“Well, well,” he says. “What have we got here?
Looks like a whole passel of laundry. And, by golly,
here’s a cardboard box under it, where you wouldn’t
hardly notice it if you didn’t happen to be looking for
a clogged gas line. Box just settin’ there, all covered
up.”
Otis came around to that side too. They looked at
each other, real puzzled.
“What do you reckon is in there?” Otis asked.
Booger shook the box a little.
“Well, heavens to Betsy,” he says. “Listen. It sort of
gurgles. You reckon it’s surp, or perfume, or
something? Maybe it’s Channel Number Five he’s
taking to one of his lady friends.” He thought for a
minute, and then slapped his hands together. “No. I
know what it is. I bet Mr. Noonan has got some spare
gasoline in this here box.”
Uncle Sagamore scratched his left leg with his
right toenail again.
“Why, shucks, boys,” he says. “That there’s just
some of my tannery solution. I was gonna send it to
the Gov’ment to have it analyzed.”
Booger and Otis straightened up. “Well, what do
you know about that?” they says. “Tannery solution.
Who would of thought it?”
“Sure,” Uncle Sagamore says. “That’s all it is,
boys.” Then he looks down inside the hood at the
motor again and points a finger and says to Pop,
“Hey, Sam, how about that there loose wire? You
reckon that could be causin’—”
“Well, I’ll be dad-burned,” Pop says. “That’s it for
sure. Now, why didn’t I see it before?” He bent over
the fender and reached in under the hood. Then he
straightened up. “Well, she’ll run now.”
Uncle Sagamore patted the bald spot on his head
again with the handkerchief. “Well, we’re sure
The Diamond Bikini— 103
obliged to you boys for stoppin’ to help,” he says.
“Reckon we’ll run along.”
“Oh, don’t rush off, Mr. Noonan,” Booger says. He
winked at Otis and they both grinned.
Otis reached into the cardboard box and brought
out one of the jars of tannery juice. He held it up to
the light and squinted at it.
“Hmmmm,” he says. “Sure is a purty color. I
reckon Mr. Noonan has been puttin’ a little burnt
sugar in his tannery solution, Booger. Gives it that
aged-in-the-wood look, just like Old Grandpaw.”
The Diamond Bikini— 104
Ten
They looked at each other real solemn, but you could
see they was having trouble keeping their faces
straight. Then Otis snickered. And then Booger
snickered. They busted into a regular guffaw. Next
thing, they’re having to hold each other up, they’re
laughing so hard.
Booger wiped the tears out of his eyes. “Tannery
solution!” he says, and then doubled up and started
to howl again. They both leaned against the car, just
whooping. You could of heard ‘em a mile.
At last they get control of theirselves again, and
Booger says, “Well, I reckon we better get going.
We’ll leave her right in there so they can confiscate
the car too. You get in the back seat and ride in with
them, Otis, and I’ll foller in the other car.”
Pop jumped up like he’d been stung. “Hey what are
you fellers talkin’ about? Confiscate the car? This is
my car.”
Otis stared at him. “Well, mister, you sure picked a
hell of a poor time to say that.”
“Now, look, boys,” Uncle Sagamore says, “you’re
makin’ a big mistake. I tell you that’s just tannery
solution I’m sendin’ to the Gov’ment.”
The Diamond Bikini— 105
Booger just shook his head. He was too weak to
laugh any more. “Wait till the sheriff hears that one,”
he says. “Boy, I can hardly wait to see his face when
we drive up. All these years he’s been tryin’—”
It seemed to me like the joke had gone far enough,
whatever it was. I couldn’t figure why they wouldn’t
believe Uncle Sagamore, but somebody ought to
straighten ‘em out. “But, look, Mr. Booger,” I says, “it
is tannery juice.”
Pop and Uncle Sagamore whirled around real fast
and looked at me. “That’s right, Billy,” Uncle
Sagamore says. “Maybe they’ll listen to you. Tell ‘em
just what I told—I mean, how you seen us take that
right out of them tannery tubs. You rememeber.”
“Why, of course, I remember.”
“You see there?” Uncle Sagamore says to Booger.
“This here boy hisself had just told you. He seen us
take it out of the tubs.”
Booger and Otis stared at me and then at each
other, sort of disgusted. “Ain’t it awful?” Otis says. “A
young boy like that. They ort to take him away from
‘em.”
