Uncle Sagamore and His Girls Read online

  “Never mind, never mind!” the Sheriff says, waving his hands over his head. He went over to look at the parts of the turpentine machinery.

  Mr. Jimerson said he hadn’t seen Pop and Uncle Sagamore since last night. I went up and climbed on the platform, so I could see better, and went on watching for them. The whole place was just an ocean of cars now, and they was still coming. It looked like everybody in the county would be here in another fifteen minutes. The men in white coveralls was waving them down toward the cornfield and the side of the hill around Uncle Finley’s ark, and off to the right of the hog pen. They was leaving the space clear in front of the platform, from there down to the barn and the shed, and that was beginning to jam solid with people. There was lots of women in the crowd. Everybody was excited and talking and looking at their watches. I was really getting scared now. In just a little while it would start.

  Then I saw Harm. He was standing off to one side in some parked cars, and it looked like he was watching for somebody too. He sure had a nerve, I thought, coming after what he’d done. He was probably keeping a watch out for Uncle Sagamore. Then a big cheer went up. Curly had arrived.

  He came on down and parked the sound truck right in front of the platform. That was so they could hook up the microphone to the loudspeakers, I thought. He got out, all dressed up in his fancy white suit and white cowboy hat, and started shaking hands with the people that crowded around. You could see he was really riding high, and he made me sick, thinking of the way he’d fooled Pop and Uncle Sagamore and was going to stab ’em in the back. Then I saw Harm squeezing through the jam, trying to attract his attention. When Curly saw him, Harm just jerked his head without saying anything. You could see something was bothering him. Curly broke away from all the handshakers and followed him. I jumped down from the platform and slipped along behind them.

  They went over between some parked cars. I sneaked around and crawled under one, right next to them. All I could see was their feet, but I could hear ’em. “I had to catch you!” Harm says. He sounded real worked up. “Before you got up there—”

  “What is it?” Curly asked.

  “It’s gone!” Harm said. “They’ve moved it!”

  “What?” Curly ripped out an awful cuss word. “Look, if this is some kind of trick—”

  “Shhh. Not so loud! It’s not any trick, goddammit. I tell you, I went down there about thirty minutes ago, just checking again to be sure, and the whole cryin’ thing was gone. Somethin’ must of made ’em suspicious. Mebbe they seen our tracks.”

  “Well, Jesus Sufferin’ Christ, if this ain’t something!” Curly says. “Five thousand people out there waitin’—”

  He went on cussing. I grinned to myself. Boy, oh, boy—Pop and Uncle. Sagamore had got wind of it in time. Then I stopped. How could they? They hadn’t even been home. And I’d been down there myself not much over three hours ago, and it hadn’t been moved then. I was more mixed up than ever.

  “Now what the hell am I going to do?” Curly said. “In about ten minutes I got to get up in front of all them people, and I got nothin’ to tell ’em.”

  “But, listen—” Harm says.

  Curly cut him off. “Give me back my hundred bucks. And you can kiss that deputy’s job goodbye. And, Buster, if I ever find out you double-crossed me—”

  Harm cussed this time. “Use your head, will you? If I’d wanted to double-cross you I’d of just kept quiet about it and let you lead those people down there and then find the place empty.”

  “Yeah,” Curly says. “I didn’t think of that.”

  “If you’ll just listen a minute,” Harm went on, “I’m tryin’ to tell you something. We can still get him.”

  “How?”

  “He’s only got three good locations beside that one. I mean real secret places that nobody’s ever found. I know where they are. I can check ’em all in a little over an hour.”

  “But, dammit,” Curly says, “I can’t stall these people that long.”

  Harm interrupted him. “You don’t have to! Stall ’em a few minutes anyway—as long as you can—and start your speech. I’ll have it located in plenty of time.”

  “But what’s that going to do?” Curly snapped. “I’m the one that’s got to know where it is. It ain’t goin’ to do any good for you to lead the way down there.”

  “And I ain’t about to, mister,” Harm says. “When he got out of the pen, he’d kill me. It’s goin’ to be hard to do so he don’t catch on, but I think there’s a way we can work it.”

