I was just about to go look for Pop and see if he’d give me some money for the shooting gallery, when a man got up on the stage. There was a microphone on a stand in the middle of it, and he walked over to it and whistled. The big loudspeakers on both sides of the stage went, Wheet! Wheet! Then five girls come out of the doorway of the tent and up the steps of the stage. They lined up behind the man. They was real pretty, and didn’t have hardly anything on in the way of clothes.
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” the man with the microphone started to say, but there was so much racket he had to stop.
Everybody around me was yelling. Some of ‘em was shouting, “Hooray! Bring on the girls!” and “Shut up and let ‘em dance!” But some more was yelling, “Hey, what the hell is this? What about Choo-Choo?”
“The whole thing looks like a fake,” another man yelled.
“I bet she ain’t even been here,” somebody else says.
The uproar was getting real bad now. And then suddenly Pop was up on the stage beside the man with the microphone. He eased the man out of the way and started talking.
“Men,” he says, “I been asked to make an announcement. I’m Sam Noonan, an’ it was my little boy Billy that was with Miss Caroline when them gangsters attacked her. She saved his life, men.”
They kept yelling.
“The hell with that.”
“Where is she now? How come we can’t find her?”
“What kind of sellout is this, anyway?”
“It’s a racket.”
“Get outta the way, you jerk, so we can see the girls.”
“Shut up and let him talk. Maybe we’ll find something out.”
Pop held up his hands for them to be quiet. “Just listen for a minute and I can answer all your questions. You read in the papers and heard on the radio how they been looking for her in twenty-three states because she was a witness in a big murder in New Orleans, an’ how she was hiding out right here on this farm. Of course, we didn’t even know who she was until the day the gangsters got her an’ opened up on her an’ my son Billy.” The noise was dying down now.
Somebody yelled, “Let him talk.”
Pop kind of gulped, like he had a catch in his throat. “Well sir, men,” he went on. That there girl, Miss Choo-Choo Caroline, is lost right here on this farm somewhere—and men, she saved my son’s life. I want her found, so I can thank her.” He kind of broke down then, and had to wait a minute before he could go on.
“What she done, men, was the bravest thing I ever heard of in my life. But wait a minute, everybody. Wait a minute. I see my son down there in the crowd right now, and I’m goin’ to let him tell you in his own words. Billy, will you come up here? Make way there, men, and let him through.”
I gulped down the last of my hamburger and started towards the stage. Everybody moved aside to let me through. When I got to it, Pop leaned down and caught my hands to lift me up, and there I was right in front of everybody. He put an arm across my shoulders. The crowd let out a cheer.
“Now, son,” he says, pulling me over in front of the microphone and lowering it a little, “I want you to tell everybody out there what a heroic thing that girl done, savin’ your life, an’ how much you think of her.”
I started out. I told ‘em how we was swimming and how the water suddenly started getting chewed up all around us with that noise the guns was making on the other bank. And when I was telling how she caught me by the neck and pulled me under the water and towed us along till we was under the bushes, I looked around and doggone if Pop wasn’t crying. He was trying to hold back the tears, kind of gulping like he was swallowing something too big for his throat, and then at last he had to haul out his handkerchief and dab at his eyes. When I finished up everybody was cheering and waving their hats.
“We’ll find her, Billy,” they yelled.
Pop took hold of the microphone again, and had to clear his throat a couple of times before he could talk. “There you are, men,” he says. “That’s the kind of girl Miss Choo-Choo Caroline is. Besides bein’ one of the most beautiful women that ever lived, she’s one of the bravest. An’ now she’s been lost down there in that wild river bottom for over eighteen hours with hardly a stitch of clothes on, nor nothin’ but that little patch of diamond-covered ribbon half the size of your hand, with the mosquitoes bitin’ her all over that lovely body an’ brambles scratchin’ her on the legs, an’ nothin’ to keep the night chill off. We got to find her, men. We just got to find her.”
The crowd let out a big roar then. It was getting bigger all the time. Then I saw Uncle Sagamore coming up on the stage.
