Uncle Sagamore and His Girls Page 10

  She waved a hand at the crowd, and grinned at Pop and Uncle Sagamore. “Hiya, boys. You ready for us to start work?”

  “You’re just in time,” Pop says. “We’re about set up now to start manufacturin’.”

  Then Booger came pushing through the crowd. “What’s all this?” he says. “What are you doin’ here?”

  “Oh, relax, relax,” Mrs. Horne says. She handed him a card. “I’m Madame Pasatiempo. Me and my nieces are going to work for the Noonan Turpentine Company.”

  Booger looked at the card kind of suspicious. “Wait a minute! I remember you. You’re Mrs. Horne—”

  She patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t strain it, honey; you might blow a fuse. Of course I’m Mrs. Horne; Madame Pasatiempo’s just my professional name. But like I started to tell you, things got a little slow in the photography business, and about that time we run into the Noonan boys and they said they’d give us some part-time work in the turpentine dodge to sort of tide us over. So here we are, no?” She spread her hands out and shrugged her shoulders. “That’s just Latin charm. Don’t let it throw you.”

  All the crowd stared, just fascinated. Booger couldn’t seem to think of anything to say. Mrs. Horne stepped back and opened the door of the trailer. “Come on out, girls, and meet the dignitaries. Looks like the Mayor’s about to cut the ribbon.”

  Two girls came out. There was a lot of whistles through the crowd, and somebody says, “Woo-woo!” They sure was pretty. They both had long shoulder-length hair, one whitish and the other jet black, and red mouths and deep blue eyes. They had on kind of gauzy white dresses and gold sandals, and was barelegged. I remembered the light-colored one, but the other one seemed to be new.

  Mrs. Horne waved an arm and her bracelets clanked. “Folks, I want you to meet my nieces. The platinum job’s Baby Collins, and the dark number is Conchita McLeod. Girls, this is where we’re going to gather the sap.”

  Conchita McLeod took her cigarette out of her mouth and looked around at the crowd. “Which one?”

  Mrs. Horne turned to Pop and Uncle Sagamore. “Well, you show ’em where to start, and I’ll park the trailer and set up camp.”

  Pop led the way over to the shed where the still was, and gave each girl a whole bunch of little buckets. He pointed up the hill to the pines. “All the trees that’re gashed,” he says, “have got a bucket hanging on a nail. Just leave an empty one and bring in the full one.”

  “Sounds like a frantic routine,” Baby Collins says.

  Conchita McLeod looked at the men following them. “Reminds me of Yellowstone,” she says to Pop. “When do you feed ’em?”

  They went off into the pines. Mrs. Horne was moving the trailer. Pop says to Uncle Sagamore, “Well, I reckon we can fire up in the mornin’. But now we better dump the rest of that hawg-feed.”

  We started down to the barn, but just then there was the awfullest hullaballoo I ever heard in my life. There was a loud shriek up in the pines, and then another one, and the two girls come flying out in the open as hard as they could tear.

  For a second I couldn’t make out what was wrong. They seemed to be slapping at their hair and their dresses while they ran. Then people began yelling, “Wasps!” “Bees!” “Ants!” “Yeller jackets!” Some of the men ran toward them, waving their hats. The girls dodged them and tore on down the hill with Miss Collins going to the front and drawing away, but then she stopped to yank off her dress and throw it behind her and Miss McLeod took over the lead. She was still slapping at her dress. Then she yanked hers over her head and tossed it in the air behind her. They was naked except for some little wispy underpants and their sandals. They screamed again, and tore for the lake, zig-zagging through the men that was waving their hats and trying to head them off. I couldn’t see the bees or wasps, or whatever it was, but there sure was plenty of men after ’em. I lost sight of them when they shot through the parked cars, and took out for the lake myself as hard as I could run.

  The girls was still in the lead and still shrieking when they went by Uncle Finley’s ark. “Nekkid hussies!” he yelled, and shook his hammer at ’em. He was running along the scaffold to keep ’em in sight, and come to the end of it and fell off. By now the whole place was like a madhouse. He got up shaking his fists and yelling something about fornicators and sinners just as the first wave of men kind of rolled over him and the girls shot out in the water. Then a car slid to a stop with the tires screaming, and I saw it was the Sheriff. He got out, with his mouth hanging open, and stared while the main body of men tore past him down the hill and you could hear the girls yelling, “Help! Help!” out in the lake. He turned around against the side of the car and put his head down on his arms, and it looked like he was pounding on the roof with his fists.

