Uncle Sagamore and His Girls (2 page)

Booger shook his head. “Not a chance, Mr. Noonan. It jest so happens Otis and me has made a big study of worm ground, an’ this here ain’t no good at all. Now, if we was to look around for a likelier spot—”

All of a sudden he stopped and pointed over to the place where Uncle Sagamore had started to dig first. “Sa-a-ay,” he told Otis, “now that there looks more like it.”

“That’s exactly what I was about to say myself,” Otis says. They started over to it.

Uncle Sagamore took out his big red handkerchief and mopped his face, and started to say something, but they didn’t pay any mind. We all followed along after them. They squatted down where Uncle Sagamore had kicked the loose dirt back in the first hole. Booger crumbled some of it between his fingers, and nodded his head real excited, like he’d found gold.

“Now, this here is more like it,” he says. “This is real, prime, honest-to-goodness worm dirt.”

Uncle Sagamore shuffled his feet on the ground and cleared his throat. “Why, boys,” he says, kind of sheepish, “that’s the same dirt. I don’t see no difference at all.”

Booger and Otis stared at each other. “
See
no difference?” Booger says. “You don’t look at worm dirt. You got to feel it.”

“Here, try some of this,” Otis says. He put some in Uncle Sagamore’s hand. “Feel that there texture, kind of silky like.”

Uncle Sagamore didn’t seem to have much interest in it, though. He let it fall to the ground. Then he mopped the back of his neck with the bandanna again. “Uh—” he says, “seems like I recollect somethin’ about worms likin’ a little more dampness in their dirt. Mebbe if you was to try a little closer to the lake—”

“No,
sir,
” Booger says. He grabbed the shovel away from Otis. “No use lookin’ any further. This here spot’s a reg’lar worm paradise.”

He put his foot on the blade and pushed it into the ground. We all watched him. It seemed to me like an awful lot of fuss just over a few worms you could dig anywhere, but I didn’t say anything. Booger went on digging. Uncle Sagamore kind of fidgeted on one foot and then the other, and once or twice he opened his mouth to talk, but changed his mind. He seemed like he was uneasy about something, but trying not to let on. Then all of a sudden we heard the shovel hit against something hard. Otis and Booger stared at each other sort of blank.

“Why, that couldn’t of been a worm,” Otis says. He hunkered down by the hole and pushed some dirt out of the way with his hand. Then he looked up at Booger and shook his head. “You jest ain’t goin’ to believe this,” he said, “but that feels like a fruit jar.”

“A fruit jar?” Booger asked. “What on earth would that be doin’ down there?”

Uncle Sagamore had his handkerchief out again and was mopping the bald spot on his head. “Uh—boys,” he says, “likely it’s some canned garden sass or somethin’ that got spoiled and Bessie throwed it away—”

“Why, sure,” Booger says. “That must be it.” He looked at Otis real solemn, but you could see they was having a hard time keeping their faces straight.

All of a sudden Otis sniffed the air, and held a handful of the dirt up to his nose. “Holy Moses!” he says, and stuck it in front of Booger’s face. “This is what I call sure-nuff rich soil. Must be at least 120 proof.”

One of ’em snickered. And then the other. The next thing they was just howling. They slapped their legs with their hands, and tears run down their cheeks, they was laughing so hard. When they could get their breath again, Otis says, “It must be leakin’. We better get it out and see how much is left.”

Uncle Sagamore shuffled his feet and glanced around downhill like he’d just thought of something he had to do. Booger looked at him. “Why, Mr. Noonan,” he says, “you wasn’t figurin’ on leavin’, was you? Stick around.”

We all watched. They brought the jar out of the hole, still grinning like big chessie cats. It was a quart size, but there wasn’t hardly anything in it, just about a spoonful of something that looked like water. Booger unscrewed the cap. It come off real easy.

“That’s the reason it all leaked out,” he says. “It never was sealed tight.” He sniffed, and grinned, and handed it to Otis.

Otis sniffed. “Man, you could get a jag on just standing close to it. But this ain’t enough for evidence.”

“No, of course not,” Booger says. “But there’ll be more.”

Uncle Sagamore seemed to have got over his nervousness. He leaned over and sniffed the mouth of the jar, and drew back. “Why, men,” he says, kind of shocked, “I ain’t no expert, of course, but I’d almost swear that was likker. How you reckon it got here?”

Booger winked at Otis. “Ain’t no tellin’,” he says. “But whoever buried it here sure done you a dirty trick.”

