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“Good God, what a family,” she says. “Not even
eight yet—”
Then she glanced down and saw I was looking at
the vine, and she started to laugh. “Oh,” she says.
“You had me worried there for a minute.”
“It sure is nice,” I said. “I wish I had one.”
“Well, I wish you had this one,” she says.
“Why?” I asked.
“Well,” she says, “I guess I developed kind of
uneven when I was a kid. I had a place to put it
before I had sense enough not to put it there.”
I didn’t know what she was talking about, but it
didn’t seem to make any difference anyhow because I
just figured then that all the women had vines, and
that if you had one that nice it was all to the good. So
we waded out in the water, kind of slow to see how
deep it was. She’d had to pin her hair up on top of
her head with bobby pins to keep it from getting wet
because she didn’t have a swimming cap.
She swam across the lake and back while I
watched, so I could see how your arms and legs was
supposed to go. Then she stood up and held me flat
out in the water while I practiced.
I began to get the hang of it in a little while and
could go for two or three feet before I went under
when she turned me loose.
“The main thing is, don’t be afraid of water,” she
says. “It can’t hurt you, so don’t fight it.”
She swam across and back once more just for fun,
and then we got out because it was beginning to be
dusk out in the trees. Her hair had got wet on the
ends in a few places, so she took a cigarette out of
her handbag and we sat down on a log while she
shook it out to let it dry. It was inky black, wet like
that, and touching the skin on her shoulders and
neck, it sure looked nice.
“By golly, you’re swell,” I said. “Teaching me to
swim, and all. Can we go in every day?”
“Sure,” she says. “Why not? I think it’ll be fun.”
The Diamond Bikini— 66
“I hope you’ll like it here,” I said. “Anyway, it ought
to be nice and restful for you after New Orleans. All
that stuff must have been pretty tiring.”
“Well,” she says, “it was a pretty tough grind.”
The Diamond Bikini— 67
Seven
When we got back to the trailer it was growing dark,
and Pop and Uncle Sagamore had left. I went on
down to the house, and they was in the kitchen with
the lamp lit, getting supper. Uncle Sagamore was
slicing the baloney and pop was frying it. I got some
slices to feed Sig Freed, and Pop asked me if we had
gone swimming. I says yes and told them about Miss
Harrington’s diamond bathing suit. Him and Uncle
Sagamore looked at each other, and Uncle Sagamore
slipped and cut his hand with the baloney knife.
“Well, imagine that,” Pop says.
“I just did,” Uncle Sagamore says, and went off to
bandage his hand.
When he came back Pop had finished frying the
baloney, and they put it on the table. Uncle Finley
came stalking out of his room, the one that connected
with the kitchen, and sat down at the table without
looking to the left or right.
He picked up a knife in one hand and a fork in the
other and held them sticking straight up with his fists
on the table, and says, furious like, “Who was that
there shameless hussy paradin’ her naked legs
around here this evenin’? Is she a-goin’ to stay here?”
The Diamond Bikini— 68
Uncle Sagamore grinned at Pop and says, real loud,
“Why, that ain’t no way to talk about a pore gal that’s
in bad health, Finley.”
“Well, either she goes, or I do,” Uncle Finley says,
banging the table with his fists. “I ain’t goin’ to live
in no place where there’s sinful people like that awavin’
theirselves around in defiance of the word of
the Lord.”
Uncle Sagamore shook his head, real sad. “Well sir,
you’re sure givin’ us a awful hard choice, Finley. But
we’ll miss you. By Ned, we sure will.”
Pop asked Uncle Sagamore, not loud enough for
Uncle Finley to hear, “Do you reckon he’ll really go?”
Uncle Sagamore shook his head. “No. You don’t
rightly understand fellers like Finley. They figure it’s
their duty to stay real close to that sinful stuff and
keep watchin’ it, so they can stay worked up about
it.”
“Yeah, I reckon that’s right,” Pop says.
“Sure,” Uncle Sagamore says. “Don’t you worry.
The Devil ain’t goin’ to run Finley off the place by
shakin’ some woman’s pink behind at him. He ain’t
no coward.”
