“Well, it’s like this,” Uncle Sagamore says.
“Every once in a while, maybe twice a year, Bessie
gets all galled under the britchin’ about something
and starts faunchin’ around here sayin’ she’s takened
all she can take, she just ain’t goin’ to put up with me
no longer, ain’t nobody could live with me. Usually
over some triflin’ little thing that don’t amount to a
hill of beans, like I won’t wash my feet or something,
but she gets all swole up like a snakebit pup and says
she’s leavin’ me for good this time. So she packs her
suitcase and gets her egg money and walks down to
Jimerson’s which is on the party line and calls Bud
Watkins that runs the taxi in town, and Bud comes
after her. She gets on the bus and goes down to
Glencove to stay with her Cousin Viola, the one that
married Vergil Talley.
“Well, I don’t know if you recollect Cousin Viola,
but you can’t take too much of her at one time. She’s
kind of delicate and refined, only she’s got this
rumblin’ in her stummick, an’ every time her
stummick rumbles she pats herself on the mouth with
three fingers an’ says, “Excuse me.” Well, something
like this all day long is bad enough, but on top of that
she’s got this damn gallstone.”
The Diamond Bikini— 34
“Gallstone?” Pop asked.
“That’s right,” Uncle Sagamore says. “Six, eight
years ago she had it takened out at the hospital, an’
this fool doctor didn’t have no better sense than to
tell her it was the biggest one he ever seen, outside
of one somebody takened out of a giraffe. Well, Viola
was all set up about that, so she brought it home with
her and put it in a little jar on the mantel an’ took to
tellin’ people about it. One time, Vergil says, some
people’s car got stuck in the mud in front of the
house an’ they couldn’t get away, an’ Viola talked
about that gallstone for thirteen hours and twenty
minutes without stoppin’. Man finally give Vergil the
keys to the car and said he’d be back for it in the
summer when the roads dried out. People took to
movin’ out of the community rather than havin’ to
dodge her all the time, so when Bessie’d leave me an’
go down there Viola’d be all primed and loaded for
her. If Bessie was real mad at me she could hold out
for ten days.”
Uncle Sagamore stopped talking and looked at
Booger and Otis. They was shifting around on the
step like they couldn’t get comfortable anywhere.
“I ain’t borin’ you boys with all this, am I?” he
asked.
“Why, no,” Booger says. “—uh—that is—” He
looked kind of funny. Pale, sort of, and sweating
pretty heavy. His face was all slick and white. Otis
was the same way. It didn’t seem to be the smell that
was bothering them, though, because they wasn’t
fanning with their hats any more. They just seemed
to be kind of restless.
“Sure wouldn’t want to get tiresome an’ bore you
boys,” Uncle Sagamore says. “Especially after what
you done, rushin’ down here to save us from that
typhoid an’ all.”
“But how does it happen Bessie stays away three
weeks now?” Pop asked. “Is Viola beginning to run
down, or something?”
“Oh,” Uncle Sagamore says. He sailed out some
more tobacco juice, and wiped his mouth with the
The Diamond Bikini— 35
back of his hand. “No. It was like this. Couple of
years ago, I reckon it was, Vergil made a pretty good
cotton crop, an’ they could see there was goin’ to be
money ahead even after they paid off the store. But
before Vergil could get in to town to buy another
secondhand Buick with it, Viola sneaked off to the
hospital an’ had about four hundred dollars worth of
new stuff takened out on the credit. Mostly female
stuff I reckon; she’d never used it much because she
ain’t stopped talkin’ long enough since they got
married for Vergil to get her in the family way. I
don’t know why it is, but no matter how hard up a
man is he ain’t goin’ to do his best with a woman
that’s talkin’ five Quarts to the gallon about her
goddam gallstone.
“But, anyhow, I reckon Cousin Viola really shot the
wad. Four hundred dollars worth of stuff is a lot,
especially since they already got you open an’ you’re
gettin’ wholesale rates after they write off the first
slice or two. So if Vergil never made another good
crop, she was set for life. It wasn’t that she talked
any less, but just that she had more to talk about now
an’ could kind of spread out over more ground.
That’s the reason Bessie’s been stayin’ three weeks
lately, Viola don’t hardly have to start repeatin’
herself in less than that.”
Uncle Sagamore stopped again. You could see now
that there was really something bothering Booger
and Otis. Their eyes was big and kind of staring, like
they hurt somewhere, and their faces was white as
chalk, with big drops of sweat oozing out on their
foreheads.
Uncle Sagamore looked round at Pop. “Well sir, by
golly, I get to ramblin’ on like this, looks like I never
know when to stop. I just remembered Billy asked me
something while ago, an’ I never did take time to
answer him. What was it, now?”
Well, I couldn’t remember anything like that, but I
was beginning to learn about Uncle Sagamore. He
wasn’t talking to me. He’d asked Pop, so I stayed
shut up. That was safest.
The Diamond Bikini— 36
“Hmmmmm,” Pop says. “He asked you what
something was, as I recall.”
