“Uh—not exactly,” Uncle Sagamore says. “You see,
you kind of make her up yourself. They send you this
powder, whatever it is, and you mix it right at home.
There may be just a teensy smell of alcohol about it,
but don’t let that fool you. It’s just because the only
thing I had to dissolve it in was some old patent
medicine of Bessie’s.”
“Well, imagine that!” the moustache one says. “A
little smell of alcohol. Who would have suspected a
thing like that?”
The gold-tooth one picked the jar up and held it
under his nose. The other one looked at him.
“Can’t smell nothing with that stink out there,” he
says. “But, hell, we know what it is.”
“I tell you it’s just a remedy, boys,” Uncle
Sagamore says. “You wouldn’t want to take that in to
the health department. They’d laugh at you.”
The Diamond Bikini— 26
“Who do you think you’re kiddin’?” the gold-tooth
one says. “But just to make sure it’s evidence—” He
tilted the jar up and took a swig out of it. He choked
a little.
“How about it?” the other one asked.
The gold-tooth one looked kind of puzzled. “I don’t
know. Strong enough to be moon, all right. But it’s
got a little funny taste. Here, see what you think.”
The moustache one looked a little doubtful. Then
he says, “Well, hell, he was drinkin’ it.” So he tilted it
up and swallowed.
He looked kind of puzzled too.
“See,” Uncle Sagamore says. “I told you. It’s just a
remedy. But you boys is kind of young to be usin’ it.
You don’t want to blame me if you start chasin’ the
gals around like banty roosters after a pullet when
you get back to town.”
The gold-tooth one still looked a little doubtful.
“You can’t kid me,” he says. “I know moon when I
taste it.” But he thought about it for a minute and
then took another drink.
“Well, I don’t know,” he says. “It would be kind of
silly if we took it in and it was medicine.”
“You ought to know better than to believe anything
Sagamore Noonan says,” the moustache one told
him. “Here. Let me have it again.”
He took another one too. But he couldn’t seem to
make up his mind either.
“Well, take her in if you just got to,” Uncle
Sagamore says. “But you might as well set and visit a
spell. Ain’t no hurry.”
“No, we’ll just run along,” they says. “This was all
we was after. Didn’t want you to catch that typhoid.”
They started to turn around.
Uncle Sagamore lifted the shotgun down kind of
absent-minded and set it across his knees. He broke
it, lifted the shells out and looked at them like he
wanted to be sure they was really in it, and then slid
‘em back in and closed the gun again. He was sliding
the safety catch back and forth, just to be doing
The Diamond Bikini— 27
something, the way a man scribbles with a pencil
while he’s talking on the telephone. They watched
him. The moustache one licked his lips.
“Sure you boys can’t set a spell?” Uncle Sagamore
asked. “No use you rushin’ off in the heat of the day.”
They stopped. The gold-tooth one says, “Uh—well
—”
“That’s the trouble nowadays,” Uncle Sagamore
went on. “People just don’t take the time to be
neighborly. Come a-chargin’ in here like a highlifed
shoat to save a man from comin’ down with that
typhoid, and then before he can hardly thank ‘em for
what they done they get another burr under their
crupper and go tearin’ off to hell an’ gone to save
some other pore taxpayer from something. Man was
to just set once in a while he’d live longer.”
The two sheriff’s men looked at each other again
and then out at the car like it had suddenly gone a
long way off and they wasn’t sure they could make it
that far in the hot sun. They kind of oozed down on
the steps, still watching Uncle Sagamore and looking
into the end of the shotgun. “Well, I reckon there
ain’t no great hurry, come to think of it,” the goldtooth
one says.
“Now you’re talkin’,” Uncle Sagamore says. He
took the old plug of tobacco out of his pocket,
rubbing it on his overall leg to get off some of the lint
and dirt and roofing tack that was sticking to it, and
bit off a big chew.
“Want to make you acquainted with my kin-folks,”
he went on. “This is my brother Sam and his boy.
Sam’s in the investment business in New York. Sam,
say howdy to the shurf’s boys. The high-pockets one
with the chicken fat in his hair is Booger Ledbetter,
and the other one, with that kiss-me-quick
moustache, is Otis Sears.”