Uncle Sagamore shook his head like it was all too much for him. “Well, sir,” he says to Pop, “it’s enough to make a man lose his faith in human nature. People sneakin’ around buryin’ likker on his place when he ain’t lookin’.”

“When you reckon they could of done it?” Pop asked.

“There just ain’t no tellin’,” Uncle Sagamore says. “Bein’ off in the field like we are from daylight to dark, workin’ our fingers to the bone to try to make enough to pay the taxes—”

Booger shook his head. “Oh, brother!”

They both had another big laughing spell. Then they dried their eyes, and Booger says, “Well, let’s dig up some more and get goin’. I can’t hardly wait to see the Sheriff’s face when we come walkin’ in with him.”

He grabbed the shovel and started digging again. We had to move back to keep from having our feet covered with dirt.

Otis grinned at him. “If you run into a worm,” he says, “don’t take no chances with him. With a whole quart of that panther sweat spilled down there, he might pull a knife on you.”

B
UT MAYBE I BETTER
go back and tell you how me and Pop came to be living here on Uncle Sagamore’s farm in the first place. You see, Pop’s a turf investment counselor by trade, and we used to travel around to the big cities like Hialeah and Belmont Park printing up the tip sheets and selling them to the clients, but along last year it seemed like Pinkerton detectives kept grabbing him all the time. And then we had this rhubarb with the Welfare Ladies in Aqueduct. They kept me while Pop was away, and threatened to take me away from him and put me in a Home because I was nearly seven years old and couldn’t read anything but the Racing Form. Pop touted ’em off that by promising to bring me down here to his brother’s place for some wholesome farm life, and we’d been here ever since, with Pop helping Uncle Sagamore out a little in some of the businesses he had for a sideline, like the leather tannery, and making evidence. Evidence is about the same thing as whiskey except it generally has less color to it.

Then there was all this hullaballoo when the gangsters come, and Miss Harrington got lost in the river bottom with nothing on but her G-string, and the Sheriff found the still in the spare room of Uncle Sagamore’s farmhouse. Him and Pop was away for a while after that, but the Governor pardoned them and they was home now. That didn’t set any too well with the Sheriff, so he always had his men hanging around watching for smoke and looking for fruit jars full of evidence so he could send ’em away again.
*

Anyway, it was hot out there in the sun, and in a few minutes Booger had a real sweat worked up. Otis took the shovel and spelled him for a while. The hole kept getting bigger, but they didn’t find any more jars.

“Hell, Sam,” Uncle Sagamore says to Pop, “I don’t see no need in us standin’ here. Why don’t we set down?”

“Sure,” Pop says. We moved over in the shade of the oak tree. Uncle Sagamore stretched out and got comfortable with his back against the trunk, sailed out some tobacco juice, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“It’s just like I always say, Sam; you can’t never tell about people,” he says. “Now, you look at them two boys, you’d swear they was borned politicians, wouldn’t you? I mean, take a long, disconnected drink of water like Booger, with his hair stuck down with chicken fat, and Otis with that cookie-duster mustache, you’d think one good diddle and a loud sneeze would kill ’em both, and here they are just workin’ away like a chain gang.”

Otis stuck the shovel in the ground and stopped to wipe the sweat off his face. “I think we’re wastin’ time,” he says. “There probably ain’t no more buried here, the way he’s actin’.”

Booger grabbed the shovel. “Don’t you believe it,” he says. “That’s just the sort of act the old crook’d put on to get us to quit. You ought to know—”

He stopped all of a sudden then, and we heard it too. The shovel had hit something. “A-
ha!
” he says. He threw out another scoop of dirt and reached down with his hands. They lifted it out, whatever it was, and begin whooping and hollering like men that had found a four-pound diamond.

“Well, look what he’s puttin’ it in now,” Otis says. “It’s a GI canteen.”

We all jumped up and went to look. They was standing in the hole they had dug, that was about three or four feet across and a little over knee deep, and Otis was holding this thing in his hand. It was a canteen, all right, the aluminum kind that soldiers carry, but it was old-looking and all crusted with dirt like it had been buried a long time.

“Say, it’s full,” Otis was yelling, real excited. He shook it and grinned at Booger. Booger grabbed it and rubbed some of the dirt off with his hands.

“Grand Jury, here we come,” he whooped.

Uncle Sagamore frowned, sort of puzzled, and peered at the canteen. “Why, boys, I don’t recollect ever seein’ that around here.”

“Why, of course not,” Booger says. “Probably what happened was it sneaked in here, filled itself with rotgut likker, and then hibernated.”

