Uncle Sagamore and His Girls Read online

  Pop and Uncle Sagamore didn’t seem to pay the slightest mind to all this uproar. They was still studying about the hog feed. “Well,” Uncle Sagamore says, kind of discouraged, “I don’t see nothin’ to do but throw her out, Sam, and start over.”

  “I reckon so,” Pop says. “Billy, you take the hawgs some of that corn you got shelled. That’ll have to do ’em for now.”

  “Making whiskey?” Major Kincaid yelled at the Sheriff. His face was turning purple now. “Evidence? Good God in Heaven, what evidence do you want? Sagamore Noonan hasn’t done anything for thirty years but make whiskey! He’s got a still right there in front of your eyes! He admits it’s a still. There’s eight tubs of mash, already fermented!”

  Pop and Uncle Sagamore picked up one of the tubs. They carried it off a little way from the barn and dumped it out. It sure smelled sour, all right. The juice part kind of bubbled and run into the ground. They came back and got another one. The people all stared and shook their heads like they couldn’t make any sense out of it.

  Major Kincaid was screaming again. “Look! They’re destroying the evidence! Are you going to stand there like a fat jackass and let ’em pour it out?”

  The Sheriff lammed his hat on the ground, and shook his finger in Major Kincaid’s face. “Don’t you call me a fat jackass! That stuff ain’t evidence in court unless it can be proved he’s tryin’ to make it into moonshine. And you don’t think any jury in its right mind would believe that even Sagamore Noonan would have the guts to try to make whiskey right out in the open in front of everybody in the county, do you? They’d laugh out loud at you.”

  Uncle Sagamore and Pop carried out another tub and dumped it. Major Kincaid sputtered again, but just then Curly Minifee pushed through the crowd with a big grin on his face and took him by the arm. “I think the Sheriff might be right, Major,” he says. The Major looked at him like he’d gone crazy, but he let Curly lead him off to one side near the hog pen. I filled up a bucket with shelled corn and took it over to the two pigs. They started to eat.

  Curly was talking to the Major. I heard him snicker. “Hey, wise up, Major,” he says. “You’re playin’ it all wrong. This whole thing’s like money from home, so don’t try to break it up. Just give it publicity.”

  “But—but—” the Major sputtered. “He ought to be in jail—”

  Curly grinned real nasty. “And where do you think he’s goin’ to be as soon as I take office? He’s goin’ to be in the pen so long and so often he won’t even bother to bring his clothes home when his time’s up. Now, you just get some good pictures of that still so we can go on nailing the Sheriff’s hide to the wall.”

  Pop and Uncle Sagamore had finished dumping the tubs and washing them out, and they moved the truck over by the shed Mr. Jimerson had built. The Sheriff was talking to Booger and Otis and waving his arms like he was all worked up. People was still milling around in the way, and there was a half dozen hot arguments going on everywhere you turned.

  “I tell you,” a farmer in a floppy straw hat was saying to another one, “he’s a-goin’ to run off moonshine right out there in the open in front of ev’body.”

  “Hell, how could he?” the other one said.

  Another one joined in. “Course he cain’t. Ain’t nobody can. All he’s doin’ is hoorawin’ the Shurf.”

  A tall skinny man was cutting a piece of tobacco off his plug with a knife. “Hoorawin’ the Shurf, your butt,” he says. “You got any idea what them boilers and that sugar cost him? An’ you ever hear of Sagamore Noonan doin’ anything without he was makin’ money on it?”

  That seemed to stop everybody. They stared at each other kind of blank. “By God, that’s right.”

  It was getting late in the afternoon now, and a good many of the people was leaving to take care of their chores. We went in the kitchen to start heating the water for the new batch of hog feed. Murph came in while Uncle Sagamore was lighting the fire in the stove.

  He lit a cigarette, and says, “We still might be able to get a bet down on Curly, by giving three-to-one.”

  “Hmmm,” Uncle Sagamore says. “Why, I don’t reckon I’d do that, Murph.”

  Murph looked at him real thoughtful like. “No? Why not?”

  “Sounds like kind of a gamble to me.” Uncle Sagamore stuck a match to the paper in the stove. “Why, supposin’ Curly didn’t win.”