“You’re makin’ a mistake, boys,” Uncle Sagamore
says, but it didn’t do any good.
They just motioned for us to get back in. Otis
climbed in the back with me. When Pop stepped on
the starter this time, the motor started right up, and
we took off. Booger followed right close behind us in
the sheriff car.
When we passed Mr. Jimerson’s house he was lying
on the front porch in the shade with his bare feet
sticking out towards the road. He raised his head up
and stared at the two cars and then at Otis in the
back seat of ours, and he rubbed his eyes. Then he
bounced right straight up like he’d been stung by
something, and started yelling, Trudy! Trudy! They
got him! They won’t run over no more of our hawgs!”
He disappeared inside the door just as we went
around the bend in the road.
The Diamond Bikini— 106
Pop and Uncle Sagamore were real quiet all the
way to town. When we got there, Otis says, “Go on
around the square and park right in front of the
courthouse.”
It was about noon by this time and the streets was
pretty quiet. That is, they was at first. That sure
changed in a minute. But right now there was just a
few people sitting on benches under the trees, and
some birds making cooing sounds high up under the
roof of the courthouse. We stopped at the curb, and
Booger pulled up right behind us in the sheriff car.
There was another man with a white hat and a
pistol-belt sitting on the steps leading up to the big
door. Otis stuck his head out and says to him, “Pearl,
tell the sheriff to come down. We got something for
him.”
Pearl jumped up and his eyes got big. He stared at
Uncle Sagamore. “You got him? You —you mean—
him?” He stood there then, with his mouth open, just
pointing.
Otis grinned. “I hope to tell you we got him. We got
him but good.”
Pearl whirled around and ran up the steps like a
bear was after him.
Otis got out, and Booger come up from the other
car. They was grinning from ear to ear.
I heard somebody running along the street yelling,
“They got Sagamore Noonan. Caught him with it!”
People began to come out of the door of the
courthouse and down the steps. They crowded
around. More was running this way from the stores
around the square. You couldn’t hardly move. Pop
and Uncle Sagamore and me had got out, but now we
was pressed back against the car by the crowd.
“I don’t believe it,” somebody says in all the jam
pushing around us. “They won’t never catch
Sagamore Noonan dead to rights. He’s too smart for
‘em.”
Somebody else says, “The hell they won’t. There he
is, right there, ain’t he?”
The Diamond Bikini— 107
Somewhere in the back, a little kid was yelling,
“Papa, hold me up. I want to see Sagamore Noonan!”
Cars going by in the street was stopping. It was
jammed up from curb to curb. People was craning
their necks. It was a regular uproar with everybody
trying to talk at once, asking questions and pointing
and hollering at each other.
“Is that really him?”
“Sure. The one that looks like a pirate.”
“That’s Sagamore Noonan?”
“Sure, that’s Sagamore Noonan.”
“I don’t care what they say, they ain’t got him.”
“Of course they have.”
“It’ll backfire on ‘em some way. You just wait.”
“I hear they found the still and ten thousand
gallons of mash.”
“They caught him running off a batch.”
The little kid was screaming. “I wanna see
Sagamore Noonan. I wanna see Sagamore Noonan, I
wanna see Sagamore Noonan.”
“You just wait,” a man says in the crowd right near
us. “The whole thing’ll blow up right in their faces. It
always does.”
I looked at him. He was a big man with a darkcomplected
face, wearing a baseball cap.
Another man says, “You want to make a bet?”
“Ten dollars says he’ll walk right out of here and
they can’t hold him. He always does,” the baseball
cap man says.
“He won’t this time.”
“Put your money where your mouth is,” the
baseball cap man says.
“I’ll take five of that,” somebody else yells.
“Here’s five,” another man says, pushing through
the crowd.
“Give me five too,” somebody else shouts.
Everybody was jostling and shoving and waving
money. The crowd pushed us back against the car
The Diamond Bikini— 108
even closer. Booger nudged a man standing close to
us.
“Cover all that Sagamore money you can,” he
whispers. “We got him dead to rights this time. Get
down five hundred for me an’ Otis if they’ll bet that
heavy.”