Pop went on. “An’ now here’s my brother Sagamore, that’s in charge of the search. He’s been up all night without a wink of sleep, goin’ back and forth across that bottom tryin’ to find her. And he ain’t goin’ to give up as long as there’s a breath left in his body. He knows the river bottom like you know the palm of your hand, and he’ll tell you anything you want to know about it.”
Everybody cheered Uncle Sagamore. He took hold of the microphone and shifted his tobacco over into the other cheek, and says, “Well sir, men, I ain’t no hand at makin’ speeches. You all know that. I’m just goin’ to tell you I appreciate you comin’ out to help an’ I know you’re going to be just like me. You’re goin’ to be right here, by hell, till that girl is found.
“Now, naturally, a man can’t look all the time. We wouldn’t expect him to. He’s got to have a little rest now an’ then, so there’s refreshment up here, and entertainment for when you get tired.”
* * *
There was a big commotion up the hill then, in that jam of cars just this side of the gate. And just as I looked, three big hound dogs came lunging through the last row of cars and into the open section of the road. They was yanking along some man that had hold of their leashes, and then they gave a big lunge and pulled him off his feet. He slid along on his stomach for maybe his own length before he could get up, and when he did and I got a look at his face, doggone if it wasn’t the sheriff. He was dusty and sweaty and limping a little, and his face was purple. It looked like he was cussing the dogs or something, but they was baying and the loudspeakers was going on with Uncle Sagamore’s speech, so you couldn’t be sure. Behind him was another man with three more of the big, long-eared dogs.
They come on down and hit the edge of the crowd and began pushing their way through, being more or less pulled along by the bloodhounds or whatever they was. Just as they got down in front of the stage, Uncle Sagamore looked out and saw them.
“Well sir, by golly,” he says into the microphone. “Here’s the shurf. He’s come to help us. It’s just like I was sayin’, men, he might be a little late gettin’ on the job, but I knowed he wouldn’t let us down.”
The sheriff got the dogs stopped. He looked up at us on the stage and at the five naked girls behind us, and he pointed at Uncle Sagamore with his mouth open and his face as purple as a ripe plum, but you couldn’t tell whether he was saying anything or not.
“I always said that shurf was a damn good man,” Uncle Sagamore went on, “an’ I tell you right now there wasn’t never the slightest doubt in my mind that he’d come here sooner or later an’ help us out in our hour of need. I got to admit, though, that it does seem to me like it was kind of cheap of the shurf’s office not to offer no more than a little old measly five-hundred-dollar reward for that girl. I’d be the last one in the world to find fault, but it does seem to me they could of made it at least a thousand.”
The crowd let out another big cheer.
Uncle Sagamore finished up. “Well, I ain’t goin’ to stand here an’ jaw at you fellers all day. You don’t want to look at no homely old bastard like me, with all them pretty girls up here to dance for you. So I thank you kindly.”
He stepped away from the microphone and the man came back. “All right, folks,” he says, “now we’ll give you a little sample of the stupendous show you’ll see inside the tent. So step right up and
get your ticket. Only one dollar—”
Music blared out of the loudspeaker then and we all got down off the stage so the girls could dance. It was real pretty to watch. They kicked their legs up high and wiggled all over.
Men was pushing around the little stand to buy tickets. I followed Pop and Uncle Sagamore down towards the house. The Sheriff was shoving his way through the crowd with the dogs, and I could see he was trying to catch up with us. I caught Uncle Sagamore’s arm.
“I think the sheriff wants to see you,” I says.
He stopped. “Why, sure,” he says. We was under the big tree near Mrs. Home’s shiny trailer.
The sheriff come up. He handed the leashes of the three hounds to the other man to hold.
He waved his hand, sort of. “Sagamore Noonan—” he says. He rubbed both hands across his face and tried again. “Sagamore Noonan—” It seemed like that was as far as he could get. He was breathing real hard.
Uncle Sagamore leaned against the tree and shifted his tobacco over into his other cheek real thoughtful. “Why, yes, Shurf,” he says. “Did you want to talk to me?”