“Howdy,” pop says.
“Howdy,” Booger says.
“Howdy,” Otis says.
The Diamond Bikini— 28
Nobody said anything else for a minute or two. We
all just sat there hunkered down looking at each
other. I was on one side of Uncle Sagamore and Pop
was on the other, and the two sheriff’s men was on
the top step, in front of us. I could hear that bug
going buz-z-z-z out in the trees again. Then a little
breeze come along and the smell got awful. The
sheriff’s men fanned harder with their hats.
“You boys warm?” Uncle Sagamore asked.
“Well, not exactly,” Booger says. “It’s just that
smell. Get’s sort of rank at times.”
“Smell?” Uncle Sagamore asked. He looked at them
kind of puzzled, and then at Pop. “You smell
anything, Sam?”
Pop quit waving the air with his hat. “Why no,” he
says, surprised like. “What kind of a smell?”
Uncle Sagamore looked back at Booger and Otis.
“You sure you boys ain’t just imagining it? Where
does it seem to be coming from?”
“Why, I thought from the tubs over there,” Booger
says.
“You don’t mean my tannery, do you?” Uncle
Sagamore asked.
“Well—uh,” Booger says, looking at the end of the
shotgun again. “I thought there was a sort of smell
coming from over there, but maybe I was wrong.”
“Sure is funny,” Uncle Sagamore says. “I ain’t
noticed a thing, myself. But I’m glad you boys
mentioned it; reminds me it’s time for them two on
the end to dreen a little. They been soakin’ for nine
days now, and I better hang ‘em up. I’ll be right
back.”
He got up with the shotgun under his arm and
walked over to the end of the porch. He stepped
down and lifted the old cowhide out of the end tub
with a stick and threw it over the clothes line, kind of
spreading it out. Then he took the next one and
spread it on the line too. They began to drip brownish
water onto the ground.
The Diamond Bikini— 29
They was bad enough before, but now when they
was out in the air it was awful. They was only ten or
twelve feet away, and with the air circulating around
‘em. I could feel my eyes watering and my breath
choking up in my throat.
Booger and Otis was looking a little sick. They
would breathe real slow and easy, and fan with their
hats, and then they’d look at Uncle Sagamore and
quit fanning and just try not to breathe any more
than they had to.
Uncle Sagamore come back and sat down with his
back against the door jamb and the shotgun over his
knees. He didn’t seem to notice the smell at all.
“I was kinda wantin’ to show you boys my tannery,”
he says. “Bein’ in the Gov’ment, so to speak, you’re
probably interested in new industries and the like,
and the different ways a man can scrabble around
and break his back to make enough money to pay his
taxes. What with them pussel-gutted politicians
settin’ around in the court-house just waitin’ for him
to scratch another nickel out of the ground, so they
can swoop down on it like sparrows after an oatfoundered
horse, a man’s got to do something or he’d
get desperate and start runnin’ for office hisself. So I
figured I’d go in the leather business as kind of a
sideline.”
“Why, that sounds like a real good idea,” Otis says,
wiping the sweat off his face.
Uncle Sagamore nodded his head. “Sure. That way,
I figure I might be able to eat something once in a
while to stay alive so I can manage to get in town
once a year to borrow enough money to make
another crop, and kinda keep goin’, so none of them
fat bastards would ever have to do anything real
desperate, like goin’ to work. You couldn’t have
nothing like that. If them Rooshians ever heard
things was so tough over here that politicians was
goin’ to work, they’d attack us in a minute.”
“Yeah, I reckon that’s right,” Otis said, like he
didn’t really think so but figured he ought to say
something just to be polite.
The Diamond Bikini— 30
The conversation kind of died then and we all just
sat there. You could see the heat waves dancing out
along the hill, and once in a while there’d be some
hammering from down where Uncle Finley was.
Pop nodded his head down that way, and asked
Uncle Sagamore, “Don’t he ever knock off?”
Uncle Sagamore puckered up his lips and shot out
a stream of tobacco juice. It sailed out flat and
straight, right between Booger and Otis, and landed
ka-splott in the yard.
“No,” he says. “Only when he runs out of boards.