The man nodded and started pushing through the
crowd. Uncle Sagamore didn’t say anything. He
looked real discouraged. He took off his shoes and
put them in through the window of the car so he
could scratch his legs with his toes, and just stood
looking down at his feet. There was so much yakking
you couldn’t hear whether he was talking or not.
Then all of a sudden a little roly-poly man with a
red face come shoving his way through the crowd
like he’d been shot out of a cannon. It was the sheriff.
He had his hat in his hand, wringing it the way you
would a wash-cloth.
He jumped at Booger and Otis like he wanted to
kiss ‘em both. “Pearl says you got him!” he yells.
“Says you caught him with the goods.”
“You bet we did,” Booger says. He pushed the
people back and opened the car door. “Look!”
The bundle of dirty clothes had been pushed off,
and the top of the cardboard box was open. You
could see the four fruit jars.
“Glory, glory, glory!” the sheriff yelled.
“Praise the Lord!” There was tears in his eyes and
he was grinning from one ear to the other. Words
just come spouting out of him.
“How did you do it, boys? How did you ever
manage to catch him? We been a-tryin’ for ten years!
Hey, stand back, everybody! Make room for the
photographer. Get the photographer down here. Get
witnesses.”
Witnesses, I thought. There must have been two
thousand people jammed around us in the street and
on the sidewalk and the courthouse lawn.
He went right on, half-way between laughing and
crying. “Get a picture of it in the car, and then
The Diamond Bikini— 109
another with me holding it behind the car, so the
license plate will show. Boys, how on earth did you
do it? We can confiscate the car, of course. Two
whole gallons of evidence—oh boy, oh boy, oh boy.
We’ll put it in the safe. No, by God, I’ll put it in the
vault in the bank and pay the storage charges on it
myself. But how in the world did you manage to
outfox him?” He ran down at last.
Booger and Otis was laughing again. Booger wiped
the tears out of his own eyes. “He says it’s tannery
solution. Honest to God, sheriff, that’s what he told
us!” He broke down and howled some more. Then he
got a grip on his-self and went on, “He outsmarted
hisself this time. You know what the old wart hog
done?”
The sheriff began to jump up and down. “No,” he
yells. “Of course I don’t know what he done. That’s
what I keep asking you. What did he do?”
Booger and Otis both started talking at once. “Well,
he set fire to an old stump down there in the bottom,
see? That was to draw us down there out of the way,
so he could sneak out without us getting a look at his
car. But we got wise as soon as we seen it was just a
stump, and rushed back, and sure enough, that was
what he was up to. But—but—”
They both leaned against the car, roaring fit to
bust.
“But what, dammit?” the sheriff yelled.
“But the car broke down!” Booger whoops. “So
there he was, sitting there like a crippled duck, with
two gallons of it on him right in broad daylight! So he
tells us it’s tannery solution!”
The sheriff just shook his head with the tears
streaming down his cheeks. “Boys,” he says, “this
here is the proudest day of my life. I won’t never
forget this.”
Uncle Sagamore mopped the sweat off his face.
“Shurf,” he says, T don’t know what all this hooraw’s
about, but if your men ain’t got nothin’ better to do
than go around pickin’ on honest citizens that’s
trying to scratch a livin’ tanning a little leather—”
The Diamond Bikini— 110
The sheriff bristled up to him like a little banty
rooster. He shook a finger in his face. “You shut up,
Sagamore Noonan,” he says. “Try to outsmart my
boys, will you? Well, we got you this time.”
The photographer took pictures of the four jars and
the box and then pictures of the car. A lot of people
in the crowd was hollering to have their bets paid.
“There’s the evidence, ain’t it?” they says.
“No, sir,” others were saying. “Bets ain’t settled till
we see ‘em close the cell door on him. That’s
Sagamore Noonan, you fool. You just wait.” These
ones seemed to be kind of losing heart, though. The
baseball cap was still talking loud, but it was like he
wasn’t so sure any more.
Booger picked up the box and started towards the
courthouse. “Come on, Sagamore Noonan,” the
sheriff says. Then he looked at Pop. “How about this
one?”
“He admitted it was his car,” Otis says.
The sheriff let out a yell. “Glory hallelujah! Two
Noonans in one haul. Come on, men.”
