The Diamond Bikini by Charles Williams(page 7)

“That’s sweet of you.”
Dr Severance butted in. “Miss Harrington’s anemia
is the very worst kind. It doesn’t show. That’s what
makes it so hard to diagnose and cure. Just looking at
her you wouldn’t think she had anything, would
you?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say that,” Pop says.
“Look,” Miss Harrington says to the doctor, “what’s
with this Hiram type, anyway? We going to adopt
him, or something? Tell him to go fry a hush-puppy
and let’s get the hell out of here.”
The Diamond Bikini— 46
“Keep your shirt on,” Dr Severance told her. “Mr.
Noonan is going to rent us a camping place on his
farm.”
Miss Harrington yawned. “Well, goody.”
“You’ll have absolute rest and quiet, and lots of
fresh leafy vegetables.”
“Just what I always wanted,” she says.

The Diamond Bikini by Charles Williams(page 6)

* * *
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.

The Diamond Bikini by Charles Williams(page 5(2))

“Well, it’s like this,” Uncle Sagamore says.
“Every once in a while, maybe twice a year, Bessie
gets all galled under the britchin’ about something
and starts faunchin’ around here sayin’ she’s takened
all she can take, she just ain’t goin’ to put up with me
no longer, ain’t nobody could live with me. Usually
over some triflin’ little thing that don’t amount to a
hill of beans, like I won’t wash my feet or something,
but she gets all swole up like a snakebit pup and says
she’s leavin’ me for good this time. So she packs her
suitcase and gets her egg money and walks down to
Jimerson’s which is on the party line and calls Bud
Watkins that runs the taxi in town, and Bud comes
after her. She gets on the bus and goes down to
Glencove to stay with her Cousin Viola, the one that
married Vergil Talley.

The Diamond Bikini by Charles Williams(page 5(1))

“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