The uniformed man followed him, squeezing his
way through the cars and getting redder in the face
all the time. “Here, nice doggie,” he says. “Here, Sig
Freed. Nice Sig Freed. I’ll kick your teeth in, you
dumb sausage bastard.”
But Sig Freed turned and ran down the middle of
the street towards us and the next thing I knew he
was under our car. The traffic was beginning to move
a little now and the people behind us was blowing
their horns and calling Pop a knucklehead, and I was
afraid Pop would start up with him under there, so I
jumped out and crawled in after him. He grinned at
me, and yawned, and licked me on the face.
I
gathered him up and got back in the car with him
sitting on my lap, still laughing that cute dog laugh of
his.
The uniform man come running up, dodging the
cars, and his face was as red as his coat. “Gimme
that damn mutt,” he says, looking hard at Pop.
“Beat it, you poodle-dog walker,” Pop says, “before
I spit in your eye.”
“Give him here! I’ll call a cop.”
The Diamond Bikini— 7
The traffic was clear up ahead now. Pop held up a
finger and says, “That for you, Mac,” and we started
off with a whoosh and just made the next traffic light
before it turned red. We turned a corner pretty soon
and the man never did catch up with us.
Sig Freed was tickled pink. He licked me on the ear
and barked a couple of times, and then stuck his
head out of the window to grin at all the people along
the sidewalk. “Can I keep him, Pop?” I says. “Can I?”
“How you going to feed him?” Pop says. “A dog like
that, from Park Avenue, he don’t like nothing but
mink and caviar.”
“I’ll bet he’ll eat regular bones just like any dog.”
“I don’t know,” Pop says, “but how you going to
keep him when we get to Hollywood Park?”
“Hollywood Park?” I says. “Ain’t we going to Uncle
Sagamore’s?”
He shook his head. “Of course not. I just said that
to them nosy old hens.”
That made me feel kind of sad, because I was all
pepped up about living on the farm, but I didn’t say
anything. There ain’t no use arguing with Pop. After
a while we found a tunnel going under the river and
when we come out Pop said we was in Jersey. I didn’t
say any more about Sig Freed, hoping he would
forget he was there and not make me put him out,
but every once in a while he would jump up and lick
Pop on the face.
“Wet cuss, ain’t he?” Pop says, just barely missing
a big truck.
But he didn’t say anything about making me put
him out, and I could see he had something on his
mind. He looked kind of worried, and he kept
mumbling to hisself. After a while he pulled off the
road and counted how much money we had.
“Is it very far from Aqueduct to Hollywood Park?” I
asks him.
“It’s quite a piece. Take us a week, anyway.”
The Diamond Bikini— 8
That night we found a place to camp by a little
creek and while he was frying the baloney I asks him,
“Pop, why can’t we go to Uncle Sagamore’s?”
“Well, for one thing, he may not be there. The last I
heard he was about to be drafted.”
“Is he in the printing business too?”
“No,” Pop says. He opened a bottle of beer and sat
down on a rock with his sandwich. “You might say
he’s more in the manufacturing business.”
“Oh.” I give Sig Freed a piece of baloney. He
flipped his head and throwed it, and then pounced on
it like it was a mouse and gobbled it down.
“See, Pop,” I says, “he eats baloney.”
“Well, that’s nice of him,” Pop grunts.
“Democratic, ain’t he?”
“Can we keep him, Pop?”
“We’ll see,” he says. “But don’t bother me now. I
got a problem.” He was looking worried again.
Sig Freed went over and started licking the frying
pan. He liked the grease. It was dark now, and the
fire was pretty under the trees. I got my blankets out
of the trailer and unrolled ‘em, and laid down with
Sig Freed curled up beside me. I wanted to keep him
awful bad. Pop opened another bottle of beer.
“Have we ever been to Hollywood Park?” I asks.
We been to so many cities I kind of lose track
sometimes.
Pop shook his head.
“Why not?”
“Because you got to go across Texas to get there.”
“What’s Texas, Pop?” I asks.
“What’s Texas? Well, I’ll tell you.” He lit a cigar
and stretched his legs out. “Texas is the biggest area
without horse racing in the whole world, outside of
the Pacific Ocean. I been wanting to go to Hollywood
Park and Santa Anita for years, but I ain’t never had
enough money to get all the way across Texas at one
jump, and that’s the only way you can get across.
One time, before you was born, I started out from
The Diamond Bikini— 9
Oaklawn Park. I got as far as Texarkana, and headed
out into Texas real early in the morning before I
could lose my nerve. But the more I thought about it
the scareder I got, and in about fifty miles I got
chicken and turned back. I ain’t never tried it since.”
He looked at the fire and let out a long breath, kind
of shaking his head. “Maybe I’m getting a little old to
try it now. A man’s either got to be young and full of
sass and vinegar and ready to tackle anything, or else
he’s got to have a lot of money. Texas ain’t no place
to fool around with. There ain’t a race track in a
thousand miles in any direction. A man was to run
out of gas in the middle of it, he might have to go to
work, or something like that. It just ain’t safe.”
I could see it had him worried considerable. Every
night when we’d camp he’d get out the road maps
and measure off with little sticks and count the
money we had left, and it always come out the same.
We’d run out of gas at a place called Pyote, Texas,
half-way between Fairgrounds and Hollywood Park.
“It ain’t no use, dammit,” he says the last night.
“We just can’t make her. We’re going to wind up
spank in the middle of Texas, sure as you’re born.
The only thing to do is hole up at Sagamore’s till
Fairgrounds opens next fall.”
I let out a yip and hugged Sig Freed and he gave
me his play growl and licked my ear. And that’s how
we come to go to Uncle Sagamore’s.
