Uncle Sagamore and His Girls

  Down at the bottom of the page in bigger print, it said, “These are not doctored photographs. If you don’t believe a man can ferment mash and operate a still out in the open in full view of our entire Sheriff’s Department, go out and see for yourself. Then vote for the man who can clean up this mess—J. L. (Curly) Minifee.”

  Just then Uncle Sagamore came out of the smoke. Murph handed him the paper. Uncle Sagamore looked at it, and Murph says, “Curly’s hauling in the votes like a ole fashion clambake. Around town they’re betting six-to-one he’ll take it by a landslide.”

  “Hmmm,” Uncle Sagamore says. “Six-to-one? Is that a fact?”

  “Maybe I’m losing my grip,” Murph says. “But I just don’t seem to follow you this time.”

  “Why, ain’t no cause to fret, Murph,” Uncle Sagamore says. “They ain’t goin’ to vote today, are they?”

  Just then a Sheriff’s car came tearing down the hill, and behind it was a sound truck. The Sheriff came pushing through the crowd to where Otis was.

  “Nothin’ comin’ out of it at all,” Otis says. “And there was nothin’ went in it but pine sap.”

  The Sheriff held up his hand. “Never mind. I’ve got it figured out now. I know what he’s doin’.”

  He shoved back through the crowd and stepped up on the running board of the sound truck with the microphone in his hand. “Folks,” he says, “listen—”

  There was a lot of boos and whistles. People crowded around, jostling each other and yelling.

  “Why don’t you arrest the old crook?”

  “Shut up and let him talk!”

  “Mebbe we can find out what the hell’s goin’ on here!”

  “Shurf, is he makin’ whiskey in that still, or ain’t he?”

  The Sheriff held up his hand. “Listen! That’s what I’m trying to tell you. He ain’t. You can go over there and see for yourself.”

  “Then what the hell is he doin’?” somebody roared.

  “He’s making whiskey in another still somewhere else,” the Sheriff boomed out through the loudspeakers. “This is just a fake, to keep us from looking for the real one—”

  “Hey! How about that?” somebody shouted. “By God, the Shurf’s probably right!”

  Some of them cheered. The Sheriff held up his hand again. “But don’t forget I already searched this place once, so it’s well hid. You know Sagamore Noonan. I want 200 volunteers. The County can’t pay you, but I’m putting up a hundred-dollar reward out of my own pocket.”

  A big cheer drowned him out. “Hmmm,” Murph says, “he’s not so dumb at politics himself.”

  That was really a search. By the middle of the afternoon I figured he must have nearer 400 men than 200, after word began to get around the county about the hundred dollars. The timber was swarming with men so thick they was bumping into each other. He even had 8 or 10 perched on top of the house and barn with binoculars watching for smoke. And none of them found anything.

  Pop and Uncle Sagamore didn’t pay the slightest mind to any of it. They put out the fire under the boiler and checked the machinery all over again, and fired it up once more. Smoke poured out, but there still wasn’t any turpentine. Along about sundown they killed the fire and gave up for the day. You could tell they was dejected as everything. And when we walked down to feed the pigs, it was worse. In every one of the tubs you could see a bubble or two coming up through the juice.

  “Sam, I jest don’t like the looks of that,” Uncle Sagamore says.

  “Oh, a bubble or two don’t mean nothin’,” Pop says, trying to cheer him up, but you could see he didn’t really mean it.

  In the morning they began pouring into the place before we even got up, and by the time we’d tried the baloney and had breakfast I figured from the cars parked around there was already 300 helping the Sheriff search and more coming every minute. There was more bubbles in the hog feed. Uncle Sagamore and Pop tried to buck each other up, but you could see they was plenty worried about it. And the turpentine machinery still didn’t work. Just smoke all over the place and not a drop of turpentine.

  At noon the Sheriff gave up and called off the search. A truck showed up that was loaded with hamburgers and five-gallon cans of coffee. He made a speech over the sound truck.

  “It’s no use, men. I was wrong, and there just ain’t no other still. Yesterday and today we’ve put in close to 4000 man-hours and covered 6000 to 7000 man-miles across every foot of this land. That settles it. I don’t know what he’s doing, but we’ve proved one thing. He sure as hell ain’t making whiskey.

