Everything seemed to happen real fast then. Snookie McCallum—I mean, Mrs. Horne—had already run across and got in the car and was motioning for Curly to hurry. He trotted over, and just as he was getting in on the other side, another car whizzed in at the gate and came to a stop a little to this side of them, and almost at the same second Mrs. Horne got in gear and took off up the hill like a scared antelope, throwing up a big cloud of dust They went through the gate and out of sight.
Everybody was staring at the second car. A big red-faced man piled out almost before it stopped sliding. He looked mad as everything, and had a pistol stuck in the waistband of his pants. He yanked a girl out of the car and went charging toward the platform, kind of dragging her along by the wrist. Then he pulled out the gun and pointed it at Pop, and roared, “All right, come on down from there, Curly Minifee!”
The girl was trying to jerk loose. She yelled, “That ain’t him, Paw!”
“It ain’t?” the man barked, kind of puzzled. Then he pointed the gun at Uncle Sagamore, standing near the back of the platform. “Don’t tell me it’s that old bald-headed bastard!”
“I tell you it ain’t neither one of ’em,” the girl snapped. “He ain’t here.”
She seemed to be about 15. She was barefooted, and had on an old patched cotton dress that was way too short for her, but she was kind of pretty, with coal-black hair and blue eyes, even though her hair could stand a little combing. Then I began to have that funny feeling again.
“Says Curly Minifee right on that there sign!” the man barked, pointing at it with his pistol. He was about half-way up the steps now, still dragging the girl, and he roared at Pop, “I want that goddam Minifee! Where you hidin’ him?”
The whole crowd was just staring, with their mouths open. Pop had been absolutely flabbergasted at first, and scared, with that gun pointing at him, but now he’d got over it a little. He walked over toward the man. “Look here, mister,” he said in a loud voice, “I don’t know who you are, but if you’re some kind of a criminal that’s come here to start a ruckus at Mr. Minifee’s rally, I can tell you right now it’s a lucky thing for you he ain’t here.”
“Criminal!” the man roared. “Ill criminal you—!”
The girl looked around at all the crowd watching, and tried to yank her arm loose. I stared at her real hard, beginning to wonder if I’d gone crazy.
This one was Baby Collins.
“Mur—!” I said. He didn’t even tell me to hush this time; he just clapped his hand over my mouth. He was staring, absolutely fascinated.
“All right, where’d he duck out to this time?” the man barked at Pop.
“Mr. Minifee just happens to be talkin’ to the Governor of this state on the long-distance telephone,” Pop says. “An’ you’d be smart if you got back in your car with your young lady friend—”
Baby Collins gave another yank, and yelled, “You’re hurtin’ my arm, Paw!”
“An’ I’ll tell you somethin’ else,” Pop cut in, real quick, “Mr. Paul whatever-your-name-is. If you’ve kidnaped that there young girl, it ain’t goin’ to go easy with you—”
“Kidnaped?” the man roared. “This here girl’s my—”
Pop held up his hand and interrupted him. You watch your language, mister. I don’t care what kind of a word you’ve got for it, but there’s ladies present. An’ you ort to be ashamed of yourself, at your age. Why, that girl’s young enough to be your daughter.”
Uncle Sagamore had come over now. He pointed his finger at the man’s face, and says, “You ort to be horsewhipped right out of this county, that’s what you ort! A innocent young girl that prob’ly ain’t even 14 yet—”
“An’ when Curly Minifee takes office as Shurf of this county,” Pop warned him, “there sure won’t be no more of your kind of goin’s-on around here, I’ll tell you that!”
The man was almost purple-faced now, and pop-eyed, like he figured he’d wandered into a band of lunatics. He said a loud cuss word and charged back to his car, still dragging Baby Collins by the arm. They dusted up the hill and out of sight.
“Well sir,” Uncle Sagamore said. “It’s jest enough to make a man shudder. Place fillin’ up with white slavers—”
Pop nodded. “You sort of wonder what things are comin’ to, when a decent woman ain’t safe on the street. But I reckon that’s what comes of not havin’ any law-enforcement.”
