We was filling up the second box when we began hearing cars outside.
‘All right, I think we got enough,’ Pop says. ‘Put out the lantern.’
I blew it out, and we went outside. Pop closed the door. There was three cars parked just up the hill from the front yard, and another one was coming. In its headlights I could see one of the others was a sound truck, with a big loudspeaker mounted on top. Men began to get out and light lanterns.
‘Which way?’ a man yells at Pop.
Pop was standing in a headlight beam. He swung his arm and pointed towards the bottom. ‘Down there,’ he says.
Men started hurrying down the hill, running around the corners of the house and out towards the cornfield with their lanterns. ‘Hey, you guys, wait for me,’ others was calling out from the cars.
Pop lit a cigar. ‘Sure is a enthusiastic search party,’ he says. ‘But they’re goin’ to need help. I can just feel it.’
The loudspeaker on the truck began to make noise. It let out a big blast and says, ‘Wheeeet! Wheeeet! Testing, one, two, three, four. Testing. Up this way, Miss Caroline. Follow the music’
It started playing a record. It was sure loud. I reckon you could of heard it over a mile.
‘Hey, Pop,’ I says. ‘That’ll bring her in in no time, if she can still walk. That’s a good idea.’
‘Sure is.’ Pop nodded his head. ‘But it’s a awful big bottom down there. Three or four miles across. Even so, they ort to find her by daylight.’
‘Reckon we ought to go ahead and distribute them hand bills?’ I asked.
‘Oh, sure,’ he says. ‘Got to do everything we can to help out. By the way, though, if I was you I wouldn’t mention nothing about them to the shurf. Them beaurocrats always want to run things their own way, an’ they get all fussed when somebody like a ordinary citizen tries to help out.’
‘Sure,’ I says. ‘I won’t say nothing.’
All the men was gone from the cars now except the one playing the records in the sound truck. Pop reached in the trailer and took out the two boxes of hand bills and carried them up to our car.
Just as we was putting them in the seat Uncle Sagamore rode up on his mule. I could just barely see him in the dark. He had to get down to talk, because the record playing in the sound truck made so much noise.
‘You about ready to go, Sam?’ he asked.
‘Just startin’ now,’ Pop says. ‘How is the search goin’?’
‘I made one sweep down across the bottom an’ back, but didn’t see a sign of her. Didn’t even see any of the searchers. Lots of ground down there.’
Pop got in the car and leaned his head out the window. ‘They’re goin’ to need all the help they can get, an’ that’s a fact,’ he says. ‘By the way, here’s one of the hand bills.’
Uncle Sagamore struck a match and read it. ‘Hmmm,’ he says. ‘Sure got a nice ring to it. Matter of fact, I reckon you better get everybody lined up an’ tell ’em to be in here by daylight, before you throw many of them things around. Might not even get in, if they don’t hurry.’
‘Can I go with you, Pop?’ I asked.
They both turned around like they’d forgot I was there. ‘Say,’ Pop says, ‘you go on up there and unroll your bed and get some sleep.’
‘But Pop—’
‘You do like I tell you. And don’t you go off down in that bottom any more. I’ll bring you some jaw-breakers.’
‘All right,’ I says. I went back and sat down on the step with Sig Freed. Pop and Uncle Sagamore talked for about five minutes more, and then Pop drove off. Uncle Sagamore came back down through the yard, leading the mule. He sat down on the step next to me to rest for a minute.
‘You might as well go to bed,’ he says. ‘Ain’t no use you stayin’ up.’
Just then Uncle Finley came tearing out through the door in his nightshirt. He was barefooted, and his bald head was shining in the lamplight coming through the window.
‘What’s that there awful racket?’ he yells. ‘How’s a man goin’ to get any sleep, with all that bellerin’ an’ screechin’?’
Uncle Sagamore spit real careful and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Why, that there’s just the shurf’s sound truck, Finley,’ he says. ‘Ain’t nothin’ to get excited about. Seems like there’s a nakid cooch dancer wanderin’ around out there an’ he’s tryin’ to toll her in.’