  “I’m sorry nobody got the reward, but I’ve done the next best thing. There’s $150 worth of hamburgers and coffee on that truck, so dive in and help yourselves.”

  The men cheered and made a break for the truck, and I ran over and got a hamburger myself. When I came back, the Sheriff was standing over to one side talking to Otis. Pop and Uncle Sagamore was still groping around in the smoke, trying to figure out what was wrong.

  “There ain’t a drop of anything coming out of it,” Otis says.

  The Sheriff mopped his face. “The thing that scares me,” he says, “is that I still haven’t been able to figure out where he’s making money. Look—he’s got all these people out here, and he ain’t gyppin’ ’em out of a cent. Normally, he’d be charging ’em a dollar to park, and they’d be getting stuck in mysterious mudholes and havin’ to be pulled out at five dollars a car, and he’d be sellin’ ’em hamburgers made out of oatmeal for a dollar apiece. But he ain’t! And he ain’t making moonshine. So where the hell is the money coming from?”

  Just then there was another Sheriff’s car came tearing down the hill. It was Booger. He come shoving through the crowd, real grim-faced and carrying something in his hand. It looked like a paper bag.

  “What’s wrong?” the Sheriff asked.

  Booger looked over his shoulder to be sure none of the men was close enough to hear. “I picked up a drunk in town a few minutes ago,” he says, “and throwed him in the tank. He had this on him.”

  He took the thing out of the paper bag, shielding it with his body so the crowd wouldn’t see it. It was a pint fruit jar. He unscrewed the cap, and held it out to the Sheriff.

  “Smell it,” he says.

  The Sheriff sniffed. “Hell, it’s just moonshine—” Then his eyes started to get big.

  “Taste it,” Booger says.

  The Sheriff tilted it up and took a sip.

  I saw a movie once where this man was about to be hung for something or other, and just as they was leading him up on the scaffold to put the rope around his neck they give a close-up of his eyes. That’s what the Sheriff’s eyes looked like. He lowered the jar down, and went on staring at Booger.

  “Turpentine,” he whispered....

  Well, that was what set off the uproar, and brought the reporters from all the big-city newspapers and the camera trucks from the television news, and started all the fights so the Governor said if Blossom County politics didn’t calm down he was going to send the National Guard. You could see as plain as day there wasn’t anything at all coming out of Uncle Sagamore’s turpentine machinery, but there was moonshine in Blossom County that had just a teensy little flavor of turpentine about it.

  Major Kincaid screamed in the paper, and Curly went around laughing and sneering and making speeches, and a lot of people wanted to lynch the Sheriff, or anyway impeach him, and others that managed to get close enough to the still to look at it was screaming that you could see there wasn’t nothing come out of it, so how the hell could he be doing it? But that’s getting ahead of the story....

  All three of them whirled and dashed into the smoke under the shed, and examined the machinery all over again from one end to the other. They traced out and felt of every pipe in it except the tubing that was down in the water tank where they couldn’t reach it. Tears ran down their cheeks, and they fanned at the smoke with their hats. They came out.

  “Can we stop him?” Otis asked.
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  “How?” the Sheriff says. He was wadding and unwadding his hat. “And stop him from what? Any damn fool can see there ain’t nothin’ coming out of it. On our own testimony, nothin’ was ever put in it but pine sap. It’s right there in the open where you can see every piece of it. So you want to try to tell a judge we had probable cause to believe moonshine was coming out of it somewhere? He’d have us committed to a nut-hatch.”

  “But—” Booger sputtered. “We got to do something.”

  The Sheriff give a kind of shudder. “You’re damn right we have! We got to prove that turpentine-flavored rotgut ain’t comin’ from here, or we may get lynched. Watch him! Don’t let him, or the still, or that mash, out of your sight for a second!” He had finished rolling his hat into a ball. He looked at it. “I got to get out of here before I crack up and murder him in cold blood.” He got in the car and shot up the hill.

