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| Saint Sebastian River Bridge [Click image to call up all published instalments] |
Wednesday,
October 19, 1921,
8:00 AM
Captain J. S. Blitch, Warden of Raiford State Prison, with barely a sip of his second cup of coffee past his lips, was presented by his head of security, George Morford, with a letter from prisoner John Ashley, to his father Joe Ashley, C/O Miller’s Landing, Gomez Grant, Stuart, Florida.
It read like a script from Blitch’s local theatrical society, where he and Mrs. Blitch had played several parts each. They were most proud of their parts in The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. He had played an acceptable Algernon, while his wife had been magnificent as the saucy Miss Prism, wowing the North Florida gentry with their talent.
While the letter reprised much of John’s ravings from his nightmare the previous morning, it contained nothing of a criminal nature, unless the Ashleys had come up with a secret code, which at this stage Blitch would not have put past John for one second.
It described the dream in detail, dwelling on the two other boats involved, but containing no mention of those who might have manned them. It was almost as if John thought his father would recognize the boats themselves. He was up to something, in any case, he always was, but by now Blitch was past caring if one murdering bootlegger killed another, or ten others. Less for him to deal with. Only good bootlegger, and all that shit. It was a disaster.
Prohibition had engendered violence |
Hell, he poured daily from a bottle of what John Ashley was in his prison for! Not just any bottle, one of John Ashleys very own God damn bottles. The exact precise identical fuckin’ bottles that had put him in here made sure his jailer was feeling no pain! It had become a farce, a charade that made The Importance of Being Earnest look like serious art.
He slid the letter back to Morford. “Re-seal it and send it along, George, looks good to me, and I trust your judgment. If I’m not here, you can make these calls in my absence, you know that.”
Morford stood before the desk, turning the letter nervously in his massive hands, the thick black hair bristling from the muscles as they moved under his rolled-up white cuffs and fountained out of his unbuttoned collar. He talked to the letter instead of his boss.
“Figured you’d want to read this one personal-like, bein’ it’s John, an’ all.”
Captain Blitch knew he had to lance this boil before it popped on its own, maybe turned into something worse. Morford had blamed himself for John Ashley’s earlier escape, and his Captain hadn’t helped by barking at him like a bulldog at their meeting later, making the big man look stupid in front of his subordinates.
Lieutenant Morford was head of security and no one outranked him but Blitch. In fact, Morford was the most competent security man Blitch had ever met, and Blitch had regretted his words instantly, but he’d been pissed, and drunk, and hadn’t backed down. Morford had instigated most of the security procedures that had prevented all but a single escape in two years, or double escape, and that of course was of John Ashley and Tom Maddox.
He leaned back and looked up at Morford’s huge frame. He couldn’t even see the damn door behind the man. “Sit down, George, you’re hurtin’ my neck.”
George put the letter in his front pants pocket, took it out, looked at it, and put it back. He took his hat off, put it back on. He turned to the chair behind him, took his hat off again. Turned back to Blitch, put his hat on, looked behind him, took his hat off again and sat, slowly torturing the hat to death with his hairy, meaty hands.
Morford could have strangled a wild hog with those hands |
“Lieutenant George Morford, you are an exemplary officer of the law and have done a superb job of securing this facility from escape. So much so, that I have put you in for Security Officer of the Year with the State Board of Corrections. The only prison in the Tri-State Area with a better record is Union, and you know what kind of retards and old farts they have to deal with, nothin’ like these hard-ass, robbin’, murderin’ State sons of bitches. Union Correctional wouldn’t even count, bein’ County, but they take State money to handle the loonies and the ’tards…”
Morford cringed just a little, trying not to show it. Blitch knew he was not only a church-goin’ man, like every Southern white man with a hair on his ass and half a brain, but a real God-fearin’ Holy Roller. He knew his mild crudeness would convince Morford he was sincere. The big man needed a real dose of self-confidence, and nothing half-assed would do the job.
“Anyway, I’ve put you in for a raise too, of twenty cents an hour. I hope that’s enough to keep a man with your talent and hard work here at Raiford. I know we don’t have what Tallahassee or Jacksonville have to offer, and I know you got three big boys to raise and another on the way, an’ I sure hope four hundred bucks a year will go a ways to help. And,” as he turned back to face his friend, “I know Jean don’t much like it here.”
Morford was shaking his head, his face screwed up tight, and Blitch was scared to death he was about to cry. What the hell would he do then?
He jumped up and turned, looked out the window behind him, his hands at the small of his back. “Go ahead and send the letter out, George, and you don’t need to bring this kind of thing to my attention in the future. You’re quite competent to handle them, and I’m a busy man, as you well know.”
George got up to go out, but as he grasped the doorknob, Blitch spoke again.
“Understand your boy James took a flashlight to a fella tryin’ to crash the door at the cinema over Lake Butler, that correct? Right upside th’ head?”
Morford looked shocked, like he or his son was being accused.
Captain Blitch put his hand to his face; he couldn’t help it. “Dwayne Pritchett, if I ain’t mistaken, and I ain’t. Meanest sumbitch this side the Apalachee River, last I heard. How tall that boy is now? James, I mean.”
Blitch’s North Florida swamp accent came out; he sounded next thing to Cajun. He couldn’t help it, talking about the local high school’s tallest basketball player got him excited. Blitch was an enthusiast would have played, or coached if he could, but he was too short, and couldn’t hit a basket with a potato at five feet. All he could do he did: promoting games, getting the prisoners into a league, donating for uniforms, especially shoes, which many of the boys simply did not own.
