Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (75) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

Tuesday,
May 1, 1923,
5:00 AM

The day dawned clear and sunny, although it had rained hard the night before. Normally Red would have slept well in the rain, but it had the God damn cows bellowing all night. Hell, they bellowed all night every night, and all day every day too, and it was beginnin’ to wear Red’s nerves thin.
    The old logging camp was now surrounded by cattle, thousands of them, with their noise, their stink, all fenced in with the timber Red and his crew had cut for months, which Guy and Jasper had sawed into posts and rails for gates and chutes, for sunken dunk tanks for the screwfly dip, for barns, and garages, and for houses for the bursting families of Skeeter Willis. The man’s capacity for drink and food was easily matched by his appetite for adopting kids, their mothers, and any stray animals that came around. He was supporting it all with the monumental cattle herd he was building.

Red was not being paid to bang nails

    The actual construction was done by three Mexicans, five Cubans and two black Seminoles from the Miccosukees, who worked together like a well-oiled engine. They were drunk from afternoon until night, but could still raise a house in one day, and a dried-in barn in two. Red could do that work but he was being paid to cut timber, not bang nails, and he was fine with that.
    He and his crew loaded their tools into the trucks, some still sipping mugs of coffee or stuffing rolled sofke cakes in their mouths. A rattling, jolting, forty-five-minute ride north brought them to the next cypress stand. The area around their old illegal cutting was getting bare of trees the right size, due to the timber needed for the cattle operation. At least, the farther they had to go to cut cypress every day, Red thought, the farther he was from those God damn cows.
    Donnie Marshbanks had told him the Ashleys were still sniffing around, in the form of the Nelson boys, and not just at Senegal’s Sumptious Palace anymore, either. They’d been to the laundry asking questions, Donnie said, but they didn’t seem to know Lola from Adam’s housecat.
    That made Red smile; his mother said the same thing. “They showed up to Jimmie’s, tried to brace the Judge at lunch. I guess he run ’em off with they tails between they legs…”
    At this, Red brayed laughter, bent over and slapped his knees. “I’ll just bet a dollar he did! They’re lucky Lily didn’t get ’holt of their asses!”
    They drank their cold Stroh’s, but Red had a worried mind. Sooner or later, either Clarence Middleton’s family connections with Harlan, or something else, would give them away. Until every one of those damn Ashleys were dead, he, Guy, Jenny, and their friends weren’t safe, and he couldn’t marry Lola Bostick. God damn them. They were in the road he was determined to travel, and he wasn’t the kind of man to back up the mule wagon for someone else. Anyone else. His Daddy used to tell him, make a move, boy. Do somethin’, even if it’s wrong. It was time to make a move.

Friday, May 4, 1923 12:00 PM

The little bell rang in Jimmy’s Flamingo Café as Red stepped through the familiar door. It had been months since he’d been there, yet everything was in place. Al Bernard was singing his jaunty, nasal version of the “Hesitation Blues” on the Aeriola Senior at the end of the bar. Jimmie was at the register, ringing up the late-breakfast old folks, who were all chattin’ up a storm and makin’ a ruckus.
    Lily was slinging plates of sizzling fish and hushpuppies onto the pass-through counter, shouting “Order up!”—even though Jimmie rarely beat her around the counter to serve a plate. Fried food, she always said, was no damn good cold.

And by the window sat the Judge

    And by the window, in his usual place, napkin tucked into his collar, sat the Judge. He looked up with his pirate grin, and hollered over the din. “There you are! Been expecting you, Mr. Dedge!”
    A few customers looked up at the name, then looked back to their food. It was no secret the Dedges were feudin’ with the Ashleys, Red reckoned, but it was old news.
    A lot must have happened in the months he and Guy had been gone. He hoped it was enough to turn the hostile eyes of the Ashleys to other victims.
    Red pulled up the chair across from Judge Stikelether. Lily sailed up like a graceful racing sloop, set a tall sweet tea in front of him, and said in her clear voice, “You want your fried catfish, eh chico?”
    Maybe she’d forgiven him for whatever he’d done. He hoped so; like most of the men in town, he was halfway in love with her.
    “Ah, ahmm, yes ma’am, Miss Lily…”
    Her eyes softened. “Miss? What’s a’ matter, chico, you no like me no more?”
    His ears felt like burning light bulbs, and a couple of older men nearby stifled snorted laughter.
    “Yes ma’am, I mean no ma’am, I, ah,” and she was sweeping away. “Ah, could I have…”
    As she passed through the swinging kitchen doors, she called over her shoulder, “Black eyed peas, I know, chico, I know…”
    The two old guys snorted some more.
    Greyson Stikelether was eating his fried catfish, as usual, like a combine goin’ through a cornfield. Seeing him doing it, Red always joked to himself, better stay out’ the way, you might get hurt.
    The old man looked up at Red, fry grease running down through his white stubble into his collar napkin, and grinned harder. “You, young man, have been a busy little beaver, haven’t you? I hear you have perhaps benefitted in some small way from the contacts I’ve sent in your direction?”
    He stuffed a whole hushpuppy in his mouth and ground away, mouth open, like a horse chewing corn.
    Red looked away, like he was expecting Lily back already, but hurried to answer.
    “Oh yes sir, and thank you very much, we couldn’t have done any of this without your friends helping us and giving us business.”