The Diamond Bikini— 10
Two
It had been a long time since Pop had been to the
farm, so after we turned off the paved road he had to
stop and ask a man how to get there. There was a
little house without any paint on it and a barn made
out of logs on the other side of the road. The man
was chasing a hog, and he stopped and took off his
hat and mopped his face with a red handkerchief.
“Sagamore Noonan?” he says, looking at us kind of
funny.
“Yeah,” Pop says.
“You mean you want to go to Sagamore Noonan’s?”
He couldn’t seem to believe it.
“Is there anything wrong with that?” Pop asks, kind
of mad. “He’s there, ain’t he?”
“Why I reckon so,” the man says. “Leastwise, I ain’t
seen ‘em bringing him out lately.”
“Well, how do we get there?”
“Well, you just sorta follow this road. The gravel
kind of peters out after a while and it’s mostly sand,
but I reckon you can make her all right with that
trailer. After you go over a long sandhill and start
down in the bottom there’s a pair of ruts leading off
to the left through a war gate. From there it ain’t
over a quarter-mile, and you can smell it if’n the
The Diamond Bikini— 11
wind’s right.” He mopped his face again. “And if you
meet any cars coming out, give ‘em plenty of room
because they’ll likely be in a hurry.”
“In a hurry?” Pop says.
“Yeah. Sometimes the shurf’s mighty aggravated
when he goes by here. Run over three of my shoats
already this year.”
“Well, that’s too bad,” Pop says.
The man kind of shook his head, like it was getting
the best of him. “That’s the reason I’m chasing this
hawg. Two of the shurf’s men is back in there now
and I’m trying to get him penned up before they
come out. Sure is hard on hawgs.”
Pop thanked him and we went on.
“What did he mean, you could smell it?” I asked.
He shook his head, kind of absent-minded, like he
was thinking. “With Sagamore, there ain’t no telling.”
We went up over a long hill where there was lots of
pine trees. The car began to get hot, pulling the
trailer in the sand. After we ran along the top of it for
a while and started down on the other side we went
around a turn in the road and right up along side
another car pulled off in a little open place where
there wasn’t any trees and you could see out over the
river bottom. A man in a white hat was sitting on top
of the car with his feet on the hood and he was
looking through a pair of field-glasses like you watch
races with. Pop put on the brakes and stopped, and
the man let his field-glasses dangle on a strap around
his neck and stared at us. I tried to see what he was
looking at, but all there was was a couple of fields
and then trees as far as you could see.
“What are you looking for?” Pop asks.
There was another man inside the car, and he was
wearing a white hat too. He got out of the car and
they looked at each other.
“Airplanes,” the man on top of the car says.
“Sure enough?” says Pop.
The Diamond Bikini— 12
“That’s right. We’re airplane spotters,” the other
man tells him. He had a gold tooth that showed when
he grinned. “Never know when them Rooshians
might take a notion to fly over this way. Where you
fellas headed?”
Pop stared at him for a minute. “To the airport,” he
says, and started the car up. “I see any Russian
planes, I’ll let you know.”
We found the ruts going off to the left, and went
through the wire gate. It was downhill a little way
through the trees and then all of a sudden we saw
Uncle Sagamore’s farm.
Then we smelled it.
Pop slammed on the brakes, and the motor stalled.
“Good God,” he says, “what’s that?”
Sig Freed began to whine and jump around in the
back seat. Pop took off his hat and fanned the air in
front of his face, kind of choking a little. Then in a
minute it wasn’t so bad and we could breathe again.
There had been a little breeze blowing from where
the house was, and it had quit.
“It’s coming from over there,” Pop says, “Right
there at the house.”
“What do you suppose is dead?” I asked.
Pop shook his head. “Ain’t nothing could ever get
that dead.”
We looked around at the farm. At first we didn’t
see anybody. There was a log barn off to the right,
and straight ahead in the shade of a big tree was the
house. It was kind of gray, like old wood, and didn’t
have any paint on it anywhere. There was a big porch
across the front. White smoke was coming out of the
stove-pipe on the far side of the roof, but we didn’t
see Uncle Sagamore anywhere.
Then we heard a hammering sound, and looked off
to the left. It was downhill that way, and at the
bottom of the hill we could see a lake that went off
into the trees. And about halfway down the hill a man
was working on something. It was the funniestlooking
thing I ever saw. I couldn’t tell what it was.
The Diamond Bikini— 13
“Is that Uncle Sagamore?” I asked Pop.
“Working like that? In the sun?” Pop shook his
head and stared at the man and the thing he was
nailing boards on. It was about fifty yards away and
you couldn’t see what the man looked like except he
was kind of shiny on top like he didn’t have much
hair.
“That’s not Sagamore,” Pop says. “But maybe he
knows where he is.”
The breeze was still stopped and we didn’t get any
more of that awful smell, so Pop started the car again
and we eased down the hill. I kept watching this
thing the man was working on, trying to figure out
what it was, but I didn’t make any sense out of it. It
looked a little like he’d started out to build a boat but
changed his mind and wanted to make a house out of
it, and then somewhere along the line he’d decided,
aw, the hell with it, he’d just go ahead and nail her
together and see what it was after he got through.
The bottom part of it was a big box about the size
of a small house trailer, and on top of that was
another box. None of it was finished yet, and you
could see all the way through it in places. A lot of the
boards had big holes in them. Some of the holes was
round and some was shaped like a new moon. The
man was standing on a scaffold about as high as the
top of the car, with his back to us, nailing a short
board over the hole in another board.
He didn’t seem to hear us. Pop stopped the car
right in back of him and leaned out of the window.
“Hey,” he says, “where’s Sagamore?”
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