  “Okay,” Murph said. “You don’t have to hit me with anything bigger than the First National Bank. But it’s going to take a Grade A miracle.” He kind of hesitated a minute, and then when Uncle Sagamore didn’t say any more he started out.

  “Uh, Murph,” Uncle Sagamore says. “That there Miss Malone. Didn’t I hear tell she was sort of in the beauty shop business?”

  “Yaah,” Murph says. “She runs a shop in town. Used to be a make-up artist in television a while back there. Why?”

  “I was jest wonderin’,” Uncle Sagamore says. He blew on the fire to get it going.

  “Curly had his eye on her,” Murph went on. “He was showing off a little on that tire deal, and that’s the reason he got so sore when you clobbered him right in front of her.”

  “I kind of figgered that,” Uncle Sagamore says, scratching his head.

  Murph left. We heated the water and mixed up another eight tubs of hog feed with about a dozen people standing around watching us. Uncle Sagamore says to Pop, “Well sir, I shore hope this here batch don’t spoil on us, like that other done.”

  “Yeah,” Pop says. “Sort of expensive, havin’ to throw it out.”

  “I tell you,” I says. “Why don’t we make it just one tub at a time? That way, the pigs’d get it et up before it had time to spoil.”

  Uncle Sagamore studied about it. “Hmmm. But ain’t that kind of a piddlin’ sort of way to do things, fritterin’ around with little dabs? Man wouldn’t have no time left for the turpentine business.”

  Well, seemed like the crowds we’d had so far wasn’t anything. The next morning they began pouring into the place before we’d even finished breakfast. When we started out to the barn there was four men lifting up the gunny sacks and peering into the tubs. They didn’t hear Uncle Sagamore come up behind ’em barefooted. He leaned against a post, picking his teeth with a long-bladed knife.

  “Mornin’, men,” he says. “If you lost something mebbe I could help you find it.”

  They whirled around, and jumped back from the tubs. “Uh—no—” one says. “We was jest admirin’ yore hawg-feed. Shore looks nice.” They kind of sidled away.

  Uncle Sagamore went over and looked in the tubs, and nodded. “Well sir,” he says to Pop, “looks like we got the do on her, Sam. This here batch don’t seem to be spoilin’.”

  They dipped a bucketful from one of the tubs and fed it to the pigs. That was all they could eat, and it still seemed to me like we’d made way too much. It’d take ’em two weeks to eat it all. We went up to the shed, where the truck was parked with all the machinery on it. Pop and Uncle Sagamore took crowbars and started skidding the boilers and the big water tank off onto the ground at the edge of the shed. A lot of men had gathered to watch now, and more was coming and going all the time, but they all stayed back out of the way. They went on moving the stuff into place under the shed. They put the two boiler things close together, and then the big tank in back of them, right over the water pipe.

  “That there’s the condenser,” I heard one of the men say. “The worm goes down through the water in the tank, an’ the likker comes out at the lower end—”

  “You mean the turpentine,” another one said. Somebody snickered. Uncle Sagamore straightened up and looked over in their direction while he bit off a chew. The snickering stopped. Just then a Sheriff’s car came shooting down the hill from the gate. It slid to a stop at the barn, and the Sheriff and Otis and another deputy got out, along with a man in a business suit and panama hat.

  The men watching nudged one another. “Hey,” one says, “that’s Robert Foss with ’em. He’s
the Prosecutin’ Attorney.”

  All four of them looked in the tubs and then come stalking up to the shed. They looked mad. “Why, howdy, men,” Uncle Sagamore says. They just glared, and didn’t answer. Mr. Foss looked at all the machinery, and nodded his head.

  “What about it?” the Sheriff asked him. “What can we do?”

  “Well, there’s just no precedent,” Mr. Foss said. “Beyond any doubt it’s a complete moonshine outfit, all right—”

  “Goddammit!” the Sheriff says. “I know all that. Of course there ain’t no precedent. There’s only been one Sagamore Noonan since the human race clumb down from the trees. And any jackass can see it’s a complete moonshine operation. But can I arrest him?”