The sheriff says, “—ffffftt—sshhh—ffffttt—”
It reminded me of when he tried to open the jar of tannery juice and spilled it all over his clothes. It looked like the words was all jammed up inside him and he couldn’t get ‘em turned length-wise so they would come out. He reached in the pocket of his coat and brought out something. It was two things, really. One of em was a copy of the hand bill me and Pop had printed up, and the other was a folded newspaper. He held the newspaper out in front of Uncle Sagamore with one hand and started slapping the front of it with the other, still not saying words but just going on with that sort of wheezing. I stood on tiptoes and craned my neck a little so I could see the front of the paper. And doggone if it wasn’t a real big picture of Miss Harrington. I mean Miss Caroline. She didn’t have anything on but her diamonds, but this time there was three patches of them. She was posed in front of a great big fan or something that looked like it was made out of ostrich feathers. And it seemed like the whole first page of the paper was about her. The headline said:
SOUGHT IN WILDS...
SCANTILY CLAD DANCER
OBJECT OF FRENZIED SEARCH
I tried to read what it said, but the way the sheriff was waving it around and slapping it with his other hand I couldn’t get any more than snatches of it. “...most fantastic manhunt in history... Wild confusion... Stampede fanned by rumors of reward... The already fabulous Choo-Choo Caroline, beautiful missing witness in gangland murder case...sweetheart of late gang leader...alleged to have fled almost nude into swamp...”
I didn’t know what a lot of the big words meant, but it sure looked as if everybody was interested in her.
Uncle Sagamore took the paper out of the sheriff’s hand and studied it. “Well sir,” he says, “that there’s a right nice picture of her, ain’t it, Shurf?”
The sheriff took another deep breath. He rubbed both hands up over his face and then down again, and this time the log jam of words inside him got straightened out and he began talking. It wasn’t loud, or anything. He talked real calm and low, like a man that was trying to hold his breath at the same time he was saying words. It was more like a whisper.
“Sagamore Noonan,” he says, “if there was any way the moral law would let me, I’d pull a gun right here an’ kill you. I’d shoot you, an’ then I’d go running up the road laughing like a hyena, an’ they’d let me go. They wouldn’t do a thing to me. At the very worse they’d just lace me up in a straitjacket or put me in a padded cell, an’ I’d have all the rest of my life with nothing to do but just stand there with my head stuck out through the bars and laugh about never being the sheriff again of a county that had you in it.”
“Listen,” he says, still whispering. “They got all the highway patrol cars in this end of the state out there on that road south of town, tryin’ to untangle the snarl. It’ll be two o’clock this afternoon before they can get any traffic across it. That’s just the highway. From here out to the highway, there’s four solid miles of abandoned cars jammed bumper to bumper in the road. They just got out and left ‘em, and took the keys. You can’t get round ‘em, and you can’t move ‘em without a wrecker—or twenty wreckers. And we can’t even get the wreckers to ‘em until they get that highway open.
“I walked in here from two miles this side of town. That’s the only way you can get in here, or out. The woods is swarming with newspaper reporters and photographers and radio news people that tried to make it on foot and got lost.”
He took another deep breath, and went on, “There’s whole towns as far as fifty miles from here that ain’t got a man left in ‘em. The stores are closed. The buses have stopped running. Construction jobs are deserted. Whole communities is empty except for women and the women is raving. I got relays of girls answering the phone, tryin’ to tell people there ain’t been any reward offered for that girl. Ain’t none of ‘em been able to stick it out more’n two hours. They can’t stand the language.
“And now that you’ve turned this place into a honky tonk, I never will get ‘em out of here until we find that there girl and show ‘em she’s been found. They wouldn’t leave, even if they could get there cars out.”
Uncle Sagamore pursed his lips like he was going to spit, only he didn’t, and he rubbed his chin real thoughtful. “Well, Shurf,” he says. “That’s what we’re all tryin’ to do, find that there girl. Why don’t we just all pitch in together an’ look for her? We been waitin’ all day for you to get down here on the job an’ do somethin’ about tryin’ to locate her.”