  Booger was in the lead. He dived right into the lake, clothes, hat, gun, and all, and rescued Miss McLeod. Some other man saved Baby Collins. When they stood up with the girls in their arms, though, you could see the water wasn’t very deep, not quite up to their hips. They waded out, dripping water from their clothes, while men was milling around asking questions and checking over the girls to see if they’d been stung bad. Booger had lost his hat, and his hair was plastered down in his face. There was so much confusion you couldn’t hear yourself think.

  And then Major Kincaid came plowing through the crowd with Doug’s camera, yelling, “Let me get a picture!” He pointed the camera at Booger and Miss McLeod, and the flash bulb went off.

  Doug was yelling at the Major. “We can’t print that! She hasn’t got any clothes—!”

  “So we’ll add a little bathing suit!” the Major shouted. “I want the people to see what the law officers of this county are doing while a man runs off moonshine whiskey in front of their noses—”

  Then the Sheriff was right in the middle of the uproar, shaking his fist in Major Kincaid’s face. “You shut up, Kincaid! Them girls was drownding, and all he did was save—!” He stopped then and looked all around, kind of blank, and then threw his hat on the ground. “Girls?” he yelled. “Who the hell are these goddam girls an’ where the hell did they come from? But anyway—all Booger did was save—” He stopped again, and kind of stared. “Booger?” he shouted. “Booger?”

  He whirled around and pointed his finger in Booger’s face. “I told you to watch that goddam mash!”

  “Oh, my God!” Booger says. He dropped Miss McLeod in the edge of the water and lit out in a hard run. The other man dropped Baby Collins, and then the whole herd was charging up past the ark again. Baby Collins sat up. “Think nothing of it, honey,” she says. “This is just an average day. I’ve been out here before.”

  Conchita McLeod spit out some water, and looked up where Uncle Finley was yelling at them and peering around the end of the ark. “And you came back?” she says.

  I took out after the men, and began passing some of the winded ones before we got up to the house. Booger was on the front end again, and the Sheriff was laying second, just off the pace. He hadn’t been in the first run, so he was able to keep up. We came down the stretch pretty well bunched up, like a well-weighted handicap, and when we got to the barn by golly there was Pop and Uncle Sagamore just as calm as you please. They was dumping out the hog feed; seven of the tubs was lying there empty by the big pile of wet mush, and they was just carrying out the last one. Seems like they hadn’t paid any mind to the uproar at all.

  They set the tub down just as we came charging up. “Sure hope them pore gals ain’t stung bad,” Uncle Sagamore says. “Them daggone red wosts is jest pure mean—”

  “Sagamore Noonan!” the Sheriff snapped. “What’d you do—?”

  Booger caught his arm and pointed at the empty tubs and the pile of wet mush, gasping for breath. “He’s—dumped ’em all. I saw ’em—dump—first one—!”

  “Shut up!” the Sheriff yelled at him. He turned on Uncle Sagamore “What’d you do with that mash?”

  Pop and Uncle Sagamore picked up the last tub and dumped it on the pile. T
he juice run off across the ground. Uncle Sagamore bit off a chew of tobacco. “Well sir,” he says, “I jest don’t know, Shurf. I can’t figger what it is we’re doin’ wrong. You don’t reckon it might be the hot weather that’s makin’ it sour? Now, you take milk—”

  “Shut up!” The Sheriff’s face was turning purple. “I want to know what you done with that stuff!”

  Uncle Sagamore looked puzzled. “Why, we dumped her out. Right there—” He pointed to the big pile of wet mush.

  “I’m not blind; I can see the corn meal!” the Sheriff barked. He whirled around to Booger. “Go into town and round up ten men and get ’em out here as fast as you can. We’ll take this place apart!”

  Booger looked sheepish. His shoes still sloshed when he moved, and water was dripping off him everywhere. “But we saw—”

  The Sheriff started to choke. “You saw him dump the first tub. Then you fished a nekkid girl out of a lake and got back in time to see him dump the last one! Get goin’!”