“Oh, sweet and merciful Jesus!” Murph says, sort of strangling. He pulled a bottle of whiskey out of the glove compartment and had a drink. The crowd was buzzing and whispering. Uncle Sagamore came down from the platform, and Pop started to turn around to the microphone. And just then another car came down the hill and stopped. Everybody looked at it. I did too, but I was trying to keep an eye on Uncle Sagamore at the same time. He stopped, though, to see who was in the car.
I was positive I didn’t know this one. It was a kind of skinny man with a big red nose. He was dressed in a white suit, and he walked real straight, and sort of stiff-legged, like he was afraid he’d break if he bent anywhere. He went right up on the platform and shook hands with Pop and clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m sure sorry to be a few minutes late,” he says. “So I guess I’d better start right in, don’t you think?”
Pop looked at him kind of blank. Then he says, “Why—uh—sure. I reckon that would be the thing.”
The man stepped over to the microphone and put some papers on the little stand. “Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you’ll forgive me if I’ve delayed the proceedings, even for one minute. I seem to have taken a wrong turn coming in here, and had to backtrack.”
Pop and Uncle Sagamore looked at each other sort of puzzled, and then Pop went back to the bench and sat down. The man seemed to weave a little as he stood there, and he took hold of the stand. “And now,” he says, looking at the papers on it. “When I was asked by some of the supporters of Mr. Minifee if I would say a few words here today, they did me a very great honor. They didn’t ask me because I’m famous, or because I’m in politics, or because I’m rich. I’m not any of those things. I’m just a working man, like nearly all of you out there. They asked me simply because I know the man, and have all my life—and that’s the part of it I consider the honor.
“Why, I’m not any silver-tongued orator, I said; I don’t know how to put into words those qualities of honesty and integrity and courage that a man recognizes in another that he respects and admires. That’s all right, they said; we don’t want oratory, we don’t want high-flown phrases and flowery language, we merely want a simple, straightforward account of what you, man who has known him since childhood, think of Curly Minifee. All right, supporters of Curly Minifee; here it is. I think Curly Minifee s a great man!”
A big roar of cheers went up. The man weaved a little, and turned over a sheet of his paper and went on. “So in my simple way, all I can do is tell you the things about Curly Minifee that he might tell you about himself except that he’s too modest—”
He was as big a liar as Curly, I thought, and it was a tiresome bunch of hokum to listen to. I glanced around at Murph, and he seemed to be puzzled. Then I looked back for Uncle Sagamore. He was gone! He’d been standing right near the steps. I jumped out of the car, and looked all around, and then I saw him. He was down the hill, almost to the back of the crowd. Probably like Murph said, it was too late to warn him now, and I was so mixed up anyway I didn’t know what to think, but at least I could tell him about Harm and Curly. I took out after him.
He went on around the end of the crowd and past the barn and hog pen. He seemed to be headed for the fence and was going into the same part of the woods where I’d lost him before. That was sure funny, I thought. When I got through the fence I wasn’t very far behind him, and I could see him slipping through the trees. Then he stopped for a second and picked up something. By golly, it was his shotgun. And there was something in his other hand. That was a quart fruit jar. Then it dawned on me; that’s why he’d come out here the other
time—to leave that stuff so it’d be here when he wanted it. But what on earth for? He went on. I started to yell at him, and then decided I’d better not. The way he was easing along, you could see he was up to something, and he’d probably tan my pants if I started a racket. But I had to try to find out what was going on.
I never had been quite as mixed up in my life. If this was politics, I thought, they could have it. I could still hear the loudspeakers a little, even out here, with that man going yap, yap, yap, Curly Minifee this, Curly Minifee that. By the time we’d gone another hundred yards, though, it died out. That was a relief.
Then Uncle Sagamore just stopped. He sat down on a log, and I could see there was a little open space just beyond him, and there seemed to be a trail going through it. Then in a couple of minutes I heard some people walking, and looked off through the trees to my right. It was Mrs. Horne, Curly Minifee, and Harm. They was coming along the trail in single file. Then, just before they got to where Uncle Sagamore was, Harm stopped. He eased back a couple of steps, turned around, and ran back the way they’d come. Mrs. Horne and Curly went right on into the little open space.