It looked like everybody had forgot about me. I
began to be scared. They was going to draft Pop and
Uncle Sagamore, and there wasn’t anything I could
do about it. They started pushing through the crowd,
with the sheriff and the man named Pearl holding
them by the arms. I followed along behind with all
the people pushing around me as we went up the
steps into the courthouse. We climbed up some more
steps to the second floor and into a big room that had
Sheriff wrote on a sign nailed to the door. Two girls
was writing on typewriters at some desks, and there
was a lot of steel cabinets with drawers in ‘em.
People come crowding in behind us till the whole
room was full.
Booger put the box down on the desk where one of
his girls was writing. Him and Pearl and Otis and the
sheriff crowded round. “Stand back a little, folks,”
the sheriff was yelling. “Give us a little room here.
We got to photograph the evidence once more.”
The Diamond Bikini— 111
Some of the people pushed back till they cleared a
little space around his desk. Pearl motioned for Pop
and Uncle Sagamore to move back towards the
corner of the room. I stood close to Pop because I
was still scared. There must have been twenty, thirty
people in the room, all grinning, and the door was
packed solid so no more could get in or out.
The photographer got his camera ready. Now,” the
sheriff says. “I want one shot of me opening a jar of
the evidence.” He stopped then and thought about it.
“No, by golly,” he goes on, “these two smart deputy
sheriffs of mine was the ones outfoxed the old devil
and caught him, so we’ll all three have our picture
made with a jar of it.”
Otis and Booger just grinned like big chessie cats.
They reached in the box and each got a jar.
“Shurf,” Uncle Sagamore says, “I keep tryin’ to tell
you you’re makin’ a mistake.
“Shut up, Sagamore Noonan,” the sheriff says. “We
don’t want to hear no more out of you.”
Uncle Sagamore scratched his leg with his big toe
and looked down at the floor. “Shucks,” he says, kind
of tired and put out, “all this hooraw over just a little
dab of tannery solution.” People just snorted at him
and looked back at the sheriff.
The sheriff held up his jar and looked through. He
grinned. “Sure is a purty color ain’t she?”
Booger sat down on the corner of the desk and held
his out in his hand, looking important. “I don’t never
drink nothing but Old Sagamore Tannery Solution,”
he says.
Everybody laughed. The photographer’s flashlight
went off, and all three of them started trying to twist
the jars open. That glue had set, so I wondered if the
caps would come off at all. They caught the bottom of
the jar in one hand and the cap in the other and
twisted till they made faces. Uncle Sagamore and
Pop leaned back against the wall and watched, real
interested.
The Diamond Bikini— 112
All of a sudden the sheriff’s jar just came right
apart in his hands as clean as a whistle. The tannery
juice went every which way, all over his clothes and
the papers on the desk, and on the people standing
around. It ran down his pants legs into his shoes. And
before anybody could yell or jump or anything,
Booger’s jar did the same thing. It was just like they
had been sawed in two, and it was right where Pop
and Uncle Sagamore had tested them with that
string. Otis’s jar didn’t break, but when he jumped
back he dropped it and it broke all to pieces on the
floor.
It was a regular madhouse. That awful smell hit
everybody at the same time and they started to choke
and sputter and run for the door, but there was so
many standing in it and in the hall outside they
couldn’t get through. They piled up like water piling
up behind a dam. Everybody was yelling and pushing.
Then the smell started to flow out through the door
and people in the hall yelled and began running down
the stairs. In a minute the log jam in the door broke
and they all shot through at once.
Everybody, that is, but the sheriff. And of course
me and Pop and Uncle Sagamore. The sheriff just
stood there with his feet in a puddle of tannery juice.
Papers was all over the floor, soaking up the juice,
where somebody had knocked over one of the steel
cabinets and spilled it open. The stuff had really
spattered, like it had pressure behind it. It was on the
typewriters and the desk and the walls. There was
even a little dripping off the ceiling. A few drops fell
on the sheriff’s bald head, going, spat, spat, spat. I
held my nose and watched him. It was sort of odd,
the way he acted.
He didn’t seem to notice the smell. He just looked
around real slow, and then he put his hands up over
his face, and bowed his head like he was praying. In
a minute he took his hands away and looked at Uncle
Sagamore. His face was purple, like a cooked beet.
He walked over, real slow, and stopped in front of
Uncle Sagamore. His hands came up and made
The Diamond Bikini— 113
gestures like he was talking, and his mouth worked,
but nothing came out.