We all sat down at the table. Uncle Finley leaned
his head down and started saying grace. While he
was talking, Uncle Sagamore reached over and
speared about eight slices of baloney and started
eating.
“Sure is nice to have some real grub for a change,”
he says, “after that goddam garden sass Bessie’s
always cookin’ up.”
After supper me and Pop got our bedrolls out of the
trailer and made ‘em up on the porch. Ours wasn’t a
big house trailer like Dr Severance’s; it was just big
enough to hold the printing press and paper and our
camping gear, and we always had to sleep outside.
There wasn’t any windows in it, either, because a lot
of times we was set up pretty close to the track when
we was printing the throw-away sheets, the
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advertising ones we ran off as soon as we’d got the
results of the first six races.
We laid down and Sig Freed curled up on my
blanket with me. Pop lit a cigar and I could see the
end of it glowing red in the dark. Some kind of birds
was yakking it up out over the river bottom, sixfurlongs-
in-one-ELEVEN, six-furlongs-in-one-
ELEVEN over and over.
“This sure is a nice place,” I says. “I like it here.”
“Well, that’s fine,” Pop says. “I reckon we’ll stay
until Fairgrounds opens in November. And looks like
we might be able to build up our bankroll a little,
what with gettin’ a commission on Dr Severance’s
rent and me helpin’ Sagamore a little with the
tannery business.”
“Well, I sure hope he don’t bring those tubs back
up here,” I says.
“Oh, you get used to that and don’t mind it a bit,”
he says. “As a matter of fact, according to
Sagamore’s formula they’re goin’ to be ready for a
little more sun exposure about day after tomorrow.”
“Where does he sell the leather?” I asked.
“Well,” Pop says, “he ain’t exactly had any to sell
yet. The first batch didn’t turn out so well. It all come
apart in the tubs.”
We didn’t say anything for a little while, and then I
remembered about all that sugar Uncle Sagamore
had bought.
“What do you suppose he’s going to do with that
much?” I asked Pop. “And why did he tell the sheriff
he’d bought it for me?”
“Oh,” Pop says. He took another puff on the cigar
and it glowed. “Well, it’s like this, Sagamore told him
that so he wouldn’t have to say what it really was.
He’s kind of proud, and he don’t like to talk to
outsiders about infirmities in the family. You see,
your Aunt Bessie’s got the sugar diabetes, and the
doctor’s put her on this diet where she has to eat six
pounds of sugar a day. But I wouldn’t say anything
about it to nobody. They don’t like it spread around.”
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“Oh, I won’t say nothing,” I says.
I thought it sure seemed like a place, though, for
people having things wrong with ‘em. Dr Severance
had the heart twinge and the sheriff had the high
blood pressure and Miss Harrington had the anemia
and there was the typhoid going around and now
Aunt Bessie had the sugar diabetes. I hoped we
didn’t come down with anything like that ourselves.
* * *
The next day was really fun. I found a cane pole
behind the house that had a line and hook on it and a
snuff-bottle cork for a bobber, so I dug some worms
and me and Sig Freed went fishing. And the funny
part of it was there was real fish in the lake. I caught
four. Uncle Sagamore said they was red perch, and
Pop fried ‘em for me for supper in the baloney
grease. They was sure good.
Right after noon I wanted to go swimming, but
when I went up to the trailer Miss Harrington was
lying stretched out in a long canvas chair having a
drink and said we couldn’t go until just about
sundown. Dr Severance was lying in another chair
having a drink too and he says to her, “Hey, what’s
with all this swimming, anyway? Don’t tell me I’m
being back-doored by a kid that ain’t even old enough
to start smoking cornsilk.”
And she says, “Oh, shut up, can’t you think about
anything else for at least five minutes?”
He says, “Well, there’s gratitude for you. I save
your goddam life for you, and now I got to move a
seven-year-old kid out of the way every time I want to
collect a little on account.”
Then she says, “Gratitude? Believe me, buster, the
next time anybody says we’re going up in the country
and lay around for a while, I’ll know what he means.”
They kept on talking like they’d already forgot I
was there, so I went back and waded around in the
shallow edge of the lake just below where Uncle
Finley was working on his boat, and tried to catch
crawfish. The water was only about waist deep and I
The Diamond Bikini— 71
could see lots of ‘em on the bottom but I never could
catch any. They scooted backward too fast.