  “How? He’s supposed to be right up there on the stand with me.”

  “He better be. And I want to be dam’ sure he stays there. He just might be suspicious of me already, and I sure ain’t hankerin’ to look around and find him behind me with that shotgun. So, look—I’ll take the car and go on around that road where we parked yesterday. And when I locate it, I won’t come tell you myself. That’d be a dead giveaway. But I got one of my kinfolks with me, Snookie McCallum—she’s sort of a shirttail relation from over around Mount Harmony, an’ Sagamore ain’t never seen her. She’ll drive in, an’ it’ll just look like she come from town, you see? When she comes up to the platform an’ whispers to you, you can announce to ev’body that they’re tryin’ to get you on the phone, somebody important, and that you got to run over to Jimerson’s to take it. Them Noonans won’t suspect a thing.”

  “I get it,” Curly says. “I ride out with her, meet you, and you show me where it is.”

  “Sure. You prob’ly won’t be gone over ten minutes at the most. They can play some records on the sound truck, or somethin’. That’ll keep the crowd happy, and hold them Noonans here at the same time. I want to be dam’ sure Sagamore’s up there, and not waitin’ at that still with a shotgun.”

  “Okay, okay,” Curly says. “That’s easy. I’ll butter ’em up so you couldn’t pry ’em off the platform with a crowbar. But, buddy, you better not let me down. I can make it plenty rough for you when I’m Sheriff. Now get goin’.”

  “Don’t worry. It’ll be in one of those three places,” Harm says. “Come on over to the car an’ I’ll make you acquainted with Snookie, an’ then we’ll light out.”

  Their feet moved away. I slid out from under the car, and looked around the end of it. They was behind another one about thirty feet away with their backs to me, talking to a woman I took to be Miss McCallum. She was a big hefty girl with a large sort of bosom, and had on a low-cut white blouse and a skirt, and was barelegged and wearing sandals. Her hair was deep black, caught together at the back of her head and hanging down in a kind of horse’s tail arrangement. She looked nice, I thought.

  Harm introduced ’em, and she stuck out her hand to Curly and says, “Howdy.” I started to turn away to go back to the platform. Then I stopped. There was something sort of familiar about her, like I’d seen her before. I looked back, but she was turning to get in the car with Harm. Well, it was probably just somebody that looked like her. Harm backed out and they tore up the hill past the stream of cars that was still coming in.

  I was running over to the platform when I saw Murph coming back. One of the white coverall men waved him down toward the lake below Uncle Finley’s ark, but Murph stopped and shook hands with him like he hadn’t seem him in a long time, and then the man looked in his hand and changed his mind and pointed to a parking place just a little off to one side and below the platform where he could watch without even having to get out. I ran over and climbed in.

  “Did you find ’em?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Not a sign of ’em. It’d be too late for ’em to move it now, anyway.”

  “I think they already have,” I said. “But it didn’t do any good. Harm’s going to find it—”

  “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  I told him about overhearing Harm and Curly. He frowned and looked kind of thoughtful. “You say this Snookie McCallum, or whatever her name is, looked familiar? But you couldn’t place her?”
>
  “That’s right. But I couldn’t have seen her anywhere—”

  “Wait a minute,” he says. “You haven’t seen Miss Malone out here—?”

  “No,” I said. “Why?”

  “I was going to bring her, but she’s gone from her shop. And I just remembered something Sagamore asked me—”

  “Oh, this wasn’t Miss Malone,” I said. “He said Snookie McCallum, plain as anything. And besides, her hair was black, and Miss Malone’s is about the color of vanilla ice cream—”

  “The flavors change,” he says. “But that wasn’t what I meant. Look, Billy—those pint jars there at the still; you didn’t count ’em, by any chance?”

  “Sure,” I said. “There was 18. Why?”

  He bit his lip like he was thinking. “... and two ... plus four more ...”

  Then I saw Pop and Uncle Sagamore. “Murph! There they are!” I jumped out of the car.

