And that wasn’t all. There was a light down at the
edge of the lake by Uncle Finley’s ark, and a couple
of cars and an ambulance and a truck, and there was
six or seven men milling around. The light was
coming from gasoline lanterns they was carrying. I
cut down that way, still running, but I give out of
breath before I got there and had to slow down to a
walk.
As I came up I could see some of the men was ones
I knew. There was the sheriff and Booger and Otis
and Pearl. Booger and Pearl was helping another
man load a stretcher into the ambulance. Uncle
Sagamore and Otis and Pop was trying to unload a
rowboat off the truck. It dropped, and everybody
cussed. The sheriff was just standing around cussing
to anybody that would listen.
The Diamond Bikini— 124
I thought it was sure funny with me and Miss
Harrington lost like we was that there wouldn’t be at
least one or two of ‘em out looking for us.
I walked up to the light. “Hi, Pop,” I says, “I found
my way back.”
Everybody just dropped everything they was doing
and swung around with their mouths open. “Good
God!” Pop says. He run over and grabbed me by the
shoulders. “Are you all right, Billy? Where the hell
have you been?”
“I was lost,” I says. “The rabbit hunters tried to
shoot us, but we got out of the lake and run off down
in the bottom and we got separated and it got dark
and I lost Miss Harrington and after a while I found
out I was walking in a cornfield, and—”
“Well!” Everybody let out a big sigh, and sat down.
They all mopped their faces and shook their heads
kind of slow, and looked real happy for a minute.
Then doggone if everybody didn’t start to cuss.
Pop and Uncle Sagamore cussed the rabbit
hunters, and Pop cussed me for going swimming with
Miss Harrington, and Booger and Otis and Pearl
cussed Pop, and the sheriff just cussed everybody
kind of impartial until he happened to remember
Uncle Sagamore and settled down to just cussing
him.
“You’d know it,” he says, red-faced and rolling his
hat around in his hands. “If there was going to be a
goddam war or a hurricane or a outbreak of the
bubonic plague or a revolution or a rest home for city
gangsters with machine-gun battles breaking out all
over the place, you’d know it’d be on Sagamore
Noonan’s farm. It’s the logical place.”
He stopped and mopped his face with the sleeve of
his shirt. Then he waved an arm. “All right, men.
Load the condemned boat back on the condemned
truck and if you’ve got all the dead gangsters in the
condemned ambulance we’ll get out of this
condemned place. We don’t have to drag the
condemned lake now, because I guess there ain’t
nobody in it.”
The Diamond Bikini— 125
He sighed and shook his head, and then went on, “I
mean there ain’t nobody in it we’re looking for at the
moment, I’m glad we don’t have to look. I’m gettin’
old and I ain’t got much appetite for the seamy side
of life any more. There just ain’t no telling, if you
dragged this here peaceful lake on this peaceful little
farm of Sagamore Noonan’s, how many dead bodies
you’ll find, and old gangsters and gambling
equipment, and pieces of old stills, and dope, and
machine-guns, and brass knucks.
It was like Uncle Sagamore said, I thought, the
sheriff was a real excitable man. But it looked like he
was forgetting that Miss Harrington was still lost.
“But, sheriff,” I says. “We got to look for Miss
Harrington. She’s still down there somewhere.”
He stopped then and stared at me. He shook his
head. “That’s right. I forgot about her. I don’t know
why—I mean, with nothing going on to interrupt a
man’s train of thought—but never mind. You say you
got separated from her?”
“Yes, sir,” I says. “About two hours ago, I reckon.
And she can’t walk very well, because she hasn’t got
any shoes.”
He nodded. “I know. I know. We found all your
clothes. But she’s got on a bathing suit, hasn’t she?”
“Yes, sir. The diamond one. But it ain’t very warm,
and there’s not much of it to keep the mosquitoes
off.”
He stared at me. “Diamond one?”
I told him about it.
He didn’t say anything for a moment. He just
sighed and walked over and leaned his forehead on
his arms against the side of the truck, shaking his
head from side to side. In the light from the lanterns
I couldn’t tell if he was crying, or what. The rest of us
just looked at him. Pop lit a cigar and Uncle
Sagamore bit off a chaw of tobacco and looked
around for a place to spit.
“If I had to grow up and be a peace officer,” the
sheriff says, still with his forehead on his arms, “why
The Diamond Bikini— 126
couldn’t I have been born in some other county?
There is other counties in this state. There’s lots of
‘em. Maybe there’s even places where they ain’t
never heard of Sagamore Noonan. We got a big-city
gang war. We got three dead gangsters. And now we
got a cooch dancer lost in twenty thousand acres of
river bottom with nothing on but a G-string.”
