The sheriff seemed to get hold of hisself at last. His face was still purple, but he got real quiet. He reached down for his handkerchief and mopped his face sort of slow and deliberate; then he took a deep breath and put the handkerchief in his pocket and walked over in front of Uncle Sagamore like a man that was holding onto hisself real hard to keep from blowing up like a stick of dynamite. He began talking.
‘Sagamore Noonan,’ he says, real quiet, but still taking those deep breaths, ‘when the voters elected me sheriff for the first time ten years ago I promised ’em I was going to make this county a decent place to live in by puttin’ you so far back in the pen it’d cost you eight dollars to send a postcard out to the front gate. When they re-elected me six years ago, and then again two years ago, I promised ’em the same thing. They knew I was honestly tryin’, and they believed me. They had patience, because they knew what I was up against.
‘I’m still tryin’. And some day I’m going to do it. Some day I’m going to get enough evidence on you to send you up the river so far your grandchildren will be old men when you get back, and we can hold up our heads around here and look the rest of the state in the face.
‘Sometimes I’m tempted to quit, to just throw up the job and sell my home and go somewhere else and start over, but then I get to thinkin’ about all the other poor people in this county who’d have to stay here and go on putting up with you because they can’t sell out and leave, so I stick it out and keep trying. It’s an obligation, I reckon. I just can’t abandon all these defenceless people to you.
‘It ain’t just a job. It’s gone beyond that. I went into the Treasurer’s office the other day and told ’em they didn’t have to issue my pay-checks any more till I freed the county of you, and that if the people didn’t re-elect me two years from this fall I’d go on servin’ for nothing, right along with the new sheriff, till we got the evidence on you to put you away and we wouldn’t be ashamed to bring innocent children into a world where you was running around loose.
‘And now that I find out there ain’t only you, that there’s two of you here on this one farm with decent, God-fearin’ people livin’ all around you, I’m almost tempted to call the Governor and have him declare martial law. There must be something on the statute books to protect the citizens from you without havin’ to go to court with evidence of any one particular crime.’
‘It’s like I was tellin’ you, Sam,’ Uncle Sagamore says. ‘This shurf is a real fine man, aside from being a little inclined to get all het up over triflin’ little things that don’t amount to a hill of beans. Reckon he’s got the high blood pressure. An’ then, too, it must be kind of trying, havin’ your men sneakin’ around pokin’ beans up their nose when you ain’t lookin’.’
‘No,’ Pop says. ‘They wasn’t poking beans up their nose. They were drinking croton oil, remember?’
‘Oh, sure,’ Uncle Sagamore says. ‘It was croton oil, wasn’t it?’
The sheriff brought both hands up and rubbed ’em across his face, and he didn’t say anything for a minute. He breathed kind of slow and heavy, but when he took his hands away he was still quiet.
‘While I’m out here,’ he says to Uncle Sagamore, ‘I’m going to have a look in your barn. We been gettin’ reports from various towns that you been doing a little shopping here and there.’
‘Why, sure, Shurf,’ Uncle Sagamore says. ‘Help yourself. I’m always kind of proud when I done a little shopping. The way I see it, it shows good management when a man can have a little money left over to buy something for hisself after he’s fed all the goddam politicians he’s got lyin’ in his lap.’
‘Come on!’ the sheriff says, real cold.
The barn was made out of logs, with split shingles for a roof. Inside there was some stalls for the mules. It was kind of dim, and smelled nice, just like the stables at a race track. In one corner there was a corncrib with a little door made out of planks.
We all stopped, and the sheriff went over and opened the corncrib door. ‘Well, well,’ he says, rubbing his hands together. ‘Just like I thought.’
I couldn’t see past him very well, but it looked like a lot of sacks of something or other piled up five or six feet high.
‘Sure is a lot of awful sweet mule feed,’ the sheriff says. He started counting, pointing with his finger and moving his lips. Uncle Sagamore leaned against the wall and sailed out some tobacco juice.
The sheriff finished counting. He turned around and looked at Uncle Sagamore, and he seemed to feel a lot better. ‘Ninety sacks,’ he says. ‘That’s about the way we heard it. That was quite a little shopping you did, here and there.’
