Uncle Sagamore and His Girls Page 5

  “Goddamned old coot, it ain’t rainin’,” Pop says, real bitter, and got up. I could still hear Sig Freed going up the hill, barking to beat the band. I looked around then, and Uncle Sagamore was standing just outside the door with his shotgun in the crook of his arm. I never been able to figure out how he does that. You don’t hear him move or anything, but all of a sudden he’s just there.

  He was standing real still, listening, and Pop stopped cussing to listen too. Sig Freed sounded like he was almost up to the sand road now. And then all of a sudden he quit barking and let out a yelp like something had bit him. He went “Yip! Yip! Yip!” and you could tell he was coming back this way as fast as he could run. Uncle Sagamore stepped down off the porch with the shotgun, moving fast and silent like an Indian, but before he’d got more than a few steps we heard a car start up by the gate. He come back.

  “What do you reckon it was?” I asked.

  He didn’t say anything. Neither did Pop. Just then Sig Freed come running back into the yard and up the steps. I grabbed him, and he licked my face. He didn’t seem to be hurt. Whoever it was in the car must have throwed something at him and scared him, or kicked at him.

  “Who do you reckon would be prowlin’ around up there this time of night?” Pop asked.

  Uncle Sagamore hitched up the other gallus of his overalls, but all he said was, “Hmmm.” And then all of a sudden there was an awful hammering around behind the house and a screech like nails being pulled. We all run around that way, and here was Uncle Finley. He was still barefooted and in his nightshirt, but he’d lit a lantern and had a pinch bar and was tearing a plank off the back wall next to the kitchen door. The plank flew off with a big clatter, and he waved the pinch bar at us and yelled, “She’s a chicken-drownder!”

  Uncle Sagamore took out his plug and bit off a chew. “Well sir,” he says to Pop, “it kind of makes a man nervous after a while, never knowin’ when he may wake up and find the house gone from over his head.”

  “How big has that ark got to be, anyhow?” Pop asked.

  “Well, I don’t rightly know, Sam. From what I can find out the Vision was kind of hazy about the specifications. He’s got the hen-house in her now, and seven privvies if I ain’t lost count, and three of Marvin Jimerson’s hawg-pens, and a wagon-bed from a pore feller that drove over here one day to do some mule-tradin’ with me. Man was real bitter about it, havin’ to ride home a-straddle of the runnin’ gear.”

  Well, it took ten minutes or so to convince Uncle Finley it was a false alarm and the world wasn’t ending yet, and by the time we all got back in bed we’d forgot what had started the uproar in the first place. But I remembered it later.

  It was around two o’clock in the afternoon and I was fishing for red perch off the end of a log that stuck out in the lake. It was still and hot and the water was like a big piece of glass. And then I heard the noise of an airplane.

  It was a small one, and it wasn’t very high. It come on over, and then doggone if there wasn’t a whole bunch of papers fluttering back from it like somebody’d throwed them out. The plane went on out of sight, but the papers swirled around and started drifting down. The whole thing sure looked funny to me, so I threw down the fishing pole and took out after ’em to see what they was. Sig Freed barked and ran with me.

  They fluttered and turned over real lazy in the air, but they was coming down pretty straight because there wasn’t any wind, and I could see they was going to land in the cornfield that’s between the back of the house and the timber that goes down toward the big river bottom. I got there just as they begin falling in among the cornstalks, and I ran along the rows gathering them up.

  They was printed handbills, and there was three different colors of ’em—pink, blue, and white. I squatted down on a corn row to see what they said, and doggone if they wasn’t about Curly Minifee.

  All the pink ones said, in real big print:

  HAD ENOUGH?

  VOTE FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT

  ELECT J. L. (CURLY) MINIFEE

  Signed: (Minifee for Sheriff Committee)

  The blue ones said, in even bigger print:

  MINIFEE’S YOUR MAN!!!!

  MINIFEE FOR LAW AND ORDER!!!!

  MINIFEE FOR SHERIFF!!!!

  But the white ones was the longest. They had a lot of printing on them, and it took me a while to read it all:

  “Folks, don’t bother to read this—

  —if you’d rather have comedy than law enforcement.

  —if you really want the county flooded all the time with rotgut moonshine.

