The Diamond Bikini (14 page)

The one with the lumber stopped, but Uncle Finley was already there, and before the man could even get out he ran around back and pulled off a board about twenty feet long and started running down the hill towards the ark, dragging the board after him.

“Hey,” the men in the truck yelled, and took out after him. One of them got hold of the end of the board and started trying to take it away from him.

The other one yelled at Pop, “Who’s this crazy old bastard? Tell him to leave this lumber alone.”

Pop was telling the drivers of the yellow trucks where to park. He looked around and waved a hand. That’s just Finley. Let him have the plank and he won’t bother you no more. He’ll be all day nailing it up.”

The two men let go the plank and Uncle Finley went scooting down towards the ark, letting the end of it drag behind him. They came back to the truck and began unloading the rest of it on the ground.

I was close enough to the yellow trucks to read the signs. They said “Burke’s Shows.” It was a carnival! Going to be set up right on Uncle Sagamore’s farm.

I looked behind them. There was more coming. And some big yellow trailers with “Burke’s Shows” on the side of them. And then some cars. And then a big shiny aluminum house trailer. And then more cars. They was just pouring down the hill from the gate with dust boiling up everywhere. They ran right on past the house and across the cornfield, and when they hit the edge of the timber they stopped and men began to jump out. They took off into the trees.

They’d sure find Miss Harrington now, I thought. It looked like the whole world had turned out to look for her.

I ducked across when there was an open space between cars so I could get through, and ran to where Pop was. He was still waving his arms and motioning to the drivers of the trucks. They was backing them here and there, and as soon as one was in the right spot men jumped down and began unloading the big tents. Other men had axes and was cutting down the little trees and bushes in the way.

“Hey, Pop,” I yelled as I came up, “where did the carnival come from?”

He looked around at me, and went on motioning to one of the drivers. “Careful of them cars, Billy,” he says. “Don’t get run over.”

“But, Pop,” I says, getting out of the way so a truck could swing up past me, “how’d they happen to bring a carnival way out here?”

“Don’t bother me now,” he says. “I’ll talk to you after a while. And you watch out for them cars.”

I was jumping up and down, I was so excited about the carnival. Sig Freed was excited too, and he began running around in big circles, getting in the way.

“Get that dawg out of here before he gets run over,” Pop yelled. “Go on down to the lake or somewhere. You can come back after it’s all set up.”

I could see the gate from here, and when I looked up the hill I saw Uncle Sagamore. He was standing there beside it, with all the cars going past him. I could see some sort of sign nailed up on one of the posts, but this far away I couldn’t tell what it said. I called Sig Freed and we ran up that way to see what he was doing.

When I got a little closer, I could make out the sign. It said “Noonan Farm. Parking $1.00” Uncle Sagamore was standing across from it, on the drivers’ side of the cars, with a flour sack. Every time a driver would turn out of the road and in through the gate he would hand Uncle Sagamore a dollar. Uncle Sagamore would drop it in the flour sack and wave for him to go on.

It seemed to me like a dollar was pretty high to pay for parking way out here in the country where there was thousands of acres, and I wondered why a lot of them didn’t just drive on down the road and pull off somewhere further along. Heck, they only charged fifty cents at most race tracks.

Then, when I got up to the gate I saw why they was all turning in. The road going on past was blocked. Uncle Sagamore’s truck was broke down right square in the middle of it less than a car’s length past where our ruts turned off through the gate. It looked like he had tried to turn it around and had got lodged between the trees growing up on both sides. It was jammed in for fair, with the front axle against a stump on one end and the tail-gate between two trees on the other. And on top of that, one of the back wheels was missing, like he’d had a flat tire and started to change it. There just wasn’t any way you could move that truck without cutting down the trees on both sides or taking it apart and carrying it away in a wheelbarrow.

And they couldn’t get out of the road anywhere back the other way for at least a hundred yards. There was solid pine trees on both sides, plus Uncle Sagamore’s wire fence along this edge of it. I looked up that way, and it was just jammed with cars, bumper to bumper. They was going slow because each car had to give Uncle Sagamore a dollar, and that jammed them up behind. Some of them was honking their horns, and men was yelling, wanting to know what the trouble was.

Just as I walked up alongside Uncle Sagamore the car making the turn stopped, but the driver didn’t hold out a dollar. He was a big red-faced man with a white moustache and there was another man in the front seat with him.

The man driving jerked his head at the sign and then shouted at Uncle Sagamore. “You think I’m going to pay a dollar to park out here in the country? You’re nuts.”