  Pop and Uncle Sagamore didn’t pay any more mind to all the crowds than they had from the first. After a while they sloshed some water in the firebox to kill the fire. This threw a lot of steam and ashes all around and made the people scatter, but they didn’t seem to care, they was so discouraged. As soon as the smoke cleared away, they started checking the machinery again. They unscrewed pipes and looked through them. Where they was bent and they couldn’t see all the way through, they blew into ’em. They took the covers off both the boilers. The spare one was empty, and the other one still had pine sap in it. Not as much, but there was some.

  Pop shook his head, and let the wrench fall. “It’s goin’ somewhere. But where?”

  It was the hog feed, though, that was the most discouraging part of the whole thing. When they knocked off and went down to feed the hogs you could see bubbles popping up all through the juice, and there was no use even trying to pretend it wasn’t going sour.

  “Well sir,” Uncle Sagamore says, “it jest disheartens a man. You reckon we ort to throw it out and start a new batch?”

  Pop shook his head. “I’m too tired. Let’s wait till morning.”

  All the people looked at them. You could see they was wondering how long they was going to keep this up, butting their heads against the wall and wasting feed eight tubfuls at a time.

  In the morning there was an even bigger crowd hanging around the barn when we went out. The stuff was done for; it had that sour smell now, and bubbles was thick all over the top. “Well,” Pop says, “let’s dump it and get it over with.”

  Uncle Sagamore frowned and pursed up his mouth. “I tell you. Let’s try one more thing, Sam. What you reckon it would do if we put in jest a pinch of saleratus? It’s good for sour stummicks.”

  “Well, it won’t hurt nothin’ to try,” Pop says. He went in the house and brought out a box of baking soda. They put half a teaspoonful in each tub and stirred it. Everybody watched them like they’d gone crazy. They covered the tubs with the sacks again, and went up to the machinery. I fed the pigs some corn.

  In a little while Booger and Otis got there to relieve the men that was watching the still and the hog feed, and by that time Pop and Uncle Sagamore had another fire going under the boiler and smoke was swirling around thicker than fog. Booger hunkered down where he could watch the ends of the copper tubing. Nothing came out. The crowds kept growing, and they seemed to be in a touchy mood today. About ten o’clock the Sheriff came dusting down the hill. Before he could get out, people was yelling at him.

  “Shurf, when the hell you goin’ to arrest them moonshiners?”

  “Hey, Shurf, what’s this we hear about the county fillin’ up with moonshine that smells and tastes like it had turpentine in it?”

  The Sheriff was mad too. He cussed, and yelled back. “I don’t know anything about it. All I know is there ain’t none bein’ made here. Go up and see if you can find any coming out of it!”

  “Hell, if you can’t catch him,” somebody yelled, “how you expect us dumb bastards to? We ain’t even got brains enough to stop payin’ your salary!”

  There was a loud laugh, and then a lot of boos. The Sheriff went over to the barn. He looked at the hog feed, and snapped at Otis, “Don’t take your eyes off it!”

  You could see they was pretty peeved at him, and ready to start a row. And even when Uncle Sagamore got up and made a speech to sort of help him out, it didn’t seem to do a bit of good. In fact, there was an awful hullaballoo.

  It was a little after noon when it happened. Curly had just showed up in his fancy sound truck. He usually came out every day for a few minutes, nosed around with that nasty grin of his, and drove off to make some more speeches running down the Sheriff. He hadn’t made any here since the first two days, when Pop and Uncle Sagamore was away.

  He did this time, though. Or started to. He pulled up at the edge of the crowd, cut off the music on the loudspeakers, and stepped out on the running board with the microphone. And he seemed to have something in his other hand. He held it up, and we could all see it was a pint fruit jar.

  “Folks,” he says, “I got sad news for you. The quality of our famous Blossom County moonshine is sure going to the dogs. In fact, I got some here a friend just found for me that you’d swear had turpentine in it. Here, you gentlemen try it and see if you don’t agree. Just pass it on—”

  The jar started through the crowd. Everybody that took a sip let out a yell. “Hey, by God, it does.” “Turpentine, sure as hell.” “Why, that useless Shurf—”

  Curly grinned. “Ain’t that the strangest thing you ever heard of?” he boomed out of the loudspeakers. “Makes you wonder where it could get a taste like that—” Some of the people started to cuss. He held up a hand. “Wait a minute, men. Don’t start yelling at the Sheriff. It’d take some pretty shrewd police work to run down a slender lead like that and locate the still, specially with all that smoke blowing in your face, so let’s don’t be hasty.”

