The Diamond Bikini (4 page)

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 oat-foundered 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 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.

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.”

“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 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.

“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.

“Well, I don’t know if you recollect Cousin Viola, but you can’t take too much of her at one time. She’s kind of delicate and refined, only she’s got this rumblin’ in her stummick, an’ every time her stummick rumbles she pats herself on the mouth with three fingers an’ says, “Excuse me.” Well, something like this all day long is bad enough, but on top of that she’s got this damn gallstone.”

“Gallstone?” Pop asked.

“That’s right,” Uncle Sagamore says. “Six, eight years ago she had it takened out at the hospital, an’ this fool doctor didn’t have no better sense than to tell her it was the biggest one he ever seen, outside of one somebody takened out of a giraffe. Well, Viola was all set up about that, so she brought it home with her and put it in a little jar on the mantel an’ took to tellin’ people about it. One time, Vergil says, some people’s car got stuck in the mud in front of the house an’ they couldn’t get away, an’ Viola talked about that gallstone for thirteen hours and twenty minutes without stoppin’. Man finally give Vergil the keys to the car and said he’d be back for it in the summer when the roads dried out. People took to movin’ out of the community rather than havin’ to dodge her all the time, so when Bessie’d leave me an’ go down there Viola’d be all primed and loaded for her. If Bessie was real mad at me she could hold out for ten days.”

Uncle Sagamore stopped talking and looked at Booger and Otis. They was shifting around on the step like they couldn’t get comfortable anywhere.

“I ain’t borin’ you boys with all this, am I?” he asked.

“Why, no,” Booger says. “—uh—that is—” He looked kind of funny. Pale, sort of, and sweating pretty heavy. His face was all slick and white. Otis was the same way. It didn’t seem to be the smell that was bothering them, though, because they wasn’t fanning with their hats any more. They just seemed to be kind of restless.

“Sure wouldn’t want to get tiresome an’ bore you boys,” Uncle Sagamore says. “Especially after what you done, rushin’ down here to save us from that typhoid an’ all.”

“But how does it happen Bessie stays away three weeks now?” Pop asked. “Is Viola beginning to run down, or something?”

“Oh,” Uncle Sagamore says. He sailed out some more tobacco juice, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “No. It was like this. Couple of years ago, I reckon it was, Vergil made a pretty good cotton crop, an’ they could see there was goin’ to be money ahead even after they paid off the store. But before Vergil could get in to town to buy another secondhand Buick with it, Viola sneaked off to the hospital an’ had about four hundred dollars worth of new stuff takened out on the credit. Mostly female stuff I reckon; she’d never used it much because she ain’t stopped talkin’ long enough since they got married for Vergil to get her in the family way. I don’t know why it is, but no matter how hard up a man is he ain’t goin’ to do his best with a woman that’s talkin’ five Quarts to the gallon about her goddam gallstone.

“But, anyhow, I reckon Cousin Viola really shot the wad. Four hundred dollars worth of stuff is a lot, especially since they already got you open an’ you’re gettin’ wholesale rates after they write off the first slice or two. So if Vergil never made another good crop, she was set for life. It wasn’t that she talked any less, but just that she had more to talk about now an’ could kind of spread out over more ground. That’s the reason Bessie’s been stayin’ three weeks lately, Viola don’t hardly have to start repeatin’ herself in less than that.”

Uncle Sagamore stopped again. You could see now that there was really something bothering Booger and Otis. Their eyes was big and kind of staring, like they hurt somewhere, and their faces was white as chalk, with big drops of sweat oozing out on their foreheads.

Uncle Sagamore looked round at Pop. “Well sir, by golly, I get to ramblin’ on like this, looks like I never know when to stop. I just remembered Billy asked me something while ago, an’ I never did take time to answer him. What was it, now?”

Well, I couldn’t remember anything like that, but I was beginning to learn about Uncle Sagamore. He wasn’t talking to me. He’d asked Pop, so I stayed shut up. That was safest.

“Hmmmmm,” Pop says. “He asked you what something was, as I recall.”

Uncle Sagamore nodded. “Sure. I recollect now. He wanted to know what croton oil was. Why you suppose he’d ask a fool thing—”

Booger and Otis stared at him with their eyes about to pop out.

“Croton oil?”
Booger says.

“Croton oil?”
Otis says, in just the same way.