‘Well, you know how it is,’ Uncle Sagamore says. ‘A man’s workin’ eighteen, twenty hours a day, he don’t get to town very often.’
‘You mind lettin’ me in on what you’re aimin’ to do with all of it?’ the sheriff asked. ‘Stories like that interest me.’
‘Why, no. Not at all, Shurf,’ Uncle Sagamore says. ‘You see, when Sam here wrote me he was comin’ to visit a spell this summer and was bringin’ his boy, I figured I ort to lay in a little sweetnin’. You know how boys is. They got a sweet tooth.’
‘Nine thousand pounds of sugar?’ the sheriff asked. ‘They must figure on staying several weeks. Ain’t you afraid that much’d be bad for his teeth?’
Uncle Sagamore snapped his fingers. ‘Well sir,’ he says, ‘you know, I never thought of that.’
The sheriff’s face started to get purple again.
Uncle Sagamore shook his head, kind of sad. ‘Imagine that,’ he says. ‘Sure looks like the joke’s on me, buyin’ all that sugar for nothin’.’
6
WE WALKED BACK TO THE car. The sheriff opened the door and started to get in. ‘Well, you just go right ahead bein’ smart, Sagamore Noonan,’ he says. ‘Sooner or later you’re goin’ to laugh on the other side of your face. It’s here on this land, and we’re goin’ to find it. It ain’t goin’ to be so funny then.’
‘Why, did you lose something, Shurf?’ Uncle Sagamore asked. ‘You should have told me. Any way me an’ Sam can help, you just let us know. And don’t you fret none about us tellin’ anybody your men’s started drinkin’ croton oil. You can depend on us.’
The sheriff said a bad cuss word and got in and slammed the door. The car jumped ahead and made a big turn and then went bucking up the hill. It seemed like him and his men was always in a hurry. I thought it wasn’t any wonder they kept running over Mr. Jimerson’s hogs.
I wondered why Uncle Sagamore had bought all that sugar, but I figured there wasn’t any use asking him. Maybe I could ask Pop about it later. He might know. But I was sure he hadn’t bought it on account of us, like he’d told the sheriff, because he didn’t even know we was coming until we’d got here.
Uncle Sagamore looked up the hill to where you could just see Dr. Severance’s trailer in the edge of the trees. Pop remembered then that what with that excitable sheriff talking so much he’d forgot to tell Uncle Sagamore about it. So he told him.
‘Well, is that a fact? A hundred and twenty a month,’ Uncle Sagamore says, aiming some tobacco juice at a grasshopper about ten feet away on the sand. He missed him a couple inches. The grasshopper went away, buzzing. ‘Got the anaemia, has she?’
‘That’s right,’ Pop says. ‘She has to eat vegetables.’
‘Well sir, that’s a shame,’ Uncle Sagamore says. ‘A young girl, and all.’
‘By the way, have we got any vegetables?’ Pop asked.
‘Hmmm,’ Uncle Sagamore says. ‘I reckon there’s still some of Bessie’s turnips out there if the hawgs ain’t rooted ’em all out.’
‘Well, they ought to do fine,’ Pop says. ‘Come to think of it, whoever seen a hawg with the anaemia?’
We walked up the hill towards the trailer. It was getting along late in the afternoon now and the shadows of the trees was lengthening out and it was pretty out over the lake.
Dr. Severance had uncoupled the traile
r from the car and set up a striped canvas shade over the door like a front porch. There was a couple of canvas chairs and a little table under it, and a portable radio on the table was playing music. It was all real nice.
Just as we walked up Dr. Severance came out the door. ‘Hello,’ he says to Pop, and Pop introduced him to Uncle Sagamore. He still had on the double-breasted suit, but he’d took off his tie and had a glass in his hand with ice and some stuff in it.
‘Would you men care for a drink?’ he asked.
‘Why, if’n it wouldn’t put you out,’ Uncle Sagamore says.
He went back inside and we all hunkered down in the shade. We could hear him in the trailer clinking glasses and ice. And just then Miss Harrington came out the door.