“Why, if’n it ain’t Curly,” Uncle Sagamore says. “Sure didn’t expect to see you out here.”
When Curly whirled around and saw him sitting there with the shotgun across his knees, his eyes got big, and it looked like he couldn’t say anything at all. While they was all staring at each other like that, I slipped over to a down tree that was only a few feet from them. I could see fine there.
“You git a-holt of the Gov’nor all right?” Uncle Sagamore asked.
Curly mopped his face with his handkerchief. “Oh—uh—yeah.” Then the two of ’em noticed Harm wasn’t there, and they looked at each other a little relieved.
“How you happen to be out here?” Mrs. Horne asked.
“Oh,” Uncle Sagamore says. “I thought I seen that dirty dawg of a Harm Bledsoe snoopin’ around. But I reckon I was mistook. You folks ain’t seen nothin’ of him? Or would you know him?”
“N-no,” Curly says. Mrs. Horne shook her head.
Uncle Sagamore looked at the two of ’em, and chuckled. “Figgered you’d do a little sparkin’ while you had a spare moment, I reckon? Well, I sure don’t blame you. Used to be a great hand for sparkin’ the gals myself, in my younger days. Set, an’ we’ll have a drink.” He took the lid off the fruit jar and handed it to Mrs. Horne.
“Why, that’s sure neighborly of you, mister,” she says, and took a drink. She passed it to Curly. He took one. Then Uncle Sagamore. Then Mrs. Horne again. “Mmmm-uumm. Them’s real prime squeezin’s,” she says, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She sat down on the log, and held the jar out to Curly.
“Oh—uh—thanks just the same,” he says. “But I reckon we ought to get back.”
“Oh, everything’s goin’ along fine,” Uncle Sagamore says. “Sam’s playin’ some records on your Victorola dojigger for the folks. Ain’t no great rush.”
“Well—” Curly had a small drink. His face was getting flushed, like it had those other times. Uncle Sagamore had one. And then Mrs. Horne. I couldn’t make any sense out of it, myself. Curly said, no, he thought he’d had enough.
Uncle Sagamore broke the shotgun kind of absent-minded, slipped the shells out, dropped ’em back, and closed it again, and sat there flipping the safety catch back and forth. “Can’t figger why that Harm Bledsoe’d be crazy enough to go sneakin’ around out here. You sure you folks didn’t see him anywheres?”
“Uh—” Curly says. He looked at the shotgun with sweat breaking out on his face.
“Oh, hell, that’s right,” Uncle Sagamore said. “You wouldn’t know him if you did see him. But drink up an’ pass it along. Man out sparkin’ the gals always needs three or four good jolts to give him that ol’ zing. Take a real one.”
Curly took one. He was beginning to look glassy-eyed. One more, I thought, and he wouldn’t be able to hit the ground with his hat. He sure didn’t have any business trying to drink with Uncle Sagamore.
Uncle Sagamore had another one, and passed the jar to Mrs. Horne. And while she had it tilted up, I saw her wink. It was the first time she’d let on that she even knew him. “Well sir,” she says, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, “I jest don’t know when I’ve throwed a lip over any roastin’-ear wine as smooth as that.” She passed it to Curly. “Belt it, Lover-lips. We got a lot of sparkin’ to do.”
I couldn’t get the point of all this drinking, so I slipped out and started back to see what Pop was doing. And by the time I got to the fence, doggone if I couldn’t hear that same man still going yap, yap, yap, about the great Curly Minifee. He sure was long-winded.
I was just going past the hog pen when for a second I thought I saw Harm again. Up by the turpentine machinery, the Sheriff and Booger and Otis was all gathered around some man I couldn’t make out, but it looked like Harm’s khaki shirt in the middle of the cluster. But that was silly, I decided. He’d have better sense than to come back here after the narrow escape he’d just had. One second later spotting Uncle Sagamore on that log, and he’d have been picking buckshot out of his hunkers for a month.
Just before I got up to the car the crowd roared out another big cheer over something the man said. I slipped into the seat and looked up at the platform. He was still weaving and holding onto the little stand while he read his notes, and Pop was standing to one side kind of beaming at everybody over all the nice things he was saying about Curly.