  —if you think gangsters and gang wars are good publicity for Blossom County.

  —if you like con games, gambling, and crooks, and being fleeced out of your hard-earned money.

  “And if you do read it, but feel that anybody who’d put a stop to all this good clean fun is just an old sorehead and a grouch, for Heaven’s sake don’t vote for Curly Minifee. He hasn’t got any sense of humor at all, folks, and he’d probably break up the whole show by taking a lot of these smart-aleck crooks out of circulation and putting them behind bars. We wouldn’t want that, would we? Think what a dull place Blossom County would be if you could leave a paved street lying out in front of your house all night and still find it there in the morning, or if your school-age children had to go all the way to Memphis or New Orleans to find out what a naked belly-dancer looks like. There’s no telling where this could lead. Why, people might quit laughing at us all over the State and making jokes about “Blossom County tea.”

  “But on the other hand, if you’re fed up with twelve years of futility and inefficiency in the Sheriff’s office and want a man that can handle the job, vote for Curly Minifee.

  “Curly Minifee is a simple, straight-forward man, folks, and he gives you a simple, straight-forward platform:

  PUT MINIFEE IN OFFICE AND PUT THE CROOKS IN JAIL

  Signed: (Minifee for Sheriff Committee.)”

  It sure seemed like he was dead set on getting to be Sheriff. Must cost a lot of money, I thought, to hire an airplane to go around dropping these papers out. I grabbed them up and started running toward the house. Pop and Uncle Sagamore might like to read ’em too.

  FIVE

  BUT THEY ALREADY HAD some. When I come tearing around the house, Murph’s convertible was parked under the oak tree in the front yard. He must have drove up while I was down in the cornfield. Pop and Uncle Sagamore was standing by the car reading a bunch of the sheets I reckon he’d brought out from town. They all looked real serious.

  “Hey, I’ve got some too,” I says. “Mine fell out of the airplane.”

  Nobody paid any attention. “From what I can find out,” Murph says, “he was already thinking about running, even before it happened. That just clinched it.”

  “You think he might win?” Pop asked.

  Murph lit a cigarette. “No use kidding ourselves. He’s got better than an even-money chance right now, and it’s still ten days to the election. The newspaper’s behind him, and the Merchant’s Association, and the League of Women Voters. The whole county’ll be knee-deep in these circulars before sundown, and he’s already sold his filling station and bought a sound truck.”

  “Hmmm,” Uncle Sagamore says. He pursed up his lips and sailed out some tobacco juice. It landed ka-splott about ten feet away, and he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “He sounds like a reg’lar go-getter.”

  Murph nodded. “He is. And he’s no dope; they say he’s slippery as an eel. You kind of caught him off guard there before, because he didn’t recognize you.”

  Just then we heard music. We all looked up the hill, and here come a panel truck in through the gate at the sand road. It looked like a one-car parade. It was painted red and white, and had big signs fastened to the sides and two loudspeakers on top. It drove on down and stopped just above where we was. The two signs on this side was wood frames and white cloth with big red letters painted on them.

  MINIFEE FOR SHERIFF!!


  PUT MINIFEE IN OFFICE AND PUT THECROOKS IN JAIL!!

  We all stared. The music stopped and the man opened the door and got out. It was Curly. He was bareheaded and had on a white suit and a red string tie. The breast pocket of his coat was stuffed with cigars, and he had that big, cocky grin on his face.

  “Howdy, men,” he says, real friendly. “Have a cigar.”

  He grabbed a handful out of the box on the seat, but just then Sig Freed seemed to notice him for the first time. He’d been lying there in the shade of the oak tree kind of grinning at everybody, but all of a sudden he let out a real mad bark and shot right under the convertible and headed for Curly. He didn’t try to bite, but his back hair was bristled up and he went on barking like he was calling Curly every name a dog could think of. It sure was odd; he was usually pretty friendly with folks. Uncle Sagamore pursed up his lips, and him and Pop looked at each other.

  Curly just grinned. “Well, looks like I done lost the weenie-dog vote right off the bat,” he says.

  I grabbed Sig Freed and calmed him down a little, but he kept watching Curly and muttering about it. Curly passed out cigars to Pop and Murph and Uncle Sagamore, and leaned his arm on the windshield of the convertible.