The other man in the seat jabbed him with his elbow, and whispers, “Shhhh! Hush, you dam’ fool. That’s Sagamore Noonan.” He was a real skinny man with a big Adam’s apple that kept on going up and down when he talked.

“I don’t give a goddam who he is,” the red-faced one says. “I ain’t going to pay no dollar to park.”

Cars behind was beginning to blow their horns at the delay. Somebody stuck his head out back down the line. “Hey, what the hell’s the matter with you guys up there? You want ‘em to find her before we get there?”

“Shut up!” The red-faced one shouted. “This here bandit’s tryin’ to hold us up.”

Uncle Sagamore spit and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, real thoughtful. Then he reached down by the gate post for something. By golly, it was his shotgun. I hadn’t seen it before. He hefted it once and slid the safety catch back and forth, and then leaned on the car window with it across his arm. The end of the barrel was sticking right in the big man’s face. Only his face wasn’t red now. It was white, and getting whiter by the second. Big drops of sweat collected on his forehead.

Uncle Sagamore cocked his ear around a little by turning his head like a deaf person, and says, “How was that again? Them horns back there was makin’ so much noise I didn’t quite catch what you was sayin’.”

“Oh,” the big man says. “Oh, I was—unjust sayin’ I sure hope we find that there girl.” He took a dollar bill out of his pocket and reached it out real careful like it might blow up in his face.

Uncle Sagamore took it and waved for him to go on. Cars kept right on coming. I never saw money pouring into anything like the dollars pouring into his flour sack. It was just like a two-dollar window on Saturday. Sometimes a man would give him a five or a ten, and Uncle Sagamore would just reach down inside the sack and come out with a wad of ones as big as a hat to count out the change. Then he’d stuff the rest back in, along with the five or the ten. Silver coins went right in the sack along with the paper money.

One or two more started to give him an argument, so he just kept the shotgun in the crook of his arm. It saved picking it up each time, and it seemed like it also cut down on the arguments a lot too. There was no way the cars could back up, if they didn’t want to pay, because they was bumper to bumper way back as far as you could see, and there wasn’t room to turn around. So they just had to come on in, and when they did they had to pay. I could see Uncle Sagamore was going to make a fortune if this lasted very long. The sack was already beginning to bulge and rattle at the bottom.

In nearly all the cars somebody would stick his head out as they came through, and ask, “They found her yet?”

For a while Uncle Sagamore would say, “No. Not yet.” Then he took to just saying, “No.” And finally he quit even that and just shook his head.

A truck come through carrying ice and tubs and cases of pop and a big icebox and a stove. The man driving it was Murph. Uncle Sagamore waved him on through without the dollar, and says, “They’re buildin’ the stand down there now across from the carnival.”

Murph nodded. “Looks like a good crowd.”

Murph drove on in. I could see there wasn’t any chance of talking to Uncle Sagamore as long as he was busy raking in money like that so I ran down the hill alongside the truck. It pulled up on the left-hand side of the road where they had unloaded the lumber. This was near Dr Severance’s trailer, and there wasn’t many trees from here on down to the house, about a hundred yards. Right across the road they was putting up the carnival tents. They had one of those big ones partly up now, and there was a raised ticket stand and a little stage out in front that had a big sign over it that said “Girls! Girls! Girls!” It didn’t look like they had a Ferris wheel or even a merry-go-round, though.

Murph stopped the truck and got out. The whole place was in an uproar now and it sounded and looked like a big day at a race track. You’d think it was the Preakness, or something. Cars was whizzing on down the hill and past the house, out into the cornfield. Men was shouting and struggling with the tents over there, and now a bunch of girls was beginning to come out of one of the trailers, all dressed in romper suits. The two men that had unloaded the lumber was trying to nail together what looked like a hot-dog stand out of it.

They had the outline of it started, up about two planks high nailed to 2-by-4’s at the corners, but every time they’d pick up a board and start to nail it up, turning their back on the lumber pile, Uncle Finley would swoop down and grab a plank and light out for the ark. They’d have to drop theirs and chase him and rassle it away from him.

Murph lit a cigarette and looked around. “Good God,” he says. “What a boar’s nest. Be ten thousand people here by noon, the way they’re pouring in.”

They sure ought to find her,” I says.

“What?” he asked. “Oh. Sure. Hell, there won’t even be room for her down in that bottom in another two hours, unless she sits on somebody’s shoulder.”

The two men come up with the plank and put it back on the pile. Uncle Finley stood off a little ways and watched them.