Things is kind of slow right now, since he used up the
last privy, but he manages to keep busy with a little
patchin’ here and there.”
We all looked at Uncle Finley.
“Just what’s he building, anyway?” Pop asked.
“A boat,” Uncle Sagamore says.
“Boat?”
Uncle Sagamore nodded. “That’s right. The way
Finley figures, it’s goin’ to start rainin’ like pourin’
water out of a boot any day now. And when the day
comes he’s goin’ to go sailin’ off like a bug on a
whiteoak chip and the rest of us sinful bastards is
going to be drowned. He thought for a while of
maybe takin’ Bessie along, being she’s his sister, but
after she raised so much hell about the privies, he
finally told her he’d takened it up with the Vision and
the Vision says the hell with her, let her drowned like
the rest of us.”
“What kind of a vision is this?” Pop asked.
I was sort of wishing he wouldn’t keep asking
about it, so we could maybe get off the porch and
away from that smell, but it seemed like he was
anxious to hear about it now and Uncle Sagamore
was real anxious for all of us to stay there so he’d
have somebody to talk to. Anyway, that’s the way it
looked, so I didn’t say anything about wanting to
move. Sig Freed was the only one that was
comfortable. He went way off up the hill and laid
down under a bush.
The Diamond Bikini— 31
Well, not the only one. Uncle Sagamore seemed to
be comfortable enough too. He stretched a little and
scratched one leg with the big toenail on his other
foot, and moved his tobacco into the other cheek.
“The Vision?” he says. “Oh, Finley seen it one night
about four years ago, as near as I can recollect. Me
and Bessie was asleep in the front room when he
come a-tearin’ through the house in his nightshirt
like somebody’d jabbed him in the butt with a bull
nettle and says as how this Vision had told him he’d
better not lose no time because the end of the world
was due any minute. So he runs out in the back yard
with a pinch bar and starts tearin’ down the hen
house to get boards to make this boat with. It was
only about two o’clock in the morning, and there was
a regular damn madhouse with all them chickens
squawkin’ and tryin’ to figure out what’s goin’ on,
and Bessie yellin’ at Finley to go on back to bed. I
didn’t get hardly no rest at all.”
The Diamond Bikini— 32
Four
“And he’s been building her ever since?” Pop asked.
“Off and on,” Uncle Sagamore says. “Dependin’ on
the supply of boards. After he used up the hen house
and the shed I used to keep the truck in, he started to
tear down the house, but we finally got him talked
out of that. So then he starts driftin’ around to the
neighbors, pickin’ up any boards that wasn’t nailed
down too tight. He tore down Marvin Jimerson’s
hawg pen so many times Marvin finally got a court
order agin him and says if he has to chase them
hawgs one more time he’s comin’ up here and shoot
Finley right in the tail with a charge of rock salt, he
don’t care if Finley did used to be a preacher and was
the one that baptized Miz Jimerson. Says come to
think of it, she takened the pneumonia when he
baptized her anyhow.”
Pop was looking down the hill. “Kinda leaky for a
boat, ain’t she?” he asked. “You can see all the way
through her in places.”
“Oh, that’s on account of the privies,” Uncle
Sagamore says. “He’s got seven of ‘em in there now,
if I ain’t lost count. You see, every time Bessie leaves
me, Finley rushes out there with his pinch bar and
starts tarin’ the privy apart before she’s out of sight.
He gets the planks all nailed into his boat, and about
The Diamond Bikini— 33
that time Bessie gets over her sull an’ comes home,
and I got to build a new one.”
“Bessie leaves you?” Pop asked. “Is she gone now?”
“Oh, sure,” Uncle Sagamore says. “Been gone a
week last Sunday. She’ll be back in about twelve
days now. Last couple of years she’s been stayin’
away three weeks each time. Before that she always
came home in ten days.”
“How’s that?” Pop asked.
Uncle Sagamore scratched his leg with his toenail
again and started to pucker up his lips like he was
going to sail out some more tobacco juice. Booger
and Otis watched him and kind of pulled back on
each side like sliding doors opening. He didn’t spit
for a minute and they relaxed and straightened up a
little, and then he spit and they had to jerk back real
fast.
No comments:
Post a Comment