Uncle Sagamore reached in his pocket and took out
his plug of tobacco. He rubbed it on the leg of his
overalls to clean it, and bit off a chew. He worked it
around from one position to the other one, then he
says, “Shurf, ain’t you got no spittoons in here?”
The sheriff’s face was purple all the way down his
neck now. His mouth went on working, but still there
wasn’t a sound coming out. His hands made little
gestures, and with his mouth opening and closing
like that it was just like watching a movie when
something has happened to the sound part and the
picture is still going on without it.
“Yes sir, Sam,” Uncle Sagamore says, “it’s just
downright unthoughtful, that’s what it is. They drag a
man in here an’ arrest him without no cause at all,
an’ they ain’t even got a spittoon in the place so’s he
can spit. It kind of takes the heart out of a man,
workin’ from daylight to dark tryin’ to scratch out a
livin’ an’ pay his taxes so he can support all these
goddam politicians.” He shook his head and stopped,
like he’d just give up.
“It is sort of unconsiderate of ‘em,” Pop says, and
nods his head. He lit a cigar.
Him and Uncle Sagamore started towards the door.
I followed them. The sheriff turned and watched us,
and then he walked real slow back to the desk. He
still hadn’t been able to say a word. It was like he
was all clogged up inside.
Uncle Sagamore stopped in the door and looked at
him. “Shucks,” he says, “ain’t no use holdin’ hard
feelin’s.”
A little sound was coming out of the sheriff now. It
was something like, “—ffift—ssssshhhh—ffffft—”
“Hell, Shurf,” Uncle Sagamore says, “the whole
thing was just a little misunderstanding an’ I reckon I
can overlook it. Matter of fact, if you want me to I
won’t let on to nobody it even happened. We’ll just
keep it a secret.”
The Diamond Bikini— 114
The sheriff reached in the box and took out the last
jar of the tannery juice. He held it in his hand for a
minute, looking at it. Then he just drew back his arm
real slow and deliberate and slammed it against the
wall.
We all went out. It sure was a relief to get out in
the fresh air. We got in the car, but we didn’t go
home right away. Pop stopped at the grocery store
and bought six pounds of baloney and some cigars.
Everybody on the street was talking about the
tannery juice, and they kept staring at Uncle
Sagamore. He didn’t seem to notice.
When we left the store we drove out in the edge of
town where there was a sawmill and some railroad
tracks. Uncle Sagamore showed Pop where to turn,
and he drove into an alley and along it until we was
in somebody’s back yard.
“What are we going to do now?” I asked Pop when
he stopped under a big chinaberry tree.
“Visit a friend of your Uncle Sagamore’s,” he says.
Uncle Sagamore rapped four times on the door and
in a minute a big woman with red hair opened it. She
was wearing a kimono. She has cold blue eyes and
looked like she could be plenty mean if she wanted
to, but she smiled when she saw us and let us in. We
followed her in through the kitchen and into another
room and off to the right of it. It was kind of like a
parlor, even if it was in the back of the house.
Somewhere on the other side of the wall I could
hear something clicking, and in a minute I figured
out what it was. It was pool balls hitting each other.
We was in back of a poolroom.
We sat down, she went out, and when she came
back she had a big bottle and three glasses, and a
bottle of coke. “That’s for you, Billy,” she says, and
handed me the coke. I couldn’t figure out how she
knew my name.
She poured her and Pop and Uncle Sagamore a
drink and then she sat down. She looked at Uncle
Sagamore, and she smiled a little and shook her
The Diamond Bikini— 115
head. “You’d sure never think it to look at you,” she
says.
Uncle Sagamore took out his chaw of tobacco and
held it in his hand while he swallowed his drink. Then
he put in back in. “Has Murph come in yet?”
“He just called,” she says. “Said he’d be here in a
minute.” Then she laughed. “God, I’d like to seen it.”
Just then the door opened and a man come in. It
was the big dark-faced man in the baseball cap that
had kept saying they couldn’t do anything to Uncle
Sagamore. He grinned at us, and poured hisself a
drink.
“Howdy, Murph,” Uncle Sagamore says. “Did
Rodney get in all right with the load?”