‘Well, ho-ly hell!’ Uncle Sagamore says, just the way Pop had the other time.
She had changed clothes, but this little two-piece romper outfit was just like the other one except that instead of being white it was striped like candy. She had on gold-coloured sandals with a strap that went between her toes, and her toenails was all painted gold. On her wrist was a big heavy bracelet, and one ankle had a thin gold chain around it. She rattled the ice in the glass she was carrying, and leaned against the door and looked at Uncle Sagamore.
‘Does he hurt somewhere?’ she asked Pop.
‘Oh,’ Pop says. ‘This here is my brother Sagamore.’
‘Well, I might have guessed that,’ she says. ‘There is something about the way he looks, if you know what I mean.’
Uncle Sagamore didn’t say anything. He just went on staring.
She snapped her fingers at him. ‘Break it up, dad,’ she says. She sauntered out the door and sat down in one of the canvas chairs and crossed her legs.
‘God, this is really back in the jungle,’ she said.
‘Fine climate, though,’ Pop says. ‘Best place in the world for anaemia.’
‘Well, that’s fine,’ Miss Harrington said. She brushed a gnat off her leg, and looked at Uncle Sagamore again. ‘If you run across anything you’re not sure about, Zeb, don’t hesitate to ask me.’
‘Well sir,’ Uncle Sagamore says to Pop, ‘I reckon this is the first time I ever met up with the anaemia. You don’t suppose Bessie’d be likely to catch it?’
‘I reckon not,’ Pop says. ‘She’s probably done past the age when she’s apt to come down with it.’
Just then Dr. Severance came out with the two drinks. He gave them to Pop and Uncle Sagamore and sat down in the other chair.
‘Well, here’s to Miss Harrington’s recovery,’ he says, and they all raised their glasses and drank.
Uncle Sagamore looked in his glass, and then says to Pop, ‘He must of spilled some water in it.’ He fished the ice out with his fingers and threw it away.
Dr. Severance fiddled with the radio dial. ‘I keep trying to pick up a New Orleans station,’ he says. ‘Miss Harrington gets homesick, and it would make her feel better to hear a familiar voice. It’s hard on a young girl, being torn away from her family and the social whirl of a big city like that, because of illness.’
The music stopped. He hit a new station, and a man’s voice was talking: ‘And now for the local news,’ it said. ‘Police reported today there have been no new developments in the sensational gangland killing of Vincent (Tiger) Lilly which shook the city a week ago. The prosecution’s star witness is still reported to be—’
He turned the dial again and some more music came on. ‘But this place is going to be wonderful for her,’ he went on. ‘It’s just what I was hoping to find when I took charge of the case. She can get the rest her condition calls for. You gentlemen probably don’t realize the absolutely man-killing social pace a debutante like Miss Harrington has to keep up with. Parties, balls, receptions, charity bazaars—it never lets up for a minute. I tell you, going through medical school is a cinch compared with it.’
Miss Harrington nodded. ‘It’s rough, MacDuff.’
‘And with that anaemia sapping her strength by the hour,’ Dr. Severance went on, ‘well, it was killing her, that’s all.’
Miss Harrington finished her drink and put the glass down on the table. She got up and walked down to the end of the trailer where you could see out over the lake.
She kind of swung and swayed when she walked, and Pop and Uncle Sagamore watched her real anxious like they was afraid she might fall or something.
Dr. Severance went on talking what hard work it was being a debutante, whatever that was. Miss Harrington stood looking out over the lake, and I figured she was probably homesick all right, and lonesome. I liked her, because you could see she was real nice and she wasn’t always wanting to grab a-hold of you and make a fuss like them Welfare ladies, so I felt sorry for her and wished she didn’t have the anaemia and have to go away from home like that, and eat vegetables.
Just then the radio changed to another tune, a real pretty one that made you want to tap your feet. Miss Harrington was still looking the other way, but you could tell she heard it because she started moving her feet in time with it and swaying her body like she was going to dance. It was real pretty to see.
