Uncle Sagamore and His Girls (7 page)

“Locates evidence,” Curly says. “By the scientific method. There just ain’t no way in the world anybody can hide moonshine from this thing.”

Uncle Sagamore shook his head. “Well, if’n that don’t beat all.”

Curly put on the ear phones and swung the box around, pointing the snout in different directions. “Too bad there ain’t no moonshine around, so you could watch how it sniffs it out—”

He stopped then, looking kind of thoughtful. He swung the snout of the thing back a little, so it was pointing straight up the hill. “Hmmm,” he says.

“Uh—what’s that?” Uncle Sagamore asked.

“Oh,” Curly says. “I was just about to say I can’t understand that Sheriff at all, not usin’ one of these things. You just can’t fail with ’em—” He stopped again, and kind of frowned, and moved his hand back and forth in front of the snout. “That’s funny. I keep gettin’ a reading, like there was moon around here.”

Uncle Sagamore was flabbergasted. “Well sir,” he says to Pop, “who would of imagined that?”

“Shhhh,” Curly says. He swung the spout some more, and listened, and then moved about ten feet to one side. “She’s there, all right. Now, we triangulate the intake to the gargle-binder—hmmmm—” He swung the snout, and listened again. It was still pointing uphill. Then he nodded. He switched off the machine and went over and put it back in the truck, and lit one of his cigars.

“You can’t fool it,” he says. “Not in a hundred years. And that’s just one of the scientific instruments I intend to lay in, men, soon as I’m elected—”

Pop and Uncle Sagamore looked at each other. “But just what did it say?” Pop asked.

“Oh,” Curly says, kind of indifferent. He turned and pointed up the hill. “See that old pine stump up there, about halfway to the gate? There’s a pint fruit jar of moonshine buried just under the ground about six inches from the west side of it.”

I’d never heard of anything like it. That stump was easy a hundred yards away. Pop and Uncle Sagamore was amazed too, but when we all walked up there Curly just scratched in the dirt with a stick and there it was. It was a pint jar, all right, and it was almost full. He held it up and looked at it.

“Hmmm,” he says, sort of frowning. “Looks like she might be just a sha-a-de out of adjustment. Said a pint, but this is about a drink short.” He unscrewed the cap and took a drink of it, and nodded. “Pretty close on the proof, though. Said a hundred, and that’s just about on the nose. See what you think.”

He passed it around. Uncle Sagamore took a drink, and then Pop, and Murph. Uncle Sagamore put his chew back in his mouth, aimed some tobacco juice at a bug crawling along the ground, and says to Pop, “Well sir, if that ain’t the beatin’est machine I ever seen in my life.”

“It sure is, for a fact,” Pop says. “You just don’t know what they’ll think of next. Likely, though, it takes a real smart man to work it.”

Curly took another drink, and then he grinned, kind of modest. “Well, it does take a little trainin’, men, but I wouldn’t want to hawg all the credit. You got to give a lot to the man that worked out the idea. Likely you recall him, the great Chinese scientist, One Screwed Duck.”

Murph nodded. “Sure. I remember reading about him. Didn’t he invent the high-diving board and the empty swimming pool?”

Curly handed the jar to Uncle Sagamore, and slapped him on the back. He seemed to have got a little red in the face from the two drinks. “Well, I got to be off and electioneerin’, men. I just wanted to let you know I’m one candidate that sure aims to keep his campaign promises, the minute he’s elected. And you take care of that back,” he says real friendly to Pop, “so you can get to the polls.”

He got back in the truck and drove off up the hill with music blaring out of the loudspeakers. We all walked over and sat down on the porch. Pop and Uncle Sagamore looked real thoughtful. Murph lit a cigarette.

“Well, I guess that was plain enough,” he says.

“Sig Freed sure didn’t seem to like him,” I said.

“Likely he caught it from somebody,” Pop says. “There’s a lot of it going around.”

“But wasn’t that a humdinger of a machine?” I asked.

“Yeah, wasn’t it?” Pop says, like he wasn’t paying much attention.

Uncle Sagamore still hadn’t said a word. He turned a chair down with its back tilted up from the floor, and laid back against it. He scratched his leg with the big toe of his other foot, and just went on looking up the hill with his mouth puckered up, like he was kinda thinking.

“It scares me,” Murph says. “What are we goin’ to do?”

