The Diamond Bikini (9 page)

Well, I thought, maybe they went off in the woods beyond the cornfield for something. Then I remembered about that warm place in the lake that I was going to ask Uncle Sagamore about, so I went down there and took my clothes off and waded out to look for it again.

And, by golly, it was gone too. I just couldn’t find it anywhere. I’d marked right where it was, too. You lined up the back end of Finley’s ark with the corner of the front porch and waded out about eight steps till the water was up to your hips and there it was. Only it wasn’t. Now the water was just the same there as it was anywhere else. It sure was funny. I went out on the bank and thought about it while I waited for myself to dry off, but it just didn’t make any sense at all. Only thing it could be, I thought, is a kind of warm spring that don’t run all the time.

It was close on to sundown, and I went back up to the house. Pop and Uncle Sagamore had come back from wherever they had went. Pop was slicing baloney and Uncle Sagamore was frying it. They was both kind of quiet and didn’t look like they would take much to the idea of answering questions, so I didn’t ask any.

After supper Pop said they was going to bring up the truck and haul the tubs back down in the woods; the leather had had enough sun for a few days. He said they might go in to town afterwards, so not to wait up.

I got scared lying on the front porch in the dark, thinking about the accident the rabbit hunters had, but I could hear Uncle Finley snoring away in the back bedroom so it wasn’t too lonesome.

When I woke up in the morning the sun was shining in my face and I could see it was going to be another fine day for fishing. Sig Freed was licking my face and I could hear Pop and Uncle Sagamore frying the baloney for breakfast back in the kitchen. I got up and raced Sig Freed down to the lake to wash up. Just as I was coming in the kitchen door I heard Uncle Sagamore say to Pop, “Reckon he must of found it, all right, and drove it clear out of the state. Heard him come in about four this morning.”

Then they seen me, and looked at each other. Uncle Sagamore started talking about the leather business.

“Sure can’t figure it out,” he says, throwing some more slices of baloney in the hot grease. “Couldn’t of followed them Gov’ment instructions no closer’n I did, and still she’s sure as hell turnin’ into soup. You reckon we just ain’t got the right kind of climate up here to make leather, Sam?”

“Well, it could be,” Pop says. “Or it might be the water. Ain’t nothing we can do, though, but just keep tryin’. Can’t give up.”

After breakfast I took Sig Freed and went up by the trailer. The doctor and Miss Harrington wasn’t up, so I went fishing. It was a nice day and I caught some more perch. Along in the afternoon I saw Miss Harrington and the doctor sitting in their chairs in front of the trailer, but when I went up there she said she didn’t want to go swimming today.

It was three days before she would go again. Then Pop give me a licking when he found out about it.

“I told you to stay away from Miss Harrington,” he says. “She’s not a well girl, and you might catch her anemia.”

It was another ten days before we got to go in again, and then I had to sneak off. And that was the day all hell busted loose.

But first there was this hullaballoo with the sheriff’s men that got everybody excited.

It started out like any other day. It was time to bring the leather out of the woods for a little more sun, so Pop and Uncle Sagamore took the truck and hauled the tubs up to the house just after breakfast. The stuff was all coming to pieces now and it smelled worse than ever. There wasn’t any breeze, either, to blow it away, so it just hung around the house something awful. It was bubbling a little, and had a thick scum, kind of brown and green, on it.

It made my eyes water, so I went out to watch Uncle Finley to get away from it. He had run clean out of boards, so he was busy pulling ‘em off one place and nailin’ ‘em on in another, just kind of patching, as Uncle Sagamore called it.

He kept muttering to hisself and wouldn’t talk, so after a while I went up towards the trailer to see what Miss Harrington was doing. She and the doctor was sitting in the canvas chairs out in front, listening to the little radio on the table. It was giving the morning news. He just grunted at me, but she went inside and got me a coke.

She was wearing a white romper suit this time, and she sure looked nice. “Do you want to go swimming this evening, Billy?” she asked me.

“I’d sure love to,” I says. “But Pop might give me another licking.”