Murph was still puzzled. “I haven’t figured the angle on this joker,” he says, like he was talking to himself. “Seems to be giving Curly the standard build-up. If he’d been there, God could have taken the other six days off too, and gone to Palm Springs—that routine.”
I started to tell him about Uncle Sagamore and the others, but he says, “Shhhh. I think he’s about to wind up.”
“—Curly Minifee, the straight-shooter, the undaunted champion of the little man—!”
The crowd let out a roar.
“—Curly Minifee, the deep student of human affairs, and courageous fighter for human decency, and dignity—!”
Another roar.
He clutched his papers in his left hand and waved them in the air while his voice grew louder and louder. “—and so, ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to present to you that man loved by everyone, honor student, Rhodes Scholar, fighter pilot, war hero, devoted family man, your next Sheriff, and my lifelong friend and neighbor—Curly Minifee!” Then he threw his arm across Pop’s shoulder and waved at the crowd.
Well, for a second you could have heard a pin drop. The man looked startled, and then kind of blank, and turned around to Pop. Pop gulped a couple of times and got red in the face. Then he managed to work up a kind of sick grin, and said into the microphone, “Uh—I reckon, folks, that there’s the mark of true greatness in a man. We all feel like we know him. I feel that way myself, like I’d knowed Curly Minifee all my life—”
Then the uproar broke loose. There was boos and yells and whistles. “What the hell is this?” somebody roared. “What’s going on here?” Pop was still trying to talk, but they kept drowning him out. The man couldn’t seem to figure it out; he looked mad, and he was holding his papers in front of Pop’s face and slapping at them with his other hand like he wanted Pop to see for himself if he hadn’t said it all exactly the way it was written down. Then he threw up his hands in disgust and walked off.
Murph took another drink. Then he shook his head sort of weak, and said, “Oh, brother! And wait’ll the snapper starts to soak in.”
“What?” I asked.
“You catch? That has to be the guy Curly was waiting for when he was stalling.”
FIFTEEN
THE CROWD WAS STILL mad and yelling. You could see they wanted to blame Pop for the whole thing, even though he didn’t seem to have any more to do with it than they did. “Where’s Curly?” they began to yell. “Why ain’t Curly back?”
br /> Then, off to one side, a loud voice roared, “Mebbe he’s been captured by the white-slavers!” There was some laughs, and a lot of others yelled, “Shut up!”
Pop kept looking up toward the gate kind of frantic, like he wished Curly would come on, and he says into the microphone, “He’ll be along any minute now, folks. Likely the Governor had a lot of things on his mind—”
Then somebody shouted, “What you got to do with this? And why ain’t Miss Emily up there? She was supposed to be here today!”
Pop leaped at that. He seemed to be real anxious to get somebody up there that might quiet ’em down. “Is there a Miss Emily in the audience?” he says into the microphone. “We’d all be more than happy to hear a few words from her.”
A man came up on the platform and whispered to him. Pop nodded several times, beginning to look happier. Then he turned to the microphone, and says, “Folks, we are lucky. It seems like Miss Emily is from Curly’s home community, and was one of his first schoolteachers and has knowed him since he was a baby. He invited her up here today, and she’s right out there in a car now.”
There was a few cheers at this, and the crowd began to quiet down. Pop and the man came down from the platform and went over to a car that was parked close by. They came back with her, one on each side, helping her along like she was made out of glass. Miss Emily was a tall, thin, real dignified old lady with snow-white hair that was gathered in a bun at the back of her neck. She had on steel-rimmed glasses that was kind of tinted, and she was dressed up to beat everything, in a dark skirt and a white blouse with a high collar, and some pearls, and there was a single fur skin of some kind draped across her shoulder. You could see she was real important.
They’d just gone up the steps when Uncle Sagamore showed up. He was alone, and I wondered what had happened to Mrs. Horne and Curly. Pop explained who Miss Emily was, and you could see Uncle Sagamore was real proud and happy to have her up there. He took her other arm, and the man left. They went over to the microphone, and Pop announced to the crowd, “Miss Emily says she doesn’t feel very strong and can only say a few words. So, folks, I think we owe her a great big hand for her courage and her devotion to Curly Minifee in making this long trip today.”