“Shake it up, you guys,” Murph says. “We got to get in operation here so we can feed all them hungry heroes when they come up out of the bottom.”

“Well, how the hell can we get anything done,” one of them says, “with that old crack-pot stealing the planks faster than we can nail ‘em up? What the hell’s the matter with him, anyway?”

“I don’t know,” Murph says. “Mebbe he thinks he s a termite. He started lifting the tubs down and breaking up ice in them for the bottles of pop.

Then he looked across the road to where the girls that had come out of the trailer was standing around lighting cigarettes and waving at the men going by in cars. “Hmmmm,” he says. “Not a bad-looking bunch of pigs he rounded up. They ought to pull ‘em in. You know, kid, I’ve seem some operators in my day, but he’s the most.”

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“Who else? Your Uncle Sagamore. Don’t ever let that bare-footed act of his fool you, kid; he’s a genius. The only real, honest-to-God genius I ever saw. I’ve watched him operate a long time now, and he’s got the touch. There ain’t no use trying to develop it; you got to be born with it. Barnum couldn’t have handled this thing any better than Sagamore’s done it.”

“Well,” I says, “he was a little afraid the sheriff wasn’t using enough men to look for her.”

He looked at me and shook his head. “You can say that again,” he says. “By the way, you haven’t seen the sheriff lately, have you?”

“No,” I says. “He went back to town last night. But I reckon he’ll be along pretty soon.”

“Well, he may be having a little trouble getting in here. I expect there’s quite a bit of traf—Hey, you old bastard, come back here with that board.”

Murph dropped the chunk of ice and took off down the hill after Uncle Finley.

I looked around for Pop. I finally spotted him clown the hill between the house and the barn, and he was really busy. The cornfield was jam-packed with cars now and they was beginning to overflow up around the barn and the back of the house, so Pop was trying to direct them where to park. Most of the drivers didn’t pay much attention, though. They’d just go on as far ahead as they could, until they was up against the car ahead, and then they’d stop and everybody would jump out and head for the timber. It was an awful snarl, and I wondered how they would ever get out when they wanted to go home.

Then they started parking downhill towards the lake and around Uncle Finley’s ark and filling that part up. Pop managed to keep the front yard clear and a little stretch each side of the road up the hill past where they was putting the hot-dog stand and the carnival. I backed up towards the gate, watching the rest of the space fill up. It was just like filling the neck of a bottle. He jammed ‘em in on both sides of the road clear out to the trees and then solid in the road itself until the last cars was just turning in at the gate and stopping. The last two that paid was only half-way through the gate from there back up the road as far as I could see, they was still bumper to bumper. The whole thing had stopped now, of course, so the horns started blowing. That went on for two or three minutes, and then the men started jumping out and coming ahead on foot. They came through the gate, some of them, and others just climbed through the fence and headed down through the trees towards the river bottom.

I came in as Pop went over by Uncle Sagamore and leaned on the fence post and took off his hat. He mopped his face and neck with his handkerchief. “Whew!” he says.

Uncle Sagamore put down the flour sack. It was bulging half-way to the top with money. “Feel kind of wore out myself,” he says. He took out his tobacco and rubbed it on his overall leg and bit off a chew. “But it looks like a man’s just got to keep hustlin’ night and day to keep ahead of the game, with the Gov’ment takin’ nearly everything he can make. Right sizeable crowd, ain’t it?”

“Must be around three thousand cars,” Pop says. “Well, there ain’t no use stayin’ around here no more. You couldn’t get another car in here if you greased it. Let’s go meet the folks an’ see if they’re gettin’ set up all right. The first wave of tired ones will be comin’ back out of the bottom pretty soon, an’ we got to be ready for ‘em.”

We walked down the hill, squeezing between cars until we got to the place where the hot-dog stand was. They had it just about finished now. Anyway, they had used up all the planks. There was spaces in it here and there, and I guess that was the ones Uncle Finley had beat them to. There was a counter along the front of it. Inside they had set up the stove and icebox, and the tubs was full of pop. Murph was starting to paint a sign.

“How much do you reckon we ought to charge for hamburgers?” he asked Uncle Sagamore.

Uncle Sagamore spit and rubbed his chin with his hand. “Well sir,” he says. That there’s a kind of hard question to answer offhand. Ordinarily I’d say a hamburger was worth about two bits. But on the other hand if you been walkin’ around in a river bottom for five or six hours an’ ain’t got no lunch with you, an’ then you find it’s a nine-mile walk to the nearest restaurant, I reckon you wouldn’t say a dollar was too much, would you?”