‘I knowed it,’ Uncle Finley says. ‘Just what you’d expect around this here place. Nothin’ but sin. Everybody’s goin’ to drowned. Cooch dancers runnin’ in an’ out of the bushes a-shakin’ theirselves at people, an’ horns a-honkin’ all hours of the day an’ night so decent people can’t sleep. It’s a comin’. The day’s a comin’, an’ it ain’t goin’ to be long. You’re gonna see ’em come pourin’ in here beggin’ to be let aboard, but I ain’t going to take ’em, Not a one.’
‘Well sir,’ Uncle Sagamore says, ‘that sure is rough on the rest of us, but if that’s the way you and the Vision got her figured, I reckon that’s the way it’s got to be. If it was me, though, doggone if I wouldn’t try to squeeze over and make room for that there cooch dancer, anyway. She wouldn’t take up much space, an’ she could sit in your lap.’
Uncle Finley says, ‘Hmmmmmph!’ and went back in the house.
Uncle Sagamore got on his mule and went back around the house towards the bottom. The sound truck went on playing music, and every once in a while the man would talk into the microphone. ‘This way, Miss Caroline. Follow the sound.’
Then there would be another record.
I stretched out on my bedroll and tried to get some sleep, but the loudspeaker made so much noise I didn’t have any luck. I got to worrying about Miss Harrington, down there all alone and scared, with her feet sore and the mosquitoes biting her, and that didn’t help any either. But I’d promised Pop I wouldn’t go back and look for her any more tonight, so I didn’t. I would of gone anway in spite of the promise, if I’d thought it would do any good, but I didn’t see how I could find her if over twenty men couldn’t.
It was funny, I thought, that I kept calling her Miss Harrington even after the sheriff and his men said her name was Choo-Choo Caroline. I wondered what a cooch dancer was, and what a material witness was, but I figured there wasn’t either one of ’em very bad, even if the police had been looking for her. It must have been that Dr. Severance had been hiding her from those gangsters so they couldn’t shoot her. I felt sorry about him.
I must have dozed off after a while, but when I woke up it was still dark. Sig Freed was lying beside me on the bedroll, and he was growling. Somebody was coming around the corner of the house. I looked at Pop’s bedroll to see if he had come back yet, but it was empty. The man walked on through the front yard and sat down on the top step close to my feet. The lamp was still burning in the front room, and I could see it was the sheriff out there.
‘Billy, you asleep?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I says. ‘Have you found her yet?’
He took off his hat and mopped his head, and slumped down a little like he was real tired. ‘Not a sign of her. God, I’m wore out. Feel like I’d walked a hundred miles through that brush.’
‘Is everybody still looking?’ I asked.
‘Everybody except me an’ Otis. We’re goin’ back to town to to get a few hours’ sleep an’ bring out a fresh party to relieve these around ten this morning. It’s three-thirty now, an’ it looks like we ain’t goin’ to find her as soon as I thought.’
‘Sure funny you ain’t,’ I says. ‘But then, Uncle Sagamore says that’s a awful big bottom down there.’
‘It sure as hell is funny,’ he says. ‘Don’t make no difference how big the place is. She couldn’t of gone very far barefooted. When her feet got sore she’d sit and stay where she was.’
‘It seems like it to me, too,’ I says.
‘Billy,’ he says. ‘I want to ask you something, and I want you to tell me the truth. Was that girl really with you when you ran
off down there? When they shot at you, I mean?’
‘Of course she was,’ I said. I sat up in bed.
‘Are you sure she didn’t get—uh—shot, there in the water? And you got scared and didn’t want to tell anybody?’
‘No. What would I want to tell a story about it for? Heck, she was the one pulled me out of the water.’
I told him the whole thing, how Miss Harrington had towed me along until we got under the bushes, and how we’d run off down the hill and hid in the ferns.
He shook his head. ‘Well, I reckon it must be true. But I’ll be damned if I can see how she got so far away twenty men can’t find her.’
‘I don’t understand it, either,’ I says.
‘Well, when I get back in the morning, will you go with me and see if you can point out this place where you hid in the ferns?’
‘Sure,’ I says. ‘We can go now, if you want to.’
‘No, we’ll wait for daylight,’ he says. He sighed and kind of stretched out a little. ‘I couldn’t walk that far, nohow. I’m pooped. Say, where’s Sagamore?’