  Mr. Foss shook his head kind of bitter. “No.”

  “No way at all?” the Sheriff asked.

  “I don’t see any,” Mr. Foss says. “A distilling apparatus in itself is not illegal except when it is used, or intended to be used, for an illegal purpose. He’s not making whiskey with it at the moment, so it’s a question of proving intent, and how in hell can we do that? Do you think we could convince a jury he intends to make illegal whiskey out in the open, in full view of several hundred witnesses, including law enforcement officers? Hah! The defense would laugh us out of court.”

  The Sheriff took a deep breath, and rubbed his hands across his face. “All right. So the only way is to catch him.” He turned around to Otis. “From now on I want two men here ever minute, day and night, one watching this still and the other watching the mash. And when that mash starts to ferment, don’t let it out of your sight for one second!”

  Uncle Sagamore and Pop just went on unloading the pipe and copper tubing. The Sheriff and Mr. Foss got back in the car and dusted up the hill. Otis went down and sat on a box by the tubs and the other deputy stayed here where he could watch the machinery.

  One of the men watching bit off a chew and looked around at the others. “I wouldn’t of missed this for nothin’ on earth. Now, jest how the hell is he goin’ to do it?”

  “He cain’t,” another one said. “Ain’t no way in the world—”

  The first one pulled out a dollar. “This here says he will. That’s Sagamore Noonan, an’ he’ll do her.”

  NINE

  WELL, THE REST OF the day it sure was interesting. There was more and more people coming and going all the time, especially after the paper came out with the front page covered with pictures of the still. Major Kincaid and his photographer showed up and took some more of Pop and Uncle Sagamore working on it. Curly drove out and looked it over again with a big grin, and left. Pop and Uncle Sagamore didn’t pay any attention to any of it at all. They just went on cutting pipe with a hacksaw and threading it and hooking up the parts of the still.

  Along in the afternoon Uncle Sagamore got together a flock of little buckets, some pieces of tin, and some nails and a handaxe, and went up to the pine trees on the hillside just above the shed. I watched while he cut V-shaped notches in the sides of the tree trunks, stuck a piece of folded tin in the bottom of the V for a sort of trough, and hung one of the buckets under it by driving a nail into the tree.

  “That’s where we catch the rosum,” he says. He notched several and crawled through a fence and notched some more on the other side until he’d used up all the buckets.

  About sundown we fed the pigs. The feed still smelled all right, but when Pop dipped out a bucketful I thought I saw a bubble coming up through the juice. “I still think we ought to make it in smaller batches,” I says.

  They didn’t say anything, but I could see they was worried. Naturally they wouldn’t make any profit at all on the hog-fattening if they had to keep throwing out spoiled feed. By the time it was dark all the watchers had gone home, but Booger and another deputy was still there, one watching the feed and the other one the still. Sometime during the night two more took their places. The next day it was the same. Pop and Uncle Sagamore went on working on the still, not paying any attention to the crowds. I went up and looked at the little buckets hanging on the pine trees, and there was some kind of sticky juice beginning to run into them from the notches in the tree trunks.

  But it was the hog feed that everybody seemed to be interested in. And by the middle of the afternoon you could see that this batch was going sour too, just as sure as anything. Bubbles was beginning to come up through the juice in every one of the tubs. Hundreds of people went over and checked it, and then they’d look at each other and nod. “Tomorrow,” I heard one of ’em say.

  Pop and Uncle Sagamore was real discouraged about it when they knocked off work on the still late in the afternoon and came down to feed the pigs.

  “Well sir,” Uncle Sagamore says, “it’s jest downright disheartenin’, Sam. What you reckon we’re doin’ wrong?”

  “I sure don’t know,” Pop said. “You s’pose we ought to throw it out now?”

  Uncle Sagamore studied about it. “Mebbe it won’t get no worse,” he says. “Let’s give it one more day.”

  All the watchers looked at each other.

  But it was worse in the morning; it had a sour smell, and bubbles was just popping up through it. They took a chance and fed a bucketful to the pigs, but you could see they was going to have to throw out seven full tubs of it unless a miracle happened. They started me shelling corn again, while they went up to the shed to work on the still. There was just a few more pipes that had to be hooked up. People began to pour into the place, parking all over the side of the hill. And the first thing they all did was come down to peek at the hog feed. Then they’d nod, and go up to the still.