  “Wait—” he says. But I was already breaking into a run.

  You’d hardly recognize the truck. There was a big “MINIFEE FOR SHERIFF” sign stuck up on it, and a lot of smaller ones with Curly’s picture on them, and paper streamers. And four barrels of something. When it went on past I saw another sign. “Free Ice-Cold Lemonade.”

  I lit out after it. It stopped just above the barn, near the back of the crowd. People was staring at Pop and Uncle Sagamore and the “MINIFEE FOR SHERIFF” signs kind of puzzled, and muttering and nudging one another. Pop jumped out and began opening big cartons of paper cups. People crowded around, looking kind of suspicious but wanting some of the cold lemonade. I tried to push through to him.

  “Just help yourself, folks,” Pop was saying, grinning at everybody. “Compliments of Curly Minifee, our next Sheriff.”

  “Pop!” I yelled. “I got to talk to you.”

  He saw me. “Later, Billy. Get yourself some lemonade.”

  I got close enough to grab his arm. “You got to listen, now!”

  He waved at somebody in the crowd. Then he says to me, “What’s that? Oh. We’ll talk about it later. The rally’s goin’ to start in just about a minute.” He headed up the hill.

  “Pop! I got to tell you—!”

  I ran after him, but lost him in the crowd. I whirled around, to catch Uncle Sagamore, but he was gone too. Then I caught sight of him going toward the house. I lit out after him, but people kept getting in my way. When I got there, he wasn’t in any of the rooms. I ran out the back, and caught just a quick glimpse of him going along through the parked cars near the barn. He was carrying something against his side. I couldn’t tell exactly what it was, but it was something long, and he seemed to be holding it that way so people wouldn’t see it. It seemed like he was headed for the timber beyond the fence. I tore out again, wondering if I’d ever get one of ’em to listen. It was beginning to look hopeless. When I got through the fence I thought I saw something moving off through the trees, and headed for it as fast as I could run. It seemed funny he’d come out here, but by now nothing made any sense. I couldn’t find him. I stopped and listened for footsteps in the leaves. There wasn’t any. Then I heard the crowd begin to roar behind me.

  “Minifee! We want Minifee!” “Let’s go, Curly!” He was stalling as long as he could, and they seemed to be getting impatient, wondering what the delay was.

  I ran on, yelling, “Uncle Sagamore!” every few steps. He didn’t answer. It wasn’t any use, I thought; I must have gone past him. It’d be better to go back and try to head him off on the way to the platform. I turned and ran back, beginning to feel winded now. Just as I got to the fence, I heard Curly’s voice over the loudspeakers. “Ladies and gentlemen—!” There was a big cheer that drowned him out. I couldn’t see anything at all, so I climbed up on top of one of the parked cars, and then I could see everything, and I was too late.

  All the way from the barn up to the platform it was just a sea of people jammed together like sardines and waving their arms and cheering. Curly was on the front of the platform by the microphone, holding his hands in the air to the cheers, and in back of him on one of the benches was Pop and Uncle Sagamore. They had big silly grins on their faces, and looked proud as anything. It was awful, I thought. Curly had them right where he wanted ’em. They didn’t have a chance.

  While I was climbing down from the car, I saw the Sheriff. He was over by the shed, all alone. He was sitting on one of the disconnected boilers with his face slumped down, listening to the big roar of cheers for Curly Minifee, and for a minute I felt sorry for him too, even if he had tried to put Uncle Sagamore in jail so he could be re-elected. There was a kind of war went on between the two of ’em all the time, but at least it was an honest war, and the Sheriff wasn’t a mealy-mouthed, underhanded sneak like Curly Minifee.

  The cheers began to quiet down a little while I was running up the side of the crowd, and Curly began to talk over the loudspeakers, some of his whopping lies about how glad he was to be here, and how happy it all made him, and how their reception made him sort of choke up and brought moisture to his eyes.

  “—as we all know, tomorrow’s election day, and this is my last speech of the campaign. And win, lose, or draw, the thing that I’ll be proudest of is that I’ve waged a clean fight without mud-slinging and underhanded tactics. As my old daddy used to say, God rest his soul—”

  It was enough to make you sick.