‘He’s down in the bottom, looking for her. He went off that way on his mule.’
‘Hmmmph,’ the sheriff says. ‘That don’t sound like him a bit. You mean he’s actually goin’ to do something useful, after fifty years?’
Just then Otis come around the corner of the house, and him and the sheriff went on up and got in their car. They drove off. The sound truck started another record.
In about half an hour I heard Uncle Sagamore’s truck start up, down there by the barn. It went up the hill towards the wire gate. I wondered where he was going this time of night. After a while I heard the motor racing like he was stuck in the sand. That went on for five or ten minutes, and then it stopped. Pretty soon he came back, walking.
He came up on the steps. ‘What happened to the truck?’ I asked.
‘Oh,’ he says. ‘I got stuck in the sand. Daggone truck just bogged down like a heifer in a mudhole.’
‘That’s too bad,’ I says. ‘You didn’t see any sign of Miss Harrington down in the bottom?’
‘Not a trace. But I reckon they’ll find her, come daylight.’
He went on down towards the barn, and after a while I went to sleep. I didn’t wake up again till it was broad daylight, and it was beginning. I never saw anything like it in my life.
Even before I opened my eyes I knew they had brought the tubs back. The smell was in my nose before I was full awake, and Sig Freed was sniffing and whimpering about it beside me on the bedroll. When he saw me open my eyes he licked me on the face. The sound truck had stopped making noise, but I could see it still sitting up there, about fifty yards from the house. I rolled over the other way, to see if Pop was there. His bedroll had been slept in, but he was gone. I didn’t hear any sounds in the house, though, like they was cooking breakfast.
Our car was parked under the tree in front, and beyond it was the four cars the searchers had come in. But there wasn’t anybody around. I walked up to the sound truck, and the man in it was asleep. I wondered where Pop and Uncle Sagamore had gone. Then I decided maybe they’d gone down in the bottom to help look for Miss Harrington. Not Harrington, I thought. Caroline. I ought to get used to calling her by her right name. Then I wondered if I’d ever see her again. Maybe they never would find her. That scared me, and I thought, sure, what the heck, of course they’ll find her.
I just remembered we hadn’t had any supper last night, so after I went down to the lake to wash up, I started a fire in the stove to fry some baloney. While I was putting the lids back on it, Uncle Finley came out of his room, putting on his tie and tucking the end of it inside the bib of his overalls.
‘Where’s everybody at?’ he asked, giving me a hard stare like maybe I’d ate ’em or something.
‘I don’t know,’ I says. I went on slicing baloney and putting it in the pan.
‘Off a-lookin’ for that there cooch dancer,’ he says. ‘Everybody up to devilment, all the time.’ He stopped and looked at me. ‘I heard tell she ain’t got no clothes on.’
‘Well, she ain’t got much,’ I says. ‘The mosquitoes is probably chewed her something fierce.’
‘Hmmmmph,’ he says. ‘The way I heered it, she ain’t got on a stitch. Shameless hussy. You ain’t seen her around, have you?’
‘No sir,’ I says. Uncle Finley always scared me a little. He looked like a man shouting at something nobody else could see.
‘Well, she’s a-goin’ to drowned, as sure as hell,’ he says.
‘She won’t neither drowned,’ I says. ‘She’s a good swimmer.’
‘Hmmmmph,’ he says. He sat down at the end of the table with his knife sticking up in one hand and the fork in the other, waiting for the baloney. When it was fried, I put it on the table and we both ate.
There was a sound then like a truck or something up on the hill by the wire gate. We went out through the front room to look up that way. Uncle Finley was in the lead, and when he got to the door leading out onto the porch, he stopped for a second and stared like he’d seen a miracle.
‘Lumber!’ he shouted.
He made one big leap and landed clear out in the yard, and started running, still shouting, ‘Lumber!’ at every other jump. I looked up that way to see what it was had excited him that way. I couldn’t hardly believe my eyes.
There was a truck, all right, coming down from the direction of the gate, and I could see it was stacked with lumber, but it was the trucks behind it I was staring at. There was three of them right behind the one with the lumber, and while I was looking another one came into sight. They was yellow trucks, and they had big signs painted on them. They was piled high with what looked like canvas tents folded up.