Red’s drawstring bag contained three thousand dollars in silver

    He’d brought a thick canvas drawstring bag, small enough to fit in the front hand pocket of his overhauls. It contained three thousand dollars in silver, a thousand each from Red, Guy and Jenny, for all he’d done to see to their success. Jenny had told them to trade their silver, as it weighed more dollar for dollar, and was therefor more to carry in a crisis. Her upbringing in bootleg turpentine and moonshine camps was coming in useful indeed.
    “We thought we’d show our appreciation for all you done, ah, Greyson,” and he slid the bag across the table, along the wall by the napkins and the salt and pepper shakers.
    The Judge didn’t look at it, just kept shoveling catfish in his mouth.
    Red saw from the Judge’s plate he’d ordered corn on the cob, the two mangled, discarded cobs and the wreckage of yellow flecks in his beard and his napkin evidence the Judge had veered from his normal feed. It was no wonder; sweet winter corn was still coming in from up Jasper and Lake City way.
    The Judge sat up straight, and took his napkin from his collar. He carefully wiped his face, and his neck with its scraggly beard, then his hands, and placed the napkin on his devastated plate, along with the piled, scattered carcasses of well over a dozen twelve-inch catfish, fried to a golden brown.
    Red didn’t know exactly how many there were, but it was one hell of a pile of fishbones. He was concentrating on that when Lily surprised him with his own plate of fish and hushpuppies, clunking the plate down like she always did.
    He saw with pleasure she had heaped extra black-eyed peas into a bowl, larger than the usual soup cup. He was hungry.
    Reading his mind, she said, “You look like you need to eat, chico. Who takin’ care of you?”
    Red didn’t want to reveal too much to nearby ears, so he leaned in to speak quietly.

She stood tall and looked at him like a retarded child

    She didn’t lean in; she stood tall and looked at him like a retarded child.
    “Uh, well, Miss Jenny, a lady from…” and she stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
    “I know who Miss Jenny is, and you are kind, chico, to call her that. You should be kind; she is a good woman, she pays for much of the medical care for the girls, you know, at Senegal’s, and at Miss Lottie’s too, especially the addicts.”
    He looked sideways, up at her. “You sayin’ they use that stuff too?”
    She shook her head down at him, almost sadly. “Oh, chico, where you been? It’s either why they do it, or the only way they can stand doing it.”
    She saw his mouth hang open, and right in style she said “Shut it, chico, juor gonna catch flies,” and turned and swayed away, to the appreciative glances of the men.
    “A-hem, ah, Mr. Dedge?”
    The Judge’s throat-clearing grin had caught Red, too, staring as that fabulous rear end switched across the room. His ears felt red hot, and he stammered, jerking his head back to look at the man sitting across from him.
    “Uh, yes sir, ah, I was hoping…”
    Stikelether stood, shaking his head. “Eat your fish, Mr. Dedge, you know what Lily says about cold fried food. I need to retire to the gentlemen’s room, then we can speak of your mission today, although I already have an idea what it might involve.”
    He strolled across the restaurant, smiling, greeting friends and acknowledging enemies, and disappeared into the hall where the bathrooms were. This was another draw for Jimmie’s customers; indoor plumbing was still something new in the last twenty years, and some places still had half-mooners out in back of their restaurants.
    When he returned, Red had intentionally gobbled up most of his fish, and was stuffing black-eyed peas in his mouth, using half a hushpuppy to scoop them up. He wanted to talk, and the Judge was touchy about talking when there was serious eating to be done, his own or anybody else’s.