  “Men,” he says, confidential-like, “the first thing a candidate runnin’ for office has to do is line up the backin’ of the real upstandin’ citizens of the community, so that’s the reason I’ve come right to you to start off my campaign—” He stopped then and looked at Pop. “By the way, I’m sure happy to see your back has got all right.”

  “Oh, it was just a little catch,” Pop says. “Straightened up in no time at all.”

  “Well, that’s just fine,” Curly says, real happy about it. “Now, to get back to politics—I don’t aim to run my campaign by knockin’ my opponent, but we got to face facts, men. You ain’t gettin’ the police co-operation you deserve. Your tax money’s bein’ wasted by incompetent men. There’s crooks abroad in this county that ought to be sent up the river so far it’d take nine dollars worth of stamps to mail ’em a postcard, but the Sheriff we got now ain’t able to handle the job. And do you know why?”

  “Hmmm,” Uncle Sagamore says. “I reckon we ain’t give it much thought, to be honest about it, but we’d sure be happy to hear what’s wrong.”

  “Well, the truth of the matter,” Curly says, “is that the Sheriff’s Department is behind the times. They got no trained men, and no modern scientific equipment. Now, I hate to say this, but did you know in that whole office they ain’t even got a Duckworth Sniffalyzer? Or a man that knows how to operate one?”

  “No!” Pop says. “Is that a fact?”

  Curly nodded. “I’m sorry to say it is, men. I checked just this morning, and they never even heard of it.”

  “Well sir, it just disheartens a man,” Uncle Sagamore says. “You reckon if you was elected, you might be able to send off and get one?”

  “Why, it just happens,” Curly said, “I got one right with me. And I’d be glad to demonstrate how it works.”

  Uncle Sagamore brightened right up then. “You see,” he says to Pop. “Things is sure goin’ to be different when we get a new Shurf around here.”

  Curly went over and got the Sniffalyzer out of the back of the truck. It was a shiny metal box with a carrying handle, and it had a sort of snout in front and a pair of earphones that plugged in. GEIGER COUNTER, it says on the side. Likely that was the name of the company that made ’em. Pop and Murph and Uncle Sagamore watched real interested while Curly turned on the switch. Little clicking sounds begin to come out of the earphones.

  “Well sir, she sure looks like a pee-dinger of a machine,” Uncle Sagamore says. “Uh—just what does she do when she’s a-sniffalyzin’?”

  “Locates evidence,” Curly says. “By the scientific method. There just ain’t no way in the world anybody can hide moonshine from this thing.”

  Uncle Sagamore shook his head. “Well, if’n that don’t beat all.”

  Curly put on the ear phones and swung the box around, pointing the snout in different directions. “Too bad there ain’t no moonshine around, so you could watch how it sniffs it out—”

  He stopped then, looking kind of thoughtful. He swung the snout of the thing back a little, so it was pointing straight up the hill. “Hmmm,” he says.

  “Uh—what’s that?” Uncle Sagamore asked.

  “Oh,” Curly says. “I was just about to say I can’t understand that Sheriff at all, not usin’ one of these things. You just can’t fail with ’em—” He stopped again, and kind of frowned, and moved his hand back and forth in front of the snout. “That’s funny. I keep gettin’ a reading, like there was moon around here.”

  Uncle Sagamore was flabbergasted. “Well sir,” he says to Pop, “who would of imagined that?”

  “Shhhh,” Curly says. He swung the spout some more, and listened, and then moved about ten feet to one side. “She’s there, all right. Now, we triangulate the intake to the gargle-binder—hmmmm—” He swung the snout, and listened again. It was still pointing uphill. Then he nodded. He switched off the machine and went over and put it back in the truck, and lit one of his cigars.

  “You can’t fool it,” he says. “Not in a hundred years. And that’s just one of the scientific instruments I intend to lay in, men, soon as I’m elected—”

  Pop and Uncle Sagamore looked at each other. “But just what did it say?” Pop asked.

  “Oh,” Curly says, kind of indifferent. He turned and pointed up the hill. “See that old pine stump up there, about halfway to the gate? There’s a pint fruit jar of moonshine buried just under the ground about six inches from the west side of it.”