Pop shook his head. “I don’t know.” He looked at Uncle Sagamore, but Uncle Sagamore didn’t even seem to notice.

Murph waited a few minutes longer, and then said he had to get back to town. Pop walked out to the car with him, and I followed along. Murph got behind the wheel and turned on the switch, and then he looked over where Uncle Sagamore was still lying on the porch. It was the first time I ever saw him look worried. “You reckon he’s got any ideas?” he asked Pop.

“There ain’t no way you can tell,” Pop said.

Murph scratched his head. “Ordinarily, I’d say there ain’t anything he can’t handle, but this is rough. That Minifee’s beginning to look like the foxiest character he’s ever tangled with.”

“Yeah,” Pop says.

“He’s goin’ to win the election, hands down. That Sheriff hasn’t got a chance.”

Pop nodded.

“And when he does,” Murph says, “that’s all, brother.”

He drove off. Pop went back to the porch and sat down. It looked like he was waiting for Uncle Sagamore to say something, but Uncle Sagamore didn’t even seem to notice him. He just laid there all the rest of the afternoon. At supper time he didn’t say a word while we was eating. We went to bed. In the morning he stretched out on the porch again, right in the same place, with his head and shoulders propped against the chair, sailing out some tobacco juice once in a while but never saying a word to anybody. It sure was funny. It didn’t seem like he was sick, or mad at us, but more like he’d just forgot we was around. At noon he was still there.

Along about two o’clock Pop went around to the side of the house where our trailer was parked. It’s not a house trailer, but a small one just big enough to carry our bedrolls and the little printing press we use to run off the tip sheets when we’re set up close to the racetracks. I looked in the door, and he was poking around, kind of checking over the press.

“What you doin’?” I asked.

“Oh,” he says, sort of moody. “I was just thinkin’ we might go back to the tracks.”

“Aw, gee, Pop,” I said, “let’s don’t. It’s more fun here.”

“I know,” he says. “But I don’t see much future in it. Not any more.”

Just then we heard a car coming. It was Murph. He parked under the oak tree, and we walked over. He looked worrieder than ever.

“Murder,” he says. “Look at this.”

On the seat beside him was some handbills, and a couple of pictures of Curly Minifee, the kind candidates nail up on telephone poles and old barns. Curly was grinning like a big chessie cat, and below the picture it says:

COURAGEOUS

CAPABLE

HONEST

PUT MINIFEE IN OFFICE AND PUT THE CROOKS IN JAIL!!!

“He’s got crews going around the county tackin’ these things up by the thousands,” Murph says. “Everywhere you look. I believe by God if you stopped on the street some kid would run up and nail one to your back before you could turn around. Major Kincaid’s got out a special edition of the paper, backing him to the limit. He held a rally over in Mayhaw Springs last night and nearly a thousand people showed up. He’s a slick talker, and he’s thought up a clever platform. He’s in favor of prosperity, motherhood, and the American flag, and puttin’ Sagamore Noonan in jail.”

Pop shook his head. “Sure don’t look very good, does it?”

“Good?” Murph says. “That ain’t hardly the word. And the Sheriff is ravin’.
He’s
on the warpath too. For the first time in eight years, he’s got to go campaignin’. And he knows he really ain’t got a chance.”

They went over on the porch and told Uncle Sagamore about it, and Murph showed him the posters with Curly’s picture on them. You couldn’t tell whether he was listening or not, but when they got through he did say, “Hmmm.”

Murph sat there kind of despondent for a few minutes like he was still waiting for Uncle Sagamore to say something else, and then he got up. “Well, I reckon the only thing left is to bet on him. Might make a few dollars that way, enough to get out of here.”

Uncle Sagamore just went on looking up the hill.

“But we’ll have to hurry,” Murph went on. “Before the odds get any worse. He’s 3-to-5 right now.”

Uncle Sagamore sailed out some tobacco juice and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Hmmm,” he says. “Likely I wouldn’t rush into nothin’, Murph.”

Murph brightened right up. “You mean you got an idea?”

“Well, ain’t no tellin’ what might happen in ten days,” Uncle Sagamore says. “Odds might change, or somethin’ like that.”

He didn’t say any more. Murph hung around for a few minutes, and then drove off. Pop sat down on the steps and smoked a cigar. After about twenty minutes, Uncle Sagamore got up. He shoved the chair back against the wall, and looked like he’d made up his mind about something. “I reckon we ort to go to town, Sam. They’s a few little odds and ends I wanted to buy.”