Uncle Sagamore and Pop just sat around in the
shade all day and talked and had a drink out of the
glass jar now and then. I remembered Uncle
Sagamore telling the sheriff how he had to work
eighteen hours a day to pay his taxes, and I asked
Pop if he was on vacation. Pop said it was kind of a
slack season on farms right now, and that things
usually picked up a little later on in the year...
About sundown Miss Harrington went up to the
point with me and we had another swimming lesson.
She had a shower cap with her this time so her hair
wouldn’t get wet, and she could get her face down in
the water and really swim. A crawl, she called it.
I got a little better, too. I could go six or eight feet
before I went under. She said I was trying too hard to
keep my face out of the water, though, and that was
making me sink.
* * *
The next morning bright and early Uncle Sagamore
and Pop took the truck and went down in the woods
back of the cornfield and brought the tubs up to the
house. The smell was even worse than it had been
before. They set ‘em right in the same place, along
the side of the house next to the well. There wasn’t
much breeze, either, to blow it away.
Well, they stayed there for nearly a week, night and
day, but like Pop said after a while you got used to it
and didn’t mind. I asked him why they didn’t take
‘em away at night, because there wasn’t any sun then
anyhow, but he says it was too much trouble to carry
‘em back and forth.
About the fifth or sixth day they was there I’d got
so used to the odor I could even go up to the tubs
without it knocking me down, so I went over to see
how the leather was coming along. I got a stick and
lifted one of the cowhides up, and doggone if the
stick didn’t just poke right through it. It was coming
apart in the tubs just like the last batch had.
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I went right away to call Pop and Uncle Sagamore
to tell ‘em about it, but I couldn’t find ‘em. They’d
been setting in the shade of the chinaberry tree in
the back yard just a few minutes ago, having a drink
out of the glass jar, but now they was gone.
I looked all around, and called, and went through
the house, but I couldn’t find ‘em. So I walked down
to the barn, and they wasn’t there either, but when I
went back to the house again they was setting right
there under the chinaberry tree where they’d been in
the first place.
When I told ‘em about the leather coming apart
Uncle Sagamore kind of frowned and they came
around and looked theirselves. Uncle Sagamore took
the stick and poked at one of the hides, and sure
enough it just went right through.
He straightened up and sailed out some tobacco
juice and scratched his head. “Well sir, by golly, she
sure is,” he says. “What you reckon we’re doin’ that’s
wrong, Sam?”
Pop scratched his head too. “Well, I just don’t
rightly know,” he says. “But it sure don’t look right.
Leather hadn’t ought to be that tender.”
“I done everything just like the bulletin says, the
one I got from the Gov’ment,” Uncle Sagamore says.
“I followed it real careful this time so’s there couldn’t
be no chance for a mistake. What you reckon we ort
to do?”
Pop studied for a moment. “Only one thing we can
do,” he says. “We got to let her run full course. Ain’t
no use startin’ another new batch now, because she’ll
probably wind up just like this. We got to let her
simmer right out to the end, and then when she’s all
finished we’ll send a little bit of it to the Gov’ment
and ask ‘em to take a look at it and tell us what we
done wrong.”
“Well sir, that’s the way I got her figured too,”
Uncle Sagamore says, nodding his head. “Them
fellers in the Gov’ment can’t tell nothin’ about it
less’n we follow the instructions right out to the end.
The Diamond Bikini— 73
So we’ll just let her ride. Only take about another
month and a half.”
“Why, in a month and a half it probably won’t be
nothing but soup,” I says.
“Well, ain’t nothing we can do about that,” Uncle
Sagamore says. “Just have to send ‘em some of the
soup, then. Instructions is instructions, and if you
don’t do what they say the Gov’ment can’t tell you
nothing.”
“But look at all the time that’s wasted,” I says.
Uncle Sagamore shifted his tobacco over. “Well,
hell,” he says, “what’s time to a dead cowhide, or the
Gov’ment?”
So they decided to do it that way. It seemed to me
like we wasn’t going to make much money out of the
tannery if another month and a half had to go by
before they started a new batch and they already
knew this one was ruined, but there wasn’t no use
arguing with Pop and Uncle Sagamore.
