Uncle Finley walked along the scaffold towards us, still craning his neck at her and pointing with his hammer. ‘Bare naked Jezebel!’ he says, furious like. ‘Paradin’ around here with your legs a-showin’, and causin’ sin.’
‘Oh, crawl back in your fruit cake,’ Miss Harrington says to him.
‘He can’t hear you,’ I says. ‘He’s deaf as a post.’
We started to go on. Uncle Finley kept walking along the scaffold looking at Miss Harrington’s legs and yelling, ‘Jezebel,’ and when he came to the end of it he didn’t even notice. He just walked right off into thin air.
Lucky he dropped the hammer and managed to grab the side of the boat, or he’d have fell about six feet and likely hurt hisself. When we went on he was still hanging there with his face against the planks yelling, ‘Sinful, naked hussy—’ and trying to turn his head so he could see.
We walked on down to the edge of the lake. There wasn’t any trees right here. There was a little sandy beach and the water looked shallow close to shore. Further along there was trees on both sides, and up about a furlong the lake bent to the left and went out of sight around a point. The water was still, and you could see the trees reflected in it. It was real pretty.
Miss Harrington looked around and then back at Uncle Finley’s boat and the house. ‘If we want to swim,’ she says, ‘we’ll have to get further away from the bald-headed row.’
‘Have you got a bathing suit?’ I asked.
‘Well—yes,’ she says.
‘Why don’t you go back and get it?’ I said. ‘And we can go on up to that point and go swimming now.’
‘Oh, I’ve got it with me,’ she said. ‘It’s here in my purse.’
‘Well, fine,’ I says.
We walked on around the edge of the lake and into the trees. In a little while we passed the point where the lake turned left and when we walked out to the edge of the water we was out of sight of the house and everything. It was nice. The lake was about fifty yards wide here, and the trees made shadows clear across it now that the sun was about to go down. It was real quiet and peaceful.
‘Do you reckon it’s too deep close to shore?’ I asked. ‘I don’t know how to swim.’
‘No,’ she says. ‘I think we can wade out. And I’ll help you. But you wait till I can change into my suit.’
She went into some bushes and ferns that was growing along the bank off to the left. I stripped down to my boxer shorts and waited for her. It looked like a fine place to swim, and I was anxious to start learning. Pop was always going to teach me, but they never seemed to have any pools close to the race tracks.
She came back in a minute, and when I looked around the first thing I thought was that Dr. Severance had sure been telling the truth when he said her folks was rich. Her bathing suit was made out of diamonds.
Of course, there wasn’t much of it, just a string around her middle and a three-cornered patch in front, but it was all just solid diamonds. It must of cost a fortune. I wondered if it was comfortable to wear.
And then I saw the vine, the one there was such a hullaballoo about in the papers later on. It had little blue leaves, and it wound around her off bosom like a path going up a hill, and right in the centre there was this little rosebud. It was the prettiest thing I ever saw.
She stopped, all of a sudden, when she noticed how I was looking, and her eyes snapped. ‘Hey,’ she says, ‘what goes on here? Are you a midget, or something? How old are you, kid?’
‘Seven,’ I says.
‘Good God, what a family,’ she says. ‘Not even eight yet—’
Then she glanced down and saw I was looking at the vine, and she started to laugh. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘You had me worried there for a minute.’
‘It sure is nice,’ I said. ‘I wish I had one.’
‘Well, I wish you had this one,’ she says.
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Well,’ she says, ‘I guess I developed kind of uneven when I was a kid. I had the place to put it before I had sense enough not to put it there.’
I didn’t know what she was talking about, but it didn’t seem to make any difference anyhow because I just figured then that all the women had vines, and that if you had one that nice it was all to the good. So we waded out in the water, kind of slow to see how deep it was. She’d had to pin her hair up on top of her head with bobby pins to keep it from getting wet because she didn’t have a swimming cap.
She swam across the lake and back while I watched, so I could see how your arms and legs was supposed to go. Then she stood up and held me flat out in the water while I practised.
I began to get the hang of it in a little while and could go for two or three feet before I went under when she turned me loose.