He looked up to see a flask held before his face

    He swallowed hard a few times as Stikelether sat down, and looked up to see a flask held before his face by a gnarled hand sticking from a perfect white shirt cuff. He snatched it, turned to the window to take two big swallows, as if every person in the place couldn’t see him plain as day, sitting there by the window with Judge Greyson Stikelether.
    The belts of ’shine calmed him somewhat; he hadn’t realized how on edge he was. He took one more long gargle, then handed the flask back. He wasn’t worried; the Judge was nothing if not generous with his liquor.
    “Now,” the older man said kindly. “Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind?”
    It took Red a minute to settle. Lily blew by and scooped up their plates, then he set his face and spoke. “I need to do somethin’ about them God damn Ashleys. Somethin’ permanent. I cain’t marry my sweetheart with them a’hangin’ over my head. I cain’t get on with business, hell my brother cain’t show his face anywhere, ’r his leg, t’ be more specific. An’ they’ll prob’ly have them Nelson boys on my ass once somebody tell’s ’em I was here today, which’ll be in about ten minutes. I’m damn sick an’ tired of it. Either I’m gonna kill them, or they’re gonna kill me.”
    Instead of speaking, the Judge took out the flask, uncapped it and turned it up. Red was sure by the time he put it down it was gone. He then reached into the other side of his jacket and pulled a flat bottle out. He set it down in front of Red.
    The boy took it, pulled the cork, and turned it up. The Judge waited. When Red set the bottle down, Stikelether folded his hands and leaned forward, grinning.
    “You know, somehow I knew you wanted to talk about the Ashleys.”
    That made Red want to know who had told him, but he knew better than to ask.
    “There’s big doings in the works, but one of the problems is catching up with them, especially more than one or two at a time. If someone takes out one or two, they’ll suspect rival gangs and go to ground. We want that to happen, but not until we can get at least most of them where we want them. In Gomez, at Joe’s old homestead, the last place they’ll expect to be attacked.” He picked up the second bottle and took a generous swig.
    Red wanted to know when this attack in Gomez might happen.

“Just hold your horses, son”

    “Just hold your horses, son, these things take time. And you can take your money back. Don’t rush me, boy. I’ll let you know if and when a bill is due. Now about those Nelson boys…”
    Turned out, as the Judge proceeded to reveal, that the Nelson brothers were not only working for the Ashley gang, but now and then were in business for themselves. Senegal Johnson, Stikelether told him, believed it was a weakness they could exploit. He’d had his people talk about an opportunity in the club, where they could hear, thinking they were eavesdropping but instead were being fed a cock-and-bull story.
    The story, an “opportunity” to anyone in the gangster business, was that St. Lucie County Sheriff J.R. Merritt had taken up with the Rice boys, the gang that Alton Davis and Bo Stokes had worked for, before they had gone missing at sea.
    The Rice gang were competitors of the Ashleys, but completely dominated by them, and required to pay them “protection” money. That the Sheriff would soon be transferring a large sum of gold and securities for the Rices, to avoid paying the Ashleys their due. The precise date and time, of course, was a closely held secret, but for the right amount of money, why, anything was possible, of course. The Sheriff would involve as few of his men as possible. Not all were on the take by any stretch. So, the loot would be lightly guarded, and secrecy depended upon.
    The date and time were mentioned in the lowest tones, with furtive looks around; but both also said it was out of their league, the kind of job they wished they had the balls for. The Nelsons continued not drinking their beers, and looked anywhere but at the conspirators.
    In the meantime, Greyson Stikelether, Esquire, asked his friend Jimmie Owens, owner of the Flamingo Café, if he could pass on something he’d heard in a discussion with a client. Lawyer’s privilege, of course, prevented the Judge from revealing such dealings, but it had no relation to his client’s case, and he felt it was important.
    Jimmie was glad to help, and yes, he’d keep it under his hat. What the Judge had heard was that someone planned to attack the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office, believing, for God only knew what reason, that there was a large amount of money hidden there. That this attack would come on that Sunday, May the Sixth, at around ten in the evening.
    Jimmie’s eyes widened a bit, but he nodded, rubbed his hand down his beard, and allowed as how he could pass that on to the right people.
    Stikelether asked if he could keep this bit of news from Lily, but at that Jimmie looked down and shook his head, hard, back and forth.

“Keep Lily in the dark? Come on, Judge!”

    “I’d keep the Sheriff in the dark, sure, but Lily? Come on, Judge, you tryin’ t’ get me killed?”
    At about ten PM on Sunday, May Sixth, two men with flour sacks over their heads burst into the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s office with pistols, and were confronted by seven deputies with rifles and shotguns.
    The story went that one of them had fired his weapon, but, in any case, their bullet-riddled bodies were photographed by reporters the next day and by Tuesday they were on the front page of every paper in Florida. “The Dumbest Gangsters in History: Tried to Rob a Sheriff’s Office!”
    Red Dedge didn’t worry about the Nelson brothers after that. Dead men might tell no tales, he thought, but these two did: the tale was that the Judge was in the game, until the very last card was dealt.

Copyright © 2022 by Roger Owens