I was having too much fun to worry about it
anyway. I went fishing early every morning, and late
in the evening Miss Harrington would give me
another swimming lesson. In between times, in the
afternoon when she wouldn’t go in I’d practice in the
shallow water at this end of the lake, just below
where Uncle Finley was building his boat. And that’s
where the funny thing happened, the one I couldn’t
figure out at all.
I reckon it was the next day after we discovered the
leather was ruined. It was right after noon. Sig Freed
was sitting on the bank watching me, because he
didn’t like water, and I was wading around and
practicing swimming not far from the bank, where it
was about waist-deep. And all of a sudden I hit a
warm place in the water.
The lake itself wasn’t real cold, of course. Just kind
of cool and nice, about right to swim in, but I could
sure tell the difference when I hit this warm spot. It
wasn’t very big. I moved a couple of feet and I was
out of it. I thought maybe I’d just imagined it, so I felt
around and by golly I hit it again. It wasn’t hot; just
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warm, like bath water. It was kind of spooky, and
what made it so funny was that I’d been swimming
and wading around here in this very spot for nearly a
week and it hadn’t been here before.
It just didn’t make sense, any way you looked at it.
It couldn’t be the sun that was causing it, because
the sun was shining on the whole lake. And if it was a
warm spring bubbling out of the ground, why hadn’t
it been here those other days? I swam all around to
see if I could find another one like it, but it didn’t
happen anywhere else. But every time I’d come back,
it was still there.
After a while I got out and put my clothes on and
went up to the house to ask Uncle Sagamore and Pop
about it. They might have some idea why there’d be
one little warm spot in a cool lake. But they wasn’t
there. It seemed to me like they had the funniest
habit of just disappearing so you couldn’t find ‘em
anywhere. I looked all around and waited, but they
never did come back, so I dug some worms and went
fishing, figuring I could ask ‘em that night at supper.
But that was the day the rabbit hunters came, and
there was so much happened then I forgot all about
it.
It was about an hour before sundown when I went
up to the trailer to see if Miss Harrington was ready
to go swimming.
Dr Severance was lying in one of the chairs with a
drink in his hand.
He looked at me and turned his head towards the
door of the trailer, and says, “Hey, here’s
Weismuller.”
Miss Harrington came out. She was wearing the
candy-striped romper outfit again, and had her purse.
“Hello, Billy,” she says.
“Kid, you really slay ‘em,” Dr Severance says. “You
must be a heavy spender. Or is it your breast
stroke?”
“Oh, shut up,” Miss Harrington told him.
The Diamond Bikini— 75
We started off through the trees, headed for the
point up the lake. We’d gone maybe a couple of
hundred yards and was walking along a trail where
the bushes was pretty thick, with me going ahead
and Miss Harrington coming behind because she was
afraid of snakes, when all of a sudden I came around
a bush and into a little open place, and there was a
man in it.
He was just easing along real slow, looking all
around through the trees, and when he saw me he
jerked his head around and stared at me with his
eyes real hard. He was wearing a Panama hat and a
double-breasted suit, and he had a tommy gun in his
hands, the kind they carry in comic books.
Hey, punk, where’d you come from?” he asked.
From Uncle Sagamore’s,” I says. “What you
doing?”
“Huntin’ rabbits,” he says. “You seen any around?”
“Not today,” I says, but he wasn’t paying any
attention. He had turned and was looking up the hill.
I looked too, and that’s when I saw the other one. He
was about fifty yards away and was dressed just like
this one, and he had a tommy gun too. He motioned
with his arm, and jerked his head.
“Shhh. I think he sees one,” the first man said. He
turned and slipped up that way, and they went out of
sight into some more trees.
“Don’t make any fuss,” I says over my shoulder to
Miss Harrington. “They’re going to sneak up on a
rabbit.”
She didn’t say anything.
I looked around, and by golly she was gone. I didn’t
see her anywhere. It was funny. She’d been there a
minute ago, right behind me.
“Hey, Miss Harrington,” I says, sort of low so I
wouldn’t scare the rabbit away.
