Uncle Sagamore and His Girls

  “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—”

  Booger nodded. “Yeah. Come to think of it, what you suppose this hawg wire is for?” r />
  Before the Sheriff could answer, a man come down the hill in a wagon. It was Mr. Jimerson, that lives out on the sand road between here and the highway. He had on a big floppy straw hat, and he looked kind of tired and dejected, like he always does. He stopped the mules in front of the shed, and they let their ears droop and went to sleep in the hot sun while he climbed down over the front wheel.

  “Mornin’, Shurf,” he says. He looked at all the stuff under the shed like it didn’t make any difference to him, and then walked over and stood up one of the rolls of hog fencing.

  “Now what you doin’ over here, Marvin?” the Sheriff asked.

  Mr. Jimerson took out his tobacco and bit off a chew. He studied about it for a minute, and then he says, “He hawr’d me to build him a hawg-pen.”

  “A hawg-pen?” the Sheriff asked. “Why, he ain’t got no hawgs.”

  Mr. Jimerson spit, and shook his head. “Nope. Not fur as I know.” He kind of slouched around to the front of the barn and opened the door. He stepped in. We heard him scratching around in the hay. In a minute he come out.

  “What was you looking for in there?” the Sheriff asked.

  “Two-by-fours,” Mr. Jimerson says.

  The Sheriff stared at him. “What?”

  “He wants me to build him a shed too,” Mr. Jimerson says. “He said I’d find the two-by-fours hid under the hay inside the barn. I was jest checkin’ to be sure they was there.”

  The Sheriff sighed, and sat looking down at the ground. “You see what I mean, Booger?” he says, sort of hopeless. “He ain’t got no hawgs, so he’s havin’ a hawg-pen built. And ever’thing you need to make moonshine is lyin’ right out here in the open where anybody can see it, but something perfectly harmless like two-by-four lumber is hid under the hay so people won’t know about it.”

  SIX

  ALL OF A SUDDEN he got red in the face and he jumped up and caught Mr. Jimerson by the front of his overalls. “Marvin Jimerson,” he yelled. “You tell me what the hell’s goin’ on here! What’s Sagamore Noonan up to this time—?”

  Mr. Jimerson just looked at him and waited till he run out of breath. “Shucks, Shurf,” he says, kind of dejected, “you ort to know it ain’t no use askin’ anybody what Sagamore Noonan’s up to.”

  The Sheriff got hold of hisself then. “I’m sorry, Marvin,” he says. He patted Mr. Jimerson on the shoulder. “My nerves is jest shot to hell. Of course you don’t know what he’s doin’. If you could figure that out, you’d be as crooked as he is.”

  “Sheriff,” I said, “I think I know why the two-by-fours are hid under the hay. It’s so Uncle Finley won’t find ’em and nail ’em in the ark.”

  Mr. Jimerson nodded. “That’s right, Shurf. Any lumber you bring out here, you either got to hide it or set on it.”

  The Sheriff took a deep breath. “All right,” he says. “But what does he want with a hawg-pen and a shed?”

  “He didn’t say,” Mr. Jimerson told him. “He jest stopped at the house early this mornin’ and hawr’d me to build ’em. Paid me five dollars.”

  The Sheriff stopped him. “He’s already paid you? You mean Sagamore Noonan—?”

  Mr. Jimerson nodded like he wasn’t quite sure he believed it either. “That’s what he done, Shurf. After he left, I talked it over with Prudy. She says there’s bound to be a trick in it somewheres, but when I takened the money to town and showed it to Clovis Buckhalter at the bank, he said it was a real five-dollar bill. So I put it in the bank, an’ Clovis give me a receipt.” He took the receipt out of his pocket and looked at it like he wanted to be sure it was still there. “You don’t reckon there’s no way he can beat me out of it now, do you, Shurf?” he asked.

  The Sheriff rubbed his chin. “I don’t know of none, Marvin. But if it was me, I’d spend it as soon as I could. But whereabouts are you goin’ to build this shed?”

  Mr. Jimerson pointed out in the open just up the hill from us. “Right out there somewheres. He says to line up the back corner of the house with that spring off to the left up there on the hill, and dig down, and I’d find a pipe just under the ground—”

  “Pipe?” the Sheriff asked.

  “Hey,” Booger says, sort of excited, “that’d be the old water supply for that still he had set up in the back room of the house. Remember?”

  “By God, yes,” the Sheriff says. “What about the pipe, Marvin?”

  “Why, he told me to build the shed right a-straddle of it,” Mr. Jimerson said.

  “Oh,” the Sheriff says. “He wants the water for the hawgs? Is that it?”

  Mr. Jimerson looked at him kind of funny. “Why, Shurf, he ain’t got no hawgs.”

  The Sheriff took off his hat and mopped his forehead real slow and careful. “I mean, he wants the water for the hawg-pen?”