‘Come on,’ I yelled to Sig Freed, and we started up there on the run.
We scooted past the sound truck, and then I saw Pop was up there. He was walking along beside the front one of the yellow trucks, and he motioned for them to pull off in an open place beside the ruts about a hundred yards away. He waved for the one with the lumber to pull off on the other side.
The one with the lumber stopped, but Uncle Finley was already there, and before the men could even get out he ran around back and pulled off a board about twenty feet long and started running down the hill towards the ark, dragging the board after him.
‘Hey,’ the men in the truck yelled, and took out after him. One of them got hold of the end of the board and started trying to take it away from him.
The other one yelled at Pop, ‘Who’s this crazy old bastard? Tell him to leave this lumber alone.’
Pop was telling the drivers of the yellow trucks where to park. He looked around and waved a hand. ‘That’s just Finley. Let him have the plank and he won’t bother you no more. He’ll be all day nailing it up.’
The two men let go the plank and Uncle Finley went scooting down towards the ark, letting the end of it drag behind him. They came back to the truck and began unloading the rest of it on the ground.
I was close enough to the yellow trucks now to read the signs. They said ‘Burke’s Shows’. It was a carnival! Going to be set up right on Uncle Sagamore’s farm.
14
I LOOKED BEHIND THEM. THERE was more coming. And some big yellow trailers with ‘Burke’s Shows’ on the side of them. And then some cars. And then a big shiny aluminium house trailer. And then more cars. They was just pouring down the hill from the gate with dust boiling up everywhere. They ran right on past the house and across the cornfield, and when they hit the edge of the timber they stopped and men began to jump out. They took off into the trees.
They’d sure find Miss Harrington now, I thought. It looked like the whole world had turned out to look for her.
I ducked across when there was an open space between cars so I could get through, and ran up to where Pop was. He was still waving his arms and motioning to the drivers of the trucks. They was backing them here and there, and as soon as one was in the right spot men jump
ed down and began unloading the big tents. Other men had axes and was cutting down the little trees and bushes in the way.
‘Hey, Pop,’ I yelled as I came up, ‘where did the carnival come from?’
He looked around at me, and went on motioning to one of the drivers. ‘Careful of them cars, Billy,’ he says. ‘Don’t get run over.’
‘But, Pop,’ I says, getting out of the way so a truck could swing up past me, ‘how’d they happen to bring a carnival way out here?’
‘Don’t bother me now,’ he says. ‘I’ll talk to you after a while. And you watch out for them cars.’
I was jumping up and down, I was so excited about the carnival. Sig Freed was excited too, and he began running around in big circles, getting in the way.
‘Get that dawg out of here before he gets run over,’ Pop yelled. ‘Go on down to the lake or somewhere. You can come back after it’s all set up.’
I could see the gate from here, and when I looked up the hill I saw Uncle Sagamore. He was standing there beside it, with all the cars going past him. I could see some sort of sign nailed up on one of the posts, but this far away I couldn’t tell what it said. I called Sig Freed and we ran up that way to see what he was doing.
When I got a little closer, I could make out the sign. It said ‘Noonan Farm. Parking $1.00.’ Uncle Sagamore was standing across from it, on the drivers’ side of the cars, with a flour sack. Every time a driver would turn out of the road and in through the gate he would hand Uncle Sagamore a dollar. Uncle Sagamore would drop it in the flour sack and wave for him to go on.
It seemed to me like a dollar was pretty high to pay for parking way out here in the country where there was thousands of acres, and I wondered why a lot of them didn’t just drive on down the road and pull off somewhere further along. Heck, they only charged fifty cents at most race tracks.
Then, when I got up to the gate I saw why they was all turning in. The road going on past was blocked. Uncle Sagamore’s truck was broke down right square in the middle of it less than a car’s length past where our ruts turned off through the gate. It looked like he had tried to turn it around and had got lodged between the trees growing up on both sides. It was jammed in for fair, with the front axle against a stump on one end and the tail-gate between two trees on the other. And on top of that, one of the back wheels was missing, like he’d had a flat tyre and started to change it. There just wasn’t any way you could move that truck without cutting down the trees on both sides or taking it apart and carrying it away in a wheelbarrow.