  I’d never heard of anything like it. That stump was easy a hundred yards away. Pop and Uncle Sagamore was amazed too, but when we all walked up there Curly just scratched in the dirt with a stick and there it was. It was a pint jar, all right, and it was almost full. He held it up and looked at it.

  “Hmmm,” he says, sort of frowning. “Looks like she might be just a sha-a-de out of adjustment. Said a pint, but this is about a drink short.” He unscrewed the cap and took a drink of it, and nodded. “Pretty close on the proof, though. Said a hundred, and that’s just about on the nose. See what you think.”

  He passed it around. Uncle Sagamore took a drink, and then Pop, and Murph. Uncle Sagamore put his chew back in his mouth, aimed some tobacco juice at a bug crawling along the ground, and says to Pop, “Well sir, if that ain’t the beatin’est machine I ever seen in my life.”

  “It sure is, for a fact,” Pop says. “You just don’t know what they’ll think of next. Likely, though, it takes a real smart man to work it.”

  Curly took another drink, and then he grinned, kind of modest. “Well, it does take a little trainin’, men, but I wouldn’t want to hawg all the credit. You got to give a lot to the man that worked out the idea. Likely you recall him, the great Chinese scientist, One Screwed Duck.”

  Murph nodded. “Sure. I remember reading about him. Didn’t he invent the high-diving board and the empty swimming pool?”

  Curly handed the jar to Uncle Sagamore, and slapped him on the back. He seemed to have got a little red in the face from the two drinks. “Well, I got to be off and electioneerin’, men. I just wanted to let you know I’m one candidate that sure aims to keep his campaign promises, the minute he’s elected. And you take care of that back,” he says real friendly to Pop, “so you can get to the polls.”

  He got back in the truck and drove off up the hill with music blaring out of the loudspeakers. We all walked over and sat down on the porch. Pop and Uncle Sagamore looked real thoughtful. Murph lit a cigarette.

  “Well, I guess that was plain enough,” he says.

  “Sig Freed sure didn’t seem to like him,” I said.

  “Likely he caught it from somebody,” Pop says. “There’s a lot of it going around.”

  “But wasn’t that a humdinger of a machine?” I asked.

 
“Yeah, wasn’t it?” Pop says, like he wasn’t paying much attention.

  Uncle Sagamore still hadn’t said a word. He turned a chair down with its back tilted up from the floor, and laid back against it. He scratched his leg with the big toe of his other foot, and just went on looking up the hill with his mouth puckered up, like he was kinda thinking.

  “It scares me,” Murph says. “What are we goin’ to do?”

  Pop shook his head. “I don’t know.” He looked at Uncle Sagamore, but Uncle Sagamore didn’t even seem to notice.

  Murph waited a few minutes longer, and then said he had to get back to town. Pop walked out to the car with him, and I followed along. Murph got behind the wheel and turned on the switch, and then he looked over where Uncle Sagamore was still lying on the porch. It was the first time I ever saw him look worried. “You reckon he’s got any ideas?” he asked Pop.

  “There ain’t no way you can tell,” Pop said.

  Murph scratched his head. “Ordinarily, I’d say there ain’t anything he can’t handle, but this is rough. That Minifee’s beginning to look like the foxiest character he’s ever tangled with.”

  “Yeah,” Pop says.

  “He’s goin’ to win the election, hands down. That Sheriff hasn’t got a chance.”

  Pop nodded.

  “And when he does,” Murph says, “that’s all, brother.”

  He drove off. Pop went back to the porch and sat down. It looked like he was waiting for Uncle Sagamore to say something, but Uncle Sagamore didn’t even seem to notice him. He just laid there all the rest of the afternoon. At supper time he didn’t say a word while we was eating. We went to bed. In the morning he stretched out on the porch again, right in the same place, with his head and shoulders propped against the chair, sailing out some tobacco juice once in a while but never saying a word to anybody. It sure was funny. It didn’t seem like he was sick, or mad at us, but more like he’d just forgot we was around. At noon he was still there.

  Along about two o’clock Pop went around to the side of the house where our trailer was parked. It’s not a house trailer, but a small one just big enough to carry our bedrolls and the little printing press we use to run off the tip sheets when we’re set up close to the racetracks. I looked in the door, and he was poking around, kind of checking over the press.