‘The main thing is, don’t be afraid of the water,’ she says. ‘It can’t hurt you, so don’t fight it.’
She swam across and back once more just for fun, and then we got out because it was beginning to be dusk out in the trees. Her hair had got wet on the ends in a few places, so she took a cigarette out of her handbag and we sat down on a log while she shook it out to let it dry. It was inky black, wet like that, and touching the skin on her shoulders and neck, it sure looked nice.
‘By golly, you’re swell,’ I said. ‘Teaching me to swim, and all. Can we go in every day?’
‘Sure,’ she says. ‘Why not? I think it’ll be fun.’
‘I hope you’ll like it here,’ I said. ‘Anyway, it ought to be nice and restful for you after New Orleans. All that stuff must have been pretty tiring.’
‘Well,’ she says, ‘it was a pretty rough grind.’
7
WHEN WE GOT BACK TO the trailer it was growing dark, and Pop and Uncle Sagamore had left. I went on down to the house, and they was in the kitchen with the lamp lit, getting supper. Uncle Sagamore was slicing the baloney and Pop was frying it.
I got some slices to feed Sig Freed, and Pop asked me if we had gone swimming. I says yes, and told them about Miss Harrington’s diamond bathing suit. Him and Uncle Sagamore looked at each other, and Uncle Sagamore slipped and cut his hand with the baloney knife.
‘Well, imagine that,’ Pop says.
‘I just did,’ Uncle Sagamore says, and went off to bandage his hand.
When he came back Pop had finished frying the baloney, and they put it on the table. Uncle Finley came stalking out of his room, the one that connected with the kitchen, and sat down at the table without looking to the left or right.
He picked up a knife in one hand and a fork in the other and held them sticking straight up with his fists on the table, and says, furious like, ‘Who was that there shameless hussy paradin’ her naked legs around here this evenin’? Is she a-goin’ to stay here?’
Uncle Sagamore grinned at Pop and says, real loud, ‘Why, that ain’t no way to talk about a pore gal that’s in bad health, Finley.’
‘Well, either she goes, or I do,’ Uncle Finley says, banging the table with his fist. ‘I ain’t goin’ to live in no place where there’s sinful people like that a-wavin’ theirselves around in defiance of the word of the Lord.’
Uncle Sagamore shook his head, real sad. ‘Well sir, you’re sure givin’ us a awful hard choice, Finley. But we’ll miss you. By Ned, we sure will.’
Pop asked Uncle Sagamore, not loud enough for Uncle Finley to hear, ‘Do you reckon he’ll really go?’
Uncle Sagamore shook his head. ‘No. You don’t rightly understand fellers like Finley. They figure it’s their duty to stay real close to that sinful stuff and keep watchin’ it, so they can stay worked up about it.’
‘Yeah, I reckon that’s right,’ Pop says.
‘Sure,’ Uncle Sagamore says. ‘Don’t you worry. The Devil ain’t goin’ to run Finley off the place by shakin’ some woman’s pink behind at him. He ain’t no coward.’
We all sat down at the table. Uncle Finley leaned his head down and started saying grace. While he was talking, Uncle Sagamore reached over and speared about ei
ght slices of baloney and started eating.
‘Sure is nice to have some real grub for a change,’ he says, ‘after that goddam garden sass Bessie’s always cookin’ up.’
After supper me and Pop got our bedrolls out of the trailer and made ’em up on the porch. Ours wasn’t a big house trailer like Dr. Severance’s; it was just big enough to hold the printing press and paper and our camping gear, and we always had to sleep outside. There wasn’t any windows in it, either, because a lot of times we was set up pretty close to the track when we was printing the throw-away sheets, the advertising ones we ran off as soon as we’d got the results of the first six races.
We laid down and Sig Freed curled up on my blankets with me. Pop lit a cigar and I could see the end of it glowing red in the dark. Some kind of birds was yakking it up out over the river bottom, six-furlongs-in-one-ELEVEN, six-furlongs-in-one-ELEVEN over and over.
‘This is sure a nice place,’ I says. ‘I like it here.’