Tell him to go fry an ice cube,” she says. “I’ll tell you what. You meet me over there about five o’clock, and we’ll go in anyway.”

Dr Severance gave her a dirty look and switched off the radio. “You stay around the trailer, like I told you. We’re not out of the woods yet.”

“Stop being such a square,” she says. “It’s been ten days.”

Just then I looked down the hill towards the house and saw Pop lying under the back end of the car like he was working on it. “I’ll see you at five o’clock,” I said to Miss Harrington, and started down that way with Sig Freed to see what he was doing.

Just before I got there he straightened up, and I saw he had a tin can in his hand. It looked to me like he must have been draining some gasoline out of the tank. He went on around the corner of the house, and then I saw Uncle Sagamore coming up from the barn carrying four jars.

I wondered what they was going to put gasoline in fruit jars for, and why they needed four big ones like that for just one little can full. I had to grab my nose when I got down close to the tubs, but I went on and looked around the corner of the house. It was funny what they was doing.

There was a little table sitting in the back yard in the shade of the chinaberry tree. Uncle Sagamore had put the four glass jars on it, and Pop was dipping a piece of white string in the can of gasoline. When it was good and wet, he took it out fast and tied it around the middle of one of the jars. Uncle Sagamore struck a match and touched it to the string. It blazed up and made a ring of fire around the jar for a minute before it went out. Then they did the same thing to the next one, with another piece of string. I watched. There didn’t seem to be any sense to it. They kept on till they had done it to all four of them. Then they took off the charred string and rubbed the jars clean with a cloth, handling them real gentle.

I walked up behind them. “Hey, Pop,” I says, “what you doing?”

They both whirled around, and looked at me and then at each other. “Doing?” Pop says. “Why, uh—we’re testing these jars. Ain’t that what it looks like?”

“Testing ‘em?” I says. “Why?”

Uncle Sagamore pursed up his lips and spit out some tobacco juice. “Well sir,” he says, “it’s just like I was telling you, Sam. A boy ain’t never goin’ to learn nothin’ less’n he asks questions. Now, how would a young boy know you don’t never send nothin’ to the Gov’ment in jars you ain’t sure of? He got any way of knowin’ what would happen if one of them jars busted along the way, or after it got there? He don’t know nothin’ about how the Gov’ment operates.”

He stopped and shifted his tobacco over into his other cheek and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Then he looks at me real solemn and goes on, “Now you take if one of them jars was to happen to bust, you got the whole goddam Gov’ment in a uproar. Before you know it, they’re faunchin’ around like a pen full of hawgs after a rattlesnake, with everybody millin’ around askin’ questions and trying to figure out what happened. Then somebody gets a burr under his crupper and starts a investigation, so you got all them high-priced people tied up wastin’ time just because some pore old ignorant boll weevil that didn’t know no better sent ‘em something in a rickety fruit jar that wouldn’t hold together. And that ain’t all. Right in the middle of all this hulla-balloo, somebody discovers the Gov’ment ain’t even got a regular fruit-jar testing department. So two more people start a investigation to find out how come they ain’t, and four others start a investigation to find out how come the first two ain’t investigated this already, and in the meantime some janitor sweeps up the busted fruit jar and throws it out, so everybody drops everything and come chargin’ in to investigate and the first thing you know the whole thing’s like a fire in a whorehouse.”

“And that makes taxes go up “ Pop says.

“Yes, sir,” Uncle Sagamore says, “that’s exactly what it does.”

“Oh,” I says. “Are you going to send something to the Gov’ment?”

“That’s right.” Uncle Sagamore nodded his head. “Me an’ Sam got to thinkin’ about what you said about all the time we’d waste lettin’ this leather run its course, so we figured maybe we ort to kind of hurry the thing along a little by sendin’ some of the juice now an’ letting ‘em see if maybe they could tell us what was wrong. We’re goin’ to have some of her analyzed by the Gov’ment.”