  “Yes, sir,” Booger says. He jumped in a car and tore off for town. The Sheriff yelled for the other deputy, and they ran up to the still. They unscrewed bolts and yanked the tops off the boiler things and looked inside, and then down in the fireboxes, and in the big water tank. I thought they’d gone crazy. Just then Major Kincaid came running down the hill from the pines. He shoved through the crowd and got hold of the Sheriff’s arm.

  “There’s no wasp nests up there!” he barked. “I looked—”

  “All right, I know that,” the Sheriff snapped.

  “And I’ll tell you what else I found out, Major Kincaid said. “He’s been tapping pines on my property. If he sets foot across that fence again, I want him arrested for trespass!”

  The Sheriff shook his fists over his head. “All right, all right, all right! Get offa my back, will you?” He ran down to the barn where Pop and Uncle Sagamore was still looking sort of mournful at the pile of spoiled hog feed. “You stay off Kincaid’s land!” he roared at Uncle Sagamore. “He says you ringed some pines on his side of the fence.”

  “Why, shucks, Shurf,” Uncle Sagamore says, kind of sheepish. “I didn’t reckon he’d mind, for jest a little old dab of rosum.”

  “Well, you heard me!” the Sheriff barked. Then he looked up and saw Mrs. Horne and Baby Collins and Miss McLeod walking down the hill. The two girls had towels wrapped around their heads, and had changed into some little romper suits. He went plowing up through the crowd and shook his finger in Mrs. Horne’s face. “If you ain’t off this place in five minutes I’m goin’ to throw the lot of you in jail!”

  Mrs. Horne grinned at him. “Okay, don’t race your engine, Sherfie. If that’s the way you feel about it—”

  She waved to Uncle Sagamore and Pop and went back up to the trailer. In a few minutes they drove off. The Sheriff and his deputy hurried back and started poking around in the machinery again.

  Uncle Sagamore shook his head. “Well sir,” he says to Pop, “I don’t reckon I ever seen a man like that Shurf for gettin’ in a uproar over nothin’.”

  “Ain’t it a fact?” Pop says. He looked at the pile of soured feed kind of despondent. “Billy, you start bringin’ some water so we can warsh out these tubs.”

  “Are we goin’ to try another batch?” I asked.

  “Why, sure,” he says. “We got to feed them hawgs, ain’t we?”

  I began washing out the tubs. People was still milling around everywhere, and I heard one man say to another, “All right, give me my dollar.” It was the two that had made the bet this morning. “I told you he’d do it, didn’t I?”

  “Ho-o-old it,” the second one says. “Not so fast. He ain’t done it yet.”

  “Well, he got it out of the tubs, didn’t he? What you want, anyway? Lie there an’ drink it while it’s runnin’ out of the still?”

  TEN

  WELL, IT SEEMED LIKE there just wasn’t any use arguing with ’em. They was bound and determined they was going to make eight full tubs of it again.

  “But listen,” I says. “It don’t spoil till the third day. So if we only made one tub at a time, the pigs’d have it et up by then.”

  “No sir,” Pop said, “we just can’t give up that easy. There’s something wrong, and we got to find out what it is.”

  “And besides,” Uncle Sagamore says, “supposin’ it went ahead and spoiled after they et it? All them bubbles a-fizzin’ around inside ’em, them hawgs’d lose confidence in you right now. And there ain’t nothin’ as aggravatin’ to live with as a disillusioned hawg.”

  So they mixed up another full batch. I thought it wasn’t any wonder all the people was shaking their heads like they couldn’t believe it. They’d already throwed out enough to feed the hogs a month, and here they was just going to do it all over again. The Sheriff went on running around the place poking into corners like a crazy man, and when Booger got back from town with two carloads of men he run out to meet them and started giving orders.

  “Two of you watch the still,” he says. “The rest of you spread out and start searching. I want this place turned inside out.”

  I couldn’t figure what they was looking for, but whatever it was, they didn’t find it. They swarmed all over the place till sundown. The Sheriff leaned against the wall of the barn and mopped his face. “All right,” he says. “Mebbe they did dump it out. Booger, what in the name of God is he up to?”