Murph nodded his head. “Slick as a whistle. He
was pulled off the road just the other side of
Jimerson’s, and as soon as he seen the two cars of
you come by he went on it and loaded up. Follered
you right into town. Let’s see—two hundred quarts at
a dollar twenty-five—”
“Two hundred and fifty dollars,” Uncle Sagamore
says. “Did you do much bettin’?”
“Six hundred and eighty, as near as I can figure it,”
Murph says. “That was includin’ five hundred from
Elmo Fenton, that I reckon was Booger and Otis’s
money.” He stopped and laughed. Then he went on,
“Let’s see, that’s three hundred and forty apiece.
Two-fifty plus three-forty—”
“Five hundred and ninety dollars,” Uncle Sagamore
says.
Murph shook his head kind of slow, like he couldn’t
even believe it and started pulling money out of his
pockets.
“You’d sure never think it,” he says, “to look at
you.”
The Diamond Bikini— 116
Eleven
It wasn’t till we’d got clear home that I remembered
we hadn’t took the dirty clothes to the laundry. I told
Pop about it when we got out of the car.
“By golly, you’re right,” he says. “We clean forgot.
Well, we’ll take ‘em tomorrow or the next day. Ain’t
no great hurry.”
“It didn’t look like it did any good at all to test
those jars,” I says.
Uncle Sagamore shook his head. “It’s just gettin’ to
where a man can’t depend on nothin’ any more, I
reckon. They sure don’t make them jars like they
used to.”
“Are you going to bottle up another batch of juice
to send the Gov’ment?” I asked.
Uncle Sagamore sat down on the porch and took
off his shoes to think about it. “Well sir, I don’t
rightly know,” he says. “Mebbe, in a couple of days.
It’s just kind of disheartenin’, having the shurf’s boys
break ‘em up that way.”
“I think we ought to get at it right away,” I says.
“We’re wasting a lot of time when we could be
making some new leather.”
The Diamond Bikini— 117
“This here boy’s a go-getter, Sam,” he says to Pop.
“You can see he ain’t goin’ to let no grass grow under
his feet.”
When it got along towards five o’clock they had
disappeared somewhere, so I didn’t have any trouble
getting away to go swimming. I didn’t go up by the
trailer; I went straight up along the edge of the lake.
Sig Freed was with me, and he kept scaring up
bullfrogs. They’d go gurk! and make one big jump
and land out in the water among the lilypads and go
under. You could see Sig Freed thought they was
crazy. He wouldn’t even put his feet in the water
hisself. Like as not, though, he just didn’t know what
it was. Being born and raised in a big fancy hotel
there in Aqueduct, he’d probably never seen a lake
like this before.
When we got up to the swimming place on the
point, Miss Harrington wasn’t there yet. I took off my
levis and shirt and sat down on the log in my boxer
shorts to wait for her. The lake was real pretty, kind
of dark in the shade and smooth as glass. I looked
across it and wondered if I could make it all the way
without help. This was the day we was going to try it.
I looked at it again, though, and decided I’d better
wait for her. She’d warned me lots of times not to try
swimming alone till at least the end of the summer.
It was nearly half an hour before she came along.
Sig Freed barked, and then I heard her sandals in the
trail. She smiled at me. She had on a blue romper
suit this time, and silver sandals, and her toenails
were painted red. I noticed her legs was getting
tanned.
“Hello, Miss Harrington,” I says. “Are we going to
swim all the way across today?”
“Sure,” she says. “You can make it easy.”
She took her suit out of her handbag and went off
in the bushes to change. When she came back I saw
it wasn’t just her legs that was tanned; she was the
same all over, and the diamonds on her bathing suit
just glittered against this kind of golden color she
was.
The Diamond Bikini— 118
“You must have been sunbathing in the raw,” I
says. “You’re sure a pretty color all over.”
She grinned at me and tousled my hair with her
hand. “Look, kid. You’re seven years old, remember?
Let’s keep it that way.”
We waded out in the water till it was up to her
waist and looked straight across. It was about fifty
yards. The trees looked cool and dim along the other
side because it was all in the shadow now that the
sun was going down.
“You’ve swum this far before,” she says, “in shallow
water along the shore, and deep water’s not any
different at all as long as you don’t get scared. So
just take it slow and easy, and remember I’ll be right
alongside you all the way. I’m a good swimmer; I
used to be in a water ballet in Florida when I was
only sixteen.”