Booger and Otis and Pearl looked at each other,
kind of frowning. Then the same idea seemed to hit
all of ‘em at once. They jumped up and started to say
something, but just then the sheriff jumped too like
something had bit him. He whirled around and
looked at Pop and Uncle Sagamore.
“Describe this girl again,” he snaps. “What’d you
say she looked like?”
“Hmmmmm,” Pop says. “A real doll. About five-six,
I reckon. Hundred and twenty pounds, or
thereabouts. Black hair, blue eyes. Mebbe twenty-one
or twenty-two years old, and built sort of—”
The sheriff was real excited. “And did she have a
vine tattooed on one of her—uh—”
Pop took the cigar out of his mouth and stared at
him. “Now, how the hell would I know what she’s got
tattooed on her?”
“Hah! the sheriff snorts. Then he whirled around to
me. “Billy, you was swimming with—”
“Why, of course she has,” I says. “Hasn’t
everybody?”
The sheriff and his three men says all at the same
time, “Choo-Choo Caroline!”
“Right here in this county all the time,” Otis says.
“And now she’s lost in the river bottom,” Booger
says. “At night.”
Otis mopped his face with his handkerchief. “In just
a G-string,” he says.
Pop looked from one to the other. “Who,” he asked,
“is Choo-Choo Caroline?”
“Nobody,” the sheriff says. “Nobody at all. Just a
striptease cooch dancer that’s been on the front page
The Diamond Bikini— 127
of every paper in the country for the past three
weeks, that’s being looked for by the FBI and the
police of twenty-three states, and I don’t know how
many different sets of gangsters. I understand they
already named a new dance after her, and a
television program, and two or three different drinks,
and a new type of brassiere with roses on it, and
some miscellaneous underdrawers and new hair-dos
and face goo and lipstick. Aside from that she’s only
a material witness in the biggest murder case they
ever had in New Orleans, and she’s been missing for
three weeks with the whole United States looking for
her.”
“The only thing I don’t understand is why it never
did occur to ‘em that the only perfectly logical place
for her to be is wandering around in Sagamore
Noonan’s river bottom in a G-string.”
The Diamond Bikini— 128
Twelve
“Well sir,” Uncle Sagamore says, “if that don’t beat
all.”
“We better get busy and find her,” Pop says.
“Imagine the poor girl wandering around in just that
little—uh—”
Uncle Sagamore looked kind of thoughtful. “Oh, I
reckon she’s safe enough down there. Ain’t nothin’ in
that bottom that’d bother her.”
Pop started to get up. “Well, we better organize a
search party, anyway. Can’t have her wanderin’
around down there, scared to death, in just that little
wisp of—uh—”
He caught Uncle Sagamore looking at him and
didn’t say no more.
The sheriff piped up then. “Course we’re goin’ to
start a search party,” he says. He started giving
orders. He says to one of the men I didn’t know,
“Harm, you take them three gangsters on into town
and turn ‘em over to the undertaker to hold for the
inquest. Me and Pearl and Otis and Booger will stay
here. We got three lanterns between us. Doughbelly,
you drive the truck back with the rowboat. Get hold
of Robert Stark. Tell him to round up twenty men—
not no more because if we get this bottom full of
people we’ll spend as much time looking for lost
The Diamond Bikini— 129
searchers as we will for her. Tell him to requisition
Rutherford’s sound truck, the one they use during
campaigns. If we make enough noise up here, she
may find her way in by herself. Tell everybody to
bring gasoline lanterns or flashlights. All right, get
movin’.”
The fat one nodded his head and started to get in
the truck. “May have a little trouble gettin’ twenty
men, this time of night.”
“Just tell ‘em what she’s wearin’,” the sheriff says.
“You won’t have no trouble at all.”
Pop and Uncle Sagamore just looked at each other
again.
The sheriff waved his hand. “Oh, yes. Tell Robert
Stark to call the state prison farm for the dawgs.
They can have ‘em here by noon tomorrow, if we ain’t
found her by that time.”
The truck and the ambulance drove away. Pop
motioned for me to come along, and him and Uncle
Sagamore went up to the house. We all sat down on
the front porch.
“Where’s Dr Severance?” I asked. “And what did
the sheriff mean about three dead gangsters? And
where’s Sig Freed? And why was they going to drag
the lake?”
Uncle Sagamore didn’t say a word. He just sat
there wiggling his toes like he was thinking. Pop told
me all about it.
