller but still substantial, was then passed to Mr. Pinder, and the transaction was concluded.
    Ed and Frank cast off, motored east a few miles into Nixon’s Bay, dropped anchor and got some sleep. By five in the morning, they were on their way back to Florida.

Ed finally saw it

    Frank turned in the bow, waving his arms in the blow of spray, crouching down to keep from going overboard. Ed stared ahead, and finally saw it.
    They were approaching the western edge of the Gulf Stream, and somewhere beyond it he could see the rising sun, reflecting from a calmer sea. Once they got to the western Straits of Florida, the weather always changed, and with the morning’s characteristic off-shore winds blowing the storms away, usually for the better.
    They had been heading northwest for the St. Lucie Inlet, with the massive swells on their port quarter. Coming at an angle and from behind, the thick rollers caused the Horny B. to surge and heave by the port aft, a motion so squirrelly Ed thought he might toss his breakfast. They’d eaten cold roast beef and bacon sandwiches, damn good considering, and had washed them down with liberal gargles of Lemon Hart Royal Navy Rum.
    Ed swallowed hard as Frank duck-walked around the cuddy and into the wheelhouse, pulling off his slickers, shaking water off his head like a wet hound dog. Ed didn’t want to puke up his toenails in sight of clear water; he knew, once they broke out into that bright horizon, it would be smooth sailing from there on in. He also knew that if he did, Frank would rib him for it in front of the family something fierce, and he’d have to hear about it for weeks.
    Frank looked up with a grin on his blocky mug, almost sneering at his little brother, to whom, in his opinion, it was Frank’s God-given mission in life to be as much of an asshole as he possibly could. Their older brother Bob had served as Frank’s tutor in this instruction, and a brutal, years-long discipline it had been, leaving Frank, like most younger brothers, bruised, humiliated, and ready for retribution. Just, not on the one who’d done it to them. They were still bigger and could still kick your ass.
    This lesson was instead passed down from brother to brother. In keeping with this time-honored tradition, Frank said, “You’re lookin’ a little green around the gills, little brother. You sure you ain’t swallowed another spider?” He was referring to one night when they were kids in the same bed, the music of crickets, and night birds singing to them as they snored. Ed woke up screaming; a wolf spider the size of a half-dollar had bitten him inside his mouth while he slept; in his slumber he’d tried to chew it.
    He vomited for three days, until Granny Meley-Sakoweka, the healer from the Seminole reservation, had given him a pot of herb tea and he’d slept for sixteen hours. Frank knew any reminder of the incident would set Ed off, and he wasn’t disappointed now.

There was a different look on Ed’s face this time

    Ed really did seem to turn green, and his cheeks blew up like a balloon, only there was a different look on his face this time. Ed was clearly pissed off as a buzzard as has been pissed on. He let go of the wheel, swung to his brother, grabbed him by the upper arms, and puked what Ed believed to be his stomach, and perhaps his liver as well, directly into Frank’s astonished face.
    And God damn, but it felt good! Ed was grinning now, puke running down his chin and onto his canvas jacket, while Frank whirled in disgust and confusion, green and brown slime covering his face and chest, in his mouth. He puked, too, then slipped in it, went down, hard, on his face, and slid out the open rear of the wheelhouse, where at least the ocean spray washed some of Ed’s breakfast off him.
    Meantime Ed was braying with laughter, falling about the wheelhouse. For once, he had turned the tables on his God damn son-of-a-bitch of a brother. “Yeah, hah, ya fucker, ya like apples? How ya like them apples, hah?”
    About the time he realized that he’d let go of the wheel, he saw Frank look up to his left and gaped in terror. Under power but not under control, the Horny B. had broached. She’d turned due west as she slid down the swells that rushed north, and was now sideways to the waves, and a huge one was rolling right down on them.
    The towering roller lifted them high, higher, and at the last second Ed managed to get a hand on the wheel and drag it to the right. Horny B., loaded to the overheads with liquor, did her best to respond, but then the wave plunged them down like a freight elevator and she rolled nearly horizontal.
    Both men were screaming. Ed was slammed into the starboard side of the wheelhouse and heard a distinct crack as his right forearm snapped, his head hit the window, and he screamed again. Frank held to the rail for dear life, inches from being swept overboard.
    Bless her heart, Ed thought, as the Horny popped back up bravely, and he dragged himself to the wheel.
    Frank was just getting his legs back aboard and was yelling something. The pain in his arm and the whack his head had taken had left Ed muddled, but Frank took over, jamming the throttle forward, still yelling.
    “If she shipped water through the intake, she’ll stall inside of five minutes!”
    Ed understood. If they made it to that bright, calm, sunlit strip just a quarter-mile away, maybe they would live. Frank steered as close to the waves as he could to shorten the distance.
    The older Stoningtons had the wheelhouse aft, to better control the rudder from directly above. The Horny B. was a newer Dragger, with the wheelhouse in the bows, as the mechanical problems with the steering had been resolved. That put the air intake to the 180-horsepower Sterling engine forward as well, but it was still vulnerable to sucking water if you damn near capsized the boat, which they had. It had a dunk well, where water should drop into a pocket lower than the bend on the intake, and it worked, some of the time.

Frank was a madman now

    Frank was a madman now, whooping and yelling. “Git up, brother, we gonna make it! Whoo!” He pulled a bottle of the Demerara from his overhauls, and how the hell he’d held on to it while pretty near going in the drink, Ed couldn’t figure out, but that was half the story.
    The other half was he didn’t give a damn either. He dragged himself up, holding his right arm close, seeing that enticing strip of light turning into a whole shimmering prospect. A border between light and dark, stormy and calm, so close, as sharp as a knife, and while they raced for it, he grabbed the bottle left-handed and turned it up.
    “Yeeahh! That’s right brother, drink up, we’s almost out th’ shit!” Frank grabbed the bottle back, gargled it like water, and then the engine quit.
    “Fuck! Not now God damn it! We’s so close…”
    Another swell lifted them, not too big this time, and the engine roared, jerking Ed off his feet with a scream for his busted wing. Frank managed to hold on to the wheel, and they slid, slick as eel snot, right out into that bright gleaming horizon.

Copyright © 2022 by Roger Owens