“James is six-foot, six inches right now, and it’s true he put that flashlight up against that man’s head. He deserved it. Pritchett has been a bad man since he could drive a car, at about eleven years old. You know he drove over the ice cream man in Middleburg when he was thirteen, killed him, just so he could rob him? Reckon he was bad before that, we only didn’t know it.” Morford’s Okeefenokee accent was coming out too, something he tried hard to hide.
“How big shoes he wear?” |
Morford hesitated. “Thirteen.”
“What?!”
“Thirteen wide.”
Blitch clutched his eyebrows again. “Make it thirty cents a hour, you gon’ need a extry two hunnerd a year just t’ shoe that boy. Oh yea`h. When he gradiate, tell him to come talk to me ’bout a job.”
Thursday, October 20, 1921, 4:00 PM
Joe Ashley turned his old Peugeot in at the prison gate; he didn’t care for cops to see what he drove these days, or any days. He’d left Gomez Grant at 1 AM that morning, and driven the whole way with only a couple stops to piss, and once about 3 AM when he’d had to run a big alligator out of what passed for a road, up Sebastian way. A couple pops in the ass from his Short Colt had set the big bastard to wiggling, but fast. Down into the dark water, where Joe was just as at home as the ’gator was, or as when he wore fancy clothes and robbed gullible rich folks. He hoped the fucker got an infection and died, or his buddies ate him. He didn’t like alligators any more than he liked sharks, and that wasn’t much.
He’d eaten a fried egg and bacon sandwich Lugenia had made for him; in fact, she’d made half a dozen, but he really didn’t feel like eating. He had some seriously troubling news, and he had a sick feeling that it was true.
Frank and Ed had not returned from a routine trip to South Bimini, from the “alternative” docks of the Lemon Hart company down at Round Rock, the docks where the local British administration sold contraband rum to American smugglers.
Even the Ashley Gang didn’t know for a fact that the Lemon Hart Company or the British government knew anything about those sales, but there sure was one hell of a lot of “contraband” for sale on the docks at the south side of that island.
Yet the north side was within hailing distance of Port Royal. The Brits said you could “throw a biscuit and hit land t’other side.” Drunken recruits regularly swam the few hundred yards on bets, and drownings were common. One had reportedly been eaten by a shark, but the young Marines figured that was just a lie to keep them from swimming over to what they called Rum Cay. There was not one chance in Hell the island authorities could miss the parade of American boats that visited Rum Cay day and night, so it followed they were as dirty as anyone else in the trade. The brothers should have been back by Tuesday at the latest; that they were not was dire news indeed. It would be a miracle now if they ever turned up alive.
John had been nabbed again in Wauchula last June, carrying a load of liquor in a stake-side truck decked out like a hay wagon. He’d been remanded to Raiford State Prison for the remainder of his previous sentence of seventeen and one-half years, until Florida could figure out what to do with one of her most incorrigible sons. After Joe explained his news and the reason for his visit, Captain Blitch and Lieutenant Morford took him to John's cell.
Joe Ashley was shocked to find his son battered and bruised |
Joe frowned at that, turning his head, but Blitch didn’t notice. He left the father with the son and went to “do his rounds,” which involved having his afternoon drink with Morford and Compton, his top men.
When Joe told his last living son about his two brothers’ disappearance, he’d expected an explosion of John’s famous temper, but despite later stories to the contrary, John was calm that day, resigned, weary even. He’d had his time of madness, back last Monday early, according to Blitch.
“The boys are sayin’ I threw my eyeball out the window, an’ that jus`t ain’t true. Didn’t think of it, or I might have.” He’d described his dream, what and who he had seen. Perhaps even before whatever had happened had actually happened. He’d already known.
As it came toward evening, the two sat quietly together on the new steel cot, while the tiniest breath of cooler air wafted through the barred window from the north, promising relief from the heat, maybe one day soon.
John rose, the new cot springs squeaking, and went to the window and looked out. “Said I threw my eyeball out in the yard. God damn window don’t even look out on the yard…”
Soon the bear-like Morford came to the door and turned the key in the heavy iron lock. He held the door open and Blitch stepped in. Both were clearly refreshed from their “rounds,” the sweet heavy odor of the Lemon Hart about their heads in the close cell. Neither had heard the conversation between father and son.
Captain Blitch leaned a consoling hand on Joe Ashley’s shoulder, not noticing the glare that hand got as he spoke to John’s back.
They both knew he was lying |
Blitch turned to Joe Ashley, saw his searing stare and snatched the offending hand back, almost stumbling, to where George had to catch his back.
Trying to regain his composure, Blitch spoke to Joe. “That letter must have got to you pretty quick, huh?”
Joe didn’t move for almost a minute, his glare fixed, then he slowly stood, turned, and stepped up close to the Warden, his face a blank mask.
Morford made to move in but Blitch put out his hand to stop him.
“Jesus. What is it, Joe?”
Julius Ashley barely moved his lips, his voice grating through clenched teeth. “What letter?”
Captain J.S. Blitch dropped his mouth open. The big man Morford seemed to deflate, leaning back against the bars. John Ashley didn’t even turn around.
| Copyright © 2022 by Roger Owens |
Roger, I trust you’ll be available to write the movie script? You might need to bone up on the preferred formats, unless you already know that too. Amazing! And will the violence of prohibition, and its ironies, be the main theme for this HISTORICAL film, as in “The violence engendered by Prohibition had staggered every law enforcer in the country. The papers only wrote about the big-city stuff, unless people were killed in the boondocks, then the angle was inbred swamp boys fighting it out with other gangs or Revenue men. Most of the cops in the United States were ready to drop this whole stupid mess, even more stupid because he and most other cops boozed it up as much as anybody.”
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