They heard the shooting, and went over there and
found our clothes where we’d left them on the log, so
they figured the men had shot us and we was lying
on the bottom of the lake. They called the sheriff
from Mr. Jimerson’s house. And when the sheriff’s
men got there they found Dr Severance up near the
head of the lake. He was dead. And right near him
there was two other dead men with tommy guns.
They was the ones that tried to shoot us. I felt bad
about Dr Severance, but I figured the other ones got
just what was coming to them.
The Diamond Bikini— 130
“Hey, Pop,” I said then, “there must have been
three of them.” I told him about the one we heard
while we was hiding in the ferns.
“Hmmmmm,” Pop says. “Well, likely he’s already
give up and left, unless he’s lost, too. Anyway, I
reckon he didn’t find her, because there ain’t been no
more shootin’.”
“Well, you reckon the sheriff’s men will find her all
right?” I asked. I was worried about her.
“Sure,” Pop says.
Uncle Sagamore still looked like he was blinking.
There was a little light coming out the window from
the lamp inside, and I could see him working his
tobacco around in his mouth, from one cheek to the
other. He spit. “Reckon they will, at that. Likely
there’s a good chance of it,” he says.
“I expect you’re right,” Pop says. He looked
thoughtful too.
I could see the three lanterns the sheriff and his
men was carrying start down towards the timber on
the lower side of the lake. Pop and Uncle Sagamore
stayed kind of quiet for a minute.
“By God,” Pop says then.
“Ain’t she a beauty?” Uncle Sagamore asked.
“She sure is,” I said. I thought they meant Miss
Harrington. I told them how she looked all tanned
like that with her diamond bathing suit glittering.
They looked at each other.
Pop choked on his cigar smoke. “Hush,” he says.
“Yes sir, by God,” Uncle Sagamore says. “It’s what
you would call a natural situation. You couldn’t even
start out and build one like it.”
“Stacked, famous, nakid, and lost,” Pop says.
“She ain’t nekkid,” I says. “She’s got on her
bathing suit.”
“Damn it, Billy,” Pop snaps at me. “Will you hush
up for a minute? A man don’t live through many
moments like this in his life, and he don’t want ‘em
spoiled with noise.”
The Diamond Bikini— 131
“Yes sir, just think of it,” Uncle Sagamore says.
“Kind of makes little cold chills run up your back,
don’t it?” Pop asked. Then he went on kind of
discouraged. “But like you say, they’ll likely find her
before morning.”
“Gosh, I sure hope so,” I says. They didn’t let on
like they even heard me.
“A man couldn’t hardly get started with nothin’ by
that time,” Pop says.
“That’s right,” Uncle Sagamore said to him. “He’d
have to give guarantees, to do any dickerin’ with
anybody.”
I didn’t know what they was talking about. And
then I suddenly remember I still hadn’t found out
anything about Sig Freed.
“Where’s Sig Freed?” I asked Pop.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I thought he was around
here.”
“Have you seen him lately?”
Pop thought about it. “No. I reckon we ain’t, now
that you mention it. Mebbe he went off looking for
you.”
“You don’t suppose those people would hurt him,
do you?” I asked. “He was there where we was
swimming.”
“No, ain’t no reason they’d do a thing like that,”
Pop says. “Now stop worryin’. A dawg can find his
way back all right.”
I got up. “Well, I’m going to take a look around.”
“Don’t you go far,” Pop says. “I don’t want you to
git lost again.”
“I won’t,” I says.
I walked up towards the big house trailer, calling
“Sig Freed! Here, Sig Freed!” It was awful dark and I
couldn’t see much, but I knew if he heard me he’d
bark and come running. I didn’t get any answer from
him, though. I came back down past Uncle Finley’s
ark, and then cut back up the hill towards the front
yard, meaning to go down past the barn and yell in
The Diamond Bikini— 132
that direction. Pop and Uncle Sagamore was still
sitting on the front porch, talking.
“I can’t find him,” I says.
“Hell, don’t worry,” Pop says. “You can’t lose a
dawg.”
I wasn’t so sure, though. “But, Pop, he’s a city
dog.”
I started to go on across the yard, and then
doggone if I didn’t hear him. It sounded like he was
down the other side of the barn in the edge of the
trees. He was barking.
“That’s him, Pop,” I says, and started to run down
that way.
And then Uncle Sagamore and Pop both bounced
off the porch. Pop caught my arm. “Wait a minute,
Billy,” he says. “Hold it.”
“Why?” I asked. “That’s Sig Freed, all right. I know
his bark.”
