* * *
Well, after Booger and Otis had come out of the trees
and got back in their car and left, Uncle Sagamore
backed his truck out of the shed by the barn. Him
and Pop loaded the tannery tubs on it and took them
off in the timber back of the cornfield.
The Diamond Bikini— 39
“Think they been in the sun long enough for now,”
he says. “This leather-making is ticklish business. Got
to let it age just right, part of the time up there in the
sun, and then down here in the shade for a few
days.”
I wondered why they had to be clear up there
beside the house just to be in the sun, but I didn’t say
anything. This didn’t seem like much of a place for
having your questions answered.
Uncle Sagamore and Pop talked it over about us
staying there for the summer and Uncle Sagamore
said it would be fine, only we’d have to kind of
provision ourselves. He said he’d been so taken up
with his tannery work this spring he’d forgot to plant
any garden, and the chickens always quit laying
when he brought his tubs up to the house to age in
the sun.
“Oh, that’s all right,” Pop says. “We’ll run into town
right now and lay in some supplies.”
So we unhitched the trailer and left it there under
the tree and started out in the car. When we passed
Mr. Jimerson’s place he was lying on his back on the
front porch. He waved a hand and grinned at us.
“Guess they didn’t run over any of his hawgs this
time,” Pop says.
“Why do you suppose they’re always trying to save
Uncle Sagamore from something?” I asked him.
“Well, he’s a big taxpayer,” Pop says. “And I reckon
they just like him.”
It was about two more miles from there out to
where the little road joined the highway. But just
before we got there we came around a little curve
and Pop slammed on the brakes and stopped. There
was a car and a big, shiny, silver-and-blue house
trailer pulled about halfway off the road.
Pop looked at it. We could get by it all right, but it
was a funny place to meet a big trailer like that
because this road didn’t go anywhere except to some
farms like Uncle Sagamore’s back towards the river
bottom. And there was nobody in the car.
The Diamond Bikini— 40
“They must be lost,” Pop says.
We got out and walked around it. The doors was
closed and the curtains was pulled tight across the
windows. We didn’t hear anybody. It was quiet and
peaceful there in the pine trees, except once in a
while we could hear a car go past on the highway just
around the next bend.
It was funny. The car and the trailer seemed to be
all right, and they wasn’t stuck in the sand or
anything. It just looked like somebody had pulled it in
here and then gone off and left it. We couldn’t figure
it out.
Then we saw the man.
He was down the road at the next bend, but he was
off a little to one side, in the trees. His back was to
us, but he was standing real still among the trunks,
watching the highway.
“Must be waiting for somebody,” Pop says.
Just then the man turned his head and saw us
standing beside the trailer. He whirled around and
started running towards us along the road. In spite of
how hot it was, he had on a double-breasted flannel
suit and was wearing a Panama hat and tan-andwhite
shoes. He kept watching us while he ran.
“What the hell are you looking for?” he barked at
Pop when he came up.
Pop leaned against the side of our car. “Why, we
was just passin’ and thought maybe you was in
trouble, or something,” he says.
The man looked us over. Pop was dressed the way
he always was around the tracks, in levis and old
scuffed-up cowboy boots and a straw sombrero. It
gives the clients, as Pop calls ‘em, confidence to
know the man they’re dealing with is connected with
a big gamble. In fact, that’s the way he got his
business name. Stablehand Noonan, he prints on top
of the sheets. Anyway, when the man sized us up a
little it seemed to give him confidence too, because
he kind of cooled off.
The Diamond Bikini— 41
“Oh,” he says. “No. No trouble. I just stopped to
cool off the motor.”
He lit a cigarette and kept on watching us like he
was thinking of something. He was dark complected
and had real cold blue eyes and a slim black
moustache. His hair was black under the Panama
hat. You could see he was hot inside that doublebreasted
flannel coat, and it looked funny out here
among the pine trees. He carried his left arm a little
awkward, out from his body somewhat, and when he
raised his hands to light the cigarette the coat
opened a crack at the top and I saw a narrow leather
strap running across his chest. I figured he was
wearing some kind of a brace. Maybe he’d had the
polio.
“You live around here?” he asked Pop.
Pop nodded. “Back up the road a piece. Me and my
brother own a big cotton plantation. You figure on
visitin’ back in that direction? Kinfolks, I mean?”
The man’s eyes got narrow, like he was thinking.
“Not exactly,” he says. “To tell you the truth, I was
looking for a spot to camp for a few months. Some
place where it was quiet and kinda off the beaten
track, and a man wouldn’t be bothered too much by
the tourists.”
I could see Pop beginning to think too. “Kind of a
out-of-the-way place, you mean? Where you could
sort of get away from the highway noise, an’ just lay
around, and maybe fish, without nobody to bother
you?”
“That’s it,” the man says. “You know of a spot like
that around here?”
“Well, I don’t know,” Pop says. “My brother
Sagamore and me might be able to rent you a little
campground. We got a lake there, and lots of trees,
but the place is kind of hard to get to and nobody
ever goes in there.”