“Well,” I says, “that seems to me like the right thing to do. Then, if they say you didn’t mix the juice just right to begin with, you can start over with a new batch without having to wait all that time.” I felt real proud of myself. They’d seen I was right.

Uncle Sagamore nodded. “That’s just the way me and Sam saw it. You got a good head on you.”

“And you’re going to ship her in those four jars?” I ask. “You reckon they’ll need that much?”

Uncle Sagamore pursed up his lips. “Well, we don’t rightly know just how much the Gov’ment usually has to have for tests like this, so we figured to be on the safe side we’d ort to send ‘em two gallons.” He stopped and looked at me. “That strike you as about right?”

“Yeah,” I says. “Sure. If it don’t cost too much to ship it.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” he says. “We’ll send her collect. Ain’t no strain about that.”

Pop got a water bucket and a dipper out of the kitchen. Circling around to get upwind of the tubs, because there was a little breeze beginning to blow now, he fanned the air with his hat in front of his face while he swished back the foam and bubbles a little and began dipping some of the juice out into the bucket. When he trotted back to the chinaberry tree with the bucket full his eyes was watering and he was choking a little.

“Startin’ to be a little on the ripe side,” he says.

Uncle Sagamore nodded. “She does seem to be gettin’ a little tang to her.”

Sig Freed whined and ran down towards the barn. I didn’t blame him much. Pop got a strainer out of the kitchen and began filling the four jars. The strainer caught the bubbles and strips of cowhide so the tanning juice in the jars was clear.

“Got to remember to wash them utensils out before Bessie gets back,” Uncle Sagamore said. “She gits provoked about usin’ ‘em for things like this.

“Hadn’t you ought to put in a couple of pieces of the leather?” I asked. “Maybe they’ll want to analyze it too.”

Uncle Sagamore shook his head. “No. I reckon not. The solution’s the only thing the Gov’ment is interested in. That’s what does the work an’ tans the leather, an’ when they find out what I done wrong when I mixed her up we’ll be all set.”

He picked up one of the jars real easy and held it up to squint through it at the light.

“How is she for color?” Pop asked.

“Real good,” Uncle Sagamore says. “She just couldn’t be better. Like a regular carmel job.”

I couldn’t see what difference the color made. You could see it was about like weak tea but, heck, what did the Gov’ment care about that?

Uncle Sagamore slipped a rubber ring around the neck of each one of the jars and got ready to screw on the caps. “Got to be sure we seal her good and tight,” he says.

“We got just the thing out in the trailer,” Pop says. He went through the house. In a minute he came back with a tube of clear cement. He smeared some on both sides of the rubber sealing ring and a little on the edges of the caps, and they screwed ‘em down firm, holding on to the shoulders of the jars with their other hand. Pop threw what was left of the juice back in one of the tubs, and washed out the bucket. Then they washed off the outsides of the jars, you couldn’t smell it now, except what was coming from the tubs themselves.

Uncle Sagamore went and got a cardboard box and packed the four jars in it real careful, stuffing wadded paper all around them so they couldn’t touch each other and break. Pop took the box out and put it in the back of our car.

“You goin’ to take it to the post office now?” I asked.

“Sure,” Pop says.

“Can I go, Pop?”

“Sure, I reckon so,” he says. “Come to think of it, haven’t you got a lot of old dirty clothes we ort to take to the laundry while we’re goin’?”

“Yeah,” I says. “I’ll get ‘em.”

I went to the trailer and found the laundry sack behind the printing press. It was full of my stuff and Pop’s shorts and levis and shirts and socks and things. Some of ‘em hadn’t been sent to the laundry since we was at Bowie. There was a lot of ‘em. Pop took the bag and put it in the back of the car, on top of the box that had the jars in it.

“Maybe they’d be better on top of the clothes,” says. “Like a cushion, so there won’t be no chance of ‘em breaking.”

“No, they’re all right,” Pop says. “We tested them jars, didn’t we?”

“Okay,” I says. I started to climb in the back. “Are we ready to go? Where’s Uncle Sagamore?”