We started out, and it was as easy as pie. I dogpaddled
along and she was doing a slow crawl stroke,
as she called it, right beside me. When she would roll
her face up out of water on my side she’d grin at me,
so I wasn’t scared at all. And I could see the bushes
hanging over the water on the other side getting
closer all the time.
We was almost there. We didn’t have more than a
few feet to go and I was getting ready to reach up
and grab one, when all of a sudden there was an
awful racket cut loose behind us on the other bank
and the water began to get chopped up all around us
by something. It was going gug! gug! gug! gug! And
every time there’d be a gug water would fly up in a
little spout like you’d throwed a rock in it. It all
happened without any warning at all, and by the time
I’d even figured out that the noise I was hearing over
there was guns shooting real fast Miss Harrington
had let out a yell and grabbed me and just pulled me
under.
I’d started to yell something myself, so my mouth
was open, and it got full of water. I choked, and
breathed in a little before I had sense enough not to,
and got water in my nose and throat. I was scared,
The Diamond Bikini— 119
and I started to kick and struggle trying to get back
to the top, but she held me down and I could feel her
kicking along like she was still swimming. We must
have turned, because we went right along and didn’t
run into the bushes or the bank. I could still hear the
things hitting up there, but down here under the
water the sound was different. They went schluck!
schluck! schluck! It was funny I even noticed it,
because I was scared stiff by this time and beginning
to go crazy and fight at Miss Harrington.
Just then I felt some brush, and our heads came out
of the water. I took a breath, and started to choke. It
seemed to me it was awful quiet, and it was a second
or two before I realized what it was. The guns had
stopped. I sputtered and fought for my breath, and
started to look around. Overhanging limbs and leaves
was all around us, there in the edge of the water. I
couldn’t see out across the lake at all. We stood up
and started to run up onto the bank. And just then
the guns cut loose again. We could hear the bullets
whamming into the trees a few feet off to our left.
Miss Harrington grabbed my arm and dragged me.
We came shooting up onto dry ground and then
stumbled and rolled across some dead leaves.
The guns cut loose again on the other side. Bullets
whacked into the ground behind us and some of them
glanced off trees and went screaming out ahead of us
like they do in Western movies. We had our faces
plastered against the ground. I was still choking and
sputtering, trying to get my breath.
Then the guns stopped and I heard a couple of men
yelling at each other on the other side. “I think they
got across into them trees,” one of ‘em shouted.
“Come on.”
I spit out some leaves and dirt that was in my
mouth, and says to Miss Harrington, “Uncle
Sagamore was right. Those rabbit hunters are sure
careless where they shoot. They might of hit us.”
She clapped a hand over my mouth and pulled me
up against her. She was listening for something. I
couldn’t hear anything except the noise we was
The Diamond Bikini— 120
making trying to get our breath. Then in a minute, I
did. It sounded like men running through the brush
on the other side of the lake.
“How far is it to the end of the lake?” She
whispered in my ear.
She’d forgot she still had her hand over my mouth,
I reckon. I squirmed a little, and she saw what the
trouble was, and took it away. “About a hundred
yards,” I says. “Just around the bend there.”
“We’ve got to get out of here,” she says, and jumps
up. She grabbed me by the arm and we started
running. She couldn’t run very fast with no shoes on
because things hurt her feet, but I was all right. I
hadn’t had shoes on since I’d been here. She put her
feet down like she was running across egg shells, and
in about a hundred yards or so we fell down again
and rolled into a little gully that had ferns growing all
along it.
We was both still wet and leaves and twigs was
sticking to our bare skin. We was out of breath. I
could hear my heart beating. She held on to me real
tight, with my face against her bosom, and I could
feel it going up and down when she breathed. There
was ferns all around and over us.
“Don’t make a sound,” she says, whispering.
“Why are we running?” I asked.
“Shhhh! Those men are looking for us. If they find
me they’ll kill me.”
“Kill you? You mean they ain’t rabbit hunters, like
the others?”
“The others wasn’t rabbit hunters, either. Hush,”
she says.
It was all crazy and mixed up, I thought. Why
would anybody want to hurt a nice woman like Miss
Harrington? I was glad the other two had had that
accident. It served ‘em right. Then I began to be
scared. They must be coming around the lake.