The man’s face lit up. “That sound fine,” he says.
“No traffic at all,” Pop says. “It’s on a dead-end
road. You alone?”
The Diamond Bikini— 42
Well, not exactly,” the man says. I noticed that all
the time he was talking he kept looking around every
few seconds to watch that bend of the road. “I’ve got
my niece with me.”
“Niece?” Pop asked.
The man nodded. “Let’s get out of this hot sun.” He
moved out of the road and we all went over and
squatted down in the shade of the pine trees on the
other side of the trailer. He faced so he could watch
towards the highway.
He took another drag on his cigarette and tossed it
away, and nodded towards the trailer. “Maybe I
better introduce myself,” he says. “I’m Dr Severance.
I’m a specialist in nervous disorders and anemia. My
niece, Miss Harrington, is in there. It’s on her
account I’m looking for a secluded place to camp.
She’s an invalid, and under my care. She needs a
long rest, in quiet surroundings.”
“I see,” Pop says.
“You understand,” the man went on, “I’m telling
you this in the strictest confidence. Miss Harrington
is from a very old and very wealthy New Orleans
family. She’s a delicate and very sensitive girl who’s
in bad health and has to have absolute rest and quiet
for a long time. Her fiancé was killed in an
automobile crash this spring, and she suffered a
nervous breakdown which finally turned into this
rare type of anemia. She’s been given up by
specialists all over the United States and Europe, so
in desperation I finally turned my New York practice
over to my assistants and took on the case myself. In
all medical history there’ve been only three cases of
it, and it’s supposed to be incurable, but it just
happened I’d once read an obscure article by Von
Hofbrau, the Austrian anemia specialist—”
The man stopped and shook his head. “But there’s
no use bothering you with all this medical stuff. The
point is that Miss Harrington has to have perfect
seclusion, and lots of fresh leafy vegetables and eggs,
and outdoor air, and she can’t be disturbed by her
The Diamond Bikini— 43
family and reporters all the time. So if you think your
farm will fit the bill—”
“Oh, sure,” Pop says. “A farm is just what you want.
We got slathers of fresh vegetables and eggs, and
absolute quiet. Now as to the price—”
Dr Severance waved a hand. “Anything. Anything
within reason.”
Pop looked at his clothes and then at the car and
the trailer. “Say fif—I mean sixty dollars a month?”
“Quite all right,” Dr Severance says. He Patted his
pocket. “Wait’ll I get another pack of cigarettes out
of the car.”
He got up and walked around in front of the trailer.
Pop shook his head kind of sad and looked at me.
“That’s the hell of it,” he says. “You get out of touch
for even a week and you begin to lose the knack and
can’t tell within fifty dollars what a client’ll go for.”
Dr Severance came back opening a package of
cigarettes.
“You understand, of course,” Pop says, “that’s per
head. Since there’s two of you it’ll be a hundred and
twenty.”
Dr Severance looked at Pop’s levis and straw
sombrero again and says, “Hmmm.” Then he
shrugged his shoulders. “Well, that’s all right.
Provided the place is what you say it is.”
Pop started to say something, and then just
stopped with his mouth hanging open.
The door of the trailer had opened, and a girl was
standing in the doorway looked out at us. She was
tall and dark-haired, with bright red lips and blue
eyes, and she didn’t have anything on but a sort of
romper affair which was just a pair of short white
pants and this kind of halter thing around her bosom.
The pants didn’t cover hardly any of her long legs.
Her hair was tousled a little, like she’d just got up,
and she had a long cigarette in her hand. She sure
was pretty.
The Diamond Bikini— 44
She had a big bosom, as big as a Welfare lady’s,
but she was a lot younger, of course.
Somehow she made you think of a real, real ripe
peach, the way she filled up those little pants and
that bosom thing and stuck out of ‘em all pink and
smooth in every direction.
Pop said, “Ho-ly hell,” real low, like he was talking
to hisself.
She looked at all of us, and said to Dr Severance,
“What’s all this convention of hay-shakers?”
Dr Severance nodded towards her. “My niece, Miss
Harrington,” he says. “I’d like you to meet Mr.-uh—”
Pop kind of shook himself, like he was coming out
of a trance. “Oh,” he says, “Noonan, lady. Sam
Noonan.”
Miss Harrington waved the cigarette at him. “Hi,
dad,” she says. “Reel in your tongue. You’re getting
your shirt wet.”
The Diamond Bikini— 45
Five
Dr Severance’s eyes was colder than ever. “Pamela,”
he says, “I thought I told you to stay inside the
trailer. Remember your anemia.” “Relax,” Miss
Harrington says. “It’s too damn hot in there.”
She sat down in the doorway and stretched out her
legs. She took a puff on her cigarette looked at her
legs, and then at Pop. “What’s the matter, Zeke? Am
I hurt somewhere?”
“Oh,” Pop says, “Uh—no. I just thought for a
minute your face was kind of familiar.”
“How would you know?” Miss Harrington asked.
“I was sure sorry to hear about your anemia,” Pop
says.
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