  Then I was up near the front. I cut over by Murph’s car, and climbed in. “Couldn’t you catch either one of ’em before they got up there?” I asked.

  He didn’t pay any attention. “Listen, Billy,” he says, “are you sure there was just 18 of those jars?”

  I couldn’t figure why he wanted to talk about that now. “Sure,” I says. “I counted ’em.”

  “Well, look—I don’t suppose you remember what kind of lids they had?”

  “Yeah. I’m pretty sure they was all the same. And they was sort of brass-colored.”

  He nodded kind of slow, but he didn’t say anything. “What is it?” I asked.

  But it didn’t seem like he even heard me. He just went on staring out through the windshield, while Curly’s mealy-mouthed lies kept coming over the loudspeakers. Then he took out a cigarette. He flipped the lighter, but just held it in his hand like he’d forgot about it.

  “The poor son of a bitch,” he said.

  “Uncle Sagamore?” I asked.

  “No,” he says. “Curly.”

  FOURTEEN

  “MURPH—” I SAYS. “WHAT is it?”

  “Shhhh.” He nodded toward the platform. “Listen.”

  “And now,” Curly went on, like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, “before I go any further, I’d like to thank the Noonan boys, Sagamore and Sam, for bein’ kind enough to allow me to hold this rally on their place. A little later on I’ll tell you the reason I wanted to make my last speech of the campaign here on the Noonan farm, and I’m sure you’ll understand perfectly when you learn it, but right now I’d like to introduce them. Ladies and gentlemen—two of our esteemed fellow citizens, and my very good friends, Sam and Sagamore Noonan!”

  “He sure is butterin’ ’em up,” I says.

  “Shhh!” Murph waved a hand for me to be quiet.

  Curly turned a little so as to face them too, and clapped his hands. Pop and Uncle Sagamore stood up with big sheepish grins on their faces. A few people clapped once or twice, but most of ’em just looked kind of puzzled and suspicious. They was about to set down again when a car shot through the gate up by the road and came flying down the hill in a cloud of dust. Curly saw it, and I could see him having trouble keeping his face straight. It was Harm’s car, all right. He’d found the still.

  It slid to a stop close to the platform with a big screeching of tires, and turned around, and Snookie McCallum jumped out. You could see she sure was in a hurry. The crowd all watched while she ran up the steps of the platform. Curly came over, and she spoke to him real low, and he nodded once or twice.

  He swung back to
the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to excuse me for a few minutes. I’ve just got word the Governor’s office is trying to reach me on the phone—”

  While he was explaining, Snookie McCallum was fidgeting first on one foot and then on the other like she was wishing he’d hurry up, and she kept looking up the hill toward the gate. I had that feeling again that I’d seen her before, and all at once it hit me. It was Mrs. Horne.

  “Murph!” I pointed. But he was already staring at her. Then he says, “Well I’ll be goddamned!”

  “But, why—?”

  “Billy,” he says, “will you do something for me? Just be quiet the rest of the afternoon. I don’t want to miss any of this, because the chances are we’ll never see anything like it again. If you do recognize somebody from time to time, it may be a miracle, but don’t bother to point it out. Just keep your eye on the stage.”

  I didn’t know what he meant. I looked back at the girl. It was crazy, but that’s who she was. Her hair being put up that way made her look younger somehow, and of course it was black now instead of blonde, and she was dressed different. But what was it all about? She was still jittering around, sort of nervous, and glancing up at the gate.

  “—not over ten minutes at the most,” Curly was saying into the microphone. “And I’m sure my good friends the Noonan boys would be glad to say a few words, or play a record or two.”

  He clapped Pop and Uncle Sagamore on the back. “You boys take good care of my friends out there. I’ll be back before you know it.”

  “Sure,” Pop says. “We’d be proud to help any way we can.” He stepped up to the microphone, with a sheepish grin on his face, and says, “Well, folks, I shore didn’t expect I’d have to make a speech when I got up on this here platform—”