“Sure,” Uncle Sagamore says. “That’s him sure
enough. But you ain’t been around dawgs as long as I
have. That there’s a skunk bark sure as you’re born.”
“Just what I was thinkin’,” Pop says. He was still
holding me by the arm. “When I heard it, I says to
myself, that there dawg’s treed a skunk.”
“Well, maybe so,” I told him. “But we can’t just
leave him down there to let the skunk stink him up.”
“You better let Sagamore take care of it,” Pop says.
“He knows how. You just sit right here and wait.”
“But, Pop—”
“Never you mind. You just do like I tell you. I don’t
want you all stunk up with polecat. You’d have to go
off and live in the barn.”
Uncle Sagamore started walking down towards the
barn real fast. Pop and me sat down on the porch. We
could hear Sig Freed still barking, and it didn’t sound
like he was too far the other side of the barn.
Nothing happened for a few minutes. Then Sig
Freed’s bark changed a little, and in a minute he let
out a yip and stopped barking altogether.
The Diamond Bikini— 133
Uncle Sagamore yelled something.
Pop walked out by the well and called back, “What?
What you say?”
“Call the dawg,” Uncle Sagamore yelled. “Git him
up there and keep him.”
“Here, Sig Freed!” I called. “Sig Freed! Sig Freed!”
In a minute he came running up. He jumped up in
my arms and started licking my face. “He didn’t get
no skunk on him, Pop,” I says. “See, he smells just
like he always did.”
“Well, that just goes to show you,” Pop says.
“Sagamore knows how to handle one. Better hold on
to that dawg, though. Don’t let him go back down
there.”
We sat down on the porch again and I held Sig
Freed by his collar. He was real happy. It seemed like
a long time went by, though, and Uncle Sagamore
didn’t come back.
“You reckon he’s having trouble with the skunk?” I
asked.
“Sagamore having trouble with one crummy little
old skunk?” Pop says. “Not on your life. He’s a match
for any skunk that ever come down the pike. He’ll be
back in a minute.”
Some more time went by, and I started Worrying
again about Miss Harrington. She’d be awful scared
down there by herself. “Hadn’t we all ought to go
down there and help look for her?” I asked Pop.
He shook his head. “Ain’t much we could do,” he
says. “And I don’t want you gettin’ lost again.”
Just then Uncle Sagamore came around the corner
of the house. He sat down on the step in the dark and
bit off a chaw of tobacco. “Well sir, by golly,” he says.
“It was just like we thought.”
“Well, you can generally tell, by the bark, if you
know dawgs.” Pop says. “You didn’t have no
trouble?”
“Hmmmm,” Uncle Sagamore says. “Not overly
much. Skunks is a lot like mules and wimmin. You
The Diamond Bikini— 134
just got to reason with ‘em. You ain’t goin’ to git
nowhere givin’ orders to a skunk, but if’n you take
the time to explain the whole thing to him he’ll
generally see it yore way.”
“You reckon it’s safe to turn the dawg loose now?”
Pop asked.
“Oh, sure. He ain’t going to locate him now. Let
him go.”
I turned Sig Freed loose. He ran around out in the
dark in the front yard, but he didn’t go far.
Uncle Sagamore sailed out some tobacco juice. You
couldn’t see it, but you could hear the ka-splott when
it landed. “You know, Sam,” he says. “I’m sorta
worried about that there girl.”
“Well,” Pop says, “I have been, too, but I just didn’t
want to let on.”
“Oh,” Uncle Sagamore says, “she ain’t in no
danger. They ain’t nothin’ down there that’d hurt
her, mind you. But it’s just that she’ll get scared, all
alone like that, and the muskeeters is goin’ to chaw
on her somethin’ awful, being light dressed like she
is. Sam, you reckon the shurf’s handlin’ this thing
just the way he ort? With only twenty men?”
“Just what I was thinkin’, myself,” Pop says. “It
seems to me like the shurf just ain’t got a real grasp
of the situation. Now, if it was me—”
“If it was me,” Uncle Sagamore says, “I’d offer a
reward.”
“Why, of course,” Pop went on. “And kinda let
people know about it.”
“Natcherly. I’d distribute a few hand bills and
mebbe call the papers. Sort of describe her, how she
looks and how she was dressed the last time anybody
saw her, so people’d know what to look for. I reckon
we could get out a pretty good description of the girl,
now couldn’t we?”
“Ho-ly hell. I mean, of course we could. We seen
her around often enough, ain’t we?”