She didn’t answer. She just wasn’t anywhere
around. I knew she couldn’t have gone on ahead,
because I was standing in the trail. So I figured she
must have forgot something, maybe her bathing suit,
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and had gone back after it. So I started back,
thinking I would meet her along the trail. But when I
got clear back to the trailer I still hadn’t seen a sign
of her. It sure was peculiar, I thought.
Dr Severance was still lying in a canvas chair with
his drink. He looked at me, and says, “Well, it’s the
champ. Where’s Miss Harrington?”
“That’s just it,” I says. “I thought she came back
here. I lost her on the trail.”
“Lost her?” he asked. “How?”
“Well,” I says, “I thought she was right behind me
when I was talking to the rabbit hunter.”
He barked at me. “Rabbit hunter? Where? And
what did he look like?”
“Down the trail there,” I says. “A couple of hundred
yards. He was a big man with a scar on his face, and
he was wearing a Panama hat and had a tommy gun.”
He came up out of the chair and threw the drink
away from him all at one time, and his right hand
shot inside his coat. I had to jump back real fast or
he’d of run right over me. By the time I could turn
around he was twenty yards down the trail.
I started to follow him, because I was still worried
about what had become of Miss Harrington, but just
then I saw Pop and Uncle Sagamore coming up
towards the trailer.
“Where’d he go in such a hurry?” Pop asked.
I told them about Miss Harrington disappearing
and about the rabbit hunters. They looked at each
other.
“Well sir, is that a fact?” Uncle Sagamore says.
“Two rabbit hunters with machine-guns. It’s sure
lucky you got a month’s rent in advance, Sam.”
“But we got to look for Miss Harrington,” I says, or
started to say when Pop motioned for me to be quiet.
It seemed like they was listening for something.
They just stood real still and whenever I’d start to
open my mouth one or the other would shake his
head at me.
The Diamond Bikini— 77
Then, all of a sudden, there was two shots down
the trail, just two shots real close together and then
it was all quiet again. Pop and Uncle Sagamore
looked at each other, and started to walk slow down
that way. I started to follow them, but Pop shook his
head.
“You’d better go back to the house,” he says.
“But Miss Harrington—” I says. I felt like crying, I
was so worried something had happened to her.
Maybe she’d fell and hurt herself.
“Never mind Miss Harrington,” Pop says. “You go
on to the house.”
They was crazy if they thought I was going back to
the house when I din’t know what had become of her.
So the minute they was out of sight in the trees I cut
downhill and started running through the bush just
below the trail. In a minute I was ahead of them. I
turned to my left and got back on the trail and went
running along to the place where I’d seen her last.
But before I got there I happened to look uphill and
there she was, standing in a little open place in the
trees. Dr Severance was with her. He was looking
down at something on the ground.
I was relieved to see she was all right. I cut off the
trail and ran up that way. But just before I got there
he waved his hand at her and I heard him say, “Go on
back to the trailer. I’ll take care of these yokels.”
She left and started walking away through the
trees, and I turned and was going to run over that
way to her but just then I saw Pop and Uncle
Sagamore coming. If they saw me here Pop would
give me a tanning for sure for not minding him. I
looked around real fast, trying to see if I could get
away by running in the other direction and then
circling back, but there wasn’t much chance. There
was some thick bushes just to one side of where Dr
Severance was, though, so I dived into them and hid.
Now that I knew she was all right I wasn’t worried
any more, so I began to be curious about what Dr
Severance was doing. I parted the leaves a little
where I was lying, and I could see him. He was only
The Diamond Bikini— 78
about ten feet away, still looking down at something
lying at his feet.
There was a log in the way so I couldn’t make out
what it was at first, but then I saw a pair of legs in
gray pants sticking out a little beyond the end of it,
with the toes of the shoes pointing up in the air, and I
realized what it was. It was one of those rabbit
hunters. Then I saw the butt of the tommy gun, lying
on the ground next to him.
And just then Dr Severance walked over a little to
his right and looked down at something else, that
was behind a bush. I stared over that way, and
doggone if there wasn’t another pair of legs sticking
out from behind it too. And another tommy gun. It
was the other rabbit hunter.
It sure looked like there’d been a bad accident.