Pop lit a cigar. “Oh, he’ll be along in a few minutes. He had to run down in the bottom to see about one of the mules.”

“Oh,” I says. “Well, why don’t we pull the car up a little so we can get away from them tubs?”

“That’s a good idea,” Pop says. He moved the car up the hill about fifty yards and we sat in it while we waited for Uncle Sagamore. It was hot and sunshiny, and I could hear that bug yakking it up out in the trees. It was real nice, I thought, especially since we was out of range and couldn’t smell them tubs. The country sure was a nice place, all peaceful like this, and not crowded like Pimlico and Belmont Park. I could see Dr Severance and Miss Harrington sitting in their chairs in front of the trailer listening to the radio. They waved at us. Pop looked up in that direction.

“A diamond bathing suit,” he says, more like he was talking to hisself. “Imagine that. Where do you swim, you an’ Miss Harrington?”

“We don’t,” I says. “You told me not to, don’t you remember?”

“Oh. Yeah, I did, didn’t I?”

He was quiet for a minute, and then he looked back up the hill again and stirred kind of restless in the seat. “Reckon if it’s made out of diamonds, it ain’t a very big suit, is it?”

“No,” I said. “Just a little three-cornered patch, sort of, and a string that goes around the middle.”

“Just one patch?”

“Yeah,” I says. “Leaves her lots of room to swim in. It ain’t binding her at all.”

“Ho-ly
hell!” he says, like he was choking on the cigar smoke. “You’re sure there ain’t three patches?”

“No. Just one. Why? Is there usually three?”

“Oh,” he says. “I don’t rightly know. Seems like I heard somewhere there was three, most generally. But I reckon it don’t make no difference. You see anything of Sagamore?”

I turned and looked down past the house and across the cornfield, but I didn’t see him anywhere. “Not yet.”

“Well, he’ll be along pretty soon.”

“Is something wrong with one of the mules?” I asked.

“Well, with a mule, it’s kind of hard to tell when something is wrong with him. But he says one of ‘em had been actin’ kind of funny. Like something was worryin’ him.”

“Oh,” I says. We waited some more. And then, when I looked down that way again, I saw a little feather of gray smoke coming up above the trees down in the bottom.

“Say, Pop. Something’s burning down there.”

He turned that way. “Well, by golly, so it is. I reckon it ain’t serious, though. Likely just an old stump or something.”

Just then there was a racket up the hill. It sounded like a car coming along the old road in a big hurry, I turned and got just a glimpse of it as it passed an opening in the trees. It didn’t turn in at the wire gate, though; it just kept on going on that road that angled down towards the bottom. It was really moving.

“They was travelling a little like Booger and Otis,” I says. “You reckon it was them?”

“Hmmmm,” Pop says. “I don’t know. Can’t see why they’d be goin’ down there towards the bottom.”

“Maybe they seen that smoke. Uncle Sagamore says they keep a sharp lookout for forest fires.”

Pop took a puff on his cigar. “Reckon that might be it, at that. Well, they’ll likely put her out. Ain’t no cause to worry.”

He kept on looking towards the timber, and in a minute Uncle Sagamore came out of it on the far side of the cornfield. He was walking pretty fast. He went in the back of the house, and then come on out the front just like he’d walked straight through, but when he came out he had on a pair of shoes. The shoes wasn’t laced, though, and he didn’t have on a shirt. He didn’t believe in dressing up much to go to town. The black hair on his chest stuck up above the bib of his overalls, and it was all sweaty when he walked up to the car and got in the front seat with Pop.

Pop started the car. “That mule all right?” he asks.

“Mule?” Uncle Sagamore asked. “Oh. Sure. Looks in pretty good shape. He was just sulkin’, I reckon.”

“That was likely it,” Pop says.

“Mules is a lot like women,” Uncle Sagamore went on. “They get to thinkin’ about some triflin’ thing that happened ten, fifteen years ago, an’ then they brood about it for a while and go into a sull an’ won’t have nothin’ to do with you for weeks. An’ the hell of it is you ain’t got no idea what they’re poutin’ about.”