Uncle Sagamore nodded. “Sure. I recollect now. He
wanted to know what croton oil was. Why you
suppose he’d ask a fool thing—”
Booger and Otis stared at him with their eyes about
to pop out.
“Croton oil?” Booger says.
“Croton oil?” Otis says, in just the same way.
“Kids can ask some of the damnedest questions,”
Uncle Sagamore went on. “Without no reason at all.”
He pulled a big red handkerchief out of his overall
pocket and started to mop the bald spot on his head.
Some kind of black powder fell out of it. He looked at
it, sort of puzzled.
“Now, how in the hell did black pepper get in my
pocket?” he asked, like he was talking to hisself. “Oh,
I recollect now. I spilled some when I was gettin’
breakfast. Atchooooo!”
Some of it got in my nose and I sneezed. Then Pop
sneezed. And Uncle Sagamore sneezed again.
But Otis and Booger didn’t sneeze. It was a little
peculiar, the way they acted. Their eyes kept getting
bigger and bigger, with that staring sort of horror in
them, and they pressed fingers under their noses and
breathed in real slow through their mouths. Then
they both got full of air and it seemed like they
couldn’t breathe out. They clamped hands over their
faces and tried to let the air escape a little at a time,
kind of whining down in their throats.
One of ‘em would say, “A-ah-ah—” like he was
about to sneeze, and he would clamp his mouth and
nose shut with both hands and begin to turn purple
in the face, with his eyes watering and sweat running
down his forehead. It would pass, and he would let a
little air out, and then the other one would start to go
“A-ah-ah—” and he’d go through the same thing.
Uncle Sagamore sneezed again. “Damn that
pepper, anyhow,” he says, and waved his
The Diamond Bikini— 37
handkerchief at it. It didn’t do much good except to
stir up what had already settled on the floor.
Booger and Otis grabbed their faces harder.
Uncle Sagamore shifted his tobacco into the other
side of his face. “Now, where was I?” he says. “Oh,
yes. About them privies. Well, Bessie raised hell with
Finley the first few times for tearin’ it down each
time before she’d hardly got out of sight, but it didn’t
do no good except to get her scratched off the
passenger list, like I said. Finley and the Vision kind
of voted her out, you might say.
“So now when she gets a bellyful of Cousin Viola
and comes home, as soon as she gets off the bus in
town she goes right over to the E.M Staggers Lumber
Company and orders a bill of material for a new
privy. They made up so many of ‘em now they don’t
even have to figure it any more. Got a list all wrote
out, right down to the last ten-penny nail, hangin’ on
a hook over the manager’s desk. So they just load it
on the truck an’ Bessie rides out with ‘em.”
But I wasn’t listening to Uncle Sagamore now. I
was watching Booger and Otis. They was still holding
their faces like they was afraid they’d die of the
pneumonia if they ever sneezed. All you could see
was their eyes with that terrible staring in them.
They looked at Uncle Sagamore and the end of the
shotgun and then out towards the car like it was a
million miles away. They couldn’t sit still at all.
They’d weave back and forth and kind of shift around
on the step; but it was funny, each time they shifted
they went backward a little. They slid down to the
next step, and then the bottom one. They stood up
and started easing away like they had something on
their minds and had lost interest in Uncle
Sagamore’s story altogether.
They started out slow but began gathering speed,
and by the time they got to the car they was really
travelling. I never did figure out how they got the
doors open and shot inside that fast, but by the time
they’d hit the seat the car jumped ahead, making a
The Diamond Bikini— 38
long, looping turn. With the tires screaming, and they
was headed back up the road towards the gate.
Uncle Sagamore looked at ‘em and sailed out some
more tobacco juice. “Doggone,” he says. “I should of
knowed I was borin’ them boys.”
Just then the car hit one of those bumps and went
up about three feet in the air. They must have put the
brakes on while it was still off the ground, because
when it hit it just slid kind of nose down, and turned
crossways and stopped about half out of the road.
The door flew open and Booger and Otis jumped
out, one on each side, and started running towards
the trees. They reminded me of horses coming out of
a starting gate, the way they took off. Booger had to
go round the car, so he was sort of left at the post,
but as soon as he was clear and had racing room he
went into a drive and started closing fast on Otis.
Otis come on again, but Booger was laying up close
to the pace now and he finally pulled into the lead by
a good length and a half, and won going away. They
shot into the trees.
Uncle Sagamore scratched his leg with his big toe
again. “Sure hope them boys ain’t comin’ down with
that typhoid,” he says, and picked up the glass jar
they had forgot to take along with them to have
analyzed.
He reached it back through the door and traded it
for the other one. He handed this one to Pop. They
both took a drink.
Uncle Sagamore leaned the shotgun back against
the wall and stretched. “You know,” he says, “that
stuff might make a purty good remedy, at that. Even
if it didn’t help a man out none with the gals, it’d
sure take his mind off ‘em.”
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