‘Well, that’s fine,’ Pop says. ‘I reckon we’ll stay until Fairgrounds opens in November. And looks like we might be able to build up our bankroll a little, what with gettin’ a commission on Dr. Severance’s rent and me helpin’ Sagamore a little with the tannery business.’
‘Well, I sure hope he don’t bring those tubs back up here,’ I says.
‘Oh, you get used to that and don’t mind it a bit,’ he says. ‘As a matter of fact, according to Sagamore’s formula they’re goin’ to be ready for a little more sun exposure about day after tomorrow.’
‘Where does he sell the leather?’ I asked.
‘Well,’ Pop says, ‘he ain’t exactly had any to sell yet. The first batch didn’t turn out so well. It all come apart in the tubs.’
We didn’t say anything for a little while, and then I remembered about all that sugar Uncle Sagamore had bought.
‘What do you suppose he’s going to do with that much?’ I asked Pop. ‘And why did he tell the sheriff he’d bought it for me?’
‘Oh,’ Pop says. He took another puff on the cigar and it glowed. ‘Well, it’s like this, Sagamore told him that so he wouldn’t have to say what it really was. He’s kind of proud, and he don’t like to talk to outsiders about infirmities in the family. You see, your Aunt Bessie’s got the sugar diabetes, and the doctor’s put her on this diet where she has to eat six pounds of sugar a day. But I wouldn’t say nothing about it to anybody. They don’t like it spread around.’
‘Oh, I won’t say nothing,’ I says.
I thought it sure seemed like a place, though, for people having things wrong with ’em, Dr. Severance had the heart twinge and the sheriff had the high blood pressure and Miss Harrington had the anaemia and there was the typhoid going around and now Aunt Bessie had the sugar diabetes. I hoped we didn’t come down with anything like that ourselves.
The next day was really fun. I found a cane pole behind the house that had a line and hook on it and a snuff-bottle cork for a bobber, so I dug some worms and me and Sig Freed went fishing. And the funny part of it was there was real fish in the lake. I caught four. Uncle Sagamore said they was red perch, and Pop fried ’em for me for supper in the baloney grease. They was sure good.
Right after noon I wanted to go swimming, but when I went up to the trailer Miss Harrington was lying stretched out in a long canvas chair having a drink and said we couldn’t go until just about sundown. Dr. Severance was lying in another chair having a drink too and he says to her, ‘Hey, what’s with all this swimming, anyway? Don’t tell me I’m being back-doored by a kid that ain’t even old enough to start smoking cornsilk.’
And she says, ‘Oh, shut up, can’t you think about anything else for at least five minutes?’
He says, ‘Well, there’s gratitude for you. I save your goddam life for you, and now I got to move a seven-year-old kid out of the way every time I want to collect a little on account.’
Then she says, ‘Gratitude? Believe me, buster, the next time anybody says we’re going up in the country and lay around for a while, I’ll know what he means.’
They kept on talking like they’d already forgot I was there, so I went back and waded around in the shallow edge of the lake just below where Uncle Finley was working on his boat, and tried to catch crawfish. The water was only about waist deep and I could see lots of ’em on the bottom but I never could catch any. They scooted backward too fast.
Uncle Sagamore and Pop just sat around in the shade all day and talked and had a drink out of the glass jar now and then. I remembered Uncle Sagamore telling the sheriff how he had to work eighteen hours a day to pay his taxes, and I asked Pop that night if he was on vacation. Pop said it was kind of a slack season on farms right now, and that things usually picked up a little later on in the year. …
About sundown Miss Harrington went up to the point with me and we had another swimming lesson. She had a shower cap with her this time so her hair wouldn’t get wet, and she could put her face down in the water and really swim. A crawl, she called it.
I got a little better, too. I could go six or eight feet before I went under. She said I was trying too hard to keep my face out of the water, though, and that was making me sink.
The next morning bright and early Uncle Sagamore and Pop took the truck and went down in the woods back of the cornfield and brought the tubs up to the house. The smell was even worse than it had been before. They set ’em right in the same place, along the side of the house next to the well. There wasn’t much breeze, either, to blow it away.
