Uncle Sagamore and His Girls (17 page)

When I woke up they still hadn’t come back. Cars was driving in now, and every time I’d hear one I’d jump and look, hoping it was them. It never was. After a while I couldn’t stand that any longer, so I went through the woods to the ravine and looked in back of the ferns, hoping they might have moved it somehow. But they hadn’t. I looked at it, scareder than ever, and ran back to the house. They still hadn’t come, and more people was arriving all the time. They seemed to be excited, and a lot of them was carrying handbills that was already beginning to litter the ground. I grabbed a bunch, and they was all the same, and they said:

MINIFEE FOR SHERIFF !!!

GIANT RALLY

NOONAN FARM MONDAY 1 PM

FOLKS, DO YOU WANT THE ANSWER?

J. L. (CURLY) MINIFEE HAS SOMETHING TO TELL YOU

HE PROMISES YOU’LL BE ENLIGHTENED SURPRISED AND ENTERTAINED

! ! !

Everybody was talking about it, and trying to guess what Curly was going to say. I was so worried I couldn’t stand still. About halfway up the hill was a truck with a big load of lumber, and four men with carpenter’s tools was building a platform. It was about six feet high, and faced down toward the barn and the shed. Uncle Finley was stealing planks from them, so they gave him three or four to keep him occupied till they could get the rest of them nailed together. It couldn’t be much more than eleven o’clock, I thought, and already cars was coming in in a steady stream. Then I saw Murph.

He came on down the hill and parked under the oak tree in front of the house. I ran and jumped in almost before he stopped.

“Hey, have you seen Pop and Uncle Sagamore?” I asked.

“Not since last night,” he says. “Haven’t they got back yet?”

“No,” I says. “And I’m scared stiff—”

“I’m a little worried myself,” he said. “I just got up, and I found the whole county knee-deep with these things.” He pointed to a bunch of the handbills on the seat, and then turned to look up the hills toward the platform. “What’s Curly up to?”

“That’s why I’ve got to find Pop and Uncle Sagamore, before the rally starts,” I said. “Or it’ll be too late. Do you know where they went?”

“No. You know how it is with Sagamore; he either tells you, or you don’t ask. He just gave me the money to bet, and shoved off.”

“Bet?” I asked.

“Sure,” he says. “Eight hundred dollars. I got it all down for him, and four hundred for myself. Took most of the night—”

“Wait,” I says, “you mean you’re all betting on Curly?”

“No,” he said. “On the Sheriff.”

“
The Sheriff?
Listen, Murph—”

“Shhhh. Not so loud,” he says. He looked around to be sure there wasn’t anybody near us. “Sure. Got 10-to-l for every nickel of it. That’s what he was doing all the time that I couldn’t understand—all this jazz with the hog feed and the turpentine and making speeches endorsing the Sheriff. He was running up the odds.”

“Murph—!”

“I don’t know what he’s got up his sleeve, but it must be good. All he said was to get my money down on the Sheriff, so I did. He’s never been wrong yet, and you always go with the champ.”

“
Murph, listen—!
” I got started at last, and I told him about it.

“Oh, good God!” he said. He slumped down in the seat.

“Curly’s going to get ’em up there in front of thousands of people, and double-cross ’em,” I said. “That mealy-mouthed—”

“Never mind the diagram,” he told me. Then he sighed and shook his head. “Well, it figured, I guess. Sooner or later he had to run into somebody that could take him.”

“M
URPH,” I SAYS, “WE
got to warn ’em.”

“It’s probably too late now.” Then he stepped on the starter. “But at least we can try. I’ll run back to town and look.”

He drove off. I went on watching. In about an hour the platform was finished. It had a little stand in front, and couple of short benches in the back, and was draped with bands of colored cloth. There was a big “
MINIFEE FOR SHERIFF
” sign across the top, and a microphone on a metal stand. The steps led down the side. By now cars was just pouring in, and there was three men in white coveralls showing the drivers where to park. But there still wasn’t any sign of Pop and Uncle Sagamore.

Just then an old wagon came creaking down the hill, holding up the cars so drivers was cussing at the man in it. It was Mr. Jimerson, and doggone if the whole wagon bed wasn’t full of tomatoes. There was a sign stuck in them that says, “
SIX FOR A DIME
.” He stopped just above the shed, and the mules let their ears droop and went to sleep. I ran over, thinking he might have seen Uncle Sagamore, and just as I got there a Sheriff’s car pulled up.

The Sheriff got out, and Booger and Otis. They was all kind of red-eyed and haggard, like they hadn’t slept for some time. The Sheriff had one of the handbills, and he looked around at the platform and the crowds, and cussed. “Now what the hell’s he up to?”

“It’s like I told you,” Booger says. “He’s made a deal with Minifee.”

“It don’t matter now,” the Sheriff said, real bitter. “He’s already wrecked any chance I had.” He looked at Mr. Jimerson. “How come you’re selling tomatoes down here, Marvin?”

“I’m sellin’ ’em for him,” Mr. Jimerson says. “He boughten the whole wagonload from me.”

“Sagamore Noonan? Buyin’ tomatoes—?”

Mr. Jimerson studied about it, and bit off a chew of tobacco. “That’s what he done, Shurf. An’ paid me fer ’em, right out in cash. Prudy was bound an’ determined there must be a trick in it somewheres, but when I takened the money in to town an’ showed it to Clovis Buckhalter at the bank—”

“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?”