“Kids can ask some of the damnedest questions,” Uncle Sagamore went on. “Without no reason at all.”

He pulled a big red handkerchief out of his overall pocket and started to mop the bald spot on his head. Some kind of black powder fell out of it. He looked at it, sort of puzzled.

“Now, how in the hell did black pepper get in my pocket?” he asked, like he was talking to hisself. “Oh, I recollect now. I spilled some when I was gettin’ breakfast. Atchooooo!”

Some of it got in my nose and I sneezed. Then Pop sneezed. And Uncle Sagamore sneezed again.

But Otis and Booger didn’t sneeze. It was a little peculiar, the way they acted. Their eyes kept getting bigger and bigger, with that staring sort of horror in them, and they pressed fingers under their noses and breathed in real slow through their mouths. Then they both got full of air and it seemed like they couldn’t breathe out. They clamped hands over their faces and tried to let the air escape a little at a time, kind of whining down in their throats.

One of ‘em would say, “A-ah-ah—” like he was about to sneeze, and he would clamp his mouth and nose shut with both hands and begin to turn purple in the face, with his eyes watering and sweat running down his forehead. It would pass, and he would let a little air out, and then the other one would start to go “A-ah-ah—” and he’d go through the same thing.

Uncle Sagamore sneezed again. “Damn that pepper, anyhow,” he says, and waved his handkerchief at it. It didn’t do much good except to stir up what had already settled on the floor.

Booger and Otis grabbed their faces harder.

Uncle Sagamore shifted his tobacco into the other side of his face. “Now, where was I?” he says. “Oh, yes. About them privies. Well, Bessie raised hell with Finley the first few times for tearin’ it down each time before she’d hardly got out of sight, but it didn’t do no good except to get her scratched off the passenger list, like I said. Finley and the Vision kind of voted her out, you might say.

“So now when she gets a bellyful of Cousin Viola and comes home, as soon as she gets off the bus in town she goes right over to the E.M Staggers Lumber Company and orders a bill of material for a new privy. They made up so many of ‘em now they don’t even have to figure it any more. Got a list all wrote out, right down to the last ten-penny nail, hangin’ on a hook over the manager’s desk. So they just load it on the truck an’ Bessie rides out with ‘em.”

But I wasn’t listening to Uncle Sagamore now. I was watching Booger and Otis. They was still holding their faces like they was afraid they’d die of the pneumonia if they ever sneezed. All you could see was their eyes with that terrible staring in them. They looked at Uncle Sagamore and the end of the shotgun and then out towards the car like it was a million miles away. They couldn’t sit still at all. They’d weave back and forth and kind of shift around on the step; but it was funny, each time they shifted they went backward a little. They slid down to the next step, and then the bottom one. They stood up and started easing away like they had something on their minds and had lost interest in Uncle Sagamore’s story altogether.

They started out slow but began gathering speed, and by the time they got to the car they was really travelling. I never did figure out how they got the doors open and shot inside that fast, but by the time they’d hit the seat the car jumped ahead, making a long, looping turn. With the tires screaming, and they was headed back up the road towards the gate.

Uncle Sagamore looked at ‘em and sailed out some more tobacco juice. “Doggone,” he says. “I should of knowed I was borin’ them boys.”

Just then the car hit one of those bumps and went up about three feet in the air. They must have put the brakes on while it was still off the ground, because when it hit it just slid kind of nose down, and turned crossways and stopped about half out of the road.

The door flew open and Booger and Otis jumped out, one on each side, and started running towards the trees. They reminded me of horses coming out of a starting gate, the way they took off. Booger had to go round the car, so he was sort of left at the post, but as soon as he was clear and had racing room he went into a drive and started closing fast on Otis. Otis come on again, but Booger was laying up close to the pace now and he finally pulled into the lead by a good length and a half, and won going away. They shot into the trees.

Uncle Sagamore scratched his leg with his big toe again. “Sure hope them boys ain’t comin’ down with that typhoid,” he says, and picked up the glass jar they had forgot to take along with them to have analyzed.

He reached it back through the door and traded it for the other one. He handed this one to Pop. They both took a drink.

Uncle Sagamore leaned the shotgun back against the wall and stretched. “You know,” he says, “that stuff might make a purty good remedy, at that. Even if it didn’t help a man out none with the gals, it’d sure take his mind off ‘em.”

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.

“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.