I jumped up, ready to go too, but Uncle Sagamore said it might be late before they got back. They drove off in the truck. At supper time they still wasn’t back, so I fried the baloney for me and Uncle Finley and Sig Freed. When it got dark I spread out my bedroll on the porch and turned in. Sometime during the night I heard Pop unroll his pallet next to mine, but when I woke up it was after sunup and they’d already had breakfast and was about to leave again. They said they might be gone all day.

“We got a job for you,” Pop says. “Pays a dollar a day.”

“Say, that’s swell,” I said. “What is it?”

“Shuckin’ and shellin’ corn,” he says. “There’s a big pile of it down by the barn, and some gunny sacks to put it in.”

“Is that what you bought?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he says. “That and some other things.”

They went off up the hill in the truck. I real quick got into my clothes, grabbed some breakfast, and tossed a couple of slices to Sig Freed. He set up on his hunkers and caught them, the way he does, and barked for more. I fed him another slice and headed for the barn with him running along behind. And here was the funniest collection of stuff I ever saw. They sure had been on a shopping spree.

The barn’s off to the left side of the house, fifty or seventy-five yards beyond the well. It’s made out of logs, and there’s a little door in front, facing toward the house, but along the uphill side the roof comes on out and makes a kind of open-sided shed where Uncle Sagamore usually keeps his truck. And that’s where they’d unloaded everything. First, there was a big pile of corn, still in the shucks. It was taller than a man’s head. Then there was a whole lot of hundred-pound sacks of sugar, stacked against the wall on some planks throwed on the ground. And next to them was eight wooden tubs, and some pieces of pipe, and coils of copper tubing, and some split oak posts. I counted the sacks of sugar. There was thirty of them. It sure looked like they was fixing to go into some kind of business. That was fine, I thought. Things always began to hum when Uncle Sagamore started up a business.

I found a box to sit on, started shucking the corn and shelling it into a bucket. When the bucket was full I emptied it into one of the gunny sacks. I had one sack full and was just starting on another when I heard a racket up by the sand road and here come one of the Sheriff’s cars.

It tore on down the hill with dust boiling up behind it, and stopped in front of the house. Two men jumped out. It was the Sheriff and Booger. They looked all around, with the Sheriff yelling, “Sagamore Noonan!” and then they saw me and come running over. Booger’s got longer legs, so he made it a little ahead of the Sheriff. He saw the sugar, and got a nasty grin on his face, and yelled, “Hey, here it is.”

The Sheriff run up. He was puffing. He pulled out a big handkerchief and mopped his face, and kind of whistled through his false teeth. He looked at all the stuff under the shed, and took a deep breath, and says, “Billy, where’s—
fffsss
—where’s Sagamore Noonan?”

“Him and Pop went off in the truck,” I said. “About an hour ago.”

“Did he say where he was goin’?” the Sheriff asked.

Booger had finished counting the sacks of sugar. He grinned again. “Why, likely to get some pecans to put in the fudge,” he says. “There’s thirty sacks of it, Sheriff. A ton and a half.”

“And look at that pile of corn,” the Sheriff says.

“And the mash tubs,” Booger says.

“And the copper tubing,” the, Sheriff went on, real excited. “And the empty jugs—”

Booger laughed and slapped his leg. “We got him, Sheriff. We got him sure as hell. You’re goin’ to win that election, after all. Can you imagine him bein’ dumb enough to leave all this stuff right out in the open—?”

The Sheriff quit grinning. “Wait a minute, Booger,” he says. He leaned against one of the posts that held up the roof, and mopped his face again. “You’re a young man, and you ain’t had twelve years of him like I have.”

I couldn’t figure what they was talking about. “What seems to be the matter, Sheriff?” I asked.

They didn’t pay any mind. “Why, hell,” Booger says. “It’s as plain as the nose on your face, Sheriff—”

The Sheriff sighed. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about. With Sagamore Noonan, any time something’s as plain as the nose on your face you better look again, because you’re apt to find your nose is growin’ out of your left elbow. I can begin to smell this already. All this stuff’s out in plain view, and he bought that sugar from a man he knowed damn well would tell me about it.”

Booger looked kind of puzzled. “What you mean?”

The Sheriff found a box and sat down. “You just don’t know what it can do to you after a while,” he says. “I mean, lyin’ awake at night wonderin’ what the hell he’s going to do next—”