Dr. Severance was still talking and didn’t notice, but Uncle Sagamore and Pop was watching her real close. She swung around in her dancing, but it didn’t seem like she even saw us. She had a faraway look in her eyes and you could tell she was humming the tune. Then she swung back facing the other way, and doggone if she didn’t reach up behind her back and unsnap the ends of that bosom thing she was wearing.
As it came off she took one end of it in her hand and waved it like a streamer while she swayed back and forth in time to the music. She was still faced the other way, but you could see she didn’t have nothing on but them little candy-striped pants. Then she turned back towards us, and as she did she caught up the bosom thing and held it pressed to her with one arm where it would have been if she was still wearing it, smiling kind of dreamy like, and I could hear her singing the words of the song.
She had a real nice voice.
Well, Pop and Uncle Sagamore was just enchanted with it, it was such a pretty dance. They leaned forward on their hunkers till they like to fell over, with their eyes bugged out, and the drinks in their hands was spilling on the ground. Miss Harrington swung on around away from us again and as she did she pulled the bosom thing away once more and started waving it in her hand like she was directing the orchestra.
Pop dropped his glass on the ground. He started to clap his hands, but then he caught hisself and looked at Dr. Severance and didn’t. But just then the doctor noticed the funny expressions on their faces and glanced around and saw Miss Harrington’s dance.
He jumped half out of his chair and knocked his drink over. His eyes were cold as ice. He clapped his hands together real hard and yelled. ‘Choo-Choo! Uh—Pamela!’
She jumped, and looked around, like she’d just remembered where she was. ‘Oh,’ she says, slipping the bosom thing back on. ‘I wish they wouldn’t play that.’
Dr. Severance glared at her. She came over and picked up her glass and went inside the trailer to get a drink.
As soon as she went in the door Dr. Severance looked at Pop and Uncle Sagamore and sighed, and shook his head real sad. ‘There you are, gentlemen,’ he says. ‘That’s what a nervous breakdown will do for you. Some people will try to tell you it’s no worse than a bad cold, but you saw it with your own eyes. Her mind just stopped dead there for a minute and she was lost, and the only thing she could grab hold of was clear back in her childhood. All the little girls in her social set had to go to dancing school and take ballet lessons.’ He shook his head again.
‘Well, that’s too bad,’ Pop says. ‘It sure is a shame. But you can see she’s had a lot of trainin’. She might have made a great dancer.’
Uncle Sagamore nodded too. ‘She sure has got the knack.’
When Miss Harrington came back she had two drinks with her. She walked over to where I was and smiled down at me. ‘What’s your name, jun
ior?’ she asked.
‘Billy, ma’am,’ I says.
‘Well, Billy, they seem to have left you out when they passed the drinks around, so I brought you a coke.’ She handed me the glass, and says, ‘Why don’t you and me walk down to the lake and see if it looks good to swim in?’
‘Why, it’s fine swimmin’,’ Pop says. ‘As a matter of fact, I was just thinkin’ I might be able to spare a little time off from work, an’ teach you.’
‘Down, boy,’ Miss Harrington says. ‘I already know how to swim. And I know all about being taught.’
She went back in the trailer and in a minute she came out with her handbag slung over her shoulder. We finished our drinks and went down through the trees towards the lake.
Uncle Sagamore and Pop started to get up like they wanted to come too, but Dr. Severance shook his head at them and says, ‘Boys, I wouldn’t. Why don’t you just stick around and talk?’
When we came out in the open we was right close to where Uncle Finley was working on his boat. Miss Harrington stopped and looked at it and at him hammering away up on his scaffold.
‘What in the name of God is that?’ she asked.
I told her about Uncle Finley and the Vision and how they figured all the sinners was going to drown when the rain started.
‘Well, they sure got some ripe ones around here,’ she says.
We started to go on past, and just then Uncle Finley looked around from his hammering and saw us. He just ignored us, like he had me and Pop, and took another swing at the nail with his hammer. Then all of a sudden he jumped and jerked his head around again and stared at Miss Harrington like he hadn’t really seen her the first time.
He waved the hammer at her. ‘Jezebel!’ he yelled.
Miss Harrington stopped. She looked at him and then at me. ‘Well, what bit him?’ she asked.