The Diamond Bikini— 79
Eight
Just then Pop and Uncle Sagamore walked up.
Dr Severance turned around and saw them.
He took out his handkerchief and mopped his face,
and shook his head kind of slow, like it was all too
much for him. He sat down on the log where the first
rabbit hunter was and let out a long, shaky breath.
“Gentlemen,” he says, “it was awful. Just simply
awful.”
“What happened?” Pop asked.
Dr Severance mopped his face with the
handkerchief again and pointed at the rabbit hunters
one at a time, with his face turned away like he didn’t
want to look at them. “Dead,” he says, real sad.
“They’re both dead. And all on account of one
crummy little rabbit.”
“Well sir, that’s a shame,” Uncle Sagamore says,
“Just how did it happen?”
“Well,” Dr Severance says, taking a deep breath
and beginning to get a-hold of hisself a little, “I was
standing there by the trail when I saw these two men
walking by up here looking for rabbits. I was just
about to call out and ask ‘em, if they’d had any luck,
when all of a sudden this little brown rabbit popped
out of a bush right between ‘em. It started to run off,
The Diamond Bikini— 80
but then for some reason it changed it’s mind and
doubled back, right square between the two of ‘em
just as they both raised their guns and shot. It was
the most terrible thing I ever saw in my life. They just
killed each other deader than hell.”
Uncle Sagamore bent down and looked at the first
rabbit hunter. He walked over to the other one and
rolled him over a little and looked down at him too.
Then he came back and hunkered down and took out
his plug of tobacco. He wiped it on the leg of his
overalls, and bit off a big chew, and shook his head.
“Yes sir, by golly,” he says, “it sure must of been a
heart-rendin’ thing to see. Pore fellers just shot each
other right in the back.”
Dr Severance nodded. “That’s right. That was what
made it so terrible. You felt so sorry for ‘em, because
they knew it was coming and there wasn’t a thing in
the world they could do about it. They both saw what
they’d done by the time they pulled the triggers.
They turned around and tried to duck, but it was too
late.”
Uncle Sagamore sailed out some tobacco juice and
wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Well sir,”
he says, “that there’s the tragic thing about all these
city fellers wanderin’ around in the woods a-hunting.
They’re helpless. They’re dangerous to theirselves,
and that’s a fact, because they don’t know how to
handle guns.”
He stopped and looked at Dr Severance, and then
he says, “But don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean
they’re all like that. Once in a while you run across
one that’s just hell on wheels with a gun, and I
wouldn’t want you to think I was lumpin’ all city
fellers together that way. No offense, mind you.”
“No,” Dr Severance says. “No. Of course not.” “But
that ain’t neither here nor there,” Uncle Sagamore
went on. “I reckon what we got to do now is notify
the shurf and explain to him how these poor fellers
killed theirselves, and ask him to haul ‘em away, it
bein’ warm weather and all.”
The Diamond Bikini— 81
Dr Severance nodded. “Sure. I guess that’s the
least we can do.”
Then all of a sudden he stopped and rubbed his
chin with his hand, his face screwed up kind of
thoughtful. “Hmmmmm,” he says. “Gentlemen, I just
remembered something.”
He reached back and got his wallet out of his hip
pocket and held it in his lap while he started taking
stuff out of it like he was looking for something. I
watched him through the leaves, trying to figure out
what he was doing. He slid out a thick bundle of
money that would have choked a horse, and just
dropped it across his legs as careless as if it’d been a
bunch of old socks, while he went on poking around
in the wallet.
Pop and Uncle Sagamore looked at all the bills.
“What is it you’re looking for?” Pop asked.
“Oh,” Dr Severance says. “Why, my copy of the
game laws.” He held the empty wallet up spreading it
open so he could look inside. “I could have sworn I
had it with me, but I must have left it in my other
suit.”
“The game laws?” Uncle Sagamore asked.
“That’s right,” Dr Severance says, putting the stuff
back in the wallet, the money last. He had to shuffle
it around a little to get it all packed in. “However, it
don’t matter that I haven’t got it with me. I
remember the laws perfectly, because I just looked
them up yesterday. And, gentlemen, do you know
what?”
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