“Well sir, I’ll tell you,” Uncle Sagamore says. “I just
ain’t satisfied with the way the shurf’s handlin’ this
The Diamond Bikini— 135
thing. That there girl’s a good friend of ours, an’ Billy
sets all the store in the world by her, an’ here that
shurf’s going to go a-piddlin’ around down here with
a little old dab of men that couldn’t find a dead
mouse in a glass of buttermilk, while she works
herself up into a swivet and gets bit all to hell by the
muskeeters. It just don’t seem right to me.”
“Well, then, what do you reckon we ort to do?” Pop
asked.
“Now, mind you,” Uncle Sagamore says, “I’d be the
last one in the world to want to interfere with the
workin’s of the law, but it shore seems to me like it’s
our duty to let the people know what’s goin’ on down
here so we can get more help to look for her.
People’d come a-runnin’ if they knew the facts,
“specially when they heard about the reward.”
“Hmmmm!” Pop says. “Mebbe about two
hundred?”
“Better make it five hundred,” Uncle Sagamore
decided.
“Say, that’s fine,” I told them. “We’ll get lots of
help. Who’ll pay it?”
“Shucks, ain’t no use worryin’ about that now,”
Uncle Sagamore says. The thing to do now is find
that there girl. Plenty of time later on to worry about
piddlin’ little details.”
“Well, what are we waitin’ for?” Pop says.
He jumped up. “We got a printing press out there
in the trailer, haven’t we? And hundreds of pounds of
paper. Come on, Billy. Let’s get to work.”
“Sure,” I says.
We got a lantern and went out to the trailer, pop
closed the door and sat down at the little desk with a
sheet of paper and a pencil. “You start settin’ her up
as fast as I get it wrote out,” he says. “We don’t want
to lose no time.”
He opened the little dictionary and started looking
up the words. Pop can’t spell anything without
looking it up.
The Diamond Bikini— 136
It was hot inside the trailer, but we was too busy to
notice.
Pop got the lead-off blocked out the way he wanted
it and I set it up in big type, and then he started with
the rest of it, the description and how to find the
place and everything.
While we was working there was a sound like a
horse outside and we looked out.
Uncle Sagamore had saddled one of his mules, and
he was setting on his back with something that
looked like a bundle of clothes under his arm.
“How you makin’ out, Sam?” he asked.
“Fine,” Pop says. “We’ll be ready to start printing
her in a few minutes. You goin’ down in the bottom?”
“That’s right,” Uncle Sagamore says. I figured I ort
to help the boys out, seein’ as how I can’t do nothin’
here.”
“What’s that you got in your arms?” I asked Uncle
Sagamore.
“Oh,” he says. “I went up to the trailer an’ found a
suit of Miss Harrington’s clothes. We find her, she’ll
want something to wear.”
I hadn’t thought of that. It was a good idea.
We closed the door and started to work again.
Pop was chewing on his pencil. “Hmmmmm!
Twenty-two years old—” he says, talking to hisself.
“No. Better make that nineteen. Get a sportier type
of searcher. Now. Which bosom is that vine on?”
“The off one,” I says, reaching for more type. “And
right in the center it’s got a little, pink—”
“Damn it, Billy—” He wiped the sweat off his face.
“Never mind.” He sighed and went on muttering.
“Climbing rose—golden suntan all over—hips—God, if
I don’t stop reading this thing over while I’m writin’
it, I’ll be down there lookin’ for her myself.”
In a little while he had it all wrote out the way he
wanted it, and I finished setting it up in type. I inked
it and ran off one to see how it was.
The Diamond Bikini— 137
Pop looked at it. “Well, that sure enough ought to
fetch ‘em,” he says. “I’ll have to save one to show to
Sagamore. It’s a downright work of art.” I read it
over, and it sure sounded fine, all right.
REWARD!!!
NUDE GIRL LOST IN SWAMP!!
REWARD! $500 REWARD!
MISS CHOO-CHOO CAROLINE, FAMOUS BUBBLE
DANCER, LOST
Five hundred dollars in cash will be paid for the
safe return of Miss Choo-Choo Caroline, worldfamous
striptease dancer, lost in wild river bottom of
the Noonan farm five miles south of the town of
Jerome, in Blossom County.
Miss Caroline has been missing since 5 p.m.
Tuesday evening, when she was surprised, attacked,
and shot at by gangsters while swimming clad only in
a diamond G-string. She is known to have escaped
into the timber at that time, but will shortly be
suffering from exposure due to having no clothes on.
Description:
Bust 36
Waist 24
Hips 36
Winner of three beauty contests, water ballet star
at 16, former model, Queen of the Water Ski festival
in 1955. Lovely, breath-taking brunette with deep
blue eyes and jet black hair. Nineteen years old.
