The diamond bikini - By Charles Williams Page 0,64

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?”

Murph shook his head kind of slow, and lettered the sign. “Hamburgers $1.00.” “Like I always say,” he says, “you’d never think it to look at you.”

We started on down to the house, with Uncle Sagamore carrying the flour sack. The shiny house trailer was parked off to the left. A big blonde woman with a lot of bracelets and a real red mouth was standing outside the door of it. She waved at Pop.

Pop says to Uncle Sagamore, “Come on over. I’d like to make you acquainted with Mrs. Home. She’s sort of travelin’ around the country with her nieces.”

We went over. “Hiya, boys,” Mrs. Home says. Her hair was real smooth and shiny and about the color of butter and it