Suppose they found us. I began to shake.
“Just be still,” she whispered. “They won’t find us
in these ferns.”
The Diamond Bikini— 121
I laid still and listened. And in a minute I could
hear them moving, running through the brush
somewhere towards the head of the lake. And all of a
sudden there was a shot. And then three or four in a
row. And then another one by itself. There was no
bullets come this way, though.
We laid real quiet in the ferns. Miss Harrington
turned her face a little and looked at me. Her eyes
was big and blue and worried.
“What do you reckon they’re shooting at now?” I
whispered.
“I’m not sure,” she says.
The sun was gone now, and it was getting shadowy
out in the timber, what little of it I could see through
the ferns. I wished Pop and Uncle Sagamore was
there. Then we heard a sound. It was a man walking
through dead leaves somewhere between us and the
lake. We couldn’t see him, though. We tried to hold
our breath and listen, waiting to see if he was coming
closer. At first it sounded that way and I was scared
stiff, but before long we could tell the sound was
dying out. He was going away.
“Maybe it was Pop,” I says. “Looking for us. Or
maybe Dr Severance.”
“Shhhh,” she whispered. “I don’t think so. They
would have tried to call us.”
“What would they want to shoot you for?” I asked.
“Never mind,” she says. She put her hand over my
mouth again.
In a few minutes we heard the steps coming back
again. They went by not twenty yards away on the
other side of us, it sounded like. Then they died out
again.
Miss Harrington sucked in a shaky breath. “The
lousy bastards,” she says, kind of whispering.
We didn’t hear anything for a long time then. It got
dark. You couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t even see
Miss Harrington’s bosom, when I was lying right
against it.
“I’m scared,” I says. “I wish Pop was here.”
The Diamond Bikini— 122
“I’m scared too,” she says. “But not quite that bad.”
“They couldn’t see us now,” I told her. “Mebbe we
can sort of sneak around and get back to the house.”
“Do you know which way it is?” she asked.
“Sure,” I says. I pointed. “That way.”
We stood up and looked around, and I wasn’t so
sure. It was all pitch-black, and one direction was
like another.
“Least I think it’s that way,” I says. “The lake
should be right over there.”
We started out walking real slow and feeling our
way, trying not to make any noise. But we kept
bumping into trees and limbs. Miss Harrington hurt
her feet, stepping on things.
“Damn it,” she says. “By God, this is one for the
book. This is the most. Wandering round in a crummy
jungle in a G-string and no shoes.”
“What’s a G-string?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she says. “Or next to it. Ouch! Goddam
the crummy limbs, anyway!”
We went on. We didn’t find the lake. Even if we got
to it, I thought, the only way we’d know was when we
walked off in it, it was so dark. Pretty soon I knew we
was going the wrong way, or maybe just going
around in a big circle.
And pretty soon me and Miss Harrington got
separated in the dark.
“Where are you?” I called out.
“Over here,” she says.
I tried to tell by where her voice was coming from,
and started that way. But then the next time she
sounded further away in another direction. “Billy,”
she was saying. “Billy, where are you?”
Then in a few minutes I couldn’t hear her at all.
“Miss Harrington,” I yelled, and didn’t get any
answer. I was lost. And she was lost too. There was
no telling which way we had been going. I got real
scared and started to cry, and then I tried to run. I
slammed into a tree trunk and it knocked me down.
The Diamond Bikini— 123
For a few minutes I just laid there and bawled like a
little kid.
I didn’t even have Sig Freed, and it reminded me
that maybe he was lost too. There wasn’t even any
telling how much timber country there was down
here, and maybe they would never find me or Miss
Harrington.
After a while I got up and walked some more. I
didn’t have any idea where I was any more, or how
long it had been since I’d got lost from Miss
Harrington. It must have been two hours, anyway, I
thought. I started to cry again, thinking about her,
and just walked along with tears running down my
face. Then after a while something struck me as
peculiar. I wasn’t running into trees any more.. The
stuff I was in was in rows, and it was smaller. I felt it.
It was cornstalks. I must be in Uncle Sagamore’s
cornfield, and that was right behind the house. I
stopped crying and started to run, right straight up
one of the rows, feeling the long leaves brushing
against me on both sides, and when I popped out of
the end of it there was the house with a light burning
in it.
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