Smooth golden suntan all over. May be identified by
tattoo in the form of a rambler rose entwined around
right breast with small pink flower in center.
PLEASE HELP US FIND THIS GIRL!
The Diamond Bikini— 138
Thirteen
We started rolling it out. I cranked till my arm was
worn out, and then Pop took over. We stacked the
sheets in big blocks and then put them in a
cardboard box. When the box was full we started
another one. Pop got tired and I took over again. Pop
got a road map out of the car and sat down at the
little desk, marking off the towns all around and the
best way to make ‘em all with one sweep. He kept
looking at his watch.
We was filling up the second box when we began
hearing cars outside.
“All right, I think we got enough,” Pop says.
“Put out the lantern.”
I blew it out, and we went outside. Pop closed the
door. There was three cars parked just up the hill
from the front yard, and another one was coming. In
its headlights I could see one of the others was a
sound truck, with a big loudspeaker mounted on top.
Men began to get out and light lanterns.
“Which way?” a man yells at Pop.
Pop was standing in a headlight beam. He swung
his arm and pointed towards the bottom. “Down
there,” he says.
The Diamond Bikini— 139
Men started hurrying down the hill, running
around the corners of the house and out towards the
cornfield with their lanterns. “Hey, you guys, wait for
me,” others was calling out from the cars.
Pop lit a cigar. “Sure is a enthusiastic search
party,” he says. “But they’re goin’ to need help. I can
just feel it.”
The loudspeaker on the truck began to make noise.
It let out a big blast and says, Wheeeet! Wheeeet!
Testing, one, two, three, four. Testing. Up this way,
Miss Caroline. Follow the music”
It started playing a record. It was sure loud. I
reckon you could of heard it over a mile.
“Hey, Pop,” I says. “That’ll bring her in in no time,
if she can still walk. That’s a good idea.”
“Sure is.” Pop nodded his head. “But it’s a awful
big bottom down there. Three or four miles across.
Even so, they ort to find her by daylight.”
“Reckon we ought to go ahead and distribute them
hand bills?” I asked.
“Oh, sure,” he says. “Got to do everything we can
to help out. By the way, though, if I was you I
wouldn’t mention nothing about them to the shurf.
Them beaurocrats always want to run thing their own
way, an’ they get all fussed when somebody like a
ordinary citizen tries to help out.”
“Sure,” I says. “I won’t say nothing.”
All the men was gone from the cars now except the
one playing the records in the sound truck. Pop
reached in the trailer and took out the two boxes of
hand bills and carried them up to our car.
Just as we was putting them in the seat Uncle
Sagamore rode up on his mule. I could just barely see
him in the dark. He had to get down to talk, because
the record playing in the sound
truck made so much noise.
“You about ready to go, Sam?” he asked.
“Just startin’ now,” Pop says. “How is the search
goin’?”
The Diamond Bikini— 140
“I made one sweep down across the bottom an’
back, but didn’t see a sign of her. Didn’t even see any
of the searchers. Lots of ground down there.”
Pop got in the car and leaned his head out the
window. “They’re goin’ to need all the help they can
get, an’ that’s a fact,” he says. “By the way, here’s
one of the hand bills.”
Uncle Sagamore struck a match and read it.
“Hmmm,” he says. “Sure got a nice ring to it. Matter
of fact, I reckon you better get everybody lined up
an’ tell ‘em to be here by daylight, before you throw
many of them things around. Might not even get in, if
they don’t hurry.”
“Can I go with you, Pop?” I asked.
They both turned around like they’d forgot I was
there. “Say,” Pop says, “you go on up there and
unroll your bed and get some sleep.”
“But Pop—”
“You do like I tell you. And don’t you go off down in
that bottom any more. I’ll bring you some jawbreakers.”
“All right,” I says. I went back and sat down on the
step with Sig Freed. Pop and Uncle Sagamore talked
for about five minutes more and then Pop drove off.
Uncle Sagamore came back down through the yard,
leading the mule. He sat down on the step next to me
to rest for a minute.
“You might as well go to bed,” he says. “Ain’t no
use you stayin’ up.”
Just then Uncle Finley came tearing out through
the door in his nightshirt. He was barefooted, and his
bald head was shining in the lamplight coming
through the window.
“What’s that there awful racket?” he yells. “How’s
a man goin’ to get any sleep, with all that bellerin’
an’ screechin’?”