  Booger shook his head. Then he brightened up. “Say, you know there’s one possibility we’ve never thought of. He might be doin’ just what he says he is.”

  The Sheriff patted him on the shoulder. “You’ve had a tryin’ day. And you better go get into some dry clothes.”

  “No, look,” Booger says. “I mean it. Don’t you see, that’s the one thing that would fool everybody.”

  “Sure,” the Sheriff said. “But there wouldn’t be any profit in it. And did you ever hear of Sagamore Noonan victimizin’ the human race just for fun? They got to pay him for it.”

  “Yeah, I forgot about that,” Booger says.

  In the morning by a little after sunup there was cars parked all around the hillside and more was coming all the time. Everybody was excited because this was the day we was going to start up the still. We looked at the hog feed first. It was still nice and clear.

  “Hmmm,” Uncle Sagamore says, real pleased. “That’s better.”

  “Yes sir,” Pop says, “mebbe we solved her.”

  I wasn’t so sure. This was still just the first day. We went up to the shed. Otis and another deputy was sitting on a couple of boxes watching the machinery. Uncle Sagamore said the first thing was to collect the rosum, so we went up to the slashed pines and brought back the buckets. They was about half full of this sticky stuff.

  I watched, real fascinated, while they started in. It was the first good look I’d had at the machinery since they finished hooking it up. There seemed to be pipes and copper tubing running everywhere. There was several that ran back and forth between the two boilers, all with valves and petcocks, and it looked like six pieces of tubing that run from the boilers down through the water tank. These all had petcocks too. They wound around inside the tank all tangled up like spaghetti, poked out through the wall of the tank near the bottom, made a little bend, and stopped. But it seemed like there was only five of these little ends. That was funny, I thought. I tried to trace them through the tangle to see if one had got lost, but the tank was filling up with water now and it was hard to see. They’d opened the valve on the pipe coming from the spring. It went into the tank down near the bottom, and there was another pipe on the other side near the top for an overflow.

  Pop and Uncle Sagamore took the cover off one of the boilers, poured in a little water, and then dug the pine sap out of the buckets and scraped it in. Otis watched every move they made. Before they put the lid on he looked inside. “What’s in the other one?”

  “Nothin’,” Pop says. “It’s just a spare, till we get in full production.”


  “Open the lid,” Otis says. “We’ll see what’s in it.”

  Pop opened it. You could see it was empty. He closed it again. By now the big water tank was full. Uncle Sagamore hunkered down and began putting paper and kindling in the firebox at the bottom of the boiler. The crowd pushed in a little closer. It sure was exciting, I thought. The turpentine business was ready to start.

  Well, it seemed like they had nothing but trouble with it right from the first minute. There was the smoke, to begin with. I never saw so much smoke. In the back of the firebox there was a place for a stovepipe, but they’d forgot to get one, so the smoke just rolled out, run into the tin roof, and swirled around everything. It seemed like the wood was a little green too, and when Uncle Sagamore kept adding pitch pine to make it burn it just made more smoke. Part of the time you couldn’t see anything of Pop and Uncle Sagamore except their feet.

  But the worst part was that there wasn’t any turpentine come out. Not a drop.

  Pop and Uncle Sagamore came out after about half an hour, coughing and wiping tears out of their eyes. “She sure ort to be runnin’ by now, Sam,” Uncle Sagamore says, sort of puzzled.

  “You reckon we made a mistake in the hook-up?” Pop asked.

  “Mebbe we ort to check again.” They went back and started groping around at the pipes and tubing. Otis got as close as he could and peered through the smoke, watching them. I looked around, and Murph was standing behind me, looking worried. He tossed me the paper he had in his hand. It was the Blossom County Bee.

  The whole front page was just big headlines and pictures again. Clear across the top in three-inch type it said:

  BLOSSOM COUNTY FOLLIES CONTINUED—

  There was more pictures of the still and the hog feed. And right in the middle of the page was the one the Major had taken of Booger and Conchita McLeod. She had her arm around Booger’s neck, and he was grinning kind of stupid, with his hair plastered down in his face. Down below it said: “Sheriff’s Deputy in hilarious moment at Noonan farm.”