“You—you—” the sheriff says. He was beginning to fizz and sputter again.
“Why, shucks,” Uncle Sagamore went on. “I don’t see nothin’ for us to do, but keep on looking. You got lots of help. An’ it don’t seem to me like you’d want to start raisin’ no stink about the reward. You want to have all them people goin’ around sayin’ mebbe that shurf don’t even care whether that there girl’s found or not? Why, they might get real violent.”
The sheriff lunged out and caught the leashes of the other three hounds. “Give me them dogs,” he snarled at the man. “Let’s go.” Then he looked around at me. “Billy, you come along and show us where you hid in them ferns.”
The dogs barked. They had a real deep, rumbling sort of bark. They lunged on the leashes and almost pulled the sheriff off his feet again.
“Damn it—” he says.
And just then there was another voice behind us. We whirled around and Baby Collins was standing in the door of the trailer, leaning against the door frame with a cigarette in her hand. She was wearing a wrap-around sort of thing made out of some lacy black stuff you could see right through, with one bare leg slanting a little out of the front of it.
“Hi, honey,” she says to the sheriff. “Why don’t you tie up your dogs and come in out of the sun? We’ll open a box of cornflakes.”
Sixteen
The sheriff got a little darker red in the face, and Uncle Sagamore says to Baby Collins, “I’d like to make you acquainted with the shurf. He’s a real busy man, though.”
“Oh,” she says. “That’s too bad. But I’m glad to meet you, sheriff. Drop in and see us any time you’re out this way, and bring your scrabble board.”
She smiled at all of us and went back to the trailer.
The big hounds was lunging on the leashes again, about to pull the sheriff over, and there was so much uproar when he finally was able to talk again you couldn’t tell whether it was Uncle Sagamore he was cussing or the dogs. Sig Freed got mixed up in it too. He’d bark at the hounds and then run around in a circle and jump up on me, just to be sure I was still there to back him up in case they got mad. Any one of ‘em could have swallowed him with one bite.
We started off down past the house, but all of a sudden the sheriff stopped. “Oh, hell,” he says. “We got to have something of hers for the dawgs to get the
scent.”
“That’s right,” the other man says. It was the first time he’d even opened his mouth. I guess he was a new deputy. He was a kind of sandy-haired man with a long neck and weak blue eyes.
The sheriff waved an arm. “Run up there to that trailer they was livin’ in and see if you can find a pair of her shoes, or some clothes. The trailer’s off there somewhere in that mess of cars.”
“Hey wait,” I says. “I just remember Uncle Sagamore had had some clothes of hers last night. “Uncle Sagamore had—”
The whole thing happened so fast then it was like something blowing up in your face. I think Sig Freed was starting to leap up on me again, or was already in the air, but anyway Pop lunged and grabbed me and hoisted me up, and at the same time he cried, “Did you see that? That dam’ dawg tried to bite Billy—”
“He did?” Uncle Sagamore says. He made a lunge at Sig Freed and waved his hat at him. “Git. Shoo! Scat, you goddam dawg!”
Everybody was excited and yelling. The sheriff says, “What the hell?” I tried to tell Pop that Sig Freed wasn’t trying to bite, that he was just playing, but his hand was over my mouth the way he was holding me, and then he was running towards the house with me on his shoulder, yelling, “We better see if he broke the skin. Might have hydrophoby.”
He was cussing Sig Freed so loud all the time he was running I couldn’t get him to understand that I was all right, even if he hadn’t had my face pressed against his shoulder so I couldn’t talk clear. He ran up on the porch and went into the bedroom, and put me down on the bed.
“Here,” he says, all excited, pulling up my pants leg. “Let me see where it was! Doggone that dawg! I knowed all the time you couldn’t trust him.”
“Pop,” I says, “for the love of Pete, I been trying to tell you. He didn’t bite me. He didn’t even try. He was just playing.”
He stared at me with his mouth open. “Oh,” he says. He took out his handkerchief then and mopped his face. “Whew! Sure give me a scare, anyway. You’re sure you’re all right!”