  The Sheriff looked mad enough to bite nails. But before he could open his mouth, Uncle Sagamore walked over to Curly. It sure surprised me; it was the first time he’d paid any mind to any of it.

  He poked a finger in Curly’s chest and took the microphone. “You listen to me, Curly Minifee,” he says. “You can just do your mud-slingin’ somewhere else. I ain’t goin’ to have nobody low-ratin’ the Shurf, not on my place. The Shurf’s a good friend of mine—”

  Curly started to get mad, but then all of a sudden he grinned, and winked at the crowd. “Well, I’m glad to hear that. Sounds like a real significant piece of information. A good friend, you say?”

  “Yes sir, he is,” Uncle Sagamore said. He was talking into the microphone now. I reckon I owe a lot to the Shurf, all the little things he’s done for me over the years, and I want to say here an’ now that I’m for him in this election—”

  “Well, you sure as hell ought to be!” somebody yelled.

  “Things would sure be in a sorry state if good friends couldn’t stick together and help each other out,” Uncle Sagamore went on. “In all my dealin’s with the Shurf, I found him a honorable man that always keeps his word an’ never lets you down after he’s promised you somethin’, and I think all of us ort to go out on Tuesday and vote for him—”

  I was surprised at the Sheriff. His face had turned purple, and he was trying to fight his way through the crowd, but Booger had grabbed him, and then Otis, and it was all the two of ’em could do to hold him. “I’ll kill him!” he was screaming. “Let me go and I’ll kill him!” That was a fine way to act, I thought. There sure wasn’t anybody else had a good word to say for him, and you’d think he would appreciate it.

  But by now the whole place was in an uproar. Somebody threw a rock, and men was yelling at Uncle Sagamore, some for the Sheriff and some against him, and they was cussing each other and saying, “I told you so!” and “Shut up!” and three fist fights broke out. Way out on the upper edge of the crowd a man knocked another one down, and when the one on the ground got up he had a knife in his hand. The first one yanked open the door of his car, and pulled
out a shotgun.

  “Look out!” everybody yelled. The man with the knife tore out for the pines, and got to them just as the other man shot. It looked like he missed, and then they was both out of sight in the timber. The Sheriff and Booger and Otis charged up that way as hard as they could run, with the whole crowd behind ’em. I took out after them. Just as we got in the edge of the timber there was another shot, still fifty yards or more ahead of us, and then another one a little beyond that, but when we got up to where we thought it was we couldn’t find anybody. We all ran back and forth for a good ten minutes, searching to see if the man with the knife had been killed.

  “Does anybody know who they was?” the Sheriff asked.

  All the men thought about it and shook their heads. It seemed like there hadn’t been anybody close to them when the fight started and then what with all the uproar and confusion and both of ’em running the other way, nobody ever had seen their faces.

  Booger and Otis and the Sheriff looked at each other. And then Booger says, “Oh, my God!” and the Sheriff yelled, “The mash!”

  I was shuffled back at the start but began gaining ground and was laying third when we broke out of the timber and started charging down toward the barn. Pop and Uncle Sagamore was unscrewing another pipe on the machinery as unconcerned as if there never had been any uproar, and when we got closer we could see all eight of the tubs lined up against the wall with the sacks still over them. They was all right.

  Everybody looked kind of sheepish. Booger leaned against one of the posts, gasping for breath. Well—sure thought for a minute—”

  The Sheriff stepped over and lifted one of the sacks. He stared at the tub, and then ripped out an awful cuss word and yanked off two more sacks and stared, and slammed his hat on the ground. His mouth worked, but nothing would come out.

  I went over and looked. The tubs was still full, just the way we’d left them, but by golly the juice part had cleared up completely. There wasn’t a sign of a bubble now, and it didn’t smell sour at all.