  Mr. Jimerson studied about it. “Why, I reckon not. Why would anybody want water in a hawg-pen without no hawgs in it?”

  The Sheriff seemed to be breathing kind of hard. He opened his mouth, but he didn’t say anything.

  “That’s jest be a foolishness,” Mr. Jimerson went on, like he was having a hard time explaining it to him. “I mean, pipin’ water into a empty hawg-pen.”

  “Ffffssshhh—!” the Sheriff says.

  “And, anyway,” Mr. Jimerson says, “the hawg-pen won’t be up there nohow. It goes out there back of the barn, around that chinaberry tree.”

  “Well, look,” Booger says, “he must want that water for something—”

  The Sheriff got tracked at last. “Goddammit!” he yelled. “Let’s get out of here before we go completely nuts!” They went back to the car, and it dusted up the hill and out of sight.

  I went on shelling corn. Mr. Jimerson took some post-hole diggers out of the wagon and went out to the chinaberry tree beyond the back end of the barn. He started digging the holes and tamping in the posts. In a little while he had ’em all set, and he unrolled the wove wire and nailed it on. It wasn’t a very big pen, about 20 feet on a side. Then he went off about fifty yards above the barn and dug around until he located the pipe. He set four posts there, longer ones that was about eight feet tall when he tamped ’em in. Then he nailed the two-by-fours around the upper ends and another one across the top for a ridgepole, and covered it with tin roofing that he found in the barn. I went up and looked at it while he was gathering up his tools. It was a kind of rickety-looking shed, but it kept the sun off you, and I reckoned it would stand up if we didn’t have a really hard wind. It was about twelve feet square.

  “What you reckon he wants it for?” I asked Mr. Jimerson.

  He bit off a chew of tobacco and studied about it for awhile. “Ain’t no tellin’,” he says. He got in the wagon and drove off.

  When noon came I went over to the kitchen and had a baloney sandwich, and then started back on the corn again. I had two gunny sacks full now. It sure puzzled me what kind of business Pop and Uncle Sagamore could be going into to need all this stuff and a shed with a water pipe, and I wished they’d get back so I could maybe find out. In about a half hour I heard a car turn in up at the gate. But it wasn’t them. It was a beat-up old Ford. It drove on down and two men got out.

  “Hello,” I says.

  “Howdy,” they said. They stood there staring at all the stuff like they couldn’t believe it. Then one of them says, “Well, if that don’t beat anything I ever seen. Right out in broad daylight.”

  The other one shook his head. “And that Shurf jest a-rarin’ fer a chanct to put him in jail before election. You reckon he’s lost his mind, Rupert?”

  Just then another car drove down the hill. It had one man in it. He got out and stared at the stuff too. “I heered about it, but I didn’t believe it,” he said.

  “What seems to be the trouble?” I asked.

  None of them said anything. They looked at each other, and got back in their cars and drove off. I went on shelling corn. There was two more cars in the next hour, and all the men acted the same way. It sure was funny, I thou
ght. Then in about a half hour Pop and Uncle Sagamore got back. They hadn’t bought anything this time, though; the truck was empty. They looked at the shed and the hog pen, and then got some buckets and started shelling corn too. I told them about the Sheriff being here, and the other people.

  “Well, is that a fact?” Uncle Sagamore says.

  “They sure seemed to be interested in what we was doin’,” I says. “What kind of business are we in, anyway?”

  Uncle Sagamore studied about it. “Well, we’re sort of thinkin’ about a couple of things. Taxes bein’ what they are, man’s got to have several arns in the fahr jest to stay alive.”

  He didn’t say any more. With all three of us working, it wasn’t long before we had five sacks of shelled corn. “That ort to do for a start,” he says. He loaded the sacks in the truck and drove off.

  “Now,” Pop says. “We got to have some hot water.”

  We built up a fire in the kitchen stove and put a washtub on it and filled it with water from the well. Pop said it would take more, so we started a fire around Aunt Bessie’s big washpot out in the back yard, and filled that too. It was sure beginning to look interesting. By the time the water was good and hot, Uncle Sagamore got back. They unloaded the five sacks of corn, and doggone if it hadn’t been ground up into meal.

  “Now, you just stay out of the way, Billy,” Pop says. “And keep that dawg from underfoot.”

  I called Sig Freed and sat down on a box and watched, trying to figure out what they was going to do. First, they set the eight wooden tubs in a row against the wall. Then Uncle Sagamore opened some of the sacks of sugar, and started measuring sugar and corn meal into the tubs while Pop brought hot water from the house. When they got the first tub full, they found an old stick and stirred it.

  Just then there was a car come down the hill from the gate. It looked like one of those that had been here before, only this time there was more men in it. And right behind it was another one. They stopped in front of the barn and men started getting out. There must have been ten, at least. They all stared at Pop and Uncle Sagamore and the tubs.