  Booger was sitting on a box where he could watch the tubs. I thought about it while I was shelling the corn, and decided I’d never seen people act crazier in my life. All over just a little bunch of hog feed that they could see we was going to have to throw out. In about twenty minutes here come the Sheriff. He was upset and out of sorts, and looked like he hadn’t slept for several days. He peered into the tubs, and sniffed them, and said a string of cuss words.

  “All right,” he says to Booger, “don’t take your eyes off it. It’s fermented now, and they’ll try to do somethin’ with it today. They’re only killin’ time on that still; it’s all hooked up now.”

  “Relax,” Booger says. “There ain’t no way on earth they can get it in the still, or run it off if they did. Hell, even besides us, there must be three hundred people watchin’ ’em—”

  The Sheriff cussed some more, and leaned against a post to mop his face. “The only shadow of a chance I got left,” he says, real bitter, “is to catch him before the election. Everybody in the county is either laughin’ at me or cussin’ me, and either way they’re goin’ to vote for Minifee. I tried to make a speech at that rally last night and they booed so loud they drowned me out.”

  Booger studied about it. “Say, you know what,” he says, “I bet that’s what he’s up to. Electin’ Minifee, I mean. Minifee’s as big a crook as he is, so mebbe they’ve worked out a deal—”

  “Oh, I already considered that,” the Sheriff said. “But ain’t no way you can prove it. I still got to catch him makin’ whiskey, or prove to these people that he ain’t. Help me move these tubs.”

  They lifted up the tubs one at a time and looked under and behind them. I wondered if he’d gone crazy. “No hidden pipes or tanks,” he says to Booger. “Only way he can get it out is dip it. Don’t take yore eyes off it!” He drove off.

  I went on shelling corn. It sure was a fine state of affairs, I thought; the Sheriff wanted to put Uncle Sagamore in jail so he could be re-elected, and Curly wanted to be elected so he could put Uncle Sagamore in jail. What chance did he have, with both of ’em after him?

  Just a few minutes past noon Pop and Uncle Sagamore knocked off at the still and came down to the barn. A whole crowd followed along behind. Booger pricked up his ears, and watched ’em like a big wasp. They lifted the gunny sacks off all the tubs and looked at the stuff, and then dipped out some
and sniffed it.

  Uncle Sagamore shook his head, real discouraged. “It ain’t no use, Sam; she’s as sour as the first batch.”

  “What you reckon causes it?” Pop asked.

  “Well sir, I sure don’t know,” Uncle Sagamore says. “There’s bound to be somethin’ we ain’t doin right. Might try just a teensy bit less corn meal in her next time, an’ see if that helps. Anyhow, we got to dump this.”

  They picked up the tub they’d been feeding the hogs out of, that was still about half full, and carried it out beyond the barn where they’d dumped the first batch. It was still lying there like a bunch of half-dried mush. Booger watched every move they made, and all the people was staring like they couldn’t quite believe it. They turned the tub upside down, and the juice part ran into the ground. They pounded on it till all the mush was out, and started back to get another one.

  But just then everybody turned and looked up toward the gate. A car had turned in and was coming down the hill pulling a big silvery house trailer. It sure was a pretty one, and I thought it had some signs painted on the side, but you couldn’t make them out from this angle. Then I saw it was a woman driving. Before she got down to where all the other cars was parked, she turned off and stopped. And then we could see the sign. It said:

  PASATIEMPO SCHOOL OF PHOTOGRAPHY

  Landscape, Portrait, Figure,

  Life Classes, Darkroom Technique

  Use Our Models Use our Darkroom

  Everybody hurried up that way to see what it was all about. The driver got out, and I knew right away I’d seen her before. She was a big blonde woman with a lot of bracelets clanking on her arm. By golly, it was Mrs. Horne. She sort of travels around the country with her nieces, showing them the country, and she’d been here the time everybody was looking for Miss Harrington. But there hadn’t been any signs on the trailer then. It looked like she’d gone into business.