Uncle Sagamore wasn’t paying much attention. He was rubbing his jaw and looking at the canteen. “Daggone it,” he says, like he was talking to hisself. “It is sort of familiar, now that I think about it.” Then he shook his head. “But I sure can’t place it.”

Otis took it back from Booger and started to twist the cap off. It was stuck tight. He grunted and strained, but it didn’t budge.

“It’s likely corroded,” Booger says. “Here, let one of the men try it.” He grabbed it away from Otis and twisted till the cords stuck out on his neck. Still nothing happened.

Uncle Sagamore went on scratching his head. “You know, Sam,” he says, “I still got a feelin’ I seen that thing somewheres—”

“I sure don’t place it,” Pop says.

“Here, you hold it,” Booger told Otis. “Use both hands, and let me twist the cap.”

They both grunted, but it didn’t budge at all. They began to look mad. “Dammit,” Booger says, “how come he put it in a canteen, anyhow? For thirty years he’s been runnin’ his moonshine off in fruit jars.”

Otis shook his head. “He probably shop-lifted it at some gov’ment surplus place.”

Uncle Sagamore looked up real quick. “Say, that’s it!” he says to Pop. “I knowed that thing was familiar.”

Booger and Otis stopped twisting and grunting and looked at him. Pop asked, “You mean you bought it at a surplus store?”

“No,” Uncle Sagamore says. “Them fellers give it to me. The men from the loan company. Well sir, that must have been six, seven year ago—”

Booger let go the canteen to wipe the sweat off his face. “Boy, I bet this is goin’ to be a good one,” he says.

“See if you can find a rock,” Otis says. “If we hit the cap a couple of hard whacks it may jar it loose.”

Booger bent down and started pawing around in the dirt for a rock.

“You say they give it to you?” Pop asked. “What company was this?”

“The Redlands Loan Company,” Uncle Sagamore told him. “From over in Waynesville, as I recollect. It was Otis sayin’ gov’ment surplus that made me remember. You see, they bought this here safe at one of them gov’ment sales—”

“Well, what’s in it?” Pop asked. “The canteen, I mean.”

“It’s some kind of cordial,” Uncle Sagamore says. “One of them hifalutin’, diddle-me-quick society drinks.”

Otis frowned, like he was trying to remember something.

“All right, here’s a rock,” Booger says. He straightened up. “Now, hold it straight up and give me room to swing—”

Otis was still looking puzzled, and he didn’t pay any attention. He held the canteen under his arm while he lit a cigarette. “Redlands Loan Company,” he says, kind of talking to hisself.

“Oh, hell,” Booger told him. “You’re not listenin’ to those lies of his, are you? What would a loan company be givin’ away canteens for? And besides, he ain’t never been in Waynesville.”

“No, they was over here,” Uncle Sagamore said. “Four of ’em in a big truck, down there in my bottom timber—”

Booger shook his head. “Boy, I can see this ’un is goin’ to be a real doozy. Hold that thing, Otis, and let me sock it.”

He grabbed up the shovel and stuck it in the ground between them, and Otis held the canteen so the cap was resting against the handle. Booger drew back the rock. Then he stopped. “
Redlands
Loan Company?” he says, kind of thoughtful.

“What was they doing down there in the bottom?” Pop asked.

“Oh,” Uncle Sagamore says. He sailed out some tobacco juice and wiped his mouth. “Like I say, they was tryin’ to open this here safe. They had a bunch of sledgehammers and drills and stuff, and they just beat it up something terrible—”

Booger stared at him. “
Safe?
” he says. His eyes got big, and he kind of stiffened up, still holding the rock.

“They boughten it at one of them gov’ment surplus sales,” Uncle Sagamore went on, “and then when they got their papers and stuff inside it they found out the combination didn’t work, or something was wrong. Anyhow, they couldn’t get her open. They’d been writin’ back and forth to the gov’ment for a right smart spell, tryin’ to get the right combination, or get somebody to come open if for ’em, but you know how the gov’ment is—”

“Wait!” Otis says all of a sudden, staring at Booger. “You remember? They never did find it—”

“But how did they come to give you this here cordial?” Pop asked.

“Oh, when they left, they just said I could have her,” Uncle Sagamore said. “They had two canteens of it, but I reckon they’d already drunk the other one before I got there. But it was awful-tastin’ stuff. Real greazy, like it was all fusel oil, and it upset my stummik somethin’ fierce. I had the gut cramps and the trots all day.”