The diamond bikini - By Charles Williams Page 0,63

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