Uncle Sagamore spit real careful and wiped his
mouth with the back of his hand. “Why, that there’s
just the shurf’s sound truck, Finley,” he says. “Ain’t
nothin’ to get excited about. Seems like there’s a
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nakid cooch dancer wanderin’ around out there an’
he’s tryin’ to toll her in.”
“I knowed it,” Uncle Finley says. “Just what you’d
expect around this here place. Nothin’ but sin.
Everybody’s goin’ to drowned. Cooch dancers runnin’
in an’ out of the bushes a-shakin’ theirselves at
people, an’ horns a-honkin’ all hours of the day an’
night so decent people can’t sleep. It’s a comin’. The
day’s a comin’, an’ it ain’t going” to be long. You’re
gonna see ‘em come pourin’ in here beggin’ to be let
aboard, but I ain’t going to take ‘em. Not a one.”
“Well sir,” Uncle Sagamore says, “that sure is
rough on the rest of us, but if that’s the way you and
the vision got her figured, I reckon that’s the way it’s
got to be. If it was me, though, doggone if I wouldn’t
try to squeeze over and make room for that there
cooch dancer, anyway. She wouldn’t take up much
space, an’ she could sit in your lap.”
Uncle Finley says, “Hmmmmmph!” and went back
in the house.
Uncle Sagamore got on his mule and went back
around the house towards the bottom. The sound
truck went on playing music, and every once in a
while the man would talk into the microphone. “This
way, Miss Caroline. Follow the sound.”
Then there would be another record.
I stretched out on my bedroll and tried to get some
sleep, but the loudspeaker made so much noise I
didn’t have any luck. I got to worrying about Miss
Harrington, down there all alone and scared, with
her feet sore and the mosquitoes biting her, and that
didn’t help any either. But I’d promised Pop I
wouldn’t go back and look for her any more tonight,
so I didn’t. I would of gone anyway in spite of the
promise, if I’d thought it would do any good but I
didn’t see how I could find her if over twenty men
couldn’t.
It was funny, I thought, that I kept calling her Miss
Harrington even after the sheriff said her name was
Choo-Choo Caroline. I wondered what a cooch
dancer was, and what a material witness was, but I
The Diamond Bikini— 142
figured there wasn’t either one of ‘em very bad, even
if the police had been looking for her. It must have
been that Dr Severance had been hiding her from
those gangsters so they couldn’t shoot her. I felt
sorry about him.
I must have dozed off after a while, but when I
woke up it was still dark. Sig Freed was lying beside
me on the bedroll, and he was growling. Somebody
was coming around the corner of the house. I looked
at Pop’s bedroll to see if he had come back yet, but it
was empty. The man walked on through the front
yard and sat down on the top step close to my feet.
The lamp was still burning in the front room, and I
could see it was the sheriff out there.
“Billy, you asleep?” he asked.
“No,” I says. “Have you found her yet?”
He took off his hat and mopped his head, and
slumped down a little like he was real tired. “Not a
sign of her. God, I’m wore out. Feel like I’d walked a
hundred miles through that brush.”
“Is everybody still looking?” I asked.
“Everybody except me an’ Otis. We’re goin’ back to
town to get a few hours sleep an’ bring out a fresh
party to relieve these around ten this morning. It’s
three-thirty now, an’ it looks like we ain’t goin’ to
find her as soon as I thought.”
“Sure funny you ain’t,” I says. “But then, Uncle
Sagamore says that’s a awful big bottom down
there.”
“It sure as hell is funny,” he says. “Don’t make no
difference how big the place is. She couldn’t of gone
very far barefooted. When her feet got sore she’d sit
and stay where she was.”
“It seems like it to me, too,” I says.
“Billy,” he says. “I want to ask you something, and I
want you to tell me the truth. Was that girl really
with you when you ran off down there? When they
shot at you, I mean?”
“Of course she was,” I said. I sat up in bed.
The Diamond Bikini— 143
“Are you sure she didn’t get—uh—shot, there in the
water? And you got scared and didn’t want to tell
anybody?”
“No. What would I want to tell a story about it for?
Heck, she was the one pulled me out of the water.”
I told him the whole thing, how Miss Harrington
had towed me along until we got under the bushes,
and how we’d run off down the hill and hid in the
ferns.
He shook his head. “Well, I reckon it must be true.
But I’ll be damned if I can see how she got so far
away twenty men can’t find her.”
“I don’t understand it, either,” I says.
“Well, when I get back in the morning, will you go
with me and see if you can point out this place where
you hid in the ferns?”
“Sure,” I says. “We can go now, if you want to.”