Well, they stayed there for nearly a week, night and day, but like Pop said after a while you got used to it and didn’t mind. I asked him why they didn’t take ’em away at night, because there wasn’t any sun then anyhow, but he says it was too much trouble to carry ’em back and forth.
About the fifth or sixth day they was there I’d got so used to the odour I could even go up to the tubs without it knocking me down, so I went over to see how the leather was coming along. I got a stick and lifted one of the cowhides up, and doggone if the stick didn’t just poke right through it. It was coming apart in the tubs just like the first batch had.
I went right away to call Pop and Uncle Sagamore to tell ’em about it, but I couldn’t find ’em, They’d been setting in the shade of the chinaberry tree in the back yard just a few minutes ago, having a drink out of the glass jar, but now they was gone.
I looked all around, and called, and went through the house, but I couldn’t find ’em, So I walked down to the barn, and they wasn’t there either, but when I went back to the house again they was setting right there under the chinaberry tree where they’d been in the first place.
When I told ’em about the leather coming apart Uncle Sagamore kind of frowned and they came around and looked theirselves. Uncle Sagamore took the stick and poked at one of the hides, and sure enough it just went right through.
He straightened up and sailed out some tobacco juice and scratched his head. ‘Well sir, by golly, she sure is,’ he says. ‘What you reckon we’re doin’ that’s wrong, Sam?’
Pop scratched his head too. ‘Well, I just don’t rightly know,’ he says. ‘But it sure don’t look right. Leather hadn’t ought to be that tender.’
‘I done everything just like the bulletin says, the one I got from the gov’ment,’ Uncle Sagamore says. ‘I followed it real careful this time so’s there couldn’t be no chance for a mistake. What you reckon we ort to do?’
Pop studied for a minute. ‘Only one thing we can do,’ he says. ‘We got to let her run full course. Ain’t no sense startin’ another new batch now, because she’ll probably wind up just like this. We got to let her simmer right out to the end, and then when she’s all finished we’ll send a little bit of it to the gov’ment and ask ’em to take a look at it and tell us what we done wrong.’
‘Well sir, that’s the way I got her figured too,’ Uncle Sagamore says, nodding his head. ‘Them fellers in the gov’ment can’t tell nothin’ about it less’n we follow the ins
tructions right out to the end. So we’ll just let her ride. Only take about another month and a half.’
‘Why, in a month and a half it probably won’t be nothing but soup,’ I says.
‘Well, ain’t nothing we can do about that,’ Uncle Sagamore says. ‘Just have to send ’em some of the soup, then. Instructions is instructions, and if you don’t do what they say the gov’ment can’t tell you nothing.’
‘But look at all the time that’s wasted,’ I says.
Uncle Sagamore shifted his tobacco over. ‘Well, hell,’ he says, ‘what’s time to a dead cowhide, or the gov’ment?’
So they decided to do it that way. It seemed to me like we wasn’t going to make much money out of the tannery if another month and a half had to go by before they started a new batch and they already knew this one was ruined, but there wasn’t no use arguing with Pop and Uncle Sagamore.
I was having too much fun to worry about it, anyway. I went fishing nearly every morning, and late in the evening Miss Harrington would give me another swimming lesson. In between times, in the afternoon when she wouldn’t go in, I’d practise in the shallow water at this end of the lake, just below where Uncle Finley was building his boat. And that’s where the funny thing happened, the one I couldn’t figure out at all.
I reckon it was the next day after we discovered the leather was ruined. It was right after noon. Sig Freed was sitting on the bank watching me, because he didn’t like water, and I was wading around and practising swimming not too far from the bank, where it was about waist-deep. And all of a sudden I hit a warm place in the water.
The lake itself wasn’t real cold, of course. Just kind of cool and nice, about right to swim in, but I could sure tell the difference when I hit this warm spot. It wasn’t very big. I moved a couple of feet and I was out of it. I thought maybe I’d just imagined it, so I felt around and by golly I hit it again. It wasn’t hot; just warm, like bath water. It was kind of spooky, and what made it so funny was that I’d been swimming and wading around here in this very spot for nearly a week and it hadn’t been here before.