“No, we’ll wait for daylight,” he says. He sighed
and kind of stretched out a little. “I couldn’t walk
that far, nohow. I’m pooped. Say, where’s
Sagamore?”
“He’s down in the bottom, looking for her. He went
off that way on his mule.”
“Hmmmmph,” the sheriff says. “That don’t sound
like him a bit. You mean he’s actually goin’ to do
something useful, after fifty years?”
Just then Otis come around the corner of the house,
and him and the sheriff went on up and got in their
car. They drove off. The sound truck started another
record.
In about half an hour I heard Uncle Sagamore’s
truck start up, down there by the barn. It went up the
hill towards the wire gate. I wondered where he was
going this time of night. After a while I heard the
motor racing like he was stuck in the sand. That went
on for five or ten minutes, and then it stopped. Pretty
soon he came back, walking.
He came up on the steps. “What happened to the
truck?” I asked.
The Diamond Bikini— 144
“Oh,” he says. “I got stuck in the sand. Dag-gone
truck just bogged down like a heifer in a mudhole.”
“That’s too bad,” I says. “You didn’t see any sign of
Miss Harrington down in the bottom?”
“Not a trace. But I reckon they’ll find her, come
daylight.”
He went on down towards the barn, and after a
while I went to sleep. I didn’t wake up again till it
was broad daylight, and it was beginning. I never
saw anything like it in my life.
* * *
Even before I opened my eyes I knew they had
brought the tubs back. The smell was in my nose
before I was full awake, and Sig Freed was sniffing
and whimpering about it beside me on the bedroll.
When he saw me open my eyes he licked me on the
face. The sound truck had stopped making noise, but
I could see it still sitting up there, about fifty yards
away from the house. I rolled over the other way, to
see if Pop was there. His bedroll had been slept in
but he was gone. I didn’t hear any sounds in the
house, though, like they was cooking breakfast. Our
car was parked under the tree in front, and beyond it
was the four cars the searchers had come in. But
there wasn’t anybody around. I walked up to the
sound truck, and the man in it was asleep. I
wondered where Pop and Uncle Sagamore had gone.
Then I decided maybe they’d gone down in the
bottom to help look for Miss Harrington. Not
Harrington, I thought. Caroline. I ought to get used
to calling her by her right name. Then I wondered if
I’d ever see her again. Maybe they never would find
her. That scared me, and I thought, sure, what the
heck, of course they’ll find her.
I just remembered we hadn’t had any supper last
night, so after I went down to the lake to wash up, I
started a fire in the stove to fry some baloney. While I
was putting the lids back on it, Uncle Finley came out
of his room, putting on his tie and tucking the end of
it inside the bib of his overalls.
The Diamond Bikini— 145
“Where’s everybody at?” he asked, giving me a
hard stare like maybe I’d ate ‘em or something.
“I don’t know,” I says. I went on slicing baloney
and putting it in the pan.
“Off a-lookin’ for that there cooch dancer,” he says.
“Everybody up to devilment, all the time.” He
stopped and looked at me. “I heard tell she ain’t got
no clothes on.”
“Well, she ain’t got much,” I says. “The mosquitoes
is probably chewed her something fierce.”
“Hmmmmph,” he says. “The way I heered it she
ain’t got on a stitch. Shameless hussy, you ain’t seen
her around, have you?”
“No sir,” I says. Uncle Finley always scared me a
little. He looked like a man shouting at something
nobody else could see.
“Well, she’s a-goin’ to drowned, as sure as hell,” he
says.
“She won’t neither drowned,” I says. “She’s a good
swimmer.”
“Hmmmmph,” he says. He sat down at the end of
the table with his knife sticking up in one hand and
the fork in the other, waiting for the baloney. When it
was fried, I put it on the table and we both ate.
There was a sound then like a truck or something
up on the hill by the wire gate. We went out through
the front door to look up that way. Uncle Finley was
in the lead, and when he got to the door leading out
onto the porch, he stopped for a second and stared
like he’d seen a miracle.
“Lumber!” he shouted.
He made one big leap and landed clear out in the
yard, and started running, still shouting, “Lumber!”
at every other jump. I looked up that way to see what
it was had excited him that way. I couldn’t hardly
believe my eyes.
There was a truck, all right, coming down from the
direction of the gate, and I could see it was stacked
with lumber, but it was the trucks behind it I was
staring at. There was three of them right behind the
The Diamond Bikini— 146
one with the lumber, and while I was looking another
one came into sight. They was yellow trucks, and
they had big signs painted on them. They was piled
high with what looked like canvas tents folded up.
“Come on,” I yelled to Sig Freed, and we started up
there on the run.
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